The Crest of the Continent: A Summer's Ramble in the Rocky Mountains and Beyond. Ernest IngersollЧитать онлайн книгу.
tenth of June having left the world upon its axis, a little band of heroic spirits made ready to mount the bony bronchos, and toil upward from the green and lovely vale of Manitou to the rocky height above. The noonday sun was sending down its most scorching rays, and the idlers on the hotel piazza were mopping their brows and repeating the wearisome formula of ‘the hottest day ever known in Colorado.’ The sun was ardent, to say the least, but the crisp breeze that came rustling down from the higher cañons tempered its effects.
“The sympathetic chambermaid of the Beebee House had been hovering in my doorway for a half hour before the start, urging me to take more and more wraps, and relating horrible anecdotes of the Chicago lady ‘who had her nose burned to a white blister and her face so raw, ma’am, that we could hardly touch it with a feather for three days.’ With such gentle admonition there was no struggle when the kind-hearted one proceeded to apply her preventive, and under a triple layer of cold cream, powder and barege veils we made the trip, and returned rather fairer in skin for the bleaching process. The perspiration ran off the guide’s forehead before he had strapped on the first bundle of overcoats, ulsters, shawls, rugs and furs, but the grateful sensation they imparted to us a few hours later will cheer me through many midsummer days. The party included, among others, a gentleman and his wife from St. Louis, and the same wicked Colorado editor who is the author of all the fine spun yarns about the Pike’s Peak volcano and the mountain lions.
“Such horses as we rode can be raised and trained only on a mountain trail, and if they could but speak, what tales of timidity, stupidity and absurdity they might relate. My own Arabian was a tan-colored beast, shading off to drab and old gold, known in the vernacular of the country as a buckskin horse, and rejoiced in the sweet name of ‘Bird.’ It was a veritable misnomer, for birds do not generally sit down and roll at every piece of green grass or cool water that they come to, nor try to shake their riders off over their necks. My sudden flights to earth were heralded in all the turgid and flamboyant rhetoric of the circus ring, and equestrian feats, each outrivaling the other in novelty and unexpectedness, diversified the route. It was proposed to call the creature Jordan, because she rolled; and again it was suggested that as it was ‘sinched’ out of all shape it had mistaken itself for an hourglass, and concluded that it was time to turn. Another horse for a lady rider answered to ‘Annie,’ and this gentle beast was only kept from lying down in every stream by energetic pullings and vigorous thrashings. The good son of St. Louis, bidden, like Louis XVI at the guillotine, to ‘mount to heaven,’ when he leaped upon his dappled gray, in a linen coat, broad-brimmed hat and full-spread umbrella, had a truly ministerial air as he preceded the line up the road. The editor rode a pensive nag that hung its head and coughed timidly now and then, but chirruped to as ‘Camille’ would push forward and crowd the other horses off the trail, until a kicking and lashing from the heels of ‘Bird’ brought things in order.
“The Pike’s Peak trail is one series of picturesque surprises. All that green cañons, tremendous boulders and turbulent little streams can do for beauty are there, and from the rustic spot where a small bandit on the rock demanded toll, there was a succession of grand and lovely scenes. The trail, worn deep into the grassy places by the procession of horses that goes up and down it from May to October, winds on between great rocks, along the steep and dizzy sides of cañons, past cascades and waterfalls (one of which is the subject of a sketch), and continually upward, opening boundless views out upon the broad plains that stretch like a yellow sea from the foothills of the Peak eastward. With every rise there came a greater one beyond, and above it all, seeming to move and rise further and higher from us, was the rose-red summit, with streaks and patches of snow bringing out its beautiful colors. Over giant boulders, creeping a cramped path beside and under them, or along a narrow ledge of sliding sand with colossal rocks miraculously suspended above our pathway, the panting horses toiled along. Ascending into higher and rarer air it was necessary every few minutes to stop and give the poor creatures a chance to breathe.
“As we rose higher on the mountain side more extended views were opened backward over the plains. The lowering sun fell fiercely on the red sandstone gateways of the Garden of the Gods, until they burned in flame-colored light against the yellow-gray grass. The hotels and cottages of Manitou were tiny dots in a green hollow far below, and the courses of the winding streams could be traced for miles over the plains by their green borders of cottonwood and willow trees. Wild flowers grew luxuriantly all the way, and in a little park half way to the summit, where the guides rest by a spring and wait for ascending and descending parties to pass, the ground was thick with big columbines, wild roses, harebells, white daisies, pale lavender geraniums with their petals streaked with maroon, and the beautiful blue-eyed penstemon of early June. At timber-line the wild box covered the sandy slopes with a thick and tangled mat of green, and higher than the hardiest pines stretched a rolling mountain meadow, a mile of emerald turf jeweled with the brilliant blossoms of bluebells, buttercups, dwarf sunflowers and dainty little Quaker-lady forget-me-nots.
“Sixteen people passed us in the half-way park on their way down. The terrified countenance of one lady on a mule would have made the hard-hearted to laugh. She pitched back and forth in her saddle, and shot a pitiful gaze at us as she went by that plainly indicated her estimate of us and mountain climbers in general. The twelve miles of steep, hard riding to the summit is trying to the most practiced rider; and for women, who have never sat a horse before, to attempt to make the trip up and down in one day is a folly that fully deserves the punishment it gets. Twenty-four miles of horseback riding on a level road even is apt to be remembered by the inexperienced. Added to the fatigue is the sea-sickness consequent upon the great altitude, and few who make the ascent escape that ill. It is a certificate of a rock-bound constitution to spend a night on the summit and not be grievously ill. After the mountain meadow come three miles of broken and ragged rock, the most wearisome and discouraging part of the road. The horses’ sides throbbed frightfully, the keen winds made a halt for overcoats necessary, and the scramble over these steep rocks is a fearful thing in a nipping sunset breeze. The rocks of the summit, that seem only reddish brown from below, are of the softest pink and rose-red shades, dotted with black and golden moss-patches until they strongly remind one of the exquisite colors of speckled trout. Above this sea of loose and broken granite a low, square house of stone at last arose, and over the ultimate rock we finally stood on the highest inhabited point on the continent.
“The officer of the signal service, who lives in that lofty house, stood in his doorway shooting at a tin can on a pole, and in that thin open air the pop of the pistol was a short, faint little noise without crash or echo. The red ball of the sun sinking down behind the snowy edges of the mountains beyond Leadville sent strange lights and mists across the tossed and uneven stretch of mountains and parks that lay between it and the gaunt old Peak. The seventy acres of wildly scattered rock-fragments that crown the top afford a vantage ground for views to every point of the compass. Eastward across the vast prairie land there seems no limit to the vision, and beyond the green lines of the Platte and Arkansas rivers we amused ourselves by imagining the steeples of St. Louis in the rose and purple vapors of the horizon. The clouds, mists, shadows and faint opalescent lights on the plains, shifting, changing and fading each moment, are more fascinatingly beautiful than the dark, upheaved and splintered ridges of the mountains. Stretching out over the plains, at first in a blue cone upon the grass, and then sweeping outward and upward to the sky-line, the vast shadow of the mountain was thrown sharply against the sky.
“Wrapped in furs and bundled in all the woolen warmth of heaviest winter clothes, the chill air of evening penetrated like a knife-edge, and we sat shivering on the rocks with pitiable, pinched and purple faces and chattering teeth. The afterglow in the east, when the sky and the plains melted in one purple line and a band of rose-color went up higher and higher, was more lovely even than the pure crimson and gold and blue of the sunset clouds.
“Around the crackling fire in the station we thawed our benumbed fingers and watched the observations taken from the various instruments and sent clicking off on the telegraph wires to Washington headquarters. The sergeant wound the alarm-clock to rouse us at four o’clock the next morning, and, giving up the one sleeping-room to the ladies, retired with the gentlemen of the party to a bed of buffalo-robes in the kitchen. The awful stillness, the stealthy puffs of wind, and the sense of isolation and remoteness, were distressing at first; but the tobacco-laden