By attending to these distinctions with map in hand we shall gain some
adequate idea of the surface of our continent. The first and second of
the regions we have left behind us, and at Leavenworth are well out upon
the third. It would not be just to call it prairie,--and it is equally
distinct from the true Plains. As a grain and grass land, Illinois
nowhere rivals it; but its surface is remarkably different from that of
the prairies east of the Mississippi. It may be described as an
alternation of lofty bluffs and sinuous ravines,--the former known as
"divides," the latter as "draws." The top of these divides preserves one
general level,--leading naturally to the hypothesis that all the draws
are valleys of erosion in a tract of alluvial deposit originally uniform
with the plateaus of the divides. Some of the larger draws still serve
as the channels of unfailing streams; most of them carry more or less
water during the rainy season; few of them are dry all the year round.
The river-bottoms which traverse this region are thickly fringed with
cotton-wood and elm timber; but it is a rare thing to encounter trees on
the top of a divide. The fertility of the soil is boundless. Every
species of grass flourishes or may flourish here, with a luxuriance
unrivalled on the continent. Of the tract embraced between the Little
Blue and the Republican Fork of the Kaw this is especially true. The
climate is so mild and uniform that cattle may be kept at pasture the
whole year round. Haymaking and the building of barns are works of
supererogation. The wild grass cures spontaneously on the ground. To
provide shelter against exceptional cases of climatic rigor,--an unusual
"cold snap," or a fall of snow which lies more than a day or two,--the
_ranchero_ constructs for his cattle a simple corral, or, at most, a
rude shed. The utmost complication which can occur in his business is a
stampede; and few of our Eastern farmers' boys would hesitate to
exchange their scythes, hay-cutters, corn-shellers, and mash-tubs for
the saddle of his spirited Indian pony and his three days' hunt after
estrays. Over this entire region the cereals thrive splendidly. The wild
plum is so abundant and delicious as to suggest the most favorable
adaptation to the other stone-fruits. Every vegetable that has been
tried in the loam of the river-bottoms succeeds perfectly. There is just
reason to think that vine-culture might reach a development along the
southern slope of the Republican Bluffs not surpassed in the most
favorable positions east of California. We believe it no exaggeration to
say that this region needs only culture (and that of the easiest kind)
to become the garden of the continent. Its mineral wealth has received
scanty examination; yet we know that it contains numerous beds of
tertiary coal, and easily worked iron-deposits, in the form both of
hydrated oxide and black scale.
On our way through this region we strike the Republican bottom near Lat.
39 deg. 30' N., and Long. 97 deg. 20' W. We are now in the primest part of the
buffalo-pasture. As we wind along the base of the steep Republican
Bluffs, and the edges of those green amphitheatres made by their
alternate approach and retrocession, our whistle scares a picket-line of
giant bulls, guarding a divide across the stream, and with tails in air,
heads at the down charge, they scour away at a lumbering cow-gallop, to
tell the main herd of a progress more resistless than their own. Or,
perhaps, our experience of the buffaloes is a more inconvenient one. We
may find the main herd crossing our track in their migration from the
Republican to the Platte. In such case, there will be a detention of
several hours, as the current of a main herd is not fordable by any
known human mechanism. The halt will be taken advantage of by timid
spectators looking safely out of car-windows,--by _bona-fide_ hunters,
who want fresh meat, and take along the tidbits of their game to be
cooked for them at the next dinner-station,--and by excited
pseudo-hunters, who will bang away with their rifles at the defenceless
herd, until the ground flows with useless blood, and somebody suggests
to them that they might as well call it sportsmanship to fire into a
farmer's cow-yard, resting over the top-rail.
Now and then we shall whirl through a village of chattering
prairie-dogs, send a hen-turkey rattling off her nest in a thicket on
the river's edge, or perhaps surprise even an antelope sufficiently
close to point out to the ladies from our window the exquisite flight of
that swiftest and most beautiful creature in our American fauna. But our
road will not be in running order very long before this sight becomes
the rarest of the rare. The stolid buffalo will continue to wear his old
paths long after the human presence has driven every antelope into
invisible fastnesses.
At intervals along the Republican bottom we shall find ranches springing
up under the auspices of our road; immense grain-fields yellowing toward
harvest; great herds of domestic cattle grazing haunch-deep through the
boundless swales of billowing wild grass; with all the other indications
of a prosperous farming settlement, which, keeping pace with the
progress of the road, shall eventually become one of the richest
agricultural communities in the world, and continuous for over two
hundred miles. Here and there we pass a lateral excavation in the face
of the bluff where some enterprising settler has opened a tertiary
coal-vein, a deposit of iron-ore, or a bed of soft limestone suitable
for both flux and mortar purposes. The way-freight trains that meet us
now are mainly laden with the wealth of the grazier, the farmer, and the
gardener, competing with their brethren of the Upper Mississippi for the
markets of St. Louis and New Orleans. Iron-ore, coal, and limestone may
form a portion of the cargoes,--but in process of time the mutual
vicinity of these minerals will become sufficiently suggestive to induce
the erection of smelting-furnaces _in situ_, and then their combined
product will travel the road in the form of pigs.
A little to the westward of a line drawn due south from Fort Kearney to
the Republican we shall find a comparatively abrupt and unexplained
change taking place in the scenery. Our green river-bottoms will give
way to tracts of the color and seemingly of the sterility proper to an
ash-heap. Our bluffs will recede, grow higher, and exchange their flat
_mesa_-like surfaces for a curved contour, imitating the mountainous
formation on a reduced scale. For long distances the vast gray level
around us will be dotted with conical sand-dunes, forever piling up and
tearing down as the wind shifts, with a tendency to bestow their gritty
compliments in the eyes of passengers occupying windward seats on the
train. The lovely blossoms of the running-poppy no longer mat the earth
with blots of crimson fire; no more does the sweet breath of eglantine
and sensitive-brier float in at the window as we whirl by a sheltered
recess of the divides; the countless wild varieties of bean and pea no
longer charm us with a rainbow prodigality of pink, blue, scarlet,
purple, white, and magenta blossoms. The very trees by the river's brink
become puny and stunted; the evergreens begin to replace the deciduous
growths; in the shade of dwarfed and desiccated cedars we look vainly
for the snowy or azure bells of the three-petalled campanula. Gaunt,
staring sunflowers, and humbler _compositae_ of yellow tinge, stay with
us a little longer than those darlings of our earlier scenery; but
before we have gone many miles the last conspicuous wave of fresh
vegetation breaks hopelessly on a thirsty sand-hill, and we are given
over to a wilderness of cacti. Here and there occurs a sightly clump of
waxen yellow blossoms, where these vegetable hedgehogs are in their
holiday attire,--but it must be confessed that the view is a melancholy
change from our recent affluence of beauty. With the other succulent
plants, the rich herbage of the prairie has entirely disappeared. There
is not a blade of anything which an Eastern grazier would recognize as
grass between this boundary and the Rocky Mountains. As we whiz over
these wastes at railroad-speed, we shall be apt to pronounce them
absolutely sterile. When we stop at the next coaling-station, let us
examine the matter more closely. The ground proves to be covered with
minute gray spirals of herbage, like a crop of vegetable corkscrews, an
inch or two in height, and to all appearance dry as wool. This is the
"_grama_" or "buffalo-grass," and, despite its look of utter
desiccation, is highly nutritious. It is almost the entire winter
dependence of the buffalo-herds, and domestic cattle soon learn to
prefer it to all other feed. Its existence, together with the wide group
of changes which we have noticed, denotes that we have passed the
threshold of the fourth grand continental division, and are now in the
region of the Plains proper.
Ex-Governor Gilpin of Colorado, in his "Central Gold Region," very truly
styles the Plains "the pastoral area of the continent." The Plains are
set apart for grazing purposes by the method of exclusion. There is
nothing else that can be done with them. Rain seldom falls on them. The
shallow rivers, like the Platte, which wander through them, are too far
apart to be used economically for their general irrigation. Only such
herbage may be expected to thrive here as can live on its own
condensation of water from a sensibly dry atmosphere. Manifestly, art
can do nothing for the improvement of such a tract. It must be left to
fulfil its natural function, as the great continental pasture. Along the
banks of the rivers run narrow strips of alluvial soil, liable to yearly
inundation; and these may be made amenable to the ordinary processes of
agriculture. On these the herdsman may raise the grain and vegetables
necessary for his own consumption. But the vast area of the region seems
inevitably set apart for the one sole business of cattle-raising, and
all the way-freight trains which pass us here are laden with beeves for
the St. Louis market, or dairy-produce for all the markets of the world.
We have never tasted _grama_-cheese, but have a theory that its
individual piquancy must equal that of the delicious _Schabzieger_.
Far off on the gray level we shall still see the antelope. His tribe is
coextensive with three-fourths of the continent. No sterility
discourages him. He seems as thrifty on the wiry _grama_ as among the
most succulent grasses of the Republican. The sneaking coyote and a
number of larger wolves put in an occasional appearance. Birds of the
hawk and raven families are common. The waters swarm with numerous
varieties of duck. It surprises us at this utmost distance from the
maritime border to see flocks of Arctic gulls circling around the low
sand-hills, and sickle-bill curlews wheeling high in air above their
broods. Before we get far into this region we shall notice that one of
its most typical features is the alkali-pool. Every few miles we come to
a shallow basin of stagnant water saturated with salts of soda and
potash. Still another characteristic of the Plains is their tremendous
rainless thunder-storms. If we are fortunate enough to encounter one of
these, we shall witness in one hour more atmospheric perturbation than
has occurred within our whole previous experience on the Atlantic slope.
The lightning for half a night will light the sky with an almost
continuous glare, brighter than noonday; all the parks of artillery on
earth could not make such a constant deafening roar as those iron clouds
in the heaven; and though the wind will not be able to blow the train
backward, as we have seen it treat a four-mule stage, it will be likely
to do its next best thing, heaping sand on the track till the engine has
to slow and send men ahead with shovels.
Entering the Denver depot, we shall find a busy scene. All that immense
freight-business between the Missouri and the Colorado mining-towns,
which formerly strung the overland road with wagons drawn by six yoke
of oxen each, has now been transferred to the railroad. The switches are
crowded with cars getting unloaded, or waiting their turn to be. What is
their freight? Rather ask what it is not. For the present, Colorado
imports everything except the most perishable commodities,--and that
which pays for all. If you would see _that_, ask the express-messenger
on the train going East in five minutes to lift the lid of one of those
heavy iron trunks in his car. Your eyes are dazzled by the yellow gleam
of a king's ransom. It is a day's harvest of ingots from the stamps of
Central City, on its way to square accounts with New York for the
contents of one of those freight-trains.
At Denver we reach the edge of the Rocky-Mountain foot-hills; the grand
snow-peak of Mount Rosalie, rivalling Mont Blanc in height and majesty,
though forty miles away, seems to rise just behind the town; thence
southerly toward Pike's and northerly toward Long's Peak, the billowing
ridges stretch away brown and bare, save where the climbing lines of
sombre green mark their pine-fringed gorges, or the everlasting ice
pencils their crests with an edge of opal. Still we do not leave the
Plains region. We glide through the thronged streets of the growing
city, cross the South Platte by a short bridge, and strike nearly due
north along the edge of the mountain-range, over a broad plateau which
still bears the characteristic _grama_. Not until we enter the _canon_
of the Cache-la-Poudre, a hundred miles from Denver by the road, can we
consider ourselves fairly out of the Plains, and in the fifth great
region of the continent, the Rocky-Mountain system of ridges and
intramontane plateaus.
Before we begin this portion of our journey, let us examine, in the
light of that already accomplished, an assertion made early in this
article to the effect that the Pacific Railroad must precede and create
the business which shall support it. The consideration shall be brief as
a mathematical process.
The river-bottoms and divides along the Lower Republican are peculiarly
suited to the raising of farm-produce. But so long as they had no avenue
to a market, they might have been fertile as Paradise without alluring
settlers to cultivate them. The natural advantages of a country are
developed not as a matter of taste, but as a matter of profit. The crops
which can be raised to best advantage in this region are the crops which
without a railroad must rot on the ground. No man can be expected to
settle in a new country from pure Quixotism,--and nothing but the
railroad would make anything else of his expenditure of energies beyond
the needs of self-support. The Plains are the natural pasture of the
continent; but they have no natural fascination for the white man which
can induce him to take up his residence there for cattle-breeding _en
amateur_. The greatest enthusiast in butter and cheese would scarcely
care to accumulate mountains of rancid firkins and boxes for the mere
gratification of fancy. Access to a market is his only justification for
spending a nomadic lifetime among herds, or a fortune on churns and
presses. The settlement of the country must precede the birth of its
industries, and the Pacific Road is the absolutely essential stimulus to
such settlement.
As we converse, we are beginning our climb toward the snow. A series of
steep grades, mainly following the bed of that wildly picturesque and
roaring torrent, the Cache-la-Poudre, take us up through the Cheyenne
Pass to the Laramie Plains. In reaching the head of the Cache-la-Poudre
we have familiarized ourselves with the ridges of the system; we are now
to learn what is meant by the intramontane plateaus. The Laramie Plains
form the most remarkable plateau of the Rocky Range,--one of the most
remarkable anywhere in the known world. Through a series of savage
_canons_ we enter what appears to us a reproduction of the prairies east
of the Mississippi,--a level and luxuriantly grassy plain, bright with
unknown flowers, alive with startled antelope, threaded by the clear
currents of both the Laramie Rivers, and rejoicing in an atmosphere
which exhilarates like the fresh-brewed nectar of Olympus. Bounded on
the east by the great ridge we have just passed, northerly by a
continuation of the Wind-River Range and Laramie Peak, southerly by a
magnificent transverse bar of naked mountains running parallel with the
Wind-River Range, and westward by a staircase of sterile divides which
we must climb to reach the base of Elk Mountain and find its giant mass
towering into the eternal snows three thousand feet farther above our
heads,--this plateau is a prairie fifty miles square, lifted bodily
eight thousand feet into the air. It is difficult for us to roll over
this Elysian mead walled in by these tremendous ranges, and think of the
commercial uses to which the level might be put; but from its elevation
and its natural crop we may pronounce it a grazing tract of splendid
capabilities, unsuited to artificial culture.
Another series of grades takes us past the base of Elk Mountain to a
broad and sandy cactus-plain, whence we descend among curious trap and
sandstone formations, simulating human architecture, to the crossing of
the North Platte. A little farther on, so close to the snow-line that we
shiver under the white ridges with a reflected chill, we cross the axial
ridge of the continent, and begin our descent toward Salt Lake by the
noble gallery of Bridger's Pass. The springs along our way become
tinctured with sulphur, alkali, and salt. We know, when we stop at a
station to drink, that we are drawing near the primeval basin of a
stagnant sea, now shrunk to its final pool in Salt Lake, but once in
size a rival of the Mediterranean. We pass over an alternation of
mountain-grades and sandy levels, cross the Green or Upper Colorado
River, stop for five minutes at the Fort-Bridger station, thread the
sinuous galleries of the Wahsatch, and come down from a savage
wilderness of sage-brush, granite, and red sandstone, into the luxuriant
green pastures of Mormondom, heavy with crops and irrigated from the
snow-peaks. Thence, one of the numerous _canons_--Emigrant or Parley's
most likely--conducts us to the mountain-walled level of Salt-Lake City.
We have now traversed the most difficult part of our road. Its
Rocky-Mountain section has cost more capital, labor, and engineering
skill than all the rest together. The return for this vast expenditure
must be no less vast,--but it will be rendered slowly. It does not lie
on the surface or just beneath the surface, as in the pastoral and
agricultural regions. It is almost entirely mineral, and must be mined
by the hardest work. But it ranges through all the metallic wealth of
Nature, from gold to iron, and no conceivable stimulus short of a
Pacific Railroad could ever have been adequate to bring it forth.
We shall find the import trade of Salt Lake by the railroad to consist
chiefly of emigrants and their chattels. If Brigham Young be still
living, his favorite policy of non-intercourse with the Gentiles may
also somewhat diminish the export business of the road. But human nature
cannot forever resist the currents of commercial interest; and the
Mormon settlements possess so many advantages for the economical
production of certain staples, that we need not be surprised to find
trains leaving Salt-Lake City with sorghum and cotton for San Francisco,
and raw silk for all the markets of the East.
From Salt-Lake City to the Humboldt Mountains, we pass between isolated
uplifts of trap and granite, over a comparatively level desert of sand
and snowy alkali. The terrors of this journey, as performed by
horse-carriage, have been fully depicted in our last April number. We
may laugh at them now. The question which principally interests us,
after we have blunted the first edge of our wonder at the sublime
sterility of the Desert, is what conceivable use this waste can be made
to subserve. Before the railroad, that question had but a single
answer,--the inculcation of contentment, by contrast with the most
disagreeable surroundings in which one might anywhere else be placed.
Perhaps it is over-sanguine to conceive of a further answer even now. If
there be any, it is this: In its crudest state the alkaline earth of the
Desert is sufficiently pure to make violent effervesence with acids. No
elaborate process is required to turn it into commercial soda and
potash. Coal has been already found in Utah. Silex exists abundantly in
all the Desert uplifts. Why should not the greatest glass-works in the
world be reared along the Desert section of the Pacific Road? and why
should not the entire market of the Pacific Coast be supplied with
refined alkalies from the same tract? Given the completed railroad, and
neither of these projects exceeds commercial possibility.
We cross the Humboldt Mountains by a series of grades shorter than that
which conducts us over the Rocky system, but full as difficult in
proportion. We descend into a second instalment of Desert on the other
side; but the general sterility is now occasionally broken by oases,
moist green _canons_, and living springs. A hundred miles west of the
Humboldt Pass we come to the mining-settlements of Reese River, gaining
a new increment to the business of the road in the transportation of
silver to San Francisco, and every conceivable necessary of life to the
mines.--Within the last eighteen months eleven hundred dollars in gold
have been paid for the carriage by wagon of a single set of
amalgamating-apparatus from Virginia City to Reese, a distance of two
hundred miles. The price of the commonest necessaries at the Reese-River
mines has reached the highest point of the old California markets in
'49,--and no attainable means of transport have been adequate to supply
the demand.
From Reese River to Carson we traverse a broken, rocky, and sterile
tract, with occasional fertile patches and a belt along the Carson River
susceptible of cultivation. The foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada
gradually shut us round, and at Carson we begin penetrating the main
system through a series of magnificent galleries between precipices of
porphyritic granite, leading nearly northward to the Truckee Pass. The
grades we now encounter are as tremendous as any in the Rocky-Mountain
system. Just before entering the main pass we come to the junction of a
branch-road from Virginia City. The train which stops at the fork to let
us go ahead is carrying down several tons of silver "bricks" from the
Washoe mines to Kellogg and Hewston's, the great assay and refining firm
of San Francisco. The pass takes us across the summit-line of the range,
but not out of the environment of its mountains. We penetrate granite
fastnesses and descend blood-chilling inclines, span roaring chasms and
glide under solemn roofs of lofty mountain-pine, until in the
neighborhood of Centralia we begin for the first time to see the
agricultural tract of the Golden State.
Between ranches, placer-diggings, and small settlements, we now thread
our comparatively level way to Sacramento. Here we are met by the chief
affluent of this end of the Pacific Road,--the long-projected, greatly
needed, and now finally accomplished line between Sacramento and
Portland. This enterprise has done for the Sacramento and Willamette
valleys the same good offices of development performed by our grand line
for all the central continent. The noble orchards, pastures,
grain-lands, and gardens of Northern California and Oregon are now
provided with a market. Their wastes are brought under cultivation,
their mines are opened, their entire area is settled by a class of men
who work under the stimulus of certain profit. The Northern
freight-trains waiting at Sacramento to make a junction with our road
are loaded with the produce of one of the richest agricultural regions
in the world, now flowing to its first remunerative market. All this
must pay toll to our road, and here is another source of profit.
Crossing a number of tributaries to the Sacramento, and intersecting
mines, ranches, and settlements, as before, we follow a nearly straight
level to Stockton. Then turning westerly, we cross the San Joaquin, pass
almost beneath the shadow of grand old Monte Diablo, glide among the
vines and olives of San Jose Mission, and curve round the southern bend
of the lovely bay to the queenly city of San Francisco. One of Leland's
carriages awaits us at the terminus. We are driven to the most
delightful hotel on the continent, and find our old friend, the
Occidental, altered in no respect save size, which the growing demands
of the Pacific New York, since the completion of our inter-oceanic line,
have compelled Leland to quadruple. We are on time,--six days and eight
hours exactly. Or, assuming the San-Francisco standard, we have gained
three hours on the sun, and, instead of taking a two-o'clock lunch, as
our friends are doing in New York, sit down to an eleven-o'clock
breakfast crowned with melons, grapes, and strawberries, in the sweet
seclusion of the Ladies' Ordinary.
Is not all this worth doing in reality?