The Crest of the Continent: A Summer's Ramble in the Rocky Mountains and Beyond. Ernest IngersollЧитать онлайн книгу.
purpose, like finding or working a silver mine, or getting a wide view so as properly to map out the region, or for a knowledge of its fauna and flora, is disagreeable but endurable, because you are sustained by the advantages to accrue; but to toil up there for fun—bah! Yet people will go on doing it, and those who know better will follow after, and the heart of the grumbler will grow sick as he sees of how little avail are his words and the testimony of his sufferings.
It was so this time. Admonitions that upright distances were the most deceiving of all aspects of nature; that the higher you went the steeper the slope and the more insecure and toilsome the foothold; these, with other remonstrances, were totally unheeded, and three misguided mortals decided to go. Then the growler yielded—what else could he do? He had survived many a previous ascent, and could not afford to assume a cowardice that really didn’t belong to him. So he chose that horn of the dilemma, and left the reader to the conclusion that in telling this tale, after the previous paragraph, he “writ himself down an ass.”
All went but the Musician. Among the gentlemen were divided the photographic camera and materials, and the whisky, while the Madame set off sturdily with field-glasses over her shoulder, and a revolver strapped around her shapely waist. Dinner was ordered for two o’clock, and up we started. The Madame wrote to her friend about it as follows (the letter, I declare, smelled of camphor):
“I assure you, my dear Mrs. McAngle, that not more than a hundred feet had been gone over before the inexperienced of our party began to feel the effects of rarefied air, although thus far it was easy enough walking. There was no path, of course, and we simply tramped over a grassy slope sprinkled with flowers and covered by trees that shaded us from the sun. Gorges which were hardly perceptible as such from the valley, now proved to be uncomfortably deep gashes in the broad mountain-side, and tiny streams came down each one of them, to water dense thickets along their banks. In one place, about a thousand feet above our starting point, we came across the remains of a camp made by some man who thought he had found precious metal. Dreary enough it looked now, with its dismantled roof and wet and moldy bed of leaves.
“By this time breathing has become a conscious difficulty. I speak in the present tense, my dear, because the recollection is very vivid, and it seems almost as though I am again trudging over those sharp-edged rocks. Every ten minutes further progress becomes an utter impossibility for me, and rest absolutely necessary; but one recuperates in even less time than it takes to become exhausted, and starts on again. Nevertheless I can not go as fast as the gentlemen, who have no skirts to drag along.
“Now the comparatively easy climbing is over. Flowers and grass have grown scarce, and almost all the trees have disappeared. Nausea is beginning to annoy me, and I was never more glad in my life than now, when I discover some raspberry bushes and eagerly gather the ripe fruit, whose pleasant acid brings moisture to my parched mouth and comforts my sad stomach, for there is no water or snow here, and I know it would not be best to drink if there were.
“Even the berries are gone now. Far above and on all sides I see nothing but fragments of rocks. For centuries, wind, frost, rain and snow have been hard at work leveling the mountains. They have broken up the hard masses of yellowish white trachyte, and the dikes of black basalt into small pieces—some as minute as walnuts, but most of them much larger, with sharp-pointed edges that cut my feet. Across these vast fields the wild sheep, thinking nothing of jumping and gamboling over such steep slopes of broken stones, have made trails that cross and criss-cross everywhere. Availing ourselves of these is some help, as we all settle down to persistent, never-ending climbing.
“Up, up, up. You have forgotten how to breathe; your back and head are aching; you have found a stick, and lean more and more upon it; you look down on the back of a hawk far below you with sullen envy; you devoutly wish you had never come, but will not give up. At length a stupor creeps over you. You never expect to reach the top, but you do not care; old long-forgotten songs go through your brain and seem to try to lull you to sleep. You see in the distance one of the strong ones reach the summit and wave his hat; you are beyond sensation, and it is all a dream. Finally you stagger over the last ledge and throw yourself down on the top and feebly call for—whisky. Mrs. McAngle, I am a teetotaller; I hate whisky! But just then I would have given half my fortune had it been necessary for the one swallow which did me so much good.”
Well, her companions having more strength, didn’t feel quite so bad, though near enough so, to make their sympathies strong. The crest having been gained, the Madame lay down on a rubber coat under the cap rock to rest, while the remainder of us dispersed in search of water. But let me quote that long letter again:
“The rocks, when I had recovered strength to look about me, I saw were crumbling lavas of two colors, light drab and dark brown. Covered, as they were, with lichens of brown, green and red, they were very pretty. At last one of the gentlemen came back, carefully carrying his hat in both hands, which he had made into a sort of bowl by pressing in the soft crown. This I soon saw contained water, but such water—foul and bad tasting, for it had been squeezed from moss. But we drank it through a ‘straw,’ made by rolling up a business card, and were thankful.
“Refreshed, and becoming interested in life again, the old hymn occurred to me—
‘Lo, on a narrow neck of land
’Twixt two unbounded seas I stand.’
Only the seas, in this case, were broad green valleys, and were bounded in the distance by lofty mountains, best of all Sierra Blanca, across whose peaks the clouds were winding their long garments as if to hide somewhat the sterility and ruggedness of their friends. Above them how intensely blue was the sky, and how the soft green foothills leaning against them satisfied your eyes with their graceful curves. Trailing among them, as though a long white string had been carelessly tossed down, ran the serpentine track of the railway, and the famous Dump Mountain sank into the merest foot-ridge at our feet. On the other side of the ledge we gazed out on the misty and limitless plains, past the rough jumble of the Sierra Mojada, and could trace where we had come across the valley of the Cuchara. Nearer by lay dozens of snug and verdant vales, in one of which glistened a little lake tantalizing to our still thirsty throats.
“We all had our photographs taken, with this magnificent scenery for a background—better even than the cockney-loved Niagara, we thought—and strolled about. Not far away we hit upon a prospect-hole. The miner was absent, but had left pick and shovel behind as tokens of possession. How intense must be the love of money that would induce a man to undertake such a terrible climb, and live in this utter loneliness and exposure! Yet they say that many of the best silver mines in Colorado are on the very tops of such bald peaks as this.
“At last, on asking my husband if he did not think he appeared like an Alpine tourist, I found him recovered sufficiently to say that we should all pine if we didn’t have dinner soon, so we turned our faces homeward. Now I hope I haven’t wasted all my adjectives, for I need the strongest of them to tell of that descent. It was frightful. Feet and knees became so sore that every movement was torture. The sun blinded and scorched me, and the fields of barren, sharp and cruel stones stretched down ahead in endless succession. Mrs. McAngle, however foolish I may be in the future in climbing up another mountain, I never, never will come down, but will cheerfully die on the summit, and leave my bones a warning to the next absurdly ambitious sight-seer. When I was on the crest, I thought what an idiot the youth in ‘Excelsior’ was, but now I hold him in high respect, for he had the great good sense, having reached the top, to stay there!”
Returning to Veta Pass, the promontory where the track winds cautiously around the brow of Dump Mountain—the name is given because of a resemblance in shape to the dump at the entrance of a mine tunnel—has been called Inspiration Point. I don’t know who christened it; perhaps some would-be hero of a novel by G. P. R. James. If, to be in character, he “paused at this point in involuntary admiration,” there was plenty of excuse, for one of the loveliest panoramas in Colorado unrolls itself at the observer’s feet.
Coming up is fine enough, if you see it on such a day as the gods gave us. The Spanish Peaks, as we approached from Cuchara, were as blue as blue could be, with half-transparent, vaporous masses hovering tenderly about them; but