Discovered only in 1878, it was at once seen that here in Battle mountain were enormous deposits of carbonate of lead carrying silver, which was so free from any refractory elements, like zinc or antimony, and so abundant in lead, that they were unexcelled in the world for the purposes of smelting. It has always been a drawback in the Leadville ores that they contained lead in too small a proportion to the silver, copper and other constituents, to make straight smelting feasible; that is it is necessary to mix into each charge an addition of “flux,”—chiefly lead, in order properly to perform the operation of smelting. This Red Cliff ore, however, is so rich in lead, frequently running sixty, seventy or eighty per cent., that no accessory is needful, and it “smelts itself,” as they say. In consequence, the carbonates of this district are in great demand at Leadville, and really bring more than their intrinsic value, since the smelters are anxious to get them to mix with the more refractory home product, and so get enough lead in the charge to secure the silver of both kinds of ore. Most of the ores from this camp, therefore, are shipped to Leadville; and not only that, but a large quantity of the bullion made here is sold there also and re-melted in order to furnish the necessary lead.

Here, as well as further down the river, some streaks of gold-quartz are found, and a stamp mill is about to be erected. Fissure veins of silver ore are also known and worked somewhat, and much is expected of this branch of production in future. But thus far the chief reliance of the district is placed upon the carbonate ores of silver. You will find all the hills and granite ledges and quartzite overflows about here punched full of prospect-pits; but it is only on the southern slope of Battle mountain that mines worth mention have been developed as yet. “The whole interior of Battle mountain,” one who knew said to me, “seems to be one bed of carbonate of lead and silver.” Then he took me into the sheds of his smelter and showed me bin after bin full of brick-red, and rust brown and dark and bright yellow earth, which lay in crumbling pieces like dried mud, or had fallen into mere sand, and told me that that was the general style of the ore. I lifted a handful and it was as heavy as shot: no doubt about that being lead. This stuff is almost too easy to mine; it is like digging into a sand bank, and every foot of the way must be carefully protected by a timber tunnel to prevent its caving in. A man can pull down three or four tons a day, to ship, and it is only requisite to wheel it to the brow of the steep hill-side at the mouth of the mine, and hurl it down a shute a thousand feet or so to the railway track in the cañon.

This cañon of the Eagle, through which the railway runs, offers one of the keenest pleasures in Colorado to the lover of scenery, and one of the points of pilgrimage to the disciple of trout-fishing. The limpid green waters of the pretty river, fed, just here, by Turkey creek bringing the melted snows of the main range, and by the Homestake coming from the foot of the Holy Cross, dash with laughter and gurgle through a narrow defile of gayly colored rocks and thence pour out to rest awhile in the parks before its struggle with Elbow Cañon down below. From here to the mouth of the river, it is between fifty and sixty miles according to the line of the railway, which will, some day, closely follow its banks down the Grand to Grand Junction. The elevation is uniformly so great, even after you get fairly out of the mountains, that agriculture is hopeless, excepting the cultivation of some of the hardiest vegetables, like turnips, and perhaps risky crops of oats and barley.

At the mouth of the Roaring Fork of the Grand (which is just below where the Eagle debouches), some remarkable mineral springs bubble out of the ground. These have long been held in high esteem by the Indians and hunters, and now a little settlement has grown up around them called Glenwood. A hotel, bath houses and other facilities for a pleasant and healthful time have been erected, and the place is likely to prove a favorite summer resort. Many men are living and digging upon the headwaters of Brush creek, Gypsum creek, and other tributaries. Just below, where the Eagle river discharges itself, the Grand receives the Roaring Fork and various other pretty large tributaries, so that it becomes a noble stream by the time the great Gunnison reinforces it, and it mingles its waters with the Green river, which has come all the way from the National Yellowstone Park, to make the mighty Rio Colorado.

Hither will come the painters, who need not go to Switzerland for snowy bergs, nor to Scotland for lochs, nor to Norway for splendid forests of pine and spruce. No mountains I know of abound in more that is picturesque; but it is always some phase of the grand rather than the pretty. The scenery is wild and savage and primeval, being the stock of which beautiful landscapes are made, rather than the culture that gentler airs and more temperate winds bring upon the face of the earth nearer the sea and the equator. The naturalist also may come here with profit. The fauna and flora are boreal and western. The geologist and mineralogist and meteorologist will find much here to interest them, and clear up doubtful points.

This splendid, hilly, well-timbered, well-pastured, well-watered western edge of the state, is the grandest hunting-ground in the United States, and it will be long before the bears and mountain lions and wild cats; the wolves and foxes; the mountain-sheep, the elk, the two deers and the antelope, are driven from its shady courts and disappear from the wide and sunny ranges. Long let us say, in fond hope, if not in serious expectation, that never shall the dread word exterminated be written after the name of any of the wild animals whose utility as game or for beauty of form makes them of interest to us.

Another excursion from Leadville was out on the stub of a line to be extended down the Blue river toward Middle Park.

To reach the valley of Blue river “the range” must, of course, be crossed. The line from Leadville follows up the Arkansas and reveals to us how small are the beginnings of great things in the way of water-courses; how a miserable, shallow, wiggling little runlet, which you can dam with a couple of shovels of mud and stand astride of like another Colossus of Rhodes, may push its way along, undermining what it cannot overthrow; sliding around the obstacle that deemed itself impassable; losing itself in willowy bogs, tumbling headlong over the error of a precipice or getting heedlessly entrapped in a confined cañon; escaping down a gorge with indescribable turmoil, and always growing bigger, bigger, broader and stronger, deeper and more dignified; till it can leave the mountains and strike boldly across a thousand miles of untracked plain to “fling its proud heart into the sea.” Hark! what does it prattle up here where we can leap its ripplings, and the red willows tangle their blossoms and shade it from side to side?—

Listen again below, where it rushes triumphant from the adamantine gates that sought to imprison it:—

Almost in the very springs of the river, where an amphitheatre of gray quartzite peaks stand like stiffened silver-gray curtains between the Atlantic and the Pacific, we curl round a perfect shepherd’s crook of a curve, and then climb its straight staff to the summit of Fremont’s,—the highest railway pass in the world. The pathway is so hidden in great woods, and the grim giants of the Mosquito range are still so inaccessibly far above you, even when you have reached the sterile oberland, above the trees, that you hardly realize the fact that you are 11,540 feet—considerably over two vertical miles—above the sea.

Once more on the Pacific slope, with the crossing of this range, we see the first trickling of Ten-Mile creek, and enter the edge of one of the famous mining districts of the state, catching a sidelong glimpse of the Holy Cross as we descend.

“Although its now well-known silver mines,” says a recent historical account, “are of recent date, the district is not a new one, having been run over by gold hunters in the ‘flush times’ of California gulch, Buckskin Joe and other famous gold-camps of early days. Gold was found in the bed of Ten-Mile creek, and in the connecting gulches, ... among them McNulty’s gulch, said to have yielded more gold in proportion to its size than any other workings in the state, and many fine nuggets of unusual size were taken from it.... The discovery in 1878, of the famous Robinson group of mines, followed, by the White Quail and Wheel of Fortune discoveries, attracted large numbers of prospectors to the new camp, and in spite of the ten feet of snow that covered the ground during the winter of 1878-’79 locations were made, and shafts and tunnels begun in every direction. During the winter the town of Carbonateville was settled, and for a time promised to become a thriving camp. On the 8th of February, the town of Kokomo, which, with its younger rival, Robinson, is now a prosperous and growing mining camp, with two smelters in operation, was located. In the spring of 1880 Robinson’s camp began to build up rapidly, under the support of the great Robinson mines, and the fostering care of the late Lieutenant Governor Robinson, and soon became a formidable rival to Kokomo. The many discoveries made during the spring and summer of 1880, brought the district into a prominence second only to that of Leadville, and a large amount of capital was invested in the development of its many promising mines and prospects. Two smelters were erected at Kokomo, and one near the old town of Carbonateville, while extensive works, consisting of furnaces, roasters, etc., were put up at Robinson to work the ores of the Robinson mine. A railroad to connect the district with Leadville on the south and Georgetown on the east, was projected, and partially graded during the summer, but was finally absorbed by the enterprising managers of the Denver and Rio Grande Company, who, with a watchful eye for the future, began the construction, under the name of Blue River extension of the Denver and Rio Grande, of a road, which in spite of the many and great difficulties encountered, was completed to Robinson on the 1st of January, 1881. Much of the grading and most of the track-laying were done under a heavy fall of snow, the range being crossed in midwinter, affording a striking instance of the energy and contempt of obstacles characteristic of Western railroad builders.”

We were told of alluring pictures of mountains and cañons below Kokomo; of timber-belts and pleasant uplands; of green meadows and sparkling streams beloved of trout and bass, and the drinking places of deer in the twilight. But our plan would not permit us to go on to Dillon, the present terminus, much less beyond it. Instead, we must turn back, make a swift run down the Arkansas, and begin our exploration of the great overland route to Utah and the Pacific coast.

I will not detain you with the account of our downward trip, but ask you to suppose us, a few hours after our visit at Robinson and Kokomo, snugly “at home” in the station in Poncho Springs, half a dozen miles west of Salida.

XXIII
FROM PONCHO SPRINGS TO VILLA GROVE.

The visitor to Poncho Springs is pretty sure to get into hot water, and, strange to say, the visitor is pretty sure to like it. There are several reasons for this peculiarity, and among the most important is this, that like the wind to the shorn lamb, the water is tempered. It needs to be tempered, indeed, for when one literally gets into hot water, one does not like to have its warmth so emphatic as to make a veal stew of the first leg that is thrust into it. Hot springs whose temperature makes any well-regulated thermometer’s blood boil and sends the mercury up to 180° in the shade certainly needs tempering. When properly moderated, however, one cannot fail to enjoy a bath in the soda impregnated waters of the Poncho springs.

The village, to which the springs have given their name, is snugly tucked away in a niche in the Arkansas valley, at the mouth of Poncho pass. The waters of the south fork of the Arkansas river, clear as crystal, and flowing with a foam-flecked current, race rapidly past the town. Along the river’s course the cottonwoods crowd, and to their branches, beginning to grow bare, still cling a few trembling yellow leaves. Beyond the river and to the south and west rise the hills, their sides and summits covered with dark phalanxes of pines. Turning one’s back upon the town and looking toward the north and west, one sees the snow-crowned summit of the Collegiate range, with all the differences between Princeton and Harvard and Yale entirely eliminated by that distance which ever adds enchantment to the view. Closer at hand, and towering grandly into the sky, a tremendous watch-tower in the west, stands Shavano, while lesser peaks and nameless pinnacles cluster and crowd around. Great plains, broken by buttes, stretch away to the northward, but mountains and foothills circle round to the east and south and west.

In this sheltered nook lies the picturesque village of Poncho Springs, and hither do the invalids and tourists flock during the warm half of the year to drink the medicinal waters and to bathe in the healing springs. I strolled through the main street of the town, along which are built substantial frame shops and hotels, and observed evidences of stability upon every side. Poncho Springs is not the result of a temporary craze, nor is it a railway terminus town to be torn down and shipped forward as the road advances. There is a good agricultural country around the village, and the Springs will be a source of permanent prosperity. One of the most picturesque features of this picturesque town is a residence which my traveling companions called “a symphony in logs.” The house is to the right of the main street and is built of hewn logs, and with gables filled in with ornamental work, with painted roof and fanciful porticos, presents a peculiarly pleasing appearance.

Passing on through the town toward the hills and crossing the river, one discovers a sign board, upon which it is announced that the distance to the hot springs is three-quarters of a mile. Putting confidence in this announcement, the visitor cheerfully advances along a good wagon road, which soon begins to twine and twist among the hills, at times making a grade of thirty degrees. Finally, just as one begins to lose faith in the guide board, the trail, with an abrupt turn to the right, descends into a gulch, and rises steeply on the other side. Clambering up this steep, the visitor sees to the left the hotel buildings, which announce the presence of the springs, while to the right are pitched a number of tents, late sleeping rooms for an army of summer visitors which, vanquished by cold breezes, has broken camp and fled.

After a bath in the conventional zinc contrivance, to which was admitted hot and cold water through most unpoetic and sternly practical faucets, all of which suggested “modern improvements” rather than a wonderful natural phenomenon, I went out in search of the hot springs, quite as much to re-establish a somewhat shaken faith in their existence as for any other purpose. My doubts soon dissolved, for back of the hotel and half-way up the grade of a steep hill, I came upon a little rivulet of soda water still steaming with the heat of its parent spring. A little further on I saw a white tumulus of volcanic formation, and scattered over its summit oval openings in which boiled and bubbled water fresh from Pluto’s kitchen. In some of these springs the water was scalding hot, while in others it was merely lukewarm. Springs showing such radical differences of temperature were frequently not more than two feet apart. There are over fifty of these springs here, and no two of them precisely alike.

The Springs have lately passed from their former ownership into the hands of new men, who are very enterprising. Larger buildings have been erected, and the camp-like freedom of the place has been exchanged for something more nearly approaching ordinary hotel life. There is room for about 150 guests, and every requirement for the comfort of invalids. The advertisements issued by the proprietors dwell largely upon the similarity of these waters to those of the Arkansas Hot Springs, and recommend them as equally curative in the special ailments that have long made the Arkansas waters famous.

A few miles northward of Poncho Springs there is a cluster of mining villages, of which the chief are Maysville and Monarch. They lie well under the shadow of the mountains, and silver ore is produced steadily in considerable quantity. These towns communicate with the outside world by a branch line of railway which diverges at this point.

In the quiet of the evening, at this charming retreat—for we had few pleasanter halting places—the Madame bethought herself (seeing the rest of us pen and pencil in hand) that she owed a letter to her Eastern confidante, and also remembered that she had promised her an account of our youthful chef, with whom by this time we all felt tolerably well acquainted. Happy accident brought this letter under my eye and I seized the opportunity to copy it, so here it is, or at least so much of it as relates to the boy:

“My dear Mrs. McAngle:

“I must tell you about our cook; or, as my husband would, no doubt correct me, our porter. How our first boy fought and bled and died I wrote you before, and that the last I saw of him he was being bundled rheumatically aboard the homeward train. Well, after I had finished that visit at Pueblo San Juan with old Santiago’s wife, whom I described to you, I went home—that is, you know, back to our train—just at evening. As I opened the door a bright-faced boy rose to meet me, with a pair of the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen,—just the kind of orbs young ladies waste oceans of sentiment upon, you know, in boarding-school days. He was, so he told me, a mixture of Kentuckian and Canadian Indian blood. His grandmother, the only one of his family to whom he seemed to feel any allegiance, had set him up in business as a liquor seller. ‘But,’ he said, ‘the business was too rough for me, so I gave it up to a friend and came out West.’

“He proved the direct opposite of his predecessor. While Edward could cook, Burt could not; and while Edward had an abhorrence of water, Burt was never so happy as when his pots, pans and kettles were all before him and he was busy scouring. The only difficulty was, that he could not keep clean, but was for ever ‘clarin’ up,’ during which process it required considerable ingenuity to make one’s way through the débris of the kitchen furniture.

“It was not long before the inside of his car was covered with tin-ware of all descriptions, pails, smoothing irons, pokers, tools,—everything that could by any possibility be hung up. He had a passion for driving nails, the larger the more fun apparently, for his nails mostly went clear through the car-walls, which soon came to bristle like a newly furnished pin-cushion.

“With an eye to our future interests in all possible contingencies, Burt laid hold of anything along the road that he thought might be of use to us, entirely ignoring any proprietary rights which others might think they had in the object ‘smoudged,’ as he expressed it. In this way we gradually became possessed of an endless quantity of odds and ends, which it required a decided exercise of authority to get rid of.

“In traveling, he was nearly always to be seen on the top of the car, for he had an appreciative eye for scenery,—so much so, indeed, as sometimes to interfere with his duties. His great fault was procrastination.

“When we reached Durango he became very greatly depressed, and on my inquiring the reason for his melancholy, he attributes it to the dullness of the place; ‘for, ma’am, there is no excitement,—no one has been killed for two weeks. Not at all what I was led to expect.’ On reaching Leadville, he became much more cheerful, as he had only been in the city six hours before seeing two fights and half of another.

“His gait was something peculiar. It can best be described by the ditty we used to sing, my dear, which commemorates so touchingly the character and adventures of Susanna in her excursions abroad,—

“Long, lank, dark-skinned, dressed in flapping coat and immensely broad and excessively slouched sombrero (until my husband bought him a cap), with his loping walk and swinging elbows, he was easily recognized at a long distance; and as he would come sailing down upon us from afar, with arms full of bundles, he reminded one a little of some huge bird of prey.

“He had a wholesome fear of rattlesnakes and grizzly bears, which the wicked men of the fort maliciously represented to him, abounded in terrible numbers, and of the most ferocious kind wherever we went. ‘No, ma’am,’ he said, in his slow, stately way, when I cautioned him one day about trying to shoot a bear if he happened to meet one, as they were hard to kill and especially dangerous if wounded, ‘No, ma’am; if I meet a bear you just bet I don’t stay to take his portrait, but shin up the first tree I come to.’

“He was continually developing new accomplishments. We learned, after a few weeks, that we had not ‘prospected’ him thoroughly at the beginning. He proved to have had more experience than his youthful looks and aimlessness of motive lead us to expect. We had little occasion to call into use whatever knowledge he had acquired as a bar-keeper, because the education of the gentlemen of the party had not been neglected in that direction,—wholly in an amateur way, and they were accustomed, while ‘concocting elaborately commingled potations,’ (as they grandiloquently termed mixed drinks) to say to one another: ‘If you would have anything well done do it yourself.’

“One day, however, great delight was caused by the discovery that Burt was a barber. His services were at once required, and when, at the end of long labors, he was munificently offered two nickels, he declined them. This noble independence aroused ‘Chum’s’ admiration. He said that he was glad to see that the boy was free from the mercenary spirit so painful to witness in the young.

“Our porter seemed to consider the whole expedition a huge joke, and ourselves a show arranged for his especial benefit. If—as it frequently happened, for a more thoroughly heedless and forgetful youth never existed—we were obliged to expostulate with him on some neglect of duty, a seriousness of countenance would remain with him for some time, but the first joke that came to his ears dispelled it. Sullen, he never was, or ill natured; and if any real emergency occurred, more willing and unselfish help could not have been tendered by a firm friend than was tendered by this servant. I repent me, indeed, Mrs. McAngle, of having made fun of him, even in the privacy of a letter to you. The odor of the steaks that he cooked still lingers in my grateful nostrils; I remember that without him, material for many jokes would have been wanting, and I look on his fast vanishing, but always picturesque figure, with regret.”

Standing here at the very foot of the mountains that hid the enchanting netherland of “the Gunnison,” we were eager to hurry on to the Pacific slope of the State; but one little side trip remained to be made, and on the second morning we coupled our cars to the express bound for Villa Grove and Bonanza. The course lay up Poncho Pass, and in five minutes the noisy locomotives announced that the ascent had begun.

It was very pretty, as, indeed, we had suspected during our walk the day before up to the hot springs, which stand near its entrance. The track is dug out of the side-hill on the northern side of the gulch, and a bright stream comes tumbling down through willows, cottonwoods, oak shrubs, wild cherry thickets and bushes of service-berry whose crimson fruit tempts you to leap off the train and taste its tart and fragrant juices. The slopes on both sides are covered with evergreens and aspens

“That twinkle to the gusty breeze.”

Up through a rift in the trees we catch a glimpse of the little watering-place, and a few miles farther, pass the log-buildings of the old Toll Gate, occupying a pocket in the hills. Only now are the gray carpeted plains of the Arkansas, the village at the mouth of the cañon, and the rough high hills, away beyond the river lost to view. At the head of Poncho Pass is Mears’ Station. It occupies a narrow defile, the walls rising steeply to unseen heights, and the gorges dropping apparently to unfathomable depths. We could not trace the devious course we had come, nor understand how it was possible the railway should surmount the stupendous barrier lying to the westward. Yet we knew that a day or two later our cars would roll steadily to the summit and steadily descend on the other side, for this little nook, the head of Poncho, is only the foot of Marshall Pass, by which the oceanic divide is crossed on the transcontinental route. Nor was it easier to see how we were to get away down the precipitous defiles in which the southern slope of Poncho Pass seemed to lose itself. It was with strongly excited curiosity, then, that we detached from the express and caused our cars to be coupled to the freight train, which the bulletin averred knew how to go down to Villa Grove, and would one day carry the traveller through to Saguache and the South.

When all was ready to make good this promise,—and if that miserably memorable engineer had thrust his shock of hair and bullet-head a trifle further out of the cab-window the company might have dispensed with the headlight—took the back track for a few rods, trended away on a curved side-track to the right as far as the hillside would admit, crossed the main line on a bridge, and having by this time accomplished a half circle, headed eastward again and began to climb the southern side of the gulch in a line so parallel with the lower track that a mile later you could fling down a stone from one to the other though you were a couple of hundred feet above. Half a mile more and the summit is reached,—a green saddle between the foothills of Mount Ouray on one side and the far-braced buttresses of Hunt’s peak on the other. The going down is fairly straight and easy work, and it is not long before the gulches widen out, the diminished, grassy hills are left behind, and your speed increases as you strike the firmly bedded, regular track, pointing southward through a broad, treeless plain.

Perhaps I have said enough of the wonderful beauty of the Sangre de Cristo range, seen from this side; have too often told of their compact array and unbroken grandeur; of the scores of nameless peaks that vie with Hunt’s, Rito Alto, Electric, the gothic Crestones and the group of pinnacled, sun-gilded summits that crowd near far-away Blanca; but in the broad morning light of this day’s trip they stood up in freshened color and renewed majesty. All the cloud-curtains were rolled up, and heaven shed unhindered its clear, sharp sunbeams from end to end of the magnificent chain. The souvenirs of yesterday’s storm added decoration, for the summits were all dusted and powdered, with light snow, like noble heads of the old regime; and this unwonted covering descended far enough below timber-line to frost the upper lines of trees, so that there was a soft gradation from the deep verdancy of the lower slopes, through hoary greenish-gray to the unbroken white of the clear-cut gables lifted into the serene and absolute solitude of the cærulean dome.

XXIV
THROUGH MARSHALL PASS.

—Keats.

One of the wonders of Colorado progress is the Gunnison valley. The “Gunnison,” as it is usually termed, embraces a wide area, being, in popular parlance, everything in Colorado west of the Continental Divide, north of the San Juan mountains and south of the Eagle River district. In fact, this is correct enough, for nearly all this great region is tributary in its drainage to the Gunnison river,—the third great stream which unites with the Grand and the Green to form the Rio Colorado. The water-shed between it and the Rio San Juan, the only other feeder of the Rio Colorado worthy of mention, is the very high and wintry ridge of the San Juan mountains, crossing which you find yourself in Baker’s Park and the region we had just come from. Betwixt the head of its northern branches and the springs that feed the Grand River basin, stand the Elk mountains and the high table lands of the Grand Mesa. From the one water-shed to the other it is about fifty miles.

Ten years ago this region had hardly a wanderer in it from one season’s end to the other, and was full of Ute Indians. There were two or three agencies, and roads leading thereto, but it was all a reservation. Everything civilized that entered the district came up from Saguache through Cochetopa Pass and along Cochetopa creek into the Uncompahgre valley, where the Utes spent their winters. There was also a trail, occasionally traveled by sportsmen and explorers, leading southward from the Los Pinos agency to the headwaters of the Rio Grande and on over Cunningham Pass into Baker’s Park. I marched over it in 1874, and a cruel march it was, though full of picturesque interest. An Indian trail northward to White river was about the only other internal pathway. The region, therefore, was a terra incognita to Coloradoans, as well as to the rest of the civilized world.

But this mystery was soon to be cleared away. The search for gold and silver, which has led to more exploration of unknown regions than all the geographical societies of the world put together, did not hesitate to encounter the darkness that overspread the Pacific slope of the State, and to go prospecting thither as soon as ever a hope of finding “mineral” entered into the miner’s heart. Close following upon the rush to Leadville, was repeated the history of the Pike’s Peak sequel. Now, as then, men disappointed in not finding mines of fabulous wealth, during the first week of their stay, or shrewdly thinking to anticipate the crowd, began to walk further and further afield in search of new argentiferous rocks, so that by the summer of 1879 we began to hear not only of Ten Mile and Red Cliff, but of the Gunnison, as a district where success had met the prospector. That was only a little over four years ago. Now how well are we acquainted with this erst mysterious and Indian-haunted valley! Four years ago a mule was the best mode of conveyance hither, and an Indian trail almost the only pathway. Yesterday I rode into the heart of it in a parlor car, and found, ready for my perusal, the morning newspaper, with a day’s history of all the world, from Chicago to Cathay.

The Gunnison country boasts several towns of considerable size, some of them the center of a circle of mines which radiates from them, and from which they absorb cash and conviviality. First in size is Gunnison City; and after it in importance are Crested Butte, Lake City, Ouray, Montrose, Delta and Grand Junction,—the last three being situated in the old Ute reservation in western Gunnison. Of less size, but yet centers of population, are a large number of small mining towns or “camps,” such as Ruby, Crooksville, White Pine, Pitkin, Irwin, Barnum and Ohio. Each of these would require some attention from a faithful chronicler of the county, for they are all in Gunnison, where the territory is large enough to enable one to set in it the whole State of Massachusetts without crowding—that is if you lopped off Cape Cod or curled it up into Marshall Pass.

It is by the way of Marshall Pass that the railway enters the Gunnison. Leaving the main line and the Arkansas valley at Salida, only five miles are traversed before the train begins to enter Poncho Pass and climb the mountains, which it requires four hours, express speed, to cross,—four hours of uninterrupted pleasure.

Of Poncho’s prettiness I have already spoken. Its summit is found at Mears’ Station, and then begins the real ascent of the Continental Divide. In a few moments the circling rim of the pit-like valley is surmounted, and Hunt’s peak, by its cap of snow signifying its superiority to the giants of the Sangre de Cristo about it, rises like a planet over the hills we are leaving behind. We seat ourselves on the rear platform and watch it until the whole range, of which it is the northernmost officer, stands drawn up in purple line before us, and we can trace the summits, pressed back into straight line, for perhaps sixty miles to the southward—

What can that goodly rank, each peak sharp and pyramidal just along side of the other, every curve of the foothills parallel with the one before, sweeping down into the trough-like park at their hither base,—what can all this uniformity be but the splendid chain of the Sangre de Cristo? Have we not seen it time and time again, beheld it from east and west and south, and now here from the north; and has it ever been out of line, or anything but a soldierly array of uniform heights bearing the same relation to the ill-assorted army of the rest of the Rockies, that the famous grenadiers of Frederick the Great did to his peasant conscripts?

This sight explains to us also, that the great width of lofty hills we are picking our way through now is the junction mass of two ranges. It is here that the Sangre de Cristo starts off on its own line to the southeastward, while the main chain, forming the backbone of the continent, trends somewhat westward and continues to do so more and more till it loses itself in the jumble of San Juan, San Miguel, Uncompahgre, Bear and other ranges that fill the southwestern corner of the State. The summits north and southwest of us divide the Atlantic from the Pacific; but that magnificent corps that will not be left behind, but seems to march steadily after us, in battle array, separates only the Arkansas from the Rio Grande. The glimpses of valley we get now and then just this side its base are of Homan’s Park, which is only the upper end of the wide San Luis, and places can be seen that we could not reach by long traveling.

Marshall Pass itself, which we enter imperceptibly out of Poncho, is a depression in the main range and lies between Ouray and Exchequer mountains. It was a daring scheme to run the road over here—for through wouldn’t express it properly. The summit is almost eleven thousand feet above the sea, and timber-line is so close that you can think sometimes you are actually there. The trees are stunted and all stand bent at an angle, showing the direction of the fierce and prevalent winds that have pressed upon them since their seedling days. The cones they bear start bravely, but after perfecting three or four broad circles of scales and seeds the nipping frosts of August and September admonish them to make haste; so the remainder of the cone is put forth so hastily, in Nature’s attempt to complete her work, that the whole remaining length of fifteen or twenty circlets will not exceed the length of the first two or three full-grown scales, and the cone ends ridiculously in a little useless acuminate tip.

To attain this height, the road has to twist and wriggle in the most confusing way, going three or four miles, sometimes, to make fifty rods; but all the time it gains ground upward, over some startling bridges, along the crest of huge fillings, through miniature cañons blasted out of rock or shoveled through gravel, and always up slopes whose steepness it needs no practiced eye to appreciate. To say that the road crosses a pass in the Rocky mountains 10,820 feet in height is enough to astonish the conservative engineers who have never seen this audacious line; but you can magnify their amazement when you tell them that some of the grades are 220 feet to the mile.

The mountains and hills in the neighborhood of Marshall Pass are clothed for the most part with grass, or else sage-brush and weeds, and with timber, scant in some places, dense in others. The tourist will not see there the startling cliffs and chasms that break up the mountains on the road to Durango, but, on the other hand, he will not feel any terror at dizzy precipices, nor tremble lest some toppling pinnacle should fall upon his fragile car. No better exhibition of the greatness and breadth of these mountains could be found, however, than here. There stretches away beneath and around you an endless series of hills, some rounded and entirely over-grown with dark woods, others rising into a comb-like crest, or rearing a dome-shaped head above the possibilities of timber-growth and covered with a smooth cap of yellowish verdure. They crowd one another on every side, and brace themselves, each by each, as though their broad and solid foundations were not enough for safety. They stand cheek by jowl in sturdy companionship, taking rain and sunny weather, hurtling storms and serene days with impartial equality. Your vision will not find the limit of these huge hills until it is cut off by the serrated horizon of the crest of the Sangre de Cristo, or by some frowning monarch near at hand, holding his head high and venerably gray, as becomes a chieftain, where he can get the first messages of the gods and be looked up to by a thousand of his more humble kin.

“It is like a huge green sea,” murmurs the Madame, hitherto silent with gazing. “I know a great many people have made the same comparison before—have often said that these commingled ranges were as a sea, tossing its white crests here and there and all at once congealed; but that is the very impression which fixes itself upon you. These rounded, or sharp-edged, tumultuous mountains are like a wide, green ocean.” The great cone on the northern side of the track, close to which the roadway skirts nearly the whole distance through the pass, is Ouray peak. Ouray, as nearly everybody must know, was the head chief of the Utes. This tribe only very lately abandoned all this portion of Colorado, leaving last that reservation which lies beyond Gunnison City, and which we are soon to visit. The peak we have hugged so closely does honor to the dead chief. The farther you get around it the more nobly do its proportions rise into the blue ether. Like Veta mountain, which it closely resembles, this peak is of white volcanic rock that has decomposed into small blocks. The sides then are loose “slides,” as steep as the fragmentary stuff will lie, and the top is a narrow summit with smooth, rounded outlines. We are only a few hundred feet from the topmost timber, yet the bald white summit rears its head to almost unmeasured heights above, and claims our admiration by its simple majesty, far more than does the broken, cliff-furnished upthrust of Exchequer peak opposite, though its black head is held quite as high. Perhaps this is only because we have become somewhat tired of the closely-shutting high mountains; weary of being

“——under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,”

as Milton puts it. Certes, it is good once more to be able to look abroad!

On our way to the summit we had crawled through long snow-sheds, built to protect the road from the snows of winter, and which are hung late in spring with brilliant icicles formed by the sun without and the cold within. Passing through the last shed, which has a length of fully half a mile, we reached the highest point of the divide, and while the extra engine which had helped pull us up the steep grades went cautiously down the valley toward Gunnison before us, we climbed the rocks about the little station house, to enjoy at its best the magnificent view presented. To the northeast, white with snow, towered the serrated range of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, rising abruptly from the valley which stretched away to the southeast and standing out in bold relief against the deep blue sky. Between the range and us were lower hills and isolated peaks tumbled into a confused mass, and only prevented from pressing too closely together by the little valleys that ran between them. Immediately around us grew stunted pines, bent, barren, blackened and lifeless. Down the mountain side the forests became denser, greener and fresher, while from the distant valleys, at the bottom of which we could see tiny streams working their way to worlds beyond, came low murmurs and sweet odors. Toward the west, and losing itself in a hazy distance, ran the Tomichi valley, narrow, heavily wooded, and free from all that rocky harshness so prevalent in Colorado. Far below we could look down upon four lines of our road, terrace below terrace, the last so far down the mountain as to be quite indistinct to the view. The iron loops were lost to sight at times as the road wound about some interfering hill; and often the forest was so dense that the track seemed to have disappeared for ever. Five hundred feet down the mountain side we could see a water-tank, and knew that it marked the spot where we would be, after an hour of twisting down the incline. As we gazed upon the mountains, the valley, and the far and farther heights, we could imagine ourselves returned to the beginning of things, and shown the globe only that moment finished. There was a wealth of coloring, a sublimity unsurpassed, and withal an attention given to detail by which the picture was made perfect. I remember to have stood on Marshall Pass once when the sun was just dropping out of sight beyond the rolling hills to the westward. As it sunk lower and lower behind its curtain of snowy peaks, prismatic hues came flashing along the pathway of its fading light, which touched the rugged sides of Ouray peak and the white-capped range beyond until every treeless spot and gabled peak shone with a mellow hue. All objects—those near by and those far away—flashed bright colors, beautiful, brilliant, and as varied as those of the rainbow. From the mountains long shadows were cast, and in the forest crept dark shades. All nature prepared to sleep, and no sounds came from around the lonely pass but the sighing of the wind as it swept through the tangled trees. “All outward things and inward thoughts teemed with assurances of immortality.”

Our descent from the pass was continuous but slow. At least it was slow at first. All steam was shut off in the engine and the air-brakes were used to preserve a uniform speed. Winding in and out among the trees, and catching at different times extended views of the Tomichi, we worked our way to more level country and were soon skirting the meadows and whirling across the ranch properties of the fertile valley. Close beside us ran a sparkling stream, tapped here and there by the farmers, who used its water for their lands, and again winding its way through the willows that grew on its banks. Looking back over the way we had come, there appeared dark-green forests, backed by high mountains with bared summits; but before us lay the Tomichi, shut in on either side by low hills and extending westward so far that its end was lost in haze. Everything was green, fertile, luxuriant. Cattle grazed in the meadows, ricks of hay stood by the side of low-roofed cabins, and narrow valleys came down from the northern mountains to join the one along which we kept the swift and even tenor of our way.

XXV
GUNNISON AND CRESTED BUTTE.