Our visitors were men of medium size, beardless, and very dark. Their hair was coal black, straight, parted in the middle, carefully combed, and gathered into two braids, the end of each being ornamented with a feather or a tuft of yarn. They wore woolen shirts, the original colors of which were lost in dirt; buckskin leggings, with fringes on the outer seam; moccasins of poorly tanned sheepskin, pointed at the toe and decorated with fringes. Bright scarlet blankets, marked U. S. I. D; were wrapped around their waists or drawn over their hatless polls. Each man carried a sheath-knife at his belt, and a bow with about a dozen arrows wrapped in a sheepskin case. Their features expressed much intelligence and good humor, easily breaking into chuckles of laughter, for they enjoyed studying us quite as much as we did them.

These Indians were Jicarilla Apaches, another branch of what was originally the same great tribe being the Mescalero Apaches, of southern New Mexico. The Jicarillas number about eight hundred souls, all told, and are apportioned into five bands, under as many chiefs, the most influential of whom is Huarito (Little Blonde), though he has no nominal headship. Their reservation extends thirty-three miles southward from the Colorado line, and is sixteen miles in breadth. On account of the severity of the winters about Amargo, the Government moved these Indians, during the autumn of 1883, to Fort Stanton, reuniting them there with the Mescaleros, on the reservation of the latter. Whether this experiment will “work” remains to be seen, as more than half the tribe were dissatisfied, and avowed their intention of returning in the following spring.

Amargo cañon which is always pretty, and sometimes approaches grandeur, extends westward to Juanita. There it widens out and disappears in a series of little parks, where the mountains diminish into pine-clad hills. For the next score of miles we skirt the turbulent Rio San Juan; but just west of Arboles, where it receives the Rio de las Piedras, we leave it, the road making a long detour, and climbing up and away from the stream, to a wide, rolling mesa. Descending again, La Boca is reached, where we cross the Rio de los Pinos, clear, rapid, and of good size, which we follow up to Ignacio.

At this point is another Indian Agency,—that for the Southern Utes, under an aged head-chief after whom the station is named. There are somewhat over eight hundred Indians here, divided into three or four bands under sub chiefs. Their reservation, which the railway traverses from where it re-enters Colorado, near Carracas, nearly to the Rio Florida, measures about sixteen miles north and south, and over one hundred miles east and west. These Utes are considered far more intelligent than the Apaches, and their conduct is more taciturn and dignified. Though not congregating in any considerable numbers along the track, they are not unfriendly to the whites, and daily wander about the streets of Durango. They are now the only Indians occupying a reservation within the limits of Colorado.

The members of both tribes are allowed to ride free at will on passenger trains, and the railway company has never experienced the slightest trouble from them. Liquor is kept from their reach as much as possible. Gambling is their passion.

Approaching Ignacio the train runs through shady lowlands, and passes, here and there, groups of teepees, the swarthy occupants of each lodge stepping out and standing motionless as statues in the shrubbery, watching us sweep by. The Rio Florida, which is soon crossed, is alive with trout, and along its upper course is excellent shooting. The whole region is undulating, green-carpeted, and covered with large yellow-boled pines, through which we catch magnificent mountain-views northward. Near Carboneria, the track describes two tremendous loops, in getting down from the table lands to the valley, and presently, rounding the mountain spur, reaches the Rio de las Animas, which it parallels into Durango, along a cutting through gravel and rock some distance above the bed of the stream.

Toward the last we had seen evidences of the great La Plata coalfield, to which I must devote a paragraph. It extends from the Rio de los Pinos almost to the southwestern corner of Colorado, and has been tapped in many places. This field is in sandstones and shales of the cretaceous age, divided into the upper and lower measures, about 1,000 feet apart. The lower coal measure is in a zone of shaly sandstones which are about 300 feet thick, and when separated from the shale is of excellent quality for domestic use. This lower measure is underlaid by a bed of dark gray shale, containing calcareous seams and nodules, called septaria. The La Plata coal-bed reaches from the east end of the county for over sixty miles, and is crossed by the river. The thickness of the entire bed between the floor and the roof is over fifty feet, and it contains about forty feet of good coal, free from shale. The floor, of grayish white sandstone, is covered with a thin layer of clay and clay shale. Upon this is a layer of compact, firm coal, six to eight feet thick; then a layer of tough black shale, one and a half to two feet thick. The remainder is a bed of excellent coal with only small seams of shale at intervals of four to ten feet. The “roof” is a tough shaly sandstone, alternating with true shales for a distance of several hundred feet above the coal-bed, and containing two or three small veins of coal.

Durango is beautifully located on the eastern bank of the river, the commercial portion being on the first or lower bench, and the residences on the second or higher plateau. Thus the homes of the people occupy a sightly position, apart from the turmoil of traffic, while lofty mountains and wall-like cliffs shelter the valley on all sides. Though founded only in the autumn of 1880, the city now contains a population of over five thousand, and is the most important point in southern Colorado. Here centers the business whose operations extend throughout the entire mountain system, and into the tillage and stock-raising districts of northwestern New Mexico. The great supply stores, with their heavy assortments of general merchandise, indicate a jobbing trade of no mean dimensions, and one which is steadily growing; while the extensive and elegant retail shops, unsurpassed in the state outside of Denver, bear evidence to the refined demands and prosperity of the citizens. Here also are concentrated the social, religious and school advantages which make up an intellectual nucleus. Its low altitude and easy accessibility render the town desirable as a temporary home for those engaged in mining, but who care not to endure the rigors of the long winter among boreal fastnesses. The banks of Durango are substantial institutions, and the hotels are commodious. Municipal improvements are being judiciously added, the most prominent for 1883 having been the erection of water-works, while street cars and gas-works are contemplated at an early day. The smelting of ores is carried on here actively and successfully, the convenience of coal, coke and fluxes, and the hauling of the ores down hill, giving the place marked advantages for this industry. Superior opportunities are likewise presented for a great variety of manufactures, foremost among them being iron and steel productions,—iron ore, limestone and all other necessary ingredients abounding in the locality, and being of easy access. The fall of the stream,—two hundred feet per mile,—supplies a water-power of never failing volume. Of late the city has been extending its limits, and now one may find an attractive ward, with cosy cottages and more pretentious houses across the river, and in the twilight shadow of the majestic bluffs which here rise precipitously a thousand feet. Taken all in all, no frontier town within our ken shows a more vigorous and healthy growth, or brighter promise for the future, than Durango on the Animas.

XII
THE QUEEN OF THE CAÑONS.

—Walter Scott.

When, some ten years ago, the writer had let his mule down into Baker’s Park, by hitching its wiry tail around successive snubbing-posts, the prediction was ventured that at some distant day a railway would penetrate these solitudes; and that it would approach from the southward, through a cañon which not even an Indian had ever been known to traverse,—the trails in that direction then leading over a terrible range, at a height far above the limit of vegetation. The prophecy has been verified, for the Denver and Rio Grande has already pushed its southwestern extension through the Cañon of the Animas, reaching Silverton in July, 1882.

Here the cores of the Rocky Mountains have been buried beneath an overflow of eruptive rock spreading over four thousand five hundred square miles of territory; or else, along with the sandstones and slates which were deposited against their sides, they have been metamorphosed into schists and quartzites. “The character of the volcanic rocks throughout the district,” says Dr. Hayden’s report, “is one of extreme interest, demonstrating an enormous amount of activity during a probably short period of time (geologically speaking), which activity was, nevertheless, accompanied by a comparatively large number of changes in the chemical and physical qualities of the ejected material.”

This geological composition gives to these mountains,—and particularly to the quartzite peaks along the southern border of the eruptive area,—a different appearance from any of the northern Rockies,—a more precipitous, Alpine and grander countenance, with sharp pinnacles, tremendous vertically walled chasms, and extensive forests of spruce clothing their lower declivities. In no other locality are so many very lofty summits to be seen crowded together. Sierra Blanca and two or three other single peaks in Colorado and Wyoming slightly outrank any here; but nowhere else can be found whole groups of mountains holding their heads up to fourteen thousand feet, and having great valleys almost at timber-line.

The old maps bear the name Sierra Madre, to designate these heights, whose snowy crests filled the northern horizon and forbade the advance of Spanish exploration. The word admits of various applications, but one which might well have been in the mind of him who first used it, is that this vast highland is the mighty Mother of our rivers. From its western slopes flow the rivulets that unite to make the Gunnison and Grand,—one of the forks of the Rio Colorado. Easterly, but on its northern face, bubbles the great spring which forms the very source of the Rio Grande del Norte. Every gulch upon its southern breast feeds the rushing streams that furnish to the Rio San Juan all the water it gets for its long journey through the wilderness.

A belt of cedars and dense shrubs stands along the base of the mountains; then perhaps a bare steep space of uniform dull green displays the tone of mingled bunch grass and sage-brush; next will appear a wall of red sandstone set at an angle, and contrasting richly in shades varying from dull vermillion to deep maroon, with the ochre-yellow, white or bluish gray of the rocks surmounting it. Occasionally these capping-stones show themselves in long, well exposed strata, slanting to the horizon; sometimes here and there they simply crop out in water-worn crags; again they will be lost altogether under the fringing shrubbery that overhangs the low forehead of the bluff. It is fifteen miles before the valley narrows in, and throughout this whole extent of bottom-land the ground is tilled from the river-brink to the stony uplands on either side, the fall of the water being so great that irrigation is easy. Ranches succeed each other without any waste land between, and I do not know any portion of the Far West (this side of Salt Lake basin) where the farms seem as thrifty or the houses so comfortable and pleasant. Every sort of grain is raised, and the yield to an acre is large, as must always be the case where the soil is rich, the weather uniform, and the ranchman able to control his water-supply and apply it as he sees need. Garden-produce is much attended to, also, for there is more profit in it than even in grain. Hay and its substitutes, alfalfa and lucerne, take high rank in the list, and of the two last named it is customary to cut three crops annually. In the winter of 1880-81 baled hay was worth $120 and $140 a ton in Durango, while one man told me that it cost him almost $500 a ton to get a supply to his mine in an emergency. In those days the farmer had as good a mine as any on the sources of his river. Such prices will probably never prevail again, now that the railway brings hay and feed from Kansas; but the resident producer can still compete with import figures at a handsome profit.

Two or three miles above Durango we pass Animas City, a small village of unpainted houses, which had an existence and an exciting history long years before its prosperous neighbor was dreamed of; and six miles farther come upon Trimble Springs, directly at the foot of the high bank which here confronts the western side of the valley. It is a singular coincidence, perhaps, that within easy distance and access of all the larger towns or population centers in Colorado, mineral springs are found, whose virtues are sufficiently marked to warrant development, thus supplying each neighborhood its own sanitary as well as pleasure resort. Trimble Springs occupies this relation to both Durango and Silverton, and is greatly frequented by the dwellers in these towns, besides numerous visitors from more remote points. A capacious hotel, of attractive exterior, and admirably arranged and furnished within, affords the comforts of a home. Near by is the bath-house, one hundred feet in length, and equipped in the most approved modern style, with all varieties of baths. The temperature of the water as it comes from the ground is 126° F., and iron, soda and magnesia are the predominating qualities, in the order named, while there is also much free carbolic acid gas. The record of cures effected here contains many cases of rheumatism, liver and kidney complaints, and chronic blood and skin diseases; while it is averred that the use of the waters will entirely eradicate the tobacco habit. The temperature is equable, and the surroundings romantic. The river supplies excellent trout-fishing, and the hunter will find an abundance of game in the adjacent foothills. The place must grow in popularity, as it becomes more widely known; for, as the Madame declared, “it excels the White Mountains in scenic features, not to mention the superiority of its thermal founts, and the charm of its climate, over any eastern sanitarium.” We marveled at the stateliness of her phrases, but couldn’t dispute the facts.

Just at the head of the farming lands, stands the little settlement of Hermosa. I had been there once before this more auspicious advent, after two days of dreadfully weary travel over a mountain trail, and had come down into the valley only to find our much-doubted warnings verified, and these cabins all deserted. We knew what it meant, but made haste to feast upon the green corn, and tomatoes, melons and roots of every sort, which the panic stricken ranchmen had left behind. Stuffing every available bag and pocket full, we went on to a camping-spot, and deliberated while we cooked our princely dinner.

It was certain that Indians had driven these settlers away, yet there were no signs of hostility apparent. There were five of us, and we had proposed going two hundred miles directly into the Indian country. Should we proceed, or turn back and abandon our exploration? Perhaps if we had possessed only our customary bacon and beans we might have halted; but the luscious corn and melons turned the scale, and we resolved to go forward. Had we not done so we should have missed the rare satisfaction of being the first to tell the story of the Cliff-Dwellers of the Mancos and McElmo. In the nine years which since have worn their footprints into the trail of events, little change had come to this particular spot; and I was glad of it, for it left in my memory a landmark which was lost elsewhere under the obliterating hand of an eager civilization, that has tamed the primitive wildness we rode over in 1874.

Above Hermosa, the valley contracts rapidly, and the wide fields give place to groves of pine, free of underbrush, through which are caught glimpses of the bright stream sinking away from us on the right. The railway commences to ascend the western hills, carving its way along their face, and tracing their shallow undulations by sweeping curves. In places the sharp stones blasted from the roadbed cover the steep and forbidding descent for hundreds of feet below us. Now the river has disappeared, though a rocky ledge marks its cañon confines, the intervening space is wild and broken, and the pines are denser, with great blackened trunks. Presently we emerge into a tiny park, and Rockwood is reached. The location is secluded yet picturesque. Lofty cliffs and precipitous mountains hem it in on all sides, and the meadows in the small depression beside the town are fringed with trees, which are tall and imposing, and yet look more like dwarfed bushes against the massive background of towering bluffs. A lively village has grown up here, whose principal stimulus exists in the fact that it is the forwarding point for the extensive mining district lying between the La Plata and San Miguel ranges. Rico, the most important camp in that section, is connected with Rockwood by a good road, thirty-two miles in length, over which stages and supply-trains make daily trips.

Before leaving Rockwood the train-men are observed to examine critically the wheels, trucks and couplings of our cars, and we know that something unusual ahead suggests the precaution.

Moving slowly through a deeply shaded cutting, a sharp outward curve is rounded, and what a vision greets our astonished eyes! The most magnificent of all the cañons of the Rockies! The mountain presents a red granite front, perpendicular for nearly a thousand feet, and midway between top and bottom has been chiseled from the solid rock a long balcony or shelf, just wide enough for the track. From far below comes to our ears the roar of driven waters, and with bated breath we gaze fearfully over the edge, so perilously near, down, down to where a bright green torrent urges its impatient way between walls whose jetty hue no sun-ray relieves. Overhead the beetling precipice towers ominously, as if about to crush the pigmies who had dared to invade its storm-swept breast. In its shadow all is silent, weird and awful.

The opposite side of the cañon, scarcely the toss of a pebble away, rises almost vertically, a smooth, unscalable wall, that gleams like brightly polished bronze, but is striped with upright lines of shadow, so that it recalls Scott’s picture of Melrose Abbey under the harvest-moon:—

Higher up, the wall breaks away into receding hills, on whose grassy and wooded slopes the sunshine plays hide and seek. A little above the gorge we can discern where the track turns to the right and crosses on a long, low trestle, the alcove in the cañon, while in the loftier heights beyond, the verdure-clad mountains are seen rising into shapely cones and coquetting with the fleecy clouds. Such were the elements of the sublime view in the Cañon of the Rio de las Animas Perdidas caught and perpetuated by our Artist.

Beyond the opening the defile again closes into so narrow a compass that the pines and spruces clinging precariously to the cliffs mingle in a dim arch that spans the chasm. Again the train is creeping cautiously along a dizzy brink, while an hundred feet below the pent-up flood is forcing its passage through the unworn and pitilessly hard rocks. The water is still green as emerald, and has the same luminous quiver and transparence of verdancy which the gem possesses. What gives it that vivid color here in this dark recess?—anything but the fact that it is surcharged with the air caught in its turbulence? We can see great nebulæ of submerged bubbles racing by, meteor-like, too swiftly to rise at once to the glassy surface. Niagara, below the Falls, has that same wonderful, deep green tint. Imprison Niagara, or only so much of it as you could span with a stone’s throw; contract its upright, volcanic walls into a crevice sixty feet wide—turn the river up on edge, as it were—and send it down that black, resounding flume, with all the impetus of a twenty-mile race,—then you have an image of this “River of Lost Souls,” in the wildest portion of its marvelous channel.

The building of the railway, for the first mile north of Rockwood, exceeded in its daring any work even in the famous Grand Cañon of the Arkansas. The engineer who had charge of the construction showed the Madame a picture one of his surveyors drew of the manner in which the location was made. Evidently the draughtsman took his observations from the water’s edge, where his vista was between two walls of natural masonry, and was limited by the side of the gorge which bent sharply there. This wall was vertical and smooth, for almost a thousand feet from its base. From that height were seen hanging spider-web-like ropes, down which men, seeming not much larger than ants, were slowly descending, while others (perched upon narrow shelves in the face of the cliffs, or in trifling niches from which their only egress was by the dangling ropes), sighted through their theodolites from one ledge to the other, and directed where to place the dabs of paint indicating the intended roadbed. Similarly suspended, the workmen followed the engineers, drilling holes for blasting, and tumbling down loose fragments, until they had won a foothold for working in a less extraordinary manner. Ten months of steady labor were spent on this cañon-cutting,—months of work on the brink of yawning abysses and in the midst of falling rocks, yet not one serious accident occurred. “Often it seemed as though another hair’s distance or straw’s weight would have sent me headlong over the edge,” said the chief engineer, and no doubt all his subordinates could say the same. The expense attending such construction was of necessity great, the outlay for this single mile aggregating about $140,000.

Crossing the handsome bridge shown in our sketch, the course of the road thereafter is generally on the eastern bank of the stream, although it is recrossed a few times where, by this expedient, expensive excavation could be avoided. The water gradually rises to the level of the track, which is henceforth rarely a rod above it. Often in making a curve, one obtains a charming view up the river, with its gracefully drooping borders of willows and aspens. Everywhere the mountains are close at hand on either side, and a goat could scarcely climb their inaccessible steeps.

Presently a halt is made, and as we alight, such a picture is presented as it may never be our fortune to again behold. The cañon is compressed into a narrow fissure among mountains of supreme height, whose fronts are in unbroken shadow. At the right a waterfall comes leaping down, to join the foam-flecked river. In the foreground great banks of moss sustain gay flowers, while over them nod the stately pines, with swaying vines, keeping time to the fretful murmur of the water. Between and far beyond the clear-cut sky-lines of nearer peaks, The Needles lift their splintered pinnacles into the regions of perpetual snow, wrapped in the gauze of a wondrous atmosphere, and their crests glowing as with a golden crown.

Continuing northward, we speedily enter Elk Park, a little valley in the midst of the range, with sunlit meadows and groups of giant pines. As we turn from the park, a backward glance discloses the subject of our frontispiece,—Garfield Peak,—lifting its symmetrical summit a mile above the track, a peerless landmark among its fellows.

Onward, the everlasting hills are marshalled, and among them for miles the cañon maintains its grandeur. Frequent cascades, glistening like burnished silver in the sunlight, leap from crag to crag for a thousand feet down the mountain sides, to lose themselves in the Animas. Thus grandly ends this glorious ride, and we sweep out into a green park, and are at Silverton, in the heart of Silver San Juan.

XIII
SILVER SAN JUAN.

—Tennyson.

In introducing some account of the southern side of the San Juan mountains, as a district producing precious metals, it may be said, in the first place, that it is a section in which productive mining has only very lately been prosecuted in earnest. Its prospects are well-founded; but almost up to the present time, its inaccessibility and other disadvantages have been obstacles to a development that, under more favorable conditions, would doubtless have occurred. The scrutiny to which it has been subjected by sharp and knowing eyes, and such digging as has been done,—by no means a small amount in the aggregate,—exhibit the fact that the region is remarkable for its general richness. That is, profitable ores are to be had nearly everywhere within its limits; hardly a hill can be mentioned where veins carrying mineral do not abound. Every square mile of its fifty miles square may safely be assumed to hold one or more good mines. It is doubtful whether anywhere else in the world there is so large a territory over which the most valuable metals are so generally diffused.

“About twenty miles west from the center of the mining region is a series of isolated groups of volcanic peaks. The highest one of these, Mount Wilson, reaches an elevation of 14,285 feet above sea level, or about 5,000 feet above the valley. Lithologically these groups must be considered younger than the lode-bearing rock of the Animas, and must therefore have become eruptive later. It seems quite possible that the disturbance produced by these eruptions may have resulted in the formation of the present fissures, which subsequently were filled from that source which supplied so much mineral matter to other neighboring rocks in the form of impregnation.”

This ore, then, may be set down as principally galena,—a lead ore of silver, frequently enriched by gray copper (tetrahedrite). The high percentage of lead makes smelting the most rational process of treatment, and they are generally to be classified as smelting ores.

In several localities, however, of which Parrott City and Mount Sneffels are chief examples, rich ores of silver are found, nearly or quite devoid of lead. These come mainly into the group of antimonial ores, with chlorides and sulphides also. Popularly these ores,—barring the chloride,—are termed “brittle silver,” and on account of the absence of lead, they are unfit for smelting, but must eventually be treated by a milling process in which the pulp is subjected to the action of mercury in amalgamating pans, where the silver is separated from the quartz and collected by the quicksilver. Antimonial ores, prior to amalgamation, will require chlorination, that is, roasting with salt, as is done at the Ontario mine, Utah; while the chlorides and sulphides of silver can be treated directly, without roasting, as at the mines of the Comstock lode, Nevada.

The foregoing remarks apply generally to all of the mining districts mentioned in the present chapter; and their uniform nature is readily explained by the fact that the whole neighborhood is of the same geological age, character and origin.

The mines in the immediate vicinity of Silverton, my starting point, are situated upon, or rather in, the lofty mountains which hem in the little park. Southward of the town, easily recognized by its cloven peak, stands the Sultan, thirteen thousand five hundred feet in altitude. Its most noteworthy mines are the “North Star,” “Empire,” “Jennie Parker,” and “Belcher.” Tower and Round mountains, next northward, contain several ledges of low-grade galena ores of silver.

Crossing the Animas to the eastern side, King Solomon wears as the central jewel in his crown another “North Star.” It stands upon his very brow,—one of the loftiest silver deposits in the world, almost fourteen thousand feet above the restless surf of the Pacific. Here, too, the ore is galena and gray copper of extraordinarily high grade. A marvelous trail has been cut through the woods and then nicked into the almost solid rock of the bald mountain-crest, far above timber-line, or built out upon balconies of logs, along which burros carry to the mine all its supplies, and bring down its product. On King Solomon are several other noteworthy claims, such as the “Shenandoah,” “Eclipse,” and “Royal Tiger.”

Nothing but a bird or a mountain sheep would be likely to attempt the almost vertical wall rising from the southern side of Arastra gulch to culminate in the spires of Hazelton mountain. Coming out into the valley, however, a road is to be found zigzagging its way up the slope leading to the principal mines, pierced only a trifle below the border of stunted spruce-woods. Very likely Dr. Holland was correct in his poetico-mineralogical statement that

but it is certain that in the San Juan, silver resides upon the loftiest ledges, where the shadowy peaks form “bridal of the earth and sky.”

The group of mines to which I have referred are known as the “Aspen,” consolidating several names of properties under the ownership of the San Juan and New York Mining and Smelting company, which is also proprietor of the smelter at Durango.

Sitting in a cozy office one evening, with two or three pleasant visitors, the conversation fell upon the other side of the year, for the last man came in rubbing his knuckles as though it were cold.

“Ha, ha!” laughed the merry Madame, glancing out at the ashy-gray peaks, which were wan in the new moonlight with autumn’s first white dusting; and, as she laughed, she quoted

“Well, it is, pretty nearly,” comes the quick rejoinder. “I have seen it snow every day during the last week of August, and the seasons which do not give us frosts in July are rare. When I first came to Baker’s park I asked a miner what sort of a climate reigned here. ‘It’s nine months winter and three months mighty late in the fall!’ was his laconic report, and I have found it a true one.

“You see,” he continued, “winter really begins about the first of November. The superintendent who hasn’t got his supplies at his mine-house by that time had better hurry, for some morning a storm will begin which will drop three or four feet of snow on a level, and fill all the small gulches full. Then his chance of packing anything up the mountain is gone. In 1880, several foremen were surprised in that way, but the first storm came remarkably early,—the 8th of October,—and on the 11th the snow was five feet deep. Later there was an open spell, though, when deficiencies could be made up, but that was only luck.”

“But,” said the Madame, solicitously, “how can men live in those little cabins, away up there, all through the terrible winter? I should think they would freeze, or that avalanches would sweep them away.”

“Oh, both those misfortunes can be guarded against. The houses are very tight and snug, and fuel is carefully stored away. Then, too, the work is carried on underground, where the temperature is practically changeless the year ’round, and the men have little occasion to go out of doors unless they wish to, for the entrance to the mine is under the shelter of the house-roof. Then, too, the fact is, that bleak and thoroughly arctic as it looks, the mercury will not fall so low, or at least will not average as low, up at timber line on Sultan, as it will down here in town. I suppose the excess of dampness in the valley makes the difference, which is more apparent to our feelings than even to the thermometer.”

“But the snow-slides are sometimes terrific, are they not?” is asked.

“Terrific? I assure you that word is not half strong enough to express it. When you go up to Cunningham gulch, and over into the other valleys, you will see the sides of the mountains, in certain places, utterly bare of trees two or three thousand feet below the limit of their growth. That is where they have been swept away and kept down by constantly recurring avalanches of snow, which in many parts of these ranges are liable to slip down in masses perhaps a mile square and anywhere from ten to a hundred feet deep, bringing rocks and everything else with them. Of course, no sapling could stand such a scraping,—nothing can. I was in a slide once, and I can appreciate it, I assure you.”

“You were!” exclaims the Madame, round-eyed at this. “I thought you said nothing could stand a snow-slide.”

“I didn’t attempt to. I went with it, and was carried down the mountain-side head first,—most of the time under flying clouds of snow-dust, until I plunged—fortunately feet down—into the compact mass at the bottom. Then a friend followed and dug me out, happening, by good luck, to begin his prospecting in just the right place.”

“But weren’t you smothered; and how did you feel going down?”

“Very nearly smothered; as to the feeling, it was merely a confused sense of noise, darkness, nothingness, nowhereness, and the sudden end of all things. Can you understand such a combination of sensations?

“Here in the park,” our friend continued, “we don’t mind the winter much. We have enough people to keep one another company, and we have no end of fun snowshoeing.”

“What sort of snow-shoes?” I break the silence to ask.

“The Norwegian skidors,—thin boards, ten or twelve feet long, and slightly turned up in front. There is an arrangement of straps about a third of the way back from the front end, and that’s all there is of it, though it’s a good deal if you don’t know how to manipulate—”

“Pedipulate, would hit it closer, wouldn’t it?”

“We came very near a famine in Rico, the first winter,” our visitor continues. “Nobody could tell just how many people would stay, the winter closed in unexpectedly early, and, all together, before New Year’s day, it began to be whispered that the supply of ‘grub’ was short. As fast as the stores diminished, prices went up, until they were nearly fabulous. Everybody was on short rations alike. The hotel would give beds, but no board. One day a miner came in from over the range on snowshoes, and reached the hotel nearly dead with hunger and exhaustion. Pfeiffer took pity on him, as an exceptional case. ‘I gifs you your supper,’ he said, ‘und a ped, und I gifs you one meal to-morrow; after that you must rustle for yourself.’ Flour, bacon, ham, sugar, coffee, everything, even tobacco, gave out in the shops; and had it not been that one of the mines which had laid in a large stock of food, shut down and so sold out, it is probable that the whole camp would have been obliged to have dragged themselves through the depth of a hundred miles of February snows, out into the lower country. Comical stories are told of how the first burro-train load of provisions was distributed.”

But in spite of all this isolation, this necessity for elaborate preparation, the arctic altitude and polar length of the “season of snows and sins,” as Swinburne phrases it, the winter is really the best time in which to work these silver mines, and the impression that the San Juan district must be abandoned for half the year, is entirely wrong, when any thorough system of operations has been projected. Well sheltered and abundantly fed, removed from the temptations of the bar-room, which can only be got at by a frightfully fatiguing and perilous trip on snow-shoes, and settled to the fact that a whole winter’s work lies ahead, there is no season when such steady progress is possible, either in “dead-work” development or in taking out ore preparatory to shipment in the spring.

Two little streams come down to the Animas at Silverton—Mineral creek and Cement creek—the former passing between Sultan and The Anvil, and the latter between The Anvil and Tower mountains. Up Mineral creek a dozen miles we find Red mountain, the scene of the latest and richest discoveries in the San Juan, but which will be considered elsewhere. Cement creek has several good mines, while beyond, almost on the divide between the Animas and the Uncompahgre, lies the Poughkeepsie Gulch camp, which was, not long ago, the locality of a “boom;” and I have the opinion of a very competent judge, that there probably is no equally limited district in the whole region, Red mountain being perhaps excepted, where so much good ore exists.

Still farther, at the very head of Cement creek, is located the important Ross Basin group of mines, worked by English capital, as are many other claims in the San Juan mountains. A neighboring mine is remarkable for producing an ore of bismuth in such quantity as to give it great mineralogical interest. Bismuth is exceedingly rare. In the United States it is obtained only to a small amount in Connecticut. Saxony furnishes commerce its main supply, procuring it at the metallurgical works of Freiburg, where it is associated with the lead ores, and is extracted from the cupel furnace after large quantities of lead have been refined, being accumulated in the rich litharge, or liquid dross, near the conclusion of the process. This litharge is treated with acid, and the bismuth precipitated as a chloride by dilution with water. The making of lily white and other complexion compounds is the chief use to which bismuth is applied. The Madame assures me that the effect upon the skin is very noxious,—but how could she know that?

Crossing the divide, passing the “Mountain Queen” district, and proceeding eastward down the west branch of the Animas to the town of Animas Forks, another prosperous and populous mining area is reached. Mineral Point, where twenty or thirty rich veins crop out, is covered with claim stakes until it looks like a young vineyard. Its ores, in general, are dry,—that is, contain little lead; and some streaks show the beautiful ruby silver. Yet further down, on the eastern side of the river, lie the partly developed silver veins and ledges of gold quartz in Picayune gulch, where hydraulic machinery is used; and opposite is Brown’s gulch, where galena and gray copper occur.

The river in this part of the valley struggles through a close and pretty cañon, at the lower end of which stands Eureka,—a neat village nestling among trees. Here, too, are concentration works, and the headquarters of several companies operating in Eureka, Minnie, and Maggie gulches.

The wall-like sides of the mountains shutting close in together from Eureka down to Howardsville, show “mineral stains” everywhere, and the eye can trace dozens of veins slanting up and down the dark cliffs, and study how they thicken here and pinch there, or just beyond perhaps disappear altogether, upsetting all the old theories. At Howardsville, which was the center of everything years ago, the reviewer diverges up Cunningham gulch, completing the circle of his inquiries, for from Howardsville to Silverton it is only four miles.

Cunningham is a good type of those huge ravines the western man calls gulches. Its real walls are several hundred yards apart,—Galena and Green mountains on the north, King Solomon on the south—but from each have tumbled long sloping banks of débris, that join at their bases into a series of ridges. Among these a turbulent stream seeks its irregular way, and over them the traveler must climb wearily, making frequent detours to avoid huge pieces of rock that have fallen bodily from the cliffs, and have been rolled by their great weight to the very bottom of the gorge. Here and there the walls are sundered, and down a side ravine is tossed a foaming line of cataracts; or some hollow among the peaks (themselves out of sight) will turn its gathered drainage over the cliff, to fall two or three thousand feet in a resounding series of cascades, white and filmy and brilliant against its dark and glistening background. Wherever any soil has been able to gather upon these loose rocks, if some curvature of the cliffs protects from the sweeping destruction of snow avalanches, heavy spruce timber grows, and this, with lighter tinted patches of poplars, or willow-thickets in wet places, or a tangle of briers hiding the sharp rocks and beloved of the woodchucks and conies, give all there is of vegetation.

But these are all minor features, under-foot. Overhead tower the rosy and gleaming monuments of that old time “when the gods were young and the world was new;”—cliffs rising so steeply that only here and there can they be climbed, and studded with domes and pinnacles so slender and lofty that, under our unsteady glance, they seem to totter and swim vaguely through the azure concave.

Amid this magnificence of rock-work, spanned by a violet edged vault which is not sky but only color,—the purest mass of color in the universe,—passes the trail and stage-road cut over the lofty crest to the sources of the Rio Grande, and thence down through Antelope park to beautiful Wagon-Wheel Gap, and the railway again. Here, too, are rich silver mines, lowest down the “Pride of the West,” next the “Green Mountain,” and, last of all, “Highland Mary,” standing almost on the summit of the pass.

The central point and outlet of all this district is Silverton, and its founders preëmpted almost the only site for a town of any consequence in the whole region. Yet she has less than one thousand acres to spread herself over. Engulfed amid lofty peaks, a little park lies as level as a billiard-table, and as green, breaking into bluffs and benches northward where the river finds its way down.

When, three and twenty years ago, miners were amazed at the wealth disclosed in the mines of central Colorado, eager prospectors began to penetrate yet deeper into the recesses of the jumbled ranges that lay behind the front rank. Among the boldest of these was a certain Colonel Baker, reputed to have got his title as a confederate officer, who organized a large party of men—some say two hundred in number—to go on an exploration of what was then called the Pike’s Peak belt, including nearly all the region between that historic mountain and the head of the Gila river in Arizona. Marching eastward to Pueblo, and thence by the old Mexican wagon-road through Conejos and Tierra Amarilla, Baker and his men worked northward along the San Juan and Animas, prospecting for and finding more or less bars of gold-gravel (you may get “colors” anywhere in this part of Colorado), till finally, in the summer of 1860, he crossed the range, and discovered the deep-sunken nook which bears his name.

Erecting a central camp here, these prospectors climbed all the mountains, and pushed up every ravine, in search of gold, but found small encouragement. The silver they knew of, but had no means of working. Winter came, and they gathered together and built cabins in the thick timber at the mouth of the cañon. The snow packed deep about them, a provision train intended for their succor was captured by the Indians, who became aggressive, sickness set in, and the horrors of starvation stood at their very doors. This terror, added to their lack of success, overcame even pioneer patience and philosophy. Reviling Baker as a cheat, who had brought them, under false pretenses, into this terrible state, they were about to hang him to one of the groaning pines that mocked their misery with a loud pretense of grief in every storm, when some slight help came and the colonel’s neck was saved. The following summer, all who had not died crawled out of their prison-park and returned to civilization.

It was not until ten years later that any persons went to Baker’s park to stay, and then they were extremely few in number. Almost the first result of this second advent of prospectors was the unearthing of the “Little Giant” gold mine in Arastra gulch—a narrow ravine where were at once erected a log village and an arastra with which to crush the quartz, worked by the little stream which trickles down from the snowbanks. Simultaneously came the discovery of silver leads, a fact that speedily got abroad, induced a little boom, and set Howardsville on its feet as a camp of some importance and magnificent expectations.

Five miles below, Silverton was laid out straight and square, became the county-seat, and attracted most of the new-comers as a place of residence. At first, of course, all the buildings were of logs, and bore roofs of dirt. To-day the village has perhaps fifteen hundred permanent residents; churches, schools, newspapers, the telegraph, and all the appurtenances of frontier civilization. It is characteristic of these mountain towns that they spring full size into both existence and dignity. There is no Topsy-growth at all; rather a Minerva-like maturity from the start.

For several years no wagon-road entered Baker’s park, and the only communication between it and the outside world was by saddle animals. As the local paper gently expressed it, it “was somewhat deprived of easy transportation.” Goods and machinery of every sort had to be brought in on the backs of the tough and patient little Mexican donkeys, toiling across the terrible heights under burdens almost as bulky as themselves. The whole town would be alive with a general jubilation when the tinkling bells of the first train of jacks was heard in the spring, for that meant the end of a six months’ siege in the midst of impassable snow.

Though these mountains are yet full of men who go about all day with a big six-shooter in their belt; and though the main streets of Silverton (like other frontier places) contain too many drinking and gambling saloons, yet the town has never passed through such a rough history as most mining camps see, and it is to-day the most orderly village in the whole region. This is chiefly due to the quietly determined attitude its best citizens have taken, and their fixed purpose not to let the lawless rule.