THE UNDEVELOPED WEST; OR, FIVE nm IN THE TERRITORIES; IB IE I IT Or A COMPLETE HISTORY OF THAT VAST REGION BE TWEEN THE MISSISSIPPI AND THE PACIFIC, ITS RESOURCES, CLIMATE, INHABITANTS, NATURAL CURIOSITIES, ETC., ETC. LIFE AND ADVENTURE ON PRAIRIES, MOUNTAINS, AND T11K PACIFIC COAST, WITH TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY ILLUSTRATIONS, FROM ORIGINAL SKETCHES AND PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEWS OF THE SCENERY, CITIES, LANDS, MINES, PEOPLE, AND CURI OSITIES OF THE GREAT WEST. BY J. H. BEADLE, WESTERN CORRESPONDENT OF THE CINCINNATI COMMERCIAL, AND AUTHOR OF "LIFE IN UTAH," ETC., ETC. Issued by subscription only, and not for sale in thf book stores. Residents of any State desii inj.> a copy should address the Publishers, and an Agent will call upon them. See page 825. PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL PUBLISHING CO PHILADELPHIA, PA., CHICAGO, ILL., AND ST. Louis. Mo. entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873. by J. R. JONES, In the Office of the Librarian of C 603 CHAPTER XXIX. DOWN TO THE COLORADO. Diversion from intended route Summary of the Thirty-fifth parallel route Leave the outlaw Navajoes Addition to our party Our interpreter- Lost on the desert An aboriginal joke A wonderful grazing ground Battle-field of Apaches and Navajoes Comparison of skulls Reach the Colorado Canon Sublime sight A fearful descent Nine hours going down hill No passage Find one of Major Powell's boats Dexterity of the Indians I risk the passage " Major Doyle" Indian romance Castilian and Navajo tongues Good-bye to my dark friends Safely over at last 624 CHAPTER XXX. FIVE HUNDRED MILES OF MORMONS. An astonishing revelation" Major Doyle" becomes John D. Lee, of Moun tain Meadow notoriety He relates his version of that affair Comments Why verdict " Guilty "Off for the settlements Jacob's Pool Long, dry ride The Pi-Utes Into Kanab Jacob Hamlin Major Powell's party Pipe Springs Gould's Ranche Virgen City Toquerville Kanawa Into the Great Basin Beaver The "Jerky" An old com rade Fillmore " Cutting off "Staging An unconscious joke Arrival at Salt Lake City Surprise of my friends 645 CHAPTER XXXI. MY SUMMER VACATION. Diamonds by the bushel ! My conclusion The sad fact Off for Soda Springs Cache Valley Gen. Connor and the Battle of Bear River CONTENTS. 31 Soda Mounds Health-restoring waters "Anti-polygamy " Spring- Wonders of the Yellowstone Eeport of Hon. U. P. Langford Return to Salt Like City Politics and Religion Popular absurdities about Utah A blast at Brigham and his allies 7 669 CHAPTER XXXII. SHORT NOTES ON A LONG EXCURSION. Another ride on the Union Pacific Down to St. Louis Up to Nauvoo Historic interest A strange old place German vintners Beauty of the site Through Iowa Southern Dakota Yankton politicians Terri torial Officials " The Government cannot afford good men " Down the Missouri An uncertain channel On the Sioux City and St. Paul Road 691 CHAPTER XXXIII. MINNESOTA. My stepmother An impecunious youth Trials of poverty I drive for excursion parties Not a success My Canadian friends Return home Mankato Crystal Lake Garden City The cabin of my friends My old employer Down to St. Paul The State Fair Northward by rail Lumbermen Big Lake St. Cloud Sauk Rapids Great water-power Northward stage The Lady Superior Belle Prairie Converting Indi ans We reach Brainerd 706 CHAPTER XXXIV. ON THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. Brainerd The Pine forests of Minnesota Sioux and Chippewas Pahya Goonsey Detroit Lakes Down to Red River Moorehead Out to Jimtown Red River Valley" The equinoctial storm" Eastward again Russian Quakers Scandinavian settlers Scenery on the St. Louis Duluth Emigration Companies "POST OFF" Humbug of land cir cularsClimate on the Northern Pacific "Be not deceived "The testimony experience of A. Toponce, Esq. Comments 724 CHAPTER XXXV, THE WAY TO OREGON. Westward again Iowa Union Pacific Utah Central Pacific Sacra mentoCalifornia and Oregon Railroad Chico General BidwelPs 32 CONTENTS. Ranche Semi-Tropical Fruits and Flowers Reading Shasta Joaquiu Miller Shasta Indians" Venus and Adonis "Staging on the Sierras Mount Shasta Yreka Frontier justice Immense Forests Oregon Rogue River Umpqua Willamette Portland 741 CHAPTER XXXVI. IN CONCLUSION. Season too late Washington Territory " Good-bye, Jonah "Down the Willamette In the Columbia A fog Salmon fisheries Strange instincts of the salmon On the heaving ocean" The first to fall "Down below " Just a little qualmish " Philosophy on the subject Smoother water " On an even keel "Arrival at Frisco Bancroft & Co. Homeward bound T67 A MONTH IN TEXAS. THE WAY TO TEXAS 779 NORTHERN TEXAS 787 CENTRAL TEXAS 792 SOUTHERN TEXAS _.796 TRIP TO AUSTIN ....801 GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY ..806 MINERALS OF TEXAS 813 WESTERN TEXAS 814 HISTORICAL 816 GENERAL VIEWS ....822 DOWN THE CANOJ5T, THE UNDEVELOPED WEST; OR, FIVE TEARS II THE TERRITORIES. CHAPTEK I. I MAKE A START. Why I went West Poor health" Infallible cures " Impecuniosity Try the newspapers Doubtful prospects Leave Evansville Stop in Wisconsin The Mound Region Boscobel Into Iowa Swedes and Norwegians West ward afoot A model farmer Wire-fence Planting timber Resources of I owa _Iowa Falls" Wall-Lake "Fanciful theories Scientific fact Fort Dodge Grasshoppers A pleasant excursion " Purgatory " and "Hell" Sloughs" Bad for women and oxen" Twin Lakes Ida City Over the " Di vide " Denison Down the C. & N. W. R. R. Council Bluffs and Omaha On the border at last. ANUARY, 1868, found me an invalid in the goodly city of Evansville. A bronchical difficulty, produced ten years before by severe application to study, had in a year of army life developed to a confirmed asthma; and now, in the moist and enervating climate of Southern Indiana, I was shaken by an ominous graveyard cough, the heaviness of a mother and the despair of friends and creditors. I tried fifty remedies : cubebs, troches, caramels, hoarhound con fections were my hourly refreshment ; a score of nasty syrups in villainous green bottles adorned my mantel; pastilles smoked upon my stove, and my chamber was redolent with the fumes of burning nitre. My friends sympathized and suggested : one had heard his grandmother say she never knew a tea made of chestnut leaves to fail in such cases, if taken in time ; another quoted an equally venerable source in favor of bloodroot and whiskey, with snuff of powdered galingale ; a third had all confidence in the regular 3 33 34 POPULAR ADVICE. " GO WEST, YOUNG MAN ; GO WEST ! " school, while a military friend just from Texas contented him self with the cheerful suggestion, " My boy, the angels have taken a fancy for you; try a southern climate." If there is anything worse than dying of consumption, it must be the reception of the advice prevalent on the subject. The general voice ran in favor of travel. One thought a sea- voyage a dead sure thing; another was enthusiastic for Florida, and a third was positive the Lake Region would straighten me out. In a multitude of counsellors, non-professional, there was anything but safety. My physician, watch in one hand, the other on my pulse, looked solemnly wise and thus pro nounced : "Go west, young man; go west." I went west. THE WAYS AND MEANS. 35 There was one little difficulty in the way of all these fine schemes advanced for my rejuvenation : I was impecunious. Young lawyers are not generally troubled with filthy lucre, and I had been in practice but one year, and out of health most of the time. After selling books and paying debts I had remain ing a hundred and fifteen dollars on which to reach the Pacific Coast for there my physician thought was the Hesperian foun tain which was to make me a new man. Manifestly if I ever reached it, economy was to be, not exactly a virtue, but some thing not nearly so heroic a necessity. Newspaper correspon dence suggested itself to my mind as a last resort. What wandering scholar, poor teacher, or feeble professional has not thought of it as the way to health-restoring travel, or the glories of a foreign tour? I wrote a carefully worded proposition to six leading journals. Two replied. The Head Quill of the Indianapolis Journal briefly declined, adding, somewhat superfluously, that there were at least a dozen applicants to each vacancy, and Western com spondence was just now of no particular value. Murat Hal- stead, Esq., of the Cincinnati Commercial, (May his shadow never grow less !) answered thus, literatim et punctuatim : (Fae simile on next page.) I trust the reader may decipher these hieroglyphics with more ease and less of doubt and trepidation than I did. Through their jagged lines gleamed a ray of hope; and on this hint I wrote. I also made arrangements with the Evansville Journal, to practise a few weeks through their columns until I became more proficient with the pen, thinking that it was best my first effusions should be read only by friends and acquaintances a common error with beginners. For criti cism, to be of any value, must come from strangers. One's friends will always praise his writings, though never so flat ; and one's enemies say something spiteful though he speak with the tongue of men and angels. My plan was to work through to California during the good weather, remain there one winter, and work back home the next summer, after an absence of about eighteen months ; and by no means to settle in the Far West. I came about as near to OFFICE OF THE i n n a t i FOURTH AND RACE STREETS. ^%^5 .S?^6g. 36 LEAVING HOME. 37 filling this schedule as young men generally do to working out their plans. It is necessary to have plans, but it is morally certain no man will ever realize them exactly. The precise thing one intends is about the only thing which never occurs, and of the great expectations of glowing youth we may philo sophize as did the Hibernian over his dressed pig: " It didn't weigh half as much as I expected, an', be japers, I always kiiowed it wouldn't." All sad farewells over, I was off from Evansville on the 8th of May. It is seldom pleasant to start, no matter what enjoy ment one looks forward to ; and the oldest travelers generally leave "winter quarters " with a feeling of despondency. De Quincy says : " We never do a thing consciously for the last time without a feeling of sadness; we never take final leave of a place even where we have not been happy without a sigh." And the experience of all Bohemians confirms this truth. Per haps the inner sense sees by a divine instinct that all these occasional partings are but faint types of the last great parting, and sighs its regret by anticipation. Perhaps the soul feels in these minor departures that a great departure is not far distant, and intuitively warns man of his destiny. I had uncommon cause for despondency. Hitherto my journeys, though long, had been no farther from civilization than western Kansas and Minnesota ; post offices, stage roads, and even railroads were not far distant, and though I "dragged at each remove a lengthening chain," it was still a chain connecting me by suc cessive links with home. But now, with feeble health and feebler pocket, I was to pass beyond the border, and across the central wild to where civilization " Shifting, turns the other way." It is not surprising then that a suspicious moisture gathered in my eye, as from the rear of the train I waved my adieus to the receding city. After a week in Northern Indiana, and three days at the Na tional Republican Convention in Chicago, I left that city for "Wisconsin by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway. I had gained on the season ; the coolness of early spring still prevailed OFFICE OF THE FOURTH AND RACE STREETS. LEAVING HOME. 37 filling this schedule as young men generally do to working out their plans. It is necessary to have plans, but it is morally certain no man will ever realize them exactly. The precise thing one intends is about the only thing which never occurs, and of the great expectations of glowing youth we may philo sophize as did the Hibernian over his dressed pig : " It didn't weigh half as much as I expected, an', be japers, I always knowed it wouldn't." All sad farewells over, I was off from Evansville on the 8th of May. It is seldom pleasant to start, no matter what enjoy ment one looks forward to ; and the oldest travelers generally leave " winter quarters " with a feeling of despondency. De Quincy says : " We never do a thing consciously for the last time without a feeling of sadness; we never take final leave of a place even where we have not been happy without a sigh." And the experience of all Bohemians confirms this truth. Per haps the inner sense sees by a divine instinct that all these occasional partings are but faint types of the last great parting, and sighs its regret by anticipation. Perhaps the soul feels in these minor departures that a great departure is not far distant, and intuitively warns man of his destiny. I had uncommon cause for despondency. Hitherto my journeys, though long, had been no farther from civilization than western Kansas and Minnesota ; post offices, stage roads, and even railroads were not far distant, and though I "dragged at each remove a lengthening chain," it was still a chain connecting me by suc cessive links with home. But now, with feeble health and feebler pocket, I was to pass beyond the border, and across the central wild to where civilization " Shifting, turns the other way." It is not surprising then that a suspicious moisture gathered in my eye, as from the rear of the train I waved my adieus to the receding city. After a week in Northern Indiana, and three days at the Na tional Republican Convention in Chicago, I left that city for Wisconsin by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway. I had gained on the season ; the coolness of early spring still prevailed 38 WISCONSIN. in this higher latitude, and I took a delightful rest of a week at Boscobel, in the valley of the lower Wisconsin. This is the centre of the " Mound Eegion " of Wisconsin so called from the many Indian mounds scattered about the valley. Some are circular, some oval, and one in the edge of the town is in the exact form of a Greek cross, the longer piece a hundred feet in length. None of these are more than four or five feet high, and the earth of which they are composed is different from the adjacent soil. Most of the original mounds have been removed in the process of settlement : some contained human remains, some implements of war and husbandry; but the most consisted entirely of earth and decayed grass or straw. Of some the earth was so fertile that the people of Boscobel used it for enriching their gardens. North of the river are larger and more extensive quadrangu lar mounds, evidently intended as a fortification, and command ing a bend in the stream. Twenty-five miles south are the " Great Mounds of the Platte," two moles of earth and rock, about half a mile in length, rising abruptly to a height of sixty feet from a level plain. But these are evidently of geologic origin. Boscobel is far enough north to be a pleasant summer resort; the climate is healthful, and just north of the Wiscon sin game of many kinds is abundant. The prairie, spangled with the myriad flowers of advancing spring, allured me to numerous excursions; the bracing air from the Minnesota hills brought healing to my lungs, and I soon felt the exquisite joys of convalescence. Tourists who cannot afford to go to the " Far West" may find here, and in the neighboring parts of Iowa and Minnesota, a pleasant and healthful summer residence. On the first of June I crossed the Mississippi from Prairie Du Chien* to McGregor, and started afoot across Northern Iowa, judging that the walk of three hundred miles would toughen me a little before encountering the real hardships of the plains. Of the next four days my recollections are of slow *" Prairie of The Dog.' An Indian chief who dominated this region two centuries ago. THROUGH IOWA. 39 sauntering over a beautiful rolling country, prairie and timber intermingled, and rather thickly settled with a thrifty and intel ligent population. Iowa and Minnesota were doubtless settled by the most generally educated class of emigrants of any part of the West; and I seem to be going into civilization rather than from it Occasional colonies of Swedes and Norwegians are found in both States, and exhibit a rapid im provement. Nine years before, during a summer residence in Minnesota, I had witnessed the colo nies coming in, direct from Scandinavia, and often smiled at their uncouth and poverty- stricken appearance. Now they are there, as in Iowa, among the wealthiest people in the country ; their national industry has raised them from poverty to opu lence. Afterwards I saw people of the same races in Utah, by the most exhaustive labor a little better off than they had been at home, and heard them boasting what great things "the Lord and Brother Brig- ham had done for them." These in Iowa had no Prophet, and consequently made a good selection for their homes, and prospered without being tithed. At the end of a week I was but eighty miles from the river, but the general appearance of the country began to AFOOT THROUGH IOWA. 40 ON THE PRAIEIE. change rapidly. There were immense tracts of unsettled prairie ; timber was found only along the streams, and I soon learned to dread it on account of the heat. On the "bottoms" of Big Wapsie Creek, in Bremer County, was dense timber for ten miles the last complete forest I was to see for a year ; and I almost melted in passing through it. On the prairie there is nearly always a gentle and refreshing wind ; in the timber a sultry and oppressive calm. To leave the first for the second was like going from balmy May into sultry July. In my prairie travels I never saw a farmer's wife who had tried both, who did not prefer the prairie to the timber, despite the intense cold of winter. Sometimes, they admitted, when the ther mometer was below zero, and the wind humming from the northwest at twenty miles per hour, they sighed for the leeward side of tall timber; but for ten months in the year, give them the prairie. " We can house up, you know, and keep warm on the prairie in winter ; but we can't house up and keep cool in the timber in summer." Westward 1 began to toughen to my work, and on the 8th and 9th of June easily made my twenty miles a day. Over taken on the open prairie by a storm, late in the afternoon of the 9th, I traveled nine miles in the rain to the first house, finding the settler like myself a retired professional, " out West for his health." Three years before he had paid seven dollars an acre for a quarter section of land, put a wire fence around forty acres of it, broke the sod and sowed it in wheat, which yielded twenty-two bushels per acre, and sold at a dollar and a quarter per bushel. He produced his " farm -books," which showed that, estimating his wire-fence and breaking sod at the highest rate, his first crop had paid for land, fence, and break ing, and a slight percentage of profit. Vacant lands in that and the adjoining counties were selling everywhere from three to fifteen dollars per acre, according to locality. Wire fences were the only kind in use in this vicinity. Many farmers used but three strands, but a " lawful fence " required five, which, the local courts consider, will make it " horse-high, bull-strong, and pig-tight." Many plant trees UNOCCUPIED LANDS. 41 for posts, using "slip cleats," that the wires may be moved every year or two on the growing tree. An artificial grove is found on nearly every farm, mostly of the soft maple and cot ton wood ; but a few have planted harder varieties of timber. The State exempts from taxation all land so planted ; the trees grow rapidly, and in twenty years Northern Iowa will be a timbered country. Iowa has less waste land than any other State in the Union. The sloughs, though rated as non-cultivable land, are sus ceptible of drainage ; and with the exception of a little rocky and sandy laud along the streams, every foot of the State is available for the support of man. Despite the national spirit of self-glorification, and the bril liant apostrophes of " Western members," how few Americans realize the comparative greatness of that tier of States just west of the Mississippi. Minnesota has thirty thousand square miles of wheat-producing land Iowa has more arable land than Eng land proper, and not quite one acre in a hundred non-productive ; Missouri has more iron, coal, timber and water-power than the Kingdom of Prussia, and Arkansas will nearly equal the King dom of Italy. Taking St. Louis as a centre, with a radius of three hundred miles, and describing a semicircle on the west, from the Missis sippi above to the same stream below, and the area thus bounded, if cultivated like rural England, would supply food for fifty million people. Really America is not yet "settled," except, perhaps, a narrow strip along the Atlantic. St. Louis, with her western rail connections, is the natural entrepot of a section that will comfortably support a population equal to that of the Rus sian Empire. We are lost in a maze of conjecture when we attempt to figure to ourselves the future American, as he will be when all that region is thickly settled, dotted with towns and villages, with perhaps a score of great cities. I journeyed on west-southwest to Iowa Falls, a city of romantic location, with a foundation partly of rock, at a point where the Iowa River leaves the "summit-divide" prairies, and plunges down by a series of cascades to the level of the lower valley. There 42 AN IOWA WONDER. is unlimited water-power in the vicinity, and an important city is springing up rapidly. It was then the terminus of the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad, and indulged in bright dreams of future greatness. The inhabitants I found to be of the genus Western Yankee, willing to take a stranger in and do him. Accordingly I did not tarry long, and on the morn ing of June 18th, took passage in a settler's wagon, to visit the celebrated " Wall Lake," which was reported afar off as the great wonder of Iowa. For many years fanciful writers had given us glowing accounts of a wonderful lake, surrounded by a compact wall of boulders and earth, with a beautiful drive on top, along which the Jehus of a "departed race" exercised their elk and buffalo teams in driving tandem. I reached the lake at dusk, having walked ten miles from the main stage road. The only inhabitant of the township lived on the border of the lake, monarch of all he surveyed, and evidently willing to havo nobody live any nearer. The land was his, and the water and the cattle on a thousand sloughs ; but he cared nothing for the natural beauty at his door, had no boat on the lake, and only granted me lodging because it was evident there was no other chance. North, west, and south of the lake the country is marshy for several miles, but on the east rises a beautiful wooded ridge, in the edge of which the settler lives. Only the western and southern borders of the lake have a regular wall', the bank on the east is bold and abrupt, and on the north the lake yields gradually to an extended marsh. At the extreme southern point, a clearly defined rocky wall breaks down by almost regular steps to a " wasteway," through which runs a considerable stream continuing eastward to the Iowa River. From this outlet for half a mile northwest is the only part of the wall which has any appearance of human handi work : it is six feet high, three feet wide on top, and very com pactly built of rock and earth. The outer side is quite steep, but within it slopes away gradually to the water's edge, for several rods, beautifully adorned with grass and flowers. But even there a careful examination shows no regular masonry ; all is in elemental, not mechanical order. ICE-BUILT WALLS. 43 Science has clearly demonstrated that these walls are not the work of the Red Man, nor yet of his possible predecessor, the Mound Builder; they are due merely to the expansive force of ice. Geologists are agreed that the lakes of this region date back to the close of the " Glacial Epoch," remaining as then mere depressions in the "drift" which formed the soil. The "Lake Region" whether in New York, Minnesota or Iowa is always found on the "summit-level." Farther down there were lakes once, but the drainage from higher ground running down the slope has cut channels far below their old beds and drained them. In Southern Iowa the careful eye can still see traces of ancient lake shores; but away up the bluffs, often fifty feet above the present surface of the river. On the " summit level," there was no such accumulation of water on higher ground to force a way through the lakes and drain them, and they remain as at first. In this climate ice often forms on them many feet in thickness. In 1863 this lake froze almost solid, killing most of the fish. Freezing to everything with which it comes in contact, boulders, earth, and rushes, the ice continually cleans the bottom of the lake and piles the materials at the edge. The expansive force of miles of miles of ice is exerted upon the rocks in a direction from the centre towards the shore ; and so powerfully that on the eastern side, where the bank is abrupt, the flat stones are in many places driven in upon the boulders with such an impetus as to splinter the former like glass. Each year this process is repeated, the lake rising to the height of the wall formed the previous year, and adding new materials thereto ; and this process continues till the loose material is exhausted, or the lake waters force an out let, as this has done at the south end. That this theory is correct, is clearly proved by the existence of fifteen other lakes in this and adjoining counties with a similar formation, of which Lake Gertrude, Lake Cornelia, Twin Lake, and Little Wall Lake have even more perfect walls than this. In some, the water has gradually cut down the outlet, and drained the lake until a new wall has begun to form inside the old ones. Swans and wild geese abound on all 44 EAGLE CREEK. OUTLET OF "WALL LAKE." the lakes. The entire region is well worthy of a visit by tour ists or artists, and surely no reflecting mind will feel less inter est in the " Wall Lake" from knowing that it is not the work of a "departed race," but a natural result of forces which have been in operation since the hour when "The morning stars sang together." After a day at " Wall Lake " I turned westward, traversing an unbroken prairie for fourteen miles to Eagle Creek. There I found six families scattered along the stream for two miles ; for in all this part of Iowa the only settlers were found near the streams or lakes where there was timber. Everybody was GRASSHOPPERS. 45 on the qui vive about the grasshoppers, which were reported to be coming from the west. Next day, in the twenty-five miles to Fort Dodge, I passed through three swarms of them, each about half a mile wide. Where I stopped for dinner the farmer sat the picture of dejection, while his wife and daughter were weep ing and wringing their hands. Their farm lay directly in the path of the destroyers, and going with them to the field of wheat, now turning yellow for the harvest, I saw the insects pouring into it from the north by millions, with an ominous roar. Before them were green prairies and yellow fields of grain ; behind them blackness, desolation and death. At Fort Dodge, and for a day's travel west of there, I saw them in new swarms, now grown larger and flying high in the air, glistening in the sun like bits of white and yellow paper. Thence I saw them no more, and afterwards learned that their " visitation" was but partial, destroying about half the crop in three counties. Whence come they ? Where do they breed ? Whither do they go ? Nobody knows certainly. In Iowa and Minnesota they are generally supposed to originate in the wastes of North ern Dakota, but the only reason I know of for this opinion is that they come generally from the northwest. In the last named State they came in August and September in 1856, and destroyed about half the crop ; the next year, as soon as the weather grew warm, they seemed to spring suddenly from the ground in myriads, and chew away on the first thing they reached. Not a spear of grass or wheat, or a blade of coru escaped; and when I was there, in 1859, Minnesota had her celebrated " hard times." Every Western State and Territory has had them at first. But settlement certainly has some effect on them, as their visits grow gradually less frequent, and are less destructive when they do occur. West of Fort Dodge I fell in with a party of five, journey ing with wagon and tent to Sioux City, and on invitation cast in my lot with them. We traveled but fifteen miles or so a day, hunted and fished and lived on the proceeds, slept in the wagon and tent, and had all outdoors to cook, eat and breathe in. For a hundred miles on our way, we passed perhaps ten 46 STUCK IN "PURGATORY." houses ; the general characteristics everywhere the same. Down a long slope for seven or eight miles, the road would bring us to a creek or slough, along which would be a scattering growth of timber; and about "one farm deep" on each side fenced in. From this valley we would rise by gentle inclines to the next " divide," five or ten miles of gently rolling prairie ; then down another slope to the next slough, or creek, and consequent settlement, fifteen or twenty miles from the last. At one place we traversed twenty-five miles without sight of a house. Far as the eye could pierce the green and waving grass, now full grown, made the country appear a very paradise of herders ; and daily my ideas of vastness enlarged till I wondered where the people were to come from to cultivate these fertile fields. Then there was but one railroad across Iowa; now there are four, all stimulated by the completion of the Union Pacific. It had just been made public that the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad was to be completed soon, and the wave of immigration was rolling in. Two years after, the road was completed, and already the line I traveled presents a succession of cultivated fields and tasty homes, a region diversified with orchards, white and red with clover tops, or yellow with heavy-headed grain. Then Iowa had one acre in seventeen under cultivation ; now she has one in twelve, and a population of nearly a million and three quarters. The State will easily support fifteen million people by agriculture alone. The sloughs grew steadily worse as we proceeded westward, and were bridged but slightly or not at all. We passed " Pur gatory " safely, but mired and stuck in " Hell " two very bad sloughs near Sac City. We stripped in the wagon, got out into inud and water waist-deep, and by an hour's hard work got over safely. Not so fortunate were a party of Norwegians just be hind us, bound for Dakota, who stuck in the worst place. We st doubled teams " and worked with them two hours, but having horses while they had oxen, could do them little good. Our stoutest man went in and carried their women and children to dry land, and we left them in statu quo women and children cry ing, men shouting, swearing, and beating their oxen, all in choice 48 A THIRTY-FIVE-MILE WALK. Norwegian. Doubtless they had to carry out their entire load, bundle at a time, and take the wagon to pieces. Well saith the border proverb, "Western travel is rough on women and oxen." At Ida City, still fifty miles east of Sioux City, I parted company with the excursionists, determined to travel southward to Omaha. Ida City consisted of one house, blacksmith's shop, and accompanying stables and outhouses. Thence it was thirty- five miles over the "divide" to Denison, on the Chicago & Northwestern Road ; and, as there were no houses on the way, I must make the distance in one day. After a day's rest, with " cold bite " in valise, and canteen of water, I bore southward over the hills ; for the ridges gradually rise higher as one goes towards the Missouri. It was the 27th of June, and the heat was intense. Water I found but once on the road, and suffered considerably from thirst. It is cold enough in winter. The preceding one five persons had frozen to death on this route, having lost their way in sud den snow storms. Twenty-eight miles on my way I found two new dwellings erected in a beautiful valley, where two brothers had just moved their families and opened a stock farm. This was a delightful surprise, and at this arcadia I rested till sundown and took supper, then finished my journey in the cool of the evening. By half past nine I had finished my walk of thirty-five miles with out serious fatigue, nor did I feel any ill consequences next day. Not bad for an invalid. I felt that I was ready for the plains, and taking the midnight train entered Omaha early on Sunday morning the 28th. The place had been represented to me as a paradise for the enterprising, but first impressions did not confirm the idea. A furious rivalry raged between the city and Council Bluffs on the eastern side of the Missouri ; pretty much in the " You're another ! " style of argument. Omaha people spoke of the Bluffs as "East Omaha," "Milkville" and "Iowa-town; " the Bluffites retorted with sarcastic remarks about "Bilkville," " Traintown," and the " Union Pacific Depot over the river." The Omahas assured me that the Bluffs were overrun by people OMAHA VS. THE BLUFFS. 49 out of employment ; that there were ten lawyers to every case, doctors till no one could count them, and so impecunious that when a man once fell on Main Street and broke his leg they rushed up in such numbers, and made such contest over the patient, that the mayor was compelled to read the Riot Act. I soon found, as a faithful chronicler, that, like Herod Otus, fami liarly known as " History's Dad," I must carefully distinguish between what I saw and what I heard. The Western mind is expansive and generous; full measure is what they always give in local history. I think it must be in the air ; that men breath ing this light, dry and health inspiring atmosphere, like the Delphian priestess, go mad in poloquent fury, and talk in strains of poetic exaggeration. Therefore, before I go far enough West to catch the same disease, I will indulge in one chapter of hard, prosaic fact. As I have now reached the border of the Far West proper, a general description of the whole country beyond the Missouri will better enable the reader to understand the next four years wandering. The facts are collated from observations in fifty thousand miles of travel, from the reports of personal friends in whom I repose confidence, from official surveys, and other ac credited sources. Many facts in a limited space being my chief object, the reader who is bent only upon amusement may skip the following chapter. 4 CHAPTER II. A COMMON MISTAKE. Our land of promise Pleasing errors Painful but wholesome truths" Ths Great American Desert " not a myth Causes of sterility Drought Eleva tion and cold Alkali Minerals Bitter Creek" Journey of Death "Travel on the Deserts Bunch grass Grand divisions of the West View of the Plains Routes across the continent Freighting under difficulties Railroad and emigration circulars Caveat emptor :" Let the buyer look out." HE "Far West" is the land of promise to ten million young Americans ; but of all those who go West, nine out of ten go just far enough to form an erroneous idea of all beyond. They visit eastern Kansas and Nebraska, and traverse the fertile strip which extends from one to two hundred miles west of the Missouri the only part of the entire West which answers to the rosy views of the expectant pilgrim. There they find the rich bottom lands, the green rolling prairies and fertile vales of political romance; and it is that region, perhaps two hundred by twelve hundred miles in extent, intermediate between the Missouri line and the high plains, which is taken as the basis of comparison by the hopeful visitor, who imagines that with the exception of a few mountain chains it is much the same all the way to the Pacific. It is difficult to convince such that in the West are regions of utter desert so vast that a New England State might be hidden in them, and only pass for a respectable oasis. Any route across the continent must traverse a complete desert from five hundred to a thousand miles wide. The Union Pacific enters upon it about Laramie, and with the exception of Salt Lake Valley, and perhaps two or three others, con tinues in it all the way to the Sierras. The Northern Pacific strikes it at the Mouvaises Terres of Dakota, and thence bar- 50 THE AMERICAN DESERT. 51 renness is the rule and fertility the exception to the entering in of Washington Territory. The Southern and thirty-fifth par allel roads strike it in western Texas or at the Rio Grande, and traverse it to Southern California. Draw a line on longitude 100 from British America ta Texas; then go 800 miles westward, and draw another from British America to Mexico, and all the area between these two lines 800 by 1200 miles in extent; or in round numbers a million square miles is the "American Desert:" a region of varying mountain, desert and rock ; of prevailing drought or complete sterility, broken rarely by fertile valleys ; of dead volcanoes and sandy wastes; of excessive chemicals, dust, gravel and other inorganic matter. Only the lower valleys, bordering perennial streams, or more rarely some plateau on which water can be brought from the mountains for irrigation, or still more rarely a green plat in some corner of the mountains where there is an unusual amount of rain, or percolation of moist ure from above, constitute the cultivable lands ; all the rest is rugged mountain, rocky flat, gravel bed, barren ridge scantily clothed with sage brush, greasewood or bunch grass, or complete desert the last covering at least one-third of the entire region. The causes of these deserts may be summed up under four heads : I. Drought. II. Elevation and consequent cold. III. Excess of inorganic matter, as rock, gravel, etc. IV. Excess of chemicals, such as soda, alkali and plants destroying salts. Generally more than one, and often all, of these causes com bine ; but for the convenient reference of the reader I will con sider them in their order : I. Drought is the prevailing characteristic of all the country far "west of the Missouri increasing westward from that river till one has crossed to the Pacific slope. The causes of this west ward increasing aridity are found in the greater elevation, the 52 A LITTLE SCIENCE. trend of the mountains and the direction of the prevailing winds. Look upon the map of the eastern hemisphere, and observe the alternations of desert and fertility between the parallels of 20 and 30 north, and note that the desert steadily increases as we go westward. The causes briefly stated are these: the clouds, surcharged with moisture from the Pacific, are carried by the prevailing winds over China and Anam, with abundant showers ; they are rung dry, so to speak, in passing the high Himalayas, and float over southern Persia and Afghanistan without discharge. They gather again a little moisture from the Persian Gulf, and hence there is rain a little way inland in Arabia ; a little more water is obtained from the Red Sea, and light showers sometimes fall in Egypt, whence they sweep over the whole length of the Sahara with out a fertilizing shower. Thence across the Atlantic, loaded with moisture, the clouds yield immense rains upon the next intervening continent, producing the dense jungles and luxu riant vegetation of tropical America. In like manner the sum mer winds from the Pacific send in upon California heavy mists, which are caught and condensed by the Coast Range, whence the valleys opening toward the west are green through out the year. Between the Coast Range and the Sierra Neva- das the great interior valley of California has rain in winter only when the moisture is wafted from the south, and east of that range the Great Basin is nearly all a complete desert, the rim of the inclosing mountains admitting only the clouds of highest range and least moisture from the south. Between that and Kansas still interposes the loftiest range of the Rocky Mountains, more completely shutting off the summer clouds and leaving all that elevated region, for three hundred miles east of the mountains, to depend upon the uncertain chance of winter snows, upon southeast winds and the percolation of moisture from higher basins and mountain hollows. Progress ing thence eastward, we come more and more within the range of winds from the Gulf, and more into a region of moisture. Hence all Western Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota must suffer from frequent droughts, and the region as far east as West ern Iowa and Minnesota occasionally from the same cause. HIGH AND DRY. 53 II. * The general elevation of the Great West would alone render much of it unfit for agriculture. Let us for illustration take the Platte Valley and general line of the Union Pacific. Omaha is nine hundred and sixty-six, and Cheyenne nearly six thousand feet above sea-level ; and through this long ride of five hundred and sixteen miles there is a gentle and almost continuous up grade, averaging ten feet to the mile. In no place does it exceed thirty feet, while in two places it sinks to a level, and on two short distances there is a down grade : the first on entering the Platte Valley from the hills just west of Omaha, and the second from Archer, a few miles east of Cheyenne, down into Crow Creek Valley. From a car window one may note a curious though very gradual and almost imperceptible change in soil and climate, and consequently in landscape and 'natural productions. Four hundred miles west of Omaha we find a high, dry country, for the most part fit only for pasturage, where frost may be looked for any month in the year. "Wyoming contains 97,000 square miles, and not a foot of land less than 4000 feet high. Colorado has about the average elevation of Wyoming, Denver being nearly on the level of Cheyenne. Manifestly the high plains of these two Territories can never be of value except for grazing. Utah, as reduced, contains over 60,000 square miles ; but, except possibly a few of the sunken deserts of the south, the lowest valley is higher than the average summit of the Allegheny Mountains, the sur face of the Salt Lake being 4250 feet above the sea. Of the 121,210 square miles in New Mexico, all are upwards of 3000 feet above the sea, except some small portions of the plains east of the Rocky Range, and the lower part of the Rio Grande valley. All of the Territory west of that river rises in a series of lofty plateaus, and Santa Fe, the capital, is so high that its summer temperature is about that of Quebec. Nevada has the same general level as Utah, but its principal towns are much higher than those of the latter, having been built by miners COLD SUMMERS. CROSSING THE PLAINS. instead of agriculturists; and the smallest number of its citizens can find fertile land enough for a garden. With 98,000 square miles the State has about as much good land as three average counties in Ohio. Even in the most elevated regions considerable tracts are found with every element of fertility, but yielding only grass, every attempt to raise grain having failed. In Parley's Park, in the Wasatch Mountains, Heber Kimball cultivated wheat for several years ; it was in the flower by the first of September, and was cut off by the first frost. At Soda Springs, Idaho, the " Morrisite " Mormons tried for many years to raise crops, and only succeeded, and that but poorly, with potatoes; they then turned their attention to cattle raising, in which they prospered. At the Navajo farms -in Arizona I have seen icicles six inches long on the rocks, only 300 feet above the fields, on the 18th of June; and in 1871, when the Indians had with great labor brought forward a crop of corn, and planted young orchards^ on the night of May 31st a storm of sleet froze every plant ALKALI. 55 and tree solid to the ground. A similar experience has followed the attempt to cultivate the soil in most of these high localities; and if there were no other causes, elevation alone would render half the Far West unfit for the farmer. Nor is this a difficulty that can be overcome by any art of man. Those who talk so glibly of the reclamation of waste lands in the West must wait until nature flattens out the country, and brings it down into the region of warmer air, and more abundant moisture. Provi dence seemingly did not intend that farming should be the leading interest of the Rocky Mou n tain % reg ion ; its true wealth is to be found in mining and grazing. III. Of barrenness caused simply by lack of soil little need be said. I have traveled for days together over ridges of gravel, or tra versed hundreds of miles with a basis of little more than solid rock, or with barely soil enough for scrubby growths of pine; and generally throughout the Rocky Mountains, instead of being green as are the slopes of the Alleghenies, all the steeps are gray and bare. From the summit of the Sierra Madre in New Mexico, 400 miles westward, I saw no other rock than sandstone, which, disintegrating and blowing down upon the valleys, was slowly covering the fields of the "lost race" and obliterating what little fertility remained. IV. ALKALI is the popular name applied everywhere in the West to that bi-carbonate which whitens thousands of square miles of the .interior plains between the Black Hills and the Sierras. East of the former it is often seen in quantity suffi cient to appear like hoar frost upon the .grass, or render barren a small plat of ground; but farther west it lies in vast beds, or mingled with the soil in such quantities as to poison the water, and destroy all vegetation. Gazing from a car window on the Union Pacific, somewhere not far west of the Platte crossing, the traveler is surprised to see flour or very white ashes, as he fciipposes, sowed in streaks and patches along the ground; and WHITE DESEKTS. STAGE CROSSING THE DESERT. here and there in the fertile soil of the valleys a pale purple streak on the ground, completely bare of grass, shows the pre sence of alkali. But west of Medicine Bow one finds it in the mass: for miles the country is of a dirty white complexion, and in dry weather the irritating dust powders the traveler till all races are of one hue. Where the trace is very slight, it can be " worked out " by cultivation; but in general it destroys all plants except the hardy greasewood and sagebrush. For sixty miles on Bitter Creek, Wyoming, the soil is a mass of clay, or sand, and alkali a horrible and irreclaimable desert which has made the place a byword. Nearly a hundred miles THE GREAT BASIN. 57 square of southern Idaho consists of a vast alkali plain, crossed only by stage routes; and in Nevada and Utah a single desert of "sand and soda" covers 30,000 square miles. Similar tracts are found in all the territories, notably the Jornada del Muerto, or "Journey of Death/' in New Mexico, the "white desert" of Arizona, the " forty mile desert," of almost pure alkali, in Wyoming, the Salt Lake desert 5000 square miles of sand, salt and alkali and the central desert or basin of Nevada, in which are " lost " the Humboldt, Carson, Truckee, and Reese rivers, and a hundred smaller streams. On the stage routes across such tracts the animals labor through a cloud of dust and the coach drags heavily, the wheels often causing a dis agreeable "cry" in the sand and soda, while the passengers endure as best they can the irritation to eye and nostril, and the slime formed upon the person by dust and sweat. This pene trating alkaline dust sifts in at the smallest crevice, and even the clothing in a close valise is often covered with it. Salt is another ele ment destructive to vegetation, but found in such excess only in the Great Basin. Just west of the Great Salt Lake is a tract of some five or six thousand square miles, which presents the NEEDS A HAVERSACK. general appearance of a dried salt marsh ; the subsoil is of sand and hard clay, mingled with flint and gravel, while the surface in the dry season dazzles and torments the eye with the glisten of salt and alkali. The Pacific Railway runs just north of this tract, and the old stage road crossed the narrowest part of it. For seventy rniles water is found in but one place, by digging; and in popular local phrase, " A jack -rabbit can't cross it without a haversack, while an immigrant crow sheds tears at the sight." So much for the bad features of the Great West : let us now 58 BUNCH-GRASS. consider what there may be of value in such a country. First to be noted among the redeeming features is the growth of bunch-grass, which is found in patches over a country at least a thousand miles square. Bunch-grass chiefly differs from the verdure of the East in that it never forms a continuous sod or green sward ; it grows in scattered clumps, six or eight to the square rod, or thicker where the locality is favorable. One can span a bunch at the roots, but above it spreads ; sometimes several bunches grow so as to form a clump a foot wide. It is never of a deep green, and for three-quarters of the year is a regular gray-brown ; hence an Eastern man might ride all day through rich pastures of it, and think himself in a complete desert. It gets its entire growth in about six weeks, some time between January and July according to the locality. It then cures upon the ground, and stands through the year look ing very much like bunches of broomsedge. It is as nutritious as ripe oats, the species with a white top, containing a small black seed, being particularly fattening. With it animals make journeys of a thousand miles without an ounce of grain ; with out it, nine-tenths of America between meridians 100 and 120, would be totally worthless. Probably the most disappointing feature in Rocky Mountain scenery, to all new comers, is the absence of a green landscape ; for with rare exceptions the traveler's eye does not rest in sum mer upon an unvarying carpet of green as in the East. The bunch-grass is a pale green, or quite gray or yellow; the small sage-brush is white, and the large variety blue, the greasewood. is a dirty white, and the earth and rocks white, yellow or red ; hence the result is a neutral gray, which seems to shroud all' creation in sober tints. One may ride all day through good bunch-grass pasture and his horse be walking in sand all the time ; or through a tolerably rich country and never see an acre of that lively emerald which is the charm of an Ohio landscape. A plat of green sward is a rare sight in the Rocky Mountains ; but eastward, on the high plains, other grasses appear, changing by slow degrees to the heavy verdure of the Missouri Valley. . But the true wealth of all that country is in its minerals. It DIVISIONS OF THE WEST. 59 is my belief that there is not a range in the Rocky Mountains in which paying minerals cannot be found somewhere. Every year valuable mines are discovered in places which had been given up as hopeless by men of science. Four years ago there was scarcely one in a hundred who believed in the mineral wealth of Utah ; now her developed mines are worth $25,000,000. With more experience, more thorough prospect^ ing, and improved modes of working, every part of that vast region will be found rich in some kind of minerals. The agricultural wealth of the country has been vastly over rated ; its mineral wealth equally underrated. Two or three more railroads across the continent are needed, to transport machinery and supplies, and then we can say that our mineral development has begun; what has been done will appear as nothing. Of timber all the West east of the Sierra Nevada has barely enough to supply local necessity ; of the immense forests on that range I will treat in the proper place. The Great West falls naturally into five grand divisions: 1. The Plains. 2. The Rocky Mountains. 3. The Colorado Basin. 4. The Great Basin also known as Fremont's and the In terior Basin. 5. The Pacific Slope. The term "plains" is often, improperly, applied to the whole country between the Missouri and the Pacific; it belongs only to that vast inclined plane stretching from the river, from four, to six hundred miles, to the foot of the mountains, and extend^ ing from Texas far into British America. Ascending this gentle grade anywhere between parallels 35 and 45, nearly the same general features are observable. Let the traveler start at the eastern border and go westward, on any section line, he will for fifty miles traverse a region rich in all the elements of plant growth ; the bottoms of inexhaustible fer tility, the slopes equal to the Miami Valley, and the ridges generally good for wheat, and always most excellent pasture. 60 THE HIGH PLAINS. Along the streams is found a heavy growth of elm, walnut, hackberry and cotton wood ; on the slopes and in the valleys, dense grass, almost the height of man, and over all the ridges, rich prairie grasses mingled with a few other plants, and beauti fully varied by thousands of bright-hued flowers, mingling the colors of the temperate and semi-tropical regions. Westward up the streams we first notice a disappearance of the forest growth ; the timber shrinks to a mere fringe along the water's edge, or to stunted and gnarled bushes, contending feebly for life against increasing drought and annually recurring prairie fires. Walnut and ash disappear, and of large timber we find only the cotton wood, box-elder and willow. A hundred miles out, west of the Neosho or near the Verdigris, a marked change is observable ; only the valleys are first class land ; the slopes are but medium, and the ridges full of rock and yielding scant grass. Fifty miles farther, on the slopes and ridges verdure in its strict meaning disappears; buffalo grass and gama grass take its place, and these show a tendency to bunch together, leaving large portions of the surface bare. The land rises into long ridges stretching away swell on swell as far as the eye can reach as if a heaving ocean had suddenly become firm, fixed earth and immense pampas spread away, alternating flint and gravel with strips of wiry, curly grass, or, at long intervals, a protected growth of stunted shrubs. The brigTit flowers of the lower valley disappear ; those that remain appear to have lost color and odor ; the blue larkspur alone retains its brightness ; the wild sunflower and yellow saffron become dust- hued and dwarfish, while milkweed and resinweed sustain a sort of dying life, and cling with a sickly hold to the harsh and forbidding soil. Still the immediate valleys are rich ; still occasional depressions or oval vales along the streams contain a few thousand acres of fertility, and half or more of the upland furnishes scant pasturage. The traveler, after toiling for hours over half-barren ridges, stunted grass-plats, or acres of bare gray rock or dead clay, finds his road leading down to some stream, and from a rocky point beholds spreading for miles an oasis, beautiful by nature and delightful by comparison, watered DIFFICULTIES OF TRAVEL. 61 by a clear stream, bordered by rich meadows, and marking the course of a long and narrow tongue of rich land. Here are the buffalo and antelope; all settlements are far behind, and the plains in all their vastness are around us. Three hundred miles out and we are on the Great American Desert; it exists, all doubts to the contrary notwithstanding, though more than half of its surface east of the mountains is of some value for grazing. Now appear depressed basins, and valleys with vast patches of white saline matter dried upon the soil; short stunted grass, half-white with salt, saline plants resembling many upon the seashore, and vast flats and marshes, drying in the summer to beds of stifling dust. Travel over the high country with teams is there an impossibility. We must follow some stream for grass and water, and hence from time immemorial, aborigine, trapper, and emigrant have had three great routes across the plains the Platte Valley, the Smoky Hill, and the Arkansas routes. The aborigine adopted these routes from the buffalo ; the hunter followed the Indian ; the emigrant was piloted by the hunter, and on the last two lines following came the railroads, obedient to the same neces sities for water and a smooth route. Leaving these narrow routes as we approach the mountains, we find foothills and ridges extending far eastward on the plains, cut by narrow gullies hundreds of feet in depth, with perpendicular sides a series of covered ways, equal to the best devised by military skill, admirable hiding places and lines of approach for marauding Kiowas or murderous Arrapahoes. Between the streams which create and mark out the lines of travel, extend broken ridges, crossed by the traveler only on low " divides," where the demands of commerce have made a crossing an imperative necessity. There the discouraged team ster contends equally with heat, thirst, and fatigue ; grows old before his time in an unequal struggle with nature ; toils over stony ridges destitute of grass and water, or labors through beds of noxious alkali, rising in ever wind-obeying clouds to excoriate his nostrils, weaken his eyes, or embitter the scant streams which are his only resource. 62 SOME GOOD LAND. Toiling through this last and worst stage of the plains the traveler enters among the foothills and first valleys of the Rocky Mountains, and finds renewed signs of fertility, but of a totally different kind from that along the Missouri. But we leave a full description of the other divisions of the West until we reach them in the course of travel. Let not the reader hastily conclude that there is no good land in all the region I have outlined. There is considerable in scattered patches- though I have been more particular in describing the bad, Th'i object of this chapter is to tell what you will not otherwise learn. The good land you will cer tainly hear of from the magnificent circulars of railroad and emigration companies. MT. BAKER AND THE CASCADE RANGE, FROM WHITBY'S ISLAND, W. T. CHAPTER III. FIVE WEEKS IN NEBRASKA. Omaha Glorious anticipitations Prosaic facts A bit of history Florence An invasion of place hunters Disappointment On the road to Fontanelle Elkhorn Valley Lost on the prairie " Any port in a storm " Down to th'e Platte Fremont Down Platte Valley Intense heat Want of domestic economy Romantic hash Victuals and poetry Bovine apotheosis Farm ing in Nebraska Room for three hundred thousand farmers Climate Society " Professional starvation " Through Sarpy County Youthful con- nubiality Artificial groves Increase of rain-fall Omaha politics " Bilks " " Hunting for work, hoping to not find it." is Omaha, George Francis Train and the Credit Mobil ier! Such was the shibboleth of the Omahas when I first made their acquaintance in June, 1868. He who was not prepared to swear by this local trinity was jocu larly advised to emigrate or make his will. At the pre sent writing the second is for the tenth time a " martyr to prin ciple," nobody knows to what principle, viewing the world through crossbars, and the third has become a national scandal, from which an odor of corruption pervades the whole land ; but the first still survives, and with a more solid basis of prosperity. It took me two hours to discover that there was no situation waiting for me in Omaha. For some weeks before reaching the city I had continually heard, "It's the great city of the near future/' " The heart of the Continent beats there," etc. ; and in walking twice along Farnham Street I encountered some fifty persons looking for "light, easy and genteel employment." But after a few days' stay I was convinced that no place in America had been " so well lied about," as no place had been exposed to a wider range of praise and blame. That the city had a future and a bright one was certain ; but that five men were dazzled in the hope of that future, and destined to lose 63 64 PRIMITIVE TIMES. time and money waiting for it, to every one that made a success, seemed equally certain. Let us on this point indulge in a little history. Omaha was laid out in 1854, soon after the organization of Nebraska Territory, and for several years gave little promise of future greatness; in fact, it was quite outrun by the little settle ment of Florence, six miles north, of which the Omahas now speak patronizingly as a "very pretty suburb," destined in their san guine view to be the Spring Grove or Brook lyn to their future Go tham. Florence was the original "Winter- Quarters " of the Mor mons, where they ar rived late in 1846, after their expulsion from Nauvoo and journey through Iowa. Hun dreds of them died there of actual want; some were poisoned by eating wild roots, and the Flo rence graveyard con tains the remains of seven hundred of these victims. J. K. Mitchell, founder of Florence, induced the Legislature to finish one ses sion there after that body had broken up in a row at Omaha. Soon after Mitchell died, and his town ceased to be a rival. Omaha contained, in 1860, two thousand people; in 1864, four thousand ; then the Union Pacific got fairly under way, and in three years the population doubled. A census taken by the city authorities a few days before my arrival, returned the popu lation at 17,600, and the next year they made it 25,000. One "WANTED : LIGHT AND GENTEEL EMPLOYMENT." SITUATIONS WANTED. 65 year thereafter came a fearful epidemic and swept away 12;000 of these at least, that strikes me as the easiest explanation, for the National Census of 1870 only credited Omaha with some 13,000 people. Council Bluffs, which had never claimed more than 12,000, suffered but little reduction from the census epidemic. The growth of Omaha was encouragingly rapid ; but the Western mind is queerly constructed, and great on anticipation. The air is light, dry -and healthy, and the world looks big west of the Missouri ; every man feels that the range of all outdoors is his pasture, and is hopeful as a millionaire if he have a few corner lots, and ten dollars in his pocket. Hence magnified re ports, and glowing promises of more rapid growth in the next two years ; and thousands of young men in the Northern and Eastern States imagined that all they had to do was to come to Omaha, and fortune would shower her favors on them. There was an immense immigration in 1868, of just such material as a new State does not want, and for every clerk's or bookkeeper's position there were a hundred applicants. But the ninety-nine rejected did not particularly suffer. Some footed it eastward, some tried their fortune farther west, and some went into the country and learned to till the soil ; for men will work rather than starve, and there is abundant provision in Nebraska for men to hoe corn and cultivate muscle. But each of the disap pointed wrote to his friends or to the press, and for the rest of that year Omaha was the best abused city in the West. The heated term was at its worst, and after ten days in Omaha I once more took my pilgrim staff for the country, fol lowing out the California Trail. The telegraph by the road side, continuous to San Francisco, awakened some singular reflections: of the time but a few years past when this was the last outpost of civilization on the long route to the Pacific; of the tens of thousands who made this their starting point for a new Eldorado, and the thousands from every State whose graves line the trail all the way to the Sacramento. Now the border of cultivation and settlement is hundreds of miles west ward; half the distance to the mines is traversed by rail, and 5 66 PAPILLION VALLEY. OMAHA CITY. in a year or two more the California Trail will be but a trail on the page of history. I own no real estate in Nebraska no corner lots in Omaha; why, then, should I go into raptures over the neighboring country? But I cannot forbear an expression of gladness at my recollections of that trip: of miles on miles of cornfields -with heavy crops, and wheat fields just ready for harvesting; farm products of every kind in the best of order, and plenty smiling over all the land. Eight miles from the city brought me into the valley of the Little Papillion (pro. Pap-ee-onh), where I spent the night with a minister of the German Refor med Church. That people have quite a settlement here, and are temperate, industrious and most desirable citizens. July 8th. Journeyed on in a northwest direction. As this , 'has been a hot dry summer, and no rain has fallen for two- weeks, I am surprised at the appearance of the corn, which shows no sign of drought, is waist high, of a rich dark green, and growing rapidly. It appears that the soil and crops seldom 3 SOIL AND CLIMATE. 67 show the effects of drought, though much less rain falls in the course of the year than in Indiana. The hard freeze of the winter makes the ground pulverize finely and hold moisture better in summer, and it is generally dry enough to plow in the spring as soon as the frost is out of the ground. Settlers report that the soil is nearly as dry in winter as in summer, and it is only during the month of May is it because the snows are then melting in the mountains ? that they have heavy rains here. The winds bother me a little. I am not yet free from the neuralgic affection consequent on last winter's troubles, and the breeze makes me feel giddy more by its steadiness than its force. So my old neighbor contemplating emigration to Nebraska, may ask himself whether it is nobler in a man to suffer the stings and buffets of these outrageous winds, with freedom from winter rain and mud, or take refuge in the wooded region of Indiana, avoid the winds, and have the other evils. Turned straight north up the Papillion, lay by in the heat of the day, and took dinner with a Swede who had been here a year and understood perhaps fifty words of English. Fortu nately he had served as a mercenary in France and Italy, and spoke both languages like a native. I recalled a little of my boarding-school French, which I hadn't had a chance to air for five years, and we carried on a mongrel conversation in a very barbarous mixture of French and Latin. He tells me there has been a famine in his native province, and that all Swedes here who can raise money have sent it to their friends and relations to pay their passage out, and that accounts for the many young people I see among them who do not appear to be of the family. They are stopping with their friends till they can get homes, which is but a little while in this marvelously fertile region, where every laborer is in demand, and where the State wants the hardy Scandinavian almost as badly as he wants it. I stop for the night with another of the lt Deformed Dutch/' as the Yankees hereabout irreverently style these German Pres byterians. AKOUXD FOSTAXELLE. SCENE NEAR FONTANELLE. July 9th. Bear away westward toward Fontanelle,and through a most delightful country, wandering at random among the far mers, and boring them with questions on climate, soil, etc. The immigration here this year is great, and composed largely of the best class of foreigners. Vacant lands have advanced in price from three to five dollars an acre ; and farmers are buying land near their homesteads as fast as they can command the means, in the assured belief that it will double in value in a year or two. This is accounted the " garden spot of Nebraska." If the country only had plenty of timber it would be perfect. And the settlers are fast remedying that lack; for every farm has an artificial grove, and most of them are now old enough to add great beauty to the landscape. In places, large plats which have been planted ten or twelve years present the appearance LOST ON THE PRAIRIE. 69 of natural forest. The country is gently rolling and the views very fine. At every turn in the road I exclaim, " Surely this cannot be excelled/ 7 and yet the next view as I move towards Fontanelle seems still more beautiful. July 10th. A day about Fontanelle, which is a neat, country village, elegantly situated on a commanding ridge above the Elk horn river. Turning southwest late in the afternoon, I lost my way on the unbroken prairie north of the Platte, and soon after sundown reached a farmhouse which looked very uninviting by starlight, but was my only chance within ten miles. To my earnest in quiry for fresh water, the settler answered that he had dug two wells, one seventy feet deep and got no water, but struck sand which "caved so he could not curb." This is the only such case I have found in the State. Sometimes they must dig deep, but they get as fine water as I ever tasted. The family were using water from the creek, of which one tinful satisfied and dis gusted me. To my request for lodging he answered that I would find hard accommodations, but he never turned anybody away at night. JSTo mention was made of supper, and I was conducted at once by a ladder to the upper story, where I turned in for the night on a shuck bed, and soon forgot in sleep all my troubles but thirst. But oh, the visionary springs that tantalized me, the crystal streams that flowed in inviting, tormenting beauty through my dreams. How often did I see the " cot of my father, the dairy house nigh it, and the old oaken bucket that hung in the well," and wake, just as the treacherous water fled from my lips. July llth. Daylight revealed a situation. My host's wife was insane as he expressed it, "clean daft" and his six chil dren, ranging from one year old to ten, were growing up like wild bulrushes. A sort of breakfast was prepared, and I forced a scant ration of bread and coffee, but it was a signal triumph of a catholic stomach over a protesting nose. My host was going to Fremont, " to git his sod plow sot and sharped," and I took a seat in his wagon, and in an hour reached 70 FREMONT. the summit of the slope leading down to the Platte Valley. As I viewed the panorama of beauty my heart swelled at the glory and magnificence of the scene. Far as the eye could pierce to the east and west spread the plain, its surface covered with tall grass, now waving and sparkling in the morning sunshine; along the opposite bluff ran the broad Platte fringed with tim ber, and on the near bank, some five miles distant, the town of Fremont showed like a toy village half buried in the green car pet. Up the valley from the east rumbled the morning train on the Union Pacific, while far to the westward a band of Pawnees were just passing out of sight, seeming on the level plain, to fade into the blue horizon. The whole scene was em blematic of progress, breathing the spirit of borderland poetry. I wanted to shout or sing. Eagerly I wished for a companion to talk in harmony with the scene and my feelings. But the man at my side was utterly unconcerned. He had seen it a thousand times, and Gallio-like, cared for none of these things. From the bluff the road across the plain looked like a deep ditch with green banks, but this appearance was due to the rank grass reaching on each side nearly as high as the horses' backs. Entering between these green banks, the hitherto apathetic far mer suddenly seized his whip and applied it vigorously to his team, shouting at every blow till they were in a gallop, while the wagon made fearful lurches, and our seatboard rattled over it in every direction. I bounced about the wagon-box, exerting all my ingenuity to save my limbs, and as soon as I could get breath shouted that there was no occasion for such hurry, to take it easy. His only reply in the intervals of plying the whip, was to point to the tall grass, from which I then observed pour ing by hundreds, a peculiar sort of clipper-built fly, with green heads, black bodies, and yellow shoulder-straps, which were trying to settle on the horses, and only prevented by the latter's speed. I held on in desperation, and our speed did not slacken for two miles, until we reached the rising ground and got among the cultivated fields near Fremont. There, while I gathered myself up and took stock of abrasions and cuticular losses, the DOWN THE PLATTE. 71 farmer killed the few flies which had stuck, each one leaving a bright red drop of blood on the frantic animals. July 12th. Spent Sunday at Fremont, a flourishing western Yankee town of 1200 people. No church or Sabbath school that I can hear of, but plenty of loafers on the hotel porch all day, sociable and communicative, discussing the hot weather, the grasshoppers, and the " craps." All agree that the " hoppers " are coming, and that it will be " mighty tough on the new set tlers as ha'int got their claims paid for yet.'' Late p. M. walked five miles down the valley. July 13th. The " hoppers" have come, but fortunately only a, light invasion, and doing very little injury. A few fields of wheat in this valley are " nipped," and passengers say that for two or three miles on Papillion, nearly half the crop is destroyed. Travel slowly towards Omaha through the most fertile country I ever saw. Farmers estimate their wheat will average thirty bushels per acre. Corn still looks thrifty in spite of long con tinued heat and drought. Thermometer stood at 100 for four hours to-day. Consequently I stood not at all, but lay by on the porch of a farmer's house till 4 P. M. Stopped for supper in Big Papillion Valley, at an inviting frame dwelling sur rounded by fine fields of corn and wheat, from which I argued good cheer. My disappointment was terrible. Tea that drew my mouth awry, without milk ; butter, that defied me in self- conscious strength ; pork, the rankest that ever smelt to heaven ; and bread that defied my geology to classify. After due trial I ventured to assign it to the palseozoic period. It lacerated my mouth ; it would have killed rats. For this entertainment (?) my host required " six bits." Left in an ill-humor, and proceeded to criticize the western farmer's style of living. Why do so many of our people poison themselves even those who are able to do better when good food is just as cheap? How many families in Indiana and Illinois are cursing the climate for evils which three months' attention to the chemistry of common life would relieve? Know ye not, that what a man eateth that he is ? Science has demonstrated that we are totally remade, bone and blood, brain 72 G ASTRONOMICAL. and muscle, every seven years. Thus our present selves are ever scooping up our future selves with knife, fork and spoon. And have not I, A. B., a vital interest in what the A. B. of seven years hence shall be ? Fried pork, watery potatoes, sloppy coffee, and sad bread ! How can the Hoosier or Sucker retain his self-respect when he remembers his component elements ? The classic Greeks did well to locate the soul in the stomach. I am not so sure but the enlightened moderns will return to that philosophy. The greatest philosophers to a man were lovers of good eating. Man, dominating the whc-le animal kingdom, selects only its noblest representatives as worthy to sink their individuality in his, by giving their meat and muscle to become part of his corporation. The highest compliment man can pay the ox is to eat him. By so doing he demonstrates that the bovine is worthy to be absorbed in the human ; and if we may believe that animal has a soul, how cheerful to reflect that it meets its proper apotheosis by adoption into the human spirituality. Viewed in that light these animals are indeed im mortal ; they survive in us, their federal head and final repre sentative. When a man says of the idol of his soul, " I love her well enough to eat her/ 7 what does he mean but this : that he has so intense an appreciation of her excellence that he would literally absorb it, swallow up as it were her rare combination of soul and body beautiful simile! translate her, so to speak, and make her a part of himself in fact as well as in figure. In this- philosophical light, the lover's tender suggestion of amatory can nibalism is really the most delicate of respectful compliments. Favor is deceitful, and beauty's only skin deep, but there is no discount on boned turkey and scalloped oysters. I have no sympathy with that class of transcendentalists, fortunately small, who deprecate any deep interest in the mere pleasure of eating. " We may live without sentiment, music and art, We may live without poetry, pictures or books, But civilized man cannot live without cooks." Having thus grumbled myself into good nature, I sauntered BEAUTIES OF NEBRASKA. 73 on towards the city, stopping late in the evening with a prosper ous farmer in Little Papillion Valley. July 14th. A beautiful artificial grove of twenty acres on this farm, shows that, whatever be the true theory as to the origin of these prairies, the soil and climate have the capacity to pro duce timber in abundance. My host says the trees are made to grow twice as fast for the first three years by cultivating corn among them. Most are cottonwood and soft maple. The locusts along the road have attained a foot in thickness in eleven years. Nebraska has the land, the air, and the water; but lacks somewhat the timber and rock, though the last abounds in a few localities. Reached Omaha to-day, and now sum up a few notes on rural Nebraska: For the width of the State and a hundred and fifty miles back from the Missouri, almost every foot of land is adapted for the comfort and sustenance of man. Thirty thousand square miles of the most fertile land in the world has even now (1873) but a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. There is abund ant room for at least three hundred thousand farmers and stock- growers. Vacant lands can be purchased at from three to fifteen dollars per acre, according to location, the vicinity of railroads, etc. I had offers of as fine land as I ever saw, in the Papillion Valleys, within ten or twenty miles of the Union Pacific, for eight dollars per acre ; but it has no doubt doubled in price since. On the Elkhorn, above Fontanelle, is still much vacant land to be had very cheap. In the southern part of the State, between Lincoln and the eastern border, are large sections of railroad land to be had at moderate prices, on annual payments for seven years. Any live Yankee farmer can make the pay ments on the land after the second year. Farther back lands are still cheaper, with fine facilities for grazing. On the slopes and in the valleys, the soil is continuous of the same quality for six feet below the surface. Immediately under this, lies a bed of soft, rather moist sand, which probably causes the soil to remain moist so long. In spite of the long droughts of 1868, the crops were very fine. While the valleys and 74 HEALTH AND CLIMATE. slopes are best for corn, the uplands produce better wheat. After the hard freeze of winter, with no thaws, the soil pulver izes finely in summer. It is never water soaked ; consequently never " bakes " or clods. The best farmers do not plow the land in spring for wheat, after it has been cultivated two or three years ; but merely harrow in the seed. Later experience in Nebraska convinced me that the State averaged as many clear days in winter as any part of America. I grumbled considerably about the wind at first ; it caused a giddy feeling in my head. But after I got over the neuralgia, bronchitis, catarrh, and six or eight other complaints I brought from Indiana, I rather liked it; and now I quite prefer a region with a continuous gentle breeze of six or eight miles an hour. My observation in the West has led me to conclude that regions with steady winds are the most healthful. Society in Nebraska will average. There is no section where they will murder a man outright because he is a Christian; and none where they will disfranchise him if he is not. The standard of popular intelligence is high. The people are the most enterprising classes from those Eastern States, which have good public schools. The school system is equal to that of any State in the Union. So, on the whole, if you are native to any climate north of latitude thirty-five degrees, and have any "get up " about you, and can and will work, there's a show for you in rural Nebraska. As for professionals well, most of the towns have doctors and lawyers to all eternity, and insurance agents till you can't rest. Omaha had, in 1868, fifty-three attorneys : business, I should say, for about six. However, for an enterprising young man, without any capital to speak of, and just beginning a pro fession, it offers as fine a field for successful starvation as any place I know. Finding at Omaha a dozen or more letters from old friends inquiring about Nebraska lands, I again started afoot, this time toward the southern part of the State. For a few miles below Omaha the country may be called hilly ; then it sinks by gentle slopes to the Platte Valley, and thence rolling prairie extends A VENTURESOME YOUTH. 75 to the Kansas border. Traveled for the first day through a fine wheat region in Sarpy County, the farmers everywhere at work, but complaining much of the intense heat. Where I stopped for dinner there had been, the previous day, two cases of sunstroke, but neither seemed likely to prove fatal. Instead of the breeze generally prevailing on the prairie there was a dead calm, sultry and oppressive. At sundown I turned aside to an humble cabin flanked by a pretentious stable. Found no one at home but a girl and boy as I supposed, of whom seeking hospitality I enquired for the man of the house. An audible smile greeted me, and the lad replied that he was "the only man o' the house there was about." Further conversation developed the fact, that this youthful pair had been married ten months, and still lacked six weeks of nine teen and sixteen years respectively. The girl-matron, "reck oned she could get me something to eat, an' I could sleep in the barn-loft with brother Perry." Under the influence of a cup of tea she became more than 'social, stating that "Ike's folks was much agin the match, bufc Ike was a comin' out to pre-empt, and swore he'd have a woman to help him." I gazed at the young husband with that admiration the timid always feel for the brave. They " was married in Iowa, and both worked for one farmer three months to get money to pay for their things, then came right out an' pre-empted." Then she turned questioner, and put me in the witness-box : Where was I born and raised ? Didn't I like this country better than Injiana? And finally, after a pause, and with a sudden jerk of the head as if she had forgot ten something important, " What do you do with your wife while you're trampin' round lookin' at the country?" I told her I had no wife, at which she was somewhat taken aback, but recovering handsomely, in a minute or two returned to the charge by asking why I had never married. I answered that I had hardly thought I was old enough, and no more questions were asked. I had her there. Darkness came, and with it dense swarms of musquitoes from the neighboring bayous of the Missouri and Platte, 76 " SMUDGE." SCENE NEAR PAPILLION, NEBRASKA. The married boy ventured a remark that "Some 7 un had told him a musketeer only lived one day, but he reckoned not; for they come tip that holler by the fillion, and he was keen to swear that some big ones come back every day for a week." " Smudges " were lighted about the yard, and the house was enveloped in a cloud of smoke which soon silenced the cozening tormentors. " Brother Perry " then led the way, carrying an old kettle containing a " smudge/' to the stable ; we ascended to the loft by an outside ladder, and retired. The bed had a maximum of cord to a minimum of feathers, and I soon found that we had "jumped a claim" which the original squatters were determined not to vacate. Though small, they were nu merous and unanimous, and enforced squatter law with blood thirsty zeal ; so, after tossing and battling till midnight, every RAIN AND TIMBER. 77 inch of my cuticle in a fever, I rose with a full appreciation of Byron's beautiful line- " No sleep till morn," and sat by a "smudge" till daylight. Thence south west ward for a few days, I found the country about as that west of Omaha, but with more and cheaper vacant land. Every settler had an artificial grove of from ten to twenty acres. It is a frequent subject of remark in Indiana, that cutting the timber and clearing up the country is slowly tending to dry up the streams; that springs "go dry every summer which never did before." But here exactly the reverse phenomena are presented. It is supposed that breaking up the land allows it to absorb more moisture than it could in the prairie state; and the settlers tell me that breaking up a hun dred acres of sod will renew an old spring, and branches are starting in gullies which have been dry for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. The oldest pioneers add, that the fall of rain in Western Nebraska and Kansas has doubled within the memory of man. I returned to Omaha to find it hot, physically and politicallv. The campaign of 1868 inaugurated; the days were too sultry for politics, but the nights were made hideous by party meet ings. General Grant and party, including Generals Sherman and Sheridan, arrived from the West, and fifteen thousand people turned out to welcome them. Omaha then had a "float ing population" worth studying. It was the half-way place between the East and the West. Thousands started for the mountains, got to Omaha, got out of money, and stopped dis heartened. Thousands were started home from the mountains and got to the city in the same impecunious condition. Daily the tide of emigration rolled in from the East, and passed on to the Far West, leaving here a deposit of its worthless materials; and daily the refluent tide rolled back from the mountains, leaving a larger deposit of more worthless materials. The streets were crowded, but the crowds did not indicate a corre sponding amount of money. Nineteen hotels and restaurants 78 " FLOATEES." were in operation, and at every one of them "bilks" abounded. The floating class were in just that condition when men will steal or beg their provisions, but carefully save their money to buy whiskey. A thousand idlers were sitting about Omaha complaining of "hard times," and cursing the country, while in the rural districts the farmers were hunting in all directions for help, and offering three dollars a day for harvesting and hay ing. Verily something was wrong: "The chain and the bucket were not hitched together." CHAPTER IV. ON THE UNION PACIFIC. Up the Platte Valley Beauty by moonlight ; barrenness by day Getting on to the desert North Platte "The gentle gazelle " " Dog-town "Not dogs, but rodents " Indians ahead " The dangerous district Crossing the plains in 1866 " The noble Red Man " Cheyenne Vigorous reduction of the popu lation Black Hill Sherman Down to Laramie The Alkali Desert Benton A beautiful summer resort ! Manners and morals (?) Bravery of the impecunious Murder and mob Vigilantes Murderer rescued by the military and escapes Amusements "jBigTent" " Now then, gentlemen, the ace is your winning card " " Cappers " and Victims No fairness in gambling. " The Yankee's place of heaven and rest Is found a little farther West." ND therefore, at 6 P. M. of July 31st, I started westward by the Union Pacific. The intense and protracted heat had yielded at last ; a heavy rain of twenty-four hours had cooled the air, and washed the dust from the grass, leaving all the region along the road a beautiful rich green. The road ran through a well settled and cultivated country for about fifty miles, but a little west of Fremont, we ran out suddenly into the open prairie, consisting of the rolling slopes and broad fertile valley of the Platte. The sky was clear after the storm, and the sunset was one that, in Italy, would have been " gorgeous," " unrivalled," and worthy of any amount of florid description, but on our western prairie was simply beautiful. Then rose the harvest-moon, now at its full ; and leaning out of the car-window I drank in quiet enjoyment while grove, bluff and broad silvery Platte rolled by in ever varying panorama of loveliness. Nor was it till mid night that wearied of gazing I went to sleep. Daylight came, the loveliness was gone, and the whole scene had changed. For landscape beauty there was only grandeur ; 79 80 FIRST VIEW OF THE PLAINS. 81 for rich green prairie and picturesque groves there was only the majesty of distance, an expanse without life, vast plains and rol ling hills. The broad Platte, like a stream of molten silver by moonlight, now appeared its real self: a dirty and uninviting lagoon, only differing from a slough in having a current, from half a mile to two miles wide, and with barely water enough to fill an average canal ; six inches of fluid running over another stream of six feet or more of treacherous sand; too thin to walk on, too thick to drink, too shallow for navigation, too deep for safe fording, too yellow to wash in, too pale to paint with the most disappointing and least useful stream in America. Here and there in the river are low islands, barely rising above the water and scantily clothed with brush ; and in the bends of the stream, more rarely, clumps of large timber or green meadows. Vegetation begins to show signs of drought. The grass is short and wiry, with a sort of dried, cured look ; no more bright flowers are seen, and neither house nor cultivated field appears. As we move westward through the day we occasionally see the blue larkspur and then the resinweed and greasewood ; finally appear the "sand-burr," a species of cactus, and a stunted flower resembling the fuchsia with weakened pink and blue tints. AYe appear to be running on a dead level ; for though the route is up the Platte Valley, the ascent is so gradual as to be quite imperceptible. At places the road is perfectly straight for several miles, and at one point I can stand on the rear plat form and note the lines of rail steadily converging till they unite and fade away beyond the reach of the eye in far per spective. We take breakfast at North Platte 291 miles from Omaha an excellent one, too ; all the delicacies of an Eastern hotel, and antelope and buffalo steaks in addition, for the moderate price of a dollar and a quarter. Such were the rates till the road was finished. Now one dollar is the standard price for a meal from Omaha to Ogden. Thence we move out upon a high, dry plain, following near the South Platte, having left the junction at North Platte, and at 10 A. M., the cry of " Ante- 6 82 STRANGE ANIMALS. lopes ! " brings every tourist to the window. Our car was filled exclusively with " pilgrims ; " not a man in it had ever been west of the Missouri in his life, and none were ashamed to ex hibit curiosity. For an hour or two we saw only single ante lopes, and at a distance ; then they appeared in considerable numbers, one herd containing seventy. They came so near the track that we could see the brightness and inquisitive stare of their eyes, then at the sound of a pistol shot from the platform turned and bounded swiftly away over the hills, displaying in perfection all the poetry of motion. They are a little larger than our common goat, but rather resemble the deer. The meat I think equal to venison in the fall and winter, but it is rather hard and tough from May to September. They can be tamed, but domesticating and handling appear to take all their wild vivacity out of them. Their sleek and shining coats roughen and the hair turns the wrong way; the eye loses its bright, and mobile softness, and they walk slowly about, looking more like sick goats than the " gentle gazelle " of poetry. They can be taken East, but with great difficulty ; for they are singularly tender in the back, and a slight blow will break the vetebrse, though one can carry off half a dozen shots in the legs or breast, and still escape the hunter. We next entered " Dog-town," eastern border of the prairie- dog country, which extends nearly two hundred miles eastward from the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, and over ten degrees of latitude. For over a mile the train runs through a continuous town, the prairie thickly dotted all the way with their mounds. It was a " good day for dogs " when we passed, and the little creatures seemed no way disconcerted by the train,, but would sit on their haunches, and converse with each other in short yelps till a shot was fired from the cars, when hundreds of feet would twinkle in the air, and the whole community go under with amazing suddenness. One by one they would peep cautiously out, and soon reappear to gaze and bark till another shot. This peculiar yelp, like that of a young puppy, seems to be the only reason they are called dogs, for they have nothing else in common with the canine genus. They are not carni* A SCARE. 83 DOG-TOWN " UNION PACIFIC R. R. vorous, but live entirely on grass and roots ; they are shaped midway between a squirrel and a ground-hog, have teeth like the former, and belong to the class Eodentia. The usual rumor was circulated of Indians having attacked and plundered the next train ahead of ours, producing the usual amount of nervousness to reward the perpetrators of the hoax. Such rumors were started regularly on every train for a year or two after the road was completed, and obtained ready credence from the well-known fact that this section on the South Platte had been the most dangerous part of the old stage route. In 1866 the U. S. Mail Coach, carrying a military guard and several armed passengers, was attacked near here by a hundred mounted Sioux and Cheyennes, and escaped after a running fight of twenty miles. A private party, in prairie ambulances, just behind were not so fortunate. They lost all their stock, and took refuge in a " buffalo wallow " a few rods in circumference a splendid natural earth-work and kept the savages at bay FOUR HUNDRED MILES OF DESERT. 85 for two days till they were relieved by a party of soldiers. Two of their number, captured by the savages, were roasted in full view of the besieged. But now a costly peace had been purchased, and Spot Ed. Tail and lady were guests of the Rollins House in Cheyenne. Now as we glide swiftly through the " dangerous district/' a small squad of soldiers appears at every section house, drawn up to receive us, and standing at a " present," till the train has passed. Their barracks are walled to the roof with sod, and a little way off is a small sod fort, connecting with the barracks by an underground passage. Occasionally we see a group of Indians looking on from distant sand-hills, and the romantic may fancy them musing sadly, or mutually indulging in lofty strains of pathos, over this curious smoke-breathing monster which is fast hastening the destruction of their race. But in prosaic fact the Indian seldom if ever thinks of such things. He is moved by a blind instinct to plunder and kill, and is not capable of a definite war policy. Not one in a hundred of the plains Indians has any conception of the comparative greatness of the white race For four hundred miles on our way there are no towns unless the eating stations deserve that name. We dine at Sid ney, and late in the day reach Cheyenne, five hundred and six teen miles, and twenty-five hours, from Omaha, where I stop for two days note-gathering. Six months since it was the "great city of the plains," lively and wicked, with perhaps six thousand people ; now it is a quiet and moral burg of some fifteen hundred inhabitants. Seeking information of a young resident, a traveler was informed that the population origin ally amounted to ten thousand, but they had lately shot and hanged so many that he " reckoned three thousand was now about the figure." From Cheyenne the road is nearly level to Hazard Station, officially pronounced the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains ; and thence the grade rises an average of eighty feet to the mile to Sherman, highest point on the whole road, and Summit of the Rocky Mountains that part, however, better known in the West as the Black Hills. 86 ALKALI PLAINS. 87 Thence the road makes a vast bend, running rapidly down ward all the time, for forty miles to the new city of Laramie. It had enjoyed three months of remarkable prosperity as the terminus, and had sprung from nothing to a city of five thou sand people ; but the terminus town had just been moved a hundred miles farther west to Benton, and Laramie, in the sixth month of its existence, was entering on a sickly old age. After two days there I boarded a construction train for the terminus. Westward the grassy plain yields rapidly to a desert; at Medicine Bow we took final leave of the last trace of fertility, and traversed a region of alkali flats and red ridges for fifty miles. In the worst part of this desert; just west of the last crossing of the Platte, we found Benton, the great terminus town, six hundred and ninety-eight miles from Omaha. Far as they could see around the town not a green tree, shrub, or spear of grass was to be seen ; the red hills, scorched and bare as if blasted by the lightnings of an angry God, bounded the white basin on the north and east, while to the south and west spread the gray desert till it was interrupted by another range of red and yellow hills. All seemed sacred to the genius of drought and desolation. The whole basin looked as if it might originally have been filled with lye and sand, then dried to the consistency of hard soap, with glistening surface tor menting alike to eye and sense. Yet here had sprung up in two weeks, as if by the touch of Aladdin's Lamp, a city of three thousand people; there were regular squares arranged into five wards, a city government of mayor and aldermen, a daily paper, and a volume of ordinances for the public health. It was the end of the freight and passenger, and beginning of the construction, divi sion ; twice every day immense trains arrived and departed, and stages left for Utah, Montana, and Idaho ; all the goods formerly hauled across the plains came here by rail and were reshipped, and for ten hours daily the streets -evere thronged with motley crowds of railroad men, Mexicans and Indians, gamblers, " cappers," and saloon-keepers, merchants, 88 BEAUTIES OF BENTON. miners, and mulewhackers. The streets were eight inches deep in white dust as I entered the city of canvas tents and pole- houses; the suburbs appeared as banks of dirty white lime, and a new arrival with black clothes looked like nothing so much as a cockroach struggling through a flour barrel. It was sundown, and the lively notes of the violin and guitar were calling the citizens to evening diversions. Twenty-three saloons paid license to the evanescent corporation, and five dance- houses amused our elegant leisure. In this place I wasted my time for two weeks, waiting for something to turn up, and lounged about the places most dangerous to pocket and morals with the happy indifference of a man who has nothing to lose* It cannot be denied, I think, that the man who has nothing is much braver than he who has plenty ; and I further suspect the bravest of our soldiers will admit, that if, about the time he- was ready to advance on Vicksburg or Richmond, he had learned that some obliging old relative had conveniently died, after leaving him $50,000, his appetite for fight would suddenly have lost much of its edge. The regular routine of business, dances, drunks and fist- fights met with a sudden interruption on the 8th of August^ Sitting in a tent door that day I noticed an altercation across the street, and saw a man draw a pistol and fire, and another stag ger and catch hold of a post for support. The first was about to shoot again when he was struck from behind and the pistol wrenched from his hand. The wounded man was taken into a cyprian's tent near by and treated with the greatest kindness by the women, but died the next day. It was universally admit ted that there had been no provocation for the shooting, and the general voice was, " Hang him ! " Next day I observed a great rush and cry in the street, and looking out, saw them dragging the murderer along towards the tent where the dead man lay. The entire population were out at once, plainsmen, miners and women mingled in a wild throng r all insisting on immediate hanging. Pale as a sheet and hardly able to stand, the murderer, in the grasp of two stalwart Vigilantes, was dragged through the excited crowd, and into the A HANGING SPOILED. IN THE HANDS OF THE VIGILANTES. tent where the dead man lay, and forced to witness the laying out and depositing in the coffin. What was the object of this movement nobody knew, but the delay was fatal to the hanging project. Benton had lately been decided to be in the military reservation of Fort Steele, and that day the General commanding thought fit to send a pro vost guard into the city. They arrived just in time, rescued the prisoner and took him to the guard-house, whence, a week after, he escaped. But the excitement thus aroused seemed to have created a thirst for blood. I had just retired to the tent when I heard a 90 "BIG TENT." series of fearful screams, and running to the door, saw the pro prietor of a saloon opposite beating his " woman." He was a leading ruffian of the city, and of a hundred men looking on not one felt called upon to interfere. At length he released his hold, and struck her a final blow on the nose which completely flattened that feature, and sent her into the middle of the street, where she lay with the blood gushing in torrents from her iace, mingling with the white dust and streaking her clothing with gore. The provost guard arrived again, after it was all over, and took the woman away, but paid no attention to the man. Four days after, I saw them together again, having apparently made it up and living on the same free and easy terms of ille gal conjugality. Two more rows wound up the evening, the last ending with a perfect fusillade of pistol shots, by which only two or three persons were "scratched" and nobody " pinked." For a quiet railroad town I thought this would do, and began to think of moving on. The great institution of Benton was the " Big Tent," some times, with equal truth but less politeness, called the " Gamblers' Tent." This structure was a nice frame, a hundred feet long and forty feet wide, covered with canvass and conveniently floored for dancing, to which and gambling it was entirely devoted. It was moved successively to all the mushroom v ter- minus " cities," and during my stay was the great public resort of Benton. A description of one of these towns is a description of all ; so let us spend one evening in the " Big Tent," and see how men amuse their leisure where home life and society are lacking. As we enter, we note that the right side is lined with a splen did bar, supplied with every variety of liquors and cigars, with cut glass goblets, ice-pitchers, splendid mirrors, and pictures rivalling those of our Eastern cities. At the back end a space large enough for one cotillon is left open for dancing ; on a raised platform, a full band is in attendance day and night, while all the rest of the room is filled with tables devoted to monte, faro, rondo coolo, fortune-wheels, and every other species of gambling known. I acknowledge a morbid curiosity relat~ 92 ( ing to everything villainous, and, though I never ventured a cent but once in my life, I ain never weary of watching the game, and the various fortunes of those who " buck against the tiger/' During the day the " Big Tent " is rather quiet, but at night, after a few inspiring tunes at the door by the band, the long hall is soon crowded with a motley throng of three or four hun dred miners, ranchmen, clerks, " bullwhackers," gamblers and "cappers." The brass instruments are laid aside, the string- music begins, the cotillons succeed each other rapidly, each ending with a drink, while those not so employed crowd around the tables and enjoy each his favorite game. To-night is one of unusual interest, and the tent is full, while from every table is heard the musical rattle of the dice, the hum of the wheel, or the eloquent voice of the dealer. Fair women, clothed with richness and taste, in white and airy garments, mingle with the throng, watch the games with deep interest, or laugh and chat with the players. The wife of the principal gambler a tall, spiritual and most innocent looking woman sits by his side, while their children, two beautiful little girls of four and six years, run about the room playing and shouting with merri ment, climbing upon the knees of the gamblers and embraced in their rude arms, like flowers growing on the verge of frightful precipices. We take our stand near the monte table, where a considerable crowd gathers, silently intent on the motions of the dealer. He throws three cards upon the cloth, points out one as the " winning card," then turns them face downward, and proceeds to toss them about, talking fluently all the time. "Now, then, here we go; my hand against your eyes. Watch the ace ! The ace is your winning card. The eight and ten spot win for me. Here is the ace, the winning card (turning it face up occasionally). Watch it close ! I have two chances to your one unless you watch the ace. Now, then, I'll bet any man twenty dollars, as they lie, that he can't pick up the ace, and I'll not touch the cards again. Will you go twenty dollars on it, sir?" As he says this, he turns his head away, and addresses a man A "GUDGEON." 93 at his left a conservative-looking neatly-dressed man, whom I should take for a merchant. But while his head is turned, a roughly-dressed, horny-handed miner by my side snatches over the nearest card, satisfies himself that it is the ace, and makes a faint pencil-mark on the back of it before the dealer can turn around. Then the miner becomes all at once anxious to bet ; puts up all the money he has $20 is anxious for some one to go in with him ; then puts down a watch and revolver, valued at $20 each. The dealer covers the pile, the miner turns the ace, and walks off with a gain of $60. There is a sensation around the board. Old plainsmen look at each other with a peculiar smile which may mean anything, but others get inter ested. The dealer curses his bad luck, and continues to throw the cards, and now the pencil-mark seems plain on the back of the ace. As soon as the cards are laid down a young fellow of nineteen or twenty, who came on the same train with me from Omaha, hastily produces a ten-dollar note, and offers to bet. " Ten dollars is no money to me, sir/' says the dealer ; " I've lost too much to fool with small bets ; I'll make or break to-night. I propose to bet forty dollars on this turn." The boy has no more money, but produces a pistol, which ia counted at ten dollars. " I'll go halvers with him," shouts the conservative-looking chap at the corner of the table, and lays down the twenty dollars. The boy eagerly seizes the pencil-marked card, turns it, and, to his norror and amazement, it is not the ace, but the ten-spot ! I see the boy turning pale, for, as I happen to know, it is his last ten dollars, while the dealer rakes in his pile and goes on with his harangue. Not a smile, not a chuckle, not a single ex pression of triumph appears ; he has had a simple business transaction, and rakes in the money, coolly, quietly, the same affable, conversable, stony-eyed gentleman. The game is now plain. The horny-handed miner, and the dapper, conservative looking gentleman, are " cappers ; " they have borne their part in the game, and " hooked a gudgeon," and carelessly stray off to some other table to repeat the operation. The charm is broken ; the little circle about the monte table take the alarm 94 " THE HAZARD OF A DIE." and begin to scatter, and we walk down to the " chuck-a-luck * board. Here a smooth oil-cloth is divided evenly into squares, numbered from six to thirty-six. On two-thirds of the numbers are some articles of value, the rest are blanks. On No. 36 is a gold watch and chain, value $300, and it is not a sham either, and on No. 6 is a $100 greenback. On numbers 7, 8 and 9, and 33, 34 and 35, are articles of considerable value, none less than $50, while the remaining numbers are blanks, or covered with some article of trifling value. Half a dollar is the charge for a throw. The cup con tains six dice. If you throw all ones you add up six, and get the hundred dollars ; if all sixes you add up thirty-six, and get the watch and chain, and the dealer will soon show you how you can ruin the bank, and most learnedly explains how you have just one chance in thirty of getting the watch and chain, and the same of getting the greenback. But you will see that your self. There are but thirty squares six to thirty-six and, of course, you stand as good a chance to hit one as another. Do you, though ? Try it and see. If you don't throw somewhere between twelve and twenty-five for ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it will be a new fact in physics. And on just those numbers from twelve to twenty-five are all blanks or trifling articles. Of course you do not see this by first glance at the cloth, for the numbers do not run in regular order, but in such ingenious irregularity that prizes and blanks all seem in undis- tinguishable order, side by side. The dice are not loaded either. You may use your own if you wish, and the result is the same and if you have any curiosity about it, reader, just try it with six dice on your own table, keep a record of your throws, and see how seldom you will reach very high or very low numbers. And having tried it thoroughly for two or three hundred throws, a moment's reflection will convince you that it would be little short of a miracle for a man to throw all sixes or all ones with dice not loaded. Then take your thirty numbers and make your calculation from the table laid down in the " theory of probabilities," and you will find there is just one chance in 990,000 that you will throw the highest or lowest number. In MORAL : DON'T. 95 other words, you stand fair to get the watch after nine hundred and ninety thousand throws at half a dollar a throw ! Rather an expensive watch. Guess we wont invest. But while we stand here philosophizing, the crowd is pressing to a long table 'at one side where an airish youth is shouting at the top of his voice, "Come down here now, you rondo coolo sports, and give us a bet." This game, like keno, has less of the "cutthroat" about it than the others. There is a per cent., small but regular, in favor of the dealer ; every thing is carried by an exact rule, and the careful player can calculate just what his chance is. But if any man imagines there is the least measure of fairness in ordi nary gambling, let him dismiss the thought. I have watched hundreds of games, and never saw a man gain a large sum with out learning, sooner or later, that he was a " capper." The evening wears along, many visitors begin to leave, the games languish, and a diversion is needed. The band gives a few lively touches, and a young man with a capacious chest and a great deal of " openness " to his face, mounts the stand and sings a variety of sentimental and popular songs, ending with a regular rouser, in the chorus of which he constantly reiterates in other words however that he is a bovine youth with a vitreous optio " which nobody can deny." As he wears a revolver and bowie- knife in plain view, nobody seems inclined to deny it. A lively dance follows, the crowd is enlivened, and gambling goes on with renewed vigor. CHAPTER V. ON A MULE. A new profession Off for Salt Lake City A Mormon outfit Nature of the over land freight Its extent Great expenses and enormous profits Luxury of miners and mountaineers Changed to the railroad " Kiting towns " Jonah's gourd Benton a year afterwards Platte City Our company Mulewhacker's Theology Pleasant gossip on. polygamy Journal of the route Horrors, of Bitter Creek Heat, cold, thirst, dust, fatigue Green River Bridger Plains Echo Canon Weber Canon Parley's Park Down Parley's Canon Salt Lake Valley and City. 'ATE: August 14th, 1868. Place: Benton, Wyoming. Scene : The writer in the rear apartment of a tent, post ing his books. Results : Cash on hand $8.65 ; Resources none; Friends distant. Moral : Something must be done. Thus may be summarized the result of a day's hard thinking. I had got thus far, more by good luck than good man agement; was wonderfully improved in health, and eager to goon. But when I resolved myself into a committee of one on the ways and means, the committee was obliged to rise and report the mat ter back without a resolution. I had written six letters to the Commercial, but did not know whether any had been accepted, and was not well enough acquainted to ask a remittance ; and there was absolutely nothing for me to do at Benton. One resource remained. Teamsters were in demand, and I thought I knew something about mules. Under ordinary cir cumstances I should have shrunk from boasting myself skilful enough to drive them, but these were extraordinary circumstan ces, and as the Turks say to justify the use of wine, "Desperate diseases require desperate remedies." The resolution passed, with an emergency clause, and I started to hunt a job. A Mormon train was to start next day, and just one man 96 97 98 LUXURIOUS MINERS. was needed. The outfit consisted often "prairie schooners" with six mules to each, the property of Naisbitt and Hindley then a prosperous Mormon firm in Salt Lake City. Our "wagon-boss," absolute monarch of a train while on the road, rejoiced in the name of John Monkins, a Mormon saint in good and regular standing. Seven of the drivers were Mormons, but the "night-herder," Billy Keyes, and two other drivers, Charley Robinson and " Big Frank," were Gentiles, with whom I fraternized readily. Our load was " packed," and about noon of the 15th, we took to the road, the writer seated on his "nigh- wheeler," and wielding a " big-bellied blacksnake " over the backs of six mules. Freighting across the plains, which had grown in the past ten years to an immense business, was now being rapidly less ened by the railroad. From 1860 to 1869 there were in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana and Colorado, two hundred thousand people to be supplied ; and every pound of groceries, manufac tured goods, foreign products, mining tools and the like, had to be hauled from six to sixteen hundred miles across the uninhabited regions which lay between the Missouri and the gold mines. The original price, of course, was a trifle; the freight, which ranged from fifteen to forty cents a pound, was the chief item of cost. Hence the apparent paradox, that the difference between first and second rate articles was comparatively much less than in the East. Hence again, the fact that when the miner or mountaineer used foreign luxuries at all, he used only the best quality ; for the freight was no more on that than the worst. The difference between crushed white sugar at twenty cents, and common brown at ten, was all important to the Eastern family ; but when one added thirty cents a pound for freight, and a hun dred per cent, for dealer's profit, the difference was not worth calculating about away up in Montana. Business men neces sarily invested large capital, and took big risks, and so indemni fied themselves with enormous profits. The best was cheaper than the second best. Hence also, an apparent extravagance in living, of which the effects show to-day in Rocky Mountain communities. MOVING REAL ESTATE. 99 This overland trade successively built up Independence, Westport, Kansas City, Atchison, Leavenworth, St. Joseph and Omaha ; but when two or three hundred miles of the railroad were completed, it took that route. Hence those "roaring towns," at the successive termini, which sprang up like Jonah's gourd, and withered away with few exceptions almost as sud denly, when Government had accepted another hundred miles of the road, and a new terminus was located. To look on Ben- ton, a motley collection of log and canvass tents, one would have sworn there was no trade ; but in those canvass tents immense sums changed hands. E. Block & Co., Wholesale Dealers in Liquors and Tobacco, with whom I lodged in Benton, in a frame and canvass tent, twenty by forty feet in extent, did a business of $30,000 a month. Others did far better. Ten months afterwards, I revisited the site. There was not a house or tent to be seen ; a few rock piles and half destroyed chimneys barely sufficed to mark the ruins; the white dust had covered everything else, and desolation reigned supreme. Transactions in real estate in all these towns were, of course, most uncertain ; and everything that looked solid was a sham. Red brick fronts, brown stone fronts, and stuccoed walls, were found to have been made to order in Chicago and shipped in (pine) sections. Ready made houses were finally sent out in lots, boxed, marked, and numbered ; half a dozen men could erect a block in a day, and two boys with screw-drivers put up a " habitable dwelling " in three hours. A very good gray- stone stucco front, with plain sides, twenty by forty tent, could be had for $300 ; and if your business happened to desert you, or the town moved on, you only had to take your store to pieces, ship it on a platform car to the next city, and set up again. There was a pleasing versatility of talent in the popula tion of such towns. An army officer told me that he went up the Platte Valley late in 1866 and observed a piece of rising ground near the junction of the two streams, where for miles not a live shrub or blade of grass was to be seen. Six months after he returned and the " Great and Growing City of the Platte " covered the 100 MOVING A CITY. site; three thousand people made the desert hum with business and pleasure ; there were fine hotels, elegant restaurants, and billiard halls and saloons, while a hundred merchants'jostled each other through banks and insurance offices. All the machinery of society was in easy operation ; there were two daily papers, a Mayor and Common Council, an aristocracy and a common people, with old settlers, new comers, and first families. Six months after he returned and hunted for the site. A few piles of straw and brick, with debris of oyster cans nearly covered by the shifting sands, alone enabled him to find it. The " city " had got up and emigrated to the next terminus. Our trip was one of unusual hardship, mingled with much that was novel and amusing. For three hundred miles west of Medicine Bow the country is the real "American Desert." The surface seems hard enough at first view, but a little travel soon works it up into a fine powder ; and standing on a little knoll one can see for twenty miles the white clouds of rolling dust which mark the course of teams, and an approaching " bull- whacker" looks at a little distance like an animated flour sack, or the disembodied spirit of Metamora. Our little party of sixteen (four passengers), fraternized much more readily than one could have expected from such a motley crew. On the plains mutual dependence calls for mutual help, and mutual help softens religious and national asperities. We had both. The Mormons were haFf English and half natives; the Gentiles half Northern and half Southern. Religiously the Gentiles were in the minority, but did the most talking. The native Mormon boys, who had never been east of Benton, were full of curiosity about the States. From the general tone of Mor mon sermons, they had imbibed the notion that outside of Utah the world was given over to fraud and lasciviousness, and sold wholly to Satan. That a majority, or anything like a "working minority" of the American people were honest and virtuous, was something they were slow to believe; and that there were rural districts of ten thousand people where grogshops were unknown and a lewd woman a rarity, was nothing short of a " monstrous Gentile lie" to their minds. That all govern- A MULEWHACKERS' DEBATE. 101 NIGHT-SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY. ments but their own, and all people but themselves are going straight to the Devil, and that by the fastest route, is a fixed fact to orthodox Mormons ; and these lads had grown up in such an atmosphere of self-sufficiency and spiritual pride, that the mere assertion that the Mormons were not the best people in the world struck them as a blasphemous absurdity. And yet they sometimes felt, instinctively, I suppose, that some thing was wrong; and that polygamy at any rate needed apolo gizing for. Toiling wearily across the plains of Bridger, one day, walk ing beside our teams, the one next me who, at the early age of 102 POLEMICAL TEAMSTERS. twenty-two was already an elder, delivered an exhaustive ment in regard to the finding of the "golden plates" by Joe Smith, to which I promptly made reply : " Don't believe it. No proof." " Do you believe Moses got stone tables from the Lord ? " asked the young elder. (Excuse the contradiction between ad jective and noun.) "Yes." "Where's your proof?" This struck me as the nearest to a "clincher" of all I had heard, and I launched into an elaborate argument on the history of the Bible, internal proofs, analysis of its principles and the like; but it was all Greek to him. And so such arguments must always be to such as fill the Mormon Church. Truly, says Eggleston : " No man ever embraced religious error, from Gnosticism to Mormonism, without a previous mental training to fit him for it;" and he might have added, a previous want of training generally predisposes a man to coarse and sensual beliefs. Reason appears to be wasted on those sects who have just knowledge enough to read the Bible and interpret it lite rally, without enough to realize that certain principles of natural equity must always remain true, no matter what the Bible may appear to say on the subject. Such did not reason themselves into their errors, and of course, cannot be reasoned out. And so our Mormon companions always thought they had the " best of the argument." Fanatics always do have the "best of the argument" in their own conceit. For they can understand their own reason ing, and cannot understand that of an intelligent opponent. In Utah one continually hears such statements as this: "Why don't they answer our arguments? They can't." One can go into any lunatic asylum in the land, and find a score of men whose arguments he cannot answer to their satisfaction. There is a fish called the mullet-head, that cannot be in toxicated by any amount of liquor. It can even swim in that fluid. Reason why : it has no brains, consequently nothing for the alcohol to act upon. In like manner some sects are invinci ble in argument. ROMANCE OF POLYGAMY. 103 But \ve had one young saint not at all troubled with rever ence for the dignitaries, who professed to give us a revelation of the home life of all the Latter-day Prophets. He told us that Brigham, when in his prime, habitually fell in love every spring and fall. Botanically speaking, his affection was a sort of flowering annual, clinging to new supports each time. Also that he then kept a registry, ruled for two hundred schedules, specifying name and style, which he called -every Saturday night to see that none were lost, strayed, or stolen. Our boy ran over the list thus : " Black-eyed Sally, Red-headed Milly, Carroty Jane, Sally No. 2," etc., etc. But of all his heroes it appeared to me that Apostle Sammy Richards truly had, as our companion expressed it, " the softest layout in the business." He had seven wives, and spent one day in the week with each. His office kept him comfortably supplied with clothing, and each wife would exert herself to set her best table when he came around ; she would be all smiles and favors to win as much of the dear man's love as possible, and thus Sammy's existence was a perpetual round of courtship. With such domestic romance, varied by song and story, we amused the evening hours, while the two cooks "slung up slap jacks " to the extent of two or three bushels ; for supper was our only full meal, arid we had it hard enough during the day. The first night we formed corral at Rawlins' Springs, only fourteen miles from Ben ton. Here are three large springs rising within a few feet of each other, one pure water, another charged with soda, and the third with sulphur. Next day we left the railroad line and made a toilsome journey straight south over the hills, to reach the old stage road ; but having two wagons mired in an alkali marsh, made but eight miles, and formed corral in a singular mountain- walled basin known as " Dug Springs." In the centre was an alkali lake of several acres, which, moved by the evening breeze, looked like foaming soapsuds ; but on its margin was a spring of pure sweet water. The grass around the lake was of the purest white, coated with alkali to the appearance of fancy frost- 104 THE SORROWFUL WAY. work ; but near the mountains we found good bunch grass for our stock. For a few days our average elevation was 7000 feet above sea-level, and the nights were extremely cold. On the 22nd we reached Bridgets Pass, and next day entered on the Bitter Creek region horror of overland teamsters where all possible ills of western travel are united. At daybreak we rose, stiff with cold, to catch the only temperate hour there was for driving. But by nine A. M. the heat was most exhausting. The road was worked up into a bed of blinding white dust by the laborers on the railroad grade, and a gray mist of ash and earthy powder hung over the valley, which obscured the sun, but did not lessen its heat. At intervals the " Twenty-mile Desert," the "Red Sand Desert," and the "White Desert" crossed our way, presenting beds of sand and soda, through which the half choked men and animals toiled and struggled, in a dry air and under a scorching sky. In vain the yells and curses of the teamsters doubled and redoubled, blasphemies that one might expect to inspire a mule with diabolical strength ; in vain the fearful " black-snake " curled and popped over the animals' backs, sometimes gashing the skin, and sometimes raising welts the size of one's finger. For a few rods they would struggle on, dragging the heavy load through the clogging banks, and then stop exhausted, sinking to their knees in the hot and ashy heaps. Then two of us would unite our teams and, with the help of all the rest, drag through to the next solid piece of ground, where for a few hundred yards the wind had removed the loose sand and soda, and left bare the flinty and gravelly subsoil. Thus, by most exhausting labor, we accomplished ten or twelve miles a day. Half an hour or more of temperate coolness then gave us respite till soon after sundown, when the cold wind came down, as if in heavy volumes, from the snowy range, and tropic heat was succeeded by arctic cold with amazing sudden ness. On the 27th of August, one of my mules twice fell ex hausted with the heat ; that night ice formed in our buckets as thick as a pane of glass. We turned northward from Bitter Creek before reaching the present railroad crossing at Green River, and on the morning SCENE IN ECHO CANON. 105 106 MORMON SETTLEMENTS. of August 28th, forded the latter stream twenty miles above the main road. Thence we again turned southwest, traversing the plains of Bridger, and entering again on the stage road near Bear River. The whole region appears to my eye totally barren, but among the foothills, and in a few of the gulches, we found enough of the yellow bunch-grass for our animals, and sage-brush for our fires. The nights were still cold, but not so much so as east of Green River ; and some stimulating property in the atmosphere enabled me to get along with half the usual amount of sleep. We slept upon the ground under the wagons, generally with a thickness of gunnysacks under us, joining blankets two and two; for though the ground was dry as a featherbed, our sleeping apartment was rather open at the sides and extensively ventilated. My bed-fellow was a lank Mormon with about as much bodily warmth as a dried corn stalk, nevertheless he used to complain that I "snugged up" al together too much, and by morning usually had him jammed tight against the hind wheel. At noon of September 4th, we entered the head of Echo Cafion, by way of the round valley below Cache Cave, a beau tiful and romantic place. Two days we consumed in the journey down Echo, sometimes down almost in the bed of the stream, and sometimes hundreds of feet up the rocky sides, where the road wound in and out on the face of the projecting ridges. Gangs of Mormon laborers were scattered along the cafion, con structing the grade for the railroad, on Brigharn Young's con tract. At noon of the 6th, we emerged into Weber Canon, and turned southward on the old stage road. There we found nu merous Mormon settlements, and the first stone-built houses and growing crops I had seen for five hundred miles. The dwel lings would have appeared poor and mean indeed in the States, but to us, just from the hot and barren plains, the valley seemed like a section of paradise. Next night we formed corral near Bill Kimbairs hotel, in Parley Park, a round green valley al most on top of the Wasatch Mountains ; and on the 8th com pleted half the passage down the wild and ragged gorge known as Parley's Ca*ion. NEARING "ZION." 107 Late afternoon on the 9th we emerged from Parley's Cafion upon the "Eastern Bench," and saw the great valley of the Jor dan and Salt Lake spreading seventy miles to the northwest. Twenty miles west the Oqiiirrh Range glowed in the clear air, a shining mass of blue and white; Great Salt Lake extended far as the eye could reach to the northward, its surface level as in a dead calm, and glistening in the light of the declining sun, while to our right the " City of the Saints " as yet appeared but a white spot on the view. A few miles to our left the Cafion of the Jordan seemed to close, giving the impression that that stream poured down from the hills ; and down the centre of the valley the river and bordering marshes extended like bands of silver. We were nearing " Zion " at last, and Mormon and Gentile were equally delighted that the long drive of four hundred miles was soon to end. Darkness overtook us four miles out, and we formed corral for the last time on the level near the "Sugar House." BATHER OPEN AT THE SIDES/ CHAPTER VI. A YEAR IN UTAH. Discharging freight " Beautiful Zion" First impressions " Our Bishop" Arguments (?) for polygamy Rough on Rome Mormon Worthies Jews, Gen tiles, and Apostates Queer condition of American citizens " Millennial Star " and " Book of Mormon " The original carpet-baggers " Jaredites " Mormon sermons Into the country A polemic race Mormon conference " No trade with Gentiles "A hard winter I become a Gentile editor Founding of Co- rinne Glowing anticipations " The Chicago of the Rocky Mountains " Ups and downs of real estate The Author comes to grief. |E entered the 'city September 10th, and even now my arms ache at recollection of the day, and our eight hours' work of unloading. For overland transporta tion goods were tightly packed in huge bales, heavy and unwieldy ; and furthermore, most of our load con sisted of stoves and castings. To lift against an average " mule- whacker" on such freight was no joke to a man of my calibre, and aching in every limb I sought a " Teamster's Home " at dark, and lay down to a heavy sleep of ten hours. I awoke to a revelation of beauty. " Zion " then seemed to me indeed the joy of the whole earth. The bright sunlight, streaming through the rugged gaps of the Wasatch, cast a flood of glory upon the city, and showed the plat marked out like a checker-board, and streams clear as crystal lacing all the squares with flowing borders. I thought it the most beautiful place I had ever seen. And failing to note that nearly all this beauty was of nature's making, it appeared to me that they could not be a bad people who occupied such a place ; I was prepared beforehand to like them. It was a nice place to rest, and I concluded to stay two weeks. The city had a singularly quiet Sabbath-like air, and the people 108 PLURALITY/ 109 SALT LAKE CITY (FROM THE NORTH). still more so; they were demure, subdued in demeanor, and did not look as if they could ever be excited. They were the last people I should have suspected of fanaticism. I called first upon " our Bishop," for so even the Gentiles then spoke of the presiding bishop of the Ward. Without waiting for a banter he entered at once upon a wordy defense, eulogy rather, of Mor- monism and " plurality " Mormon euphemism for polygamy. A rose by any other name apparently would not smell as sweet in Utah. And such an argument : " Plurality was the original order of marriage established by God. Laws against it were all of man's device, and first set up by Rome. It was because that city was settled by robbers and runaways, and of course they had very few women. Women were so scarce that a law was made that no man should have more than one, and that was the origin of monogamy, and the first law ever made against the Celestial Order of Marriage. The Church of Rome took . that 110 "GENTILE LIES.' fes ORSON PRATT, ONE OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. law from Heathen Rome, and the sects of the day, which are Rome's daughters, took the law from Catholic Rome. But all the churches established by God ha veal ways practised plurality." Before the enunciation of such history (?) as this one can only gape and remain silent. But after a breathing spell I endea vored to quote authorities to the effect that Greece was mono- gamic centuries before Rome was founded ; but the bishop promptly squelched me : " Them histories is nothing but Gentile lies, and the writers priests and tools of Rome. In fact there is no real history come down from the time when Rome ruled all fixed up lies to justify the Pope, and all the sects of the day wont publish nothing but what suits their creed." This summary suppression of history of course ended the argument. But the zealous bishop, warmed by his triumph, enlarged on the subject: " There's no priest or preacher among the sects that's really authorized to solemnize a marriage none outside of the Latter- day Saints. Where's your preacher's authority ? Can you trace it back to anything ? No man's a right to administer the NOTABLES OF SALT LAKE CITY. Ill GEORGE A. SMITH. Gospel ordinances unless he's specially sent. You've six hun dred and sixty-six sects now, they can't all be right. Which one of them can show credentials ? They've all gone astray; with the form of godliness but denying the power. There was no prophet or authorized teacher on earth for eighteen centuries. But Joseph Smith was called to re-establish the true priesthood. Alexander Campbell was a sort of fore-runner like John, the Baptist, before Christ. But he had only a glimmering of the truth," and so on, ad nauseam. Is it worth one's while to argue with men who are in such an intellectual muddle? I called on various other worthies. First on Orson Pratt, whom I found deep in an astronomical work, and not inclined to talk ; also on George A. Smith, President's Councilor, Elder, Historian, etc., a round, fat and unctuous man with a pig-eye and soap fat chin, and on his colleague Daniel H. Wells, Mayor, Second Councilor and Lieutenant General a gaunt and angular Saint, whose face and head bore involuntary witness to the truth of Darwinism. Also on Hon. W. H. Hooper, a slim and ner vous Saint, monogamous Delegate to Congress from this poly- 112 MORMON LITERATURE. garaous Territory ; and T. B. H. Stenhouse, editor of a secular paper, the Daily Telegraph, who seemed to be a sort of guerilla captain in the church militant, in no particular hurry to join the church triumphant, and quite indifferent as to whether I favored Mormonism or not. He treated me most courteously as a brother of the quill, and as I listened to his jolly tones, I little thought we were soon to become such savage opponents on paper. The Gentiles I found non-committal. They did not know exactly what was about to happen. They numbered but six or eight hundred in a community of fifteen thousand Mormons, surrounded by sixty or seventy thousand more; and the heads of the church were even then concerting measures to deprive them of their trade. They consisted, in nearly equal numbers, of Jews, Christians, and apostates, all in the same society, and supporting the same school and church. The joke about Utah being the only place where Jews are Gentiles, is an uncommonly good one, it has the merit of a fine old age. But it is true in more senses than is generally imagined ; the Jews in Utah are the most intensely American, and opposed to polygamy of any part of the population. At odd hours I read the Millennial Star and " Book of Mor mon," the last the Old Testament^of the Latter-day Saints. J read how Lemuel, Lehi, Nephi and other Israelites, being warned of God in a dream, left Jerusalem six hundred years before Christ ; traveled eastward many years till they reached the sea, then made a wonderful vessel, and crossed it ; landing in Central America, called in the record the " Land of Promise." And then is recorded a real miracle : " And we did find in the forests all manner of animals both wild and tame, both the horse and the ass, and the sheep and the ox." They found the horse two thousand years before the Spaniards introduced him here, and the ass, which naturalists have always told us was not native to this country. They spread over America in a few generations, finding in many places the remains of the "Jaredites" a colony which had come immediately after the dispersion from Babel ; and by QUEEE EMIGRATION. 113 revelation learned that they had been "destroyed for their ex ceeding great wickedness," which matters fill the "Book of Jarod," and two or three others. And here comes in another miracle. These people crossed the ocean in " whale-like barges," made by direction of the Lord, " with holes above and below," under these lucid instructions : If they needed air and light, they were to open the holes above and below (!), and if the water came in they were to shut them again. The only possible con clusion from the cumbrous sentences is, that the barges rolled over and over like tubs, which must have made it uncomfortable for the Jaredites. Then the various divisions of the transplanted Hebrews got to fighting among themselves, and fought till only two of the " righteous race " were left, viz : Mormon and Moroni. They two, about 400 B. c., collected all the histories of those who had preceded them, and added a book apiece, and most curious of all, we are told it was written in "Reformed Egyptian, which is of the language of the Jews and the writing of the Egyptians," though why the mischief these Israelites, who had been in America for a thousand years, should give up their own lan guage and adopt that of the Egyptians, is enough to puzzle philologists. Sunday came, and six or seven thousand people attended ser vices in the huge Tabernacle irreverently styled by Gentiles the " Mud-turtle " and I among them. In the afternoon we listened to Orson Pratt, who gave the people to understand that the city of the Saints was a most glorious spot, but back in Missouri was a blessed and chosen spot where they would all be glorified and live a thousand years in happiness. But just be fore that time fury would be poured out on the Gentile world, and all that were to come would have to make tracks to get in on time. He would meet them all there ; yes, and the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and every kind of cattle they needed. In short, he gave them to understand that they were bully boys, and their goose would finally hang high in spite of outside pressure. And the audience sat almost breathless, with 8 114 NORTHERN UTAH. open eyes and mouth, and swallowed it all down, even as soap suds run into a sink hole. Utah in ray original plan was only to be one of several stop ping places on my way to California. I expected to take a short rest, find another team going out with produce from the fall crop, to drive to Austin, Nevada, and thence work my way on to the Pacific. Nothing was farther from my thoughts than to subside into a " Gentile," one of that hated minority, who, until quite lately, lived in Utah upon a sort of uncertain suffer ance. Yet I did become a Gentile, and a somewhat noted and slightly " persecuted " one too, for a while ; and on this wise. Finding no teams ready to start westward, I determined upon a trip to the northern part of the Territory. I traveled afoot and by easy stages nearly to the Idaho line, purposing a visit to Soda Springs ; then got tired, and slowly retraced my steps, finding abundant enjoyment in noting the manners and customs of the rural Saints. Near Ogden I found an old Dane living with a mother and two daughters as wives ; in Brigham City I saw a bishop with six wives, two of them his cousins and two his nieces, and a little farther on, visited another Dane living with three wives in the single room of a cabin about sixteen feet square all of which did not strike me as exactly the highest type of domestic felicity which might be hoped for as the result of two thousand years of Christianity and cultivation. As an old bachelor I had not found single blessedness the best possible condition, but it suited me far better than such multiple cussedness. One wife, I thought, would be enough for me, if she were a good one ; and if a bad one, why should any sane man multiply his misery ? I found the rural Saints an exceedingly polemic race ; they were ready for an argument any minute. No kind of mental exercise is so dangerous as theological disputation, especially if a man knows nothing else; and the Mormons had all read the Bible, and were ignorant of nearly all besides. But I got interested in them. Their absurdly literal rendering of Scripture amazed and amused me, and J began to study their ways with much GENTILE REPORTER. 115 the same kind of interest, morbid perhaps, with which the student in anthropology would investigate a new phase of mono mania. At that time I knew little of their history, or their more obscene and disgusting tenets, and regarded them merely as a curious class of fanatics, silly but harmless. So I returned to the city half persuaded to stop awhile in Utah. The October Conference of the Mormon Church was in session, and the people were in a white heat of hatred against the Gentile world. I had never seen anything like it. The leaders had concocted a plan for getting the entire trade of the Territory into a few hands, and the first move was to have the people vote en masse that they would not trade with Gentile merchants. Ten thousand people all the New Tabernacle would hold adopted this resolution without a dissenting vote ! To bring them to the proper degree of frenzy the speakers had recited the entire history of the Church, Mormon version, and reopened every wound that the " Lord's peculiar people " had suffered for the past forty years ; and the result was such a condition of fanatical hatred against Gentiles that the timid " smelt blood in the air," and began to talk of flight. But the experienced said. " There is no danger whatever in the city ; Brigham has too much at stake to allow trouble here ; it is only out in the cafions and distant settlements that the Gentile may be in danger." And this I afterwards found to be true. There was a daily paper in Salt Lake City, in the Gentile interest, known as the Reporter. It was about a foot square, and contained perhaps as much reading matter as four pages of this volume. During the excitement over Conference and its decrees, I wandered into the office, and for want of something to do wrote a few lines of editorial. The proprietor, Mr. S. S. Saul, forthwith suggested to me that I try my hand as editor for a few weeks. The salary was to be twenty dollars per week, about as good as half that amount in the States. I had sent East for money and got no response ; my cash on hand was three dollars, and I was in debt for a week's board ; it is need less to add that I accepted the magnificent offer. The paper was enlarged a column width on each side. Mr. A. Aulbach, 116 A FEEBLE JOURNAL. the foreman, was put in charge of the business; Mr. Saul went East to solicit advertisements, and I ran that paper to suit my self for seven weeks. Saul then returned without a dollar's worth of patronage. I had received a hundred and fifty dollars from Mr. Halstead for my first fifteen letters, I felt opulent, and was eager to go on to California. But almost without knowing it, I had slid into the position of an editor ; and once there, my destiny was fixed. The course of the Reporter had given satis faction to the Gentiles, and when I spoke of leaving, they bound me with these flattering words, " We can't do without you." If there ever was a more sickly childhood than that of the Salt Lake Reporter, I never heard of it. Established in May, 1868, it had, when I began to edit it, just sixty-nine paying sub scribers. When Saul returned from the East we had increased the number two hundred. Saul was cast down ; Aulbach and I were confident. We reasoned after the foolishly sanguine manner of newspaper men, that if we could do so well for another, we could do ten times as well for ourselves a com mon conclusion with hopeful youth, and one which is not necessarily correct. Saul surrendered the entire office to Gene ral P. E. Connor, of whom he had bought it ; and we A. Aul bach, John Barrett, and myself purchased it. The price was $2500, to be paid at the rate of $300 a month. By the most heroic exertions we raised the first payment of $100 each ; the second was paid, I believe, some three months after. Eight months from the day of sale the General was pressing us, for the third instalment, six months over due; but you cannot " draw blood out of a turnip," and he never did get his money till both my partners had sold out to a man of some wealth. I was fixed as Gentile editor in Salt Lake, but the Gentiles were in cruel straits. The decree of the Mormon Church had been carried out strictly, and Gentile stores were empty. It was amusing and provoking to take a walk along Main Street that winter, and see the melancholy Jews standing in the doors of their stores looking in vain for -customers. For six months the ten -Gentile firms did not sell one-twentieth the usual QUEER LAWS OF TRADE. 117 amount of goods; their disgust was beyond expression, and their curses against Brigham not loud but deep. It is indeed a singular fact, to the Eastern reader quite incomprehensible, that one man should be able by his simple will to corral the commerce of ninety-thousand people, nullify the laws of trade, reverse the popular current in favor of certain dealers, and completely ruin the business of a score of merchants; and yet that is precisely what was done in Utah. There was no great violence, nothing that the law could take cognizance of, nothing that would make much of a showing before a Congressional Committee ; and yet to the sufferers it was actual " persecution," fully as hard as any the Mormons have any just reason to complain of. One by one the Gentile merchants lost heart and emigrated. The leading firm was that of Walker Brothers ; four gentlemen, now worth together probably a million dollars ; born Mormons, but delivered early in life, by the grace of God, from the body of that death. They offered their immense property and stock at very low figures to the Mormon Co-operative Institution, but being refused, enlarged their store and determined to figbt it out on that line if it took no end of summers. For a year or so they sunk money, but pluck and public spirit conquered ; the mining development of Utah more than doubled their former prosperity. They are now the merchant princes of Utah, investing heavily in mining enterprises, men of national reputation, and forward in all works to advance the liberal cause. But theirs was the only vessel that outrode the financial storm without serious loss; and Salt Lake City held by July, 1869, no more than one hundred and fifty Gentiles. The Mormon Hierarchy had determined to corral the trade of Utah by a grand co-operative scheme, for the benfit of the Church ; and men who can stand it to live with six or eight wives apiece roust be credited with some resolution. And here I may remark that I never was in a country where a little talent would sell so high as at that time in Utah. There were but few men of real genius on either side of the contro versy; far more, of course, among the Gentiles than the Mormons. 118 A QUEER "MOSES. 7 BRIGHAM YOUNG. The entire Church of Latter-day Saints does not contain ten men who would take rank as average merchants in an Eastern city not one man of real commanding talent. The claims put forward for Brigham Young are simply silly, as the plain figures show. He has been at the head of the Church for twenty-five years; it now numbers one-half the adult adher ents it had when Joe Smith died. He led his people a thou sand miles into the wilderness, where every acre of cultivated land has cost from fifty to a hundred dollars in labor, when two hundred thousand square miles of the richest land in the world were begging for inhabitants. What sort of a Moses do you make of such a man ? The apostate Mormons were often men of some genius, but it was all of the hair-splitting kind. They were fluent on the "rights of man," " liberty of intellect/' "spiritual develop ment/' and the like ; but when concerted action was required, they were a set of impracticables. They were beyond doubt the most skeptical class in the world. They had been so badly deceived once, that they regarded all religions as delusion or fraud generally both. I recall one in particular, with whom I was intimate, who was at once the most credulous and the most skepti- THEATRICAL. 119 cal of men. He talked long and loud of liberty, equality, and fraternity, but cursed the administration and despaired of repub lican government ; be quoted Tom Paine and Herbert Spencer by the hour, was poloquent on First Principles and Universal Law, and argued on the Supreme Good, the origin of evil, and the control of passion, till he was black in the face with anger. He swore by jvoman, yet doubted her virtue; unhesitatingly rejected the New Testament miracles, and unhesitatingly ac cepted everything published in the Banner of Light; put his trust in a miserable half-faith which he called Spiritual Phi losophy, and believed every book but the Bible. Such were the materials we had with which to build up a liberal party in Utah. By the middle of the winter the Gentiles had given up the hope of business, and devoted themselves to amusement prin cipally dancing and the theatre. Brigham's Theatre was then the institution of Salt Lake; and Madam Methua Scheller, John C. McCullough, George B. Waldron and lady, and other <( stars" gave us three months of varied entertainment princi pally such pieces as the "French Spy/' "Daughter of the Regi ment," " Naiad Queen," and other sensational and spectacular dramas. Two or three times they ventured on something better, particularly " Romeo and Juliet," which failed of an audience, of course; the parquette, where the Mormons sat, was nearly empty. Indeed, the idea of playing "Romeo and Juliet" before a Mormon audience is a self-evident absurdity. That play repre sents the essential duality of true love: one man loves one woman, her, and her only, and swears by all creation that he will never love another, while the audience have been taught all their lives that a man can love six women just alike. Single ness of love they hold to be selfishness. If they could have six Juliets leaning half a dozen heads on as many hands out of six windows, all in different orders of architecture, and all the Juliets of different styles of beauty, and one old frog of an elder making love to all by turns, it would probably take. It would have Mormon spice in it. 120 FIRST CORINNETHIANS. FIRST SETTLER AT CORINNE. Spring approached, and by general consent the more enter prising Gentiles began to look for a new place of settlement. On the 25th of March, the City of Corinne was laid out at the railroad crossing on Bear River, some six miles north of the north end of the lake ; we moved the Reporter there early in April, and all went to work with a hurrah to make a "great Gentile city." It was a gay community. Nineteen saloons paid license for three months. Two dance-houses amused the elegant leisure of the evening hours, and the supply of " sports " was fully equal to the requirements of a railroad town. At one time the town contained eighty nymphs du pave, popularly known in Mountain-English as "soiled doves." Being the last railroad town it enjoyed "flush times" during the closing weeks of building the Pacific Railway. The junction of the Union and CORINNETHIAN ORATORS. 121 "SUNDAY-NIGHT AMUSEMENTS." Central was then at Promontory, twenty-eight miles west, and Corinne was the retiring place for rest and recreation of all the employes. Yet it was withal a quiet and rather orderly place. Sunday was generally observed : most of the men went hunting or fishing, and the "girls" had a dance, or got drunk. Legitimate business was good for the first two months of the city's existence; for the railroad was just being completed, and everybody supposed that the harvest of gain was about to begin. We had public meetings in abundance. Two or three times a week flaming posters called the citizens together, to consult on '' improvements for the benefit of Corinne." Bonfires were 122 UN-REAL ESTATES. lighted, a stand improvised by turning up a dry-goods box, and a number of florid speeches delivered; the crowd then voted unanimously for various heroic resolutions, and dispersed to read their proceedings in the next morning's Reporter. Sanguine real estate owners predicted a city of ten thousand people within two years. And they believed it too. Let no man imagine that the citizens of new and lively western towns are only talking to draw in outsiders; they convince themselves long before they try to convince others as witness the fact that very few of them sell out when the excitement is at its hight. They hold on for higher prices, and ninety-nine out of a hundred who are rich when the city is on the rise, grow poor again when it goes down. Corner lots in Corinne went up to fabulous prices. All seemed to be satisfied that the loca tion of the " Chicago of the Rocky Mountains " was definitely settled. And they had some ground for their belief. At the head of navigation on Bear River, connecting with the lake, and the most favorable point for shipping freight from the railroad into Montana and Idaho, it was reasonable to suppose that a large town would spring up. Chief among our eloquent real estate owners was Dr. O. D. Cass, better known as "The Doc," formerly of Denver, who had invested largely in Corinne ; and many delightful hours have I spent in his office, hearing him demonstrate from the map the certain future greatness of Corinne. Every morning the Reporter contained a new and encouraging scheme to insure commercial importance. Here was to be an enduring city, the entrepot of all trade from the northern Territories; here was to be the " Queen City of the Great Basin." The Mormon papers rarely alluded to us, but their speakers denounced Corinne as the home of devils, and warned their young men to avoid it as the place of destruction to manners and morals. They ransacked the Scriptures for precedents : it was too dry for wells, too barren for gardens ; it was to be as Tyre, desolate and a warning to the Gentile ; it was as wicked Sodom to perish under Heaven's wrath ; it was Moab, the Lord's wash- pot ; it was Edom, over which he would cast out his shoe. THE BUBBLE BURSTS. 123 FOR THE BENEFIT OF COHERE. Vain denunciations, and equally vain hopes. The railroad was completed, and all our floating population drifted to fresh fields; the "dull times" of 1869 came on, and Corinne sub sided to a moral and quiet burg of perhaps four hundred in habitants. Better times came in 1870, and in the last two years, and the " Queen City " is now a thriving country village of perhaps twelve hundred people. My corner lots, which cost me $500, are for sale at a discount, and other real estate owners are in the like case. I met "The Doc" a few weeks since on my last visit there. He was still social and lively ; but there was no speculation in his eyes. 124 CITY LOTS. The history of Corinne is the history of something near a thousand towns in the " glorious free and boundless West." In a new country, when the first towns are laid out, every body speculates, one makes money and nineteen come to grief. "Well do I remember when, now twenty years ago, the people of our place in Indiana first felt the excitement about Minnesota as a place of settlement. Oregon and California had been "all the rage " for four years, and the former State was generally regarded as a cold, barren region, with a few Indian trading posts ; and, perhaps, some good land, but quite too far North for Hoosiers and Buckeyes. But about that time the tide began to set that way. Two young men from our town went out to Winona, remained a few months, and returned with fabulous accounts of the fertile soil, fine timber, and healthful air ; " and as to cold/ 7 they added, " the ground is so dry and the winters so uniform, we didn't suffer half as much as in Indiana." Then every body wanted to go West to Minnesota. And one old gentleman, noted for his prudence, thus pronounced : " Now you see, I ain't 'er goin' to be led away by any excitement about any one place. I've got money to invest, and I'll put in one whole season ridin' about, and a man can tell by the lay of the country where the big town's a goin' to be and there I'll stick my stake." And he went and rode all one summer a^out the State, and was convinced by unmistakable signs that there was to be one big city in the Northwest, and that was to be at the southern end of Lake St. Croix. All this he demonstrated on his return home by unanswerable arguments on the map and went out again with some ten thousand dollars and invested it all at Prescott at the south end of that Lake ; and to the best of my knowledge and belief his lots there are worth as much as they were in 1854, if not more. At any rate I have not heard a word about Prescott then the "great coming town " for ten years past. For aught I see in the papers it, like Paddy's little brother, " died a bornin'." In like manner I have heard people demonstrate that Omaha and Kansas City could not be the big places ; the true location was a few miles up or a few miles down the river; the site was unfortunate, VERY UNCERTAIN. and the other place, whatever it was, must finally get ahead. But somehow these " other places " seldom get ahead if they lose the first two years' start. Moral : you can't most always tell out "West where the "big place " is going to be, simply from the " run of the river" or " lay of the country." Nature only determines the general neighbor hood within, perhaps, fifty or a hundred miles of cities in the. new West ; between any two sites in the same neighborhood, the pluck and energy of the first settlers always determine the matter. Moral again : If you are in the biggest place, the one that has the start, don't be seduced away to a new place because it appears to have a little better site, but stay where you are, even if " times are dull " just now, and ten to one the place that has the start will keep it. CHAPTER VII. UNION PACIFIC COMPLETED. The last rail and spike A visit home An unofficial tour Whitney, Benton, Burton, Fremont, Stansbury, Saxton, and Gunnison Difficulties of construc- ture Where is the real starting point? Missouri River Bridge Out the Platte Fremont Columbus On the plains again Julesburg Smoothness of the route Delightful traveling Cheyenne A Western Jeffreys ! Laramie again A tragedy A miracle, perhaps ! " Big Ed's " guardian angel Pyra mid rocks -Beauties of Laramie Plains Desert west of them Wasatch Echo and Weber Promontory Moral gamblers Reflections. ) |N the 10th of May, 1869, 1 attended the ceremonies con nected with laying the last rail, and driving the last spike, on the Pacific Railway, which events took place on the Promontory north of Great Salt Lake. A few days after I came East on the completed road, visiting my home after an absence of thirteen months ; and then, in company with other correspondents, made an unofficial inspec tion of the entire line for our several journals, stopping at all the towns along the way. Reams of paper and gallons of ink have since been exhausted on the great work, and still the read ing public asks for more. And there is always more to be said ; for the ever-varying circumstances of Western life, the shifting phases which characterize existence beyond the Mississippi, re quire a new historian every year. History has not decided to whom belongs the honor of ad vancing the idea of a Pacific Railroad. Probably to no one man. The scheme was such as to suggest itself to many of our earlier statesmen. When Whitney proposed to build it for a grant of land thirty miles in width along its track, it was looked upon as the fancy of a monomaniac. I think myself he would have come out some thirty millions in debt, unless he could 126 PRELIMINARY SURVEYS. 127 have persuaded Eastern capitalists to purchase the grant between the Black Hills and the Sierras without visiting it. When the great Benton began to agitate the matter, it was regarded as premature the harmless fancy of an old politician. And as late as 1856, when the National Republican Platform contained a clause in favor of the work, it was regarded as a piece of cheap electioneering " buncombe " rather shallow at that. Again, in 1860, the English traveler and scientist, Capt. R. F. Burton, in his " City of the Saints," says of the road : " The estimated expense is one hundred millions ; it would cost at least twice that sum ; it is expected to build it in ten years, but it will consume at least thirty." In nine years from that utterance the road was completed. Fremont, Stansbury, Saxton, Gunnison, and other explorers, seem to have been slow in convincing themselves that the road could be built at all. Stansbury, however, has the honor of being the first to demonstrate satisfactorily that there was any route more direct than the old emigrant trail by the Sweetwater River and South Pass. On his return, in 1850, from his sur vey of the Great Salt Lake, he followed up the mountain pass directly eastward from Laramie Plains, crossed the Black Hills about on the present railroad line, and descended eastward to a point very near where the city of Cheyenne now stands, follow ing down Lodgepole Creek to its junction with the Platte. Southern influence was all-powerful in Congress in those days, and was against the road. The national charter was first granted in July, 1862 ; the preliminary organization was com pleted in October, 1863, authorized capital, a hundred million dollars ; and the first contract for construction was made in August, 1864. The first forty miles of the road were not com pleted till January, 1866. Still the work languished : capita lists doubted it ; the government appeared indifferent ; the war absorbed every energy of the people, and for a time the very idea seemed forgotten. But all that time a few bold and deter mined men were working incessantly to insure its completion. By the war the necessity for a closer union with the Pacific States became more apparent, and the mighty energies evolved 128 AT THE MISSOURI. by the civil strife, found their proper object in iron girding the continent. These energies were needed in view of the difficulties. Omaha, the initial point, was not then connected with the East by rail. A gap of a hundred miles or more intervened, over which everything had to be transported by teams. The mag nificent engine of seventy-horse-power, which for a long time ran the company's works at Omaha, was hauled by oxen from Des Moines, Iowa. Under the stimulus caused by the Union Pacific, three through lines have already been completed from Chicago to Omaha. Was the road then built too soon ? By no means. But the cost was- undoubtedly much greater than it would have been at a later day. It is strenuously claimed by Iowa men that Omaha is not the real starting point; for the plat designated by charter the common junction of half a dozen roads is east of the Mis souri, some four miles southwest of Council Bluffs. Hence a wordy war between the two cities, which threatened all sorts of terrible things, and was once of sufficient importance to get into Congress. Hence, also, the great Union Pacific Bridge over the Missouri, which completed the continuous line of rail from Atlantic to Pacific. This structure, entirely of iron r has eleven spans of .two hundred and fifty feet each; is fifty feet above high water mark, and seventy above low. The piers are formed of iron cylinders, filled in with boulders and concrete; the cylinders being merely rings, each ten feet high and nine and a half in diameter. In forming the pier one ring was placed upon the sand, tightly capped, and the air within pumped out, when the pressure would drive it down to the level ; after which it was uncapped and another bolted tightly upon it, and the process repeated. The eastern pier, first completed, went down seventy- five feet below the surface before it rested on solid sandstone. On the 10th of July we left Omaha for a review of the "first division" extending in our arrangement, to Fremont, the first place of note, forty miles out. A year before I had entered it from the north, afoot, weary and disconsolate. It looked much 129 130 COLUMBUS, NEBRASKA. better when entered from the cars, in bodily comfort and good company. Fremont has " great expectations." It is the center of a plain of great beauty and richness, is the point of junction for the Sioux City branch of the Union Pacific, and has a population of three thousand. We are here not quite " out of civilization/' but merely on its borders ; the extremes of society are closely mingled, and both nature and humanity seem full of the spirit of border-land poetry. From Fremont forty-five miles of gentle up-grade aver aging throughout the Platte Valley seven feet to the mile bring us to the ambitious "city" of Columbus. George F. Train settled in his own mind that this was the geographical center of the United States, though most people place that point some where near Fort Riley, Kansas; consequently he pronounced it " the future Capital," and proceeded to buy and lay out a town plat. A great railroad was projected from Sioux City to this point, with branch straight north across the Niobrara country to Yankton, Dakota, and a continuation southward through the valley of the Blue to connect with some of the numerous projected roads in Kansas. " The wind-work is all done, and grading will commence about September first" the sanguine citizens confidently affirmed. They further assured me, seeing that I was a journalist, and only wanted the exact truth to lay before my " numerous and intelligent readers," that Columbus was sure to be quite a metropolis, the great central city of this valley, certainly the capital of the State, and possibly of the Nation. And, like the hopeful builders of my own Corinne, they believed every word of it; town lots were at handsome figures and advancing, and there was speculation in the eyes of real estate owners. We remained a day, but did not " invest in lots." Columbus is one of the "stakes" of the " Josephite Mor mons" so-called by the profane, but styling themselves the "Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" and here I met Alexander and David Hyrum Smith, sons of the late Prophet Joseph, who were gathering the "sinews of war" for a raid into Utah, to wrest the kingdom from the BUFFALO AND EMIGRANT. 131 usurper Brigham. They traveled with us the next stage to Cheyenne, and continued on to Utah. They went, they saw but they did not conquer. Their appearance excited little enthusiasm among the saints. Fanaticism, like revolution, never goes backward. Religious bubbles, like all others, must rise till they burst. Very few in Utah were prepared to leave the developed stage of Mormonism to go back to the original. Beyond Columbus there were then no " cities" for four hun dred miles. Of all which sprang up on the road, only two or three survive in anything like their first greatness. A specula tive and uncertain character attached to all of them; lots in the " wickedest city," Julesburg, which once sold readily for a thousand dollars, are now the habitations of the owls and prairie dogs. But there is one lot in the deserted site of Jules- burg whose tenants will not remove to the new railroad town. I mean the cemetery, where lie the bodies of at least a hundred victims of midnight rows, violence and vigilantes. The town lasted only five months, but was quite successful in establishing a graveyard. In that neighborhood, or a little farther east, in the years before the railroad, two great lines of migration and emigration annually intersected : the first of the millions of buffaloes which had wintered in northwestern Texas and were thus far on their spring travel ; the second of the overland travelers who had journeyed from the Missouri, reaching this point about the latter part of May. From here to the foot of the mountains was then a great buffalo range ; and it is stated that emigrants were hindred from crossing the Platte for several days at a time by the herds which were crowding to pass it. Now they are rarely seen here. The Indians hunt them to the south of Republican Fork, and the Kansas, not the Union, Pacific is the route on which to see buffaloes. One can speak in the highest terms of the smoothness and ease of travel on the Union Pacific particularly on that por tion in the Platte Valley. Hour after hour the traveler is carried rapidly along without jar or discomfort, generally free 132 SEVERE SENTENCE. from dust, with sensations as agreeable as if upon rails of glass. On a table in the sleeping car a glass of water, filled within half an inch of the brim, can be carried hundreds of miles without spilling a drop ; and in these moving palaces all the parlor entertainments of books, cards, chess, and even sewing and writing to some extent, can be enjoyed without dis comfort. Cheyenne stands on a beautiful plain, half encircled by the bend of Crow Creek ; to the west the Black Hills break the horizon, while Long's Peak, ninety miles to the south, and the snowy summits of the Rocky Mountains show with dazzling brilliancy through the rarified air. The city is no longer the paradise of " roughs," but a quiet and orderly community. The political and social revolutions of its first year are worthy the pen of a Macaulay. It is confidently stated by old settlers that Colonel Murrin, while mayor, raised the value of city- scrip eighteen cents on the dollar, by requiring every man who shot at another to pay a fine of ten dollars, " whether he hit or missed." But this unheard-of severity built up a powerful opposition, and Murrin lost his office. This genial official often had the "girls" before him for such trifling charges as <( drunk and disorderly," when the following colloquy usually ensued : " Your fine is ten dollars and twenty-five cents." " Yes, y'r honor, but what's the twenty-five cents for?" " To buy your honorable Judge a drink in the morninV In those days Cheyenne was in the Territory of Dakota,, Wyoming not being organized; but as it was eight hundred miles by the shortest route to Yankton, the new city did not wait for a regular charter, but had a complete government with no basis but the will of the people. A year or so afterwards, those who had fined and imprisoned culprits, or sent them to work with ball and chain, became apprehensive of legal ven geance, and applied to the Dakota Legislature, which legalized the original charter, nune pro tune. We rolled westward from Cheyenne on the 17th of July, but the morning was cold ; and the train crept slowly up the moun tain-side enveloped in a chilly gray mist, which gave an air of 134 BLACK HILLS. added desolation to the gloomy defiles of the Black Hills. The ascent upon the eastern side is everywhere so gradual as to be scarcely perceptible ; and even at Sherman, highest point on the road 8342 feet above sea-level the spectator is less conscious of being upon a mountain than at any other point, the high bare rocks, with a few green plats, spreading away to the north and south, giving rather the appearance of a high meadow than a mountain top. Passing the wild scenery of Granite Cation just as the fogs of the morning were giving way to the clear sunshine and blue sky of the mountains, we emerged upon the first rocky " bench," with a free outlook to the west, then passed Dale Creek bridge, at a dizzy hight over a narrow gorge, which seems to split the highest ridge of the mountains from north to south ; but a little south of the road it turns sharply to the eastward, and the creek cartons out upon the eastern bench, and running across the high plains, empties into the South Platte. Thence, west ward and northward, we move down the mountain, first through ragged gaps and rock cuts, then along embankments and rock flats, and then out upon the head of Little Laramie, where the road gets much smoother, but still bearing swiftly downward, till we run out upon the grassy plats and wonderful scenery of Laramie Plains, and stop for a few days at the " city " v of Laramie. Laid out in May, 1868, this place had an early history much like that of Cheyenne. But the better citizens, impatient of the law's delay, took the matter into their own hands, and an explosion of popular wrath ended in a "judicious hanging." On a beautiful midnight of the next October, three notorious villains were seized by the Vigilantes, given a short trial, and at daylight of a clear Sabbath morning, "Con" Wagner, Asa Moore, and " Big Ed " Bernard, were hanging stiif and cold to the projecting timbers of an old log-house. And then an inci dent occurred which long furnished matter for surprise to the curious, and conjecture to the superstitious. A neighboring photographer, knowing that the bodies would be removed a& aoon as daylight discovered them, arranged his instruments and THE ANGEL IN THE CLOUD. 135 CHIEF JUSTICE OF WYOMING. waited patiently for the first light, to secure a sensational view of the executed. The light clouds were just scattering before the coming sun when he bared the sensitive plate, and turned it towards the bodies in a little too great haste as it proved and there appeared fixed upon the negative, formed by the parting of two clouds, an exact representation of a weeping angel over " Big Ed's" shoulder. Her long hair fell on each side of the swinging murderer ; her down-cast eyes appeared to rest in deep sadness on the rope encircling his neck, while two tear-drops trembled on her cloudy cheeks. At first view of the negative, preserved in memory of this curious accident, the 136 "LONG STEVE." angel appears as a real figure in the scene; and it is not till one traces the joining of the clouds that he perceives the illusion. Another of the same gang, " Long Steve " Young, had been warned the previous day to leave town ; but instead of doing so, he armed himself and swore to revenge the death of his com rades. He was seized at once, given a fair trial, and at nine o'clock of that Sabbath morning was hanged to the telegraph pole at the end of the depot. At his first suspension the rope broke, and he fell to the ground, when an old mountaineer who had been garroted and robbed a few nights before, jumped upon him and stamped him furiously in the face. This extra horror was ended at once by the Vigilantes, and the prisoner hanged till dead. Young had been hanged twice before in Colorado, and cut down at the point of death. The Vigilantes wore no mask, and v attempted no concealment ; the Deputy United States Marshal was the only official in the vicinity, and he had fled the night before, being rather more than suspected of complicity with the robbers. Some twenty miles southwest of Laramie is a region known as Pyramid Rocks, well worthy a few days' visit. At a distance the rocks look like the ruins of an ancient city, but on near approach are found to consist of clusters and columns of red and white sandstone, from ten to twenty feet in diameter, and from fifty to eighty feet in hight, worn by the ceaseless winds or by the waters of a geologic age till they are round and smooth as if polished with the lapidary's greatest skill. The summits of many of the columns are crowned with a species of parachute, often extending fifteen feet over the edge. Where the columns gather in clusters, these projecting summits unite, forming a solid roof and appearing to one below like vast arches support ing a cathedral dome. Towards the center of the largest group the light fades away, owls and bats peer down from numerous crevices upon the intruder, while still farther into the recesses can be heard the suppressed growl of foxes, badgers and coyotes, and the floor is strewn with the bones of their prey. The great bald eagle has appropriated many places upon the summit for LARAMIE PLAINS. 137 PYRAMID ROCKS. his eyrie, and the prairie wolf finds a retreat in the deepest cav erns. At a distance one column has the exact appearance of an old baronial castle, and another that of a Roman arch. The loose sand, driven about by the wind for thousands of years, has worn away the softer portions, and carved a thousand gro tesque faces upon the rock. Here is written as upon an open book, the pre-Adamite history of these rocks and plains, the erosion and drift, and then the wear of wind and sand, which have made these level plains among the mountains, leaving only these solid monuments to show the lapse of years. These singular plains of the Big and Little Lamarie are really parks, quite similar in formation to those of Colorado, but of less elevation, being but 6500 feet above sea-level, and entirely surrounded by mountains, except the passes north and north- 138 A WEARY LAND. west through which flow Laramie and Medicine Bow Rivers. Here the vegetation of the East and West mingles, and the larger part of these plains i covered by a mixture of buffalo and bunch grass, very nutritious, and already the grazing land of numerous stock-growers. We find near Medicine Bow a number of lakes with no outlet, strongly impregnated with alkali, and with borders quite barren except for an occa sional stunted growth of sage-brush, greasewood, and desert cactus. Thence for nearly four hundred miles westward, all nature is a weariness to the eye and a burden to the flesh white deserts of alkali, bare deserts of gravel and sand, gray rock, red buttes, yellow hills, dry gullies, and hot bare plains. Two or three green valleys appear, in which some enthusiastic settlers have half-persuaded themselves that they can "make a country ." One such resident met the Honorable (and bluff) Ben. Wade, while the latter was on his tour inspecting the Union Pacific, and with a deprecating air, remarked, " This isn't such a bad country all it lacks is water and good society." " Yes," retorted the Senator, with equal truth and point in application, " that's all that Hell lacks." The comparison nearly does justice to the country. From this region the road rises by the eastern slope of the Wasatch Mountains to Wasatch Station, the summit of the "Rim of the Great Basin," seven thousand feet above sea-level, a place of wild, rare beauty, and during a large part of winter, entirely above the clouds. I visited the place in January, 1869, and during my stay of a week the thermometer never rose to- zero, ranging from three to twenty degrees below, though there was not a cloud in the sky except the light masses near the horizon, and the sun shone with a peculiar dazzling brilliancy. The air, too, was quite still, and sitting in a well-warmed frame tent, and looking through the windows on the yellow waxen sunlight, it seemed impossible that winter held such savage reign without, but a step into the open air soon showed the reality. The terminus was to remain there the rest of the win- PROMONTORY. 139 ter, four thousand men were at work on the grade and rock-cut within a few miles, who must do their trading there, and as by magic a city of fifteen hundred people sprung up in two weeks in the dead of winter. During my stay, the sound of hammer and saw was heard day and night, regardless of the cold, and restaurants were bqilt and fitted up in such haste that guests were eating at the tables, while the carpenters were finishing the weather-boarding that is, putting on the second lot to "cover joinings." I ate breakfast at the " California " when the cracks were half an inch wide between the " first siding," and the ther mometer in the room stood at five below zero ! A drop of the hottest coffee spilled upon the cloth froze in a minute, while the gravy was hard on the plate, and the butter frozen in spite of the fastest eater. This was another " wicked city." During its lively existence of three months it established a graveyard with forty-three occupants, of whom not one died of disease. Two were killed by an accident in the rock-cut ; three got drunk, and froze to death ; three were hanged, and many killed in rows, or mur dered ; one " girl " stifled herself with the fumes of charcoal, and another inhaled a sweet death in subtle chloroform. From Wasatch we pass through 1 O a long rock-cut and tunnel, and PULPIT ROCK, ECHO enter Echo Canon, which leads us into Weber Canon and that out to Salt Lake Valley. A hun dred miles from Wasatch bring us to Promontory, for six months after their completion, the junction of the Union and Central Pacifies, the spot where, " Civilization shifting turns the other way," And the tide of progress rolling westward, was met by the 140 GAMBLING MORALITY. reflux tide of Pacific " self-risers," assisted by the almond-eyed Mongolian. Here we rested for a day at the last "U. P. town" 4900 feet above sea-level, though, theologically speaking, if we inter pret Scripture literally, it ought to have been 49,000 feet below that level ; for it certainly was, for its size, morally nearest to the infernal regions of any town on the road. In two days I had the pleasure (?) of seeing at least a score of " smart Alecks " relieved of their surplus cash by betting on the " strap game," " patent lock," " ten-die game," " three-card monte " and other beautiful uncertainties, which are so worked as to appear " a dead sure thing " to the uninitiated. What I particularly admire in the "sports" is the fine morality they display in always having the loser in the wrong. The latter is certain he is going to cheat the gambler, otherwise he would never venture. He thinks the gambler ignorant of the fact that the card is marked, or the lock " hampered," or the strap changed, as the case may be, by the " capper ; " and goes in on what he considers a " dead sure thing." Hence I maintain there should be no legal action to recover money lost in gambling. Between the gambler and the loser the moralities are equal ; both are rogues at heart, only the former is the more expert. My journalistic inspection of the Union Pacific was ended, and on the 1st of August I stood upon the " last rail," which was laid three months before with such imposing ceremonies, and which has, in literal prose, been whittled up, carried off and replaced six times ; so that we have had no less than seven last rails, and the end is not yet. Here Irish and Chinese laborer met in their great work, to place the last jet in the band which weds the Orient and Occident, and solemnize their union by the shores of America's. Dead Sea. The scene on this burning August day is not provocative of sentiment; the theme is ex hausted in song and story, but worthy still of extravagant eulogy as the great triumph of peace in this age; and as I gaze upon the rocky hights around, I almost fancy I can CREDIT MOBILISE. 141 see the shade of Columbus, still pointing westward, still affirming : "Iwas right after all : This is the way to India." NOTE : This chapter originally contained floridly complimentary notices of all the great men engaged in building the Union Pacific, but about the time it vwent to press, the Credit Mobilier investigation was in progress in Washington, so I thought it safest for my reputation as an author and Gentile prophet, to-/ mention no names. Never praise a man, or name your children after him, till he is dead. CHAPTEE VIII. THE GREAT BASIN. Hunting new fields Gentile needs Mines or nothing Southward Sevier Mines Gilmer and Saulsbury Rockwell's Ranche The Utah Basin Will it be sacred ground? A family ticket Social robbery Chicken Creek " Them mules is in the sagebrush ; you go hunt 'em ! " Gunnison Sevier Valley Abandoned towns Marysvale Up the Gulch Drawbacks to the district Mr. Jacob Hess My later experience The habitable lands of Utah and Nevada Productions Fruits True policy with the State and Territory "Mormon enterprise" A silver State Sunken deserts Death Valley Mournful reminiscence. HE Union Pacific and overland excursion had become too common. Every man who could command the time and money was eager to make the trip, and all who could sling ink became correspondents. At least ten thousand columns had been written about the Mormons, and my local occupation was spoiled. The Bedouin instinct stirred within me, and I longed for fresh fields and pastures new. The Gentiles in Utah were ruined in business if that business depended on the Mormons, and a few of us turned our eyes towards the hills as a last hope. We wanted to live in Utah ; to do so we must have a Gentile population, and the only hope for such a population was in developing paying mines. Trade with the Mormons no Gentile could count on, and in agricul ture no American could go into the country and compete with the foreign-born Mormons, who worked little five and ten-acre patches, and thought themselves in affluence if they had a hundred dollars' worth of surplus produce. Unless Utah had rich mineral deposits, we might prepare to emigrate. Cotton- wood, Rush Valley and Sevier were spoken of the last far in Southern Utah. The place was beyond the settlements, in the 142 PORTER ROCKWELL. 143 OFF FOB THE SEVIER MINES. edge of the Indian country, and the route thither lay through the dark regions of Polygamia. But the reports appeared favorable, and I determined to visit the district. Gilmer and Saulsbury, successors to Wells, Fargo & Co., ran a tri- weekly line to Fillmore, the old territorial capital ; and from Chicken Creek, north of that city, a miners 7 express sometimes ran to the Sevier region. The "State Road," so-called in allusion to the proposed " State of Deseret," runs southward up the Jordan and through the " Narrows," to the Utah Lake region. The last station on the Jordan is known as Rockwell's Ranche, having long been the residence of the notorious " Port " Rockwell, reputed Danite and undoubted desperado. Making due allowance for western exaggeration, enough is certainly known of his life to make it one of singular and horrible fascination. Most of the evidence I have of his life is from Mormons, but Porter himself only owns to having killed a dozen men, most of which cases he justifies, and complains of having been slandered by journalists, particularly Fitzhugh Ludlow. That writer visited Porter at his ranche, and afterwards collected his history from various sources, and credits (or debits) him with fifty murders, as if all were proved facts. " Port " used to grit his teeth when that 144 UTAH LAKE BASIN. history was mentioned, and say if he met Ludlow he would make it fifty-one ! " Port " disappeared from his usual haunts while Judge McKean's Federal Court was running ; but when that condition was reversed by the Supreme Court, he was again to be seen and heard in " Zion." His custom, when drunk, is to walk Main Street and give vent to a regular series of pro longed yells, which are sufficiently murderous in tone to make a stranger believe almost anything about him. But time would fail me to tell even that part of Rockwell's life which is well proved ; the palmy days of such men in Utah are passed, and the " Danite Captain's " occupation is gone. From Rockwell's we pass the " Point o' Mountain " and " Narrows," and thence down a long slope into the fine valley east of Utah Lake the Galilee of modern Saints. Through the flourishing settlements of Lehi, Battle Creek, and American Fork, we pass to the city of Provo, second place in age, and third in size, in the Territory. The bishop of this place was- immortalized by Artemus Ward, who tells of giving him a "family ticket," and after congratulating himself on the size of his audience, discovering that all but a dozen of them were the- bishop's wives and children. The point of the joke is in the fact that, though the bishop has five wives, he has never been a father. This case illustrates the folly of polygamy, in a politico- economical sense, a little more clearly than most others. If the four superfluous wives of this potentate had each a husband, we might, in the course of nature, expect a score of children where now are none. There being one woman to one man in the world at large not near so many in the Territories and all men being "created free and equal," who gave one man the right to take five men's shares of womanly sweetness ? What robbery so bad as that which robs a man of any chance for a wife or domestic happiness? A community of polygamists is an absurdity rather an impossibility. From the nature of the case, polygamists must form an exclusive aristocracy, like that of slaveholders. Night had overtaken us before passing Springville, at the SPECULATIONS. 145 ON A FAMILY TICKET. southern point of Utah Lake. The Provo, or Timpanogos, Spanish Fork, American Fork, and a dozen smaller streams feed this " Gem of the Desert/' which only sends off one-third as much water by the Jordan as it receives from these mountain affluents. Some may find its way under ground, but more is accounted for by evaporation. The lake contains forty square miles. Myself and the driver were left alone, and rattling along the shores of this modern Sea of Galilee, which, with the Jordan and Salt Lake, forms so strange a copy of the wonders of the Holy Land, while I enjoyed the calm beauty of the Utah moonlight, I could but wonder if this region was to become historic in aftertimes as the starting-point of a new religion, where future pilgrims should wander by the voiceless shore, and look back over eighteen centuries to the cradle of their faith. Mormonism is now forty-three years old, dating from the first baptism in the brook of Sharon, Ne\y York, and claims to have more converts than did Christianity 10 146 HUNTING MULES. at the same age. "Will it in time be purged of its extraneous abominations, polygamy, incest, and blood-atonement, and with a purer theology develop into a new form of worship, in more vital harmony with the age ? In another generation will some great leader, some impassioned orator and reasoner, like Saint Paul, seize upon the growing sect, and convert millions to its progressive faith ? If so, then Sharon, and Manchester, Kirt- land, and Far West, Nauvoo, Salt Lake, and the shores of the American Jordan will become places of holy renown and pious pilgrimage, while Governors Boggs and Ford, yes, and some who have employed their pens against Mormonism, will rank in the future Church History like Pilate and Herod in their connection with the true faith. So much by way of riotous fancy. But the prospect, melan choly as it might appear to a good Mormon, did not prevent my catching a few minutes' sleep on the smoothest parts of the road, till daylight revealed the north point of Iron Mountain, and my last station on the stage road. This was Chicken Creek, whence the main road bears westward, and a trail through a high uninhabited valley leads to the Sevier road. It was the day for the miners' express, and the station-keeper informed me "The mules was in the sagebrush; driver would start as soon as he got 'em." All new staging enterprises in the West begin with mules. They take whipping and cursing more kindly, and in emer gencies can live on the white sage, which horses cannot. The first coaches from the Missouri to Denver were drawn entirely by mules, the stations often forty miles apart; and in some instances a " whipper" was employed to gallop beside the team, and urge them forward. Arrived at the station, the mules were turned out till the next coach came in, when the passen gers were expected to hunt them, the penalty for refusal being severe if the driver had power to enforce it. An old plains man gave A. Ward the following account of the style : " A while back there went along here one of them fellers dressed out to kill in Boston cloze, and the first station they come to they wan't no mules. Says the chap with Boston AN UNLUCKY BOSTONIAN. 147 "YOU GO HUNT 'EM!" cloze, says he, ' Where's them mules ?' Says the driver, 'Them mules is in the sagebrush ; you go hunt 'em ; that's what you do.' Says the man o' Boston dressin', 'Oh, no.' Says the driver, 'Oh, yes;' an' he took his big stage-whip, an' he licked the man o' Boston dressin' till he went an' got the mules. How does that strike you for a joke?" We consumed two days in making the hundred miles to the mines, traveling up the Sevier River, and passing through seven abandoned towns. The Mormons settled most of this valley many years since, but were driven out by Indians in 1866 ; their well-built towns, surrounded by immense stone walls, still stood in perfect preservation, but uninhabited. 148 UP PINE GULCH. My memory does not recall a more pleasant journey. The "coves" opening back into the mountains were rich in bunch- grass, which was fairly alive with jack rabbits ; sage hens, and other small fowl were abundant on the lower plain, and vast flocks of ducks were found along the river. The valley has a general elevation of five thousand feet above sea-level ; the air was cool, pure and invigorating, and the sky without a cloud, deep blue and dazzling. Southern Utah has probably the finest climate in America, or, taking it the year round, in the world. The snow seldom falls more than three inches deep, or lies on more than one night. Cattle live upon the range nearly all winter, and yet the district is free from the scorching summer heats of Arizona. At Marysvale, last town on the Sevier, we found the Mor mons returning to their homes, after three years' absence, the Indians being once more peaceful. There we turned west ward, and toiled for six miles up Pine Gulch, on which the mines are situated. Along the mountain stream by a narrow " dug-way/' with an average up-grade of one foot in four, but cut by cross ravines, and often turned by immense rocks, we slowly made our way towards the mountain top. One moment we were on the edge of a narrow track where an overturn would have sent us a hundred feet into the bed of the .stream, and the next struggling through a narrow chasm at the bottom of the gulch, with walls of granite rising on both sides of us, and above them the sloping sides of the cafion half a mile in hight, with a descent of more than forty-five degrees, and cov ered with immense pine forests to the very summit. The roar ing brook, now beside, now far below us, and again under our wagon-wheels, seems to be singing of the snowy hights that form its source; and at every place where a short level or natural dam of rock forms a pool, the shining mountain trout are to be seen in numbers through the clear fluid, though its temperature is but little above that of ice-water, which indeed it is at its source a few miles above. We find Bullion City a straggling row of houses along the ne street, which inclines some thirty degrees towards the bed SEVIEB. 149 of the stream. Miners, particularly in new districts, are always delighted to see a journalist; I was warmly welcomed, made free of the hospitality of the most pretentious cabin in the place, and spent three days looking at the mines. Then, for the first time, I became familiar with those mysterious terms of the mining language : " lodes," " croppings," " wall-rock," " foot and hang ing wall," "dips," "spurs," "angles," "variations," and "sinu osities." At the end of three days I concluded that I knew all of the science which was of any particular value, and proceeded to write an authoritative report on the Sevier Mines. Two years afterwards, at the end of three months' hard travel, and parti cularly hard study of shafts, tunnel, etc., I concluded that my education for a " mining expert" had just begun, and was quite likely never to be finished. I discovered that there was about the same difference between any two districts as between any two languages the student may acquire ; while certain general principles pervade all, the details are radically different. I discovered, after Utah began to be a mining country, that the position of mining reporter is one of exceeding liability to mis takes, and taken all in all, certainly, the most thankless, unpro fitable But I anticipate. To resume. Sevier ought to have been a rich and well developed mining region. Of that I am still convinced. But it was too far from the railroad ; the characteristic of the region was large bodies of low grade ore too low grade to reward transportation to a great distance the original locators were too poor to get in mills and machinery, and capitalists then had no faith in Utah mines. My sanguine predictions for the region were singularly falsified ; it was the last district in Utah to be developed. My friend and host, Mr. Jacob Hess, held on till the last, and when the district did "come out," had the satisfaction of retiring with a comfortable fortune. After a delightful sojourn in southern Utah, I returned to my editorial labors, a new man physically. I have since traversed the Great Basin in many different ways, and to avoid vain repe tition append a few facts which the reader may refer to or avoid at leisure. 150 A HARD COUNTRY. The Great Basin contains nearly one half of Utah, all of Nevada, a large portion of southeastern California, and small sections of Idaho, Oregon, and Wyoming. In this strange region all nature seems to be reversed : a river is larger at the middle than at the mouth, where it has any mouth ; the lakes have no outlet to the ocean, though receiving large streams ; timber grows only on the mountains, all the interior plains being bare ; about one-eighth the quantity of rain falls as in the eastern States, and possibly one acre in fifty is fit for cultivation. The rest consists of alkali beds, salt plains, rocky flats, barren mountains, bitter pools and brackish marshes, extinct volcanoes, lava beds, and "dry rivers," with occasional patches of bunch- grass the last rendering perhaps one-third of the Basin of some value for grazing. Geographically it is divided into a number of smaller basins, each with a water system of its own, that draining into Great Salt Lake being the largest. The only land fit for cultivation is found along the base of the highest mountains, where melting snow furnishes some moisture throughout the dry season ; or in narrow strips of valley along the streams, where irrigation is practicable. Even of the fertile land, not more than one- third can be reclaimed without a most expensive system of irrigation. In Utah the Mormons have nearly exhausted the valleys* which can be cultivated by the common mode; agriculture can only be extended further by more scientific engineering, carrying out canals from the heads of the larger streams upon higher plateaus. In this manner they might reclaim the great plateau west of Bear River, that west of the Jordan and perhaps three or four others. That territory has about reached the limit of its farming population, except some such plan be adopted. Nevada, with 81,539 square miles, has about as much good land as three average counties in Ohio. But where the land is fit and irrigation practicable, the yield is immense. Wheat averaged last year in Utah, twenty bushels per acre ; oats, barley and potatoes are produced in abundance ; a little Indian corn is raised, but the climate is not favorable; peaches and apples may be counted on every year, and nearly DEATH VALLEY. 151 all the fruits and vegetables of the temperate zone yield boun teously. Politically the Great Basin ought to be all included in one State. It would then have about population enough for one Representative in Congress, which neither of its divisions will have for the next twenty years, unless the number of members is increased every decade ; for the country at large is increasing in population as fast, if not faster, than either Nevada or Utah. The proposed State would be a mining commonwealth, whose laws would apply equally. Mormonism out of the way, its people would be homogeneous, with interests substantially the same in every section, and with the railroads already done and in a fair way for completion communication would be -easy, as the population is located only around the edges, leaving the cen ter uninhabited. The Mormons are much praised for what they have done in Utah ; but it seems to me a people who were so absurd as to settle in such a country, when empires of good land were beg ging for inhabitants, have too little judgment to be relied on for anything. We can scarcely respect the general intellect of a man who squats in a mud-hole, though we may wonder at his energy in getting out. As we go towards the south west all cultivable land disappears. The " Great Desert" of Nevada and Utah covers some 30,000 square miles, and is succeeded by the sunken deserts which ex tend down to the Colorado. Most notable among these is Death Valley, so called from the loss of an emigrant train, of which the following account is given : " It is said to be lower than the level of the sea, and wholly destitute of water. The valley is some fifty miles long by thirty in breadth, and save at two points it is wholly encircled by mountains, up whose steep sides it is impossible for any but ex pert climbers to ascend. It is devoid of vegetation, and shadow of bird or beast never darkens its white, glaring sand. In the early days trains of emigrants bound for California passed, under the, direction of guides, to the south of Death Valley, by what is known as the old ' Mormon road.' In the year 1850, a 152 APPEARANCE OF THE DEAD. large train with some three hundred and fifty emigrants, mostly from Illinois and Missouri, came south from Salt Lake, guided by a Mormon. When near Death Valley a dissension broke out in a part of the train, and twenty-one families appointed one of their number a leader and broke off from the main party. The leader determined to turn due west; so with the people and wagons and flocks, he traveled for three days, and then de scended into the broad valley whose treacherous miracje prom ised water. They reached the center, but only the white, glar ing sand, bounded by the scorched peaks, met their gaze on every hand. Around the valley they wandered, and one by one the men died, and the panting flocks stretched themselves in death under the hot sun. Then the children crying for water, died at their mothers' breasts, and with swollen tongues and burning vitals, the mothers followed. Wagon after wagon was abandoned, and strong men tottered, and raved and died. After a week's wandering, a dozen survivors found some water in the hollow of a rock in the mountains. It lasted but a short time, when all perished but two, who, through some miraculous means, got out of the valley, and followed the trail of their for mer companions. Eighty seven persons, with hundreds of ani mals, perished in this fearful place, and since then, the name of Death Valley has been applied to it. Mr. Spears says when he visited it after the lapse of eighteen years, he found the wagons still complete, iron works and tires bright, and the shriveled skeletons lying in many places side by side. 7 ' CHAPTER IX. THROUGH NEVADA. Out of a place A wanderer again Tired of Utah Westward Promontory* Salty district Queer calculations Down the Humboldt Elko White Pine "John Chinamen "Humboldt Canon Desert Reese River " Sinks " Morning at Truckee Beauty of the Sierras Eureka ! Donner and Bigler Lakes Western Slope " Forty miles of snow sheds " Mining towns Cape Horn Sublime scenery Scientific engineering Swiftly downward Scenery of the Pacific slope Out upon the plain The California autumn Suburbs of Sacramento. RETURNED from Sevier to Corinne to find the affairs of the Reporter in a condition of beautiful uncertainty. Both my partners had previously sold out to a new man, who had, in my brief absence, quietly installed another editor, without the little formality of consulting me. The " Josephite " Mormons were just then gaining a little ground in Utah, and it was proposed to make the paper a sort of "Josephite organ," which did not at all suit me. After ten days of fruitless effort to compromise our views, I gave up the contest, put my share of the concern " on sale/ 7 and was out of employment. There remained nothing for me but the uncertain chances of travel, so I renewed my determination of the pre vious year and started westward. Utah is a favorite place for the curious, but one grows tired even of Utah, with all its curiosities of nature and religion ; its hot springs and hotter passions; its pure air and water and impure ethics; its lofty mountains and low conceptions of human nature ; its social perversions, blood-mixtures, ignorance and priestcraft. All these charms could not always interest, and on the afternoon of September 23d, 1869, I took the train westward, determined to see how the tide of human life moved on 153 154 SALINE BAYOUS. " 'Mid sage-brush in Nevada State, Where silver-miners congregate." Eeaching Promontory, still the junction of Union and Cen tral, by dark, I was surprised, not very agreeably, to fine ihat ray fame had preceded me. All the " sports " seemed to know me at sight, which I could not account for till a friend handed me an old copy of the Cincinnati Commercialj and therein I saw my former letter, containing a description by no means flattering of this same " Robbers' Roost/' and a partial expose of the little games practised here. But one copy had reached the place, and that had been handed around and read as long as it would hold together, causing a dangerous mixture of wrath and mirthfulness. An old monfe-dealer, whose acquaintance I had made at Benton the previous year, soon hastened to take me by the hand with many compliments : " Capital, sir, capital ! Almost equal to Mark Twain; good burlesque; much pleased with your account of how we roped the old Californians. Now then, as long as you stay here, stick by me, and you shan't be hurt." I availed myself of his kind offer, but found it conve nient to go west on the first train. We change here to the plainer cars of the Central Pacific, and a down grade of fifty miles brings us to Indian Creek, and Kelton Station, at the northwest corner of the lake, and in a valley of alkali flats and salt beds of indescribable barrenness. The town of Kelton will certainly never spoil for want of salt. The spring rise of the lake covers all the adjacent low lands, and retiring during the dry season, leaves thousands of acres crusted with salt, and here and there a little pond with deposits of the pure crystal a foot in depth. One enterprising firm proposes to dam the mouth of a long bayou near, and place a windmill on the lake shore, with force sufficient to keep the pond thus created full all summer; the evaporation would be continuous and rapid, making, in one season, half a million tons of salt. The lake has an average width of forty, and length of ninety miles ; in the center it is forty feet in depth, the borders shelving gradually, and the entire body will average 18 per cent, of salt, or a little over one gallon in six of the 155 156 "CROCKER'S PETS." fluid. From these figures it is estimated that the entire body contains five billion tons of salt. Rather a big estimate, but probably it would take that much to sweeten the kingdom of Brigham. Westward from the Promontory we find California work and ideas, pay in coin, and encounter everywhere the Chinese, with their singular dresses of silk and linen, their chip hats, rice feed, and cheap labor. " Crocker's pets," as they were then styled on the Central, worked for thirty-one dollars per month and boarded themselves, which amounted to an effectual em bargo on white laborers wherever they came into competition. Of course there was furious opposition, " prejudice against color," and jealousy about " our proud (Caucasian blood," and the old-time talk about the freedmen was repeated over and over again, without the merit of variation. Naturally enough, the politicians are deeply interested, and inquiring earnestly, " What shall we do with them ? " It never seems to occur to these inquirers, as it did not in the case of the free negroes in the North, that the objects of their solicitude are doing quite well without their interference. It appeared to me somewhat ridiculous that those who took such strong ground against enfranchising the negroes because they were "lazy, improvident, and worthless," were just as savage against the Chinese for exactly the opposite reasons: that they are so patient, temperate, laborious, and saving, that they can work cheaper and supplant white men. I stopped for a few days' observation at the new, enterprising and furiously speculative town of Elko, situated in the best part the only good part of the Humboldt Valley, and the point of departure for the White Pine mines and other newly discovered districts. With its enormous freighting business to the mines of Eastern Nevada, Elko has better chances for a continued existence than most of the "mushroom towns" on the Pacific Railway. I found it a pretentious and lively city. Most of the business men were "Californiaized Jews," an improved variety of the race. All transactions are on a gold basis. Greenbacks were then taken from "pilgrims," and A BIG DIGGER. 157 under protest, at seventy-five cents on the dollar, not following the fluctuations of the gold-room except at long intervals. The climate is a combination of hot sun and cold winds, with occa sional wind-storms and frightful clouds of alkali dust rather disagreeable much of the time. The stages from White Pine came in loaded heavily every day, making an agreeable liveli ness and change of population ; and from ten to forty tons of freight went on to the same place by the long mule trains, making an equal liveliness in business circles. To all business intents, Elko was a White Pine town. White Pine, the great sensation of Nevada, was discovered in 1865, by a band of " prospectors" from Austin. After a weary journey over the barren mountains of Eastern Nevada, they came upon the first " indications" at what is now known as the Piute District. Not satisfied with these they descended from Diamond Range into the present Mohawk Cafion, where they came upon the first " float" now so celebrated. Returning to camp one evening from a weary hunt, they came upon a greasy Piute smelling around their meat-sacks, aud thrusting his filthy fingers into their pot of beans. With kicks and curses they drove away the aborigine, but next morning he returned hold ing in his hand a piece of green-tinged rock, on which their practised eyes detected " horn silver." They were upon him at once with questions as to where he got it. " Heap hungry me like um beans," was the diplomatic reply in the best Eng lish he could command. No kicks or curses, no driving out now. The best in the camp was at his command, and when gorged to repletion, probably for the first time in his life, the Digger led them to the spot where he obtained his specimen the place now famous as the original Hidden Treasure Lode. The photograph of that Indian now has an extensive sale in the towns of White Pine, and he may be said to have achieved immortality. Strangely enough White Pine remained almost unknown fora year or two after the discovery. October 10th T 1865, the pioneers organized the mining district, which they named from the forests f scrubby white pine which cover most of the hills. The White 158 RESTLESS MINERS. Pine range extends due north and south for twelve miles, with an average altitude of nine thousand feet ; the summers are rendered disagreeable by storms of wind and dust, and for five months of winter the cold is excessive. There, as in most parts of Nevada, a man with an umbrella is hailed as a " pilgrim" just from the East; for in the summer it rarely rains, and when it does, an umbrella would be torn to ribands in five minutes. Nevertheless, White 'Pine became the goal of all who desired to be suddenly rich. The "rush" began early in. 1868; by the opening of 1870, fifty quartz-mills were in operation, and the county numbered twenty thousand inhabitants. The miner is the most restless of men except, perhaps, the sailor. In a poor camp he longs for a good one; in a good one he longs for a better. With steady work, at six or seven dollars a day profit, he will drop his pick at a moment's notice to fol low a new "excitement." Notwithstanding all the enormous fortunes made at White Pine, I met dozens every day who were cursing the place and their luck in it. Eberhardt, the richest location, is synonymous with Eldorado; but for one Eberhardt there were ten thousand "locations" that never "paid grub wages." It is the history of all very rich mining districts; people will draw too largely on the future, and the wealth of Potosi would not have averted the ruin of those who specu lated too deeply and rashly. Leaving the fast town of Elko from Omaha 1305 miles, froni Sacramento 496, above sea-level 5092 feet on the morn ing of September 30th, we moved west-southwest and down the Humboldt. The scenery is not inspiring. The only view of any gran deur is at Humboldt Canon, now better known as the Palisades, a wild gorge through which the river has forced its way in some far distant geologic age, and where the railroad track lies along the base of a perpendicular rock many hundred feet in hight. Far below the excavated track the waters of the Humboldt foam over the uneven bottom of a narrow channel, obstructed in many places by the immense rocks, which have fallen from the cliff*. The lack of colors in the stone prevents that singular " GINASTICUTIS." 159 HUMBOLDT PALISADES. variety which is the charm of Echo and Weber Gallons, but the cold unchanging grey imparts a wild and gloomy beauty instead. On the south side of the cation the Devil's Peak rises fifteen hundred feet directly above the river. In a cleft near the top is a singular looking mass of sticks and long roots, just visible from below, which those who have examined it aver to be a mammoth bird's nest, strongly constructed of willows and rushes, which still endure the wear of the elements though abandoned long ago. If indeed a nest, it must have been in habited in an age of birds larger than the condor or any exist ing species. A fellow-traveler suggested that the occupant was cotemporary with the Hibernian fowl, generally denominated the " Ginasticutis." In the old days of crossing the continent the emigrants could not drive through this cafion ; so left it at a side cafion some miles above, and toiled a wearisome way over the mountains, seeking the valley again by the first practicable route below. 160 A DRY STATE. This brought them down to Gravelly Ford, one of the few places where grass was rich and abundant; and here emigrant companies often remained several weeks to rest and recruit their stock. The Shoshonee Indians also knew the place well, and many a fight with them has occurred here ; sometimes, too, it is whispered, with " painted Mormons," caused in both cases by a conflict of opinion in regard to the ownership of stock. Thence down the long, shallow Humboldt there is little to be seen but the same dreary and unvarying wastes, relieved but rarely by patches of bunch grass or sagebrush. Sometimes a green plat appears in a depression of the valley, or an occa sional strip of meadow land near the river; north and south of us are continuous lines of hard, bleak and forbidding moun tain peaks. Late in the day we reach the opening of Eeese River Valley, forming a break in the line of hills south of the Humboldt. Reese River rises away in Southern Nevada, and after running two hundred miles northward, sometimes almost disappearing, and again, when swollen by mountain streams in some parts of its course, taking almost respectable rank as a river, it finally enters the open plain and forms a "sink" before reaching the Humboldt. In this word "sink" the Western man embodies an empirical explanation of the disap pearance of the water ; but elemental action and reactipn are necessarily equal, whether in an enclosed basin or on the entire earth's surface, and the water really goes upward instead of downward. Eastern readers may wonder that all the rivers of Nevada " run to nothing," but a little experience in the State would explain the matter. If the Ohio were turned into the northeast corner of the Great Basin, not a drop of it would ever reach the Colorado at least above ground. The thirsty alkali soil, hot sun and drying air would exhaust it before it could traverse the State. Hot springs are found at various places along the Humboldt; at Elko, Cluro, or Hot Spring Valley, Golconda, and other places ; all of which are reported " highly medicinal " by those who own town, lots in the vicinity I suppose, as I never heard of any chemical analysis. Of the towns along the route little DRY NEVADA. 161 ON THE TRTJCKEE C. P. R. R. need be said. Carlin, Argenta, Winnemucca, and several others have simply the history of Union Pacific towns over again : a roaring, rattling period of boisterous life, with about an equal mixture of business and pleasure, as long as it was the terminus, followed by a sudden decay when the road moved on, left each in a state of half-hopefulness, waiting for mines to be discovered in the vicinity, or " something to turn up." At dusk we turn straight west, crossing for the last time the noted Humboldt, which has been decreasing for a hundred miles, and is now shrunk to a mere slough, meandering sluggishly to the southward, where a few miles further on, it has just enough vitality left to enter the " sink," and then exit the Humboldt. There we enter upon the Great Nevada Desert horror of early 11 162 TIMBER AGAIN. PLACER MINING. Miners shovel earth, containing gold dust, into a flume the earth is washed away and the gold settles to the bottom. emigrants which greedily swallows the little moisture of creeks, rivers and clouds, but yields nothing in return. In it and on its borders are Pyramid, Humboldt, Carson, Winnemucca, and Mud Lakes; its area includes all the Central Basin of Nevada, and in every part are found evidences of recent volcanic action. But sleep intervened, till daylight brought to view the wild scenery of the Sierras, upon which we enter along the course of the foaming Truckee, and soon after passing Verdi Station, at an elevation of five thousand feet, we cross the dividing line, and shout EUREKA, for we are in Eldorado, the Golden State California. Crossing the Truckee we take an additional locomotive and enter upon the ascent of the Sierras. The first large curve up the mountain side brings us above Donner Lake, with a fine view of it ; and soon after we are almost over Lake Bigler. A GRAND SCENERY. 163 CAPE HORN C. P. R. R. little farther brings us to Summit Station, highest point on the Central Pacific, 7042 feet above sea-level, 1669 miles from Omaha, and 105 from Sacramento. We enter now upon the western slope, with its steep descent, and with the brakes " set up " and very little steam, we still rush along at a fearful rate, at one place running twenty-five miles in thirty minutes, with out an ounce of steam. Forty miles of snow sheds have been erected along this part of the line at a cost of a million and a half of dollars ; to the great assurance of winter passage, but to an equal hindrance of our enjoyment of the view. Running out upon a more gentle grade we pass in rapid suc cession Dutch Flat, Little York, You Bet, and Red Dog, all old mining towns, the largest still containing three thousand inhabitants. All along the road we see mile after mile of flumes running in every direction down the ridges, and carrying large streams to be used in hydraulic mining below, and in places pass hundreds of acres of " old dirt," which has been washed out and abandoned. But the feature of greatest interest, A HIGHWAY. 165 next to the mountains themselves, is the tall timber, everywhere covering the slopes and crests to the very summit. To one just from the treeless plains of Nevada and Utah the sight is de lightful, and like an invalid from the lumber districts of Maine who lately passed this way, one feels to exclaim, " Thank the Lord, I smell pitch once more." The finest view is at Cape Horn, but the sight is not good for nervous people. An awful chasm, at first apparently right before us, and then but a little to the left, opens directly across the range ; and standing on the steps of the car, it seems as if the train were rushing headlong into it. The first view allows the sight to pierce a thousand feet, almost straight downward to the green bottom, where the trees shrink to mere shrubs, and the Chinamen working at the lumber seem like pigmies ; a little further down the gorge the wagon bridge, hundreds of feet above the bottom, appears like a faint white band, and still fur ther the sight is lost in a blue mist. The railroad track is ex cavated along the sides and around the head of this gorge, where in aboriginal days the Indians had not even a foot-path, as the first descent from the head of the chasm is six hundred feet, nearly perpendicular. When the road-bed was constructed, the men who made the first excavation were secured by ropes let down from a higher point. Coming out of this wild scenery into a region where settle ments begin to thicken, and gardens, orchards, and cultivated fields appear, we pass* Colfax, Clipper Gap, Auburn, New Cas tle, Rocklin, and Junction. The climate changes rapidly; in place of the gray-brown vegetation of the Basin, we see the bright yellow grass and flowers of the California autumn, and the red branches and pale green leaves of the manzanita. By noon the air is quite warm. Down at last on the California side of the Sierras we emerge from the foot-hills upon a rather level plain, dotted with clumps of trees, and more rarely a cul tivated field. We seern in a new world ; everything has a more southern or tropical appearance. The grass is quite yellow, in places with a coppery hue, cured, dried up, as if the surface had been uni- 166 CALIFORNIA PLAINS. formly scorched over. But this is the " dry season." During winter and spring this plain is green with rich grass; as the season advances the verdure dries upon the ground, and the Californian's season of short pasture comes, not in the winter, but in the late summer and fall. The soil is rather sandy. The little bayous and streams appear to have dried up many weeks ago, and the dust is quite annoying. When this dry, parched region has begun to grow monoto nous, a fresh accession of green indicates that we are on marsh land. Soon after we run upon a long trestlework, then pass- the bridge over American River, and enter upon a beautiful course between great vineyards, and amid the semi-tropical vege tation, luxurious gardens and well-watered grass plats, which, the suburbs of the State Capital. INTERIOR OF PALACE-CAR ON CENTRAL PACIFIC. CHAPTEE X. AFOOT IN CALIFORNIA. New Spain Poetry and fact Saxon and Spaniard Cavalier and Pioneer Otu Heroic Age The American Iliad Sacramento Yolo county " Tules" Chinese California Central R. R. Ague High and Low Water-marks Chinese and Chinese labor Acclimating sickness Davisville Sericulture- Warner's Vineyard The land of grapes Pears, apples, and figs Up Putah Creek Drouth and dust The rainy season at hand Fruit farms near the coast range Ranches only, not homes Popular reasons therefor Agricultural items Shall we settle in rural California Chinese " Devil-drive " Mongo lian Theology" Josh "Blowing up the Devil Ah Ching's opinion" China like Melica man ! " Off for " Frisco." N his day-dreams, the Spaniard of the sixteenth century saw an Eldorado in the unknown West; a land of gold and glittering gems, of flowers and fruit, of shining sands and crystal streams, of soft air and mild skies ; where a temperate climate and fertile soil prom ised bodily ease, and unfailing health was to be gained from fountains of youth-restoring virtue the Hesperia of ancient poets realized in the New World. For this, Narvaez, De Soto, and a host of others, sought long and traveled far, but died without the sight; nature had provided no "Islands of the blest," even amid the soft airs of the Pacific. There was, however, an Eldorado there ; not the fabled clime which lured the imaginative Spaniard, but still a land of wealth and plenty, where industry was to find a bounteous reward, and enterprise build up a golden State. But not for a superstitious race, ignorant of true liberty, was this domain reserved. In the divine predestination of history this hidden wealth was to serve the puposes of freedom ; it was to aid a civilization based on individual thought and energy ; to strengthen a free Republic, 167 168 A FULL-GROWN STATE. SACRAMENTO. and in the dark hour furnish the " sinews of war," in a death- struggle with slavery. For two centuries, men of Spanish extraction wandered amid the beauties of California, ignorant of her capacities and making but awkward use of the hundredth part of her surface wealth, till the fullness of time came, when enlightened freemen owned the soil, and so soon thereafter as to show a providence, her hidden wealth was made known. From that day the history of the State reads like a romance. At once, and from eveiy part of the Great Republic, half a million of freemen came crowding to this coast ; and with scarce a period of transition, without the slow, irregular growth of a territorial childhood, this commonwealth sprang, full-orbed, into Statehood, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter. It is not at all surprising that Californians should be inclined to boast ; or that they should seem proud even of their vices. It is in the air, the clime, more than all in the history of their State. Their virtues and vices are so near akin in their origin : both spring from that riotous exuberance of nature, that prodi gality of life both animal and vegetable, which makes existence on this coast a constant excitement. The material, too, which made California was of no common kind. The pioneers were HALF A MILLION HEROES. 169 men of extremes; they did not stop half way, either in their work or pleasures, and with the rapid changes of early days it is not surprising that dissipation and crime kept even pace with hardy enterprise, in the very recklessness of perverted energy. Of all who came to California in the various " excitements," from 1848 to 1855, in general only the most successful or the most utterly ruined, remained ; but, combined with the expe rience of those who returned, their history makes one of the grandest chapters of our day. Time only is needed to add its bright halo, to make that our " heroic age," and those the demi gods of our social and commercial history. Consider that twenty-five years ago the vast distance overland was alone enough to appal the ordinary mind ; add to that the broad prairies, the rugged mountains and scorched deserts, the great plains without water, the unknown character of the -country, the great rivers with their fords of treacherous sands, the savage Indians, then threatening the whole route, the danger from sickness and loss of supplies, and to this all the imagina tion could supply of unknown terrors, and it seems amazing that any considerable number of men should ever contemplate such a journey. But, despite all this, the love of gold and ad venture led half a million men to brave all these perils. We talk much of the noted men in our colonial history ; but there is scarcely a township in the United States but has one or more men who have traveled more miles, seen more of nature and adventure, risked greater danger and undergone more toil and hardship, than did the famous Captain John Smith in settling Virginia. Where is the Homer who shall sing the American Iliad of the half million heroes who attacked and conquered the wild obstructions of nature ; or the Odyssey of the re turning brave, who retraced their steps for the most part with wounds and glory for their pay ? The Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo made California ours in October, 1848. A few weeks before, a laborer named Marshal picked up the first piece of gold in the almost unknown terri tory. To-day we enter a rich and powerful State by the greatest railway in the world. SACRAMENTO VALLEY. 171 I remained a week in Sacramento, which I found lively and beautiful ; but the peculiar condition of the pocket-nerve ren dered it insalubrious as a continued residence for me. Besides, the towns could give me but little idea of the natural wealth of the State, though the towns only have been described by the press, and in the accounts of most travelers San Francisco is California. So on the morning of October 12th, knapsack in hand, I started to see the rural districts. Crossing the Sacramento to the little town of "Washington, in Yolo County, then the terminus of the California Central Rail road, I followed the track of that road for ten miles as the best way to get through the " tule lands." These constitute a tract nearly ten miles wide, overflowed during the winter and spring, and till late in summer intersected by almost impassable sloughs. Tule is the Spanish or Indian name of a coarse reed which covers the entire tract, green during winter and spring, but now dry as tinder, and furnishing fuel for extended fires. Far down among the reeds, which often exceeded ten feet in hight, I saw cattle hunting for scattering clumps of grass which still had a little shade of green in the moisture preserved by the tules. Beyond this tract, the road emerges into a vast plain, overflowed for many miles out in winter, but now dry and dusty, and covered with coarse grass of a yellowish brown color, which looks to the Eastern eye as if every particle of nutriment were burnt out of it. Eight miles from Sacramento I rested at the Tule House. The previous winter a good-sized steamer ran out every day to this hotel, and tied up to the porch of the upper story, their water privileges being uncommonly good for four months in the year. Many and various are the schemes proposed to reclaim and utilize this overflow tract, extending some ten miles out from the river. The one most favorably received is, to cut an immense canal directly across the big bend of the Sacramento from near Marysville to the head of Suisun Bay, which, ac cording to the engineers, would leave the land dry two months earlier in the spring. The soil is ten feet in depth, formed by deposits from the annual overflows ; and the advocates of 172 MALARIOUS COUNTRY. GEYSERS, PLT7TON RIVER, CALIFORNIA. rice culture here claim that it would support "five head of Chinamen to the acre." At present it is prolific of death rather than life, and at the first place I stopped, I was painfully reminded of the Wabash "bottoms," by finding the whole family suffering from ague. This was contrary to all I had heard of California, but I found all the country near this level tract abundant in bilious diseases. The inhabitants testify that, near the foothills, it was formerly healthy, but sickness was caused by the system of mining: " The water is used over and over again ; run into different reservoirs and left to settle, and when one fills up, a new one's made, and t'other left bare to the hot sun." Such is the local diagnosis, and I may add that I never visited any part of America where the inhabitants were not confident " it would be the healthiest place in the State, if" so and so were not the case. At one point I found the railroad running on trestle-work for CHINAMEN, 173 SAH VEY. a mile, over a marsh filled with water four months ago, but now dry as the hot rays of a California sun, from six months of cloudless sky, could make it. Where a good sized steamer might have run last January is now a bed of dust, whence the lightest winds raises stifling clouds. A little green grass is occasionally seen in the shade of the tules, and a few thrifty shrubs indicate moisture beneath. After a year's experience it has been found necessary to raise the whole road-bed four feet. In this work I encountered many gangs of Chinese, with their wicker- work basket-shaped hats, stolid, impassive air, and universal no sahvey ("don't understand ") to every question. To me they all looked alike, the same size, and seemed to have been cast in the same mould. It hardly seemed possible that I could get well-acquainted with one individual. But their Yankee over seers tell me this is "all a notion at first sight ; " that they see as much difference as among whites, and when called upon to identify one under oath, which is often the case, do so without difficulty. To me they appear to work very slowly, feebly 174 CALIFORNIA SILK. even ; but the overseers credit them with great steadiness, and aver that one does as much in a day as an average Irishman. They use no coffee and very little water, making tea their regu lar beverage, both at meals and work. Those employed on this road receive twenty-eight dollars a month, boarding themselves and resting Sundays. It costs them a dollar and a half each per week to live. They have but two holidays, which they observe with great festivity : the Chinese New Year's, occurring either ' in January or February, as their year contains thirteen lunar months; and the "Devil- drive/ 7 which takes place in October. Chinese labor is only relatively cheap : in California it costs but half that of white laborers, or even less ; but in the Eastern States the difference is too little to furnish just grounds to that class who manifest so much horror about "an invasion of barbarous Mongolians." My haste to reach the hills was moderated by sudden sick ness, resulting from too free use of water from the shallow wells of the valley, and I learned by painful experience that new comers must get acclimated in California as well as in the South. Taking a short rest at Davisville, fifteen miles from Sacramento, I was much interested in a Cocoonery just established there. A large field had been planted in mulberry trees ; a factory large enough to employ a hundred hands was being erect <1, and the experiment is now in active and favorable operation. Sericul ture will, I have no doubt, constitute one of the leading interests of California, as capable men are entering upon it at several places, and there can scarcely be a doubt that the climate and soil are well adapted thereto. The want of cheap labor has been the great hindrance ; and this brings us again to the Chinese, who will probably soon become silk manufacturers here as they are at home. I also spent half a day in the noted vineyard of Fred. War ner, Esq., which contains a hundred acres of grapevines, yield ing several thousand gallons of wine yearly. The " picking season " was over, but there were still enough on the vines to furnish a plentiful repast. Many thousand bunches had dried upon the stem and tasted more like raisins than grapes, unless TROPICAL FRUITS. 175 they happened to be of the more acid Sonoma variety, which had a strong, fiery taste. The capacity of this soil and climate for grapes is indeed wonderful ; every variety from the extreme north to the tropics seems to find here a congenial location, a second native country, So to speak, where they attain a size and fineness of flavor almost incredible. In this vineyard I noted particularly a kind called the Black Hamburg, far sweeter than the variety of that name in Indiana, which seemed to me the perfection of grapes. The Californians also boast much of their apples, but I am not so well pleased with them; they seem to me overgrown, lacking in piquancy, cloying and "filling "to an extreme, and what we, when boys, used to call " pethy." From the vineyard we wandered through a large orchard, noting on the way a heavy growth of large yellow pears, which to my taste partook of the same fault as the apples ; and thence into a plantation of fig trees, with broad dark green leaves and purple fruit, of which we found enough of the last crop to satisfy a moderate appetite. When first gathered, figs are almost black, but when washed and dried they turn a pale yellow color the fig of commerce. The trees never bloom ; the heavy leaves are of one color nearly all the year, and the fruit starts like a small knob just below the joining of the foliage. Those on the south side of the tree are, in this latitude, generally best, as they require for protection both heat and shade. They are growing for ten months in the year, sometimes starting even in the coldest weather. The first crop ripens by the first or middle of July, and the second early in September. There is seldom a period of over two weeks be tween the crops, and generally a few are ripe on the tree at any time. Sometimes enough ripen late in October to constitute a third crop. When gathered from the tree the fig is excessively sweet and rather juicy, full of soft red seeds ; perhaps not quite so cloying as the shop fig, but a very few satisfy. As I wan dered through the brilliant maze of red and yellow flowers, and tasted these tropical fruits, it seemed impossible we could be in the same latitude as my home in Indiana, where I had enjoyed sleighing and skating for two months in the year. 176 THE DRY SEASON. From Davisville I travel up Putah Creek, all day through a rich level country, covered now with the rich haze of autumn^ the air seeming full of red dust and smoke; pass occasionally clumps of trees and very inferior looking farm houses, seldom painted or well-finished ; traverse mile after mile of continuous wheat fields, with stubble still bright though the crop was har vested four months ago, and find the same dry, dusty grassless look over the whole landscape. The entire valley is devoted to the growth of wheat and barley, with the exception of occasional stock-ranches which also appear devoid of life at this season, with the same old look, and half-Southern, half-Spanish air of shiftless discomfort. There is a painful monotony about the road, which runs unfenced through a constant succession of wheat fields, where the dust has blown in rifts till the surface appears to have been plowed again. But this is the worst and last of the dry season. A few weeks hence copious showers will drench this dusty plain, and a rich velvety coloring will transform the landscape; a few weeks more and the bright green of the "grow ing season " will follow, and by the first of February, rural California will present a delightful and verdant appearance. Now my prevailing impression is one of drought: fields parched and cracked open, dust in great heaps among the dried vegetation, grass withered and burnt, while the largest, creeks are entirely dried up or shrunk to mere rivulets, pursuing their sluggish and doubtful course away down at the bottom of deep gulches which in winter and spring are filled by immense tor rents. At night the horizon is lighted up by fires raging in the stubble on the high lands or among the tules lower down, and by day the sun is obscured and distant objects hidden by the smoke or light haze, which corresponds to our eastern Indian summer and is here the immediate precursor of the first rain. Reaching the foothills of the Coast Range I find an agreeable change among the fruit farms ; and after a few days' rest there, I incline to the opinion that most of the beauty of country life in this State, as poets have described it, is to be found in the fruit regions. The grain districts are certainly far from lovely at this season. Grass does not grow about the yards unless irri- AGRICULTURE. 177 gated occasionally, and not one 'family in twenty has a windmill or other arrangements for irrigation. The people seem to be aware of these deficiencies and are often profuse in reasons there for : " The country is new, and we hav Vt all got our land paid for yet ; many got ' grant land/ and got too much, and are bothered to pay for it ; grass don't start up here like it does in the States ; it has to be watered and we're not fixed with pumps yet ; we want to make some money first, and after awhile when we can build larger houses it will be time to fix up," etc., etc. Another class fall back on this general formula : " If people would only economize here like they do in the States, they'd get rich mighty fast; but they don't economize, in fact, they can't ; California's the best place in the world, splendid place, long's you've got plenty o' money; but it's the worst country in the world if you're out o' money." Which opinion I endorse with qualifications, and modestly add : The subscriber never found a good country in which to be " out o' money," having tried it often. As Yolo is an exclusively agricultural county, and a fair specimen of rural California, the prospective emigrant may be interested in a few plain figures, which I copied from the reports at Woodland county seat which will enable him to make up his mind better than from any opinion of my own. Yolo has a long irregular shape, sixty miles from northeast to southwest, with an average width of fifteen miles. The eastern half is almost a dead level; next west of that is a narrow strip of undulating prairie, rising gradually to the foothills of the Coast Kange. The level strip consists of some five miles oftuk tract and about as much more grain land. Cotton wood, syca more and willow grow sparsely along the water courses, and oak and pine on the foothills. My figures are for the year 1866, the last obtainable, when 100,000 acres were under cultivation. These produced 867,590 bushels of wheat, raised on 26,408 acres; 70,000 bushels of oats, 1250 bushels of rye, 16,120 bush els of Indian corn, 150 bushels of buckwheat, 200 bushels of peas, 4000 bushels of castor beans, 4042 bushels of peanuts, be sides 1500 pounds of tobacco and 6 pounds of silk cocoons the 12 178 CHANCES FOR SETTLERS. last two industries being just established. The same year were produced 97,020 pounds of butter, 7040 pounds of cheese, 162,680 pounds of wool, and 26,244 pounds of honey, with small quantities of hay, potatoes, beets and onions. The porno- logical report gives the number of fruit trees : apple 29,430, peach 31,350, pear 12,148 fig trees not counted and a few lemon, orange and olive trees, were more as an experiment than otherwise. There were also a hundred thousand grapevines in the county, and 18,637 gallons of wine and 5687 of brandy were made from the vintage of that year. Of live stock there were 59,166 sheep, 14,644 hogs, 4480 horses, 1976 mules, 2492 cows and 4604 beef cattle. The population of the county was twelve thousand, which shows a good average of individual wealth. The price of land I found to be from one-third to one- half what it is in the old farming districts of Indiana. The climate for the first six months in the year I record my later experience in California is doubtless the finest in the world. For the last four, it is perhaps the worst two months of ter rible dust, followed by torrents of rain and oceans of mud. The other two months are just as it happens. Sometimes July and August are delightful always so among the foothills and higher valleys ; but if a small amount of rain has fallen, or if the " later rain " has not put in an appearance, they are, in local phrase, "tolerable dry." An eastern man would pronounce them intolerably dusty. If you have average industry and intelligence and, of course, you won't be reading this book if you havVt and can get there with a thousand, or even five hundred dollars clear, you can do well far better than with the same amount in Indiana or Ohio. You ought to expect to make preparations for about six weeks of winter, but not one in twenty of the farmers do. Their stock take chances, and those which don't get through alive are merely considered "out o' luck." The country people are generally a trifle shiftless and lazy'; and the probabili ties are that when you have been there five years, you will be as shiftless and lazy as they are. With the capital above mentioned, you can get some kind of CHINATOWN. 179 IN THE JOSH HOUSE. a start on a stock-ranch, grain or fruit farm. But if you have no money, stay well, it don't make much difference where you are. In that case I don't know but California is as good a place as any other to fight out the battle of life on the line of hard work, but it will take all summer, and several of them. After a long "tramp" among the fruit farms, I returned to Sacramento, falling in everywhere along the road with parties of Chinamen going in to the great "Devil-drive." I made haste to reach the city in time for that performance, which took place October 18th, with imposing ceremonies. Nearly all the Chinese in Sacramento live on I street, which for ten blocks is 180 "TOP-SIDE JOSH." the same as a town in China. There were at least four thou sand in the city on this occasion, the workmen from all the railroads being present; and with the blowing of horns, beating gongs, talking and yelling, by Mongolian courtesy called singing, and open air theatres and bands, they made the evening lively. Nearly all the Chinese in America are Orthodox Boodhists, there being very few of the followers .of Confucius, who are the fashionable infidels or philosophers of China, while the Bood hists constitute the High Church party. They reason the matter thus: "If God good, why pray? Tend to the Devil/ 7 Hence this ceremony of driving out the latter. In company with a few whites I crowded through the mass of Mongolians to where a tobacco factory had been converted into a temporary "Josh- house." They are not at all sensitive or exclusive about their religion, and made way for us to reach the interior very good- naturedly. We found the Devil "out in the cold" a hideous black figure, easily recognized as the Evil One, set upon a pedestal just outside the door. Within were two enormous "Joshes" ten feet high, one in each corner, and over thjem a shelf filled with little household gods, two feet or so in length, while behind the altar the Boodhist priests and attendant boys were* going through a ceremony very similar to High Mass. The Bood hists, like the Mormons, believe in a regular gradation of gods, rising one above another to the great head god, whom the Mor mons call Eloheim, and the Chinese "Top-side Josh." Outside, booths with open front were erected, in which vari ous plays were being performed in choice Tartar, the view free to the crowd. This continued till midnight, when a general chorus of priests and bands announced the close of the festi val (?), and a torch was applied to the Devil. The figure, which proved to be full of fire-crackers, " went off" in brilliant style till nothing was left apparently but the hideous head and back-bone ; these then shot upward like a huge Roman candle, leaving a trail of blue fire, and exploded high in the air with a loud report, followed by a shower of sparks and insufferable THE DEVII, GONE UP. 181 AH CHING'S THEOLOGY. stench and that was supposed to be the last of the Devil for another year. Poor Heathen ! They have no such simple devices as horse shoes and sieves, nailed to the stable-door, or stuck up over the bed, nor any of the civilized contrivances known to our own en lightened rustics ; and so they trust to keep off Satan's agents with inexplicable dumb show and noise. Turning away with a feeling of relief that the Devil was gone at last, I encountered Ah Ching, our Mongolian laundry- man at the Pacific Hotel, who spoke some English, and had an intellect that was " not to be sneezed at," of whom I sought information, and received it thus : " Hallo, John, do you believe in him ? n 182 " PIGEON-ENGLISH." " Oh, velley, Melica man, me believe him." " All Chinamen believe in him ?" " Oh, China like Melica man. Some believe him, sahvey ; some tink him all gosh damn." And I felt that I was answered. I went next to San Francisco and remained ten days; but as the subject is a large one, I beg leave to reserve my notes upon that pity, which will be found under the appro priate heading. NOTE : The word " Josh," or " Joss/' is not Chinese, but " Pigeon-English," a language used in the ports of China. It results from speaking English with Chinese idioms, and contains also a number of new words fabricated by sailors and traders. ENTRANCE TO THE QUICKSILVER MINE OF NEW ALMADEN> CAL. CHAPTER XI. UTAH AGAIN. Elected defendant Utah law Polygamous judges Trial at Brigham City* Assault on the author Skillful surgery Rapid recovery " Write a history of the Mormons ! "Visit the East Return to Utah Political Bear River canal scheme Author goes to Washington Miseries of a lobbyist Election of 1870 Gen. Geo. R. Maxwell Debate on polygamy Cui bonof Mormon morals and Gentile associations. > [(|HILE I was enjoying myself amid the soft airs of the Pacific, a beautiful mess of trouble was preparing for me in Utah. In most of the Territories it is " Your money or your life ; " but in Utah a Gentile was after my property, and the Mormons seeking my life. Be tween them they got the first, and came very near getting the second. As I previously stated, I had originally two partners in the Reporter, both of whom sold out to one man ; and in a month he and I quarreled about the policy of the paper. Dur ing my absence he had fixed up a case under the peculiar attach ment laws of Utah, and by the merest accident I received a copy of the paper containing the legal notice. Taking the train at once I reached Corinne the day before the trial, which was to take place at Brigham City, the county seat, on Monday, November first. My journal was now in the regular condition of half the Rocky Mountain papers : struggle, debt, and litigation make up their chronic condition, and failure their normal end. But in this case the beauties of Utah law were to be elegantly illustrated. Here was a suit between a Gentile and an " apostate Mormon," who had to leave their own town and go before a polygamous judge, an English Mormon, living in violation alike of the laws of Congress and the codes of Moses and Ma- 183 184 "KNOCKED OUT OP TIME." hornet. For this Judge Bishop Elias Smith, of Boxelder County is not only the husband of six wives, but two of them are his cousins, and two the daughters of his own brother. These facts are notorious in Utah ; and I am informed, though of this I am not positive, that the girls were " sealed " to their uncle by Brigham Young against the protest of their father ! From the biography of this Judge, and a few of his colleagues in Utah, the reader may understand the late telegrams to the effect that the Gentiles are looking anxiously for some action by Congress which shall lessen the power of these Probate or County Judges, and bring all important cases before the U. S. District Judges. A few weeks before, I had published a severe criticism of this Judge Smith. His "strikers" now had me at Court as defendant, in a town of twelve hundred Mormons, and only half a dozen Gentiles with me. The facts brought out on trial were so clearly in my favor that I gained the suit. About sundown I started with the crowd to pass out of the Court House, and was just stepping off the portico when I heard the words, " You're the man that wrote that lie about my lather," and at the same instant received a violent blow on the back of the neck and head, which sent me upon my face on the gravel walk. I remember nothing more than a succession of blows followed by the trampling of heavy boots, and next I was being raised by my friends, covered with blood, and only not quite senseless. I was hauled seven miles to Corinne, where a medical examination showed that my collar-bone was broken in two places, my temple badly cut, and right eye injured, a section of my scalp torn off, and a few internal in juries received. Then took place what has always appeared to me a miracle of surgery, or of the healing force of nature. Dr. J. W. Graham dressed my wounds, set my fractures, and placed me flat on my back in bed, with instructions that I must "lie just so for three weeks." But the second day thereafter I grew so nervous that he decided the confinement so long would kill me, and invented a new process. Assisted by Dr. O. D. Cass, who ceased for A HEALING AIR. 185 THE AUTHOR RECEIVES MORMON HOSPITALITY. the time to speculate on the " certain future greatness of Co- rinne," he constructed a perfect strait-jacket, in which I was encased ; both arms were stuck tight to my body with adhe sive strips, my right arm below the elbow only being free, and in that stringent condition I walked about Corinne for four weeks. With all these wounds I was in bed two nights and a day ; in ten days my head showed only a deep and permanent white scar, and in five weeks I was able to travel. I had heard much of the rapidity with which wounds heal in the elevated regions of the Far West, but my case seemed most extraordinary. But notwithstanding my good luck, I have no desire to try it again, though repeatedly assured by the dignitaries at Brig- ham that mine was an unusual case. 186 MORMON JUSTICE. It turned out that my principal assailant was the son of Judge Smith. He was arrested by the city authorities (Mor mon), taken before the mayor, and fined five dollars! It is well known in such cases in Utah, that the fine is very seldom paid. Two years afterwards a Gentile lawyer of Suit Lake, W. R. Keithley, having been abused in the Ogden Junction, a Mor mon journal, attacked the editor and struck him two blows with a cane, doing no particular damage. He was promptly arrested, taken before Justice Clinton, fined one hundred dol lars, and put under bonds of four hundred to keep the peace. That is about the percentage of difference between justice to the Gentile and the Saint in Utah. But let us be candid on this subject. It is nothing more than we ought reasonably to ex pect, when a whole community are of one religious faith, and that of a debasing kind, bound together by the strongest ties, with unanimous vote and nearly absolute political power; and if seventy-five thousand Scotch Covenanters, Primitive Metho dists, or any sect of foreigners or people not generally educated in liberal politics, had complete possession of any Territory, I suspect they would make it uncommonly lively for dissenters. Indeed, it is evident in the West that a single town occupied entirely or generally by people of one sect, rapidly tends to grow intolerant and absurdly exclusive. Some think, or profess to think, that all religious sects should become one. I hope it will not be in my time. For I am con vinced that, in the present imperfect condition of man, a multi- plicitv of sects, each much weaker than all the others combined, and compelled by common weakness to mutual tolerance, is our best security for civil liberty ; and the day that sees a hint at any form of religion inserted in the Constitution, marks the beginning of liberty's decline. New sects always preach the New Testament till they get into power, then jump it and go back to the Old Testament for precedents. So the Mormons, who first preached a mixture of Campbell's doctrines and Primitive Methodism, now rarely quote Christ and the Apos tles; their trusted exemplars are the patriarch who married his half sister, and took a "dark Egyptian" for his concubine, the ANCIENT PRECEDENTS. 187 ORSON HYDE, PRESIDENT OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. warrior who hewed captive kings in pieces, the missionaries who exterminated the Canaanites, the priest who slaughtered idolaters, and the prophet who hewed up Agag, varied by occasional exhortations on the piety of that woman who cut off Holofernes' head, or that other who with a tent nail did the business for Sisera The critical may insist that this is a long sermon on a short text, but as I never got satisfaction for my pounding in Utah, I now purpose to take it out of the suffering public. I have often observed in the West the curious fact that those sects which need toleration the most, are least willing to extend it. When the Mormons were a suffering minority, their Plea for Tolera tion would have made Locke and Milton turn in their graves for envy, or weep with sorrow that they died two hundred years ago; but when they obtained the rule of a whole Territory, they suddenly became convinced of the necessity of " putting down the enemies of God, that the sinners in Zion might be afraid. 7 ' A worried dog turning on his tormentors, a mad bull 188 I TURN AUTHOR. charging his enemies, or fierce watch-dogs tearing in pieces the wolves which come near the fold, were the models they proposed for themselves in sermons still extant. Twenty years of such power made it seem to them indeed " the rule of God's priest hood/' and to dissent was rebellion against heaven, worthy of the fate of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. No wonder, I say, that they felt impelled to sacrifice the first of us who attacked their system. The only wonder is, that some, who call themselves statesmen, should want to revive a fanatic power by giving the Mormons a State government. Such should read a few of Apostle Orson Hyde's sermons, as published in the Mormon " Journal of Discourses." I was once more fit for business. But my investments in Corinne had proved failures. The town had gone down and the paper with it. The lawsuit de stroyed half the value that remained ; I sold out for a pittance, and every dollar of it was required to pay for bone-setting and expenses of convalescence. Fifteen months had passed since I entered Utah, and I was poorer than ever "down to bed-rock and couldn't show color." Disconsolately I sauntered down the street till I met my friend Spicer, to whom my despondency found utterance: "Judge, what the mischief shall I do?" Promptly, and with the con viction of inspiration, came the answer : " Write a history of the Mormons ; you are the only Gentile who can do it." Now this had suggested itself to my own mind, and but one encour aging voice was needed. I went resolutely to work, and in ten weeks had the history completed. DOMESTICATED PIUTE. CORINNE. 189 About that time, fortunate ly, the Mormons began to at tract public attention, and I soon found a publisher. I was despondent till the last, for it seemed to me no good could come out of Utah ; but, to my surprise, the book rose with a bound to the hight of popular favor, and I soon felt the ex quisite joys of authorship handling the dividends. With these came a sense of power, renewed confidence, and a long- .ing to get back to Utah, and engage once more in the old contests. So I returned to Corinne in April, 1870. Things had changed, and were changing faster. The mining era had just begun, and the Gentile interest was in creasing. The merchants who had fled before the face of Brigham, began to return, and it was estimated that the non- Mormon population had dou bled in a few months. The Liberal Party had been form ally organized ; Congress had shown a disposition to attend to the wants of the Territory, better officials had been ap pointed, and the star of the Gentiles was once more in the ascendant. Corinne again had hopes, for 190 SENT TO WASHINGTON. the hard year of 1869 was succeeded by better times in Idaho and Montana. There never was so dull a period in the moun tains as the eight months following the laying of the last rail. Men had to get down from mountain prices to railroad prices, and the general disappointment made business men sick and hopeless. It is a well-ascertained fact that the Far West lost both population and capital the year the railroad was completed, instead of gaining either. (Everywhere west of Omaha the railroad means, of course, the Pacific Railroad.) In 1870 there was six times as much freight shipped from Corinne to Montana and Idaho as in 1869. Everybody thought that the next year would be " even as this, and much more abundant," and speculation was more lively than ever. Corinne organized a company to irrigate a hundred thousand acres of land in Bear River Valley by one main canal, to be taken out^ from the rapids at the last cafion ; and the writer was sent to "Washington to get the company incorporated, and secure a small grant of the land to aid in the work. As we only asked two sections per mile, and of land which the Government would not sell in a thousand years without the canal, it scarcely entered our heads to doubt immediate success. It was then I learned the miseries of a lobbyist. Said my constituents to me thus confidently : " All those men want is just to understand the necessity and reason of this thing. You understand the mode of farming in this country. Now, just go down there and explain it to 'em, and she'll go through in a week. Why, the modesty of the request will insure its success. And tell 'em we intend to get in here a Gentile colony of a few thousands, and you've got 'em." I did not find modesty at such a remarkable premium in Washington. I might, with much better success, have asked for ten thousand sections than the sixty I did ask for. I found there about five thousand other fellows with "modest requests," and as it was my first visit to Washington, I was but poorly " heeled " for the work. I soon found, too, that a man from the Territories is of very little consequence; he has no vote for Congressman or Governor, and none for a man who has a vote MY LITTLE BILL. 191 for Senator, and consequently the political strings he can pull are decidedly limited. I found that, first of all, my bill must be approved in committee the Committee of Public Lands then it must be approved by the " committee of the other House ; " then it must be introduced, then referred, then ordered printed, then passed to a third reading, and at the end of all this labor, it would be "on the calendar to take its chances," and the real work would begin. Then some member must call it up, with unanimous consent, and if nothing else was pressing, and nobody " objected/' it would come to a vote. With a recklessness born of western life I addressed myself to the task of persuading each individual member of both Houses. Obviously there was no money in the scheme ; so the newspapers couldn't call it a "job," and my arguments were at least received without suspicion. After one month's exhausting labor I got a hearing before the Senate Committee on Public Lands ; at the end of another month my bill was introduced by Senator Williams of Oregon, read by title, and ordered printed. Then said the Senator, " Go home, and wait till after the elec tions; members then will not be so afraid of a little land grant/' I returned in December. The elections had weakened the Kepublican party, and land grants were thought to be among the chief causes. Everybody began to " hedge " at once, and talk against all grants big or little; the tide had turned and was setting the other way too strong to be resisted, and, as on the previous flood many unworthy schemes had gone through with the worthy, so on the present ebb, many really worthy ones were defeated. For months I danced attendance on the committees ; waited and sought interviews with members, and cooled my heels in the ante-chambers of official greatness. After two trips to Washington and five months' work, I had got the bill "on the calendar," and now it only wanted a champion to call it up. Senator Warner, of Alabama, whether from intelligent interest in the scheme, or to get rid of my importunities, I know not, twice tried to bring it forward : both times, I, from the gallery, heard the ominous " I object." Surely lobbyists are a need- 192 NO PLACE FOR ME. "THE SENATOR is ENGAGED, SAH." lessly abused class ; if their experience is like mine they earn all they get. No man accustomed only to associate with equals, is fit for a lobbyist. No man from a Territory can work long for any measure before Congress, and retain his self-respect. To wait an hour in an ante-chamber, then to hand your card to a negro, and be told " the Senator is engaged, Sah," and wait another hour, then enter the awful presence and ask a favor which you cannot repay with a vote, is poison to the soul of a mountaineer. Who would condescend to dance attendance on men, whom he must secretly despise, when the best land in the West costs next to nothing, and grubbing hoes but two dollars apiece? But there came a day especially appropriated to the Com mittee on Public Lands. One after another they called up and passed the bills they had reported favorably, until but two more FATE OF A LOBBYIST. 193 remained before they reached ours ; and from the gallery I list ened eagerly and watched the clock, which marked only forty minutes to "adjournment." The Colorado Railway Bill was called ; one clause was " ob jected to ; " a debate followed and the Senate adjourned, when ten minutes more would have sufficed for us, and I walked out feeling, like the cynical politician, that republican government was a failure, and I should like to plant a ton of powder under the rotunda, blow the Capitol to atoms, and pound the head of the Goddess of Liberty. So Corinne did not get her canal. But the next Congress she started the matter again, and having the friendship of six Senators instead of one, at the end of the long session, they had the bill once more "on the calendar," just where I left it. Early in the session of 1825, a young man from the interior of New Jersey rode up in front of a hotel, long since destroyed, a few rods east of the Capitol, and hitched his horse. Being told he had better have the animal put up, he replied, " No, it aint worth while, I have a little claim on the Government; it's all correct, and there's no doubt about my papers, so it'll take but an hour or two." Annoyed by the quizzical smile of the landlord, he swore he would not leave Washington or unhitch his horse till that claim was allowed and ordered paid. In an obscure boarding house in Georgetown may now be seen a ven erable grayheaded man. The excavations two years since for the new block on A street, brought to light the crumbling skel eton of a horse and fragments of iron stirrups. They told the tale of a lobbyist and his horse. I sought him out, and as I extended my hand in sympathy, a smile of hope illuminated the withered features, and be informed me he had secured the friend ship of the Senators from Kansas and Nevada, and was confident his claim would go through next session. He would then bid Washington a tearful adieu, and return to spend a green old age in Jersey. Young'men of America, let this case point an awful moral ; and keep away from Washington. From my first trip to the Capital, I returned to find Utah hot with the excitement of a political campaign, which resulted 13 194 EXPERIENCED POLYGAMISTS. in giving Gen. Geo. R. Maxwell, the Liberal candidate for Con gress, some two thousand votes. For the rest of the season I alternately traveled in the newly-opened mines of Utah, of which journeys the results appear elsewhere, and edited the Corinne Reporter. We had one rare episode that summer the debate on Bible polygamy between Rev. J. P. Newman and Apostle Orson Pratt. It turned entirely on the Old Testament, and always appeared to me like a huge burlesque. Why not argue the morality and expediency of circumcision, slaughtering the heathen, or any other of the forty things done by the ancient Jews ? If a man once admits that that people were for our ex ample, he involves himself in a tangle from which no logic can extricate him. There are some things that a civilized man ougnt to know by nature ; if he does not know them, no argument you can use will ever reach down to him. He ought to know that the free, honestly sought love of one good woman is a thousand times more valuable than the constrained embraces of fifty ; and if he does not know it, why waste time in arguments which he cannot understand ? Solomon, after possessing for many years a thon^ sand women, thus gives in his experience : " One man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all these have I not found. . . . And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets. . . . Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of thy life, of thy vanity given thee under the sun." Eedesiastes. And Brigham Young, with two houses full of women, says in one of his sermons, " If polygamy is any harder on them (the women) than it is on the men, God help them." The general summary to my mind is, that the polygamist is truly to be pitied, having robbed himself of a pure pleasure to wallow in sensuality. But long after polygamy shall have died out, or been abolished, the other evils of Morrnonism will affect society in Utah. The great evil which is long to trouble Utah, is the terrible effect the past has had upon the young, the legitimate result of Mormon Jesuitism. Beyond all question it has been an estab- NATURALIZATION. 195 BRIGHAM YOUNG'S RESIDENCES, SALT LAKE CITY. lished tenet of Mormon ism that, where the interests of the Church were concerned, it was perfectly right to deceive the Gentile. Take naturalization for instance. Many Mormons came up at the terms of the United States District Court in 1870 and '71, and solemnly swore that they were not polyga- mists, and did not intend to become such, forswearing a prime principle of their faith, and undoubtedly committing moral per jury, in order to become voters. They openly justify this, and here is their mode of reasoning: " If a man seeks my life, I am right to use any means otherwise unlawful to defend it. The same is true of attacks upon my liberty or personal rights; that which would otherwise be wrong becomes right in self-defence. The Federal judges have set up an unjust rule to take away my rights as a citizen, and I am justified in any means to defeat their aim. The judge has no right to ask such a question of the Saints." Twenty years' prevalence of such principles must weaken the moral perceptions, and soon affect others who come to live among them. Some Jews and Gentiles, too, often think it necessary to descend to the same low level and fight with the same weapons; for, if they do not, they are at a disadvantage. Hence society in general becomes demoralized. The material future of Utah is bright ; of her moral and social future I have 196 RELIGIOUS LYING IN UTAH. serious doubts. She seems destined to universal infidelity. Mormonism dies away ; no other faith takes its place ; the young Saints as soon as they grow up divide into two bodies Spirit ualists and infidels and the Territory bids fair to become the common hunting ground of every ism suggested by a heterodox and fertile fancy. Let what may happen, the residence of the Mormons will have left in the country a general uncertainty of ideas and a laxity of moral principle which will not be effaced in less than a generation ; perhaps not even then, or until they learn by dire experience that the way of the transgressor is hard. Religious lying seems to have been reduced to a science, and religious lying is the worst of all lying. Thus it stands in Utah : the Jews lie for gain, the Gentiles from association, and the Mormons for Christ's sake. MORMON BAPTISM. CHAPTER XII. I START AGAIN. Another misfortune and change of scene Kansas City Lawrence Early tragedies Later horrors Last great success Southward Ottawa " Don't mention it, Deacon" Franklin County Anderson Ozark Ridge Allen County lola Western enterprise Montgomery County Beautiful Mounds Cherry vale Northward A modern Methuselah Troy Ready to report. HAVE to request that the courteous reader will make a big jump, from the conclusion of the last chapter of eight months in time, and out of Utah into Kansas. As previously stated, I went to Washington in De cember, 1870, and remained three months, as agent of the Bear River Canal Company. I returned to Corinne with a painful disease of the eyes, which I thought not serious enough to prevent a trip to the mines of Little Cottonwood. From that journey I returned to Salt Lake City with both eyes swollen almost out of my head, and for six weeks lay on my back in a darkened room, fighting off blindness. Through the combined skill of Doctors Fowler and Volluni of that place, I recovered sufficiently to reach Cincinnati, and was put under the treatment of the renowned oculist, Professor E. Williams. Having learned a little wisdom by severe experience, I did not start again till he gave me leave, which he did on the 1st of July, 1871. This time I thought I would see something of the Missouri Valley, and on the 6th of that month left St. Louis in company with a journalist companion, by the Missouri Pacific. Indiana and Illinois were, when I left them, in the eighteenth month of an almost continuous drought; but across the Mississippi, the 197 198 ANOTHER OMAHA. evidences of rain and greater fertility increased as we moved westward. At Kansas City the Missouri Pacific ceases, and the Kansas Pacific begins, though the track is continuous ; and we halted for a day's rest. If Shadrach & Co. rested in Neb's furnace, then we rested at Kansas City. The heat was simply fearful, beyond all scope of dictionary terms. I don't wonder the ancient Persians worshipped the sun : it was worth while, if one could thus soften his rays, and it almost seems to me that the moderns will return to that belief. Certainly, if I ever turn heathen, I will become a Luminarian. Kansas City is a second Omaha, lifted up and moved two hundred and fifty miles south, and set down on eleven hills, from fifty to one hundred and fifty feet high, and with bluffs east, north, and west. It is the place where people come to scatter out the starting point and toll-house to Kansas, New Mexico and the Indian Territory, as Omaha is to the Northwest. Thus set upon a hill, with real estate on the edge, it logically follows that there is twice as much profit in lands; so, at least, the people reason, judging from the price of lots. Still, real estate men assured us there was yet a chance for moneyed men, and a few choice lots can even now be had for cash almost as cheap as in Cincinnati. The people of Kansas City all looked, to my eye, as if they were expecting something to turn up. They are nearer heaven locally than morally, for the social and unsocial evils equally abound. But they are a little ahead of Omaha in hotels. They are satisfied to " size your pile" and take quarter of it. while farther north the aim is to take half or two-thirds. That night we ran out to Lawrence, the Athens of the West, a town of romantic history, delightful to dwell in, of which, though so often described, many good, and some new, things might be said. Its history is the leading romance of Kansas. In the summer of 1849, a party of gold hunters from "away down East," borne along with the flow of that year to Califor nia, encamped for a night near the junction of the Kaw and Wakamsa. where the level prairie of the low valley begins to give way to higher ridges and rolling plains. Intelligent men A HISTORIC CITY. 199 and lovers of the beautiful, they were enchanted with the pros pect, and their leader vowed that if California gave him a fortune, he would some day make this spot his home. He re turned to Massachusetts in 1853, interested his friends in Boston, and by the time Kansas was open to the whites by law, the place was already marked as the destined location of a Massachusetts colony. The Kansas-Nebraska Act became a law early in 1854, open ing this section to settlement, and to slavery, " The direful spring Of woes unnumbered." The North, beaten in Congress, transferred the conflict to this soil, and by the time the Act received the signature of Pierce, Boston was organizing Emigrant Aid Societies, and in the first formed were several of our California emigrants. Early in '54, Mr. C. H. Branscomb, of Boston, was sent here, reported favor ably upon this site, and erected the first " habitable dwelling." The first party, of thirty persons, arrived in August, followed by two other parties late in the fall; a town was laid out, called after Amos Lawrence, and by winter contained a population of 200. Log, "shake," pole and sod houses then constituted Lawrence, a lone settlement of " Free State Men," forty miles from the slave border a star of hope and advancing freedom. The "Pioneer House" was "all roof and gable," consisting of long poles joined at the top like rafters, with the other ends on the ground, covered with sod, a sort of improved wigwam. It gave way next spring to the Free State Hotel, burned by Sheriff Jones ; on the same spot was erected the Eldridge House, num ber one, destroyed by Quantrel ; then came the Eldridge House, number two, from the upper windows of which we look down upon the crossing of Massachusetts and Ohio streets, on a scene of busy commerce, in the business center of a city of twelve thousand people. We are on historic ground here. Lawrence has an ancient, a modern, and a mediaeval period. Yes, I may add, a mythical and heroic age. The city suffered four regular invasions from Missouri in its first three years. March 30, 1855, the " border 200 BORDER WARS. FIRST HOTEL IN LAWRENCE. ruffians" came and made a population of nine hundred and sixty-two appear to cast a vote of one thousand and thirty-four. This is better than even the Mormons can now do ; their vote seldom runs over a third of the whole population. In Novem ber, 1855, occurred the " Wakarusa War," in consequence of the Free State men refusing to recognize the justices elected by the " border ruffians ; " the city was regularly invested, and Barber and others killed. May 21, 1856, Sheriff Jones "exe cuted the writ " of Judge Lecompte, burned the Free State Hotel and pillaged the town. In August, 1856, some twenty- eight hundred " border ruffians " invested the place, but failed to attack, as it had grown too strong to be captured without a fight. Better times soon followed. The Free State men got control of Kansas ; the Legislature refused to consider Lecompton the Capital, and met regularly at Lawrence, which was virtually the Capital for three years. The "depression" of 1857 fol- " CHIVALRY." 201 lowed, and Lawrence declined for two years. There were fewer people here in 1860 than in 1857. But the country adjacent was rapidly developing; people ceased to look for the "spring emigration" as their only chance to make money, and a. more legitimate and healthy growth began. Early in 1863 the State University was located here, and the Kaw was bridged, both adding greatly to the prospects of the town, which had a popu lation of nearly three thousand in August, 1863. Then came the last, most cruel blow. Occasional rumors of invasion from Missouri had agitated the city, but all had ceased, and Lawrence never felt more secure than on the evening of August 20, 1863. Even the little guard of Federal troops had been ordered away by the District Commander at Kansas City. At 2 P.M. of the 20th, Quantrel assembled his band in Missouri; between 5 and 6 P.M. they crossed the border, and made directly for Law rence, sending out scouts to guard all the roads and turn back all who might carry information. At the first glimmer of day they were seen passing through Franklin, a few miles south east ; at sunrise they were here. They sent a squad to Uni versity Hill, west of the city, to guard against surprise from that direction, and parties of two or three each took position at the principal points in the city, so quietly that those who saw them had not a suspicion of their designs. Then, just as most of the citizens were rising from their beds, the main body dashed into the town yelling like savages, and began the work of destruction. In two hours seventy-five business houses on Massachusetts Street, and all the , central part of the city, were in flames, and one hundred and twenty-five citizens lay dead among the ruins or upon the streets. Many were horribly mutilated. At one house two men were killed, and in the presence of their shriek ing wives their heads were cut off and stuck upon the gate. Those who died of their wounds brought the number of slain up to a hundred and forty-three. The brutality of the gue rillas was only equaled by their cowardice. When resistance was made from any stone building they at once retreated, and many were thus saved. 202 "TWIN RELICS." All this is old, says the critic. Yes, it is ten years past, and we hear much of the political duty of forgetting. But it is well to refresh the public memory sometimes, that the younger class of Americans may not entirely forget just what it costs to tolerate a relic of barbarism in a Republic, or give power to its sup porters. Slavery raised up a set of men capable of this trans action, as polygamy made a community capable of the Moun tain Meadow massacre. When the politics or religion of a people teach them to disregard the rights and happiness of one class, they will soon come to look upon all the " outside and Gentile world" as lawful prey. One of the "twin relics" is extirpated from American soil; the other now knocks at the door of Congress, and asks only the political power of a State. The noted camel of classic fable only asked that he might put his head in at the door ; the result was that those who did not like that camel's society might vacate the premises. Lawrence survived a martyr city in the cause of freedom. When I first visited the place, in the autumn of 1867, there were still traces of QuantrePs raid. The city appears to me to have nearly doubled in size since that visit, and present improvements indicate that she is still growing rapidly. She has the trade of an agricultural population of thirty thousand, and a growing importance as the junction of the Leaven worth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad with the Kansas Pacific. The new State University is completed, and ranks among the very best in the West. Lawrence is the intellectual center of the Missouri Val ley, probably the only city in the Far West that can boast an average intelligence and education equal to any in New Eng land. Ten churches indicate that the religious element is pow erful. Two daily, two semi-weekly, and four weekly papers, well supported, indicate that there is a reading population here and hereabout. Lawrence is one of the very few places I see in my western wanderings at which I always want to stop and take up my residence. It is to be the Athens of the West. Thence we took the Leaven worth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad, now completed to Parker, on the line of the Indian Territory. The main offices are at Lawrence, but it is said the NEW BAILROADS. 203 real terminus is at Kansas City, from which there is a branch connecting with this at Ottawa, thirty miles south of Lawrence, on the Marais des Cygnes, in Franklin County. The history of these roads is a little curious. " Joy's road," as it was, now known as the Missouri River, Fort Scott and Gulf Railroad, runs nearly straight south through the eastern tier of counties, in a few places within five miles of the Missouri line, and is popularly known here as the " border tier road." It passes through Fort Scott to Baxter Springs, the present terminus. When the same parties obtained control of the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston road, the terminus of which was then but a little south of Lawrence, the Kansas Pacific charged them such ruin ous rates for transporting their iron over the little distance to Lawrence, that they found it cheaper to send it north to Leaven- worth, and ship the remaining distance over their own road. A further calculation, however, showed it would be cheaper to build a line of connection from Kansas City, which was done in a few weeks, and the Ottawa branch is the result. By the charters, the road which first reached the Indian Ter ritory would be the only one entitled to pass through it, and Joy was first in the race until he reached the noted " Joy Pur chase," when hostilities so hindered his progress that he aban doned that scheme and bought a controlling interest in the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston. Lately, however, he has retired from this road. At noon of a scorching day we moved out of Lawrence and through a beautiful grove of elm, black walnut, ash, and hackberry, southward into the valley of the Wakarusa. The rich dark green of grass and corn, the entire absence of dust, and the water standing in the furrows, indicated that this had been the rainiest season Kansas ever knew; all this was confirmed by the local testimony. Have Kansas and the Wabash Valley traded climates for the time? It seems so. The bottom-lands of this valley are mostly in corn, the slppes in wheat and corn, while for miles away extend beautiful rolling lands, covered with rich prairie grasses, and a variety of plants, the whole present ing a strange mingling of the feature of Northern and Southern 204 SHARP TRADERS. farms, corresponding to the peculiar mild climate which charac terizes this section. Being in the "agricultural report" line, we made a short stop at Ottawa, one of the " magic cities" of Kansas. Located in 1864, it now has a population of nearly four thousand, has two railroads and two more in course of construction. We found the citizens a decidedly lively people, but slightly prone to large talking poloquence, I might call it. To them might appro priately be applied a bon mot of Sidney Smith's. Said a friend to him, speaking of a mutual acquaintance: "Thomson is a good fellow, a real entertaining fellow, but you must believe only half he says." " Certainly," was the reply, " but which half?" It is easier to tell which half to believe at Ottawa. But if you locate there, stay long enough to get acquainted before you go into trade. In the early days a popular clergyman of that city sold a " blooded mare," as he averred, to one of his deacons. Shortly after the deacon observed some motions in his new property he did not like, and sought the minister's study with, " Brother K., the mare I got of you is very stiff in the shoulders." Drawing a fine Partaga from between his lips, the reverend coolly re plied : "Better not tell that, deacon ; it might injure the sale of her." New light broke in on the deacon. He " farewelled" and took his leave. The minister, however, had a weakness for " blooded sheep," and a prominent banker, afterward Lieu tenant-Go vernor of Kansas, took advantage of it, and sold him two fine-looking rams, of common stock, at $150 each. He was to be paid in town lots, at a value appraised by two prominent citizens. They learned of the "blooded sheep" trick, and rated the lots at five times their actual value, adding at the bottom of the appraisement this item : " Fees, $10." The banker ran down the list to the " fees," and tapping it significantly, re marked : "That is the only reasonable thing on this paper. That charge I will pay. As for the rest, the preacher's got his rams, and may go to with them." South of the Marais des Cygnes, or " Swan Marsh," we run for ten miles on the Ozark Ridge, so called by the settlers, EIDGE LANDS. 205 "DON'T MENTION IT, DEACON." who tell us it is a spur from the Ozark Mountains. In all the cuts I observe the rock just below the surface not in ledges or boulders, but in successive layers of thin and narrow stones, not so compact but that the plow could be forced through them. "Buffalo stamps," are tracts of hard blue soil, supposed to be due, originally, to the presence of alkali and saline properties in the ground, causing numbers of buffalo to crowd together, lick ing and stamping the life out of the soil. It is a curious fact that our domestic cattle, imported to Kansas, no matter how well supplied with salt, soon acquire the same habit, not licking the soil, but crowding and stamping upon the same spots. In such places the grass is very short, wiry and thick, looking like green hair, if such a comparison be at all allowable. Some people here say that it is really the best of land, and that after being broken up and sown in wheat a few years, it will become extremely fertile; but I will wait awhile and see results before endorsing that opinion. 206 SOUTHERN KANSAS. The Marais des Cygnes River is bordered most of its course by considerable forests of good timber. Franklin probably contains the least proportion of waste land of any county in southern Kansas. With an area of 572 square miles, it has a population (1870) of only 12,000; this in a country where every eighty-acre lot will support a family in affluence, with a com mercial population half as large as the agricultural, and with no more manufacturing than is incident to a farming community. It is evident, then, that there is room in Franklin for ten thou sand more. But already considerable tracts of the best land are in the hands of non-residents, who hold them a little too high to encourage rapid settlement. This railroad has no large amount of land in Franklin at least nothing like as large as in the counties south. The Leavenworth, Lawrence and Gal- veston seems to be more fortunate in its land grant than either of the other Kansas roads. The Fort Scott road obtained its grant along the border which had been settled many years, the Kansas Pacific strikes directly west towards the " American Desert," and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas tends in the same direction. The L. L. and G. ran through four of the richest counties in Kansas, while they were comparatively unsettled, in the best position for timber and far enough removed from the arid plains. The grant was made and the railroad sections allotted in 1863 and 1864, and the road mostly constructed in 1870 and 1871 ; but meantime the even sections were open to settlement and rapidly taken in expectation of the road. Hence the railroad lands are intermingled with old settlements and well-improved farms, and convenient to schools, churches, and all the advantages of society. From the ridge, and the fact that the railroad owns so much land there, it has resulted that Anderson County, next south of Franklin, is not nearly so well settled as the country north and south of it. For ten miles here we did not see a house or a rod of plowed land. Passing Divide, a station on the ridge separa ting the waters which flow northeast into the Marais des Cygnes, from those flowing south into the Neosho, we run down into Allen County, the great agricultural center and leading county ENTERPRISING IOLA. 207 of southern Kansas. This county is ranch better settled. Every man owns the land upon which he lives, and society has made astonishing progress for so new a country. Ten days we wandered about Allen County, taking note of local manners, the price of lands and leading productions. lola, the county seat, so named from Mrs. Tola Colbourne, wife of an old settler, is another of the " magic cities " of Kansas. It was a village before the war, and went down, with all southern Kan sas, in that period, but with the great "rush" of 1867-68 it took a start, which is a surprise even in this country of preco cious cities. Stone blocks went up which would look well in Cincinnati. A stone bank building graces the square equal to any west of the Mississippi ; the pavement in front of it cost two hundred dollars; mammoth glass, which cost in Chicago seven hundred dollars per pane, show the interior glories of the prin cipal store, and generally improvements are conducted with an audacity astonishing even to the West. While lola was yet weak, the " King's Iron Bridge Manufacturing Company" were hunting a location for the western branch of their establishment. They tried Topeka, but Topeka was a little slow in accepting their terms. Mr. King visited lola, and proposed to locate the works there for a given space of ground and fifty thousand dol lars in money. A meeting was called at once, the money was pledged that night, and the contfact signed before he left town. A few days after, Topeka was ready to accept, but work was already begun at lola. Bonds were issued by the city, at a high rate of interest, secured by individuals, and it was stipulated in the contract that the works should employ at least three hun dred men. The buildings were just finished, and work com menced in one wing, and I had the pleasure of seeing the first bridge put together. All this was accomplished by a "city "then of eight hundred inhabitants. I am astonished at the boldness of these new coun ties in the line of public works ; they cleerfully enter upon out lays which would frighten the oldest counties in Indiana. Iron bridges span the Neosho at several prominent points the best at Neosho Falls and lola costing from twenty to forty thou- 208 SOLID IMPROVEMENTS. 209 sand dollars. Farmers readily vote to tax their land two and a half per cent. sticking it to non-resident owners pretty steep, by the way to pay for these things. " Will it pay ? " I ask of them somewhat doubtfully, to which they, in substance, reply : " In the older States we have seen the folly of cheap improvements. Wooden bridges have been put over the same little stream every five or ten years for two generations. Here we purpose to begin with stone and iron ; double the cost at first, but cheaper in the lifetime of ourselves and children. Besides the difference between these and timber is not as great as in Indiana." There is sense in this exhibit. At one place in Parke County, Indiana, I have, in my short life, ridden over four successive wooden bridges, built at a cost, probably, of twelve thousand dollars each. Stone and iron would have bridged the stream for fifty thousand dollars, and lasted five generations at least. Eight miles below lola is Humboldt, the two enjoying a keen rivalry. Humboldt is the head of the United States Land District ; lola has obtained the county seat ; but Hulmboldt has secured the terminus of the branch road which is to connect the L. L. and G. with the " Border-tier " road at Fort Scott. This 'will give a through line from this section to Sedalia, Missouri. But the lolians say they will have a Y put in with the right branch terminating at their town, and offer to do the grading if the railroad company will insure the rest. This portion of Kansas has had two eras of settlement ; as a historian I might say a mythical, a heroic and a modern age. It was settled scatteringly in '55, '56 and 7 57, and by " free State men " for the most part. The " border war," particularly the horrible Marais des Cygnes massacre, and the perfidy of the administration discouraged progress. It had barely recovered when the notable " dry season " of 1860 occurred. The bed of the Neosho was dry, and regularly used as a public road from the falls to Humboldt. The settlers contended successively against short crops, no crops, Indian thieves and all devouring grasshoppers. Whole families wintered on poor buffalo meat, 14 210 EARLY DIFFICULTIES. and dressed almost entirely in the skins and charity clothing. Some lived for weeks on condemned crackers. An old school mate from Indiana lived seven months on corn bread "straight," and thought himself in luck to have it. Many lost their health, and a few, very few, died of want and exposure, or the diseases thereby engendered. Extreme want weakened the intellect or distorted the moral perceptions. The brain, lacking rich, red blood, distinguished but feebly between right and wrong. Men stole at first from want ; afterward, as evil habits create perverted principles, from second nature, or " because they had got into the habit and couldn't quit." " Jayhawking " was adopted into the language as a delicate euphuism for " taking what you really needed when you couldn't pay for it." Not a few men wandered off into the Indian Territory, became adventurers, and married squaws or practised aboriginal " free-love ; " and thus is growing up a race of half-breeds, with all the native cunning of the mother, and the intellectual meanness of the superior white race. Two fruitful seasons followed, and society took a second growth. Then came the war producing worse confusion. Most of the young men entered the army, and many families moved north ward. Farms and new claims were abandoned, fences and even houses were burned for fuel, and the whole section went back ten years. Half-breeds stole, Indians murdered, and Kansians retaliated, and the rebels impartially plundered all three. Peace came at last, and two years after, the " big immigra tion " set in. Through '67, '68 and '69, the whole country put on a new appearance, and the old settlers saw with astonishment a new and more enterprising race seizing upon all the fair unoc cupied spots, bringing with them all the habits of an old and cultivated society, and looked upon school-houses, churches and public improvements springing up with the rapidity of magic. Society in the settled portions of Woodson, Neosho and Allen Counties will compare favorably with any rural district in Ohio. , There are more educated men than usually fall to the lot of new communities. Music is cultivated to a surprising extent. Com mon schools surpass the average of those in Indiana, and are modeled upon the plan of Massachusetts. BEAUTIFUL MOUNDS. 211 Continuing our examination of rural Kansas by successive stages southward, just below the Neosho we pass a large extent of unsettled country. Part of it is a comparatively barren ridge, separating the waters of the Neosho from those flowing into the Verdigris; the remainder consists of rich slopes and the valley of the latter river, nearly all railroad and school land. This has just been brought into market, on easy terms, in seven yearly payments, and is filling up rapidly. Thence we bore down into Montgomery County, upon that beautiful plain, sloping gently towards the Verdigris River, of inexhaustible richness, and dotted at regular intervals by those cone-shaped mounds of rock and gravel, which are the delight of the traveler and the despair of science. All the central por tion of Montgomery consists of rich prairie broken by these mounds. Some of them are perfectly circular, rising abruptly from the plain, with a rocky wall of from ten to thirty feet in hight, upon which stands the cone of gravel, loam and clay, often with a clump of bushes growing upon the top. Others rise gradually in long swells, abrupt at one end, and sloping gradually to the plain at the other; and still others are mole- shaped, of every length, from fifty to ten thousand feet, and from twenty to a hundred feet in hight. They were evidently islands at the time when this valley was a lake ; beyond that period I do not venture a supposition. One of them, north of Independence, the county seat, overtops all the rest, and from its summit one can obtain a magnificent view of all Montgomery, and much of Labette, Howard, and Wilson Counties. Neosho, to the northeast, is shut off by the ridge separating the waters of the Neosho from those of the Verdigris. Our last stop was at Cherryvale, then terminus of the L. L. & G., and confident of future greatness. It was about the size of Cincinnati, but only four squares were built up yet; mostly with frame tents. It was late in July, and the heat was most intense, so we turned northward, thinking it best to visit the cooler sections of the Missouri Valley. At Ottawa we took the Kansas City branch of the Leaven- worth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad, traversing the beau- 212 AN OLD SETTLER. MOUNDS ON THE VERDIGRIS. tiful farming region of Johnson County. The Ottawa brancb and road from Lawrence to Pleasant Hill, on the Missouri Pacific, form an X at Olathe, county seat of Johnson, and thence also the Missouri, Fort Scott and Gulf Road bears nearly due south, through Fort Scott to Baxter Springs, on the State line. Heavy rains soon refreshed the soil of Kansas, accompanied in many places by hail, and the intense heat gave place to a delicious coolness. We found Kansas City about as we left it, but the day of our return was notable as the last day on earth of the oldest man in the West, if not the oldest in America or the world. Jacob Fournais, or "Old Pinaud," as he was