IN LEADVILLE.
The South Park line--Oscar Wilde on sunflowers as food--In a
wash-hand basin--Anti-Vigilance Committees--Leadville the city of
the carbonates--"Busted" millionaires--The philosophy of thick
boots--Colorado miners--National competition in lions--Abuse of the
terms "gentleman" and "lady"--Up at the mines--Under the pine-trees.
STARTING from Denver for Leadville in the evening, it seemed as if
we were fated to see nothing of the very interesting country through
which the South Park line runs. At first there is nothing to look at
but open prairie land sprinkled with the homesteads of agricultural
pioneers, but as the moon got up there was gradually revealed a
stately succession of mountain ridges, and in about two hours we
found ourselves threading the spurs of the Sangre di Christi range
and following the Platte River up toward its sources. Crossing and
recrossing the cañon, with one side silvered, and the other thrown
into the blackest shadow by the moon, and the noisy stream tumbling
along beside us in its hurry to get down to the lazy levels of the
great Nebraska Valley, I saw glimpses of scenery that can never be
forgotten. It was fantastic in the extreme; for apart from the jugglery
of moonlight, in itself so wonderful always, the ideas of relative
distance and size, even of shape, were upset and ridiculed by the snowy
peaks that here and there thrust themselves up into the sky and by the
patches and streaks of snow that concealed and altered the contour of
the nearer rocks in the most puzzling manner imaginable. And all this
time the little train--for the line is narrow-gauge--kept twisting and
wriggling in and out as if it were in collusion with the hills, and
playing into their hands to disconcert the traveller.
I have seen at different times great curiosities of engineering, as
in travelling over the Ghats in Western India, where everything is
stupendous and at times even terrific, where danger seems perpetual and
disaster often inevitable. In passing by train from Colombo to Kandy
in Ceylon, and crossing Sensation Rock, the railway cars actually hang
over the precipice, so that when you look out of the window the track
on which you are running is invisible, and you can drop an orange plumb
down the face of this appalling cliff on to the tops of the palm-trees,
which look like little round bushes in the valley down below. From
Durban to Pietermaritzburg again, on the line along which, when it
was first opened, the engine-driver brought out from England refused
to take his train, declaring it to be too dangerous, but along which,
nevertheless, the British troops going up to Zululand were all safely
carried. The South Park line, however, can compare with these, and must
be accepted as one of the acknowledged triumphs of railway enterprise.
For much of its length the rocks had to be fought inch by inch, and
they died hard. The result to-day is a very picturesque and interesting
ride, with a surprise in every mile and beauty all the way.
On the way to the "City of the Carbonates," I heard much of Leadville
ways and life. That very morning the energetic police of the town had
arrested two young ladies for parading the sunflower and the lily too
conspicuously. One had donned a sunflower for a hat, the other walked
along holding a tall lily in her hand. The Leadville youth had gathered
in disorderly procession behind the aesthetic pair. So the police
arrested the fair causes of the disturbance.
I told Oscar Wilde of this a few days later. "Poor sweet things!"
said he; "martyrs in the cause of the Beautiful." He was on his way
to Salt Lake City at the time, and I told him how the Mormon capital
was par excellence "the city of sunflowers," and assured him that the
poet's feeding on "gilliflowers rare" was not, after all, too violent
a stretch of imagination, as whole tribes of Indians (and Longfellow
himself has said that every Indian is a poem, which is very nearly
the same thing as a poet) feed on the sunflower. The Apostle of Art
Decoration was delighted.
"Poor sweet things!" said he; "feed on sunflowers! How charming! If
I could only have stayed and dined with them! But how delightful to
be able to go back to England and say that I have actually been in a
country where whole tribes of men live on sunflowers! The preciousness
of it!"
It is a fact, probably new to some of my readers: that the wild
sunflower is the characteristic weed of Utah, and that the seeds of the
plant supply the undiscriminating Red Man with an oil-cake which may
agreeably vary a diet of grasshoppers and rattlesnakes, but has not
intrinsically any flavour to recommend it. So South Kensington must not
rush away with the idea that the noble savage who has the Crow for his
"totem," feeds upon the blossoms of the vegetable they worship. It is
the prosaic oil-cake that the Pi-ute eats.
But all I heard got mixed up eventually into a general idea that every
man in the place who had not committed a murder was a millionaire, and
all those who had not lost their lives had lost a fortune. The mines,
too, got gradually sorted up into two kinds--those that had "five
million now in sight, sir," or those whose "bottoms had fallen out."
But one fact that pleased me particularly was the "Anti-Vigilance"
Committee of Leadville. Every one knows that a "Vigilance Committee"
consists of a certain number of volunteer guardians of the peace, who
call (with a rope) upon strangers visiting their neighbourhood and
offer them the choice of being hanged at once for the offences they
purpose committing or of going elsewhere to commit them. The strangers,
as it transpires in the morning, sometimes choose one course and
sometimes the other. This is all very right and proper, and conduces to
a general good understanding. But in Leadville, the citizens started an
anti-vigilance committee and so the Vigilance Committee sent in their
resignations to themselves--and accepted them. I do not think I ever
heard of a fact so appalling in its significance. But the humour of it
is that the Anti-Vigilance Committee managed somehow to keep the peace
in Leadville as it had never been kept before.
It reminded me of an incident of the Afghan war. A certain tribe of
hill-men persisted in killing the couriers who carried the post from
one British camp to the other, and the generals were nearly at their
wits' end for means of communication, when the murderers sent in word
offering to carry the post themselves--and did so, faithfully!
It was in Leadville also that lived the barber who, going forth one
night, was met by two men who told him peremptorily to take his hands
out of his pockets, as they intended to take out all the rest. But he
had nothing in his pockets except two Derringers, so he pulled his
hands out and shot the two men dead where they stood. Next morning
the citizens of Leadville placed the barber in a triumphal chair, and
carried him round the town as a bright example to the public, presented
him with a gold watch and chain as a testimonial of their esteem for
his courage--and then escorted him the first stage out of the town,
advising him never to return.
But this was in the Leadville of the very remote past--1880 or
thereabouts--and not in the Carbonate City of the present, 1882. The
town is now as quiet as such a town can be, a wonderfully busy place
and a picturesque one.
And while my companions talked I sat in the wash-hand basin and smoked.
Why the wash-hand basin? Because there was nowhere else to sit.
The "smoking-car" of this particular train happened to be also the
gentlemen's lavatory, a commodious snuggery measuring about eight feet
by five. And as there were only eight smokers on board we were not so
crowded as we should have been if there had been eighteen, and then,
you see, we made more room still by two of the eight staying away. For
the rest, two of us sat in the wash-hand basins, one on a stool between
our legs, another on a stool with his knees against the gentlemen
opposite, and the balance stood. We were an example of tight packing
even to the proverbial sardine. But I found the water-tap at the edge
of the basin an inconvenient circumstance. I would venture to suggest
to American railway companies that for the comfort of smokers when
sitting in the basins they should place these taps a little farther
back.
I suppose I ought to give some mining statistics about Leadville. But
the very fact that I shall be neglecting an obvious duty if I omit all
statistics, nearly decides me to omit them. The deliberate neglect of
an obvious duty is, however, a luxury which only the very virtuous
can indulge in; and to compromise therefore with the situation, I
would state that the mining output of Leadville is to-day about eleven
times as great as it was two years ago, and that five years ago there
was no output at all. That is to say, this town of Leadville, with a
population, floating and permanent together, of some 40,000 souls, and
yielding from its mines about a thousand dollars per head of the total
population, was five years ago a camp of a few hundred miners, as a
rule so disappointed with the prospect of the place that another year
of the status quo would have seen Leadville deserted. But the secret
of the carbonates being "ore-iferous" was discovered, and Tabor, like
the fossil of some antediluvian giant, was gradually revealed by the
pick of the miner, in all his Plutocratic bulk. A few years ago he
was selling peanuts at the corner of a street. To-day he moves about,
king of Denver, with Leadville for an appanage. His potentiality in
cheques increases yearly by another cipher added to the total, and
drags at each remove a lengthening chain of wealth. Why do men go on
accumulating money when they are already masters of enough? Surely it
is better to be rich than a pauper? But in Colorado this is not the
general opinion. Men there prefer to be ruined rather than be merely
rich. And the result is that you could hardly throw a boot out of the
hotel window without hitting an ex-millionaire. Not that I would advise
anybody to go throwing boots promiscuously out of hotel windows in
Leadville. You would run a good chance of following your boots.
"Do you see that man there, paring his boot with a knife?" asked my
companion.
"Yes," said I, "I see him; there is a good deal of him to see."
"Well," said he, "that's So-and-so. He sold so-and-so for $400,000
about a year ago. But he busted last Fall. And if you get into
conversation with him, he'll be glad to borrow a dollar from you."
"Then I shall not get into conversation with him," I replied.
"And do you see that old fellow on the other side, leaning against the
hitching post, outside the Post Office?"
"Well," said I, "they seem to be mostly leaning against the
hitching-post, but I presume you mean the gentleman in the middle."
"Yes," was the reply. "That's So-and-so. He struck the so-and-so, got
$80,000 for his share about six weeks ago--and is busted."
And so on ad infinitum. The problem was a very puzzling one to me at
first--why do such men make fortunes if they take the first opportunity
of throwing them away? But the solution, I fancy, is this--that these
men do not care for money. It is to them what knowledge is to the
philosopher, a means of acquiring more--worthless in itself, but, as
leading to larger results, worthy of all eagerness in its pursuit.
They do not put Wealth before themselves as an accumulation of current
coins, capable of purchasing everything that makes life materially
pleasant. They contemplate it merely in the bulk. Much in the same way
a whaler never thinks of the number of candles in the spermaceti into
which he has struck a harpoon. He looks at his quarry only as a "ten
barrel" or a "fifteen barrel" whale, as the case may be. He does not
content himself with the illuminating potentialities of the creature
he pursues. He is only anxious as to how it will barrel off, and the
barrels might be pork, or potatoes, or anything else. So with the
man who goes out mine-hunting. He harpoons a lode, lays open so many
"millions" of ore, sells it to a company for a "million" or two, and
straightway goes and "busts" for so many "millions." It does not seem
to concern such a one that a "million" of dollars is so many guineas,
or roubles, or napoleons, or mohurs, and so forth, and that if he goes
on to the end of his life, he can never achieve more than money. His
arithmetic goes mad, and he begins computing from the wrong end of the
line. Ten thousands of dollars make one 50-cent piece, two 50-cent
pieces make one quarter, five quarters make one nickel, five nickels
make one cent, and "quite a lot" of cents make one fortune. So at it he
goes again, trying to foot up a satisfactory balance with thousands for
units--and "busts" before he gets to the end of the sum.
Leadville itself as I first saw it, ringed in with snow-covered hills,
a bright sun shining and a slight snow falling, remains in my memory
as one of the prettiest scenes in my experience. In Switzerland even
it could hold its own, and triumph. I wandered about its streets and
into its shops and saloons, curious to see some of those men of whom
I had heard so much; but whatever may have been their exercises with
bowie-knife and pistol at a later hour of the day, I was never more
agreeably disappointed than by the manners and bearing of the Leadville
miners early in the morning.
There is nothing gives a man so much self-reliance as having thick
boots on. This fact I have evolved out of my own consciousness, for
when I was out in the Colonies I often tried to analyze a certain sense
of "independence" which I found taking possession of me. The climate
no doubt was exceptionally invigorating, and I was a great deal on
horseback. But I had been subjected to the same conditions elsewhere
without experiencing the same results. And after a great deal of severe
mental inquiry, I decided that it was--my thick boots! And I was right.
No man can feel properly capable of taking care of himself in slippers.
In patent-leather boots he is little better, and in what are called
"summer walking-shoes" he still finds himself fastidious about puddles,
and at a disadvantage with every man he meets who does not mind a rough
road. But once you begin to thicken the sole, self-reliance commences
to increase, and by the time your boots are as solid as those of a
Colorado miner you should find yourself his equal in "independence."
And some of their boots are prodigious. The soles are over an inch
thick, project in front of the toes perhaps half an inch, and form a
ledge, as it were, all round the foot. What a luxury with such boots it
must be to kick a man!
The rest of the costume was often in keeping with the shoe leather, and
in every case where the wearers did not belong to the shops and offices
of the town, there was a general attention to strength of material and
personal comfort, at a sacrifice of appearance, which was refreshing
and unconventional. They are a fine set, indeed, this miscellaneous
congregation of nationalities which men call "Colorado diggers." There
is hardly a stupid face among them, and certainly not a cowardly one.
And then compare them with the population of their native places--the
savages of the East of London, the outer barbarians of Scandinavia, the
degraded peasantry of Western Ireland! The contrast is astonishing.
Left in Europe they might have guttered along in helpless poverty
relieved only by intervals of crime, till old age found them in a
workhouse. But here they can insist on every one pretending to think
them "as good as himself" (such is, I believe, the formula of this
preposterous hypocrisy), and, at any rate, may hope for sudden wealth.
Above all, a man here does not go about barefooted, like so many of
his family "at home," or in ragged shoe-leather, like so many more of
them; but stands, and it may even be sleeps, in boots of unimpeachable
solidity. So he goes down the street as if it were his own, planting
his feet firmly at every step, and, not having to trouble himself about
the condition of the footway, keeps his head erect. Depend upon it,
thick boots are one of the secrets of "independence" of character.
But Leadville, this wonderful town that in four years sprang up from
300 to 30,000 inhabitants, is not entirely a city of miners. On the
day that I was there larger numbers than usual were in the streets, in
consequence of an election then in progress holding out promises of
unusual entertainment. Besides these there is, of course, the permanent
population of commerce and ordinary business; and I was struck here, as
I had not been before since I left Boston, with the natural phenomenon
of a race reverting to an old type. Boston reminded me at times of some
old English cathedral city. Leadville was like some thriving provincial
town. The men would not have looked out of place in the street, say,
of Reading; while the women, in their quiet and somewhat old-fashioned
style of dressing, reminded me very curiously of rural England. Indeed,
I do not think my anticipations have ever been so completely upset
as in Leadville. All the way from New York I have been told to wait
"till I got to Colorado" before I ventured to speak of rough life, and
Leadville itself was sometimes particularized to me as the Ultima Thule
of civilization, the vanishing-point of refinement.
But not only is Leadville not "rough;" it is even flirting with the
refinements of life. It has an opera-house, a good drive for evening
recreation, and a florist's shop. There were not many plants in it, it
is true, but they were nearly all of them of the pleasant old English
kinds--geraniums, pansies, pinks, and mignonette. Two other shops
interested me, one stocked with mineral specimens--malachite, agate,
amethyst, quartz, blood-stone, onyx, and an infinite variety of pieces
of ore, gold, silver, lead, iron, copper, bismuth, and sulphur--with
which pretty settings are made, of a quaint grotto-work kind, for
clocks and inkstands. The other a naturalist's shop, in which, besides
fossils, exquisite leaves in stone and petrified tree-fragments, I
found the commencement of a zoological collection--the lynx with its
comfortable snow-coat on, and the grey mountain wolf not less cozily
dressed; squirrels, black and grey, "the creatures that sit in the
shade of their tails," and the "friends of Hiawatha" with various
birds--the sage hen and the prairie chicken, the magpie (very like the
English bird), and the "lark,"--a very inadequate substitute indeed for
the bird that "at Heaven's gate sings," that has been sanctified to
all time by Shelley, and the idol of the poets of the Old World--and
heads of large game, horned and antlered, and the skin of a "lion."
It is a curious fact that every country should thus insist on having
a lion. For the real African animal himself I entertain only a very
qualified respect. For some of his substitutes, the panther of Sumatra
and the Far East, the (now extinct) cat of Australia, and the puma of
the United States, that respect is even more moderate in degree. "The
American lion" is, in fact, about as much like the original article as
the American "muffin" is like the seductive but saddening thing from
which it takes its name. The puma, which is its proper name, is the
least imposing of all the larger cats. It cannot compare even with the
jaguar, and would not be recognized by the true lion, or by the tiger,
as being a kinsman. It is just as true of lions as it is of Glenfield
starch--"when you ask for it, see that you get it." I admit that it is
very creditable to America that in the great competition of nations
she should insist on not being left behind even in the matter of
lions, but surely it would be more becoming to her vast resources and
her undeniable enterprise if she imported some of the genuine breed,
instead of, as at present, putting up with such a shabby compromise as
the puma.
This tendency to exaggeration in terms has I know been very frequently
commented upon. But I don't remember having heard it suggested that
this grandiosity must in the long-run have a detrimental effect
upon national advancement. Presuming for instance that an American
understands the real meaning of the word "city," what gross and
ridiculous notions of self-importance second-class villages must
acquire by hearing themselves spoken of as "cities." Or supposing that
one understands the real meaning of the word "lady," how comes it that
an ill-bred, ill-mannered chambermaid is always spoken of as a "lady"?
If the name is only given in courtesy, why not call them princesses at
once and rescue the nobler word from its present miserable degradation?
I was in the Chicago Hotel and a coloured porter was unstrapping my
luggage. I rang the bell for a message boy, and on another black
servant appearing I gave him a written note to take down to the
manager. But in that insolent manner so very prevalent among the
blacker hotel servants in America, he said: "That other gentleman will
take it down." "Other gentleman!" I gasped out in astonishment; "there
is only one gentleman in this room, and two negro servants. And if," I
continued, forgetting that I was in America, and rising from my chair,
"you are not off as fast as you can go, I'll--" But the "gentleman"
fled so precipitately with my message that I got no further.
Now could anything be more preposterous than this poor creature's
attempt to vindicate his right to the flattering title conferred upon
him by the Boots, and which he in turn conferred upon the Barman, until
everybody in the hotel, from the Manager downwards, was involved in an
absurd entanglement of mutual compliments? It may of course be laughed
at as a popular humour. But a stranger like myself is perpetually
recognizing the mischief which this absurd want of moral courage and
self-respect in the upper classes is working in the country. Nor
have Americans any grounds whatever to suppose that this sense of
"courtesy" is peculiar to them. It is common to every race in the
world, and most conspicuous in the lowest. The Kaffirs of Africa and
the Red Indians address each other with titles almost as fulsome as
"gentleman," while in India, the home of courtesy and good breeding,
the natives of the higher castes address the very lowest by the title
of Maharaj("great prince"). It is accepted by the recipient exactly in
the spirit in which it is meant. He understands that the higher classes
do not wish to offend him by calling him by his real name, and his
Oriental good taste tells him that any intermediate appellation might
be misconstrued. So he calls himself, as he is called, by the highest
title in the land. There is no danger here of any mistake. Every one
knows that the misfortune of birth or other "circumstances beyond
his control" have made him a menial. But no one tells him so. He is
"Maharaj."
For myself, I adopted the plan of addressing every negro servant as a
"Sultan." It was not abusive and sounded well. He did not know what it
meant any more than he knows the meaning of "gentleman," but I saved my
self-respect by not pretending to put him on an equality with myself.
At Leadville the hotel servants are white men, and the result is
civility. But I was in the humour at Leadville to be pleased with
everything. The day was divine, the landscape enchanting, and the men
with their rough riding-costumes, strange, home-made-looking horses,
Mexican saddles (which I now for the first time saw in general use) and
preposterous "stirrups," interested me immensely. Of course I went up
to a mine, and, of course, went down it. And what struck me most during
the expedition? Well, the sound of the wind in the pine-trees.
It was a delightful walk--away up out of the town, with its suburbs of
mimic pinewood "chalets" and rough log-huts, and the hills all round
sloping back from the plateau so finely, patched and powdered with
snow-drifts, fringed and crowned with pine-trees, here darkened with
a forest of them, there dotted with single trees, and over all, the
Swiss magic of sunlight and shadow; away up the hill-side, through a
wilderness of broken bottles and battered meat cans, a very paradise
of rag-pickers, among which are scattered the tiny homes of the
miners. Women were busy chopping wood and bringing in water. Children
were romping in parties. But the men, their husbands and fathers,
were all up at the mines at work, invisible, in the bowels of the
mountain; keeping the kobolds company, and throwing up as they went
great hillocks of rubbish behind them like some gigantic species of
mole, or burrowing armadillo of the old glyptodon type. And so on, up
the shingle-strewn hillside thickly studded with charred tree-stumps,
desolation itself--a veritable graveyard of dead pine-trees. Above
us, on the crest of the mountain, the forest was still standing, and
long before we reached them we heard the wind-haunted trees of Pan
telling their griefs to the hills. It is a wonderful music, this of
the pine-trees, for it has fascinated every people among whom they
grow, from the bear-goblin haunts of Asiatic Kurdistan through the
elf-plagued forests of Germany to the spirit-land of the Canadian
Indians. It is indeed a mystery, this voice in the tree-tops, with all
the tones of an organ--the vox-humana stop wonderful--and in addition
all the sounds of nature, from the sonorous diapason of the ocean to
the whisperings of the reed-beds by the river. When I came upon them
in Leadville the pines were rehearsing, I think, for a storm that was
coming. Lower down the slope, the trees were standing as quiet as
possible, and in the town itself at the bottom of the hill the smoke
was rising straight. But up here, at the top, under the pine-trees,
the first act of a tempest was in full rehearsal. And all this time
wandering about, I had not seen one single living soul. There stood the
sheds built over the mines. But no one was about. At the door of one
of them was a cart with its horses. But no driver. This extraordinary
absence of life gave the hill-top a strange solemnity--and though I
knew that under my feet the earth was alive with human beings, and
though every now and then a little pipe sticking out of a shed would
suddenly snort and give about fifty little angry puffs at the rate
of a thousand a minute, the utter solitude was so fascinating that I
understood at once why pine-covered mountains, especially where mines
are worked, should all the world over be such favourite sites in legend
and ballad for the home of elfin and goblin folk.
The afternoon was passing before I set out homeward and I could hardly
get along, so often did I turn round to look back at the views behind
me. And in front, and on either side, were the hills, with their hidden
hoards of silver and lead, watching the town, whence they know the
miners will some day issue to attack them, and on their slopes lay
mustered the shattered battalions of their pines, here looking as if
invading the town, into which their skirmishers, dotted about among the
houses, had already fought their way; there, as if they were retreating
up the hillside with their ranks closed against the houses that pursued
them, or straggling away up the slopes and over the crest in all the
disorder of defeat.
And so, down on to the level of the plateau again, with its traffic and
animation and all the busy life of a hardworking town.