The Crest of the Continent: A Summer's Ramble in the Rocky Mountains and Beyond. Ernest IngersollЧитать онлайн книгу.
cloud-flecked background, majestic in full round outlines beyond the majority of mountains—in hue purple and sunny white, with the mingling of forests and vast sterile slopes. North of it the landscape was almost hidden under rain-veils, into which the sun shot a great sheaf-full of slanting arrows of light, and beyond, range behind range were marked with phantom-like faintness of outline. A broad canopy of leaden clouds hung overhead, down from the further eaves of which was shed a wide halo radiating from the invisible sun above; and this snowy shower had stood long unchanged before our entranced eyes, making us believe that the brown cliffs, toward which we were running so swiftly, were the gates of an enchanted land.
VETA PASS.
Now, from within and far surmounting those portals, we stand gazing abroad, as in olden days they looked out of some castle tower through and beyond the great fortress arch. The typically mountain-like mass of Veta, satisfying all our ideals of how that style of elevation should look which does not abound in rugged cliff and sky-piercing pinnacles, but is smoothly and roundly huge, cuts off all northward outlook. Southward the crowded foothills of the divide between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas hide from view the central points in which they culminate—even lofty Trinchera, whose sharp summit was so plain a landmark at the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo yesterday. Beyond these swelling domes and gables, and ridges of green and gray, were lifted the noble pyramids of the Spanish Peaks, their angles well defined in varying tints of purplish blue, and their grand old heads sustained in generous rivalry. (Illustration.) Behind us was only a piney slope, close at hand: but ahead—the world! I think no one has ever said enough of the beauty of this picture in Veta Pass. From the precipitous, wooded mountain-side where you stand, the eye follows the little creek as it glides with less and less disquietude down through the protruding bases of the diminishing foothills, into the slowly broadening valley where the willows are more dense, and the heather and small bushes have taken on brilliant colors to vie with the splendor of aspen-patches higher up; on to the hay-meadows fenced with the many-elbowed and scraggy faggots of red cedar; on past the little park where the low brown adobe houses of the Mexican rancheros look like mere pieces of flat rock fallen from the mountains; on into the midst of minute cornfields; on out, beyond the surf-like ridges breaking against the base of the range, to the blue and boundless sea of the plains.
The western side of the Pass is a tortuous descent through continuous woods and lessening hills, until you emerge upon a plain where the ragged heights of the Saguache Mountains fill the northern horizon; and as you turn southward the glorious serrated summits of the Sangre de Cristo range come into view behind and beside you, on the east. This plain is the San Luis Park, the largest of those four great interior plateaus—North Park, Middle Park, South Park and San Luis—which lie between the “Front” and the “Main” ranges of the Rockies.
It has been truly said of the Rocky Mountains that the word “range” does not express it at all. “It is a whole country, populous with mountains. It is as if an ocean of molten granite had been caught by instant petrifaction when its billows were rolling heaven-high.”
CREST OF VETA MOUNTAIN.
Nevertheless, popular language divides the system into certain great lines. The “Front Range” extends irregularly from Long’s Peak to Pike’s Peak, then fades out. The “Main” or “Snowy Range,” which is the continental watershed or “divide,” begins at the northern boundary, in the Medicine Bow Mountains: but in the center of the State breaks out of all regularity into several branches, so that it is only by ascertaining where the headwaters of the Atlantic and Pacific streams are separated, that one can tell how to trace the backbone of the continent, for many of the spurs contain peaks quite as lofty as the central chain. Thus the splendid line of the Sangre de Cristo, running southeastward, only divides the drainage of the Rio Grande from that of the Mississippi; yet the highest peak in Colorado belongs to it. The main chain, on the contrary, trends southwestward from the parallel groups in the heart of the State, only to become mixed up into half a dozen branches, all of enormous height and bulk, down in the southwestern corner. Even this is not all, for westward to Utah the whole area is filled with vast uplifts, standing in isolated groups, serving as cross-links, or lying parallel with the general north-and-south lines of great elevation. “I suppose,” says Ludlow, “that to most Eastern men the discovery of what is meant by crossing the Rocky Mountains would be as great a surprise as it was to myself. Day after day, as we were traveling between Denver and Salt Lake, I kept wondering when we should get over the mountains. Four, five, six days, still we were perpetually climbing, descending or flanking them; and at nightfall of the last day, we rolled down into the Mormon city through a gorge in one of the grandest ranges in the system. Then, for the first time, after a journey of six hundred miles, could we be said to have crossed the Rocky Mountains.”
Because we had ascended and descended Veta Pass, therefore, and saw on our left the seemingly insurmountable barrier which yesterday stood at our right, we had by no means got beyond the Rockies; for out there “mountain billows roll westward, their crests climbing as they go: and far on, where you might suppose the Plains began again, break on a spotless strand of everlasting snow.”
VI
SAN LUIS PARK.
The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air.
—Tennyson.
San Luis Park, exceeding in size the State of Connecticut, is identified with the earliest and most romantic history of Colorado. It was here that brave old pioneer, Colonel Zebulon Pike, established his winter quarters almost a century ago, and was captured by the Mexican forces, for at that time all this region was Spanish territory. It was here the northernmost habitations of the Mexican people, the ranches at Conejos, Del Norte, and all along between, were placed, and so became the first farms in what now is Colorado. Here were pastured the first herds and flocks of the early settlers, and the great Maxwell grant, whose ownership has been the subject of so much litigation, included a large portion of this park. To this region, long ago Governor Gilpin directed the attention of immigrants, and lauded it as the “garden of the world.” Gardening is practicable here, without doubt; but colonists have found other parts of the State so much more favorable, that, in spite of its superior advertising, the park has kept nearly its pristine innocence of agriculture outside of the old Mexican estates along the principal streams.
That Colorado can ever produce cereals enough for the sustenance of a large population is doubtful. The great rarity and dryness of the atmosphere; the light rainfall, and almost instant disappearance of moisture; the large proportion of alkaline constituents in the earth, and the climate caused by great altitude, seem to handicap this region when compared with the Mississippi valley or the Pacific coast. By irrigation only, can agriculture thrive in this State; and the amount of arable land that can be cultivated without enormous expenditure for irrigating canals can hardly be considered wide enough to long supply the local population, which increases faster than the acreage under the plow is extended. The nature of the soil, and the effect of the short, hot seasons, under careful regularity of watering, combine, however, to make the product of Colorado farms extremely heavy to the acre, and of the finest quality in every article grown.
“The San Luis valley,” says a recent report to the Government, “bears witness to the wealth of the produce returned by the soil under proper cultivation. In following up the Rio Grande, the Mexicans ascended divers tributary waters, and upon these and along the main river can their apologies for farms be seen. Generally content with simple existence, but little variety in the products of their land is observed. The turning of the earth with oxen and a sharpened stick, the threshing