quickly flash by, slowly return to the memory and feed recollection, as
the mind in after days elaborates the impression made by each, and
summons a series of separated and leisurely pictures before the
imagination; but no writer can depict for another what the form of these
pictures shall be. I recite to you the elements--stupendous
measurements, majestic forms, splendid colors, the gleaming green and
white of water, the blue and gold of sun and sky, the crystalline
sparkle of reddened rocks; but you must yourself receive these elements
if you are to paint adequately to your fancy the pictures of the cañon.
It is not literary cant, but the literal truth, when I say that to be
understood, this marvelous pathway through the mountains must be seen.
And having seen it, you have enriched your memory beyond anything you
could have foretold.
XXVIII
THE UNCOMPAHGRE VALLEY.
The hills grow dark,
On purple peaks a deeper shade descending;
In twilight copse the glow-worm lights her spark,
The deer, half-seen, are to the covert wending.
--WALTER SCOTT.
The station at the western end of the cañon of the Gunnison is called
Cimmaron after the river upon whose banks it stands. In the prehistoric
days before the railway, this was Cline's ranch, where all the stages
from the Gunnison to the San Miguel region stopped. He was one of the
few pioneers who got on well with the Indians, and his monument stands
in the name of a peak down by Ouray.
From Cimmaron upward stretches one of the steepest grades between Denver
and Salt Lake, in order to surmount Squaw Hill in the Cedar range,--the
water-shed between the Cimmaron and the lower drainage of the Gunnison.
Two locomotives drag us at a snail's pace, struggling, puffing rapidly
and spasmodically just as though their lungs were tortured by the rarity
of the air. Their efforts suggest Pope's line, and seem to beat time to
it,--
"When Ajax strives, some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line, too, labors, and the words move slow."
There is nothing to be seen but great knolls of grass and sage brush,
sometimes showing their rocky anatomy; and this nakedness is a relief
after the strain upon our attention in the cañon. Finally we get high
enough to look far away to a horizon full of hazy mesas and peaked
mountains, with a touch of valley land down in the center of the
picture. A cool breeze blows, and comes with refreshing.
The valley we see is our first view of the Uncompahgre; and in the
middle of the afternoon we reach the town of Montrose,--a settlement of
wooden houses.
Here we stopped. There were two reason: first, this was the point of
departure for the upper valley of the Uncompahgre, and the mining region
on the northern front of the San Juan mountains; second, we wanted to
know the arguments that had induced some hundreds of people to make
their homes in the midst of this white sahara.
The first of these objects required instant attention, for between our
arrival at Montrose and the departure of the stage up the valley to the
Uncompahgre Cantonment, and the town of Ouray, there was time only to
get a hearty luncheon. Chum had said from the start that he was quite
willing to concede all the attractions of Ouray, and declined positively
to leave the comfort of home. I told him he was missing a good deal, but
he said that he had lost all faith in good deals--didn't "gamble any
more on that chance,"--and persisted in his "No, thank you."
[Illustration: BUTTES OF THE CROSS.]
The Madame felt both inclined and disinclined. She knew the horrors of
staging, she said it was a fit punishment for malefactors, and she
dreaded even forty miles of it, on a level road, worse than a fit of
sickness. Then she looked unutterable sympathy at me, and began to
reflect that possibly her duty as a wife required her to go (seeing that
I couldn't escape it,) in order to share the discomforts her husband was
obliged to undergo, and do what she could to alleviate his tortures.
Just at this juncture, for doubt had swayed her usually well-decided
mind up to the last minute, she caught a glimpse of the big red coach
coming from the hotel toward us. Its noise was as the thundering of "the
chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof." It swung from side to side
like a fire steamer tearing over Baltimore cobble stones. It lunged into
irrigating ditches and came pitching up out of them, while the hind boot
dived in to be brought up with a frame-cracking jolt, and it rocked fore
and aft like a Dutch lugger in a chop sea. Its great concavity was
packed full of unfortunate Jonahs, swallowed "bag and breeches." Its
capacious baggage receptacles before and behind were distended with
trunks and valises, rolls of blankets, packages of newspapers, boxes of
fruit and dozens of mail-sacks. Its roof was piled with a confused mass
of luggage and sweltering humanity. There wasn't a lady to be seen. Chum
looked at me as I buttoned my duster, and lifting a corner of the
Madame's apron to his eye, choked back a sympathetic sob.
"Come on!" I called to the person who was anxious to alleviate my
tortures, but she held back.
"I'm--thinking--whether--after all"--
"Oh, are you? Good--give us a kiss--good bye! Better do your thinking
now than after you're tired out up the valley. I'll be back shortly, and
expect you to know all about Montrose."
The big red coach came to a lurching anchorage close by the door and I
climbed to the vacant seat beside the driver, for which, with the wisdom
of experience, I had telegraphed a request the day before.
"Been a-keepin' this seat for you with a club," said Jehu, curtly, as he
gathered up the reins of four grey horses and removed his foot from the
brake.
There was the sensation of a geological upheaval, forward. I dug my
heels hard into the mail-sacks heaped upon the foot-board, clutched the
hand-rail of the seat, set my back against the knees of the man on the
dicky seat, stiffened my neck to save my head from being snapped
off,--and we were under way.
A whole chapter could be written about that stage ride and my fellow
travelers, but it will keep. The road crossed the yellow Uncompahgre,
and stretched like a chalk-mark athwart the sage green expanse of
gravelly valley. One of the outside passengers was an Englishman who had
spent seven years in the diamond fields of South Africa. He told us this
region reminded him of that land, and entertained us by his accounts of
it, and of the Caffres--especially the English habit of knocking one
down (a Caffre-boy was always handy) whenever the aggrieved temper of a
white man required any little relief. So, with umbrella overhead and
green goggles to break the glare,--despite the purple-blue storms we
could see stalking about the mountain-ranges ahead--the first seven
miles passed speedily, and we drew up at the sutler's store of the
pretty military cantonment, whose buildings had loomed mirage-like for
more than half the way.
When the Utes were ready to be moved from this valley over to the new
Uintah agency, a military post was established here. As its permanence
was not decided upon, only a cantonment was founded, providing temporary
quarters in log houses for six companies. It was called simply the
Cantonment on the Uncompahgre, and was at first garrisoned by the
Twenty-third Infantry. In 1882, however, this regiment was relieved by
four companies of the Fourteenth Infantry. Its commanding officer,
Lieutenant Colonel Henry Douglass is here, although the headquarters of
the regiment are at Sidney, Nebraska.
The post, as I said, is not intended to be a permanent one. The visitor
must not expect, therefore, the handsome buildings and grounds to be
seen at Camp Douglass, Salt Lake City, where this regiment was domiciled
for seven years, enduring meanwhile some hard service in Indian
fighting.
We had already passed Ouray Farms, where Ouray, the fine old head-chief
of all the Ute confederation, lived toward the end of his life in a good
house built of adobe after the Mexican fashion, and cultivated the
neighboring bottom-lands. His farm made the grand center of Ute
interest, and from the pleasant groves near it radiated all the trails
across mountain and plain. Many out-houses, of log and frame, surrounded
the main building and testify that order was one of the great chief's
good qualities. Here, after his death Chippeta, widow of Ouray,
continued to live, raising farm products and pasturing sheep, and so
attached had she become to the spot that she importuned the government
to be granted the privilege of abandoning her race and returning to her
farm home. The government refused this request, but decided to sell the
farm for the personal benefit of Chippeta.
All along the river, which ran between thick belts of trees some
distance at our left, we had seen spaces of meadow and a few ranches. At
the old Agency--four miles above the post--we came to its lofty bank at
a point where the river bent in so close to the foot of the bluff, that
water for the station-stables was drawn up by means of a pulley mounted
in a tall scaffolding of poles standing in front of the cliff, and
reached by a bridge. It was a well, built some sixty feet out of ground,
like that Nevada tunnel Mark Twain describes, which, having gone quite
through the hill, was continued out upon a staging.
The road thence ran along the edge of the bluff and through the woods--a
road upon which we rattled at a steady trot, although on the left there
was nothing to break our fall for a hundred feet or so, should an
accident tip us over. The river valley, thus sunken, was sometimes
narrow and the stream turbulent among rocks; sometimes a mile or two
wide with willow-covered bottoms; sometimes showing islands crowded with
trees and thickets, or of great bends where lay spaces of rank meadow.
Two or three little houses were pointed out where head men among the
Indians had lived on small farms, and the driver, who had run a stage
before the red men left, told us many interesting stories of their life
in this favorite valley.
Leaving the river and the verdant gorge, its cottonwoods illumined with
flaming light of the sunset, the road took to the higher ground and gave
us many a good jolt in crossing the small acequias which watered the
upper ranches on the edge of the mesa, and then came into view of
Uncompahgre park, stretching away to the westward like a prairie, and
the scene of some of the finest farming in Colorado. There are about
thirty ranches where, half a dozen years ago was nothing but wild
pasture. The ranchmen were all poor men when they came here; now they
have pleasant houses, well fenced and irrigated farms and equipments in
abundance. I heard of one ranch sold lately for ten thousand dollars,
and was told of another where the owner cleared six thousand dollars for
his last season's profits. Everything is raised except Indian corn, but
wheat is not cultivated so extensively as it will be when milling
facilities are better. Barley, oats, hay and vegetables are the
principal crops, and potatoes probably offer the highest return of all.
Prices have decreased to one-fifth the figures of five years ago, yet
the ranchmen prosper and increase their acreage, putting surplus money
into cattle which roam upon the adjacent uplands. The land is by no
means all taken up, however, and improved property can be bought at
reasonable prices. There is plenty of water, too, an important
consideration.
In the center of the park we passed a copious spring of hot mineral
water, carrying much iron, as we could tell by the circular tank of
ferric oxide it had built around it, forming a bath large enough for a
hundred persons at once. As yet there are few arrangements for making
use of this fountain,--a fact due to the plentiful hot springs of iron
and of sulphur (sulphate of lime, etc.), water close to Ouray, where a
sanitarium and bath houses have been fitted up, and where persons
suffering from rheumatism and kindred ailments find great benefit. So
much warm water is poured into the Uncompahgre, in fact, that nothing
more than a film of ice forms upon it in the coldest weather.
Remembering all these varied advantages, it is no wonder the Utes loved
the place and protested against its loss.
The mountains ahead came into plainer view, as we left the park; we
caught a glimpse of the curious Sawtooth range off at the left, saw that
the rounded outlines of the bluffs on each side were changing to abrupt
walls, and trending inward, and then the hush of night and the quiet of
weariness came to still our conversation and turn our thoughts into
meditative channels. Darkness enveloped the world and we pulled slowly
through it by the light of a thousand brilliant stars--the same stars
that shone on the Madame and Chum; that, beyond the Range, shed soft
light on the shepherds and herdsmen of the great plains; that trembled
in the eddies of the Mississippi; that were watched by wakeful people on
the slopes of laurel-crowned Alleghanian hills; that caught faintly the
eye of revelers--for it must now be after the opera--in New York; that
spoke a mysterious language to the watcher upon the far ocean; and, oh,
best of all! that looked in at a curtained New England window and saw a
child in peaceful slumbers. Little daughter under the ancient
elms,--planet in the far sky,--father passing under the massive shadow
of gigantic cliffs whose pine-fringed bulwarks are lost in the thick
gloom above! What an immeasurable triangle, yet how swiftly does the
mercury of thought compass it and link its points together?
XXIX
AT OURAY AND RED MOUNTAIN.
Bathed in the tenderest purple of distance,
Tinted and shadowed by pencils of air,
Thy battlements hang o'er the slopes and the forests,
Seats of the gods in the limitless ether,
Looming sublimely aloft and afar.
Above them, like folds of imperial ermine,
Sparkle the snowfields that furrow thy forehead,--
Desolate realms, inaccessible, silent,
Chasms and caverns where Day is a stranger,
Garners where storeth his treasures the Thunder,
The Lightning his falchion, his arrows the Hail.
--BAYARD TAYLOR.
Ouray is--what shall I say? The prettiest mountain town in Colorado?
That wouldn't do. A dozen other places would deny it, and the cynics who
never saw anything different from a rough camp of cabins in some quartz
gulch, would sneer that this was faint praise. Yet that it is among the
most attractive in situation, in climate, in appearance, and in the
society it affords, there can be no doubt. There are few western
villages that can boast so much civilization.
Ouray stands in a bowl-shaped valley--a sort of broad pit in
fact--hollowed out of the northern flank of that mass of mountains which
holds the fountains of so many widely destined rivers. A narrow notch in
the bowl southward lets the Uncompahgre break through to the lowlands,
and furnishes us with a means of ingress; otherwise the most toilsome
climbing would be the only way to get into or out of town. From this
point diverge three or four short but exceedingly lofty, and several
lesser ranges, like the spokes of a wheel from its hub. Eastward
stretches the continental divide of the Sierra San Juan proper;
southward the Needles and the circling heights that enclose Baker's
park; westward the Sierra San Miguel; northward the spurs of
Uncompahgre; and the diminishing foothills and mesas that sink gradually
into the Gunnison valley.
[Illustration: MARBLE CAÑON.]
Yet the first comers--it is only seven years ago, but the mists of
antiquity seem to gather about it--did not enter that way, but came over
the range from the south. Prospectors for precious metals, they ascended
the Rio Las Animas from Baker's park, until they found its head, and
stood upon the dividing crest of the range. Here a streamlet trickled
northward, and they followed its broadening current down the unknown
gorges into which it sank. The walls were often too steep to allow any
foothold for them, and then they would wade in the icy water and stumble
over the slippery bowlders that had fallen from above. When a dozen
miles of this work had been accomplished, they found themselves entering
a cañon so narrow, that by stretching out their arms they could almost
touch both of its walls; and so irregular that a few rods before and
behind was all the distance that ever could be seen at once. Uncertain
when they would be brought to a standstill by some pool or precipitous
fall, and compelled to struggle back against a torrent which scarcely
allowed them to move downstream in safety, they pushed on until they
suddenly emerged into a beautiful round valley, filled with copses of
trees and sunny glades. In this haven the chilled and weary prospectors
rested for the night. While one man--there were no more than three, I
believe,--built the fire, sliced the fat bacon and molded the bread; the
second went to the river with his fishing-line, and the third started
out with his gun. By the time the bread was baked the angler came back
with eighteen trout and the hunter returned for help to bring in a bear
he had killed within a couple of hundred yards. So runs the tradition,
and there is no reason to discredit it.
Now, where the bear was shot and the trout caught, stands a town of
fifteen hundred people, which forms the center for supplying a wide
circuit of mining localities, including Red Mountain, Mt. Sneffles,
Mineral Point and Mineral Farm, Bear Creek, and half a dozen other
places of lesser note; and which affords a good market for the
agriculturists of the lower valleys, and the cattle breeders of
neighboring mesas. Prosperity, comfort, and even much luxury prevail
now; but some of the trials of the earliest settlers, beset by
isolation, winter, famine, and the fear of Indians, would be worth
recounting could I have unlimited space.
This is not a miner's guide, and nothing could be drier reading for a
stranger than a catalogue of diggings and minerals. The ores abound in a
thousand ledges which run up and down, and here and there, all through
the mountains, from the metamorphic limestones of the outer ledges to
the storm-hewn trachyte that caps the hoary summits. What I have said
concerning the ore of the opposite (southern) side of the San Juan
system of mountains, and the way in which it occurs, applies well enough
to this side also. It could not well be otherwise, for the age and
general geology of the two regions is as nearly alike as the two sides
of the same mountain-chain are very likely to be. In a word the ores are
varied, but chiefly ores of galena and copper, occurring in fissure
veins and carrying a "high grade" proportion of silver (in various
forms) and a considerable quantity of gold. The extraordinary variety of
minerals, and the vast bulk of the ore deposits are the two noteworthy
features of the region. These ores, moreover, as a rule, are not
"refractory" though containing antimonial elements which in an excess
would make them so. Works for their concentration, _i.e._, the sifting
out (after pulverization) of the worthless vein-matter, in order to save
the expenses of transportation, are run to great advantage.
Ouray's principal claim to our notice as sightseers lay in its beautiful
situation, and the attractive bits of mountain scenery in its
neighborhood,--a collection of pictures which it would be hard to
duplicate in an equally limited space anywhere else in the whole Rocky
mountains.
The valley in which the town is built is at an elevation of about 7,500
feet above the sea, and is pear-shaped, its greatest width being not
more than half a mile while its length is about twice that down to the
mouth of the cañon. Southward--that is toward the heart of the main
range,--stand the two great peaks Hardin and Hayden. Between is the deep
gorge down which the Uncompahgre finds its way; but this is hidden from
view by a ridge which walls in the town and cuts off all the farther
view from it in the direction, save where the triangular top of Mt.
Abrams peers over. Westward are grouped a series of broken ledges,
surmounted by greater and more rugged heights. Down between these and
the western foot of Mt. Hayden struggles Cañon creek to join the
Uncompahgre; while Oak creek leaps down a line of cataracts from a notch
in the terraced heights through which the quadrangular head of White
House mountain becomes grandly discernible,--the easternmost buttress of
the wintry Sierra San Miguel.
All of these mountains, though extremely rugged, precipitous, and
adorned with spurs and protruding shoulders of naked rock, yet slope
backward somewhat, and through one of these depressions passes a most
remarkable and picturesque wagon road to Silverton, constructed at
immense cost and displaying wonderful engineering skill. But at the
lower side of the little basin, where the path of the river is beset
with close cañon-walls, the cliffs rise vertical from the level of the
village, and bear their forest-growth many hundreds of feet above. These
mighty walls, two thousand feet high in some places, are of metamorphic
rock, and their even stratification simulates courses of well-ordered
masonry. Stained by iron and probably also by manganese, they are a deep
red-maroon; this color does not lie uniformly, however, but is stronger
in some layers than in others, so that the whole face of the cliff is
banded horizontally in pale rust color, or dull crimson, or deep and
opaque maroon. The western cliff is bare, but on the more frequent
ledges of the eastern wall scattered spruces grow, and add to its
attractiveness. Yet, as though Nature meant to teach that a bit of
motion,--a suggestion of glee was needed to relieve the sombreness of
utter immobility and grandeur however shapely, she has led to the
sunlight by a crevice in the upper part of the eastern wall that we
cannot see, a brisk torrent draining the snowfields of some distant
plateau. This little stream, thus beguiled by the fair channel that led
it through the spruce woods above, has no time to think of its fate, but
is flung out over the sheer precipice eighty feet into the valley below.
We see the white ghost of its descending, and always to our ears is
murmured the voice of the Naiads who are taking the breathless plunge.
Yet by what means the stream reaches that point from above, cannot be
seen, and the picture is that of a strong jet of water bursting from an
orifice through the crimson wall and falling into rainbow-arched mist
and a tangle of grateful foliage, that hides its further flowing.
As Mr. Weston well says, and as I have insisted in my chapters upon the
southern side of the San Juan range, the indescribable charm of this
scenery is due not so much to its gigantic proportions, its grotesque
and massively-grand outlines, or its variety of composition, as to the
contrasts of color and condition. "Even now (May) while I write," he
says, "it is warm and summery in town, the side hills are covered with
flowers and the whistle of the humming bird's wing is heard in the air;
yet I can look up at White House peak and see the snow banners blowing
from its summit, as in the coldest day in winter. In the autumn, more
especially, are the contrasts of color seen, and the landscape, as it
then appears, if painted on canvas, would, I believe, be laughed at, if
shown in Europe or the Eastern States, as an impossibility. I have
climbed the heights above Ouray, and looked down on it, when the
atmosphere of the valley seemed of a hazy blue, the sloping sides of the
surrounding mountains being clothed with the golden yellow and the red
brown of the quaking aspen and the dwarf oak, the varied greens of the
spruce, balsam, cedar and yellow pine, and above that the brown gray of
the trachyte peaks, their snow-capped summits forming a charming
contrast against the lovely violet blue of the evening sky."