laid hold of anything along the road that he thought might be of use to
us, entirely ignoring any proprietary rights which others might think
they had in the object 'smoudged,' as he expressed it. In this way we
gradually became possessed of an endless quantity of odds and ends,
which it required a decided exercise of authority to get rid of.
"In traveling, he was nearly always to be seen on the top of the car,
for he had an appreciative eye for scenery,--so much so, indeed, as
sometimes to interfere with his duties. His great fault was
procrastination.
"When we reached Durango he became very greatly depressed, and on my
inquiring the reason for his melancholy, he attributes it to the
dullness of the place; 'for, ma'am, there is no excitement,--no one has
been killed for two weeks. Not at all what I was led to expect.' On
reaching Leadville, he became much more cheerful, as he had only been in
the city six hours before seeing two fights and half of another.
"His gait was something peculiar. It can best be described by the ditty
we used to sing, my dear, which commemorates so touchingly the character
and adventures of Susanna in her excursions abroad,--
'When she walks she lifts her foot,
And then she puts it down again.'
"Long, lank, dark-skinned, dressed in flapping coat and immensely broad
and excessively slouched sombrero (until my husband bought him a cap),
with his loping walk and swinging elbows, he was easily recognized at a
long distance; and as he would come sailing down upon us from afar, with
arms full of bundles, he reminded one a little of some huge bird of
prey.
"He had a wholesome fear of rattlesnakes and grizzly bears, which the
wicked men of the fort maliciously represented to him, abounded in
terrible numbers, and of the most ferocious kind wherever we went. 'No,
ma'am,' he said, in his slow, stately way, when I cautioned him one day
about trying to shoot a bear if he happened to meet one, as they were
hard to kill and especially dangerous if wounded, 'No, ma'am; if I meet
a bear you just bet I don't stay to take his portrait, but shin up the
first tree I come to.'
"He was continually developing new accomplishments. We learned, after a
few weeks, that we had not 'prospected' him thoroughly at the beginning.
He proved to have had more experience than his youthful looks and
aimlessness of motive lead us to expect. We had little occasion to call
into use whatever knowledge he had acquired as a bar-keeper, because the
education of the gentlemen of the party had not been neglected in that
direction,--wholly in an amateur way, and they were accustomed, while
'concocting elaborately commingled potations,' (as they grandiloquently
termed mixed drinks) to say to one another: 'If you would have anything
well done do it yourself.'
"One day, however, great delight was caused by the discovery that Burt
was a barber. His services were at once required, and when, at the end
of long labors, he was munificently offered two nickels, he declined
them. This noble independence aroused 'Chum's' admiration. He said that
he was glad to see that the boy was free from the mercenary spirit so
painful to witness in the young.
"Our porter seemed to consider the whole expedition a huge joke, and
ourselves a show arranged for his especial benefit. If--as it frequently
happened, for a more thoroughly heedless and forgetful youth never
existed--we were obliged to expostulate with him on some neglect of
duty, a seriousness of countenance would remain with him for some time,
but the first joke that came to his ears dispelled it. Sullen, he never
was, or ill natured; and if any real emergency occurred, more willing
and unselfish help could not have been tendered by a firm friend than
was tendered by this servant. I repent me, indeed, Mrs. McAngle, of
having made fun of him, even in the privacy of a letter to you. The odor
of the steaks that he cooked still lingers in my grateful nostrils; I
remember that without him, material for many jokes would have been
wanting, and I look on his fast vanishing, but always picturesque
figure, with regret."
* * * * *
Standing here at the very foot of the mountains that hid the enchanting
netherland of "the Gunnison," we were eager to hurry on to the Pacific
slope of the State; but one little side trip remained to be made, and on
the second morning we coupled our cars to the express bound for Villa
Grove and Bonanza. The course lay up Poncho Pass, and in five minutes
the noisy locomotives announced that the ascent had begun.
It was very pretty, as, indeed, we had suspected during our walk the day
before up to the hot springs, which stand near its entrance. The track
is dug out of the side-hill on the northern side of the gulch, and a
bright stream comes tumbling down through willows, cottonwoods, oak
shrubs, wild cherry thickets and bushes of service-berry whose crimson
fruit tempts you to leap off the train and taste its tart and fragrant
juices. The slopes on both sides are covered with evergreens and aspens
"That twinkle to the gusty breeze."
Up through a rift in the trees we catch a glimpse of the little
watering-place, and a few miles farther, pass the log-buildings of the
old Toll Gate, occupying a pocket in the hills. Only now are the gray
carpeted plains of the Arkansas, the village at the mouth of the cañon,
and the rough high hills, away beyond the river lost to view. At the
head of Poncho Pass is Mears' Station. It occupies a narrow defile, the
walls rising steeply to unseen heights, and the gorges dropping
apparently to unfathomable depths. We could not trace the devious course
we had come, nor understand how it was possible the railway should
surmount the stupendous barrier lying to the westward. Yet we knew that
a day or two later our cars would roll steadily to the summit and
steadily descend on the other side, for this little nook, the head of
Poncho, is only the foot of Marshall Pass, by which the oceanic divide
is crossed on the transcontinental route. Nor was it easier to see how
we were to get away down the precipitous defiles in which the southern
slope of Poncho Pass seemed to lose itself. It was with strongly excited
curiosity, then, that we detached from the express and caused our cars
to be coupled to the freight train, which the bulletin averred knew how
to go down to Villa Grove, and would one day carry the traveller through
to Saguache and the South.
When all was ready to make good this promise,--and if that miserably
memorable engineer had thrust his shock of hair and bullet-head a trifle
further out of the cab-window the company might have dispensed with the
headlight--took the back track for a few rods, trended away on a curved
side-track to the right as far as the hillside would admit, crossed the
main line on a bridge, and having by this time accomplished a half
circle, headed eastward again and began to climb the southern side of
the gulch in a line so parallel with the lower track that a mile later
you could fling down a stone from one to the other though you were a
couple of hundred feet above. Half a mile more and the summit is
reached,--a green saddle between the foothills of Mount Ouray on one
side and the far-braced buttresses of Hunt's peak on the other. The
going down is fairly straight and easy work, and it is not long before
the gulches widen out, the diminished, grassy hills are left behind, and
your speed increases as you strike the firmly bedded, regular track,
pointing southward through a broad, treeless plain.
Perhaps I have said enough of the wonderful beauty of the Sangre de
Cristo range, seen from this side; have too often told of their compact
array and unbroken grandeur; of the scores of nameless peaks that vie
with Hunt's, Rito Alto, Electric, the gothic Crestones and the group of
pinnacled, sun-gilded summits that crowd near far-away Blanca; but in
the broad morning light of this day's trip they stood up in freshened
color and renewed majesty. All the cloud-curtains were rolled up, and
heaven shed unhindered its clear, sharp sunbeams from end to end of the
magnificent chain. The souvenirs of yesterday's storm added decoration,
for the summits were all dusted and powdered, with light snow, like
noble heads of the old _regime_; and this unwonted covering descended
far enough below timber-line to frost the upper lines of trees, so that
there was a soft gradation from the deep verdancy of the lower slopes,
through hoary greenish-gray to the unbroken white of the clear-cut
gables lifted into the serene and absolute solitude of the cærulean
dome.
[Illustration: BLACK CAÑON OF THE GUNNISON.]
Down between the sharp edged spurs come numerous streams, watering
little spaces where ranchmen had placed their cabins and fenced in their
fields. Large areas now given up to the badgers and sage-brush, can be
brought under irrigation, when the more favorable lower parts of the
valley have been utilized. A broad road runs down here,--the old wagon
road from Leadville and the Arkansas valley to Saguache, Del Norte, the
San Juan region and New Mexico.
The same words apply to the more broken western side of the valley, here
called Homan's Park, though it is only the upper end of the San Luis
valley; and, in addition, those western hills are full of prospectors,
and of places where prospecting for silver and gold has met with
success. This is the celebrated Kerber Creek district, and Bonanza,
Exchequer, Sedgwick and other little centers of human interest, lie back
of those rugged, green hills over which the angular heads of Exchequer
and Ouray mountains stand in high-chieftainship.
Of all these, Bonanza is the largest. The ores, however, are
characterized by being of a low grade, but great volume, and by
containing refractory elements, with a small percentage of lead, so that
the large smelter at Bonanza has been compelled to cease running until
it could provide itself with a more adequate outfit of fluxes, etc.
Villa Grove--a pleasant little village on San Luis creek, which drains
the upper part of the park--is the railway point for all these mines and
several other settlements not yet mentioned. Looking southeast from the
station you can see where the track runs up into the foothills of the
Sangre de Cristo to one of the great iron mines of the Colorado Coal and
Iron company, whence large shipments are being made daily. Though of
great importance and value, the seeing of this mine amounts to little,
since it is hardly more than an open quarry.
From Villa Grove stages leave daily for Bonanza, Saguache and half a
dozen other places, such as Crestone and Oriental,--little mining camps
in the foothills. The roads are so smooth and level everywhere that the
great six-horse Concords are unnecessary and spring wagons are used.
XXIV
THROUGH MARSHALL PASS.
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortes, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent upon a peak in Darien.
--KEATS.
One of the wonders of Colorado progress is the Gunnison valley. The
"Gunnison," as it is usually termed, embraces a wide area, being, in
popular parlance, everything in Colorado west of the Continental Divide,
north of the San Juan mountains and south of the Eagle River district.
In fact, this is correct enough, for nearly all this great region is
tributary in its drainage to the Gunnison river,--the third great stream
which unites with the Grand and the Green to form the Rio Colorado. The
water-shed between it and the Rio San Juan, the only other feeder of the
Rio Colorado worthy of mention, is the very high and wintry ridge of the
San Juan mountains, crossing which you find yourself in Baker's Park and
the region we had just come from. Betwixt the head of its northern
branches and the springs that feed the Grand River basin, stand the Elk
mountains and the high table lands of the Grand Mesa. From the one
water-shed to the other it is about fifty miles.
Ten years ago this region had hardly a wanderer in it from one season's
end to the other, and was full of Ute Indians. There were two or three
agencies, and roads leading thereto, but it was all a reservation.
Everything civilized that entered the district came up from Saguache
through Cochetopa Pass and along Cochetopa creek into the Uncompahgre
valley, where the Utes spent their winters. There was also a trail,
occasionally traveled by sportsmen and explorers, leading southward from
the Los Pinos agency to the headwaters of the Rio Grande and on over
Cunningham Pass into Baker's Park. I marched over it in 1874, and a
cruel march it was, though full of picturesque interest. An Indian trail
northward to White river was about the only other internal pathway. The
region, therefore, was a _terra incognita_ to Coloradoans, as well as to
the rest of the civilized world.
But this mystery was soon to be cleared away. The search for gold and
silver, which has led to more exploration of unknown regions than all
the geographical societies of the world put together, did not hesitate
to encounter the darkness that overspread the Pacific slope of the
State, and to go prospecting thither as soon as ever a hope of finding
"mineral" entered into the miner's heart. Close following upon the rush
to Leadville, was repeated the history of the Pike's Peak sequel. Now,
as then, men disappointed in not finding mines of fabulous wealth,
during the first week of their stay, or shrewdly thinking to anticipate
the crowd, began to walk further and further afield in search of new
argentiferous rocks, so that by the summer of 1879 we began to hear not
only of Ten Mile and Red Cliff, but of the Gunnison, as a district where
success had met the prospector. That was only a little over four years
ago. Now how well are we acquainted with this erst mysterious and
Indian-haunted valley! Four years ago a mule was the best mode of
conveyance hither, and an Indian trail almost the only pathway.
Yesterday I rode into the heart of it in a parlor car, and found, ready
for my perusal, the morning newspaper, with a day's history of all the
world, from Chicago to Cathay.
The Gunnison country boasts several towns of considerable size, some of
them the center of a circle of mines which radiates from them, and from
which they absorb cash and conviviality. First in size is Gunnison City;
and after it in importance are Crested Butte, Lake City, Ouray,
Montrose, Delta and Grand Junction,--the last three being situated in
the old Ute reservation in western Gunnison. Of less size, but yet
centers of population, are a large number of small mining towns or
"camps," such as Ruby, Crooksville, White Pine, Pitkin, Irwin, Barnum
and Ohio. Each of these would require some attention from a faithful
chronicler of the county, for they are all in Gunnison, where the
territory is large enough to enable one to set in it the whole State of
Massachusetts without crowding--that is if you lopped off Cape Cod or
curled it up into Marshall Pass.
It is by the way of Marshall Pass that the railway enters the Gunnison.
Leaving the main line and the Arkansas valley at Salida, only five miles
are traversed before the train begins to enter Poncho Pass and climb the
mountains, which it requires four hours, express speed, to cross,--four
hours of uninterrupted pleasure.
Of Poncho's prettiness I have already spoken. Its summit is found at
Mears' Station, and then begins the real ascent of the Continental
Divide. In a few moments the circling rim of the pit-like valley is
surmounted, and Hunt's peak, by its cap of snow signifying its
superiority to the giants of the Sangre de Cristo about it, rises like a
planet over the hills we are leaving behind. We seat ourselves on the
rear platform and watch it until the whole range, of which it is the
northernmost officer, stands drawn up in purple line before us, and we
can trace the summits, pressed back into straight line, for perhaps
sixty miles to the southward--
"----Sierras long,
In archipelagoes of mountain sky."
What can that goodly rank, each peak sharp and pyramidal just along side
of the other, every curve of the foothills parallel with the one before,
sweeping down into the trough-like park at their hither base,--what can
all this uniformity be but the splendid chain of the Sangre de Cristo?
Have we not seen it time and time again, beheld it from east and west
and south, and now here from the north; and has it ever been out of
line, or anything but a soldierly array of uniform heights bearing the
same relation to the ill-assorted army of the rest of the Rockies, that
the famous grenadiers of Frederick the Great did to his peasant
conscripts?
This sight explains to us also, that the great width of lofty hills we
are picking our way through now is the junction mass of two ranges. It
is here that the Sangre de Cristo starts off on its own line to the
southeastward, while the main chain, forming the backbone of the
continent, trends somewhat westward and continues to do so more and more
till it loses itself in the jumble of San Juan, San Miguel, Uncompahgre,
Bear and other ranges that fill the southwestern corner of the State.
The summits north and southwest of us divide the Atlantic from the
Pacific; but that magnificent corps that will not be left behind, but
seems to march steadily after us, in battle array, separates only the
Arkansas from the Rio Grande. The glimpses of valley we get now and then
just this side its base are of Homan's Park, which is only the upper end
of the wide San Luis, and places can be seen that we could not reach by
long traveling.
Marshall Pass itself, which we enter imperceptibly out of Poncho, is a
depression in the main range and lies between Ouray and Exchequer
mountains. It was a daring scheme to run the road over here--for
_through_ wouldn't express it properly. The summit is almost eleven
thousand feet above the sea, and timber-line is so close that you can
think sometimes you are actually there. The trees are stunted and all
stand bent at an angle, showing the direction of the fierce and
prevalent winds that have pressed upon them since their seedling days.
The cones they bear start bravely, but after perfecting three or four
broad circles of scales and seeds the nipping frosts of August and
September admonish them to make haste; so the remainder of the cone is
put forth so hastily, in Nature's attempt to complete her work, that the
whole remaining length of fifteen or twenty circlets will not exceed the
length of the first two or three full-grown scales, and the cone ends
ridiculously in a little useless acuminate tip.
To attain this height, the road has to twist and wriggle in the most
confusing way, going three or four miles, sometimes, to make fifty
rods; but all the time it gains ground upward, over some startling
bridges, along the crest of huge fillings, through miniature cañons
blasted out of rock or shoveled through gravel, and always up slopes
whose steepness it needs no practiced eye to appreciate. To say that the
road crosses a pass in the Rocky mountains 10,820 feet in height is
enough to astonish the conservative engineers who have never seen this
audacious line; but you can magnify their amazement when you tell them
that some of the grades are 220 feet to the mile.
The mountains and hills in the neighborhood of Marshall Pass are clothed
for the most part with grass, or else sage-brush and weeds, and with
timber, scant in some places, dense in others. The tourist will not see
there the startling cliffs and chasms that break up the mountains on the
road to Durango, but, on the other hand, he will not feel any terror at
dizzy precipices, nor tremble lest some toppling pinnacle should fall
upon his fragile car. No better exhibition of the greatness and breadth
of these mountains could be found, however, than here. There stretches
away beneath and around you an endless series of hills, some rounded and
entirely over-grown with dark woods, others rising into a comb-like
crest, or rearing a dome-shaped head above the possibilities of
timber-growth and covered with a smooth cap of yellowish verdure. They
crowd one another on every side, and brace themselves, each by each, as
though their broad and solid foundations were not enough for safety.
They stand cheek by jowl in sturdy companionship, taking rain and sunny
weather, hurtling storms and serene days with impartial equality. Your
vision will not find the limit of these huge hills until it is cut off
by the serrated horizon of the crest of the Sangre de Cristo, or by some
frowning monarch near at hand, holding his head high and venerably gray,
as becomes a chieftain, where he can get the first messages of the gods
and be looked up to by a thousand of his more humble kin.
[Illustration: CURRECANTI NEEDLE, BLACK CAÑON.]
"It is like a huge green sea," murmurs the Madame, hitherto silent with
gazing. "I know a great many people have made the same comparison
before--have often said that these commingled ranges were as a sea,
tossing its white crests here and there and all at once congealed; but
that is the very impression which fixes itself upon you. These rounded,
or sharp-edged, tumultuous mountains _are_ like a wide, green ocean."
The great cone on the northern side of the track, close to which the
roadway skirts nearly the whole distance through the pass, is Ouray
peak. Ouray, as nearly everybody must know, was the head chief of the
Utes. This tribe only very lately abandoned all this portion of
Colorado, leaving last that reservation which lies beyond Gunnison City,
and which we are soon to visit. The peak we have hugged so closely does
honor to the dead chief. The farther you get around it the more nobly do
its proportions rise into the blue ether. Like Veta mountain, which it
closely resembles, this peak is of white volcanic rock that has
decomposed into small blocks. The sides then are loose "slides," as
steep as the fragmentary stuff will lie, and the top is a narrow summit
with smooth, rounded outlines. We are only a few hundred feet from the
topmost timber, yet the bald white summit rears its head to almost
unmeasured heights above, and claims our admiration by its simple
majesty, far more than does the broken, cliff-furnished upthrust of
Exchequer peak opposite, though its black head is held quite as high.
Perhaps this is only because we have become somewhat tired of the
closely-shutting high mountains; weary of being
"----under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,"
as Milton puts it. Certes, it _is_ good once more to be able to look
abroad!