We were in the wagon again a few minutes before noon (the hours kept on

the Plains are good), for we had thirty-five miles yet to make to-day,

which, with a mule team require a long afternoon. True, the roads are

harder here, less cut up, less muddy, than in Eastern Kansas; but few

men think how much up and down is saved them in traveling over a

civilized region by bridges and causeways over water-courses. We still

kept north of west for several miles, so as to cling to the high

“divide” between Chapman’s Creek and Solomon’s Fork (another tributary

of the Smoky Hill) so far as possible. Soon we saw our first antelope,

and, in the course of the afternoon, five others; but not one of them

seemed to place a proper estimate on the value of our society. Two of

them started up so near us as to be for a moment within possible

rifle-shot; but they widened the gap between us directly. We crossed

many old buffalo-trails and buffalo-heads nearly reduced to the

skeleton, but no signs that buffalo have been so far east this season.

Two or three of the larger water-courses we crossed had here and there a

cotton-wood or stunted elm on its banks, but the general dearth of

timber is fearful, and in a dry season there can be little or no water

on this long thirty-five miles. But it must be considered that our route

avoids the streams, and of course the timber, to the utmost. The creek

on which we are encamped (a branch of Solomon’s) is now a fair

mill-stream, but in a dry time might doubtless be run through a

nine-inch ring. It has considerable wood on its banks—say a belt

averaging ten rods in width.

Twenty miles back, the rock suddenly changed entirely from the universal

limestone of Kansas, east of Chapman’s Creek to a decaying red

sandstone; the soil hence becomes sandy and much thinner; the grass is

also less luxuriant, though in some places still good. For acres,

especially on the higher ridges, there is little or no soil; rock in

place or slightly disturbed nearly covering the surface. Through all

this region, the furious rains, rushing off in torrents without

obstruction, have worn wide and devious water-courses, but they are

neither deep enough nor permanently wet enough to shelter timber. I

reckon “claims” will not be greedily hunted nor bought at exorbitant

prices hereabouts for some years yet.

Our hostess for the night has two small tents, as at No. 8, and gave us

a capital supper, butter included; but she and her two children alike

testify that, in one of the drenching thunder-storms so frequent of

late, they might nearly as well have been out on the prairie, and that

sleeping under such a visitation is an art only to be acquired by

degrees. They have a log-cabin going up, I am happy to say. Their tents

were first located on the narrow bottom of the creek; but a rapidly

rising flood compelled them, a few nights since, to scramble out, and

move them to a higher bench of prairie. It would have been pitiful to

have been turned out so, only the shelter they were enjoying was good

for nothing.

I believe I have now descended the ladder of artificial life nearly to

its lowest round. If the Cheyennes—thirty of whom stopped the last

express down on the route we must traverse, and tried to beg or steal

from it—shall see fit to capture and strip us, we shall probably have

further experience in the same line; but for the present the progress I

have made during the last fortnight toward the primitive simplicity of

human existence may be roughly noted thus:

_May 12th._—_Chicago._—Chocolate and morning newspapers last seen on the

breakfast-table.

_23d._—_Leavenworth._—Room-bells and baths make their final appearance.

_24th._—_Topeka._—Beef-steak and wash-bowls (other than tin) last

visible. Barber ditto.

_26th._—_Manhattan._—Potatoes and eggs last recognized among the

blessings that “brighten as they take their flight.” chairs ditto.

_27th._—_Junction City._—Last visitation of a boot-black, with

dissolving views of a board bedroom. Beds bid us good-by.

_28th._—_Pipe Creek._—Benches for seats at meals have disappeared,

giving place to bags and boxes. We (two passengers of a scribbling turn)

write our letters in the express-wagon that has borne us by day, and

must supply us lodgings for the night. Thunder and lightning from both

south and west give strong promise of a shower before morning. Dubious

looks at several holes in the canvas covering of the wagon. Our trust,

under Providence, is in buoyant hearts and an India-rubber blanket.

Good-night.

VII.

THE HOME OF THE BUFFALO.

Station 11, Pike’s Peak Express, }

CLEAR CREEK, _May 29, 1859_. }

I ceased writing No. VI. last night at midnight at Station 9—the storm,

which had been threatened since dark, just bursting in wind and rain.

The wind was a gale, but upset neither tents nor wagons; the rain fell

for about an hour, then ceased, though a little more fell this morning,

and we have had thunder and lightning at intervals through the day, and

have it still, threatening showers before dawn. We rose early from our

wagon-bed this morning, had breakfast at six, and soon bade adieu to

Pipe Creek, with its fringe of low elms and cotton-woods, such as thinly

streak all the streams we have passed to-day that are large enough to

protect timber from prairie-fires. Very soon, we were off the sandstone

upon limestone again, which has been the only rock visible for the last

forty miles, and this but sparingly. The soil is of course improved, but

I think not equal to that of Eastern Kansas. The face of the country is

slightly rolling—in one place, a level prairie eleven miles wide—but

even this is cut and washed out by shallow water-courses, probably dry a

good part of each summer. We have crossed many streams to-day, all

making south for Solomon’s Fork, which has throughout been from two to

six miles from us on our left, its narrow belt of timber constantly

sending out longer or shorter spurs up the creeks which feed it on

either side. The route has been from fifty to two hundred feet above the

bed of the Fork, keeping out of all bottoms and marshes, but continually

cut by water-courses, often with abrupt banks and miry beds, in one of

which only were we stalled until an extra span of mules was sent from

the other wagon to our aid. (The express-wagons always go in pairs, for

reciprocal aid and security.) I presume all the timber we have passed

through since we left the Republican at Junction (and we are now one

hundred and ten miles from it by our route, and perhaps one hundred in a

straight line), would not form a belt half a mile wide, with but a few

white-oaks to render it of any value except for fuel. A low,

long-limbed, twisty elm, forms three-fourths of all the wood we have

seen this side of Junction; the residue is mainly cotton-wood. The

streams are usually clear, except where riled by recent showers, and

springs are not infrequent. If well timbered, this country would be

rather inviting. It is largely covered with the dead stalks of the wild

sunflower, which is said to indicate a good soil for corn. The sunflower

plant has not started this season.

On rising our first ridge this morning, a herd of buffalo was seen

grazing on the prairie some three miles toward the Solomon; soon, more

were visible; then others. At length, a herd of perhaps a hundred

appeared on the north—the only one we saw on that side of our road

during the day. Having been observed, they were heading down the valley

of a small creek toward the Solomon. Just then, the tents and wagons of

a body of encamped Pike’s Peakers appeared right across a little creek;

two men were running across the prairie on foot to get a shot at the

buffalo; another was mounting a horse with like intent. The herd passed

on a long, awkward gallop north of the tents and struck south-west

across our road some forty rods ahead of us. A Sharp’s rifle was leveled

and fired at them by one of our party, but seemed rather to hasten than

arrest their progress. But one old bull shambled along behind in a

knock-kneed fashion (having probably been lamed by some former party);

and he was fired at twice by our marksmen as he attempted to cross the

road—once when only fifteen rods distant. They thought they wounded him

fatally, but he vanished from our sight behind a low hill, and their

hasty search for him proved unsuccessful.

Thence nearly all day, the buffalo in greater or less numbers were

visible among the bottoms of the Solomon on our right—usually two to

three miles distant. At length, about 5 P. M., we reached the crest of a

“divide,” whence we looked down on the valley of a creek running to the

Solomon some three miles distant, and saw the whole region from half a

mile to three miles south of our road, and for an extent of at least

four miles east and west, fairly alive with buffalo. There certainly

were not less than ten thousand of them; I believe there were many more.

Some were feeding, others lying down, others pawing up the earth,

rolling on it. etc. The novel spectacle was too tempting for our

sportsmen. The wagons were stopped, and two men walked quietly toward

the center of the front of the herd. Favored by a water-course, they

crept up to within fifty rods of the buffalo, and fired eight or ten

shots into the herd, with no visible effect. The animals nearest the

hunters retreated as they advanced, but the great body of the herd was

no more disturbed or conscious of danger than if a couple of mosquitos

had alighted among them. After an hour of this fruitless effort, the

hunters gave it up, alleging that their rifle was so foul and badly

sighted as to be worthless. They rejoined us, and we came away, leaving

nine-tenths of the vast herd exactly where we found them. And there they

doubtless are sleeping at this moment, about three miles from us.

We are near the heart of the buffalo region. The stages from the west

that met us here this evening report the sight of millions within the

last two days. Their trails chequer the prairie in every direction. A

company of Pike’s Peakers killed thirteen near this point a few days

since. Eight were killed yesterday at the next station west of this by

simply stampeding a herd and driving them over a high creek-bank, where

so many broke their necks. Buffalo-meat is hanging or lying all around

us, and a calf two or three months old is tied to a stake just beside

our wagons. He was taken by rushing a herd up a steep creek-bank; which

so many could not possibly climb at once; this one was picked out in the

melee as most worth having, and taken with a rope. Though fast tied and

with but a short tether, he is true game, and makes at whoever goes near

him with desperate intent to butt the intruder over. We met or passed

to-day two parties of Pike’s Peakers who had respectively lost three

oxen or steers, stampeded last night by herds of buffalo. The mules at

the express stations have to be carefully watched to preserve them from

a similar catastrophe—to their owners.

I do not like the flesh of this wild ox. It is tough and not juicy. I do

not forget that our cookery is of the most unsophisticated

pattern—carrying us back to the age of the building of the Pyramids, at

least—but I would much rather see an immense herd of buffalo on the

prairie than eat the best of them.

The herbage hereabout is nearly all the short, strong grass known as the

buffalo-grass, and is closely fed down; we are far beyond the stakes of

the land-surveyor—beyond the usual haunts of white men. The Santa Fé

trail is far south of us; the California is considerably north. Very

probably, the buffalo on Solomon’s Fork were never hunted by white men

till this spring. Should one of these countless herds take a fancy for a

man-hunt, our riflemen would find even the express-wagons no protection.

Though our road is hardly two months old, yet we passed two graves on it

to-day. One is that of an infant, born in a tent of the wife of one of

the station-masters on her way to his post, and which lived but a day;

the other that of a Missourian on his way to Pike’s Peak, who was

accidentally shot in taking a rifle from his wagon. His party seems to

have been singularly unfortunate. A camp or two further on, a hurricane

overtook them and tore their six wagons into oven-wood; they were able

to make but three passable wagons out of the remains. Their loss in

other property was serious; and they sustained much bodily harm. One

more of them was buried a camp or two further on.

Those whom we meet here coming down confirm the worst news we have had

from the Peak. There is scarcely any gold there; those who dig cannot

average two shillings per day; all who can get away are leaving; Denver

and Auraria are nearly deserted; terrible sufferings have been endured

on the Plains, and more must yet be encountered; hundreds would gladly

work for their board, but cannot find employment—in short, Pike’s Peak

is an exploded bubble, which thousands must bitterly rue to the end of

their days. Such is the tenor of our latest advices. I have received

none this side of Leavenworth that contradict them. My informant says

all are getting away who can, and that we shall find the region nearly

deserted. That is likely, but we shall see.

A young clerk with whom I conversed at supper gave me a little less

discouraging account; but even he, having frozen his feet on the winter

journey out, had had enough of gold-hunting, and was going home to his

parents in Indiana, to stick to school for a few years. I commended that

as a wise resolution. Next morning, after we had started on our opposite

ways, I was apprised by our conductor that said clerk was a woman! I had

not dreamed of such a thing; but his more practical or more suspicions

eyes had seen through her disguise at once. We heard more of her at

Denver—quite enough more—but this may as well be left untold.

VIII.

LAST OF THE BUFFALO.

REISINGER’S CREEK, Station No. 13, }

Pike’s Peak Express Co., _May 31, 1859_. }

I would rather not bore the public with buffalo. I fully realize that

the subject is not novel—that Irving, and Cooper, and many others, have

written fully and admirably upon it; and that the traveler’s

enthusiastic recital falls coldly on the ear of the distant, critical,

unsympathizing reader. Yet I insist on writing this once more on

buffalo, promising then to drop the subject, as we pass out of the range

of the buffalo before night. All day yesterday, they darkened the earth

around us, often seeming to be drawn up like an army in battle array on

the ridges and adown their slopes a mile or so south of us—often on the

north as well. They are rather shy of the little screens of straggling

timber on the creek-bottoms—doubtless from their sore experience of

Indians lurking therein to discharge arrows at them as they went down to

drink. If they feed in the grass of the narrow valleys and ravines, they

are careful to have a part of the herd on the ridges which overlook

them, and with them the surrounding country for miles. And, when an

alarm is given, they all rush furiously off in the direction which the

leaders presume that of safety.

This is what gives us such excellent opportunities for regarding them to

the best advantage. They are moving northward, and are still mainly

south of our track. Whenever alarmed, they set off on their awkward but

effective canter to the great herds still south, or to haunts with which

they are comparatively familiar, and wherein they have hitherto found

safety. This necessarily sends those north of us across our roads often

but a few rods in front of us, even when they had started a mile away.

Then a herd will commence running across a hundred rods ahead of us,

and, the whole blindly following their leader, we will be close upon

them before the last will have cleared the track. Of course, they

sometimes stop and tack, or, seeing us, sheer off and cross further

ahead, or split into two lines; but the general impulse, when alarmed,

is to follow blindly and at fall speed, seeming not to inquire or

consider from what quarter danger is to be apprehended.

What strikes the stranger with most amazement is their immense numbers.

I know a million is a great many, but I am confident we saw that number

yesterday. Certainly, all we saw could not have stood on ten square

miles of ground. Often, the country for miles on either hand seemed

quite black with them. The soil is rich, and well matted with their

favorite grass. Yet it is all (except a very little on the

creek-bottoms, near to timber) eaten down like an overtaxed

sheep-pasture in a dry August. Consider that we have traversed more than

one hundred miles in width since we first struck them, and that for most

of this distance the buffalo have been constantly in sight, and that

they continue for some twenty-five miles further on—this being the

breadth of their present range, which has a length of perhaps a thousand

miles—and you have some approach to an idea of their countless myriads.

I doubt whether the domesticated horned cattle of the United States

equal the numbers, while they must fall considerably short in weight, of

these wild ones. Margaret Fuller long ago observed that the Illinois

prairies seemed to repel the idea of being new to civilized life and

industry—that they, with their borders of trees and belts of timber,

reminded the traveler rather of the parks and spacious fields of an old

country like England—that you were constantly on the involuntary

look-out for the chateaux, or at least the humbler farm-houses, which

should diversify such a scene. True as this is or was of Illinois, the

resemblance is far more striking here, where the grass is all so closely

pastured and the cattle are seen in such vast herds on every ridge. The

timber, too, aids the illusion, seeming to have been reduced to the last

degree consistent with the wants of a grazing country, and to have been

left only on the steep creek-banks where grass would not grow. It is

hard to realize that this is the center of a region of wilderness and

solitude, so far as the labors of civilized man are concerned—that the

first wagon passed through it some two months ago. But the utter absence

of houses or buildings of any kind, and our unbridged, unworked road,

winding on its way for hundreds of miles without a track other than of

buffalo intersecting or leading away from it on either hand, bring us

back to the reality.

I shall pass lightly over the hunting exploits of our party. A good many

shots have been fired—certainly not by me; even were I in the habit of

making war on nature’s children, I would as soon think of shooting my

neighbor’s oxen as these great, clumsy, harmless, creatures. If they

were scarce, I might comprehend the idea of hunting them for sport;

here, they are so abundant that you might as well hunt your neighbor’s

geese. And, while there have been several shots fired by our party at

point-blank distance, I have reason for my hope that no buffalo has

experienced any personal inconvenience therefrom. For this impunity, the

foulness of the rifle has had to answer in part; the greenness of the

sportsmen is perhaps equally responsible for it. But then we have had no

horse or mule out of our regular teams, and the candid will admit that a

coach-and-four is not precisely the fittest turn-out for a hunting

party.

I write in the station-tent (having been driven from our wagon by the

operation of greasing its wheels, which was found to interfere with the

steadiness of my hastily-improvised table), with the buffalo visible on

the ridges south and every way but north of us. They were very close

down to us at daylight, and, till the increasing light revealed

distinctly our position, since which they have kept a respectful

distance. But a party of our drivers, who went back seven miles on mules

last evening, to help get our rear wagon out of a gully in which it had

mired and stuck fast, from which expedition they returned at midnight,

report that they found the road absolutely dangerous from the crowds of

buffalo feeding on either side, and running across it—that, the night

being quite dark, they were often in great danger of being run over and

run down by the headlong brutes. They were obliged to stand still for

minutes, and fire their revolvers right and left, to save their lives

and their mules.

The superintendent of this division, Mr. Fuller, had a narrow escape day

before yesterday. He was riding his mule along our road, utterly

unconscious of danger, when a herd of buffalo north of the road were

stampeded by an emigrant train, and set off full gallop in a

south-westerly direction, as usual. A slight ridge hid them from Mr.

F.’s sight till their leader came full tilt against his mule, knocking

him down, and going over him at full speed. Mr. F. of course fell with

the dying mule, and I presume lay very snug by his side while the

buffaloes made a clear sweep over the concern—he firing his revolver

rapidly, and thus inducing many of the herd to shear off on one side or

the other. He rose stunned and bruised, but still able to make his way

to the station—with an increased respect for buffalo, I fancy, and a

disposition to give them a reasonably wide berth hereafter. But he has

gone out this morning in quest of the mired coach, and our waiting for

his return gives me this chance to write without encroaching on the

hours due to sleep.

Two nights ago, an immense herd came down upon a party of Pike’s Peakers

camped just across the creek from this station, and, (it being dark)

were with difficulty prevented from trampling down tents, cattle, and

people. Some fifty shots were fired into them before they could be

turned. And now our station-master has just taken his gun to scare them

off so as to save our mules from a stampede.

But the teams have returned with the missing coach, and I must break off

and pack to go on.

* * * * *

STATION, 15, PRAIRIE-DOG CREEK, _May 31, evening_.

We have made fifty-five miles since we started about nine this morning,

and our present encampment is on a creek running to the Republican, so

that we have bidden a final adieu to Solomon’s Fork, and all other

affluents of the Smoky Hill branch of the Kansas. We traveled on the

“divide” between this and the northern branch of the Kansas for some

miles to-day, and finally came over to the waters of that stream (the

Republican), which we are to strike some eighty miles further on. We are

now just half way from Leavenworth to Denver, and our coach has been a

week making this distance; so that with equal good fortune we may expect

to reach the land of gold in another week. The coaches we met here

to-night have been just a week on the way, having (like us) lost a day,

but not, like us, by high water: their bother was with wild

Indians—Arapahoes mainly—whom they report to be in great numbers on our

route—not hostile to us, but intent on begging or stealing, and stopping

the wagons peremptorily till their demands are complied with. They are

at war with the Pawnees, and most of their men are now on the war-path;

their women and children are largely camped around the Express Company’s

Stations, living as they best may. The Pawnees, I believe, are mainly or

entirely south of our road. The Arapahoes boast of triumphs and

slaughters which I am tempted to hope, have been or will be

reciprocated. Indian wars with each other are, in our day, cruel and

cowardly plundering forays, fitted to excite only disgust.

As we left Station 14 this morning, and rose from the creek bottom to

the high prairie, a great herd of buffalo were seen in and around our

road, who began to run first north, then south, many standing as if

confused and undecided which course to take, and when at last they all

started southward, we were so near them that our driver stopped his

mules to let the immense impetuous herd pass without doing us any harm.

Our sportsman’s Sharp was not loaded at the time; it afterward was, and

fired into a herd at fair distance, but I did not see anything drop.

After this, they were seen in greater or less numbers on the ridges and

high prairie, mainly south of us, but they either kept a respectful

distance or soon took one. We have not seen one for the last twenty-five

miles; but they are now considerably further this way than they were a

few days since; and as every foot of the way thus far, and (I hear)

further, is carpeted with buffalo-grass, not here eaten down, and as

buffalo-paths and other evidences that this is their favorite

feeding-ground are everywhere present, I presume they will be here in

the course of a week. But enough of them. And let me here proffer my

acknowledgments to sundry other quadrupeds with whom I have recently

formed a passing acquaintance.

The prairie-wolf was the first of these gentry to pay his respects to

us. He is a sneaking, cowardly little wretch, of a dull or dirty white

color, much resembling a small, short-bodied dog set up on pretty long

legs. I believe his only feat entitling him to rank as a beast of prey

consists in sometimes, when hard pressed by hunger, digging out a

prairie-dog and making a meal of him. His usual provender is the

carcass—no matter how putrid—of any dead buffalo, mule, or ox that he

may find exposed on the prairies. He is a paltry creature.

But the gray-wolf—who is also a denizen of the prairies—(I think we have

seen at least a dozen of the species to-day)—is a scoundrel of much more

imposing caliber. He delights to lurk around the outskirts of a herd of

buffalo, keeping out of sight and unsuspected in the ravines and

creek-timber, so far as possible; and wo to the unlucky calf that strays

(which he seldom does) outside of the exterior line of defence formed by

the bulls. If very large and hungry, the gray-wolf will sometimes manage

to cut a cow off from the herd, and, interposing between her and her

companions, detain or drive her further away, until she is beyond the

hope of rescue, when her doom is sealed. His liveliest hope, however, is

that of finding a buffalo whom some hunter has wounded, so that he

cannot keep up with the herd, especially should it be stampeded. Let him

once get such a one by himself, and a few snaps at his hamstrings,

taking excellent care to keep out of the way of his horns, insures that

the victim will have ceased to be a buffalo, and become mere wolf-meat

before another morning.

It is impossible for a stranger to the prairies to realize the impudence

of these prairie-lawyers. Of some twenty of them that I have seen within

the last two days, I think not six have really run from us. One that we

saw just before us, two hours ago, kept on his way across the prairie,

stopping occasionally to take a good look at us, but not hurrying

himself in the least on our account, though for some minutes within good

rifle range. Once to-day, our superintendent sent a ball after one who

was making very deliberate time away from us, hitting him in a quarter

where the compliment should have expedited his movements; but it did not

seem to have that effect. It is very common for these wolves to follow

at night a man traveling the road on a mule, not making any belligerent

demonstrations, but waiting for whatever may turn up. Sometimes the

express-wagons have been followed in this way, but I think that unusual.

But this creature is up to any thing wherein there is a chance for game.

The prairie-dog is the funny fellow of these parts—frisky himself, and a

source of merriment to others. He dens in villages or towns, on any dry,

grassy ground—usually on the dryest part of the high prairie—and his

hole is superficially a very large ant-hill, with the necessary orifice

in its center. On this ant-hill sits the proprietor—a chunky little

fellow, in size between a gray squirrel and a rabbit—say about half a

woodchuck. When we approach, he raises the cry of danger—no bark at all,

but something between the piping of a frog on a warm spring evening, and

the noise made by a very young puppy—then drops into his hole and is

silent and invisible. The holes are not very regularly placed, but some

thirty feet apart; and when I say that I believe we have to-day passed

within sight of at least three square miles of these holes, the reader

can guess how many of these animals must exist here, even supposing that

there is usually but one to each hole. I judge that there cannot be less

than a hundred square miles of prairie-dog towns within the present

buffalo-range.

That the prairie-dog and the owl—of a small, brown-backed, white-bellied

species—do live harmoniously in the same hole I know, for I have seen

it. I presume the owl pays for his lodgings like a gentleman, probably

by turning in some provisions toward the supply of the common table. If

so, this is the most successful example of industrial and household

association yet furnished. That the rattlesnake is ever admitted as a

third partner, I indignantly deny. No doubt he has been found in the

prairie-dog’s home—it would be just like him to seek so cozy a nest—but

he doubtless entered like a true border-ruffian, and contrived to make

himself a deal more free than welcome. Politeness, or (if you please)

prudence, may have induced the rightful owner to submit to a joint

tenancy at will—the will of the tenant, not that of the rightful

landlord—but no consent was ever given, unless under constraint of that

potent logic which the intruder carries in his head, and warning whereof

proceeds from the tip of his tail.

Of antelope, I have seen many, but not so near at hand as I could wish.

I defer speaking of them, in the hope of a better acquaintance.

A word now of the face of the country:

For more than a hundred miles back, I have seen no stone, and think

there is none, except at a great depth. Solomon’s fork, where we left

its vicinity, is now a stream two rods wide, running but four to six

inches of water over a bed of pure sand, at a depth of some three or

four hundred feet below the high prairie level of the country. I infer

that there is no rock in place for at least that depth. The subsoil of

the prairies is generally a loamy clay, resting on a bed of sand. The

violent though not frequent rains of this region form sheets of water,

which rush down the slopes into the water-courses, which they rapidly

swell into torrents, which, meeting no resistance from rocks or roots of

trees, are constantly deepening or widening the ravines which run down

to the creeks on every side. These gullies or gorges have originally

steep, perpendicular banks, over which, in times of heavy rain, sheets

of water go tumbling and roaring into the bottom of the ravines, washing

down the sodden, semi-liquid banks, and sending them to thicken the

waters of the Kansas and the Missouri. Thus the prairie, save some

narrow, irregular ridges, or “divides,” is gradually scooped and worn

into broader or narrower valleys, some of which have three or four

little precipices at intervals up their sides, where they formerly had

but one, and will eventually have none. For still the soil is washing

away and running off to the Gulf of Mexico; and if this country should

ever be cultivated, the progress of this disaster would be materially

accelerated. It needs to be timbered before it can be fit for the

habitation of civilized man. But still a few low cotton-woods and elms

along the margins of the larger streams—not a cord of wood in all to

each square mile—are all the timber that is to be seen. I hear of some

poor oak on the broader streams, and an occasional white-ash, but do not

see them.

The prairie-wind shaking the wagon so that I write in it with

difficulty, bespeaks a storm at hand. Adieu!

IX.

THE AMERICAN DESERT.

STATION 18, P. P. EXPRESS CO., _June 2_.

The clouds, which threatened rain at the station on Prairie-Dog Creek,

whence I wrote two days ago, were dissipated by a violent gale, which

threatened to overturn the heavy wagon in which my fellow-passengers and

I were courting sleep—had it stood broadside to the wind, it must have

gone over. It is customary, I learn, to stake down the wagons encamped

on the open prairie; in the valleys of the creeks, where the company’s

stations are located, this precaution is deemed superfluous. But the

winds which sweep the high prairies of this region are terrible; and the

few trees that grow thinly along the creek-bottoms rarely venture to

raise their heads above the adjacent bluffs, to which they owe their

doubtful hold on existence.

For more than a hundred miles back, the soil has been steadily

degenerating, until here, where we strike the Republican, which has been

far to the north of us since we left it at Fort Riley, three hundred

miles back, we seem to have reached the acme of barrenness and

desolation. We left this morning, Station 17, on a little creek entitled

Gouler, at least thirty miles back, and did not see a tree and but one

bunch of low shrubs in a dry water-course throughout our dreary morning

ride, till we came in sight of the Republican, which has a little—a very

little—scrubby cotton-wood nested in and along its bluffs just here; but

there is none beside for miles, save a little lurking in a ravine which

makes down to the river from the north. Of grass there is little, and

that little of miserable quality—either a scanty furze or coarse

alkaline sort of rush, less fit for food than physic. Soil there is none

but an inch or so of intermittent grass-root tangle, based on what

usually seems to be a thin stratum of clay, often washed off so as to

leave nothing but a slightly argillaceous sand. Along the larger

water-courses—this one especially—this sand seems to be as pure as

Sahara can boast.

The dearth of water is fearful. Although the whole region is deeply

seamed and gullied by water-courses—now dry, but in rainy weather

mill-streams—no springs burst from their steep sides. We have not passed

a drop of living water in all our morning’s ride, and but a few pailfuls

of muddy moisture at the bottoms of a very few of the fast-drying

sloughs or sunken holes in the beds of dried-up creeks. Yet there has

been much rain here this season, some of it not long ago. But this is a

region of sterility and thirst. If utterly unfed, the grass of a season

would hardly suffice, when dry, to nourish a prairie-fire.

Even the animals have deserted us. No buffalo have been seen this year

within many miles of us, though their old paths lead occasionally across

this country; I presume they pass rapidly through it, as I should

urgently advise them to do; not a gray-wolf has honored us with his

company to-day—he prefers to live where there is something to eat—the

prairie-dog also wisely shuns this land of starvation; no animal but the

gopher (a little creature, between a mouse and a ground-squirrel)

abounds here; and he burrows deep in the sand and picks up a living, I

cannot guess how; while a few hawks and an occasional prairie-wolf

(cayota) lives by picking here and there a gopher. They must find him

disgustingly lean.

I would match this station and its surroundings against any other scene

on our continent for desolation. From the high prairie over which we

approach it, you overlook a grand sweep of treeless desert, through the

middle of which flows the Republican, usually in several shallow streams

separated by sandbars or islets—its whole volume being far less than

that of the Mohawk at Utica, though it has drained above this point an

area equal to that of Connecticut. Of the few scrubby cotton-woods

lately cowering under the bluffs at this point, most have been cut for

the uses of the station, though logs for its embryo house are drawn from

a little clump, eight miles distant. A broad bed of sand indicates that

the volume of water is sometimes a hundred-fold its present amount,

though it will doubtless soon be far less than it now is. Its average

depth cannot now exceed six inches. On every hand, and for many miles

above and below, the country above the bluffs is such as we have passed

over this morning. A dead mule—bitten in the jaw this morning by a

rattlesnake—lies here as if to complete the scene. Off the five weeks

old track to Pike’s Peak, all is dreary solitude and silence.

Speaking of rattlesnakes—I hasten to retract the skepticism avowed in a

former letter as to the usual and welcome residence of these venomous

serpents in the prairie-dog’s burrow. The evidence of the fact is too

direct and reliable to be gainsayed. A credible witness testifies that

he and others once undertook to drown out a prairie-dog in his domicil,

and, when sufficient water had been rapidly poured in, out came a

prairie-dog, an owl, and a rattlesnake all together. In another case, a

tremendous rain raised a creek so that it suddenly overflowed a

prairie-dog town, when the general stampede of prairie-dogs, owls, and

rattlesnakes was a sight to behold; It is idle to attempt holding out

against facts; so I have pondered this anomaly until I think I clearly

comprehend it. The case is much like that of some newspaper

establishments, whose proprietors, it is said, find it convenient to

keep on their staff “a broth of a boy” from Tipperary, standing six feet

two in his stockings and measuring a yard or more across the shoulders,

who stands ready, with an illegant brogue, a twinkle in his eye, and a

hickory sapling firmly grasped in his dexter fist, to respond to all

choleric, peremptory customers, who call of a morning, hot with wrath

and bristling with cowhide, to demand a parley with the editor. The

cayota is a gentleman of an inquiring, investigating turn, who is an

adept at excavation, and whose fondness for prairie-dog is more ardent

than flattering. To dig one out and digest him would be an easy task, if

he were alone in his den, or with only the owl as his partner; but when

the firm is known or strongly suspected to be Prairie-Dog, Rattlesnake &

Co., the cayota’s passion for subterranean researches is materially

cooled. The rattlesnake is to the concern what the fighting editor is to

the journalistic organizations aforesaid. And thus, while my faith is

enlarged, is my reason satisfied.

A word now on the antelope. I liked him when I first saw him, days ago;

I then wished for a better acquaintance, which wish has since been

gratified; and since I dined with him (that is, off of him) my esteem

has ripened into affection. Of the many antelopes I have seen, I judge a

majority considerably larger than the deer of our eastern forests—not so

tall nor (perhaps) so long, but heavier in body, while hardly less swift

or less graceful in motion. He is the only animal I have seen here that

may justly boast of either grace or beauty. His flesh is tender and

delicate—the choicest eating I have found in Kansas. Shy and fleet as he

is, he is the chief sustenance at this season of the Indians out of the

present buffalo-range. An old hunter assures me that, with all his

timidity, he is easily taken by the knowing. To follow him is absurd;

his scent is too keen, his fear too great; but go upon a high prairie,

to a knoll or swell whence you can overlook fifteen or twenty square

miles; there crouch in a hollow or in the grass, and hoist your

handkerchief, or some red, fluttering scarf on a light pole, which you

wave gently and patiently in the air; soon the antelope, if there be one

within sight, perceives the strange apparition: his curiosity is

excited; it masters his caution; he makes toward the strange object, and

keeps drawing nearer and nearer till he is within fifteen or twenty

rods. The rest requires no instruction.

* * * * *

STATION 21, _June 3_, (evening), 1859.

Since I wrote the foregoing, we have traveled ninety miles up the south

branch of the Republican (which forks just above Station 18) and have

thus pursued a coarse somewhat south of west. In all these ninety miles,

we have passed just two live streams making in from the south—both

together running scarcely water, enough to turn a grindstone. In all

these ninety miles, we have not seen wood enough to make a decent

pigpen. The bottom of the river is perhaps half a mile in average width;

the soil in good part clay and covered with a short, thin grass; the

bluffs are naked sand-heaps; the rock, in the rare cases where any is

exposed, an odd conglomerate of petrified clay with quartz and some

specks that resemble cornelian. Beside this, in some of the bluffs,

where clay overlies and is blended, under peculiar circumstances, with

the sand below it, a sort of rock seems to be formed or in process of

formation. Water is obtained from the apology for a river, or by digging

in the sand by its side; in default of wood, _corrals_ (cattle-pens) are

formed at the stations by laying up a heavy wall of clayey earth flanked

by sods, and thus excavating a deep ditch on the inner side, except at

the portal, which is closed at night by running a wagon into it. The

tents are sodded at their bases; houses of sods are to be constructed so

soon as may be. Such are the shifts of human ingenuity in a country

which has probably not a cord of growing wood to each township of land.

Six miles further up, this fork of the Republican emerges from its sandy

bed, in which it has been lost for the twenty-five miles next above. Of

course, it loses in volume in passing through such a land of drouth.

Probably thirty times to-day we have crossed the broad sandy beds of

creeks running down from the high prairies—creeks which in winter and

early spring are sweeping torrents, but now are wastes of thirsty sand.

Thus has it been for ninety miles—thus is it for many miles above and I

presume many also below. The road from Leavenworth to Denver had to be

taken some fifty miles north of its due course to obtain even such a

passage through the American Desert; on a direct line from the head of

Solomon’s Fork, it must have passed over some two hundred miles of

entire absence of wood and water.

I have seen, during the last three or four days, several bands of wild

Indians—Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Kioways, Sioux, etc.—mainly the two

former. Of these, the Arapahoes have been the most numerous and

repulsive. Their children swarmed around us at Station 16—the men being

mainly absent on a marauding expedition against the Pawnees—the women

staying in their lodges. The young ones are thorough savages—their

allowance of clothing averaging six inches square of buffalo-skin to

each, but so unequally distributed (as is the case with worldly goods in

general) that the majority have a most scanty allowance. A large

Cheyenne village is encamped around Station 19, where we stopped last

night; and we have been meeting squads of these and other tribes several

times a day. The Kioways are camped some eight miles from this spot.

They all profess to be friendly, though the Cheyennes have twice stopped

and delayed the express-wagons on pretence of claiming payment for the

injury done them in cutting wood, eating grass, scaring away game, etc.

They would all like to beg, and many of them are deemed not disinclined

to steal. We are to pass through several more encampments, but expect no

trouble from them. The Cheyennes are better clad, and seem to have more

self-respect than the Arapahoes, but they are all low in the scale of

intellectual and moral being, and must fade away unless they can be

induced to work. More of them hereafter.

The unusual dullness of this letter is partly explained by an accident.

Two evenings since, just as we were nearing Station 17, where we were to

stop for the night, my fellow-passenger and I had a jocular discussion

on the gullies into which we were so frequently plunged, to our personal

discomfort. He premised that it was a consolation that the sides of

these gullies could not be worse than perpendicular; to which I rejoined

with the assertion that they could be and were—for instance, where a

gully, in addition to its perpendicular descent had an inclination of

forty-five degrees or so to one side of the track. Just then, a violent

lurch of the wagon to one side, then to the other, in descending one of

these jolts, enforced my position. Two minutes later, as we were about

to descend the steep bank of the creek-intervale, the mules acting

perversely (being frightened, I fear, by Indians) my friend stepped out

to take them by the head, leaving me alone in the wagon. Immediately we

began to descend the steep pitch, the driver pulling up with all his

might, when the left rein of the leaders broke, and the team was in a

moment sheared out of the road and ran diagonally down the pitch. In a

second, the wagon went over, hitting the ground a most spiteful blow. I

of course went over with it, and when I rose to my feet as soon as

possible, considerable bewildered and disheveled, the mules had been

disengaged by the upset and were making good time across the prairie,

while the driver, considerably hurt, was getting out from under the

carriage to limp after them. I had a slight cut on my left cheek and a

deep gouge from the sharp corner of a seat in my left leg below the

knee, with a pretty smart concussion generally, but not a bone started

nor a tendon strained, and I walked away to the station as firmly as

ever, leaving the superintendent and my fellow-passenger to pick up the

pieces and guard the baggage from the Indians who instantly swarmed

about the wreck. I am sore yet, and a little lame, but three or four

days’ rest—if I can ever get it—will make all right. This is the first

and only accident that has happened to the express-line, though it has

run out some thirty passage-wagons from Leavenworth, and perhaps half so

many back from Denver, over a track where there was no track six weeks

ago. And this was the result of a casualty for which neither driver nor

company was to blame.

Three days hence, I hope to be at Denver (one hundred and eighty-five

miles distant), whence our latest advices are very cheering to the

hearts of the legions of faint and weary gold-seekers we have passed on

the way. I trust, for their sakes, that this news will prove fully true.

X.

GOOD-BYE TO THE DESERT.

DENVER, _June 6, 1859_.

My last, I believe, was written at Station 20, ninety miles up the

Republican from the point at which the Leavenworth Express Company’s

road strikes that river in the great American desert. Six miles farther

up, the stream disappears in the deep, thirsty sands of its wide bed,

and is not seen again for twenty-five miles. Even a mile or two below

its point of disappearance, I learn that recent excavations in its bed

to a depth of eight feet have failed to reach water. Its rëappearance

below this point is marked, and seems to be caused, by the timely

junction of a small tributary from the south, which appears to flow over

a less thirsty bed, and pours into the devouring sands of the Republican

a small but steady stream, aided by which the river begins to rëappear,

first in pools, and soon in an insignificant but gradually increasing

current. At the head of this “sink,” the stream disappears in like

manner to that of its emergence. Here is Station 22, and here are a

so-called spring, and one or two considerable pools, not visibly

connected with the sinking river, but doubtless sustained by it. And

here the thirsty men and teams which have been twenty-five miles without

water on the Express Company’s road, are met by those which have come up

the longer and more southerly route by the Smoky Hill, and which have

traveled _sixty_ miles since they last found water or shade. This is a

sore trial for weary, gaunt, heavy-laden cattle, and doubtless proves

fatal to many of them. The Pike’s Peakers from the Smoky Hill whom I met

here, had driven their ox teams through the sixty miles at one stretch,

the time required being two days and the intervening night. From this

point westward, the original Smoky Hill route is abandoned for that we

had been traveling, which follows the Republican some twenty-five miles

further. Its bed is often dry, or only moistened by little pools exuding

from the meagre current which filters slowly through the deep sands

below. Where the bed is narrow and the channel under one bank, the petty

stream is seen creeping slowly away to the Kansas, the Missouri, the

Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico. Of course there are seasons when the

river runs aboveground throughout, and others when the “sink” is far

longer than now.

The face of the country remains as I have already described it, save in

the greater scarcity of wood and water. The bluffs are usually low, and

the dry creeks which separate them are often wide reaches of heavy sand,

most trying to the ill-fed teams. There is little grass on the rolling

prairie above the bluffs, and that little generally thin, dead,

worthless. Some of the dry-creek valleys have a little that is green but

thin, while the river bottom—often half a mile wide—is sometimes

tolerably grassed, and sometimes sandy and sterile. Of wood, there is

none for stretches of forty or fifty miles: the _corrals_ are made of

earth, and consist of a trench and a mud or turf wall; one or two

station-houses are to be built of turf if ever built at all; and at one

station the fuel is brought sixty miles from the pineries further west.

Even the grasses are often coarse and rushy, or so alkaline as to be

injurious to cattle; the more common plants seem to be wild sage and

wild wormwood. The cactus—which had begun to appear some two hundred

miles back—grows common, but is dwarfed by the pervading sterility; the

Spanish nettle and prickly pear are abundant further on. But little rock

is seen, and that looks like a volcanic conglomerate. Yet the river,

such as it is, is the life of this region; the ground-squirrel of the

prairies digs his holes profusely in its vicinage; the hawk and the

raven circle and swoop in pursuit of him; the antelope often looks down

from the ridges, and is hunted with success; the bark of the cayote is

heard; the gray-wolf prowls fearless and ferocious, and does not

hesitate to rob cows of their young calves in spite of the desperate

maternal resistance, and even to attack and disable ponies. The harness

of the mules which draw the express-wagons have been often gnawed and

injured as they hung up beside the tents, in which half a dozen men were

sleeping, by these impudent miscreants. They may easily be shot by any

one who will bait and patiently, skillfully hunt them.

A ride over a rolling “divide” of some twenty miles, brought us to the

“Big Sandy,” running south-west to become tributary (when it has

anything to contribute) to the Arkansas. Like the Republican, it is

sometimes a running stream, sometimes a succession of shallow pools,

sometimes a waste of deep, scorching sand. A few paltry cotton-woods, a

few bunches of low willow, may have graced its banks or those of some

dry creek running into it, in the course of the twenty miles or so that

we followed up its northern bank, but I do not now remember any. I

recollect only that the grass at intervals along its narrow bottoms

seemed a little better than on the upper course of the Republican. One

peculiarity of the Big Sandy I had not before observed—that of a thin,

alkaline incrustation—mainly of soda, I believe—covering many acres of

the smoother sands in its dry bed. Hence I infer that the water of its

stagnant pools must be prejudicial to man or beast. At length we crossed

its deep, trying sand and left it behind us, passing over a high

“divide,” much cut up by gullies through which the water of the wet

seasons tears its way to the Arkansas on the south or the Platte on the

north, until we struck, at five last evening, the first living tributary

to the Platte—a little creek called Beaver, which I have not seen on any

map. It is about ten miles east of the Bijou, with which it probably

unites before reaching the Platte.

After leaving the valley of Big Sandy, the grass of the uplands becomes

better, and is no longer confined to the water-courses. It spreads in

green luxuriance up the southward slopes of considerable hills, which

seems to be owing to vast drifts of snow in winter, swept over and off

the tops of hills by the fierce prairie-winds, and piled up here to a

height of fifteen or twenty feet, to be slowly dissolved by the warmer

suns of the spring months, and thus give rise to an after-growth of

grass which contrasts strongly with the surrounding sterility.

At Beaver Creek we saw, for the first time in many weary days—for more

than two hundred miles at the least—a clump of low but sturdy

cotton-woods, thirty or forty in number—part of them laid low by the

devastating axe, but still giving hope that the desert was nearly past.

And, six or seven miles further, just as night was falling, we came in

sight of pines, giving double assurance that the mountains were at hand.

Pike’s Peak in the west-south-west, and Long’s Peak in the

west-north-west, (the latter nearly the direction of Denver), had stood

revealed to us hours before, by the gleam of their snowy diadems, as the

morning sun dispelled the chill mists of the preceding night; but their

majesty was a bleak and rugged one; while the pines, though but

scattered clumps of the short and scrubby variety known in New England

and the south as pitch-pine, lent a grace and hospitality to the

landscape which only the weary and wayworn, who have long traversed

parched and shadeless deserts, can appreciate. They grow here mainly in

steep ravines, and often show marks of fire which the bareness of the

surrounding prairies—sterile as “pine plains” are apt to be—renders to

me inexplicable. Possibly, the fires that scorched them were kindled in

the leafy carpet spread beneath them by the trees themselves.

This is but the northern outskirt of the pine region, which stretches

far south, through Arkansas and beyond, soon thickening into forests and

widening to a breadth of some sixty miles. Scattered as it is, I could

hardly repress a shout on meeting it. And it was a pleasure to see, last

evening, the many parties of wayworn gold-seekers encamped beside our

way, after their long journey through a woodless region, surrounding

great, ruddy, leaping fires of the dead pitch-wood, and solacing

themselves for their long privation by the amplest allowance of blaze

and warmth; for the climate of the American desert is terrible. Be the

day ever so hot in the sun’s unsoftened glare, the night that follows is

sure to be chill and piercing, driving the mosquitoes and buffalo-gnats

to their hiding-places directly after sunset. The fierce prairie-wind

searches to the marrow (ice froze a quarter of an inch thick on the

Plains on the 26th of May), and a shower at this season is very apt to

be accompanied by hail as well as thunder and lightning. I trust our

country has no harsher climate, save high among her grandest mountains.

From the Bijou to Cherry Creek—some forty miles—I can say little of the

country, save that it is high rolling prairie, deeply cut by several

streams, which rim north-eastwardly to join the Platte, or one of its

tributaries just named. We passed it in the night, hurrying on to reach

Denver, and at sunrise this morning stopped to change mules on the bank

of Cherry Creek, twelve miles south of this place (which is situated at

the junction of the creek with the south fork of the Platte). The

“foot-hills” of the Rocky Mountains seemed but a few miles west of us

during our rapid ride down the smooth valley of the Cherry Creek, which

has a fine belt of cotton-wood only, but including trees of immense

size—not less than three to four feet in diameter. The soil of the

adjacent prairie seems light and sandy, but well grassed, and capable of

yielding oats, potatoes, etc.; but the elevation (hardly less than six

thousand feet), and the proximity of the Rocky Mountains, whose

snow-covered crests, gleaming between and over the “foot-hills,” seem

hardly twenty miles distant, must ever render the growth of corn

difficult, if not absolutely impossible. Wheat, I understand, has been

grown fifty to eighty miles south of this, with moderate success. Still,

if the adjacent gold mines realize the sanguine expectations now

entertained here, this region will require millions on millions’ worth

of food from the rich prairies and bottoms of Kansas proper, Nebraska,

and Missouri, and we shall need but the Pacific railroad to open up a

most beneficent home-trade, and give the rich valley of the Missouri and

its immediate tributaries better markets than those of the east.

And I fervently trust that the fond expectations of these gold-seekers,

however chastened, may not be disappointed. For the sake of the weary,

dusty, footsore thousands I have passed on my rapid journey from

civilized Kansas to this point, I pray that gold may be found here in

boundless extent, and reasonable abundance. Throughout the next six

weeks, they will be dropping in here, a hundred or more per day; and I

trust that they are not to be sent home disappointed, spirit-broken,

penniless. If they must recross the great desert with their slow-moving

teams, may they be enabled to do so with lighter hearts and heavier

purses.

For the very mothers who bore them would hardly recognize their sons now

toiling across the Plains, and straggling into this place, hideously

hirsute, recklessly ragged, barefoot, sun-browned, dust-covered, and

with eyes shielded (where they have them) by goggles from the glare of

the prairie-sun, reflected from the desert clay. A true picture of

gold-seekers setting out from home, trim and jolly, for Pike’s Peak, and

of those same gold-seekers, sober as judges, and slow-moving as their

own weary oxen, dropping into Denver, would convey a salutary lesson to

many a sanguine soul. Nay, I have in my mind’s eye an individual who

rolled out of Leavenworth, barely thirteen days ago, in a satisfactory

rig, and a spirit of adequate self-complacency, but who—though his

hardships have been nothing to theirs—dropped into Denver this morning

in a sobered and thoughtful frame of mind, in dust-begrimed and tattered

habiliments, with a patch on his cheek, a bandage on his leg, and a limp

in his gait, altogether constituting a spectacle most rueful to behold.

It is likely to be some time yet before our fashionable American spas,

and summer resorts for idlers will be located among the Rocky Mountains.

As to gold, Denver is crazy. She has been low in the valley of

humiliation, and is suddenly exalted to the summit of glory. The stories

of days’ works, and rich leads that have been told me to-day—by grave,

intelligent men—are absolutely bewildering. I do not discredit them, but

I shall state nothing at second hand where I may know if I will. I have

come here to lay my hand on the naked, indisputable facts, and I mean to

do it. Though unfit to travel, I start for the great diggings (fifty

miles hence nearly due west in the glens of the Rocky Mountains)

to-morrow morning.

XI.

THE KANSAS GOLD-DIGGINGS.

IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, }

Gregory’s Diggings, _June 9, 1859_. }

We left Denver at six yesterday morning, in a wagon drawn by four mules,

crossing immediately by a rope ferry the south fork of the Platte. This

fork is a swift, clear, cold stream, now several feet deep and some

twenty rods wide, but fordable except when snows are melting in the

mountains. Many gold-seekers’ wagons were waiting to cross, and more

were momently arriving, so that the ferryman at least must be making his

pile out of the diggings. Henceforward, our way lay north-west for

fifteen miles, across a rolling and well-grassed prairie, on which one

or two farms had been commenced, while two or three persons have just

established “ranches”—that is, have built each his _corral_, in which

cattle are herded at night, while allowed to run at large on the prairie

during the day: $1.50 per month is the usual price per head for herding

in this way, and the cattle are said to do very well. The miners leave

or send back their cattle to herd on these prairies, while they

prosecute their operations in the mountains where feed is generally

scarce.

Reaching Clear Creek, (properly Vasquer’s Fork), a cold, swift,

rocky-bottomed stream, which emerges just above through a deep, narrow

cañon from the Rocky Mountains—we left our wagons, saddled the mules and

forded the creek—(and it was all our mules could do to stem its

impetuous current)—ascended a gentle, grassy slope to the foot of Rocky

Mountains—which had for an hour seemed almost within a stone-throw on

our left. Now they were to be faced directly, and the prospect was

really serious. The hill on which we were to make our first essay in

climbing, rose to a height of one thousand six hundred feet in a little

more than a mile—the ascent for most of the distance being more than one

foot in three. I never before saw teams forced up such a precipice; yet

there were wagons with ten or twelve hundred weight of mining tools,

bedding, provisions, etc., being dragged by four to eight yoke of oxen

up that giddy precipice, with four or five men lifting at the wheels of

each. The average time consumed in the ascent is some two hours. Our

mules, unused to such work, were visibly appalled by it; at first they

resisted every effort to force them up, even by zigzags. My companions

all walked, but I was lame and had to ride, much to my mule’s intense

disgust. He was stubborn, but strong, and in time bore me safely to the

summit.

New as this rugged road is—it was first traversed five weeks ago

to-day—death had traveled it before me. A young man, shot dead while

carelessly drawing a rifle from his wagon, lies buried by the roadside

on this mountain. I have heard of so many accidents of this nature—not

less than a dozen gold-seekers having been shot in this manner during

the last two months—that I marvel at the carelessness with which

fire-arms are every where handled on this side of the Missouri. Had no

single emigrant across the Plains this season armed himself, the number

of them alive at this moment would have been greater than it is.

We traveled some two miles along the crest of this mountain, then

descended, by a pitch equally sharp with the ascent, but shorter, to a

ravine, in which we rested our weary animals and dined. That dinner—of

cold ham, bread and cheese—was one of the best relished of any I ever

shared. Re-saddling, we climbed another precipice a little less

steep—and so up and down for ten miles, when we descended into the

narrow valley of a little branch of Clear Creek, and thenceforward had

ten miles of relatively smooth going, crossing from one valley to

another over hills of moderate elevation and easy ascent.

A wilderness of mountains rose all around us, some higher, some lower,

but generally very steep, with sharp, narrow ridges for their summits.

Some of them are thinly grassed, between widely scattered trees up their

sides and on their tops; but they are generally timbered, and mainly

with yellow-pine, some of it quite large, but more of it small and

apparently young. High on the mountains, this pine is short and scraggy,

while in the ravines it grows tall and shapely, but averages not more

than a foot in diameter. Hurricanes have frequently swept these

mountains, prostrating the pines by scores; fires have ravaged and

decimated them; still, pines on the summits, pines on the hill-sides,

pines even in the ravines, are all but universal. The balsam-fir grows

sparingly in the ravines; hemlock, also, is reported, though I have not

seen it: but the quaking-asp or aspen—which seems but a more delicate

species of cotton-wood—is thick-set in the ravines, and sometimes

appears on the more moderate acclivities, as do gooseberry bushes in the

glens. Brooks of the purest water murmur and sing in every ravine;

springs abound; the air is singularly pure and bracing; the elk,

black-tailed deer and mountain-sheep are plentiful, except where

disturbed by the in-rush of emigration; grouse are common and bold: the

solitude was sylvan and perfect until a few weeks ago. All is now being

rapidly changed, and not entirely for the better.

We had a smart shower, with thunder and lightning, during the afternoon,

which compelled us to halt a few minutes. Another such this afternoon,

indicates that it is a habit of the country. I am told, however, that

though thunder is common, rain is generally withheld at this season, or

confined to a mere sprinkle.

Night fell upon us, while yet six or seven miles from the diggings, and

we camped in the edge of the pines, on the brow of a gentle acclivity,

with a prospect of grass as well as water for our weary, hungry beasts

down the slope south of us. Mine had fallen to her knees in the last

water-course we had passed, very nearly throwing me over her head; had

she done it, I am sure I had not the strength left to rise and remount,

and hardly to walk the remaining half-mile. As it was, I had to be

lifted tenderly from my saddle and laid on a blanket, with two more

above me, where I lay while the fire was built, supper prepared, and a

lodge of dry poles and green pine boughs hastily erected. I was too

tired to eat, but the bright, leaping flame from the dry pines heaped on

our fire gradually overcame the shivering, which was about the only sign

of vitality I showed when first laid down, and I at length resumed the

perpendicular by an effort, and took my place in our booth, where sleep

but fitfully visited me during that bright, cool, short summer night.

But this left me more time to rub my chafed and stiffened limbs, so

that, when breakfast was called in the morning, I was ready, appetite

included, and prepared to dispel the apprehensions of those who had

predicted, on seeing me taken off my mule, that I must be left there for

at least a day. By six o’clock, we were again in the saddle, and pushing

on, over a stony but rather level table-land, which extended for two or

three miles, thickly covered with young pines and aspens, to the next

ravine, whence the road leads up a short, steep hill, then down a very

long, equally steep one, to Ralston’s fork of Clear Creek—being as rapid

and rock-bottomed as where we had crossed the main creek the day before

thirty miles below, but with only one-third the volume of water, so that

we forded it easily without a wet foot. A little runnel coming in from

the west directly at the ford, with its natural translucency changed to

milky whiteness by the running of its waters through sluices in which

the process of gold-washing was going forward, gave us assurance that we

were in immediate proximity to the new but already famous workings

called, after their discoverer, “Gregory’s Diggings.”[2]

Footnote 2:

Now (October) known as “Mountain City.”

I shall not here speak of their pecuniary success or promise, though I

have visited, during the day, a majority of those which have sluices

already in operation, and received reports from my fellow-visitors from

nearly all the others. Having united with them in a statement—to be

herewith forwarded—of what we saw and learned, I refer those who feel

any interest in the matter to that statement. What I propose here to do

is to give the reader some idea of the place and its general aspects.

The little brook which here joins Clear Creek from the west starts at

the foot of mountains three or four miles distant, and runs in a usually

narrow ravine between generally steep hills from five hundred to fifteen

hundred feet high. Gregory’s lead is very near its mouth; half a mile

above seems the heart of the present mining region, though there are

already sluices in operation at intervals for at least two miles up the

runnel, and others are soon to be started at intervals above them. Three

or four miles south-west from its mouth, are Russell’s Diggings, where

coarse gold is procured, but I was unable to visit them. Prospecting is

actively going forward in every direction, and vague reports of lucky

hits or brilliant prospects are started on this side or on that, but I

have not been able to verify them. It is no disparagement to the others

to say that, though mining is carried on at various points within a

radius of thirty miles from this spot, “Gregory’s Diggings” are to-day

the chief hope of gold-mining in the Rocky Mountains.

Six weeks ago, this ravine was a solitude, the favorite haunt of the

elk, the deer, and other shy denizens of the profoundest wildernesses,

seldom invaded by the footsteps of man. I believe this strip of country

has long been debatable land between the Utes and the Arapahoes, which

circumstance combined with its rarely accessible situation to secure its

wild tenants against human intrusion and persecution. I hear that the

Arapahoes say that a good “lodge-pole trail”—that is, one which a pony

may traverse with one end of the lodge-poles on his back, the other

trailing behind him—exists from this point to the open prairie where

Clear Creek debouches from the mountains—a trail which doubtless winds

along the steep sides of the ravines and avoids the rugged heights

necessarily traversed by the miner’s wagon-road. Should these diggings

justify their present promise, I doubt not a road will in time be made,

reducing by one-half—say five thousand feet—the present aggregate of

ascent and descent between this and Denver. But an unworked wagon-road

must avoid the sides of these steep-banked ravines, running square up

the faces and along the crests of the mountains, so that this spot is

destined to remain barely accessible for at least another year.

This narrow valley is densely wooded, mainly with the inevitable

yellow-pine, which, sheltered from the fierce winds which sweep the

mountain-tops, here grows to a height of sixty or eighty feet, though

usually but a foot to eighteen inches in diameter. Of these pines, log

cabins are constructed with extreme facility, and probably one hundred

are now being built, while three or four hundred more are in immediate

contemplation. They are covered with the green boughs of the pines, then

with earth, and bid fair to be commodious and comfortable. As yet, the

entire population of the valley—which cannot number less than four

thousand, including five white women and seven squaws living with white

men—sleep in tents, or under booths of pine boughs, cooking and eating

in the open air. I doubt that there is as yet a table or chair in these

diggings, eating being done around a cloth spread on the ground, while

each one sits or reclines on mother earth. The food, like that of the

plains, is restricted to a few staples—pork, hot bread, beans and coffee

forming the almost exclusive diet of the mountains; but a meat-shop has

just been established, on whose altar are offered up the ill-fed and

well-whipped oxen who are just in from a fifty days’ journey across the

plains, and one or two cows have been driven in, as more would be if

they could here been subsisted. But these mountains are mainly wooded,

while the open hill-sides are so dry during summer that their grass is

very scanty. It is melancholy to see so many over-worked and

half-starved cattle as one meets or passes in this ravine and on the way

hither. Corn is four dollars per bushel in Denver, and scarce at that;

oats are not to be had; there is not a ton of hay within two hundred

miles, and none can ever be brought hither over the present road at a

cost below forty dollars per ton. The present shift of humane owners is

to herd their oxen or mules on the rich grass of the nearest prairies

for a week or so, then bring them in here and keep them at work for a

week or more, letting them subsist on browse and a very little grass,

and then send them down the mountain again. This, bad as it is, seems

the best that can be done. Living of all kinds will always be dear at

these mines, where American flour is now selling at the rate of

forty-four dollars per barrel, and bacon is worth fifty cents per pound;

sugar ditto.

I presume less than half the four or five thousand people now in this

ravine have been here a week; he who has been here three weeks is

regarded as quite an old settler. The influx cannot fall short of five

hundred per day, balanced by an efflux of about one hundred. Many of the

latter go away convinced that Rocky Mountain gold-mining is one grand

humbug. Some of them have prospected two or three weeks, eating up their

provisions, wearing out their boots—and finding nothing. Others have

worked for the more fortunate for one dollar per day and their board and

lodging—certainly not high wages when the quality of the living is

considered. And I feel certain that, while some—perhaps many—will

realize their dreams of wealth here, a far greater number will expend

their scanty means, tax their powers of endurance, and then leave,

soured, heart-sick, spirit-broken. Twenty thousand people will have

rushed into this ravine before the 1st of September, while I do not see

how half of them are to find profitable employment here. Unless,

therefore, the area of the diggings shall meantime be greatly

enlarged—of which there is no assurance—I cannot imagine how half the

number are to subsist here, even up to that early setting in of winter

which must cause a general paralysis of mining, and consequently of all

other Rocky Mountain industry. With the gold just wrested from the earth

still glittering in my eyes—and one company has taken out to-day, at a

cost of not more than twenty-five dollars a lump (condensed by the use

of quick-silver) which looks like a steel-yard-poise and is estimated as

worth five hundred and ten dollars—I adhere to my long-settled

conviction that, next to outright and indisputable gambling, the hardest

(though sometimes the quickest) way to obtain gold is to mine for

it—that a good farmer or mechanic will usually make money faster—and of

course immeasurably easier—by sticking to his own business than by

deserting it for gold-digging—and that the man who, having failed in

some other pursuit, calculates on retrieving his fortunes by

gold-mining, makes a mistake which he will be likely to rue to the end

of his days.

We had a famous gathering a few rods from this tent this evening. The

estimate of safe men puts the number present at fifteen hundred to two

thousand. Though my name was made the excuse for it, brief and forcible

addresses were made by several others, wherein mining, postal, and

express facilities, the Pacific railroad, the proposed new Rocky

Mountain state, temperance, gambling, etc., etc., were discussed with

force and freedom. Such a gathering of men suddenly drawn hither from

every section, and nearly every state, in a glen where the first axe was

raised, the first tent pitched by white men, less than six weeks ago,

should have inspired the dullest speaker with earnestness, if not with

eloquence.

Mining quickens almost every department of useful industry. Two

coal-pits are burning close at hand. A blacksmith has set up his forge

here, and is making a good thing of sharpening picks at fifty cents

each. A volunteer post-office is just established, to which an

express-office will soon attach itself. A provision store will soon

follow; then groceries; then dry goods; then a hotel, etc., until within

ten years the tourist of the continent will be whirled up to these

diggings over a longer but far easier road winding around the

mountain-tops rather than passing over them, and will sip his chocolate

and read his New York paper—not yet five days old—at the “Gregory

House,” in utter unconsciousness that this region was wrested from the

elk and the mountain-sheep so recently as 1859.

* * * * *

DENVER, _June 10, 1859_.

We left the diggings yesterday morning, and came down to the foot of the

mountains, in spite of a drizzling rain from noon to three or four

o’clock, which at one time threatened a heavy shower. We made a poor

shelter of a buffalo-skin and a rubber blanket, stretched across a

fallen tree, and there waited half an hour; but, finding the rain

neither stopped nor grew violent, we saddled up and came on. Two

accidents, which might have proved serious happened to members of our

party—the first to Mr. Villard, of Cincinnati, who, riding at some

distance from all others, was thrown by his mule’s saddle slipping

forward and turning under him, so that he fell heavily on his left arm,

which was badly bruised, and thence was dragged a rod with his heel fast

in the stirrup. His mule then stopped; but when I rode up behind him, I

dared not approach him lest I should start her, and waited a moment for

the friend who, having heard his call for help, was coming up in front.

Mr. V. was released without further injury, but his arm is temporarily

useless. The other casualty happened to Mr. Kershaw, of New York, who,

riding to my assistance at Clear Creek crossing at nightfall, was thrown

by his mule’s starting at the rush of a savage dog, and considerably

injured, though he is nearly well to-day. It would have been to me a

source of lasting sorrow had his fall resulted in more serious damage.

When we reached Clear Creek on our way up three mornings since, though

the current rushing from the mountains looked somewhat formidable, I

charged it like a Zouave, and was greeted with three ringing shouts from

the assembled Pike’s Peakers, as I came up, gay and dripping, on the

north shore. But now, though the water was but a few inches higher, the

starch was so completely taken out of me by those three days’ rough

experience in the mountains, that I had neither strength nor heart for

the passage. I felt that the least stumble of my mule over the round,

slippery stones that fill the channel would fling me, and that I was

unable to stand a moment in that rushing torrent. So, driving in my mule

after the rest of the party, and seeing her reach the south bank safely,

though with great difficulty—breaking a girth and spilling saddle,

blanket, etc., into the water—I betook myself to a spot, half a mile up

stream, where the creek is split by islets into three channels, and

where a rude foot-bridge of logs affords a dry-shod passage. Here I was

met by my friend with his mule, and in a few minutes rode to our wagon,

beside which we found supper in an emigrant tent and lodging in several,

and at four o’clock this morning harnessed up and drove into Denver—just

three whole men out of a party of six, and all as weary and care-worn as

need be, but all heartily gratified with our experience of three days in

the Rocky Mountains.

XII.

THE PLAINS—THE MOUNTAINS.

DENVER, _June 15, 1869_.

I know far greater contrasts than that between the region which

stretches hundreds of miles eastward from this spot toward the Missouri,

and is known as _The Plains_, and that which overlooks us on the west,

and, alike by its abrupt and sharp-ridged foot-hills seeming just at

hand, and its glittering peaks of snow in the blue distance, vindicates

its current designation, _The Mountains_. Let me elucidate:

The plains are nearly destitute of human inhabitants. Aside from the

buffalo-range—which has been steadily narrowing ever since Daniel Boone

made his home in Kentucky, and is now hardly two hundred miles wide—it

affords little sustenance and less shelter to man. The antelope are

seldom seen in herds—three is the highest number I observed together,

while one, or at most two, is a more common spectacle. One to each mile

square would be a large estimate for all that exist on the plains. Elk

are scarcely seen at all, even where they have hardly ever been hunted

or scared. Of deer, there are none, or next to none. For the plains are

the favorite haunt of beasts and birds of prey—of the ravenous and

fearless gray-wolf, of the cayote, the raven, and the hawk—the first

hanging on the flanks of every great herd of buffalo, ready to waylay

any foolish calf or heedless heifer that may chance to stray for water

or fresher grass beyond the protection of the hard-headed and chivalrous

patriarchs, behind whose vigilant ranks there is comparative safety, and

counting as their property any bull, even, whom wounds or disease or

decrepitude shall compel to fall behind in the perpetual march. For,

while a stray buffalo, or two, or three, may linger in some lonely

valley for months—for all winter, perhaps—the great herds which blacken

the earth for miles in extent cannot afford to do so—they are so

immensely numerous and find their safety in traveling so compactly that

they must keep moving or starve. Avoiding, so far as possible, the

wooded ravines of the slender water-courses, where experience has taught

them to dread the lance-like arrow of the lurking Indian, they keep to

the high “divides,” or only feed in the valleys while they have these

well covered by sentinel bulls to give warning of any foe’s approach.

Take away the buffalo, and the plains will be desolate far beyond their

present desolation; and I cannot but regard with sadness the inevitable

and not distant fate of these noble and harmless brutes, already crowded

into a breadth of country too narrow for them, and continually hunted,

slaughtered, decimated, by the wolf, the Indian, the white man. They

could have stood their ground against all in the absence of fire-arms,

but “villainous salpeter” is too much for them. They are bound to

perish; I trust it may be oftener by sudden shot than by slow

starvation.

Wood and water—the prime necessities of the traveler as of the

settler—are in adequate though not abundant supply for a hundred miles

and more on this as they are throughout on the other side of the

buffalo-range; at length they gradually fail, and we are in a desert

indeed. No spring, no brook, for a distance of thirty to sixty miles

(which would be stretched to more than a hundred[3] if the few tracks

called roads were not all run so as to secure water so far as

possible)—rivers which have each had fifty to a hundred miles of its

course gradually parched up by force of sun and wind, and its waters

lost in their own sands, so that the weary, dusty traveler vainly digs

for hours in their dry beds in quest of drink for his thirsty

cattle—rivers which dare not rise again till some friendly brook, having

its source in some specially favored region, pours in its small but

steady tribute, moistens the sands of the river-bed, and encourages its

waters to rise to the surface again. In one case, an emigrant assures me

that he dug down to the bed-rock of one of these rivers, yet found all

dry sand.

Footnote 3:

Since writing the above, I learn by a newly arrived Pike’s Peaker that

the waterless stretch of desert is already a hundred miles long, and

that every day’s sun is extending it.

I know not that I can satisfactorily account, even to myself, for the

destitution of wood which the Plains everywhere present, especially the

western half of them. The poverty of the soil will not suffice, for

these lands, when sufficiently moistened by rain or thawing snowdrifts,

produce grass, and are not so sterile as the rocky hills, the pebbly

knolls, of New England, which, nevertheless, produce wood rapidly and

abundantly. On the Prairies of Illinois, Missouri, and eastern Kansas,

the absence of wood is readily accounted for by the annual fires which,

in autumn or spring, sweep over nearly every acre of dead grass, killing

every tree-sprout that may have started up from scattered seeds or roots

running from the timber in the adjacent ravine beneath the matted grass.

But here are thousands of acres too poorly grassed to be swept by the

annual fires—on which the thinly scattered reed-stalks and bunch-grass

of last year shake dryly in the fierce night-winds—yet not a tree nor

shrub relieves the tameness, the bareness, the desolation, of thousands

after thousands of acres—not a twig, a scion, gives promise of trees

that are to be. For a time, the narrow ravine or lowest intervale of the

frequent streams were fairly timbered with cotton-wood, and low,

sprawling elm, with a very little oak, or white-ash at long intervals

intermixed; but these grew gradually thinner and feebler until nothing

but a few small cotton-woods remained, and these skulking behind bluffs,

or in sheltered hollows at intervals of twenty to forty miles. Once in

ten or twenty miles, a bunch of dwarf willows, perhaps two feet high,

would be found cowering in some petty basin washed out by a current of

water many years ago; but these, like the cotton-woods, are happy if

able to hold their own; indeed, I have seen much evidence that wood was

more abundant on the Plains a hundred years ago than it now is. Dead

cotton-woods, of generous proportions, lie in the channels of dry brooks

on which no tree nor shrub now grows; and, at one or more stations of

the express-company, near the sink of the Republican, they find dead

pine eight miles up a creek, where no living pine has been seen for

generations. I judge that the desert is steadily enlarging its borders

and at the same time intensifying its barrenness.

The fierce drouth that usually prevails throughout the summer, doubtless

contributes to this, but I think the violent and all but constant winds

exert a still more disastrous potency. High winds are of frequent, all

but daily, occurrence here, within a dozen miles of the great protecting

bulwark of the Rocky Mountains; while, from a point fifty miles eastward

of this, they sweep over the Plains almost constantly, and at times with

resistless fury. A driver stated on our way up, with every appearance of

sincerity, that he had known instances of tires being blown off from

wagon-wheels by the tornados of the Plains; and, hard to swallow as that

may seem, I have other and reliable assurance that, when the

Missourians’ camp, on the express-road, was swept by a hurricane, five

or six weeks ago, so that, after the wreck, but three decent wagons

could be patched up out of their six, as I have already narrated, one of

the wheel-tires was found not only blown off but nearly straightened

out! There is almost always a good breeze at mid-day and after, on the

Plains; but, should none be felt during the day, one is almost certain

to spring up at sunset, and blow fiercely through the night. Thus,

though hot days, or parts of days, are frequent on the Plains, I have

experienced not even a moderately warm night. And thus trees are not;

mainly because the winds uproot or dismember them, or so rock and wrench

them while young, that their roots cannot suck up even the little

nourishment that this soil of baking clay resting on porous sand would

fain afford them. Thus the few shoots that cleave the surface of the

earth soon wither and die, and the broad landscape remains treeless,

cheerless, forbidding.

But the dearth of water and wood on the plains is paralleled by the

poverty of shrubbery and herbage. I have not seen a strawberry-leaf—far

from me be the presumption of looking for a berry!—since I left the

Missouri three weeks ago; and the last blackberry bramble I observed

grew on Chapman’s Creek—at all events, the other side of the

buffalo-range. A raspberry-cane has not blessed my sight these three

weary weeks, nor aught else that might be hoped to bear an old-fashioned

fruit, save the far-off blackberries aforesaid, and two or three

doubtful grape-vines on some creek a great way back. The prickly pear,

very rare and very green, is the only semblance of fruit I discovered on

the plains; a dwarfish cactus, with its leaves close to the ground; the

Spanish nettle—a sort of vegetable porcupine—a profusion of wild sage,

wild wormwood, and other such plants, worthless alike to man and beast,

relieved by some well-gnawed grass in the richer valleys of winter

water-courses (the flora usually very scanty and always coarse and

poor)—such are my recollections of the three hundred miles or so that

separate the present buffalo-range from the creeks that carry snow-water

to the Platte and the pines that herald our approach to the Rocky

Mountains.