of verdurous spring and the noise of gushing waters, of flaming autumn
and the drapery of haze etherializing the world, presenting under always
novel aspect the forms and colors so lavishly displayed--this nook alone
would satisfy a generation of artists. But the enchantment of the half
hidden gorges, the allurement of the beckoning peaks urge us to explore
beauties beyond.
* * * * *
I cannot redescribe the way in which these bristling peaks of purple and
green trachyte cut the tremulous sky, nor try to make you understand
anew the abysses that sink narrowly between the closely crowded
mountains. If the reader will kindly turn back to where I have
endeavored to convey to him some idea of the Alps that lie about Baker's
park and at the head of the Rio Dolores and the Rio de La Plata, he will
learn what I might repeat of scenes this side of the divide; for some of
those former peaks can be seen from here, and this, too, equally with
the southern slope, "is Silver San Juan."
The ride across the hills towards Red mountain was something to be
remembered. The great walls of maroon rock and the precipices that rose
in terraced grandeur upon their shoulders, coming into view one by one
as we ascended from the basin to the foothills, were all wet with the
night dews, and gleamed like mirrors under the morning sun. The
foothills themselves were rugged jumbles of rocks heaped about the base
of the mountains, and full of deep crevices where the streams coursed
far out of sight and hearing. They were covered with a mingled growth of
spruces, cedars, small oaks and several other shrubby trees. There were
open spaces where a dense chapparal or heather of small thorny bushes of
various kinds hid the ground; and other slopes where tall grass and
innumerable flowers formed favorite pastures for sedate groups of
donkeys. Passing the dizzy brink of the chasm into which Bear creek
makes its awful leap, snatching a beauty beyond portrayal from the very
jaws of terror, we enter a rank forest of aspens and spruces. One might
fire a pistol-ball across to the side of Mt. Hayden, which rises an
almost sheer wall of indigo-gray from a gulf between us and it, whose
creviced-bottom is out of sight below. Deep and varied shadows lie in
the little ravines that seam its almost vertical slopes, and streaks of
dusty snow lurk in the higher crannies feeding trickling cascades of
sunbright water that drop like tears into the unfathomed cañon.
[Illustration: GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO.]
Through the trees southward, to the right of the triangular peak of
Engineer mountain, and the great barrier of Abrams, we could now catch a
glimpse of a rounded summit as gaudy as the hat of a cardinal. This was
the Red mountain, of which so much has been heard. The road there
follows the course of Red Mountain creek from its mouth for two miles
through dense pine timber. At this point, four miles from Ouray, and two
thousand feet higher, it enters a flat valley or park two miles long,
which is covered with willows and with prairies of long grass that every
autumn is mowed for hay. This park contains many ponds and miry places,
and is said to be underlaid everywhere with bog iron-ore. On either side
of the park is a high range of mountains and trachyte peaks, that on the
west being the divide between the Red Mountain district and Imogene
basin in the Sneffels district, and that on the east being the divide
between the Red Mountain district and the Uncompahgre district and
Poughkeepsie gulch. At the upper end of the park commences the chain of
scarlet peaks, from twelve to thirteen thousand feet in altitude, which
are regarded as the volcanic center toward which all the lodes of the
surrounding region seem to converge.
The history of this new "camp," Red Mountain, is a short one. In the
summer of 1881 three men discovered the Guston mine, but as the ore was
low grade it was worked only because it gave an excess of lead which was
just then in demand at the Pueblo smelter. In August, 1882, John
Robinson, one of the owners, was hunting deer, and while resting,
carelessly picked up a small bowlder, after the manner of prospectors
who never stop a moment anywhere but they scrutinize every bit of stone
within reach, out of pure habit. Astonished at the weight of this piece
he broke it in two and found it to be solid galena. This clue led to the
discovery of the Yankee Girl lead close by. A month later the owners had
sold the prospect-hole for $125,000, but retained two other apparently
equally valuable mines near at hand. In the Yankee Girl rich ore was
found only a dozen feet below the surface; and though it had to be
packed upon mules and burros all the way down to Silverton, it yielded a
profit of over fifty dollars a ton.
Upon the heels of this discovery there was a great rush of miners and
speculators toward the scarlet heights, and several large
settlements--principally Ironton and Red Mountain Town--sprang up on the
rough and forested hillside. Claim stakes dotted the mountain as thick
as the poles in a hop-field, and astonishing success attended nearly
every digging. Among them all the first lode opened, the Yankee Girl,
held supremacy, as is so often the case; but a few months later a
neighboring property, the National Belle, leaped far to the front at a
single bound.
This occurred by the accident of a workman breaking through the tunnel
wall into a cavity. Hollow echoes came back from the blows of his pick,
and stones thrown were heard to roll a long distance. Taking a candle,
one of the men descended and found himself in an immense natural
chamber, the flickering rays of the light showing him the vaulted roof
far above, seamed with bright streaks of galena and interspersed with
masses of soft carbonates, chlorides and pure white talc. On different
sides of this remarkable chamber were small openings leading to other
rooms or chambers, showing the same wonderful rich formation. Returning
from this brief reconnoisance a party began a regular exploration. They
crept through the narrow opening into an immense natural tunnel running
above and across the route of their working drift for a hundred feet or
more, in which they clambered over great bowlders of pure galena, and
mounds of soft gray carbonates, while the walls and roof showed
themselves a solid mass of chloride and carbonate ores of silver.
Returning to the starting point they passed through another narrow
tunnel of solid and glittering galena for a distance of forty feet, and
found indications of other large passages and chambers beyond. "It would
seem," cries the local editor in his account of this romantic
disclosure, "as though Nature had gathered her choice treasures from her
inexhaustible storehouse, and wrought these tunnels, natural stopping
places and chambers, studded with glittering crystals and bright mineral
to dazzle the eyes of man in after ages, and lure him on to other
treasures hidden deeper in the bowels of the earth.... The news of the
discovery spread like wildfire, and crowds came to see the sight, and to
many of them it was one never to be forgotten."
This was only the first of these surprises, for many cavities have since
been divulged, great and small, in each of which crude wealth had been
locked up since the world was made. The character of the ores, the
occurrence of these cavities, and the extremely short distances beneath
the turf at which rich ore is struck, have combined to cause much
discussion among geologists as to the true history of the district.
* * * * *
One of the most striking scenes in the neighborhood of Ouray is the
passage through which Cañon creek makes its way down to join the
Uncompahgre just above the village. A wild and interesting gorge leads
upward toward the western foot of Mt. Hayden, the trail carrying one
along the edge of a little cliff, and the walls rapidly contracting so
that little room is left even for the foot-trail. A quarter of a mile,
perhaps less, above the village, these walls suddenly close together,
and the steep, brush-grown slope, is lost in a lofty crag, towering far
above the tallest spruces, and standing squarely across the gorge. In
this escarpment a zigzag crevice shows itself extending from top to
bottom: at the top you may look some distance within it, but at the foot
the protruding masses on one side, the sharp curve on the opposite, and
the deep shadows, never illumined by the highest sun, shut off all
searching by the eye. Out of this narrow, upright, cave-like crevice, as
though from its original strong fountains, gushes the deep and turbulent
stream, cold as ice and sparkling with a million imprisoned bubbles of
air. Get as near as you can to its aperture--crane your head around the
very corner of these mountain water-gates, and you can see nothing but
darkness, in which only the outlines of the nearest irregularities in
the rocky walls are dimly defined, while the beetling ledges above shut
out the narrow line of sky that might be seen were the sides of the
cañon smooth. Retreating down stream a little way, you look past bright
pillars of rosy quartzite, across the glittering pathway of foam flecked
water, glorying in its escape, up to the lofty gates and the shadowy
crevice between, whence the river comes ceaselessly and with singing;
you note the color-touches of the flowers and blossoming vines; the soft
hangings of the ferns under the damp ledges, the emerald foliage of the
poplar standing bravely beneath the shadow of the cliffs and the darker
forms of giant spruces--you see this contrast of brightness and color
and sunshine just without the damp gloom of the mysterious portals; and
you tell yourself that there are few scenes in the Rockies that can
equal it.
There is a roundabout way to get to the top of these cliffs and look
down into the chasm; and at one point, where it is much more than one
hundred feet in depth, a person may easily step across from edge to
edge. Though it would probably be impossible in the lowest stage of
water to make one's way up from below against the swift flood that fills
the whole width of the chasm, yet by going above it is possible to work
your way down stream for a long distance into the crevice. A cave exists
there, entered at the surface of the water, and occasional picnic
parties are made up to go to it. These consist mainly of young people
whom age has not sobered, for during the latter part of the way it is
needful that the gentlemen wading should carry the ladies across
frequent portages--to borrow a word from a reverse custom. The cave
entrance at the water side is only an ante-chamber to the real cavern.
To reach that a ladder and rope is required, by which the men first
ascend to a second higher chamber and then draw the ladies up. The
entrance is a hatchway so narrow that portly persons have been known to
express fears as to their getting through.
[Illustration: GRAND CAÑON, FROM TO-RO-WASP.]
Both cave and cañon are eaten out of the limestone, and several chasms
of the same sort occur upon this and neighboring streams, where the
water flowing along the strike of the upturned strata, has cut into it a
narrow channel between walls of more resisting rock. Along Portland
creek, just above the village, such a cañon is to be visited, containing
many beautiful cascades, where the cañon walls do not rise vertically
but at a considerable slant, one leaning over the other, and the stream
ever edging sidewise as it cuts deeper and deeper. The erosion in these
cases is not accomplished so much by attrition, as by a chemical
decomposition of the limestone. Yet attrition must do a great work at
times; for now and then these purling brooks become the channels for
cloudbursts at their sources, and then a mighty and impetuous flood
hurls itself down the gorge and chokes the bursting cañons with an
unmeasured mass of water and detritus, whose weight and velocity are so
great, however, that the flood of water not only, but thousands of tons
of bowlders and rocky fragments are forced through and spread out in the
valley below. Every such a deluge leaves its marks plainly upon the
sides of the cañons, as well as upon the softer banks outside.
It was in the afternoon that I mounted the coach homeward bound, and
bade good bye to a host of pleasant acquaintances. I felt rather guilty.
I had stayed longer than I intended, and had had a much better time than
I had anticipated. I felt somehow, therefore, as though I defrauded the
Madame and Chum out of a pleasurable opportunity; and I resolved to note
more carefully whatever I might see that was delightful.
The gap in the great red cliffs which lets the river and us out to the
lowlands is only two or three hundred yards in width, and is filled with
a dense growth of trees. The river trickles as a narrow, winding stream
through a broad swath of pebbles that it has swept down, and which
annually it overflows. The lofty cliffs stand on each side, erect and
imposing. Theirs were the massive forms seen dimly in the darkness and
enveloping us in inky shadows when we came up at midnight. Their
irregularities break into new forms of picturesqueness as we roll past,
enchanting our eyes. Three or four miles below town the thick growth of
trees in the bottom and on the ledges thins out, while the valley grows
wider, and ranches begin to appear. Pleasant houses, surrounded by
trees, stand in the midst of wide fields of grain and low-lying meadows
of natural hay. The cliffs still rise hundreds of feet high and are
redder even than those above,--as brightly vermillioned as the crest of
the treasure-mountain I have compared to a cardinal's hat. Those on the
eastern side (we are heading squarely northward) are sparsely wooded
with spruces and cedars that get a foothold on the rocky shelves and
lean outward craving the light; those on the left are almost bare, even
of herbage.
It is said that _Uncompahgre_ in the Ute tongue, means "red stream,"
and, if so, it is easy to understand the application. The water is not
red (though it might sometimes look so when roiled by freshets,) but the
whole cañon is crimson and blood-stained. The color shines between
bushes and trees, stands out in great upright masses, tinges the dust
underfoot, and intensifies both the green of the heathery hills and the
azure of mountain and sky.
At Dallas Station, where the Dallas river comes down from the west into
the Uncompahgre, we stopped to get supper and wait for the stage from
Telluride, Rico, Ames, and the other mining towns in the San Miguel
range, whose outlet is this way. Those mountains were in plain
view--Sneffles, Potosi, and all their peers,--glorified in the sunset;
while away in the eastward could be seen the gashed and splintered peaks
of that quartzite group (here called the Sawtooth, but reckoned on the
maps as part of the Uncompahgre range) the outline of which I can only
compare to the jagged confusion of the broken bottles set along the top
of a stone wall.
It is dark when we leave Dallas and darker in the gloom of the mesa
shadows and under the shrubbery that overhangs the road along the high
river bank. Out of the blackness below came up the sound of the river's
fretting as from a nether world, for we could only now and then get a
glimpse of the shaded water. When this had been passed, however, and we
were going at a steady trot across the wide-reaching and starlit
uplands, it was very delightful. The air was cool and soft and drowsy.
The stars shone with that brilliance which long ago suggested to the
savage mind that they were pin-holes in the canopy through which beamed
the ineffable refulgence of an endless clay to be attained when the
probation of this life was over. Every moment or two a meteor would leap
out, flash with pale brilliance across the firmament, eclipsing the
steady stars for an instant, and then disappear as though behind a veil.
Sleepy cattle, resting in the dust, would rise with heavy lurchings to
get out of our way and stupidly stare at us as we swung past. The "watch
dog's honest bark" came to our ears from ranches, whose position we knew
by a dot of yellow light; ghostly forms would quickly resolve themselves
into the white hoods of freight wagons, their poles piled with harness
and their crews asleep underneath; faint rustlings in the sage-bush told
of disturbed birds and rabbits; and so, peacefully and enjoyably,
midnight brought us to our journey's end.
XXX
MONTROSE AND DELTA.
My father left a park to me,
But it is wild and barren,
A garden too with scarce a tree,
And waster than a warren;
Yet say the neighbors when they call,
It is not bad but good land,
And in it is the germ of all
That grows within the woodland.
--TENNYSON.
The compassion I had been feeling for probable _ennui_ endured by the
two who had been left behind at Montrose was quite unnecessary. They had
amused themselves very well during my prolonged absence.
"Montrose is better than it looks," they told me.
"But what did you do?" I asked.
"Well, we studied the situation," said Chum, who is becoming thirsty for
knowledge in these latter days. "And we got acquainted with some very
pleasant people, who told us good stories, and took us out riding and
lent us books."
"Yes," said the Madame, "in one of our rides we went up to the camp."
"Eh!"
"And heard how you spent a whole day there doing nothing but playing
billiards with the officers. Do you call that being industrious?"
"Well," I began.
"No, it is not well at all; at any rate you might have told me, and not
made believe you only saw the camp by passing through. And we heard all
about that hop in Ouray. You forgot that, too, didn't you? The people
were greatly surprised to learn you were not a gay young bachelor. It
was three o'clock in the morning before you went home."
"Oh, Oh-h!" groans Chum.
"'Pon honor, it wasn't," I protest. "It was only two."
"Only two! Well, the next time you go to Ouray I'm going with you."
Chum sings:
"Now is the time for disappearing," and takes a header out of the side
door. It is my cue to follow suit, but instead the Madame picks up her
parasol and sails out with dignity. She wouldn't make a bad figure in
the Lancers, I think, as she closes the door. I had intended to do some
writing before the time came to pursue our journey, but I don't feel
like it now and pick up _Felix Holt_ and a cigar. Presently the two
return in high good humor over some joke, and luncheon is ordered and
eaten amid a fusilade of chattered nonsense.
Betweentimes I extract bits of information in regard to Montrose and its
neighborhood. The town is the center of a very large agricultural
district. It supplies all of the valley of the Uncompahgre as far south
as Dallas creek, and westward nearly to Delta; while northward its
bailiwick extends over to widely scattered but numerous settlers on the
North Fork of the Gunnison and its tributaries. A glance at the map will
show the reader that a great number of small streams come down from the
mountains lying north of the Gunnison, and of its North Fork, to feed
those trunk-streams. The mountains themselves, and the spurs that
stretch down between the creeks are rocky, sterile, and too cold for
farming; but in the valleys where the descent is always rapid, water is
easily led aside in irrigating ditches, and the soil is invariably found
to be rich and responsive. Throughout these remote creek-sides, then, a
large farming and stock-raising population has already settled itself;
and though out of sight, it forms a large element in the class of buyers
for whom the merchant at the railway station must provide. Those living
on the lower part of the North Fork trade at Delta.
Lately coal has been found within half a dozen miles of town, and veins
of great thickness and soundness are being opened in several places by
Montrose men, who can sell it much cheaper than it has hitherto been
brought from Crested Butte. At Cimmaron, about twelve miles from
Montrose, coal of very good quality occurs in great abundance, and is
being mined. On the mesas, surrounding Montrose, grows timber of unusual
size and importance, and nearly all the large sticks--some forty-four
feet in length,--used by the railway in the construction of bridges on
this half of the line, were derived from those forests of yellow pine.
Several sawmills, each a nucleus of small settlements, buy and sell at
Montrose. Local cattle-owners make the town their headquarters, the
herds ranging on the upland pastures within a few miles. The cattle
business in this region has just begun, but everything proves so
favorable that great expectations are entertained of it as a source of
wealth. The object is to raise fat beef for local markets, and Durham
blood is being introduced to raise the grade of the native stock. The
Cimmaron range, the heights beyond the North Fork and the Uncompahgre
mesa, supply the chief ranges at present. A good many people are
employed at Montrose, also, in the forwarding business,--that is, the
re-loading of merchandise and other goods into the huge trailed wagons
which they used to call "prairie schooners" on the plains, to be dragged
away to the mountain mining camps. Finally, the town is the county
seat.
[Illustration: EXPLORING THE WALLS.]
While these resources are all of importance Montrose depends mainly upon
the farming which she says is to make her valley and the dun-colored
mesas, "blossom as the rose."
"They tell me," says Chum, "and they prove it, too, that there is
nothing you cannot raise here short of tropical fruits, and they're not
quite sure about that, for they propose peaches, nectarines, and
apricots. And as for grain, great Injuns! why I saw stalks of oats as
big as a walking-stick, and stems of barley that looked like
gun-barrels."
The Madame raises her eyebrows and coughs slightly, but I take no
notice.
"And as for wheat, sir,--wheat? why it's immense! Thirty-five and forty
bushels to the acre is the regular yield, and of oats they will produce
fifty or sixty bushels, and of barley eighty or ninety. As for corn, I
forget the figures, but when we go down the road this afternoon you'll
see great green fields of it that'll make you think you're back on the
banks of the Wabash. There isn't anything they can't raise in these
bottoms, where they have more water than they know what to do with, and
it'll be only a few years before this whole great patch of greasewood
and chalk will be verdant with--with potatoes and corn."
It was a bit of a break, but when this young man gets a fair grip upon
poetry he don't let go so easy. He frowned down the suspicion of a smile
round the corner of our eyes, and rising to his feet, continued:
"I tell you, sir, in five years from now the people of this favored spot
can say in the words of the immortal singer--speaking historically, of
course, you understand--can say,
"Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed
By many an icy horn"
* * * * *
"Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed
And green with vines--
(watermelons, squashes, pumpkins, hops, morning glories, grapes,
strawberries, parsley, honeysuckles--I've seen 'em all!)
"--and corn."
We exploded with laughter, and even the enthusiastic orator smiled
grimly as he sat down.
"May be Mr. Whittier wouldn't have seen so much poetry in the way I used
his words, but I tell you Montrose knows there's a heap of truth in it."
"Yes, no doubt. But how about the 'icy horn'--these high and dry benches
up here?"
"Well, they say the very strongest and most productive soil of all is on
those same gravelly mesas. It's lighter and different from the saline
clays of the bottoms. Now, over there"--pointing to the great upland,
which lay elevated a hundred feet or so above the river on the southern
side of the Uncompahgre--"lies a mesa that contains about twenty-two
thousand acres. Then down below, at the mouth of the river, is another
stretch just twice as large. All that is needful to make that productive
farming land is water. A company here is building a canal which will be
twenty-seven miles long and will cost a hundred thousand dollars. It
takes the water out of the Uncompahgre away up by the Cantonment, leads
it along the foot of the wooded bluffs behind the mesa, and can furnish
enough to water the whole expanse. If you have a farm there, all you
have to do is to select half a mile square or so--there's heaps of it
left untouched as yet,--pay $1.25 an acre, dig side ditches and draw as
much water as you need at so much an inch rental from the company.
That's going to make one vast wheat-field."
"I see, but what next?"