Off to Del Norte and Wagon Wheel Gap! That meant a long run. We might have gone afoot across the Cunningham Pass and down the Alpine fastness of the Rio Grande’s birthplace almost as speedily as the train would take us, back to Durango, over the heights and glories of Toltec, down the mazy labyrinth of the Whiplash, and across the sheep pastures of San Luis. But we were in no hurry, and by preparing had the jolliest time you can imagine the whole way. At Alamosa we bid a reluctant farewell to our three companions, the Artist, the Photographer and the Musician, who can no longer spare to us their society. But our prospective loneliness is mitigated by a new comer,—an old college friend. I shall introduce him to the reader as Chum, because that was the ordinary way in which we dispensed with his name.

Here, the good-bye and the welcome given in the same breath, we change our cars to a new train headed westward toward the upper course of the Rio Grande, with its farms and mines and medicinal springs.

The track is laid right across San Luis park, which is to become, through irrigation, one of the richest agricultural regions in the world. By and bye, the dull line under the horizon began to form itself into trees, and among these we could distinguish the scattered log and adobe dwellings and the half-cultivated little farms of Mexican ranchmen. The bottoms of the Rio Grande now spread wide around us, with bushes and trees, and tall, rich grass, and a few miles further on we came to the town amid a group of picturesquely broken volcanic bluffs of great size. This is a sort of postern-gate for the San Juan mining region, and also for Lake City, Ouray and the San Miguel.

Only a postern-gate, for now the railway southward carries the passenger to Durango and Silverton, and the Salt Lake line makes an easy entrance to the northern slope of the Sierra Madre; but, a few years ago Del Norte was the last outfitting point for those going into all that region, and the first real civilization encountered on the return. Under the “boom” of this patronage the old Mexican ranch-center became an American town of some size and importance almost ten years ago, and its people thought they were soon to be the metropolis of the southwest. But such has not yet appeared to be their destiny, and a snug, stirring little village of twelve or fifteen hundred people is all that the settlement has developed into. It is charmingly placed, and there is so much land along the river, both above and below, which is cultivated by both Mexicans and Americans (chiefly in the line of hay), and so many sheep, cattle and horses are owned and sold there, that this interest alone will support the village and enable it to grow slowly.

But pleasant Del Norte has more than this to rely upon. Twenty-eight miles back in the mountains of the Continental divide are the famous Summit gold mines. The richness of these mines (as they appear at present) is almost inconceivable—it equals the fabled El Dorado so many brave fellows have died in their effort to find. The railway express company, in the three months following the advent of the road at Del Norte, forwarded to the Denver mint $300,000 in gold bars. I have seen and handled many pieces of this reddish, rusty, honeycombed quartz, in which you could see the gold as thickly and plainly as the pepper on sliced cucumbers. There were streaks of it, maybe half an inch wide, where the material was more than half its weight, pure, visible gold.

Prospecting on South mountain in 1874 (or before that) men found these ledges, and various claims were staked off, and, in 1875, stamp mills were erected, which at once began grinding out thousands of dollars a day and saving only about sixty per cent. of the gold, the remainder running off in the tailings because it was too coarse and heavy to be caught quickly by the mercurial batteries; this was enough to set fire to the tinder of the gold-seeking population, which is always ready to stampede to a new camp, and in 1876 a great rush to the Summit district happened. The whole region was quickly put under claim-stakes and a dozen respectable mining beginnings were made. Among these was a group of claims, more or less worked, which became the property of a corporation called the San Juan Consolidated Mining Company. Their principal mine was the “Ida,” and their most intelligent stockholder was Judge, now United States Senator, Thomas Bowen. He came to this region from Arkansas an exceedingly poor man, though in early life he had been a wealthy planter. Elected a justice of his judicial district, he plodded on foot from county to county, too poor to own a horse. For seven long years, the story goes, he put all his money into prospecting, and at last turned up here at the Summit. Watching the way in which the “Consolidated” property was being handled, he concluded that its managers were not on the right track and would speedily come to a halt; furthermore, he had faith that he could right the mistake if he had the power.

But “Bowen’s bonanza” is not the only one. There are others of perhaps equal merit close by, and I have no doubt many more will be discovered. For, in spite of all the bullion which has this year been produced, these mines are as yet in their infancy. I suppose the measure of half a mile would include the total length of underground workings in all of them together. Who shall say what the future may not disclose?

Half a dozen miles across the mountain from the Summit is a flourishing little settlement of prospectors who believe they have struck a profitable lode of silver-galena; and still farther beyond, among the springs of the Rio San Juan, lie the Cornwall silver mines, where much work has been done. The principal properties are on the Perry lode, which gives sulphuret of silver. Other ores there vary from this, however, and are said to be best suited to the lixiviation process. A smelter has been purchased for that locality. Judge Jones, so well known all over southern Colorado for his steady allegiance to everything which savors of “San Juan” and for his equal hatred of whisky, has large visions of future wealth out of this district.

Now the whole of these mines and trials for a mine are so much grist to Del Norte’s mill. So long as they keep men digging, so long she will thrive exceptionally and remain an important feeder to our railway.

The scenery along the Rio Grande, above Del Norte, is very fine, and has always the zest of human interest in the quaint ranches of the Mexican farmers, whose women and children flock out to see every train go by. Terraced steeps bound the river-valley where the farms are, at a little distance, on the right, while rounded pine-clad hills slope upward on the left. We see this part of the river on our way to Wagon Wheel Gap, a place for which, if I were writing a separate chapter, I should adopt as a motto the words of Exodus: “And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water and three score and ten palm trees, and they encamped there by the waters.”

“But what is Wagon Wheel Gap, and how did it get such a name?” asks the Madame.

“The gap,” it is thereupon explained, “is a noble gateway, thirty miles west of Del Norte, through which the Rio Grande breaks out of the confinement of its youth in the San Juan mountains; and I heard only yesterday how it come by its name, from the great and good Judge Jones, whose narratives most happily combine both facts and fancies.

“You will remember what we heard of the band of men who went into the San Juan mines four and-twenty years ago, under Colonel Baker. Well, there was a part of that story you have not heard yet. It seems that the party was composed of Northern and of Southern men in nearly equal numbers. When they heard that war had broken out between the Northern States and the hoped for ‘Confederacy,’ there was added to the woe of disappointment, diminished food, and the fear of Indians, the bitterness of a little civil war among those who previously had been compatriots and friends. It was a miserable little copy of the great struggle, but it resulted in disproportionate sorrows, for a panic ensued, in which the men of the party broke up and scattered out of the mountains by every available passage, a prey to double the dangers which would have menaced them had they stayed together. Some tried to take their wagons out piecemeal over Cunningham Pass. Putting them together on the eastern side, they worked their way down to Del Norte, Fort Garland, and so to Santa Fe, or around to Denver. But they often broke down, and a relic of this panic-stricken flight, in the shape of a large wagon wheel, found by Judge Jones, served to give the place its peculiar name. To distinguish it from other gaps in the range it was spoken of as ‘the gap where the wagon wheel was found,’ which soon, by natural process of curtailment, condensation and transposition, became ‘Wagon Wheel Gap,’ and Wagon Wheel Gap it is, even unto this day.”

The gap itself is a cleft through a great hill; or it is two half hills (for they stand not squarely opposite one another, but with somewhat overlapping ends only) each vertically faced and uprightly seamed on the river side, but sloping away into a grassy ridge behind. The southern end of the bluffs, which also is the farthest up stream, is narrow and tower-like, but the other, rounding out and swelling high, in the center has a breadth of half a mile or more, the river washing its bowed base. Of about the same height as the Palisades of the Hudson, and like them marked with vertical lines of cleavage, this bluff of reddish volcanic rock would bear a striking resemblance to that great monument of the Plutonic reign on the Atlantic slope, did its façade present a straight front; but in this swelling front is where it exceeds its eastern rival, for one gets added pleasure from the perspective of the massive battlement retreating right and left in grand curvature.

The gap is wide enough not to pen the water into a very narrow flood, so that only a slight exaggeration of the always lively current occurs. This is enough, however, to make these ripples a favorite spot for the splendid trout in which the whole upper part of the river abounds, and I suppose four or five thousand pounds of these gamy fish are taken every year.

Right at the foot of the talus stands a group of connected log-cabins forming a comfortable hotel. As we are bound for the hot springs, we do not remain here, but climbing into the spring wagon in waiting ride southward for a mile back into the hills to a second little cuchara of a valley where are the springs themselves and the hotel, bath houses and accessories belonging to the sanitarium they have created. This hotel is delightfully home-like in its excellence of bed and board.

Persons go to Wagon Wheel Gap seeking recreation and for recovery from ill health. If the first is their object (as it has been in the case of the late Secretary of the Treasury,—one of the hardest working men for ten months in the year, in the United States) they have a pleasant home and good company and no end of out-door fun from which to choose. There are little hills near by which they may begin on, and taller bluffs beyond, where they may make perfect their practice; while far away stand the “ultimate heights” of the Sierra Madre,—unbroken masses of snow when we last beheld their spear-pointed peaks. There are ponies they may ride, and donkeys for the children. There are single buggies and phætons for the ladies and carryalls for the whole family. There are geologizing, botanizing and general natural history to invite study in endless variety.

Then there is good sport. That noblest of the deer race,—the elk—still haunts the upland pastures and mountain glades. The black-tailed deer is to be found lurking in the aspens, and, if you are a good climber, you may enjoy the very next thing to Alpine chamois shooting in the arduous chase of the mountain sheep. As for fishing, there is no stint to it in the proper season. I know no place in Colorado where the fly-fisher will have better sport and the angler, though uninstructed in the wiles of Walton, get better results.

But it is to invalids that the hot springs especially appeal, holding out all these pleasures for their delectation as gradually they regain their health sufficiently to practice and enjoy them. Long ago these beneficent waters were resorted to by the Indians for healing. A trail, not yet obliterated, ran across the hills to Pagosa Springs, which were called The Big Medicine, while these waters were known as The Little Medicine.

Though of less volume than single springs at Pagosa, the springs at Wagon Wheel Gap pour out nearly as much water, since there are thirty or more of them in the sheltered basin which makes a natural sanitarium. Some are icy cold, others tepid, others extremely hot. They are diverse also, in respect to their mineral constituents, nearly every known variety of spa water being represented more or less closely. Only a few of the springs are utilized, however, those being selected which seem to have the most powerful curative properties. These are principally three,—and are known as Nos. One, Two and Three. The analysis of them published, though imperfect, but serves to show the general character of each, and reads as follows, the proportions being thousandths of a given bulk of the water:

The largest of these is the “Number One,” and from it is drawn the water for the plunge-bath and to the private bath-rooms, which is used in the largest number of cases where the disease affects the nerves, blood or skin. An oval basin twenty feet or more in length has been excavated and tastefully walled up. Here the spring bubbles up most copiously, at a temperature of 150 degrees Fahrenheit, and sends off an incessant cloud of steam if the air is at all cold. From this tank the water is conducted in an open trough to the bath-houses, losing about 30 degrees of its heat on the way. This introduces it into the baths at the quite endurable temperature of 120 degrees, but fills the compartment with a cloud of vapor, so that the patient breathes in the chemically-laden moisture with every inhalation. Besides this, while in the bath, the fresh hot water is drunk in big draughts. The invalid is thus soaked out and in with the healing fluid; the pores of his skin, all the passages of his head and chest, his stomach and secretory organs feel the touch of the water and eagerly absorb the medicinal elements it contains.

Astonishing results have come from a steady continuance of daily baths and sweatings. They will tell you instances—and vouch for them, too, by incontestable testimony—of men brought there utterly helpless and full of agony from inflammatory rheumatism or neuralgia, who, in a week, were able to walk about and help themselves, in a fortnight were strolling about the valley erect and comfortable, in a month went to work. Three months of faithful self-treatment, it is confidently promised, will set straight the most chronic and painful cases of such invalidism. Many a miner now digging in the wintry mountains passed from almost certain death to exuberant strength through this Siloam, and evidences are being multiplied of the startling efficacy of these springs with every additional season.

Then there is the dreadful list of cutaneous diseases and disorders of the blood, headed by the fiendish heritage of syphilis. To such cases, because their disease is communicable, are set apart separate baths. Here, again, utter helplessness and the awful suffering which tempts to suicide, are relieved by a few weeks of steady application; and not merely relieved, as the druggist’s medicines might in some cases do, but, it is claimed, thoroughly and healthfully cured. But this last claim, in the case of pronounced syphilis, needs the confirmation of longer trial. I am willing to admit that the two or three, or four years which have elapsed since certain persons have gone away restored to health, have shown no recurrence of the symptoms; but I should like to know that the same thing could be said indisputably half a century hence before I would be willing to admit as proven that this spring or any other could lay low forever the head of a malady which it has hitherto baffled medical science to eradicate wholly from an infected system. But even if this final, full glory shall never be attained by the Wagon Wheel Springs, it is enough joy for the present that they are able to alleviate its miseries and even temporarily check the havoc of body and soul. I have said so much upon this point, because, it being impossible to deny the existence of the evil, it is every man’s duty to aid in spreading a knowledge of any method of relief or cure.

“I know it, unless I work him down your way.”

“Come on with him—don’t mind me.” I reeled in, climbed on the rock, and sat down to see the fun. The noble fellow made a gallant fight, but the hook was in his upper jaw, and it was only a matter of time when he would turn upon his side. Working him down stream, through my pool and round into the quieter water near shore, was the work of ten minutes at least, the captive, seeming to readily understand that still water was not his best hold, kept making rushes for the swift current; but each time he was brought back, and soon began to weaken under the spring of the lithe toy in Chum’s hand. Fifteen minutes were exhausted when the scale hook was run under his gills and he registered one pound twelve ounces.

Apologizing for creating a row in my quarters, Chum went back to his old place, while again I tried my luck. About five minutes elapsed when I heard another not to be mistaken yell.

“I’ve got another—he’s bigger than the first.”

“Yes, I see you have—I think it’s infernally mean.”

“I know it is, but I can’t help it. I’ve got to come down there again.”

“Well, come on,” and I sat down again to watch the issue. The struggle was not so brave, though the fish, when brought to scale, weighed half a pound more than the first. While we were commenting on this streak of luck, we noticed a change in the water, its partially clear hue began to grow milky, and in less time than it takes to tell it, a bowlder six inches under the surface was out of sight.

“We might as well go to dinner, no trout will try to rise in that mud,” and I reeled up with the reflection that the next best thing to catching a trout is to see one captured by one who knows how.

The next day we had another try. Chum crossed the river, and then we slowly walked down to a magnificent pool a mile below. Here were a party of half a dozen gentlemen, to one of whom I called out just as we came within hearing.

“Have you got him?” The inquiry was made on the score of good fellowship; the bend of his split bamboo, the tension of his line, and the whirr of his reel indicated the first stage.

“I’ve hooked him, and he’s no sardine, I tell you—whoa, boy, gently now,” as a sudden rush strung off full twenty feet of line. “Whoa, boy, be easy now; gently, now; come here; whoa! confound your picture! whoa, boy, gently, so, boy.”

“May be you think you are driving a mule,” came from one of the anglers.

“Oh, no! I’m trying to lead one—whoa, boy, whoa, boy, gently, now, none of your capers—whoa! I tell you!” as a renewed and vigorous dash for liberty threatened destruction to the slender tackle. “No you don’t, old fellow, so, boy, that’s a good fellow,” and showing his back near the surface, the captive exhibited twenty inches (at a guess) of trout.

“By George, he’s a beauty,” came from behind us.

I had allowed my flies to float down stream and had backed out to give room for fair play. It was a long fight, but his troutship finally showed side up, and was gently drawn ashore, the water turned out of him, and he drew down the scale three pounds to a notch.

These are only “pointers” for the angling fraternity. As for our own luck that day—well, we had good trout left in the ice-box for a week.

It was our fortune throughout this trip to mix experiences by the most sudden transitions. It did not seem strange to us, therefore, that from the gold-fields and trouting and jollity of this beautiful valley, we should go at a jump into the coal districts east of the range.

XVII
EL MORO AND CAÑON CITY.

—William E. Pabor.

“El Moro, sir,—breakfast nearly ready, sir!”

I had only closed my eyes an instant before, I was sure, yet then I had been lying quietly in the station at Alamosa, away over on the other side of the Sangre de Cristo. I couldn’t remember anything of the transition. Then it was night; now it was morning. Time and space had been an utter blank for ten hours and a hundred miles.

Drawing aside my window curtain and gazing out over gray plains, my eyes caught instantly the bluish outlines of a grander castle and fortress than ever traveler on Rhine or Danube glanced upon. Almost a twelve-month before the Madame and I had spent a sunny day at St. Augustine, where the old square, four-bastioned fort stood grim on the shore of a foam-flecked and laughing sea. Here was a copy of that fortress a thousand times as large,—sloping walls, outer works, bastions, towers and all; you might almost see the huge guns, standing rigid and ready on the magnificent parapet. This was El Moro. It was miles and miles away, and a hundred cities had room to cluster about it and take its name without crowding one another. It is the most magnificent model of a half ruined, antique, but altogether glorious fortress in the whole wide world.

At El Moro are some of the great coal mines of this carboniferous state; but to put the matter Hibernically, they are half a dozen miles away up in the hills. We went up there on an engine which drew behind it a box-car load of Mexicans, men and women, who all squatted down on their heels on the car floor and were quite happy, chattering like magpies. It is a very miserable class of Mexicans, for the most part, that one sees in this part of the state. The fathers and mothers of most of them were peons of the wealthy Spaniards, who, under the old regime, owned all this region as pasturage for their flocks and herds.

The coal-bed is some hundreds of feet higher than the valley of the Purgatoire, where the village is; and it can be traced for thirty miles east and west, cropping out frequently and used all along by the farmers who live near it, as a supply of fuel. Throughout this extent it varies, of course, in thickness and quality, though in no great degree. Where the El Moro mines are opened, it runs from a vertical thickness of thirty feet to thirteen, nearly all of which is solid, merchantable coal. There are two thin streaks of what the miners term “bone”—something neither coal nor slate—and little patches of refuse, now and then, but no great amount.

I do not know how many hundreds of yards of underground tunnels we walked through, but it was an immense distance, yet the foreman said we had not been half way through it all. Everywhere the roof was high overhead and the walls solid coal, so that the men did not have to crawl on all fours or lie prostrate and dig, as I have seen done in some eastern mines, but could stand full height. All the product of the mine is taken by the pick, except a small amount cut by machines, which dig a horizontal trench, level with the floor, for five feet or so under the breast of the coal and across its whole breadth. This machine works with extreme rapidity, and after it is done, a couple of blasts will topple down as much coal as can be carted out in a day.

The output each month is nearly twenty-five thousand tons, about two hundred and seventy-five miners working. The piece-work method is adopted in paying, and though a smaller rate is paid per ton in mining than is usual in the Pennsylvania or Illinois mines, the earnings of the miners aggregate much larger than the average in the East. This is due to the superior ease with which this coal can be taken out, because of its softness and the roominess of the working chambers, rather than to anything better in the miners or greater diligence in working. One difficulty, indeed, arises from the ease with which high earnings can be made here, namely, that desirable workmen will labor only during the winter, or until they have made a “grub-stake,” as they say, when they will go into the mountains prospecting for mines until their funds are exhausted, for, thus far, none of them have become suddenly wealthy.

At the mines, the Colorado Coal and Iron Company, which owns this property, have built a small village of adobe and wooden houses, in which the miners reside. About two hundred men were employed, many of whom had families. They were of almost every nationality, including some sixty Mexicans.

The El Moro coal is a true bituminous coal, producing a coke of excellent quality. It is asserted by its owners to be the best coal for making gas and for blacksmithing in the state; and it is used extensively for steam and metallurgical purposes. It is also said to be the only coal yet discovered in Colorado, lying east of the mountains, which can be profitably used for heating iron in furnaces, and for this it is equal to the best grades of eastern coal. About two-thirds of the product is made into coke.

The coke-works lie five miles from the mines and near El Moro, where there are three steam pumps, a fifty-horse power engine, crushing and washing machinery and two hundred and fifty coking ovens. A charge for each of these ovens, they told us, was about four and a half tons, and the yield of coke from each, after forty-eight hours of burning, is about two and a quarter tons, making a present total product of two hundred and eighty tons of coal a day.

The following shows the analysis of this coal and coke, and also that of the well known Connelsville coal and coke:

This analysis of El Moro coal was made from selected specimens; the average of ash in the coke will probably run up to twelve to fourteen per cent.

When we were at Cucharas once before (I have omitted to mention it in its proper place), we ran over to Walsenburg, a neat little settlement in Huerfano Park, and a headquarters for a large sheep industry, and visited the coal mines of this company near by. They own a large tract of land there, containing three seams of coal, four, nine, and five feet in thickness. Only the thickest of these has as yet been developed, sending out about seventy-five thousand tons annually. This coal analyses as follows, “No. 1” being the four-feet seam, “No. 2” the nine-feet seam:

It was old traveled ground, for the major part of the distance between El Moro and Cañon City, on the Arkansas, forty miles above Pueblo; and as we were anxious to save all the time we could for the new regions in the west, where we were sure the most romantic experiences awaited, we decided for another night-run, disadvantageous as they were, compared with day journeys. The next morning after our visit to El Moro, therefore, found us at anchor in Cañon City.

“What is there to see about Cañon City?” Oh, quantities of things. Here is a list of what its Record keeps “set up” as its “advantages, natural and otherwise:”

“Soda springs, iron springs, hot soda baths, wide streets, excellent town site, immense water power, exhaustless coal fields, good water works, best building stone, splendid lime rock, iron mines, mica mines, lead mines, silver mines, oil wells, irrigating ditches, abundance of shade trees, peaches, plums, pears, apples, walnuts, grapes, vegetables, grain, flowers, bees, fifteen thousand dollar school house, twenty thousand dollar court house, Masonic temple, city government, low taxes, streets sprinkled, seven churches, theatre hall, first-class dentists, two newspapers, excellent physicians, good teachers, brick and stone stores, excellent society, protection from cold winds, immense stocks of goods, railroad communication, good ranches, stock ranges, excellent hotels, military college, and kindergarten.”

Most of these items describe themselves, but others are worth mention. Right at the mouth of the Grand Cañon, which suggested the name, this site early attracted to a permanent home many of the earliest wanderers whom the famous Pike’s Peak immigration of 1859 brought to the country. Half a century before them, though, Major Zebulon Pike had made a station for part of his troops on this spot, whence he reconnoitered the surrounding mountains.

Basing their calculations upon the fact that their settlement, which from the first was called Cañon City, was the last place to which the big emigration and freight wagons could come from the plains, the pioneers had large hopes of their town as the one entrepôt and supply-point for the mountains. Merchants came here and crammed great sheds with stocks of goods sold at wholesale, while forwarders were busy in organizing ox-trains to carry supplies into the mountains.

Then the war closed, emigration westward revived, and Cañon City, along with the rest of the region, took a new lease of life. A committee of Germans came from Chicago seeking a place for a colony of their compatriots, and were guided by Mr. Rudd until they hit upon the Wet Mountain Valley and located Walsenburg. A little later, hopes of a railway cheered the hearts of the southern Coloradoans. The Kansas Pacific Company sent engineers up the Arkansas to locate their road across the range. They surveyed to this point, estimated upon the cost of grading through the cañon, and over the range by two or three routes. Then they abandoned the locality and deflected to Denver. This was no sooner done than reports of the advance of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe came to cheer the citizens, but disappointment ensued until early in the last decade the Denver and Rio Grande staked out their narrow gauge, and had the cars running regularly hither by the Spring of 1874.

All this time the town was slowly progressing and its vicinity being taken up for ranches, claimed for coal lands, quarried for building-stone and lime, and prospected for the precious metals. In 1879 came a “boom.” Leadville flashed into sight and the Rosita and Silver Cliff district sprang to the front to rival it in excitement. To both these centers of rushing crowd Cañon City was one point of ingress. The town suddenly became thronged with men and women who were straining every nerve to get into the new regions, and with the undertow of a returning army of men disgusted with their reception and ill-luck, or jubilant over quick success, or going east only to return with machinery or goods or more money and friends.

To the task of catching toll from this careless, hurrying, fat-pocketed stream of humanity Cañon City set herself. The hotels charged big prices, lodging houses started up right and left, restaurants and boarding tents thrust out their signs every few steps, merchants urged your renewing your outfit at their replenished counters, and every form of wild amusement led to revelry and hideous headaches. Of all the wild towns it has been my fortune to see in the West, I think the Cañon City of those days was the worst. Ruffianism was the only fashionable thing, seemingly, and from the tangle-headed, dusty and drunken bull-whacker or the professional card-sharper to the staid old citizen, everybody had caught the spirit of a grand spree and the devil reigned.

But the railway was at last built through the cañon, the loud-swearing, quick-shooting teamsters followed their principals to the end of the track at Cleora, Salida, Buena Vista, and so on to Leadville itself; the gamblers and dance-houses and harlots followed; the host of railway laborers no longer made the village streets scenes of debauchery, and the town counted its gains, reckoned the loss its manners and morals had suffered, and returned to its normal quiet.

But its waking up had set its blood flowing faster and it has been a live town ever since, growing steadily, making public improvements, building houses and finding occupants faster than they could be put up, and all without any fictitious excitement.

It is for its coal mines—and these are half a dozen miles eastward—that Cañon City has the highest repute, however, and to these it owes much of its prosperity. They are the property of the ubiquitous Coal and Iron Company, who supply from here a large part of the fuel—and of the hardest and cleanest quality—used in the household all over the state. The railway consumes a great quantity too, for it has long been recognized as the best steam-maker. Two veins are now worked, one five feet and the other four feet in thickness. The mines are worked by slopes furnished with steam hoisters. The Coal Creek mine has been in operation for nine years. The company has recently opened two new slopes at Oak Creek, and are prepared to furnish 1,500 tons of coal per day from them. The total annual output of these mines is about 125,000 tons. The following are the analyses of these coals:

Everybody will understand from this statement that this coal is worthless for coking, but most desirable as fuel. Our cook will swear to this, but declines to tell how much he stole at various times for culinary use.

Withal, Cañon City is a pretty town; one of the pleasantest places to live in in Colorado. Rows of large trees shade all the side-walks (and they are side-walks of planking, not mere gravel paths), and the ample spaces left about each house are filled with fruit trees, flowers and garden vegetables. To go into such a garden as one I visited in town is a surprise. A picturesquely built house, its adobe walls hidden by much climbing vinery, has its porch turned into a thickly-leaved bower by masses upon masses of clematis, whose white, thistly puffs of seed-down, each as large as a snow ball, are strung upon the green stem like monstrous beads. The garden, of which this cottage is the center, abounds in apple trees, pears, quince, plum, and peach trees, through whose spring blossoms thousands of bees go to and fro bearing burdens of honey to the neat store-houses under the shade. The lower part of the garden falls away, terrace fashion, to the river, and here are arbors of grapes, thickets of currant and gooseberry bushes, beds of asparagus, celery, and all sorts of good plants to make the pot-boiler happy. Down by the river stands a windmill, by which water is pumped to a reservoir, whence the whole garden and orchard can be irrigated and sprinkled.

This is only one of hundreds of gardens small and great where fruit and vegetables are raised for home use and for sale. Marvelous stories are told of the weight of the cabbages, of the girth of the beets, of the solidity of the turnips and strength of the onions that go hence. And as for apples, scores and scores of acres are being newly set out in apple trees, and almost square miles of “truck”fields will next year add their quota to the unsatisfied market. I was astonished when I saw how extensive and successful was the culture of fruit and garden sauce in and about Cañon City.

This comes from good soil and easy climate. They say some winters here are so mild that one hardly needs an overcoat at all; it must be remembered that though the elevation is high the latitude is low. I saw a field where clover had been cut three times a year for twelve years, yet showed no signs of running out; and as for alfalfa, they cut the crop quarterly.

The citizens think that their town is likely to prove a manufacturing center. I see no reason why it should not. The river falls there at a rate which furnishes a fine water power, already utilized to propel the public water-works. With the best of coal close by, and iron in abundance only a little way off, I should think the future would see machine shops and foundries placed at this point; while factories for woolen cloth, for making wooden-ware from pine and for various other industries adapted to the resources and market of the neighborhood, shoe factories and leather-work by machinery generally ought to be flourishing here some day, since hides ought to be tanned here instead of being sent wholly to the East.

In the State prison, which is situated here, there is already a shoe-factory, but most of the prisoners are engaged in quarrying and cutting stone. The quarries are in the side hill, and the stone is a yellowish sand-rock, very good for building. The fine-appearing prison-buildings and the lofty wall which encloses them are built of this stone, as can readily be seen from the car-windows. Much stone, in the rough and shaped, is shipped from these quarries to Denver and elsewhere, and the railway makes extensive use of it.

Just outside of the foot hills, where the sand stone is procured, are the “hog-backs”—elongated ridges of white lime-rock. These, also, are being leveled to supply the lime-kilns and also to be sent to Leadville, Argo and elsewhere for the use of the smelting furnaces as flux. Something like two hundred car-loads a week, I am told, go to Leadville alone; but the competition of lime-ledges near Robinson and elsewhere north of Leadville is likely to diminish this shipment in future to that point. Possibly, though, if the newly discovered silver prospects over the hills near Blackburn turn out to be of any value, a home demand may make up for Leadville’s discrepancies. Finally, petroleum seems to have been found here in quantities which will ultimately prove highly remunerative. Wells are being bored, and unexpectedly good results are obtained, so that high hopes are entertained that to her list of productions Colorado shall add in profitable quantities this wonderful substance—mineral oil—and the spirit of speculation and industry be given a new channel for its activity.

XVIII
IN THE WET MOUNTAIN VALLEY.