Across America; Or, The Great West and the Pacific Coast. James Fowler Rusling

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СКАЧАТЬ treated with an acid, it effervesced and vanished quite as freely. H—— and B—— tried it with lemons and whiskey and reported their cocktails quite unequalled since leaving New York. Col. Chivington, of Sand Creek memory, had recently purchased these springs and the land adjacent for three thousand dollars; but he was now asking ten thousand, though there had not been a dollar expended for improvements yet. Combined with Pike's Peak, the Garden of the Gods, and all the unique and romantic scenery from there to Denver, as well as the general Plains and Mountains, the investment did not seem to be a bad one, and no doubt will pay handsomely some day. But it was then waiting the completion of the Pacific Railroad, and the in-pouring of population, that all Coloradoans then devoutly hoped and prayed for.[6]

      

      Just beyond the Soda Springs, stood or rather slept Colorado City. We had been so unfortunate as to break our ambulance-tongue in pulling out of a mud-hole, and halted there to have a new one made. In the days of 1857–60, when mining centred at Pike's Peak, Colorado City was the Denver of southwestern Colorado, and must have been a place of considerable importance. But the "diggings" there long since gave out, and C. C. was now in a bad way. Corner-lots were for sale, dirt-cheap. It had plenty of empty shanties, but scarcely any population; and what it had, were the sleepiest-looking Coloradoans we had yet seen anywhere. The "hotel" or tavern, was forlorn and dirty; the people, idle and listless; and the "City," as a whole, was evidently hastening fast to the status of Goldsmith's Deserted Village. Cañon City, farther up in the mountains, they told us, was even worse off—having no inhabitants at all. It had good buildings, some even of brick and stone, equal indeed to any in Colorado; but all stood empty, like "some banquet-hall deserted," and the once busy "City" was now as silent as Thebes or Petræ. Such is life in our mining regions. Population comes and goes, as restless as the sea, according as the "diggings" promise good "pay-dirt" or bad. And what are prosperous and busy centres this year, next year may become empty and deserted.[7] At sunset we went into camp on the banks of the Fontaine qui Bouilli, while a snow-squall was careering around Pike's Peak. Several of these had been prancing about his summit during the afternoon, and about five p. m., one of them swept down over the foothills and valley, with far out-stretched wings, giving us a taste of its icy breath as we journeyed by. At sunset the hues along the mountains and among the snow-peaks were magnificent and glorious; but the air became keen and nipping as night fell, and all the evening we hugged the fire closely. Just before dark, while supper was cooking, two or three of us tried the Fontaine qui Bouilli for trout, and caught—not a nibble even!

      Soon after leaving Colorado City the mountains trend away to the southwest, while the road to Fort Garland continues on down the Fontaine qui Bouilli to the Arkansas. Fording this at Pueblo, and subsequently its two affluents, the Greenhorn and the Huerfano, you again strike the mountains, a hundred miles farther south, at the foot of Sangre del Christo Pass. The high ridges or "divides" between all of these streams are barren and sterile, to an extent little imagined in the east; but the streams themselves are bordered by broad valleys, rich and fertile, that as a rule need only irrigation to produce luxuriantly. In some seasons they do not require even this, as their proximity to the mountains affords them rains enough. Still, no farmer is safe there without his system of acequias or water-ditches, to irrigate if necessary; and we found these everywhere constructed, if not in use, where settlements had been made. In all of these valleys we already had scattered ranches—some of them very large—and raised wheat, barley, corn, oats, etc. in considerable quantities. Colorado had formerly imported all her grain and flour from the Missouri, at an enormous cost; but latterly she had drawn large supplies from these fertile valleys, and in '66 considered herself about self-sustaining. Not more than one-tenth, or less, of her arable land here, however, seemed to be under cultivation, and agriculture even then was of the rudest and simplest. The ranchmen were mainly Americans or Germans, but the labor was all performed by Mexican peons, subjected for generations to but one remove from slavery. It was the threshing season, and in many places we saw them treading out their wheat and barley by mules, with a Greaser on the back of each, lazily whiffing his cigarrito, while his donkey dozed around. Elsewhere, their threshing done, we saw them winnowing their grain by hand, as the breeze chanced along. We did not see or hear of a threshing-machine or a fanning-mill in the whole region there, and doubt if there was one. The Mexicans do not comprehend these nineteenth century new-fangled notions, and will have none of them. They prefer by far their old-time dolce far niente. Festina lente is their national maxim, and your thorough-bred peon would choose a broncho rather than a locomotive any day. And naturally enough, the American settlers here, we found, were mostly from the south, and during the war had been none too ardent for the Union.

      Most of the farms here were large in size, and in crossing the Greenhorn we passed through a noble ranch, twelve miles wide by eighteen long, owned by a Mr. Zan Hincklin. In '65 he sold his crop of grain for eighty thousand dollars, and in '66 expected to do even better. He had on hand a thousand horses, three thousand head of cattle, and six thousand sheep, all of which he grazed the year round. He lived very plainly, in a rude adobe hut, that we should think hardly fit for a canal-laborer east; but was as hospitable and generous as a prince. We had scarcely gone into camp, on the banks of the rippling Greenhorn, before he sent us over butter, eggs, and vegetables, and bade us welcome to his heart and home. He acquired his great estate by marrying one of the half-breed daughters of the celebrated John Brent, who used to hunt and trap all through this region, and who lived so long among the Indians that he became himself half Red-Skin. He died possessed of vast tracts of land here, acquired chiefly through trading with the Indians, but his children it appeared, as a rule, had turned out poorly. One of his sons had returned to Indian life, joining a wandering tribe, and others still hung about the settlements, of small account to anybody.

      From the Arkansas, the country gradually but constantly ascends, until you strike the mountains again at the foot of Sangre del Christo Pass. Here you follow up a dashing rivulet, that courses away to the Huerfano, and advantage is taken of a depression in the main ridge to cross into San Luis Park. We camped the night before in a sheltered nook among the foot-hills, surrounded on three sides by gnarled piñon trees, while the fourth opened on a little plateau sloping down to a noisy brook, that afforded water and grass in abundance. The next morning we breakfasted early, and were off up the Pass soon after sunrise. The morning air was nipping, and as we advanced we found the mists rolling down the mountains, and so off over the Plains eastward. The teams being a little slow that morning in packing up and getting off, some of us concluded to walk on; but we had not proceeded far, before some one suggested this might be dangerous, as Indians were reported about, and our arms were all behind in the ambulances. Halting, therefore, for the rest to come up, two of us then secured our Spencers and six-shooters, and mounting one a horse and the other a mule pushed on ahead again. The ascent, though gentle, we found nevertheless very constant, and gradually the ambulances dropped much behind. The road led over a shelving plateau, and up a pretty sharp hill, and then plunged by a rapid descent into a little valley again. Here we met several men, with a drove of indifferent cattle and sheep, en route from Culebra to Denver and a market. Climbing out of this valley, we struck a sharp ascent, that led southward along and up the ridge, and then turning west by south struck straight across the summit. As we raised the summit, a keen, fierce wind met us from the west, and soon set our teeth to chattering in unison with it. On the tip-top we found a contractor's train, en route to Fort Garland with supplies, doubling up ox-teams and doing its "level best" to forge slowly ahead. The summit or ridge, the tip-top of the Rocky Mountains—the very backbone of America here—we found only a few hundred yards across; and then we came out on the western slope, with all the glories of the San Luis Park nestling at our feet, or uprising gorgeously before us. Below, the Park lay wrapped in a dreamy haze, with the Sangre del Christo creek flashing onward through it; above, peak on peak—huge, snow-white, and sublime—rimmed it round, as with a crown. Over all, hung one of those blue and faultless skies, for which the Rocky Mountains are so world-famous, with the sun sweeping majestically through it, while God himself seemed ready to speak on every side. This was to the west. Turning to the east, the view there seemed, if possible, even more grand and sublime. Peak and ridge, plateau and foot-hill, stretched away beneath us; in the distance the brace of Spanish Peaks, two bold "buttes" СКАЧАТЬ