The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Crest of the Continent, by Ernest Ingersoll

PREFACE.

Probably nothing in this artificial world is more deceptive than absolute candor. Hence, though the ensuing text may lack nothing in straightforwardness of assertion, and seem impossible to misunderstand, it may be worth while to say distinctly, here at the start, that it is all true. We actually did make such an excursion, in such cars, and with such equipments, as I have described; and we would like to do it again.

It was wild and rough in many respects. Re-arranging the trip, luxuries might be added, and certain inconveniences avoided; but I doubt whether, in so doing, we should greatly increase the pleasure or the profit.

“No man should desire a soft life,” wrote King Ælfred the Great. Roughing it, within reasonable grounds, is the marrow of this sort of recreation. What a pungent and wholesome savor to the healthy taste there is in the very phrase! The zest with which one goes about an expedition of any kind in the Rocky Mountains is phenomenal in itself; I despair of making it credited or comprehended by inexperienced lowlanders. We are told that the joys of Paradise will not only actually be greater than earthly pleasures, but that they will be further magnified by our increased spiritual sensitiveness to the “good times” of heaven. Well, in the same way, the senses are so quickened by the clear, vivifying climate of the western uplands in summer, that an experience is tenfold more pleasurable there than it could become in the Mississippi valley. I elsewhere have had something to say about this exhilaration of body and soul in the high Rockies, which you will perhaps pardon me for repeating briefly, for it was written honestly, long ago, and outside of the present connection.

“At sunrise breakfast is over, the mules and everybody else have been good-natured and you feel the glory of mere existence as you vault into the saddle and break into a gallop. Not that this or that particular day is so different from other pleasant mornings, but all that we call the weather is constituted in the most perfect proportions. The air is ‘nimble and sweet,’ and you ride gayly across meadows, through sunny woods of pine and aspen, and between granite knolls that are piled up in the most noble and romantic proportions....

“Sometimes it seems, when camp is reached, that one hardly has strength to make another move; but after dinner one finds himself able and willing to do a great deal....

“One’s sleep in the crisp air, after the fatigues of the day, is sound and serene.... You awake at daylight a little chilly, re-adjust your blankets, and want again to sleep. The sun may pour forth from the ‘golden window of the east’ and flood the world with limpid light; the stars may pale and the jet of the midnight sky be diluted to that pale and perfect morning-blue into which you gaze to unmeasured depths; the air may become a pervading Champagne, dry and delicate, every draught of which tingles the lungs and spurs the blood along the veins with joyous speed; the landscape may woo the eyes with airy undulations of prairie or snow-pointed pinnacles lifted sharply against the azure—yet sleep chains you. That very quality of the atmosphere which contributes to all this beauty and makes it so delicious to be awake, makes it equally blessed to slumber. Lying there in the open air, breathing the pure elixir of the untainted mountains, you come to think even the confinement of a flapping tent oppressive, and the ventilation of a sheltering spruce-bough bad.”

That was written out of a sincere enthusiasm, which made as naught a whole season’s hardship and work, before there was hardly a wagon-road, much less a railway, beyond the front range.

This exordium, my friendly reader, is all to show to you: That we went to the Rockies and beyond them, as we say we did; that we knew what we were after, and found the apples of these Hesperides not dust and ashes but veritable golden fruit; and, finally, that you may be persuaded to test for yourself this natural and lasting enjoyment.

The grand and alluring mountains are still there,—everlasting hills, unchangeable refuges from weariness, anxiety and strife! The railway grows wider and permits a longer and even more varied journey than was ours. Cars can be fitted up as we fitted ours or in a way as much better as you like. Year by year the facilities for wayside comforts and short branch-excursions are multiplied, with the increase of population and culture.

If you are unable, or do not choose, to undertake all this preparation, I still urge upon you the pleasure and utility of going to the Rocky Mountains, travelling into their mighty heart in comfortable and luxurious public conveyances. Nowhere will a holiday count for more in rest, and in food for subsequent thought and recollection.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

I
AT THE BASE OF THE ROCKIES.

Old Woodcock says that if Providence had not made him a justice of the peace, he’d have been a vagabond himself. No such kind interference prevailed in my case. I was a vagabond from my cradle. I never could be sent to school alone like other children—they always had to see me there safe, and fetch me back again. The rambling bump monopolized my whole head. I am sure my godfather must have been the Wandering Jew or a king’s messenger. Here I am again, en route, and sorely puzzled to know whither.—The Loiterings of Arthur O’Leary.

“‘There are the Rocky Mountains!’ I strained my eyes in the direction of his finger, but for a minute could see nothing. Presently sight became adjusted to a new focus, and out against a bright sky dawned slowly the undefined shimmering trace of something a little bluer. Still it seemed nothing tangible. It might have passed for a vapor effect of the horizon, had not the driver called it otherwise. Another minute and it took slightly more certain shape. It cannot be described by any Eastern analogy; no other far mountain view that I ever saw is at all like it. If you have seen those sea-side albums which ladies fill with algæ during their summer holiday, and in those albums have been startled, on turning over a page suddenly, to see an exquisite marine ghost appear, almost evanescent in its faint azure, but still a literal existence, which had been called up from the deeps, and laid to rest with infinite delicacy and difficulty,—then you will form some conception of the first view of the Rocky Mountains. It is impossible to imagine them built of earth, rock, anything terrestrial; to fancy them cloven by horrible chasms, or shaggy with giant woods. They are made out of the air and the sunshine which show them. Nature has dipped her pencil in the faintest solution of ultramarine, and drawn it once across the Western sky with a hand tender as Love’s. Then when sight becomes still better adjusted, you find the most delicate division taking place in this pale blot of beauty, near its upper edge. It is rimmed with a mere thread of opaline and crystalline light. For a moment it sways before you and is confused. But your eagerness grows steadier, you see plainer and know that you are looking on the everlasting snow, the ice that never melts. As the entire fact in all its meaning possesses you completely, you feel a sensation which is as new to your life as it is impossible of repetition. I confess (I should be ashamed not to) that my first view of the Rocky Mountains had no way of expressing itself save in tears. To see what they looked, and to know what they were, was like a sudden revelation of the truth that the spiritual is the only real and substantial; that the eternal things of the universe are they which, afar off, seem dim and faint.”

There are the Rocky Mountains! Ludlow saw them after days of rough riding in a dusty stage-coach. Our plains journey had been a matter of a few hours only, and in the luxurious ease of a Pullman sleeping car; but our hearts, too, were stirred, and we eagerly watched them rise higher and higher, and perfect their ranks, as we threaded the bluffs into Pueblo. Then there they were again, all the way up to Denver; and when we arose in the morning and glanced out of the hotel window, the first objects our glad eyes rested on were the snow-tipped peaks filling the horizon.

Thither Madame ma femme and I proposed to ourselves to go for an early autumn ramble, gathering such friends and accomplices as presented themselves. But how? That required some study. There were no end of ways. We were given advice enough to make a substantial appendix to the present volume, though I suspect that it would be as useless to print it for you as it was to talk it to us. We could walk. We could tramp, with burros to carry our luggage, and with or without other burros to carry ourselves. We could form an alliance, offensive and defensive, with a number of pack mules. We could hire an ambulance sort of wagon, with bedroom and kitchen and all the other attachments. We could go by railway to certain points, and there diverge. Or, as one sober youth suggested, we needn’t go at all. But it remained for us to solve the problem after all. As generally happens in this life of ours, the fellow who gets on owes it to his own momentum, for the most part. It came upon us quite by inspiration. We jumped to the conclusion; which, as the Madame truly observed, is not altogether wrong if only you look before you leap. That is a good specimen of feminine logic in general, and the Madame’s in particular.

But what was the inspiration—the conclusion—the decision? You are all impatience to know it, of course. It was this:

Charter a train!

Recovering our senses after this startling generalization, particulars came in order. Spreading out the crisp and squarely-folded map of Colorado, we began to study it with novel interest, and very quickly discovered that if our brilliant inspiration was really to be executed, we must confine ourselves to the narrow-gauge lines. Tracing these with one prong of a hair pin, it was apparent that they ran almost everywhere in the mountainous parts of the State, and where they did not go now they were projected for speedy completion. Closer inspection, as to the names of the lines, discovered that nearly all of this wide-branching system bore the mystical letters D. & R. G., which evidently enough (after you had learned it) stood for—

“Why, Denver and Ryo Grand, of course,” exclaims the Madame, contemptuous of any one who didn’t know that.

“Not by a long shot!” I reply triumphantly, “Denver and Reeo Grandy is the name of the railway—Mexican words.”

“Oh, indeed!” is what I hear; a very lofty nose, naturally a trifle uppish, is what I see.

Deciding that our best plan is to take counsel with the officers of the Denver and Rio Grande railway, we go immediately to interview Mr. Hooper, the General Passenger Agent, among whose many duties is that of receiving, counseling, and arranging itineraries for all sorts of pilgrims. An hour’s discussion perfected our arrangements, and set the workmen at the shops busy in preparing the cars for our migratory residence.

The realization that our scheme, which up to this point had seemed akin to a wild dream, was now rapidly growing into a promising reality, did not diminish our enthusiasm. Indeed we experienced an exhilaration which was quite phenomenal. Was it the very light wine we partook at luncheon? Perish the suspicion! Possibly it was the popularly asserted effect of the rarefied atmosphere. But kinder to our self-esteem than either of these was the thought that our approaching journey had something to do with our elevation, and we accepted it as an explanation.

But we had yet a few days to spare, and we could employ them profitably in looking over this Denver, the marvelous city of the plains. We studied it first from Capitol Hill, as our artist has done, though his picture, so excellently reproduced, can convey but the shadow of the substance. Then we nearly encompassed the town, going southward on Broadway until we had passed Cherry Creek, and détouring across Platte River to the westward and northward, on the high plateau which stretches away to the foothills. The city lies at an altitude of 5,197 feet, near the western border of the plains, and within twelve miles of the mountains,—the Colorado or front range of which may be seen for an extent of over two hundred miles. In the north, Long’s Peak rears its majestic proportions against the azure sky. Westward, Mounts Rosalie and Evans rise grandly above the other summits of the snowy range, and Gray’s and James’ Peaks peer from among their gigantic brethren; while historic Pike’s Peak, the mighty landmark that guided the gold-hunters of ’59, plainly shows its white crest eighty miles to the south. The great plains stretch out for hundreds of miles to the north, east and south. Near the smelting works at Argo, we retrace our way and re-enter the city.

It is the metropolis of the Rocky Mountains, and a stroll through these scores of solid blocks of salesrooms and factories exhibits at once the fact that it is as the commercial center of the mountainous interior that Denver thrives, and congratulates herself upon the promise of a continually prosperous future. She long ago safely passed that crisis which has proved fatal to so many incipient Western cities. Every year proves anew the wisdom and foresight of her founders; and I think her assertion that she is to be the largest city between Chicago and San Francisco is likely to be realized. Most of her leading business men came here at the beginning, but their energies were hampered when every article had to be hauled six hundred miles across the plains by teams. It frequently used to happen that merchants would sell their goods completely out, put up their shutters and go a-fishing for weeks, before the new semi-yearly supplies arrived. Everybody therefore looked forward, with good reason, to railway communication as the beginning of a new era of prosperity, and watched with keen interest the approach of the Union Pacific lines from Omaha and Kansas City. These were completed, by the northern routes, in 1869 and 1870; and a few months later the enterprising Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe sent its tracks and trains through to the mountains, and then came the Burlington route, a most welcome acquisition, adding another link to the transcontinental chain, which now binds the East to the West, the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. At Pueblo, the Denver and Rio Grande, meeting the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, was already prepared to make this new route available to Denver and much of Colorado, and adopting a liberal policy, at once exerted an immense influence upon the speedy development and prosperity of the State.

Thus, in a year or two, the young city found itself removed from total isolation to a central position on various railways, east and west, and to its mill came the varied grist of a circle hundreds of miles in radius. Now blossomed the booming season of business which sagacious eyes had foreseen. The town had less than four thousand inhabitants in 1870. A year from that time her population was nearly fifteen thousand, and her tax-valuation had increased from three to ten millions of dollars. It was a time of happy investment, of incessant building and improvement, and of grand speculation. Mines flourished, crops were abundant, cattle and sheep grazed in a hundred valleys hitherto tenanted by antelope alone, and everybody had plenty of money. Then came a shadow of storm in the East, and the sound of the thunder-clap of 1873 was heard in Denver, if the bolt of the panic was not felt. The banks suddenly became cautious in loans; speculators declined to buy, and sold at a sacrifice. Merchants found that trade was dull, and ranchmen got less for their products. It was a “set-back” to Denver, and two years of stagnation followed. But she only dug the more money out of the ground to fill her depleted pockets, and survived the “hard times” with far less sacrifice of fortune and pride than did most of the Eastern cities. None of her banks went under, nor even certifieda check, and most of her business houses weathered the storm. The unhealthy reign of speculation was effectually checked, and business was placed upon a compact and solid foundation. Then came 1875 and 1876, which were “grasshopper years,” when no crops of consequence were raised throughout the State, and a large amount of money was sent East to pay for flour and grain. This was a particularly hard blow, but the bountiful harvest of 1877 compensated, and the export of beeves and sheep, with their wool, hides and tallow, was the largest ever made up to that time.