Across America; Or, The Great West and the Pacific Coast. James Fowler RuslingЧитать онлайн книгу.
know but we should want all, and more. With the usual exaggeration of the border, the story current there was, that a Mexican belonging to one of the settlements down below had quarrelled with a Ute about a squaw, and wound up by killing him; that the Utes were consequently up in arms, stealing stock and murdering the inhabitants; that Fort Garland was already practically besieged; and that the United States was of "no account, no how," because we did not send more troops to Colorado. However, we started for Garland, well-armed as above; we did not meet a hostile Indian on the way; and when we arrived there, we found there hadn't been a settler molested, or mule stolen; and the whole yarn had come from a Ute found dead, supposed killed by lightning. When first discovered, near one of the settlements, the Utes were considerably ruffled; but when the post-surgeon at Garland and their medicine-man had examined him and found no marks of violence, the chiefs laid their heads together and sagely concluded the Great Spirit had called him.
Our course from Denver was about due South, following the trend of the mountains, and always near them. For several days our road was substantially over Fremont's old trail of 1843, across the high "divide" between the Platte and Arkansas, and so down the dashing Fontaine qui Boulli to the Arkansas. This "divide" bears an unenviable reputation, as a storm-region. Coloradoans aver, that it rains, hails, snows, or blows there, when it is fair weather all around it, and we were warned of it accordingly. It is a high rolling region, running well up into the mountains, with Pike's Peak frowning over it, and I suppose the configuration of the country is such as to attract and concentrate storms there. We made haste to get across it, but sure enough encountered both rain and hail, though we found the country both north and south of it basking in a dreamy, autumnal atmosphere, that seemed like the very wine of life. That night we camped near "Dirty Woman's Ranch," close into the mountains, and slept delightfully in a hay-yard. The sun went down in a cloudless sky, transfiguring the snow-clad summit of Pike's Peak with a glory all its own, whose pink and crimson faded into purple, and this again to blue, as the day died out. So, too, the rest of the range, from purple and blue, came out sharp and black against the star-thick sky, and night shut down upon the Plains with scarcely a sound to break the silence.
During the day, the blank monotony of the Plains was broken by numerous "buttes," some of which were very surprising. The chief one, "Castle-Rock," was an abrupt precipitous mass, well bastioned and castellated, that rose sheer into the air several hundred feet, as if the work of hammer and trowel. At a distance, it seemed almost squarely perpendicular, but two of our party, who had galloped on ahead, found an accessible path to the summit on its southeast side. As we drove up abreast of it, we descried them on its dizzy edge, but took them to be eagles or buzzards, until they out with their handkerchiefs and fired off their pistols. The smoke curled away on the breezy air, but the sound was inaudible down by the roadside as we drove by. These "buttes" dot the country over there for miles, standing solitary and alone—wholly disconnected from each other—and are a strange feature of the Rocky Mountain region.
The next day we struck Monument Creek and followed this down to the Fontaine qui Bouilli. Here the country for miles is marked by great masses of sandstone and limestone, chiseled by wind and rain into the most fantastic shapes and forms. Some are slender columns of gray or red rock, a hundred feet or more in height, worn and smooth; while others are cut and carved so curiously, that it seems they must be the deft handiwork of man. Right under the shadow of Pike's Peak, they seem to culminate, and here is Colorado's famous Garden of the Gods. Entering from the roadside we passed through a little ravine, that rapidly widened into a bijou of a valley, and there near its centre uprose two tremendous rocks, red dashed with gray, six hundred feet long by two hundred high, tapering to a knife-like edge. They were both inaccessible to man, but the elements had bored a hole through the summit of one, that looked for all the world as if a round shot or shell had knocked its way through there. A score of swallows were twittering about this, as we passed by, and their nests were visible all up and down the rocks. A little distance off stood three red sandstones, ten or twelve feet in diameter, by a hundred or more high, like the surviving columns of some ruined temple—one somewhat splintered and shattered, but the others still uplifting their capitals sublime against the sky. Farther on the whole country here is studded for miles, with these wedge-shaped and columnar masses of red and gray rock, some even on a grander scale, as though it were a cemetery of Titans, marked by Cyclopean tombstones. It is a vast meadow, rich with herbage, with Monument Creek meandering through it, vocal with the song of birds, the whole lying close up under the overshadowing Mountains; while over all, breaking sharp and clear against the faultless sky, stands Pike's Peak, imperial in his majesty, dark below with pines and firs, but his bald head crowned with eternal snows, looking calmly down, as if God's sentinel keeping watch and ward over all below. Altogether the grouping of the landscape there is very fine, as if the gods had done their best; and on the glorious morning when we saw it, beneath a perfect September sky, we thought Colorado had indeed here much to be supremely proud of.
Some three miles farther on, near the banks of the Fontaine qui Bouilli, which here comes boiling down from the foot of Pike's Peak, there are several fine natural soda-springs. They come bubbling up on either side of the stream from the far depths below, and their overflow during the long ages has deposited large rocks of calcareous tufa or carbonate of soda all about them. We tried this soda-water, and found it as cool, and as sharp and titillating as that from a city-fountain; and when 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