Fort William—its Structure, Owners, People, Animals, Business, Adventures, and Hazards—A Division—A March—Fort el Puebla—Trappers and Whisky—A Genius—An Adventurous Iroquois—A Kentuckian—Horses and Servant—A Trade—A Start—Arkansas and Country—Wolfano Mountains—Creeks—Rio Wolfano—A Plague of Egypt—Cordilleras—James's Peak—Pike's Peak—A Bath—The Prison of the Arkansas—Entrance of the Rocky Mountains—A Vale.
Fort William, or Bent's Fort, on the north side of the Arkansas, eighty miles north by east from Taos in the Mexican dominions, and about one hundred and sixty miles from the mountains, was erected by gentlemen owners in 1832, for purposes of trade with the Spaniards of Santa Fé and Taos, and the Eutaw, Cheyenne and Cumanche Indians. It is in the form of a parallelogram, the northern and southern sides of which are about a hundred and fifty feet, and the eastern and western a hundred feet in length. The walls are six or seven feet in thickness at the base, and seventeen or eighteen feet in height. The fort is entered through {174} a large gateway on the eastern side, in which swing a pair of immense plank doors. At the north-west and south-east corners stand two cylindrical bastions, about ten feet in diameter and thirty feet in height.
These are properly perforated for the use of cannon and small arms; and command the fort and the plains around it. The interior area is divided into two parts. The one and the larger of them occupies the north-eastern portion. It is nearly a square. A range of two-story houses, the well, and the blacksmith's shop are on the north side; on the west and south are ranges of one-story houses; on the east the blacksmith's shop, the gate and the outer wall. This is the place of business. Here the owners and their servants have their sleeping and cooking apartments, and here are the storehouses. In this area the Indians in the season of trade gather in large numbers and barter, and trade, and buy, under the guardianship of the carronades of the bastions loaded with grape, and looking upon them. From this area a passage leads between the eastern outer wall and the one-story houses, to the caral or cavy-yard, which occupies the remainder of the space within the walls. This is the {175} place for the horses, mules, &c., to repose in safety from Indian depredations at night. Beyond the caral to the west and adjoining the wall, is the waggon-house. It is strongly built, and large enough to shelter twelve or fifteen of those large vehicles which are used in conveying the peltries to St. Louis, and goods thence to the post. The long drought of summer renders it necessary to protect them from the sun.
The walls of the fort, its bastions and houses, are constructed of adobies or unburnt bricks, cemented together with a mortar of clay. The lower floors of the building are made of clay, a little moistened and beaten hard with large wooden mallets; the upper floors of the two-story houses and the roofs of all are made in the same way and of the same material, and are supported by heavy transverse timbers covered with brush. The tops of the houses being flat and gravelled, furnish a fine promenade in the moonlight evenings of that charming climate. The number of men employed in the business of this establishment is supposed to be about sixty. Fifteen or twenty of them in charge of one of the owners, are employed in taking to market the buffalo robes, &c., which are gathered at the fort, {176} and in bringing back with them new stocks of goods for future purchases. Another party is employed in hunting buffalo meat in the neighbouring plains; and another in guarding the animals while they cut their daily food on the banks of the river. Others, under command of an experienced trader, goes into some distant Indian camp to trade. One or more of the owners, and one or another of these parties which chances to be at the post, defend it and trade, keep the books of the company, &c. Each of these parties encounters dangers and hardships, from which persons within the borders of civilization would shrink.
The country in which the fort is situated is in a manner the common field of several tribes, unfriendly alike to one another and the whites. The Eutaws and Cheyennes[111] of the mountains near Santa Fé, and the Pawnees of the great Platte, come to the Upper Arkansas to meet the buffalo in their annual migrations to the north; and on the trail of these animals follow up the Cumanches. And thus in the months of June, August, and September, there are in the neighbourhood of these traders from fifteen to twenty thousand savages ready and panting for {177} plunder and blood. If they engage in battling out old causes of contention among themselves, the Messrs. Bents feel comparatively safe in their solitary fortress. But if they spare each other's property and lives, they occasion great anxieties at Fort William; every hour of day and night is pregnant with danger. These untameable savages may drive beyond reach the buffalo on which the garrison subsists; may begirt the fort with their legions, and cut off supplies; may prevent them from feeding their animals upon the plains; may bring upon them starvation and the gnawing their own flesh at the door of death! All these are expectations, which as yet the ignorance alone of the Indians as to the weakness of the post, prevents from becoming realities. But at what moment some chieftain or white desperado may give them the requisite knowledge, is an uncertainty which occasions at Fort William many well-grounded fears for life and property.
Instances of the daring intrepidity of the Cumanches which occurred just before and after my arrival here, will serve to show the hazards and dangers of which I have spoken. About the middle of June, 1839, a band of sixty of them, under cover of {178} night, crossed the river, and concealed themselves among the bushes growing thickly on the bank near the place where the animals of the establishment feed during the day. No sentinel being on duty at the time, their presence was unobserved; and when morning came the Mexican horse-guard mounted his horse, and with the noise and shouting usual with that class of servants when so employed, drove his charge out of the fort, and riding rapidly from side to side of the rear of the band, urged them on, and soon had them nibbling the short dry grass in a little vale within grape-shot distance of the guns of the bastions. It is customary for a guard of animals about these trading-posts to take his station beyond his charge; and if they stray from each other, or attempt to stroll too far, to drive them together, and thus keep them in the best possible situation to be hurried hastily to the caral, should the Indians, or other evil persons, swoop down upon them. As there is constant danger of this, his horse is held by a long rope and grazes around him, that he may be mounted quickly, at the first alarm, for a retreat within the walls. The faithful guard at Bent's, on the morning of the disaster {179} I am relating, had dismounted after driving out his animals, and sat upon the ground, watching with the greatest fidelity for every call of duty, when these fifty or sixty Indians sprang from their hiding-places, ran upon the animals, yelling horribly, and attempted to drive them across the river. The guard, however, nothing daunted, mounted quickly, and drove his horse at full speed among them. The mules and horses hearing his voice amidst the frightening yells of the savages, immediately started at a lively pace for the fort; but the Indians were on all sides, and bewildered them. The guard still pressed them onward, and called for help; and on they rushed, despite the efforts of the Indians to the contrary. The battlements were covered with men. They shouted encouragement to the brave guard—"Onward! onward!" and the injunction was obeyed. He spurred his horse to his greatest speed from side to side, and whipped the hindermost of the band with his leading rope. He had saved every animal; he was within twenty yards of the open gate; he fell; three arrows from the bows of the Cumanches had cloven his heart. Relieved of him, the lords of the quiver gathered {180} their prey, and drove them to the borders of Texas, without injury to life or limb. I saw this faithful guard's grave. He had been buried a few days. The wolves had been digging into it. Thus forty or fifty mules and horses, and their best servant's life, were lost to the Messrs. Bents in a single day. I have been informed also that those horses and mules, which my company had taken great pleasure in recovering for them in the plains, were also stolen in a similar manner soon after my departure from the post; and that gentlemen owners were in hourly expectation of an attack upon the fort itself.
The same liability to the loss of life and property attends the trading expeditions to the encampments of the tribes.
An anecdote of this service was related to me. An old trapper was sent from this fort to the Eutaw camp, with a well-assorted stock of goods, and a body of men to guard it. After a tedious march among the snows and swollen streams and declivities of the mountain, he came in sight of the village. It was situated in a sunken valley, among the hideously dark cliffs of the Eutaw mountains; and so small was it, and so deep, that the overhanging heights {181} not only protected it from the blasts of approaching winter, but drew to their frozen embrace the falling snows, and left this valley its grasses and flowers, while their own awful heads were glittering with perpetual frosts.
The traders encamped upon a small swell of land that overlooked the smoking wigwams, and sent a deputation to the chiefs to parley for the privilege of opening a trade with the tribe. They were received with great haughtiness by those monarchs of the wilderness, and were asked "why they had dared to enter the Eutaw mountains without their permission." Being answered that they "had travelled from the fort to that place, in order to ask their highnesses' permission to trade with the Eutaws," the principal chief replied, that no permission had been given to them to come there, nor to remain. The interview ended, and the traders returned to their camp with no very pleasant anticipations as to the result of their expedition. Their baggage was placed about for breastworks; their animals drawn in nearer, and tied firmly to stakes; and a patrol guard stationed, as the evening shut in. Every preparation for the attack, which appeared determined upon on the part of the Indians, being {182} made, they waited for the first ray of day—a signal of dreadful havoc among all the tribes—with the determined anxiety which fills the bosom, sharpens the sight, nerves the arm, and opens the ear to the slightest rustle of a leaf, so remarkably, among the grave, self-possessed, and brave traders of the Great Prairie and Mountain Wilderness.
During the first part of the night the Indians hurrying to and fro through the village, their war speeches and war dances, and the painting their faces with red and black, in alternate stripes, and an occasional scout warily approaching the camp of the whites, indicated an appetite for a conflict that appeared to fix, with prophetic certainty, the fate of the traders. Eight hundred Indians to fifty whites, made fearful odds. The morning light streamed faintly up the east at last. The traders held their rifles with the grasp of dying men. Another and another beam kindled on the dark blue vault, and one by one quenched the stars. The silence of the tomb rested on the world. They breathed heavily, with teeth set in terrible resolution. The hour—the moment—had arrived! Behind a projecting ledge, the dusky forms of three or four hundred Eutaws undulated near the ground, like herds {183} of bears intent on their prey. They approached the ledge, and for an instant lay flat on their faces, and motionless. Two or three of them gently raised their heads high enough to look over upon the camp of the whites.
The day had broken over half the firmament; the rifles of the traders were levelled from behind the baggage, and glistened faintly; a crack—a whoop—a shout—a rout! The scalp of one of the peepers over the ledge had been bored by the whistling lead from one of the rifles—the chief warrior had fallen. The Indians retreated to their camp, and the whites retained their position, each watching the others movements. The position of the traders was such as could command the country within long rifle-shot on all sides; the Indians, therefore, declined an attack. The number of their foes, and perhaps some prudential consideration as to having an advantageous location, prevented the traders from making an assault. Well would it have been for them had they continued to be careful. About nine o'clock, the warlike appearance gave place to signs of peace. Thirty or forty unarmed Indians, denuded of clothing and of paint, came towards the {184} camp of the traders, singing and dancing, and bearing the Sacred Calumet, or Great Pipe of Peace. A chief bore it who had acted as lieutenant to the warrior that had been shot. Its red marble bowl, its stem broad and long, and carved into hieroglyphics of various colours and significations, and adorned with feathers of beautiful birds, was soon recognized by the traders, and secured the bearer and his attendants a reception into their camp. Both parties seated themselves in a great circle; the pipe was filled with tobacco and herbs from the venerated medicine bag; the well-kindled coal was reverently placed upon the bowl; its sacred stem was then turned towards the heavens, to invite the Great Spirit to the solemn assembly, and to implore his aid; it was then turned towards the earth, to avert the influence of malicious demons; it was then borne in a horizontal position, till it completed a circle, to call to their help in the great smoke, the beneficent invisible agents which live on the earth, in the waters, and the upper air; the chief took two whiffs, and blew the smoke first towards heaven, and then round upon the ground; and so did others, until all had inhaled the smoke—the breath of Indian {185} fidelity—and blown it to the earth and heaven, loaded with the pious vows that are supposed to mingle with it while it curls among the lungs near the heart. The chief then rose and said, in the Spanish language, which the Eutaws east of the mountains speak well, "that he was anxious that peace might be restored between the parties; that himself and people were desirous that the traders should remain with them; and that if presents were made to him to the small amount of £140, no objection would remain to the proposed proceedings of the whites; but on no account could they enter the Eutaw country without paying tribute in some form. They were in the Eutaw country, the tribute was due, they had killed a Eutaw chief, and the blood of a chief was due; but that the latter could be compromised by a prompt compliance with his proposition in regard to the presents."
The chief trader was explicit in his reply. "That he had come into the country to sell goods, not to give them away; that no tribute could be paid to him or to any other Eutaw; and that if fighting were a desideratum with the chief and his people, he would do his part to make {186} it sufficiently lively to be interesting." The council broke up tumultuously. The Indians carried back the wampum belts to their camp, held war councils, and whipt and danced around posts painted red, and recounted their deeds of valour, and showed high in air, as they leaped in the frenzy of mimic warfare, the store of scalps that garnished the doors of the family lodges; and around their camp-fires the following night were seen features distorted with the most ghastly wrath. Indeed, the savages appeared resolved to destroy the whites. And as they were able, by their superior numbers to do so, it was deemed advisable to get beyond their reach, with all practicable haste.
At midnight, therefore, when the fires had smouldered low, the traders saddled in silent haste, bound their bales upon their pack-mules, and departed while the wolves were howling the hour; and succeeded by the dawn of day in reaching a gorge where they had expected the Indians (if they had discovered their departure in season to reach it) would oppose their retreat. On reconnoitering, however, it was found clear; and with joy they entered the defile, and beheld from its eastern opening, the wide cold plains, and the sun rising, red and cheerful, {187} on the distant outline of the morning sky. A few days after, they reached the post—not a little glad that their flesh was not rotting with many who had been less successful than themselves, in escaping death at the hands of the Eutaws. For the insults, robberies, and murders, committed by this and other tribes, the traders Bents have sought opportunities to take well-measured vengeance: and liberally and bravely have they often dealt it out. But the consequence seems to have been the exciting of the bitterest enmity between the parties; which results in a little more inconvenience to the traders than to the Indians; for the latter, to gratify their propensity to steal, and their hatred to the former, make an annual levy upon the cavy-yard of the fortress, which, as it contains usually from eighty to one hundred horses, mules, &c., furnishes to the men of the tomahawk a very comfortable and satisfactory retribution for the inhibition of the owners of them upon their immemorial right to rob and murder, in manner and form as prescribed by the customs of their race.
The business within the walls of the post is done by clerks and traders. The former of these are more commonly young gentlemen {188} from the cities of the States; their duty is to keep the books of the establishment. The traders are generally selected from among those daring individuals who have traversed the Prairie and Mountain Wilderness with goods or traps, and understand the best mode of dealing with the Indians. Their duty is to weigh sugar, coffee, powder, &c., in a Connecticut pint-cup; and measure red baize, beads, &c., and speak the several Indian languages that have a name for beaver skins, buffalo robes, and money. They are as fine fellows as can anywhere be found.
Fort William is owned by three brothers, by the name of Bent, from St. Louis. Two of them were at the post when we arrived. They seemed to be thoroughly initiated into Indian life; dressed like chiefs—in moccasins thoroughly garnished with beads and porcupine quills; in trousers of deer skin, with long fringes of the same extending along the outer seam from the ankle to the hip; in the splendid hunting-shirt of the same material, with sleeves fringed on the elbow seam from the wrist to the shoulder, and ornamented with figures of porcupine quills of various colours, and leathern fringe around the lower edge of the body. And {189} chiefs they were in the authority exercised in their wild and lonely fortress.
A trading establishment to be known must be seen. A solitary abode of men, seeking wealth in the teeth of danger and hardship, rearing its towers over the uncultivated wastes of nature, like an old baronial castle that has withstood the wars and desolations of centuries; Indian women tripping around its battlements in their glittering moccasins and long deer skin wrappers; their children, with most perfect forms, and the carnation of the Saxon cheek struggling through the shading of the Indian, and chattering now Indian, and now Spanish or English; the grave owners and their clerks and traders, seated in the shade of the piazza, smoking the long native pipe, passing it from one to another, drawing the precious smoke into the lungs by short hysterical sucks till filled, and then ejecting it through the nostrils; or it may be, seated around their rude table, spread with coffee or tea, jerked buffalo meat, and bread made of unbolted wheaten meal from Taos; or, after eating, laid comfortably upon their pallets of straw and Spanish blankets, and dreaming to the sweet notes of a flute; the old trappers withered with {190} exposure to the rending elements, the half-tamed Indian, and half civilized Mexican servants, seated on the ground around a large tin pan of dry meat, and a tankard of water, their only rations, relating adventures about the shores of Hudson's Bay, on the rivers Columbia and Mackenzie, in the Great Prairie Wilderness, and among the snowy heights of the mountains; and delivering sage opinions about the destination of certain bands of buffalo; of the distance to the Blackfoot country, and whether my wounded man was hurt as badly as Bill the mule was, when the "meal party" was fired upon by the Cumanches—present a tolerable idea of every thing within its walls.
If we add, the opening of the gates on a winter's morning—the cautious sliding in and out of the Indians whose tents stand around the fort, till the whole area is filled six feet deep with their long hanging black locks, and dark watchful flashing eyes; and traders and clerks busy at their work; and the patrols walking the battlements with loaded muskets; and the guards in the bastions standing with burning matches by the carronades; and when the sun sets, the Indians retiring again to their camp outside, to talk over their newly purchased blankets {191} and beads, and to sing and drink and dance; and the night sentinel on the fort that treads his weary watch away; we shall present a tolerable view of this post in the season of business.
It was summer time with man and beast when I was there. The fine days spent in the enjoyment of its hospitalities were of great service to ourselves, and in recruiting our jaded animals. The man, too, who had been wounded on the Santa Fé trade, recovered astonishingly.
The mutineers, on the 11th of July, started for Bent's Fort, on the Platte;[112] and myself, with three sound and good men, and one wounded and bad one, strode our animals and took trail again for the mountains and Oregon Territory. Five miles above Fort William, we came to Fort El Puebla. It is constructed of adobies, and consists of a series of one-story houses built around a quadrangle, in the general style of those at Fort William. It belongs to a company of American and Mexican trappers, who, wearied with the service, have retired to this spot to spend the remainder of their days in raising grain, vegetables, horses, mules, &c., for the various {192} trading establishments in these regions. And as the Arkansas, some four miles above the post, can be turned from its course over large tracts of rich land, these individuals might realize the happiest results from their industry;—for, as it is impossible, from the looseness of the soil and the scarcity of rain, to raise any thing thereabout without irrigation; and, as this is the only spot, for a long distance up and down the Arkansas, where any considerable tracts of land can be watered, they could supply the market with these articles without any fear of competition.[113]
But these, like the results of many honest intentions, are wholly crippled by want of capital and a superabundance of whisky. The proprietors are poor, and when the keg is on tap, dream away their existence under its dangerous fascinations. Hence it is that these men, destitute of the means to carry out their designs in regard to farming, have found themselves not wholly unemployed in drunkenness; a substitute which many other individuals have before been known to prefer. They have, however, a small stock; consisting of horses and mules, cattle, sheep, and goats; and still maintain their original intention of irrigating and cultivating {193} the land in the vicinity of their establishment.
We arrived here about four o'clock in the afternoon; and, being desirous of purchasing a horse for one of the men, and making some farther arrangements for my journey, I determined to stop for the night. At this place I found a number of independent trappers, who after the spring-hunt had come down from the mountains, taken rooms free of rent, stored their fur, and opened a trade for whisky. One skin, valued at four dollars, buys in that market one pint of whisky; no more, no less. Unless, indeed, some theorists in the vanity of their dogmas, may consider it less, when plentifully mollified with water; a process that increases in value, as the faucet falters in the energy of its action; for the seller knows, that if the pure liquid should so mollify the whisky, as to delay the hopes of merriment too long, another beaver-skin will be taken from the jolly trapper's pack, and another quantity of the joyful mixture obtained. Thus matters will proceed, until the stores of furs, the hardships of the hunt, the toils and exposures of trapping, the icy streams of the wilderness, the bloody fight, foot to foot, with the knife and tomahawk, {194} and the long days and nights of thirst and starvation are satisfactorily cancelled in the dreamy felicity which whisky, rum, gin, brandy and ipecacuanha, if properly administered, are accustomed to produce.
One of these trappers was from New Hampshire; he had been educated at Dartmouth College, and was altogether one of the most remarkable men I ever knew. A splendid gentleman, a finished scholar, a critic on English and Roman literature, a politician, a trapper, an Indian! His stature was something more than six feet; his shoulders and chest were broad, and his arms and lower limbs well formed, and very muscular. His forehead was high and expansive; Causality, Comparison, Eventuality, and all the perceptive organs, (to use a phrenological description), remarkably large. Locality was, however, larger than any other organ in the frontal region. Benevolence, Wonder, Ideality, Secretiveness, Destructiveness, and Adhesiveness, Combativeness, Self-Esteem and Hope were very high. The remaining organs were low. His head was clothed with hair as black as jet, two and a half feet in length, smoothly combed, and hanging down his back. He {195} was dressed in a deer-skin frock, leggings and moccasins; not a shred of cloth about his person. On my first interview with him, he addressed me with the stiff, cold formality of one conscious of his own importance; and, in a manner that he thought unobserved, scrutinized the movement of every muscle of my face, and every word which I uttered. When any thing was said of political events in the States or Europe, he gave silent and intense attention.
I left him without any very good impressions of his character; for I had induced him to open his compressed mouth but once, and then to make the no very agreeable inquiries, "When do you start?" and "What route do you take?" At my second interview, he was more familiar. Having ascertained that he was proud of his learning, I approached him through that medium. He seemed pleased at this compliment to his superiority over those around him, and at once became easy and talkative. His "Alma Mater" was described and redescribed; all the fields, and walks, and rivulets, the beautiful Connecticut, the evergreen primitive ridges lying along its banks, which, he said, "had smiled for a thousand ages on the march of decay;" were successive {196} themes of his vast imagination. His descriptions were minute and exquisite. He saw in every thing all that Science sees, together with all that his capacious intellect, instructed and imbued with the wild fancyings and legends of his race, could see. I inquired the reason of his leaving civilized life for a precarious livelihood in the wilderness. "For reasons found in the nature of my race," he replied. "The Indian's eye cannot be satisfied with a description of things, how beautiful soever may be the style, or the harmonies of verse in which it is conveyed. For neither the periods of burning eloquence, nor the mighty and beautiful creations of the imagination, can unbosom the treasures and realities as they live in their own native magnificence on the eternal mountains, and in the secret, untrodden vale.
"As soon as you thrust the ploughshare under the earth, it teems with worms and useless weeds. It increases population to an unnatural extent; creates the necessity of penal enactments, builds the jail, erects the gallows, spreads over the human face a mask of deception and selfishness, and substitutes villany, love of wealth and power, and the slaughter of millions for the gratification {197} of some individual instead of the single-minded honesty, the hospitality, the honour and the purity of the natural state. Hence, wherever Agriculture appears, the increase of moral and physical wretchedness induces the thousands of necessities, as they are termed, for abridging human liberty; for fettering down the mind to the principles of right, derived, not from nature, but from a restrained and forced condition of existence. And hence my race, with mental and physical habits as free as the waters which flow from the hills, become restive under the rules of civilized life; dwindle to their graves under the control of laws, customs, and forms, which have grown out of the endless vices, and the factitious virtue of another race. Red men often acquire and love the Sciences. But with the nature which the Great Spirit has given them, what are all their truths to them? Would an Indian ever measure the height of a mountain that he could climb? No, never. The legends of his tribe tell him nothing about quadrants, and base lines and angles. Their old braves, however, have for ages watched from the cliffs, the green life in the spring, and the yellow death in the autumn, of their holy forests. Why should he ever calculate an eclipse? He {198} always knew such occurrences to be the doings of the Great Spirit.
"Science, it is true, can tell the times and seasons of their coming; but the Indian, when they do occur, looks through nature, without the aid of science, up to its cause. Of what use is a Lunar to him? His swift canoe has the green embowered shores, and well-known headlands, to guide its course. In fine, what are the arts of peace, of war, of agriculture, or any thing civilized, to him? His nature and its elements, like the pine which shadows its wigwam, are too mighty, too grand, of too strong a fibre, to form a stock on which to engraft the rose or the violet of polished life. No. I must range the hills, I must always be able to out-travel my horses, I must always be able to strip my own wardrobe from the backs of the deer and buffalo, and to feed upon their rich loins; I must always be able to punish my enemy with my own hand, or I am no longer an Indian. And if I am any thing else, I am a mere imitation of an ape."
The enthusiasm with which these sentiments were uttered impressed me with an awe I had never previously felt for the unborrowed dignity and independence of the genuine, original character {199} of the American Indians. Enfeebled, and reduced to a state of dependence by disease and the crowding hosts of civilized men, we find among them still, too much of their own, to adopt the character of another race, too much bravery to feel like a conquered people, and a preference of annihilation to the abandonment of that course of life, consecrated by a thousand generations of venerated ancestors.
This Indian has been trapping among the Rocky Mountains for seventeen years. During that time, he has been often employed as an express to carry news from one trading post to another, and from the mountains to Missouri. In these journeys he has been remarkable for the directness of his courses, and the exceedingly short space of time required to accomplish them. Mountains which neither Indian nor white man dared attempt to scale, if opposing his right-line track, he has crossed. Angry streams, heavy and cold from the snows, and plunging and roaring among the girding caverns of the hills, he has swum; he has met the tempest as it groaned over the plains, and hung upon the trembling towers of the everlasting hills; and without a horse, or even a dog, traversed often the terrible and boundless wastes of mountains, {200} and plains, and desert valleys, through which I am travelling; and the ruder the blast, the larger the bolts, and the louder the peals of the dreadful tempest, when the earth and the sky seem joined by a moving cataract of flood and flame driven by the wind, the more was it like himself, a free, unmarred manifestation of the sublime energies of nature. He says that he never intends again to visit the States, or any other part of the earth "which has been torn and spoiled by the slaves of agriculture." "I shall live," said he, "and die in the wilderness." And assuredly he should thus live and die. The music of the rushing waters should be his requiem, and the Great Wilderness his tomb.
Another of these peculiar men was an Iroquois from Canada; a stout, old man, with a flat nose, broad face, small twinkling black eyes, a swarthy, dirty complexion, a mouth that laughed from ear to ear. He was always relating some wonderful tale of a trapper's life, and was particularly fond of describing his escapes from the Sioux and Blackfeet, while in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. On one occasion he had separated from his fellow-trappers and travelled far up the Missouri {201} into a particularly beautiful valley. It was the very spot he had sought in all his wanderings, as a retreat for himself and his squaw to live in till they should die. It appeared to him like the gateway to the Isles of the Blest. The lower mountains were covered with tall pines, and above and around, except in the east, where the morning sun sent in his rays, the bright glittering ridges rose high against the sky, decked in the garniture of perpetual frosts. Along the valley lay a clear, pure lake, in the centre of which played a number of fountains, that threw their waters many feet above its surface, and sending tiny waves rippling away to the pebbly shores, made the mountains and groves that were reflected from its rich bosom seem to leap and clap their hands for joy, at the sacred quiet that reigned among them.
The old Indian pitched his skin tent on the shore, in a little copse of hemlock, and set his traps. Having done this, he explored carefully every part of the neighbouring mountains for ingress and egress, "signs," &c. His object in this was to ascertain if the valley were frequented by human beings; and if there were places of escape, should it be entered by hostile persons {202} through the pass that led himself to it. He found no other pass, except one for the waters of the lake through a deep chasm of the mountain; and this was such that no one could descend it alive to the lower valleys. For as he waded and swam by turns down its still waters, he soon found himself drawn by an increasing current, which sufficiently indicated to him the cause of the deep roar that resounded from the caverns beyond. He accordingly made the shore, and climbed along among the projecting rocks till he overlooked an abyss of fallen rocks, into which the stream poured and foamed and was lost in the mist. He returned to his camp satisfied. He had found an undiscovered valley, stored with beaver and trout, and grass for his horses, where he could trap and fish and dream awhile in safety. And every morning, for three delightful weeks, did he draw the beaver from the deep pools into which they had plunged when the quick trap had seized them, and stringing them two and two together over his pack-horse, bore them to his camp; and with his long side-knife stripped off the skins of fur, pinned them to the ground to dry, and in his camp kettle cooked the much-prized tails for his mid-day {203} repast. "Was it not a fine hunt that?" asked he; "beaver as thick as musquitoes, trout as plenty as water. But the ungodly Blackfeet!" The sun had thrown a few bright rays upon the rim of the eastern firmament, when the Blackfeet war-whoop rang around his tent—a direful "whoop-ah-hooh," ending with a yell, piercing harsh and shrill, through the clenched teeth. He had but one means of escape—the lake. Into it he plunged, beneath a shower of poisoned arrows—plunged deeply—and swam under while he could endure the absence of air; he rose, he was in the midst of his foes swimming and shouting around him; down again, up to breathe, and on he swam with long and powerful sweeps. The pursuit was long, but at last our man entered the chasm he had explored, plunged along the cascade as near as he dared, clung to a shrub that grew from the crevice of the rock, and lay under water for the approach of his pursuers. On they came, they passed, they shrieked and plunged for ever into the abyss of mist.
Another individual of these veteran trappers was my guide, Kelly, a blacksmith by trade, from Kentucky. He left his native State about twelve years ago, and entered {204} the service of the American Fur Company. Since that time, he has been in the States but once, and that for a few weeks only. In his opinion, every thing was so dull and tiresome that he was compelled to fly to the mountains again. The food, too, had well nigh killed him: "The villanous pies and cake, bacon and beef, and the nicknacks that one is obliged to eat among cousins, would destroy the constitution of an ostrich." And if he could eat such stuff, he said he had been so long away from civilization that he could never again enjoy it. As long as he could get good buffalo cows to eat, the fine water of the snowy hills to drink, and good buckskins to wear, he was satisfied. The mountaineers were free; he could go and come when he chose, with only his own will for law.
My intercourse with him, however, led me afterwards to assign another cause for his abandonment of home. There were times when we were encamped at night on the cold mountains about a blazing fire, that he related anecdotes of his younger days with an intensity of feeling which discovered that a deep fountain of emotion was still open in his bosom, never to be sealed till he slumber under the sands of the desert.
{205} We passed the night of the 11th of July at the Puebla. One of my companions who had, previously to the division of my company, used horses belonging to an individual who left us for Santa Fé, and the excellent Mr. Blair, were without riding animals. It became, therefore, an object for them to purchase here; and the more so, as there would be no other opportunity to do so for some hundreds of miles. But these individuals had no money nor goods that the owners of the horses would receive in exchange. They wanted clothing or cash, and as I had a surplus quantity of linen, I began to bargain for one of the animals. The first price charged was enormous. A little bantering, however, brought the owner to his proper senses; and the articles of payment were overhauled. In doing this, my whole wardrobe was exposed, and the vendor of horses became extremely enamoured of my dress-coat, the only one remaining, not out at the elbows. This he determined to have. I assured him it was impossible for me to part with it; the only one I possessed. But he, with quite as much coolness, assured me that it would then be impossible for him to part with his horse. These two {206} impossibilities having met, all prospects of a trade were suspended, till one or the other of them should yield. After a little, the idea of walking cast such evident dissatisfaction over the countenances of my friends, that the coat was yielded, and then the pants and overcoat, and all my shirts save four, and various other articles to the value of three such animals in the States. The horse was then transferred to our keeping. And such a horse! The biography of her mischief, would fill a volume! and that of the vexations arising therefrom to us poor mortals? Would it not fill two volumes of "Pencillings by the Way," whose only deficiency would be the want of a love incident? Another horse was still necessary; but in this, as in the other case, a coat was a "sine quâ non;" and there being no other article of the kind to dispose of among us, no bargain could be made. The night came on amidst these our little preparations. The owners of the horses and mules belonging to El Puebla, drove their animals into the court or quadrangle, around which their houses were built. We gathered our goods and chattels into a pile, in a corner of the most comfortable room we could obtain, and so {207} arranged our blankets and bodies, that it would be difficult for any one to make depredations upon them during the night, without awaking us. After conversing with my Dartmouth friend concerning the mountainous country through which we were to travel, and the incidents of feasting and battle which had befallen him during his trapping excursions, we retired to our couches.
At eight o'clock on the 12th, we were harnessed and on route again for the mountains. It was a fine mellow morning. The snowy peaks of the Wolfano mountains, one hundred and seventy miles to the south-west, rose high and clear in view.[114] The atmosphere was bland like that of the Indian summer in New England. Five miles' travel brought us to the encampment of Kelly's servant, who had been sent abroad the night before to find grass for his horses. Here another horse was purchased of a Mexican, who had followed us from Puebla. But on adjusting our baggage, it appeared that three animals were required for transporting it over the broken country which lay before us. Messrs. Blair and Wood would, therefore, still have but a single saddle horse for their joint use. {208} This was felt to be a great misfortune, both on account of the hardships of such a journey on foot, as well as the delay it would necessarily cause in the prosecution of it. But these men felt no such obstacle to be insurmountable, and declared, that while the plain and the mountains were before them, and they could walk, they would conquer every difficulty that lay between them and Oregon. After we had eaten, Kelly's horses were rigged, and we moved on four or five miles up the river, where we halted for the night. Our provisions consisted of a small quantity of wheat meal, a little salt and pepper, and a few pounds of sugar and coffee. For meat we depended on our rifles. But as no game appeared during the day, we spent the evening in attempting to take cat-fish from the Arkansas. One weighing a pound, after much practical angling, was caught—a small consolation surely to the keen appetites of seven men! But this, and porridge made of wheat meal and water, constituted our supper that night and breakfast next morning.
July 13th, fifteen miles along the banks of the Arkansas; the soil composed of sand slightly intermixed with clay, too loose to {209} retain moisture, and too little impregnated with the nutritive salts to produce any thing save a spare and stinted growth of bunch grass and sun-flowers. Occasional bluffs of sand and limestone bordered the valley of the stream. In the afternoon, the range of low mountains that lie at the eastern base of the Great Cordilleras and Long's ranges became visible; and even these, though pigmies in the mountain race, were, in midsummer, partially covered with snow. Pike's peak in the south-west, and James' peak in the north-west, at sunset showed their hoary heads above the clouds which hung around them.[115]
On the 14th, made twenty miles. Kelly relieved his servant by surrendering to him his riding horse for short distances; and others relieved Blair and Wood in a similar manner. The face of the plain became more broken as we approached the mountains. The waters descending from the lower hills, have cut what was once a plain into isolated bluffs three or four hundred feet in height, surmounted and surrounded with columnar and pyramidal rocks. In the distance they resemble immense fortresses, with towers and bastions as skilfully arranged as they could have been by the best suggestions of {210} art—embattlements raised by the commotions of warring elements—by the storms that have gathered and marshalled their armies on the heights in view, and poured their desolating power over these devoted plains!
The Arkansas, since we left Fort William, had preserved a medium width of a quarter of a mile, the waters still turbid; its general course east south-east; soil on either side as far as the eye could reach, light sand and clayey loam, almost destitute of vegetation.
On the 15th travelled about eighteen miles over a soil so light that our animals sunk over their fetlocks at every step. During the forenoon we kept along the bottom lands of the river. An occasional willow or cotton-wood tree, ragged and grey with age, or a willow bush trembling, it almost seemed, at the tale of desolation that the winds told in passing, were the only relieving features of the general dearth. The usual colour of the soil was a greyish blue. At twelve o'clock we stopped on a plat of low ground which the waters of the river moistened by filtration through the sand, and baited our horses. Here were forty or fifty decrepid old willows, so poor and shrivelled that one felt, after enjoying {211} their shade in the heat of that sultry day, like bestowing alms upon them. At twelve o'clock we mounted and struck out across the plain to avoid a southward bend in the river of twenty miles in length. Near the centre of this bend in the mouth of the river Fontequebouir, which the trappers who have traversed it for beaver say, rises in James' Peak eighty miles to the north-west by north.[116]
We came upon the banks of this stream at sunset. Kelly had informed us that we might expect to find deer in the groves which border its banks. And, like a true hunter, as soon as we halted at the place of encampment, he sought them before they should hear or scent us. He traversed the groves, however, in vain. The beautiful innocents had, as it afterwards appeared, been lately hunted by a party of Delaware trappers and in consideration of the ill usage received from these gentlemen in red, had forsaken their old retreat for a less desirable but safer one among the distant hills in the north. So that our expectations of game and meat subsided in a supper of 'tole'—plain water porridge. As our appetites were keen, we all relished it well, except the Mexican {212} servant, who declared upon his veracity that 'tole was no bueno.' Our guide was, if possible, as happy at our evening fire as some one else was when he "shouldered his crutch and told how fields were won;" and very much for the same reasons. For, during the afternoon's tramp, much of his old hunting ground had loomed in sight. Pike's and James' peaks showed their bald, cold, shining heads as the sun set; and the mountains on each side of the upper river began to show the irregularities of their surfaces. So that as we rode along gazing at these stupendous piles of rocks and earth and ice, he would often direct his attention to the outlines of chasms, faintly traced on the shadings of the cliffs, through which various streams on which he had trapped, tumbled into the plains. I was particularly interested by his account of Rio Wolfano, a branch of the Arkansas on the Mexican side, the mouth of which is twelve miles below that of the Fontequebouir. It has two principal branches. The one originates in Pike's peak, seventy or eighty miles in the south; the other rises far in the west among the Eutaw mountains, and has a course of about two hundred miles, nearly parallel with the Arkansas.[117]
{213} We travelled twenty-eight miles on the 16th over broken barren hills sparsely covered with shrub cedars and pines. The foliage of these trees is a very dark green. They cover, more or less, all the low hills that lie along the roots of the mountains from the Arkansas north to the Missouri. Hence the name "Black Hills" is given to that portion of them which lie between the Sweetwater and the mouth of the Little Missouri. The soil of our track to-day was a grey barren loam, gravel knolls and bluffs of sand and limestone.
About four o'clock, P. M., we met an unheard of annoyance. We were crossing a small plain of red sand, gazing at the mountains as they opened their outlines of rock and snow, when, in an instant, we were enveloped in a cloud of flying ants with greyish wings and dark bodies. They fixed upon our horses' heads, necks, and shoulders, in such numbers as to cover them as bees do the sides of a hive when about to swarm. They flew around our own heads too, and covered our hats and faces. Our eyes seemed special objects of their attention. We tried to wipe them off; but while the hand was passing from one side of the face to the other, the part that was left bare was {214} instantly covered as thickly as before with these creeping, hovering, nauseous insects. Our animals were so much annoyed by their pertinacity, that they stopped in their tracks; and finding it impossible to urge them along, guide them and keep our faces clear of the insects at the same time, we dismounted and led them. Having by this means the free use of our hands and feet, we were able in the course of half an hour to pass the infested sands, and once more see and breathe.
We dined at the mouth of Kelly's Creek, another stream that has its source in James' peak. Encamped at the mouth of Oakley's creek, another branch of the Arkansas.[118] It rises in the hills which lie thirty-five miles to the north. It is a clear, cool little brook, with a pebbly bottom, and banks clothed with shrub cedars and pines. We had a pleasant evening here, a cloudless sky, a cold breeze from the snow-clad mountains, a blazing cedar-wood fire, a song from our merry Joe, a dish of 'tole' and a fine couch of sand. Who wants more comforts than we enjoyed? My debilitated system had begun to thrive under the bracing influence of the mountain air; my companions were well and happy; our {215} horses and mules were grazing upon a plat of rich grass; we were almost within touch of those stupendous ridges of rock and snow which stay or send forth the tempest in its course, and gather in their rugged embrace the noblest rivers of the world.
July 17. We made twenty miles to-day among the deep gullies and natural fortresses of this great gateway to the mountains. All around gave evidence that the agents of nature have struggled here in their mightiest wrath, not the volcano, but the floods of ages. Ravines hundreds of feet in depth; vast insular mounds of earth towering in all directions, sometimes surmounted by fragments of mountains, at others, with stratified rocks, the whole range of vision was a flowerless, bladeless desolation! Our encampment for the night was at the mouth of Wood's creek, five miles from the debouchure of the Arkansas from the mountains.[119] The ridges on the south of the river, as viewed from this place, presented an embankment of congregated hills, piled one above another to the region of snow, and scored into deep and irregular chasms, frowning precipices, tottering rocks, and black glistening strata, whose recent fractures indicated that they were continually {216} sending upon the humble hills below weighty testimony of their own superior height and might. Nothing could be more perfectly wild. The summits were capped with ice. The ravines which radiated from their apices were filled with snow far down their course; and so utterly rough was the whole mass, that there did not appear to be a foot of plain surface upon it. Eternal, sublime confusion!
This range runs down the Arkansas, bearing a little south of a parallel with it, the distance of about fifty miles, and then turning southward, bears off to Taos and Santa Fé. At the back of this ridge to the westward, and connected with it, is said to be a very extensive tract of mountains which embrace the sources of the Rio Bravo del Norte, the Wolfano, and other branches of the Arkansas; and a number of streams that fall into Rio Colorado of the West, and the Gulf of California.[120] Among these heights live the East and West bands of the Eutaws. The valleys in which they reside are said to be overlooked by mountains of shining glaciers, and in every other respect to resemble the valleys of Switzerland. They are a brave, treacherous race, and said to number about eight thousand souls. They {217} raise mules, horses, and sheep, and cultivate corn and beans, trap the beaver, manufacture woollen blankets with a darning-needle, and intermarry with the Mexican Spaniards.
Sixty miles east of these mountains, and fifty south of the Arkansas, stands (isolated on the plain), Pike's Peak, and the lesser ones that cluster around it.[121] This Peak is covered with perpetual snow and ice down one-third its height. The subordinate peaks rise near to the line of perpetual congelation, and stand out upon the sky like giant watchmen, as if to protect the vestal snows above them from the polluting tread of man. On the north side of the river a range of mountains, or hills, as they have been called by those who are in the habit of looking on the Great Main Ridges, rise about two thousand feet above the plain. They resemble, in their general characteristics, those on the south. Like them, they are dark and broken; like them, sparsely covered on their sides with shrub pines and cedars. They diverge also from the river as they descend: and after descending it forty miles, turn to the north, and lose themselves in the heights which congregate around James' Peak.
{218} On the morning of the 18th we rose early, made our simple repast of tole, and prepared to enter the mountains. A joyful occasion this. The storms, the mud, the swollen streams, the bleakness and barrenness of the Great Prairie Wilderness, in an hour's ride, would be behind us; and the deep, rich vales, the cool streams and breezes, and transparent atmosphere of the more elevated regions, were to be entered.
Wood's Creek, on which we had passed the night, is a cold, heavy torrent, from the northern hills. At the ford, it was about three feet deep, and seven yards wide. But the current was so strong as to bear away two of our saddle-horses. One of these was my Puebla animal. She entered the stream with all the caution necessary for the result. Stepping alternately back, forward, and sidewise, and examining the effect of every rolling stone upon the laws of her own gravity, she finally gathered her ugly form upon one of sufficient size and mobility to plunge herself and rider into the stream. She floated down a few yards, and, contrary to my most fervent desire, came upon her feet again, and made the land. By dint of wading, and partially drowning, and other like agreeable ablutions, we found ourselves at {219} last on the right side of the water: and having bestowed upon it sundry commendatory epithets of long and approved use under like circumstances, we remounted; and shivering in the freezing winds from the neighbouring snows, trotted on at a pace so merry and fast, that three-quarters of an hour brought us to the buttress of the cliffs, where the Arkansas leaps foaming from them.
This river runs two hundred miles among the mountains. The first half of the distance is among a series of charming valleys, stocked with an endless number of deer and elk, which, in the summer, live upon the nutritious wild grass of the vales, and in the winter, upon the buds, twigs, and bark of trees. The hundred miles of its course next below, is among perpendicular cliffs rising on both sides hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of feet in height. Through this dismal channel, with a rapid current down lofty precipices, and through compressed passes, it plunges and roars to this point, where it escapes nobly and gleefully, as if glad at having fled some fearful edict of nature, consigning it to perpetual imprisonment in those dismal caverns.[122]
Here we entered the Rocky Mountains {220} through a deep gorge at the right, formed by the waters of a little brook which comes down from the north.[123] It is a sweet stream. It babbles so delightfully upon the ear, like those that flowed by one's home, when youth was dreaming of the hopes of coming years in the shade of the hemlock by the family spring. On its banks grew the dandelion, the angelica, the elder, the alder and birch, and the mountain-flax. The pebbles, too, seemed old acquaintances, they were so like those which I had often gathered, with a lovely sister long since dead, who would teach me to select the prettiest and best. The very mountains were dark and mighty, and overhanging, and striped with the departing snows, like those that I viewed in the first years of remembrance, as I frolicked with my brothers on the mossy rocks.
We soon lost sight of the Arkansas among the small pines and cedars of the valley, and this we were sorry to do. The good old stream had given us many a fine cat-fish, and many a bumper of delicious water while we travelled wearily along its parched banks. It was like parting with an old companion that had ministered to our wants, and stood with us in anxious, dangerous times. It was, therefore, pleasant to hear its voice come {221} up from the caverns like a sacred farewell while we wound our way up the valley.
This gorge, or valley, runs about ten miles in a northwardly direction from the debouchure of the Arkansas, to the dividing ridge between the waters of that river and those of the southern head-waters of the south fork of the Great Platte.
About midway its length, the trail, or Indian track, divides: the one branch makes a circuit among the heights to the westward, terminates in the great valley of the south fork of the Platte, within the mountains, commonly called "Boyou Salade;" and the other and shorter leads northwardly up the gorge to the same point.[124] Our guide carefully examined both trails at the diverging point, and finding the more western one most travelled, and believing, for this reason, the eastward one the least likely to be occupied by the Indians, he led us up to the foot of the mountain which separates it from the vales beyond. We arrived at a little open spot at the base of the height about twelve o'clock. The steepest part of the trail up the declivity was a loose, moving surface of sand and pebbles, constantly falling under its own weight. Other portions were precipitous, lying along overhanging {222} cliffs and the brinks of deep ravines strewn with fallen rocks. To ascend it seemed impossible; but our old Kentuckian was of a different opinion.
In his hunting expeditions he had often ascended and descended worse steeps with packs of beaver, traps, &c. So, after a description of others of a much more difficult nature, which he had made with worse animals and heavier packs, through storms of hail and heaps of snow; and after the assurance that the Eutaw village of tents, and women, and children, had passed this not many moons ago, we felt nettled at our own ignorance of possibilities in these regions, and drove off to the task. Our worthy guide led the way with his saddle-horse following him; the pack animals, each under the encouraging guardianship of a vigorous goad, and the men and myself leading our riding animals, brought up the rear. Now for a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull not all together, but each leg on its own account. Five or six rods of zigzag clambering, and slipping, and gathering, and tugging, advanced us one on the ascent; and then a halt for breath and strength for a new effort. The puffing and blowing over, a general shout, "go on, go on," started the cavalcade {223} again. The pack animals, with each one hundred and fifty pounds weight, struggled and floundered, as step after step gave way in the sliding sand; but they laboured madly, and advanced at intervals of a few yards, resting and then on again, till they arrived at the rocky surface, about midway the ascent. Here a short pause upon the declivity was interrupted by a call of "onward" from our guide; and again we climbed. The track wound around a beetling cliff, which crowded the animals upon the edge of a frightful precipice. In the most dangerous part of it, my Puebla mare ran her pack against a projecting rock, and for an instant reeled over an abyss three hundred feet in depth. But her fortune favoured her; she blundered away from her grave, and lived to make a deeper plunge farther along the journey.
The upper half, though less steep, proved to be the worst part of the ascent. It was a bed of rocks, at one place small and rolling, at another large and fixed, with deep openings between them; so that our animals were constantly falling, and tottering upon the brink of the cliffs, as they rose again and made their way among them. An hour and a half of this most dangerous and tiresome {224} clambering deposited us in a grove of yellow pines, near the summit. Our animals were covered with sweat and dirt, and trembled as if at that instant from the race track. Nor were their masters free from every ill of weariness. Our knees smote each other with fatigue, as Belshazzar's did with fear.
Many of the pines on this ridge were two feet in diameter, and a hundred feet high, with small clusters of limbs around the tops. Others were low, and clothed with strong limbs quite near the ground. Under a number of these latter, we had seated ourselves, holding the reins of our riding horses, when a storm arose with the rapidity of a whirlwind, and poured upon us hail, rain, and snow with all imaginable liberality. It was a most remarkable tempest. Unlike those whose monotonous groans are heard among the Green Mountains for days before they assemble their fury around you, it came in its strength at once, and rocked the stately pines to their most distant roots. Unlike those long "blows," which, generated in the frozen zone of the Atlantic seas, bring down the frosty blasts of Greenland upon the warmer climes of the States, it was the meeting {225} of different currents of the aërial seas, lashed and torn by the live thunder, among the sounding mountains. One portion of it had gathered its electricity and mist around James' Peak in the east; another among the white heights north-west; and a third among the snowy pyramids of the Eutaws in the south-west; and, marshalling their hosts, met over this connecting ridge between the eastern and central ranges, as if by general battle to settle a vexed question as to the better right to the Pass; and it was sublimely fought. The opposing storms met nearly at the zenith, and fiercely rolled together their angry masses. As if to carry out the simile I have here attempted, at the moment of their junction, the electricity of each leaped upon its antagonist transversely across the heavens, and in some instances fell in immense bolts upon the trembling cliffs; and then instantly came a volley of hail as large as grape-shot, sufficient to whiten all the towers of this horrid war. It lasted an hour. I never before, not even on the plains, saw such a movement of the elements. If anything had been wanting to establish the theory, this exhibition sufficed to convince those who saw its {226} movements, and felt its power, that these mountains are the great laboratory of mist, wind, and electricity, which, formed into storms, are sent in such awful fury upon the great plains or prairies that stretch away from their bases to the States, and, that here alone may be witnessed the extreme power of the warring elements.
After the violence of the tempest had abated, we travelled up the remainder of the ascent, and halted a few minutes on the summit to view the scene around us.[125] Behind was the valley up which we had travelled, covered with evergreen shrubs. On the east of this, rose a precipitous wall of stratified rock, two thousand or three thousand feet high, stretching off towards the Arkansas, and dotted here and there with the small shrub pine, struggling from the crevices of the rocks. In the south-west the mountains, less precipitous, rose one above another in a distance, till their blue tops faded into the semblance of the sky. To the east of our position, there was nothing in sight but piles of mountains, whose dark and ragged masses increased in height and magnitude, till they towered in naked grandeur around James' Peak. From that frozen height ran off to the north {227} that secondary range of mountains that lie between the head-waters of the South Fork of the Platte and the plains. This is a range of brown, barren, and broken ridges, destitute alike of earth and shrub, with an average height of three thousand feet above the plain. On the western side of it, and north of the place where we were viewing them, hills of a constantly decreasing height fall off for fifty miles to the north-west, till they sink in the beautiful valley of Boyou Salade, and then rising again, tower higher and higher in the west, until lost in the haze about the base of the Anahuac range; a vast waste of undusted rocks, without a flower or leaf to adorn it, save those that hide their sweetness from its eternal winters in the glens down which we were to travel.
The Anahuac ridge of the snowy range was visible for at least one hundred miles of latitude; and the nearest point was so far distant that the dip of the horizon concealed all that portion of it below the line of perpetual congelation. The whole mass was purely white. The principal irregularity perceptible was a slight undulation on the upper edge. There was, however, perceptible shading on the lower edge, produced, perhaps, by great lateral swells protruding {228} from the general outline. But the mass, at least ninety miles distant, as white as milk, the home of the frosts of all ages, stretching away to the north by west full a hundred miles, unscaled by any living thing, except perhaps by the bold bird of our national arms,