THE SWITZERLAND OF AMERICA. 
 
 A SUMMER VACATION 
 
 In the Parks and Mountains 
 
 OF 
 
 COLORADO. 
 
 BY SAMUEL BOWLES, 
 \\ 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ACROSS THE CONTINENT. 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, MASS : 
 
 Samuel Bowles & Company. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 The American News Company. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 Lee Shepard. 
 1869. 
 
7.373; 
 
 Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
 
 SAMUEL BOWLES, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for 
 the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 SAMUEL BOWLES AND COMPANY, 
 
 Electrotypers, Printers and Binders, 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, MASS. 
 
THESE letters of a Summer Vacation, in saddle and 
 camp, among the great Central Parks and Mountains of 
 America in Colorado, are gathered into this volume in 
 order both to satisfy and stimulate the public interest in 
 a region of our New West destined to a peculiar place 
 in the future of America. We saw enough of it in our 
 stage ride across the Continent in 1865 to suggest that it 
 would become the Switzerland of America ; Bayard Tay- 
 lor, a wider traveler and closer observer, made a more 
 familiar tour in 1866, and more formally pronounced the 
 same judgment ; and now, after a new visit, and an inti- 
 mate acquaintance with all its details, we find our original 
 enthusiasm more than rekindled, our original thought 
 confirmed. 
 
 The distinctive physical feature of Colorado is her 
 wide elevated Parks, lying among her double and treble 
 folds of the continental range of mountains great plains, 
 like counties in Illinois and Iowa, or states in New Eng- 
 land, six thousand to nine thousand feet above the sea- 
 level, surrounded by mountains that rise from three to 
 five thousand feet higher ; plains, green with grass, dark 
 with groves, bright with flowers ; mountains, dreary with 
 rocks, white with snow. The distinctive charm is the 
 atmosphere, so clear and pure and dry all the while, as 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 to be a perpetual feeling, rather than vision, of beauty ; 
 invigorating every sense, softly soothing every pain, lend- 
 ing a glory to landscape and life alike, clothing every 
 feature of nature with beauty, and giving the eye of every 
 spectator the power to see it -this is the indescribable 
 thing that lifts Colorado out of other lackings, and more 
 than compensates, in the comparison, for what is peculiar 
 to Switzerland. 
 
 Here, where the great backbone of the Continent rears 
 and rests itself; here, where nature sets the patterns of 
 plain and mountain, of valley and hill, for all America ; 
 here, where spring the waters that wash two-thirds the 
 western Continent and feed both its oceans ; here, where 
 mountains are fat with gold and silver, and prairies glory 
 in the glad certainty of future harvests of corn and 
 wheat here, indeed, is the center and the central life of 
 America, fountain of its wealth and health and beauty.* 
 Switzerland is pleasure and health; Colorado is these 
 and use besides the use of beauty, and the use of profit- 
 able work united. I beg every traveler by the Pacific 
 Railroad not to " pass it by on the other side ; " for, in so 
 
 doing, he would offend the best that is in him. 
 
 s. B. 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, MASS., ) 
 February ', 1869. ) 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 Page. 
 I. THE PACIFIC RAILROAD, 7 
 
 II. To DENVER AND THERE, 28 
 
 III. THE GEOGRAPHY OF COLORADO, 39 
 
 IV. TRAVEL AMONG THE MOUNTAINS, 49 
 
 V. EXPERIENCES IN THE MIDDLE PARK, 65 
 
 VI. FROM THE MIDDLE PARK BY BOULDER PASS, . . 80 
 
 VII. OVER GRAY'S PEAK TO SOUTH PARK, 92 
 
 VIII. SOUTH PARK AND MOUNT LINCOLN, 108 
 
 IX. AN INDIAN SCARE THE TWIN LAKES, .... 120 
 
 X. FROM TWIN LAKES TO DENVER, 131 
 
 XL MINES, MINING AND MINERS, 145 
 
 XII. THE AGRICULTURE OF COLORADO : CONCLUSION, . 157 
 
COLORADO: 
 
 Its Parks and Mountains. 
 i 
 
 I. 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD. 
 
 The Contrast of 1865 and 1868 Vice-President Colfax, Governor 
 Bross and their Summer Vacation Party Chicago and the Ride 
 thither The Pullman Cars of the West From New York to 
 San Francisco without Leaving the Car West from Chicago 
 Council Bluffs and Omaha Across the Plains by Railroad 
 Cheyenne Up the Mountains The Charms of Scenery and 
 Atmosphere Railroad Cities, their Rise and Fall How the 
 Railroad is built Back to Cheyenne. 
 
 ON THE DIVIDE OF THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC OCEANS, ) 
 
 August, 1868. > 
 
 TO-DAY the Pacific Railroad climbs over the line 
 that separates the waters of the oceans. We sit 
 astride the crest of the continental mountains, and 
 see the last rail on the Atlantic slope and the first 
 on the Pacific fastened down. It is an era in our 
 lives, it is an era in our national life. Three years 
 ago, the Pacific Railroad was hardly commenced, 
 not a rail was laid this side of the Missouri River ; 
 now there are eight hundred miles of iron track 
 
8 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 from that river west ; on the other side from the 
 Pacific Ocean east, six hundred miles are laid ; and 
 early in 1869, while you are reading these pages, 
 my friend, the Continent will be spanned, and the 
 cars will run from ocean to ocean. Only the energy 
 of a Republic could perform such a work in so brief 
 a time. 
 
 Three summers ago, our little party of four per- 
 s>ns were ten days and nights in stages in reaching 
 this point from the Missouri River ; now our larger 
 party of a dozen have been swept up hither in a 
 day and a half from Omaha, and two days and a 
 half from Chicago. Another year the journey from 
 Boston to San Francisco, that then occupied a full 
 month, will be compassed in a single week. Divid- 
 ing the across-the-continent trip into thirds, this 
 .crest of the mountains is two-thirds the way from 
 the Atlantic to the Pacific. Chicago is twelve 
 hundred miles from Boston ; here we are twelve 
 hundred miles from Chicago ; and about the same 
 distance from San Francisco in the other direction. 
 
 Our summer vacation party to these central 
 mountains of our New West is the outgrowth of 
 the excursion that Speaker Colfax led across the 
 Continent In 1865. Now as then he is the central 
 figure. Governor Bross of Illinois comes next, now 
 as then the favorite of the crowds that gather at 
 every stopping place for a speech, and the leader in 
 all our enjoyments. We miss one of the original 
 four ; but new recruits and the ladies, then denied 
 us, carry up our numbers to near a dozen. Chicago 
 is the gathering-point ; there the Old West culmi- 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 9 
 
 nates, and the New West begins. Soon she must 
 cast her lot with the East, for westward, indeed, 
 the star of empire takes its way ; but for the sea- 
 son, she sits in the center of railway commerce, 
 East and West, and, motherly and queenly both, 
 broods benignantly over the Continent. 
 
 Whether you come west to Chicago by Erie or 
 New York Central, by Pittsburg and Fort Wayne, 
 by Michigan Southern or Michigan Central, leaving 
 at the same hour, you are swept into Chicago at 
 the very same moment. The thousand mile jour- 
 ney is run on either route to one schedule of time. 
 Passengers, who part at the supper table at Roches- 
 ter, bow to each other out of the rival car windows 
 twenty-four hours later at the junction of the two 
 Michigan roads in the outer suburbs of Chicago ; 
 while those, who bade each other good-bye in New 
 York twelve hours earlier, race along side by side 
 on the Fort Wayne and Michigan Southern roads, 
 through the slaughter-house and bone-boiling ad- 
 jacencies of the great city of the North-west, to 
 their neighboring station-houses. 
 
 It seems strange that in this new and rough 
 West of ours, where the fight is fresh with all the 
 elements of nature, and ease and luxury, if not de- 
 spised, at least are generally postponed, there should 
 be more comfortable and luxurious accommodations 
 for railway travel than anywhere else in the world. 
 Yet it is so. Europe and the Atlantic states pro- 
 vide on none of their railways as yet so elegant and 
 ease-giving carriages as the saloon and sleeping 
 and refreshment cars that are offered to travelers 
 i* 
 
IO A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 on the long routes of the West. They are the in- 
 vention of Mr. George W. Pullman, who has thus 
 associated his name forever with one of the great- 
 est improvements in railway travel. Some are pro- 
 vided with kitchen and larder, and will furnish at 
 any hour a meal that rivals Delmonico; and the 
 traveler can leisurely eat breakfast or dinner from 
 his own little private table, as the train sweeps 
 along at the rate of twenty or thirty miles an hour. 
 Their broad, luxurious seats or sofas by day are 
 turned at night into generous beds with clean linen 
 and close curtains if you would have them. The 
 ventilation is perfect ; the freedom from dust and 
 cinders only tolerably so ; but the chief limitation 
 is in the way of toilette accommodations. One 
 disposed to abandon himself or herself to privacy 
 and much water in this respect chafes solnewhat 
 at the common corner and wash-bowl and single 
 looking-glass, however elegant and cleanly ; but 
 when a dozen to forty people undertake to keep 
 house for three days or a week in a single car, 
 there must be some sacrifices of fastidiousness to 
 the spirit of travel. That the Pullman car de- 
 mands so few is the wonder. 
 
 These cars are owned by companies distinct from 
 the railroads, and added to the trains of the latter 
 by special arrangements. Additional charges are 
 made to passengers who occupy them, varying with 
 the amount of room and service taken, but about 
 on a par with the prices of first-class hotels for lodg- 
 ings and meals. To enjoy their comforts to the full, 
 a party of a dozen or twenty should charter the ex- 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 1 1 
 
 elusive use of one ; and when the continental pleas- 
 ure travel to the Pacific sets in next year, this will 
 be a very common fashion. Starting from Boston, 
 New York, Niagara, or Chicago, in your Pullman 
 parlor, dining-room and bed-room, with servants 
 to attend to all wants, the journey to San Francisco 
 may be made with a degree of comfort and luxury, 
 unequalled heretofore in all the dreams of travel, 
 and without necessarily leaving the car from the 
 beginning to the end of the three thousand mile 
 ride. Such a company and such a car were ours 
 from Chicago to the present end of the Railroad and 
 back, and four days of more comfortable and en- 
 joyable travel while half a continent of plain and 
 mountain and river was unrolled before us can 
 hardly be imagined. A little house organ was 
 built into the side of our car, and by its aid we 
 kept time to the music of nature as we rolled over 
 the prairie and up the hills to the crest of the con- 
 tinental mountains. 
 
 From Chicago to Omaha, where is the beginning 
 of the Pacific Railroad proper, is five hundred 
 miles, across Northern Illinois and through Central 
 Iowa, by the Chicago and North-western Railway, 
 and crossing the Mississippi River midway. Two 
 more roads, lower down in Illinois and Iowa, will be 
 done next year those by Rock Island and Burling- 
 ton and give Chicago and Omaha three connecting 
 lines, and all nearly direct. St. Louis, also, has a 
 railroad connection with Omaha by the road down 
 the Missouri River to St. Joseph and Kansas City, 
 meeting at both points lines across Missouri to its 
 
12 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 commercial city. In fact, this puts Omaha and the 
 Pacific Road one hundred and twenty-five miles 
 nearer to St. Louis than to Chicago ; but Chicago 
 is more than that farther east. 
 
 Though but a new country, for most of our way, 
 from Chicago to Omaha, we were rarely out of sight 
 of the golden stubble of wheat or the rich green 
 of waving cornfields. The wonder is constant alike 
 at the richness of the soil, the beauty of the rolling 
 prairie, the abundance of the harvests, the rapid 
 settlement and cultivation of the country, where 
 all the people came from, and where all the grain 
 and hay they grow goes to. 
 
 Council Bluffs in Iowa and Omaha in Nebraska 
 are one in inspiration and growth ; but the muddy 
 Missouri rolls between, and makes them nominal 
 rivals. Both are having a rapid development, and 
 must be great towns. The roads from the North, 
 South and East, to connect with the Pacific Road, 
 must all center at Council Bluffs. The wide 
 meadow three to five miles wide between the 
 bluffs and the river will be intersected with their 
 tracks, and thickly planted with their depots, ancl 
 peopled with their dependents. Three roads 
 north to Sioux City, south to St. Joseph and St. 
 Louis, east to Chicago are already here ; two 
 more will come next year ; and in ten years as 
 many lines will center at this point. Already 
 Council Bluffs has eight thousand inhabitants, and 
 she added thirteen hundred buildings last year. 
 The older and more attractive parts of the town 
 lie back on the bluffs and in the wooded ravines 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 13 
 
 among them a winning location, where healthful- 
 ness and beauty appear combined/and where will 
 gather the real resident population of Council Bluffs. 
 Omaha rises more directly and symmetrically 
 from the opposite bank ; its bluffs or plateaus sweep 
 up sharply from the water, and circle around in a 
 grand amphitheatrical form, somewhat as Spring- 
 field lies to the Connecticut River; you see its 
 majesty of location and its wide-spreading improve- 
 ments at a glance ; the operations of the Pacific 
 Road, of which it is the beginning and the head- 
 quarters, have given it almost feverish development; 
 and it already holds a population of fifteen thousand 
 to seventeen thousand. But with such rich con- 
 junction of water and railway communication ; 
 with the river at its feet, navigable to the Roqky 
 Mountains, north and west, and to the Gulf of 
 Mexico, south two thousand miles in either direc- 
 tion ; with the workshops and head-quarters of 
 the great Railroad of the Continent within its terri- 
 tory, and all the lines from the East and North 
 and South centering before and around it, to make 
 their connections and transhipments ; with a State 
 back of it certainly as large and as rich in agricul- 
 tural wealth as any in the great West, Omaha 
 surely need feel no misgiving as to the future, but 
 may proudly accept her destiny as one of the 
 great interior cities of the nation. Directly, a 
 bridge will be raised over the river to Council 
 Bluffs, and then passengers and merchandise can 
 go back and forth in the same cars that they came 
 in from New York or Sacramento. 
 
14 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 Now out upon the grand continental Railroad 
 into the ocean of the Plains. It is five hundred 
 miles to the base of the central mountains ; up an 
 imperceptible but steadily ascending grade of ten 
 feet to the mile ; and for nearly the whole distance 
 along by the wide but shallow, fierce but fallow 
 Platte River, which, gathering in the melted snows 
 of all this slope of the Rocky Mountains, sweeps 
 across the wide plains, that, one day, by dams and 
 ditches, it is destined to fertilize for miles on each 
 side and make its wilderness to blossom as the 
 rose, and carries the grand tide into the Missouri 
 below Omaha. For two hundred miles, Nebraska 
 is slashed by cross rivers, tributaries of Platte or 
 Missouri ; the land lies in long, beautiful rolls ; 
 timber is in tolerably good supply ; and the soil is 
 as fertile as any in the West. The climate is well- 
 balanced ; oats, corn and wheat yield as richly and 
 as of fine quality as in any state in the Union ; 
 and the rapid growth and great wealth of Nebraska 
 are the surest things in our future. Hardly any 
 state in the Mississippi and Missouri valleys has 
 larger capacities. The settlement of her first two 
 hundred miles west from the Missouri is surpris- 
 ingly rapid ; well-cultivated farms are rarely out of 
 sight ; and the population has certainly trebled in 
 this three years' interval of our visits. 
 
 This limit passed, the prairie roll ceases ; timber 
 and side-streams are no more seen ; the dead level 
 of the Plains fills the eye ; relieved only, twenty 
 to thirty miles north and south, by the faint line of 
 low bluffs, and a scant, irregular growth of cotton- 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS, 15 
 
 woods along the line of the Platte itself But the 
 grass is strong and green ; the soil laughs at the 
 old nickname of the great American desert; here, 
 at least, is pasturage unbounded, wheat, too, I be- 
 lieve, without irrigation, and with irrigation every- 
 thing. But the first results of the Railroad are to 
 kill what settlement and cultivation these plains had 
 reached under the patronage of slow-moving em- 
 igration, stage-travel, and prairie-schooner freight- 
 age. The ranches which these supported are now 
 deserted ; the rails carry everybody and everything ; 
 the old roads are substantially abandoned ; the old 
 settlers, losing all their improvements and opportu- 
 nities, gather in at the railway stations, or move 
 backwards or forwards to greater local develop- 
 ments. They are the victims, in turn, of a higher 
 civilization ; they drove out the Indian, the wolf, 
 and the buffalo ; the locomotive whistles their occu- 
 pation away; and invites back for the time the 
 original occupants. 
 
 The day's ride grows monotonous. The road is 
 as straight as an arrow. Every dozen or fifteen 
 miles is a station, two or three sheds and a water- 
 spout and woodpile ; every one hundred miles or 
 so a home or division depot, with shops, eating- 
 house, " saloons " uncounted, a store or two, a few 
 cultivated acres, and the invariable half a dozen 
 seedy, staring loafers, that are a sort of fungi in- 
 digenous to American railways. The meals are 
 abundant and good, breakfast, dinner and supper 
 each the same as the other, and only apt to be un- 
 certain in bread and butter. We yawn over the un- 
 
16 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 changing landscape and the unvarying model of the 
 stations, and lounge and read by day, and go to bed 
 ear.ly at night. But the clear, dry air charms ; the 
 half dozen soldiers hurriedly marshalled into line 
 at each station as the train comes up, suggest the 
 Indians ; we catch a glimpse of antelopes in the 
 distance ; and we watch the holes of the prairie 
 dogs for their piquant little owners and their tra- 
 ditional companions of owls and snakes, but never 
 see the snakes.' 
 
 Fremont (46 miles from Omaha) and Columbus 
 (91) are the most considerable and promising settle- 
 ments of Nebraska on the line of the road. The 
 latter disputed the political capital with Omaha, but 
 Lincoln,little more than a paper town as yet, and off 
 the railway line, has won it from both. Old Fort 
 Kearney, 200 miles out, a representative of the old- 
 time life of the Plains, is fading away. The chief 
 stations of the Railroad, so far, are Grand Island (153 
 miles), North Platte (291), Sidney (414), Cheyenne 
 (516), and Laramie (5/2). Julesburg, last year so 
 lively a settlement, and at one time before an impor- 
 tant military post, is now abandoned altogether, a 
 few log and board shanties and turf huts are all that 
 remain of its former high uncivilization. Cheyenne 
 alone takes on the air of permanency and feels the 
 hopes of promise. After " Hell," as the end town 
 of the Railroad has been appropriately called, moved 
 on, it was a serious question with her whether to be 
 or not to be, whether she was anything or noth- 
 ing. The problem seems to be solved in her favor. 
 She stands at the end of the Plains, at the begin- 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. I / 
 
 ning of the Mountains ; the Railroad must have im- 
 portant shops here ; it is the point of divergence 
 for Colorado to the South, and the Railroad to Den- 
 ver connects with the main line here, ultimately 
 the Kansas or St. Louis Pacific Railroad will, as 
 Congress has ordered, make its connection by this 
 branch ; a fine agricultural country surrounds, feed- 
 ing the mountains beyond, altogether material 
 enough to make a permanency of Cheyenne. She 
 has now three or four thousand inhabitants, who 
 are settling down into reasonable soberness and 
 serious work ; three daily papers struggle for sup- 
 port ; several good church buildings are erected or 
 erecting ; brick and stone are supplanting canvass 
 and rough boards as building materials ; and taverns 
 and restaurants and stores well respond to all hu- 
 man appetites and needs and tastes. Though the 
 town is six thousand feet above the level of the sea, 
 it lies on an open prairie country, and the moun- 
 tains are only dimly discernible in the distance. It 
 is the principal settlement of the new territory of 
 Wyoming, but so near Colorado, that the latter 
 territory covets and half claims it. 
 
 Now the road grows more interesting. We do 
 not enter mountains, except in fancy, they have 
 been levelled for our track ; but the plain ascends 
 rapidly ; the debris of the old mountains stand 
 around in fantastic shapes ; the forms of the remain- 
 ing mountains rise vast and majestic, blue and white 
 and black, in the far distance, north and south ; in 
 thirty-two miles the track ascends over two thou- 
 sand feet, but so uniformly is the rise distributed 
 
1 8 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 that at no point is the grade above eighty feet to 
 the mile ; and at Sherman or Evans's Pass, we are 
 eight thousand two hundred and sixty-two feet 
 above the sea level the highest point in the whole 
 line of the Pacific Railroad, yet the crest, not of 
 the main or continental range of mountains, but 
 of its eastern line of " Black Hills," so called. Out 
 of narrower plain, free from these ruins of the old 
 mountains, down a thousand feet or so, the road 
 next enters upon and crosses the wide Laramie 
 Plains ; a trifle sheltered, yet open to sharp suns 
 and long, piercing breezes, and selected for their va- 
 rious attractions for the summer homes of the rail- 
 road officials. These were famous hunting-grounds 
 of the Indians ; agreeable resting-places for the 
 emigrant caravans of old ; and long the chief out- 
 post of the army in the mountain region. 
 
 All this section of the road for one hundred and 
 fifty miles west of Cheyenne possesses the greatest 
 novelty and charm for the traveler. The senses all 
 dilate with what is spread before and around him ; 
 rich black mountains bound the horizon north and 
 south ; a dash of snow on peak or side occasionally 
 enlivens the view and deepens the coloring ; along 
 your pathway are fine valleys or broader plains, 
 rich in grass and flowers ; nature has fashioned it 
 for a railroad ; scattered around in valley or plain, 
 as the track approaches the summit, are monu- 
 ments of rock, grotesquely or symmetrically ar- 
 ranged ; here a wall as if for a bulwark, there the 
 ruin of cathedral or fort, again a half-finished build- 
 ing, anon the fashion of a huge, dismasted screw 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. IQ 
 
 steamer, with paddle astern and pilot-boat ahead ; 
 over all an atmosphere so pure that the eye seems 
 to take in all space, and so dry and exhilarating 
 that life titillates at every avenue, and we mount 
 as if on angel's wings. Here would seem to be 
 the fountain of health ; and among these hills and 
 plains is surely to be many a summer resort for the 
 invalid and the pleasure-seeker in the by no means 
 distant future. The hills have timber, though the 
 plains are bare of it, and the water runs pure and 
 bright, and carries trout in abundance, as plains 
 and mountains give deer, mountain sheep, antelope 
 and grouse. This whole wide pathway up and over 
 the mountains seems to have been fashioning for its 
 present use for ages. The hills have wasted into 
 plain ; those solid walls of feldspar and granite dis- 
 integrated and dissipated into a fine gravel, that is 
 the very perfection of a railway bed ; while these 
 "buttes" or monuments of remaining rock, that lie 
 scattered about with such picturesque effect, are all 
 that are left, the very kernel, so to speak, of what 
 was once but a close succession of real rocky moun- 
 tains a Pelion upon Ossa that forbade passage to 
 wheel of wagon or car. 
 
 But the next section of one hundred and fifty 
 miles is a sad contrast. The charms of atmosphere 
 and of distant mountains remain; but the green 
 grass, the flowers, the pure water, the oases of 
 trees, all depart, and we have a dreary waste of sage 
 bush, a barren, alkali, dusty soil, little water, and 
 that bitter and poisonous. This is the Bitter Creek 
 country, so horrible to slow emigrant travel, . so 
 
2O A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 painful to stage passengers. The eye has no joy, 
 the lips no comfort through it; the sun burns by 
 day, the cold chills at night ; *the fine, impalpable, 
 poisonous dust chokes and chafes and chaps you 
 everywhere. It is within this region that my letter 
 is dated, and that the track crosses the continental 
 divide. Rolling hills abound, but no mountains. 
 The track winds easily along; but a water train 
 has to be added to the usual supply trains, and the 
 expense of construction is greatly increased by 
 the distance which all material and all food and 
 drink have to be drawn. Deep wells will in the 
 future relieve the poverty and poisonousness of 
 the surface water, whose alkali elements not only 
 render it unfit for drink but impossible of use in 
 the boilers of the engines. 
 
 Spite of the obstacles, however, the tra-ck marches 
 on with magic rapidity. Ten to fifteen thousand 
 men are at work on the grading of the three hun- 
 dred miles between this point and Salt Lake valley. 
 Following the completion of their work come the 
 gangs of track-layers with their supply trains. First 
 the ties or sleepers, brought up from below or out 
 of the neighboring hills, and carried several miles 
 ahead of the train by innumerable mule teams. 
 Then rails and spikes are transferred to platform 
 cars and pushed up to the end of the track ; and 
 by help of horse and a dozen practiced men, work- 
 ing like automatons with brains, the iron lengths 
 are dropped in place, spiked down, the car rolled 
 over them, the work repeated, and again and again, 
 at the rate of from three to eight miles a day, the 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 21 
 
 only limit yet found being the power of the com- 
 pleted road to bring up sleepers and rails to the 
 supply trains of the contractors. The gangs of 
 track-layers number in all from four hundred to five 
 hundred ; are picked men ; live on the train or in 
 tents which the train brings along as the track pro- 
 gresses ; and are fed by the contractors in so good 
 a style that no apologies were necessary in inviting 
 our party of ladies and gentlemen to dine with 
 them, and no hesitation felt on our part in accept- 
 ing, nor any repentance at having accepted. It 
 was one of the "squarest" meals of our whole trip 
 so far. 
 
 For a few weeks now, Benton, in this Bitter Creek 
 country, is the end of the open road, and here pas- 
 sengers and freight going west are transhipped, and 
 here are temporarily gathered that motley crew of 
 desperadoes, outcasts and reckless speculators, that 
 are following the road's progress, and rioting in the 
 license and coarseness of unorganized society. It 
 is a most aggravated specimen of the border town 
 of America, not inaptly called " Hell on Wheels," 
 and unknown to all other civilizations or barbarisms. 
 One to two thousand men, and a dozen or two 
 women, are camped on the alkali plain in tents and 
 board shanties ; not a tree, not a shrub, not a blade 
 of grass visible ; the dust ankle deep as you walk 
 through it, and so fine and volatile that the slightest 
 breeze loads the air with it, irritating every sense 
 and poisoning half of them ; a village of a few va- 
 riety stores and shops, and many restaurants and 
 grog-shops ; by day disgusting, by night dangerous ; 
 
22 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 almost everybody dirty, most filthy, and with the 
 marks of lowest vice ; averaging a murder a day ; 
 gambling and drinking, hurdy-gurdy dancing and 
 the vilest of sexual commerce, the chief business 
 and pastime of the hours, this is Benton. Like its 
 predecessors on the track, it fairly festers in cor- 
 ruption, disorder and death, and would rot, even in 
 this dry air, should it outlast a brief sixty-day life. 
 In a few weeks, its tents will be struck, its shanties 
 razed, and with their dwellers will move on fifty or 
 a hundred miles farther to repeat their life for an- 
 other brief day. Where these people came from 
 originally; where they will go to when the road is 
 finished, and their occupation is over, are both puz- 
 zles too intricate for me. Hell would appear to 
 have been raked to furnish them ; and to it they 
 will naturally return after graduating here, fitted for 
 its highest seats and its most diabolical service. 
 
 Beyond this one hundred and fifty mile section 
 of desert country, that marks the divide between 
 the waters of the two oceans, the road crosses 
 Green River and enters upon the descent into the 
 Salt Lake basin. The country here changes rap- 
 idly ; it is broken by mountain ranges, and coursed 
 by fresh rivers ; and every way becomes most in- 
 teresting to the traveler, and most difficult for the 
 railroad constructor. The section from Green River 
 to the Salt Lake valley is the hardest part of the 
 whole line of the Union Pacific Road to build ; 
 heavy rock cuttings and embankments, sharp 
 curves, and tunnels are necessitated ; yet there 
 is nothing in it all so serious and expensive as the 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 23 
 
 work on the line of the railroads through and over 
 the Alleghany Mountains, or worse than that the 
 Boston and Albany Railroad encountered west of 
 Springfield. The traveler will find pleasure, how- 
 ever, where the contractors met labor ; the wonder- 
 ful Church Butte, the charming high valley region 
 about Fort Bridger, the narrow, ^rock-embraced 
 canyons or gorges of Echo and Weber, the white- 
 capped Wasatch Mountains, all will awaken his 
 enthusiasm and wonder, and lead him down to the 
 settlements and civilization of the Mormon saints 
 in a frame of pleasurable and curious excitement. 
 He will need all its stimulus, however, to carry him 
 contented over the new and wider desert country 
 that the road will yet take him, along and beyond 
 the Humboldt valley, through northern Nevada, 
 and on to the now double-welcome glories of the 
 Sierra Nevadas. And here upon the threshold of 
 California, we leave him to find his own way. 
 
 Everybody inquires how the Pacific Railroad is 
 built ? Well or ill as faithful as fast befitting or 
 betraying the royal endowment of the American 
 people ? A monosyllable will not answer the ques- 
 tion. Well, with a qualification ; ill, with a qualifi- 
 cation. As well, certainly, as new roads are gen- 
 erally built in America better surely than the 
 North-western Road is built across Iowa. As well, 
 too, as is consistent with such speed. The ties are 
 plenty, a third thicker at least than is usual in the 
 East ; the rails as good as the Pennsylvania iron 
 consciences and poverty will permit ; and the ad- 
 justments all faithfully made and by competent 
 
24 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 workmen. I could wish the bed had been thrown 
 up a foot higher across the Plains, to escape the 
 flood of possible heavy rains and the drift of snows ; 
 long sections are certainly imperfectly ballasted, or 
 not at all ; wooden bridges and culverts need to be 
 rebuilt with stone ; tressle-work should be replaced 
 by embankments ; and embankments need widen- 
 ing ; many curves and circles should be cut across, 
 the line straightened and shortened ; and grades 
 lowered or evened up. But the builders agree as 
 to all this, except perhaps the hight of the bed 
 across the Plains, and are proceeding with the im- 
 provements and reconstructions as fast as the 
 greater necessity for pushing on to the end will 
 permit them. The only dispute there can be is as 
 to the degree or extent which these completions and 
 reconstructions are necessary or should be required. 
 The road has been and will be such a mine of 
 wealth to its owners, they should be held by public 
 and government to a strict performance of all their 
 obligations, they should give us in return for our 
 gifts of money and land and privilege a thoroughly 
 first-class road in every respect. But, on the other 
 hand, exacting security for the perfection, they 
 should be allowed generous time-to do it in. The 
 materials, stone, ballasting and timber, for all the 
 work required, are upon the line ; and when the rush 
 of progress is over, and the road opened through, 
 then the work of bringing up every part and 
 every detail to perfection should be insisted upon 
 by the one party, and cheerfully executed by the 
 other. Self-interest invites the managers to this 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 25 
 
 fidelity ; they have found the road most profitable 
 to build ; they are likely to find it as profitable to 
 own and run ; and dependent as they must largely 
 be upon the favor of public opinion and the protec- 
 tion and care of the government, aside from the 
 necessity of having the road in thorough condition 
 fdr its safe and profitable use, they will see how 
 desirable it is they should leave no cause for com- 
 plaint in the condition and management of the 
 property. 
 
 No internal improvement was ever so generously 
 endowed, none was ever so wonderfully built. 
 The government bounty was voted in ignorance of 
 the difficulties and cost of the work. They have 
 proven much less than was expected. The entire 
 road from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean 
 is about one thousand seven hundred miles long. 
 The California company builds six hundred miles, 
 the New York company about one thousand one 
 hundred, and the.ir junction is near Salt Lake, 
 Congress voted sixteen thousand dollars govern- 
 ment bonds per mile of plain country ; thirty-two 
 thousand dollars per mile of more difficult territory ; 
 and forty-eight thousand dollars per mile of the 
 higher and rougher mountains passed over ; and it 
 also authorized the companies to issue mortgage 
 bonds of their own to equal amounts, which should 
 take precedence in security of the government 
 bonds. From one-half to two-thirds of the entire 
 line is probably through "plain" country, yet, from 
 a mixture of deception and ignorance, only about 
 one-third was so counted. The average govern- 
 
26 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 ment grant was thirty thousand dollars a mile, and 
 the companies' first bonds, which have found ready 
 sale, just doubled this sum as the cash provision for 
 the construction of the road, or sixty thousand dol- 
 lars per mile. But the actual cost has not probably 
 been over half this, or not far in excess of the gov- 
 ernment grant alone, certain-ly, with equipment, 
 it will not average -over forty thousand dollars per 
 mile. This would leave a net cash profit on the 
 building and opening of the road of thirty-four 
 millions dollars. But, back of all this, the compa- 
 nies have the capital stock of the road, and own 
 half the lands for a width of twenty miles along 
 their tracks. There never was such a gigantic 
 speculation on the American continent at least; 
 and it is safe to predict that no other railroad will 
 ever win such largess from the government as this 
 has. 
 
 To snow how deceived or mistaken the govern- 
 ment agents were in the character of the work to 
 be done, the trailer only need'to look at the one 
 hundred and fifty miles of road west from Chey- 
 enne, and remember that this is the section for 
 which they allowed the highest price of forty-eight 
 thousand dollars a mile as heavy mountain work. 
 In fact, it is about as fine a country to build a 
 railroad through as lies on the face of the globe. 
 It is one long, inclined plane, with a fine, disinte- 
 grated granite for its soil, worked by plow and 
 scraper, and affording the solidest and most per- 
 manent road bed that exists in America. Only a 
 few hills had to be cut through, or embankments 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 2/ 
 
 made, or streams crossed. The California company 
 had no such rich streak of luck as this ; their forty- 
 eight thousand dollars a mile section was grievously 
 heavy mountain work, over the rough and broken 
 Sierra Nevadas, requiring heavy rock cuttings and 
 many tunnels. But they had, to make up for it, no 
 "plain" or sixteen thousand dollars a mile track at 
 all ; it was all forty-eight thousand dollars and 
 thirty-two thousand dollars a mile, while many of 
 their miles were as easy to build as the line across 
 the Plains of the eastern section. 
 
 But no matter now ! Only by such appeal to 
 cupidity have we got this continental roadway 
 opened so soon, a gift to our nationality, to our 
 commerce, to our wealth, that is worth in five years 
 more than it all cost. And now if the gigantic 
 corporations that own and use it will but let our 
 politics alone, give the country faithful service and 
 at a fair price, and spend some of their profits in 
 opening branch lines to Montana, Idaho, and Ore- 
 gon, we will gladly give them welcome to their for- 
 tunes, and cry quits. 
 
 The path and the profits of the Pacific Railroad 
 are likely to be for some time fresh subjects in our 
 American lives, and so justify this long letter about 
 them. We turn back the track to Cheyenne, and 
 thence follow the mountains down to Denver to 
 begin our real Summer Vacation in Colorado. 
 
II. 
 
 TO DENVER AND THERE. 
 
 Where the Mountains Lie The Stage Ride from Cheyenne to 
 Denver Scenes in the Stage-Coach at Night Meals on the 
 Road How Denver Looks Its Growth, Attainments, and 
 Prospects The Mountain View from the Town Denver and 
 Salt Lake City Rivals in Beauty of Location and Attraction for 
 Travelers. 
 
 DENVER, Colorado, August, 1868. 
 
 IT is the old story over again the railroads do 
 not show you the best of the country. Their tracks 
 run through the back yards in towns, and away 
 from the hills and among the barren wastes of the 
 interior. You no more see the Rocky Mountains 
 in riding over the Pacific Railroad than you do New 
 York in going through the Fourth Avenue tunnels, 
 or Springfield in steaming by the mechanic shops 
 and restaurants of Railroad Row. Nature graded 
 a grand pathway for the locomotive across our Conti- 
 nent ; the mountains fall back to the right of us and 
 to the left of us, so far away that we catch only the 
 dim outline of their greatness, leaving but here 
 and there a quaint ruin of or majestic monument 
 to her mighty labor, that civilization may go by 
 steam from ocean to ocean. The great mountain 
 center of the Continent lies below the present rail- 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 2Q 
 
 road line ; it looms up in the distance 'at Cheyenne ; 
 it marches along the southern horizon as you sweep 
 up and across the magnificent Laramie Plains ; it 
 cheers you through the rolling alkali dust of the 
 Bitter Creek country; and it shoots its spurs in 
 beauty and in power before you, as you seek, more 
 slowly, a descending path into the Salt Lake basin. 
 But would you behold it in all its majestic grandeur, 
 its multiplied folds of hight, with fields of ice and 
 snow and rock, its beauty of infinite form and color, 
 its wealth of flora and its wealth of gold and silver, 
 all the grand landscape and the hidden promise 
 of the finest mountain region that the world holds, 
 then you must switch off from the main road, and 
 come into the heart of Colorado, which is the very 
 heart of our western Continent. 
 
 Bear in mind, too, thal/the great Pacific Railroad 
 does not touch Colorado. It goes a few miles 
 above the northern border. A branch road is now 
 building from the main track at Cheyenne down to 
 Denver, the capital and focal point of the state. 
 While waiting for that to be finished, next year, we 
 travel this one hundred miles in a six-horse coach. 
 If we could do it all by daylight, nothing could be 
 more pleasant. The road lies across the last fifty 
 miles of the Plains, through high rolling green 
 prairies, cut every fifteen or twenty miles by a 
 vigorous river, with border of rich and cultivated 
 intervale, and line of trees marking its progress from 
 mountain debouch to the slow-sinking, wide-reach- 
 ing horizon, to the right the grim mountains with 
 towering tops of rock and snow, to the left the un- 
 
3O A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 ending prairie ocean, with only an occasional cabin 
 and scattered herd of cattle to break its majestic 
 solitude and indicate human settlement; there is 
 such . magnificent out-doorness in the continuous 
 scene as no narrower or differently combined land- 
 scape can offer, and so long as the day lasts it is a 
 thing of beauty and of joy. But it is a twenty hours' 
 ride, and the stage arrangements make a night of it. 
 And in stage-riding it is peculiarly true that it is the 
 first night that costs. It is more intolerable than the 
 combination of the succeeding half-dozen, were the 
 journey prolonged for a week ; the breaking-in is 
 fearful, the prolongation is bearable. The air gets 
 cold, the road grows dusty and chokes, or rough and 
 alarms you ; the legs become stiff and numb, the 
 temper edges; everybody is overcome with sleep, 
 but can't stay asleep, the struggle of contending 
 nature racks every nerve, fires every feeling ; every- 
 body flounders and knocks about against everybody 
 else in helpless despair ; perhaps the biggest man 
 in the stage will really get asleep, which doing 
 he involuntarily and with irresistible momentum 
 spreads himself, legs, boots, arms and head, over 
 the whole inside of the coach; the girls screech, 
 the profane swear; some lady wants a smelling 
 bottle out of her bag and her bag is somewhere on 
 the floor, nobody knows where, but found it must 
 be ; everybody's back hair comes down, and what 
 is nature and what is art in costume and character 
 is revealed, and then, hardest trial of all, morning 
 breaks upon the scene and the feelings, everybody 
 dirty, grimy, faint, "all to pieces," cross, such a 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 31 
 
 disenchanting exhibition! The girl that is lovely 
 then, the man who is gallant and serene, let them 
 be catalogued for posterity, and translated at once, 
 heaven cannot spare such ornaments ; and they are 
 too aggravating for earth. 
 
 Every ten miles we stop to change horses, and 
 the driver, night or day, signalizes the approach to 
 a station by a miniature war-whoop, that, as the 
 Bostonians say of their great organ, "must be heard 
 to be appreciated," it is certainly rather startling 
 to new ears. Every thirty miles or so, a " home " 
 station' and a " square meal." Dinner, supper and 
 breakfast are all alike, and invariably generous and 
 good, more uniformly so, indeed, than those along 
 the railroad line from Chicago to the mountains. 
 We missed willingly some of one sort of " home " 
 stations, that we encountered out here three years 
 ago in the "Across the Continent" ride, single- 
 roomed turf cabins, bare dirt floors, milkless coffee, 
 rancid bacon, stale beans, and green bread, and "if 
 you don't like these, help yourself to mustard ; " 
 but we welcomed heartily, at the Laporte station, 
 where is the most of a village on the road, our old 
 host and hostess, with whom the Indians then pre- 
 vailed on us, in their charming fashion, to pass a 
 sweet and silent Sunday in their little retreat of 
 Virginia Dale park in the mountains on the old 
 r0 ad, lady and gentleman now as then by diviner 
 gifts than those of milliner or tailor. It was pleas- 
 ant to see they had prospered, and got out among 
 neighbors, where Indian raids, of which they had 
 survived no fewer than eight in their solitary Dale 
 
32 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 station, now abandoned, were less threatening ; 
 pleasant to have the ladies confirm the picture in 
 "Across the Continent" on comparison with the 
 original ; pleasantest of all, perhaps, to find she had 
 not forgotten our weakness for good victual. Those 
 sup well who sup with our heroine of Virginia Dale, 
 and if they would have especial grace and greeting, 
 let them prove acquaintance with the "Colfax party." 
 The Vice-President often dwells on " the two 
 kinds of welcome," and it was the other kind that 
 we met at the next, eating-place. Our stage was 
 an " extra," and " ran wild," and so came along un- 
 awares. It was a trifle rough, therefore, to rouse a 
 lone woman, at one o'clock in the night, to get us 
 some supper or breakfast, whichever you choose 
 to call it She could do it, she said, but she didn't 
 quite like to. But who could resist the gallant Vice- 
 President, whether pleading for ballot or breakfast ; 
 or the offers of help from the ladies ; or the final 
 suggestion of the driver ? She wavered at the first ; 
 the second operated as a challenge to her capacity ; 
 and the third was irresistible. There is no king on 
 his route like a stage driver, he has a "dreadful 
 winning way" with him, both for horses and women. 
 The philosophy of it I do not understand, but the 
 fact is universal and stubborn; he is the successful 
 diplomat of the road ; no meal can be begun till he 
 is in place ; and there are no vacant seats where he 
 drives, even the cold night air would not send our 
 girls off his box, and inside, during this long ride. 
 So, at two o'clock in the morning, we sat down to 
 beef and ham and potatoes, tea and coffee, bread 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 33 
 
 and butter, pies, cakes and canned fruits, not even 
 the edges of the " squareness " of the meal rubbed 
 off, and good humor everywhere. 
 
 We cross the rivers Cache-a-la Poudre,- which 
 indicates that some Frenchman deposited his pow- 
 der here aforetime, St. Vrains, Big Thompson, 
 Little Thompson, Boulder, Clear Creek r and finally 
 the South Platte, to which all the others are tribu- 
 tary ; and, having left Cheyenne at ten o'clock in the 
 forenoon, gay and aggressive, v/e are tumbled out 
 of the stage at Denver at eight the next morning, 
 feeble and flabby, hungry and humble, with a dread- 
 ful "morning after " feeling and appearance and 
 movement about us. 
 
 But the air of Denver, both inside and outside 
 the houses, is very recuperating; we were soon 
 toned up, and began to look about us. The town 
 has spread out and settled down a good deal within 
 three years. Things look less brisk, but more sub- 
 stantial and assured. The town "feels its oats" less 
 and its dignity more. It has passed its hot and 
 fickle days, when gamblers reigned, and "to be or 
 not to be" was the everlasting question that fretted 
 everybody who owned real estate, and with which 
 they, in a sort of your-money-or-your-life manner, 
 assaulted every stranger the moment he got out of 
 the stage. Now, though trade is dull, and I have 
 seen but one fight since I came to town, the Den- 
 verites all wear a fixed fact sort of air, and most of 
 them are able to tell you, in a low and confidential 
 chuckle, calling for envy rather than sympathy, 
 that they own a quarter section just out there on 
 
 2* 
 
34 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 the bluff, to which the town is rapidly spreading, 
 and where the capitol buildings and the fine resi- 
 dences will all be located, or a few corner lots down 
 near the river, where the mills and the factories are 
 destined to rise in the near future. Long lines of 
 brick stores already give permanent and prosper- 
 ous air to the town ; its dry and its wet rivers are 
 both newly bridged ; irrigating ditches scatter water 
 freely through streets, lawns and gardens, and now 
 flowers and fruits, trees and vegetables lend their 
 civilizing influences and their permanent attractions 
 to the place ; national banks emit their greenbacks 
 and will "do" your little note most graciously at 
 from one to two per cent a month and "a grab 
 mortgage" behind it; Episcopal Bishop Randall 
 from Boston has established an excellent school 
 for girls; the Catholics have a larger educational 
 establishment ; the Methodists have the handsom- 
 est church and wear the best clothes ; the Baptists 
 and Congregationalism are lively and aggressive; 
 the stores are closed Sundays ; the nights are quiet 
 and the police have a sinecure ; free schools are or- 
 ganized ; and three daily papers and two independ- 
 ent weeklies are published in the town. Kitchen 
 girls are scarce and a dear luxury, with pay at 
 fifty dollars to seventy-five dollars a month ; but 
 the consequence is that the cooking is excellent, 
 and people live " first rate." The dwelling-houses 
 are mostly small, a single story or a story and a 
 half, but within are comforts and luxuries in abun- 
 dance, and one house boasts a true Van Dyke. 
 The emigrant and the traveler must "move on" by 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 35 
 
 Denver if he would get beyond the organization 
 of the best American social and intellectual life. 
 
 I see I have spoken of Denver's "dry river," 
 which calls for a parenthetical paragraph in expla- 
 nation. The South Platte sweeps around the lower 
 part of the town, broad and turbulent, of certain 
 volume but uncertain track, useless for navigation 
 but excellent for irrigation ; but more sharply 
 through the center of the business section lies 
 Cherry Creek, now a broad bottom of dry sand, 
 and only occasionally enlivened with any water. 
 For years after the founding of .the town, none 
 appeared in its bed, and supposing it to have 
 been deserted altogether, the people builded and 
 lived in the bottom. Stores, shops and dwellings, 
 streets and blocks appeared there ; it was the heart 
 of the town ; the printing office was there, also the 
 city records ; but of a sudden, after a heavy rain, 
 there came a flood pouring down the old river bed, 
 not gradually and in rivulets, to warn, but a full- 
 blown stream marched abreast with torrent force 
 and almost lightning speed, reclaimed its own, and 
 swept everything that had usurped its place into 
 destruction. Since then, the people have paid re- 
 spect to Cherry Creek; at some seasons of the 
 year there is still a little water in its sands, but for 
 the most part- it is dry through the town ; but no- 
 body builds in the bed, and bridges over its path 
 pay tribute to what it has been and may b again. 
 Farther up its line, there is water in it now; but 
 the sands consume and an irrigating ditch seduces 
 it all away before it reaches the limits of the city. 
 
36 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 Her central location, under the mountains, in the 
 Plains section of the state, gives Denver a fine cli- 
 mate the year through ; is favorable for trade to all 
 parts of the state ; secures to her the outgo and the 
 income of the mining districts ; makes her also the 
 chief market for all the productions of the farming 
 counties, and ' the focal point for all travel to and 
 from the mountains, as well as north to the Railroad, 
 and south to New Mexico ; and endows her with 
 a scene of mountain panoramic beauty, one hundred 
 miles long, now touched with clouds, now radiant 
 with sunshine, then dark with rocks and trees, again 
 white with snow, now cold, now warm, but always 
 inspiring in grandeur, and ever unmatched by the 
 possession of any other city of Europe or America. 
 The finest views of these mountains are obtained 
 farther out in the Plains, where the more distant 
 peaks come into sight, and the depth and variety, as 
 well as the hight and beauty of the range, are real- 
 ized ; and wider and older travelers than I, who 
 have seen the Cordilleras of South America from 
 the sea, as well the Alps from Berne, join in the 
 judgment that no grand mountain view exists, that 
 surpasses this, as seen from the high roll of the 
 prairie just out of Denver, and over which the town 
 is fast spreading, and so on from twenty to forty 
 miles farther east. The one point of .grandest view 
 is located at the last "home station" on the Smoky 
 Hill rofcd, about thirty-five miles east from Denver, 
 and along which the St. Louis Pacific Road will 
 probably be built another year. 
 
 With these charms of climate and landscape, with 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 37 
 
 a settled and intelligent and prosperous population 
 already of four thousand to five thousand, with busi- 
 ness connections and facilities, social order and at- 
 tractions, religious and educational institutions, all 
 well organized, and fed by their own interior force, 
 growing from within out, and not simply by fresh 
 importations of eastern, material, and holding the 
 conceded position of the social, political and com- 
 mercial capital bf the state, Denver has a gratifying 
 future of growth before it. Another year will bring 
 through it the Pacific Railroad on the St. Louis 
 route, connecting here with the branch of the main 
 or central road that drops down from Cheyenne ; a 
 railroad is already commenced, also, towards the 
 mining centers of the mountains by the Clear Creek 
 valley ; and it cannot be long before a southern road 
 will be demanded, down from Denver along the base 
 of the Mountains to southern Colorado and Santa 
 Fe. Not unlikely, indeed, it will prove wiser to 
 carry the first southern Pacific Railroad around this 
 way, rather than to strike diagonally across to Santa 
 Fe from the present terminus of the St. Louis Road, 
 as is proposed, for this route is through a rich and 
 already partly developed agricultural country, while 
 that goes by half or wholly barren table-lands, not 
 likely to be at all occupied for many years, and 
 never capable like this of holding a large population. 
 Coal and iron and clay are found in the neigh- 
 borhood ; the hills give timber ; the valleys every 
 grain and vegetable and many fruits ; and Denver 
 cannot well escape a steady and healthy growth, 
 and the destiny of becoming one of the most per- 
 
38 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 manently prosperous, as it will be certainly one of 
 the most beautiful of our great western interior 
 cities, I rank it along with Salt Lake-City. Both 
 are off the main line of the continental railroad; 
 but both have locations amid developed natural 
 wealth and conceded natural beauty, that must com- 
 mand their future, and make it one of power and 
 prosperity. Six hundred miles apart, with the con- 
 tinental range of mountains separating them, there 
 can be no rivalry between them, save in social graces 
 and pleasure attractions, and here the Mormon su- 
 premacy in Salt Lake will give Denver great ad- 
 
III. 
 
 THE GEOGRAPHY OF COLORADO. 
 
 The Back-bone of the Continent The Mother Mountains of 
 America The Three Great Divisions of Colorado Her Plains, 
 Her Folds of High Mountain Ranges, Her Great Natural, 
 Elevated Parks North, Middle and South Parks ; their Sur- 
 roundings and their Beauties The Unknown West of Colorado. 
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS, Colorado, August, 1868. 
 As Pennsylvania is the key-stone in the Atlantic 
 belt or arch of states, so is Colorado the key-stone 
 in the grand continental formation. She holds the 
 back-bone, the stiffening of the Republic. Lying 
 a huge square block in the very center of the vast 
 region bounded by* the Mississippi valley on the 
 east, the Pacific Ocean on the west, and British 
 America and Mexico north and south, the conti- 
 nental mountain chain here dwells in finest propor- 
 tions, exaggerates, puffs itself up and spreads itself 
 aroomd with a perfect wantonness and luxuriance 
 of power, great fountains of gold and silver, and 
 lead and copper, and zinc and iron, great fountains 
 of water that pours itself in all directions through 
 the whole interior of the Continent, feeding a 
 wealth of agriculture that is little developed and 
 never yet dreamed of even, great fountains of 
 
4O A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 health in pure, dry and stimulating air, great 
 fountains of natural beauty ; she may proudly bid 
 the nation come to her for strength, for wealth, for 
 vigor, for rest and restoration, and may well 
 call her mountains the Sierra Madre, the Mother 
 Mountains of the Continent. 
 
 Her geographical prominence and parentage are 
 but type and promise of her future relations to 
 the developed and developing life of the nation. 
 Stretching two hundred and sixty miles north and 
 south, and three hundred and seventy-five miles 
 east and west, her territory has three natural sub- 
 divisions. The eastern third is of the Plains, and* 
 forms their western section, a high rolling plateau 
 from four thousand to five thousand feet above the 
 sea level, richly watered by streams from the moun- 
 tains, the strips along the rivers ripe for abundant 
 harvests of grain and fruits and vegetables, the 
 whole already the finest pasture land of the Conti- 
 nent, and with irrigation, for which the streams 
 afford ready facility, capable of most successful 
 cultivation, beautiful in its wide, treeless sea of 
 green and gray, with waves of land to break the 
 monotony and lift the eye on to the great panorama 
 of mountains, snow-slashed and snow-capped, that 
 hangs over its western line through all its length of 
 two hundred and sixty miles, and marks the second 
 or middle division of the state. This is of about 
 equal width, mountains one hundred, one hundred 
 and fifty, two hundred miles deep, on, on to the* 
 west, till even this pure air tires of carrying the eye 
 over peak on peak, over range on range, you think 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 41 
 
 you must look over into Brigham Young's fertile val- 
 leys, and trace the Colorado River out of its grand 
 mystery, even if the outer and faintest rim does not 
 shadow forth the Sierra Nevada of California. 
 
 Starting from an elevation at the end of the 
 Plains of five thousand to five thousand five hun- 
 dred feet, these mountains rapidly carry you up to 
 eight thousand, ten thousand, thirteen thousand, 
 near to fifteen thousand feet above the sea level. 
 Nine, ten, and twelve thousand feet peaks are scat- 
 tered everywhere, they are the mountains, while 
 those that mount to thirteen or fourteen thousand 
 are plenty enough to be familiar, and are indeed 
 rarely out of sight. They do not form a simple 
 line, ascending from one and descending to another 
 plain or valley, but are a dozen lines folded on, and 
 mingled among each other, in admirable confusion ; 
 opening to let their superfluous waters flow out ; 
 closing to hold their treasures and defy the ap- 
 proach of man ; gathering up all their strength, as 
 it were, to make a peak or two of extra massive 
 proportion^ cold with snow and dreary with rock ; 
 and shading down into comparatively tender hills, 
 that woo the forests and the flowers to their very 
 summits. The line of peaks that divide the waters 
 that flow to the Atlantic from those coursing into 
 the Pacific, "the divide," par excellence, twists 
 and turns through the territory, very much in the 
 style of a long and double-backed bow, making an 
 almost entire circle sometimes, and then coming 
 back to its mission as a north and south line. 
 Within its huge folds are other "divides," sepa- 
 
42 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 rating the feeders to rival rivers of the same conti- 
 nental side, or rival feeders of the same river, and 
 other ranges with peaks as high as the parent 
 range; and within an-d among them all, the hills, 
 as if tired of hight and perpendicularity, give way 
 to wide plains or prairies, with all the beauties and 
 characteristics of plains and prairies outside the 
 mountain region, and the added charm of holding 
 little baby mountains of their own to diversify the 
 landscape and feed forest and stream, while up and 
 around them grow, through woods and grassy open- 
 ings, the grand parent ranges that guard and en- 
 fold what are well called NATURAL PARKS. 
 
 These Parks are a distinctive and remarkable 
 feature of this mountain center or belt of Colo- 
 rado. They open upon the traveler at frequent in- 
 tervals in charming unexpectedness ; rich with grass 
 and water, with trees and flowers, with soft beauty 
 of outline and warm beauty of color, in most ad- 
 mirable contrast to the rough rocks and white snow 
 of the high ranges around. Most of these Parks 
 are, of course, petite, little wide valleys around the 
 heads of single streams, or the conjunctions of sev- 
 eral, or the homes of sweet lakes; but there are 
 four great ones that mark the phenomenon and 
 give the name. These are North Park, Middle 
 Park, South Park and San Luis Park, varying in 
 size from twenty by fifty miles to one hundred by 
 two hundred, or say from Rhode Island to Massa- 
 chusetts, little episodes and interjections among 
 these mountains, by whose size, as thus stated, 
 you may take in some sense of the extent and 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 43 
 
 majesty of the region, of which they are a sub- 
 feature, as a whole. 
 
 The North Park extends up to the northern line 
 of the territory and within thirty or forty miles of 
 the Pacific Railroad ; through and out of it flow the 
 head waters of the North Platte ; its streams are 
 thicker with trout, and its sage brush and buffalo 
 grass and wooded hill-sides offer more deer and 
 wolves and antelopes and bears than are found in 
 the lower and more frequented Parks, but its soil is 
 colder as its elevation is higher, and its charms of 
 color and vegetation more stinted. Middle Park 
 lies next below, and separated by a single but 
 high sub-range of the main mountains. This is 
 fifty miles wide by seventy miles long, and as the 
 continental divide sweeps around on its eastern 
 side, all its waters flow into the Colorado of the 
 West and so into the Pacific. But it embraces 
 within itself several high ranges of hills and two 
 or three different valleys. The great peaks of the 
 territory lie marshaled around it, Long's Peak, 
 Gray's Peaks, and Mount Lincoln, north-east, south- 
 east and south-west, each from thirteen thousand to 
 fourteen thousand five hundred feet high ; and snow- 
 topped mountains circle its whole area. Milder and 
 more beautiful in landscape than the North, it yet 
 falls behind its neighbor on the other side, the 
 South Park, which is thirty miles wide and sixty 
 long, and, fellowshiping with the North Park, comes 
 into the inner tail of the bow, carries the continental 
 divide on its west, and furnishes the waters of the 
 Arkansas and the South Platte. 
 
44 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 This (the South) is the more beautiful of the- 
 Parks and the better known. Mining discoveries 
 within and around it have opened roads through it, 
 and bordered it with settlements. It offers a re- 
 markable combination of the beauties of the Plains 
 and those of the Mountains. They mingle and mix 
 in charming association. Wide areas of rich prairie 
 open out before the level eye ; upraise it or turn 
 one side, and grand snowy mountains carry the 
 sight up among the clouds ; and between these 
 types of natural beauty are plentiful shadings in 
 gently rolling hills, long level banks, thick and 
 diversified forests, bright and bountiful streams, 
 all the grand panorama of natural beauty that hill 
 and valley, mountain and plain, winter and sum- 
 mer, snow and verdure, trees and rocks, water and 
 waste can produce in combination and comparison, 
 is here spread before the spectator, not from a 
 single spot or in a singly hour of his travel, but 
 from mile to mile, from day's journey to day's jour- 
 ney, ever the same various scene, yet ever shifting 
 in its kaleidoscopic alliances and changes. 
 
 The San Luis Park lies along and around the 
 Arkansas and its tributaries in Southern Colorado 
 and Northern New Mexico, is the largest and per- 
 haps the most varied of the series of great Parks, 
 centers about a grand lake, and is rich alike in 
 agricultural and mineral .promise. The Indians 
 have robbed us of our promised peep into its lines, 
 and we know it only by its kinship to those we 
 have visited, and the enthusiastic descriptions of 
 those to whom it is familiar. But the South Park 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 45 
 
 as yet takes the palm among the Coloradians, per- 
 haps only, however, because it is the more acces- 
 sible, and its beauties more thoroughly explored. 
 Certainly it lies more closely in the lap of the great 
 mountains ; and Mount Lincoln and Pike's Peak, 
 perhaps the most noted and remarkable of all the 
 high peaks of the territory, sentinel it north and 
 south, feed it from their snows, protect it from the 
 rough winds, shadow it from the sharp suns. 
 
 In spite of these great elevations, the traveler 
 carries summer skies as he keeps summer scenes 
 with him at this season in most of his excursions 
 among the mountains and their parks in Colorado. 
 We borrow our ideas of mountain travel and moun- 
 tain hights from Switzerland and the White Moun- 
 tains of New Hampshire. Among them both, vege- 
 tation ceases at about five thousand feet above the 
 sea level, and perpetual snow reigns among the 
 Alps at seven thousand to eight thousand feet, and 
 would in the White Mountains if they went as 
 high. But here in these vaster mountain regions 
 than either of Western America, the hills them- 
 selves only begin to rise from the Plains at an 
 elevation of five thousand five hundred feet. And 
 at that hight, though the nights are always de- 
 liciously cool, the summer's days are as warm as, 
 if not warmer than they ever are in the valleys of 
 the New England States, and snow enough for 
 sleighing or to force the cattle to shelter or other 
 food than the prairie grass is only a rare chance, 
 a memory of the oldest, or a dream of the youngest 
 inhabitant. At six thousand or seven thousand 
 
46 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 feet, in the valleys of the mountains, the small 
 grains and the tenderer vegetables are successfully 
 cultivated, and at seven thousand five hundred and 
 eight thousand five hundred feet, potatoes, turnips 
 and cabbages thrive. The Middle Park ranges 
 from seven thousand seven hundred to nine thou- 
 sand feet high in its level sections, and the South 
 from six thousand five hundred to seven thousand 
 five hundred, while the higher plains and embraced 
 hills of both run up to ten thousand and even 
 eleven thousand feet. Yet grass grows richly and 
 abundantly through both ; hay is a great natural 
 crop, and is cured already for all the wants that 
 can be reached ; and in the lower parts of the 
 South Park, cattle winter out of doors, and the 
 smaller grains and hardier vegetables are grown 
 with great siiccess and profit. Flowers are beauti- 
 ful and abundant up to ten thousand or eleven 
 thousand feet, so beautiful and abundant that I 
 must reserve them for special description, the 
 largest and best timber -grows at nine thousand 
 to eleven thousand feet, and trees do not cease 
 till you pass above eleven thousand five hundred 
 feet, while the real, absolute and perpetual snow 
 line, such snow and ice as are found univer- 
 sally in Switzerland at eight thousand feet, is 
 not reached at all in these mountains. At twelve 
 thousand feet, it begins to lie in great patches on 
 the shaded sides of the hills, or in deep ravines, 
 and goes on to multiply in such form as the moun- 
 tains rise to their greatest hight at fourteen thou- 
 sand to fourteen thousand five hundred feet. But 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 4/ 
 
 it absolutely covers no mountain peak; the tops 
 of Gray's Peaks and Mount Lincoln, the highest 
 points in the whole region, are dry and bare, at 
 least at midday, through August, though in reach- 
 ing them you may go over snow fields twenty or 
 thirty feet deep and miles long, though nearly 
 every morning's sun may glance brilliantly off the 
 freshly whitened peaks of all the high mountains- in 
 sight, and though it makes everywhere and at all 
 times a significant feature in all the landscape 
 visions of the country. The full mountains of 
 snow and the vast rivers of ice that belong to 
 Switzerland are not here, and are certainly missed 
 by the experienced mountain traveler ; but for their 
 absence we have many compensations, a more va- 
 ried and richer verdure, a wider range of mountains, 
 with greater variety of form and color, these elevated 
 Parks, that have no parallel anywhere for curious 
 combination of landscape feature and beauty and 
 practical use, a climate in summer that fosters com- 
 fort and makes high mountain travel both much 
 more possible and agreeable, and an atmosphere 
 that, in purity and dryness, in inspiring influence 
 upon body and mind, can find no match in any part 
 of Europe, nor elsewhere in America. 
 
 The third or western great division of Colorado 
 is comparatively unknown. Explorers have crossed 
 it here and there ; adventurous miners have pene- 
 trated into this and that of its valleys ; but it holds 
 no real popu-lation, and its character is known only 
 in a general way. The great * mour 
 s'.iade down irregularly through 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
48 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 interior basin of the West, instead of breaking off 
 almost abruptly, as they do on their eastern side, 
 into the level plains; the Grand, the White, the 
 Green and the Gunnison, the great feeders of the 
 Colorado of the West, slash freely through it, often 
 by narrow and unapproachable gorges, often too 
 through wide and rich valleys ; many a high park, 
 with rough sage brush and tall grass, spreads itself 
 out, cold and dreary in the north, warmer and more 
 fertile in the south. Many a fable of rich mines, 
 of beautiful valleys, of broken and ruined moun- 
 tains, the debris of great conflicts of nature, 
 many a deep faith in untold wealth and unnum- 
 bered beauties do I hear of and about this section 
 of the territory; but the fact remains that it has 
 but few settlers and no especial history, and I 
 gather the conclusion that it is in every way less 
 interesting to traveler, less enticing to speculator 
 or settler, than the middle and eastern divisions. 
 New and thorough explorations are in progress 
 through its lines ; "another year will add something 
 to our knowledge of its valleys and mountains ; but 
 for the present it is perhaps as much unknown land 
 as any section of equal size in the United States. 
 
% IV. 
 
 TRAVEL AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 From Denver up into the Mountains How the Honest Miners 
 Travel, and Colorado Families Make Summer Excursions 
 The Clear Creek Valleys The Scene of Beirstadt's Storm in 
 the Rocky Mountains The Outfit for a Trip to Middle Park 
 We Celebrate the Mule The Upper Valley of Clear Creek, 
 and up the Mountain Side The Flowers, the Shrubs, and the 
 Trees of the Higher Regions. 
 
 TOP OF BERTHOUD PASS, August, 1868. 
 GOING into the mountains from Denver, the trav- 
 eler has choice of several roads. To the north he 
 passes up Boulder Creek to Boulder City and its 
 sub-villages and mining camps ; more directly west 
 are the Clear Creek valley routes, one by Golden 
 City, and on to North Clear Creek, with Black 
 Hawk and Central City, that run into each other 
 and form the chief mining town of the territory, 
 and passing from here over to South Clear Creek, 
 with Idaho, Fall River, Mill City, Empire and 
 Georgetown on its line, this being the daily stage 
 route, and the other, farther south, going up the 
 Mount Vernon road, and striking down into the 
 South Clear Creek valley below Idaho ; while still 
 farther south, where Bear Creek and Turkey Creek 
 3 
 
5O A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 come out of the mountain range, is the road that 
 leads up and through the South Park country. At 
 this season all these roads are good, for mountain 
 roads; in most part quite excellent and much trav- 
 eled, and kept in repair by tolls collected under 
 territorial charters. Fifty miles is the end of the 
 stage line and wagon road at Georgetown ; and a 
 like distance on either road takes you into the 
 midst of the high mountains, and to the foot of 
 the continental range. The Boulder and both the 
 Clear Creek roads all connect by cross-roads in the 
 mountains ; but there is no direct connection be- 
 tween the South Park and the upper Clear Creek 
 valleys save by trails. A tri-weekly stage-wagon 
 goes direct from Denver into the South Park 
 region to supply its villages with mails and carry 
 passengers. 
 
 All these roads introduce one delightfully to close 
 companionship with the mountain scenery, first 
 through the long, wide prairie; then into narrow 
 valleys ; occasionally a bold gorge or canyon and a 
 broken mountain ; up and among and over high 
 hills, commanding majestic views of higher sum- 
 mits beyond ; through little wooded parks or open 
 fields, where grain grows and flocks feed, and some- 
 body keeps " a ranch ; " by lively streams with tan- 
 gles of willows and hops and clematis, and fruity 
 shrubs up the drier and higher banks ; among 
 flowers everywhere, growing finer and plentier the 
 higher you climb; out and in forests of various 
 species of cotton-wood and evergreen, often brown 
 and dead through wasting fires that have swept the 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 5 1 
 
 hill-sides, or half cleared for the consuming rage of 
 the gold and silver furnaces, but still a rich posses- 
 sion of beauty and wealth for the country ; under 
 a sun always searching with heat, but through an 
 atmosphere growing rarer and rarer and drier and 
 drier, and ever fresh and cool, the day's ride is 
 thus a perpetual pleasure and surprise to the new- 
 comer. 
 
 * 
 
 We scattered in disorder on our first trip to the 
 mountains. The Vice-President and the Governor 
 took the stage and fulfilled several appointments 
 to make speeches. Governor Hunt of the Terri- 
 tory made up a camping excursion for the young 
 ladies, with carriage, saddle-horses and outfit of 
 tents, blankets, cooking-stove and "grub" in bulk, 
 and moved leisurely up by the Mount Vernon road, 
 reckless of time or taverns, and stopping where- 
 ever hunger or night overtook them. That patri- 
 arch of the country, General Pierce, and myself, 
 drove "a one-horse shay" by the same route ; and 
 when we grew hungry, we picked out a brook and 
 a choice lot of grass, turned the horse loose for an 
 hour, and lay among the flowers and disposed of 
 huge piles of bread and butter and meat, that 
 we had brought with us, after the fashion of the 
 country. This independent camping habit is al- 
 most the rule with home travelers here. It grew 
 up with the necessities of the early settlements and 
 the roving, straggling ways of the miners. The 
 taverns are not now frequent or good ; the climate 
 favors the outdoor life at this season ; and with 
 provision in abundance, blankets, a coffee-pot, a 
 
52 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 frying-pan, and a sack of flour and a side of bacon, 
 either in a wagon, or packed on an extra horse, if 
 you are journeying in the saddle, even pleasure- 
 travelers find it much the more comfortable and 
 decidedly the more independent mode, while to the 
 old settler, and especially to a miner, it is alto- 
 gether a matter of course. One of these hangs his 
 blanket and his coffee-pot and frying-pan, with a 
 joint of meat and a bit of bread, around his saddle, 
 and without extra animal or companion, is good for 
 a week's journey among the mountains. What he 
 lacks for food he finds in the streams or woods, or 
 buys at the occasional ranch, and at night a de- 
 serted cabin, which is nearly always at hand, where 
 miners have been and are not, or a roadside tree 
 and an open camp fire furnish him shelter and 
 warmth. He sleeps the sleep of the tired, and if 
 it rains and he gets wet, the renewed fire dries 
 him, and the climate never encourages colds. So 
 with the multiple of our single traveler; with com- 
 panions conveniences and comforts increase, but 
 the fashion is the same ; and whole families, 
 mothers and babies included, will, with covered 
 wagon and a saddle-horse or two, make a pleasure 
 visit to the mountains, after this fashion, and live 
 literally on the country for days and weeks, in 
 delightful and refreshing companionship with Na- 
 ture. It was this sort of life that we were all 
 entering upon,- in all its strange novelty and stimu- 
 lating influences. 
 
 We found the Clear Creek valleys generally 
 brisk and beautiful. Between mining and milling 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 53 
 
 and the late floods, the north one is terribly torn 
 to pieces, and looks rough and ragged. Black 
 Hawk and Central City may be good places to 
 get gold in, but there can be no genuine homes 
 ttiere. The valley is too narrow, a mere ravine, 
 and all beauty is sacrificed to use ; though -after 
 all beauty is truly use, but to the mere use of 
 washing out gold. Below and above, the valley 
 widens and is finer ; but over the divide on the 
 South Branch, there is a very charming country to 
 look upon and live in. Below Idaho, gulch mining, 
 which is pretty lively and successful still, despoils 
 the prospect so far as man can ; but the dozen or 
 fifteen miles from Idaho up by Fall River, Mill 
 City and Empire to Georgetown, is quite the nicest 
 bit of the inhabited portion of the mountains^ The 
 valley is not wide, indeed you can heave a stone 
 across it in the narrower, and fire a rifle from hill 
 to hill at its wider parts ; but it breaks out fre- 
 quently into little nooks of plateaus or bars ; it 
 opens up into seductive side valleys or canyons, 
 and it winds and turns about, and sends up its 
 high mountain walls in form and manner, to pre- 
 sent a constantly varying but ever beautiful scene. 
 At the upper end, winter confronts you in show- 
 covered peaks ; below, nature looks warm and sum- 
 mer-like ; and though the valley is from seven thou- 
 sand five hundred to eight thousand five hundred 
 feet high, the days are like June and October, and 
 the winter is not long or severe. Till you reach 
 Georgetown, where the hills shut in the valley 
 sharply, and the rich silver section has its center, 
 
54 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 there is not much mining, and the villages are but 
 neighborhoods of six to a dozen houses each. Ida- 
 ho and Fall River have good hotels, and are favor- 
 ite summer resorts. The former has a wonderful 
 hot soda spring that furnishes most refreshing a'nd 
 health-giving baths. Over it rise a family group of 
 three peaks, distinguishable in all mountain views, 
 and known as the Chief, Squaw and Papoose, and up 
 from the valley here you rise to Chicago* Lake and 
 Chicago Mountain, familiar as the foreground scene 
 in Bierstadt's " Storm in the Rocky Mountains." 
 
 All these mountains go sharply up from two to 
 four thousand feet above the valley, often- past the 
 timber line, and end in snow or bare, grim rocks. 
 They offer unending fascination to the lover of 
 mountain-climbing and mountain views ; while to 
 lie on the grassy banks just above the river, that, 
 in practical parenthesis, it should be noted, runs 
 swift and strong down the rapid descent of the 
 valley, and is full of " water power," in the warm 
 sun, and look through the snowy fleece of grass- 
 hoppers, that with outstretched wings fill the air, 
 up and among them, masses of forest and rock 
 and patches of snow, to the line of brightened 
 blue sky they border, this is just comfort and rest, 
 and is worth the coming to experience. 
 
 It was from here that, sending wagons and women, 
 tents and trunks, back to Denver, and coming down 
 as the miners say to the " bed-rock " of flannel over- 
 shirts and a pocket comb for personal baggage, we 
 started with a select masculine party for a week's 
 trip over into the Middle Park. 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 55 
 
 We. had a number of welcome Colorado volun- 
 teers for this expedition. There were a full dozen 
 of us that gathered after breakfast on mule and 
 horseback in the last camp of Governor Hunt and 
 the young ladies, far up the Clear Creek valley, 
 above Empire. The latter went back, we forward, 
 led by Governor Hunt and Indian Agent Oakes. 
 Charley Utter, a famous mountaineer, trapper, In- 
 dian scout, rove^ such a character as only the 
 American border can breed, small and tough, wiry 
 and witty, intelligent and handsome, alike at home 
 in your parlor or an Indian hut, and to whom all 
 these mountains and parks are as familiar as your 
 own paternal acres are to yourself; he and his 
 assistant, Franklin Ashley, provided our animals 
 and outfit generally, and also came along with u, 
 to guide and help us in our new and strange life. 
 Two extra mules and a horse carried our blankets 
 and provisions and cooking utensils, and the per- 
 sonal baggage of those not weaned yet from carpet 
 bags. 
 
 Some experience as a traveler myself, and more 
 valuable advice from those of larger, had taught 
 me to rise superior to such aristocratic impedi- 
 ments. Indeed, it proved I was outfitted in quite 
 a model way, and had more of what was necessary 
 and less of what was not, than others of the inex- 
 perienced in camp and mountain travel. First, 
 woolen stockings and winter under clothing; and 
 of these, an extra set, with two extra handkerchiefs 
 and two towels, soap, comb and tooth-brush and 
 slippers, only moderately filled a pair of light saddle- 
 
$6 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 bags on my own animal. Over the undershirt was 
 worn a dark and thick cassimere shirt, with turn- 
 over collar of same and pocket in breast, which, 
 coming nowhere in contact with the body, may be 
 worn for weeks without disrespect to your washer- 
 woman. A pair of very thick, high top, riding 
 boots, of extra size; my last winter's thick panta- 
 loons and heavy sack coat, and an old soft hat, 
 flexible as a rag, and answering as well for a night- 
 cap, completed my clothing. No vest or waist- 
 coat, no suspenders ; a strap around the waist held 
 things together, and carried a revolver and a tin 
 cup. Over the saddle-bags behind were strapped 
 a thin woolen overcoat, it better have been thick, 
 and a loose rubber cloth coat ; both which were 
 frequently in use, and were always valuable at 
 night ; and as often in mid-day they had the com- 
 pany around the saddle of the sack coat, and I rode 
 under the warm sun in pantaloons and shirts. It 
 was a neat, complete and compact personal outfit ; 
 everything that was needed for a trip of two or 
 three weeks, and the only modification I would 
 make, in going again, would be to substitute a pair 
 of old shoes for the slippers, and to have the rub- 
 ber overcoat so modified that it would closely cover 
 the legs in trie saddle down to the boot-tops. All 
 this was carried on and around my own saddle ; my 
 bedding alone went on the pack animals, and this 
 consisted of two pairs of heavy blankets, a buffalo 
 robe, a rubber blanket and a pillow, all strapped 
 into a tight roll or bundle, no more than one rest- 
 less sleeper needs in the cold nights of these out- 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 57 
 
 door mountains, but equally abundant for two square 
 and fair sleepers who will turn over at one and the 
 same time and don't kick the clothes off. 
 
 My mule, did you ever ride a mule ? There is 
 no other experience that exactly fits one for this. 
 As far as a mule's brains go, he is pretty sensible, 
 and so obstinate ! But it takes a long while to 
 beat a new idea into his head, and when it dawns 
 on him, the effect is so overpowering that he just 
 stops in amazed bewilderment, and won't move on 
 again until he is relieved of the foreign conscious- 
 nes^, and gets back to his own original possessions. 
 The whole process is s.tartlingly human ; it inspires 
 you with faith in the idea of the transmigration of 
 souls. I know so many people who must have 
 been mules once, or will be, else there is no vir- 
 tue in the fitness of things! But my mule be- 
 longed to the best of the race ; he was prudent, 
 he never went in any doubtful places until some- 
 body else had gone before and proved the way ; he 
 was very patient, he would always stop for me to 
 get off, or to get on ; he was very tough, my spurs 
 never seemed to annoy him one atom, and my rid- 
 ing him didn't wear any skin offofAts backsides, not 
 a bit. But after we grew acquainted, and he came 
 to appreciate the more delicate shades of my char- 
 acter, we got on charmingly together for the first 
 half of the day ; in the afternoon, when he grew 
 lazy and tired, and I nervous, we often had serious 
 discussions, sometimes with sticks, but he gen- 
 erally got the best of the argument. 
 
 If a well-broken Indian pony or a "broncho" 
 
 2* 
 
58 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 (a California half-breed horse) can be got, either is 
 probably better than a mule ; more springy in tread 
 and quicker in movement, and equally careful in 
 mountain-climbing and fording streams and ditches ; 
 but otherwise, the mule is the better animal for your 
 work on these expeditions. A "States" horse can't 
 stand the hard riding and tough climbing, and be- 
 sides must have grain to keep him up, while the mule 
 and the Indian and "broncho" ponies will live on the 
 rich grasses of the country. The latter are apt to 
 be wilful and wicked, and should only be taken, in 
 preference to the mules, upon good references as to 
 character and a trial to boot. 
 
 But " get up, Jenny." We are falling fast in the 
 rear. The narrow valley rapidly narrows, and be- 
 comes a defile, a gorge, wooded and flowered, rock- 
 strewed and briskly watered, a wild Alpine scene. 
 The mountains rise sharp and sheer, one thousand 
 and two thousand feet above the road, and wide 
 walls of red granite hang over it. The stream 
 turns and twists and foams, and we follow a half- 
 made road along, over, in its rugged path. There 
 was an attempt made a few years ago to build a 
 stage road through the mountains and over into 
 Utah by t^is route ; many thousand dollars were 
 spent upon it; but it was found too big a job, and 
 it is passable now for only a few miles farther on. 
 It takes the traveler into and among rich moun- 
 tain beauties ; even to come up here and go back, 
 without an objective point beyond, is abundant 
 recompense. 
 
 After four or five miles of this road, we turn 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 59 
 
 sharply from it up an abrupt mountain trail; in 
 single file, along a mere path on a steep hill-side, 
 a mis-step of the mule would send animal and rider 
 rolling over and over among the sparse trees down 
 the declivity, but mules don't mis-step, and even 
 the top-heavy pack jacks, a mountain on a mole- 
 hill, indeed, carried their burden and themselves 
 unharmed to the top. The thin and thinning air 
 offered severer trial, however, and the beasts strug- 
 gled like huge bellows for wind, and trembled be- 
 neath us in the effort to take in enough to keep 
 going; to get off and walk was to undergo the 
 same trial ourselves, and walking or riding, we had 
 every few rods to stop and adjust the lungs of man 
 and beast to the rare and growing rarer air. There 
 was temptation to stop, too, in the widening view 
 of the upper mountains ; their snowy fields and 
 gray or red or brown walls and peaks lifted into 
 sight, on all sides, close and familiar, distant and 
 stranger, but making us feel, for the first time, 
 their real companionship, that nearness to great 
 and sublime nature that awes and uplifts like the 
 presence of God himself. 
 
 Passing the sharp mountain side, we come, at 
 a hight of ten thousand feet, to pleasant little park 
 openings, ascending by easy grade, half-wooded, 
 and whose bright grass and abundant flowers and 
 deep evergreens tell of fertile soil and protecting 
 hights around. Such spots are frequent in all these 
 high mountain ranges, and are exceeding fair to 
 look upon. They are in their glory at this season ; 
 it is but a little while back to last year's snows, and 
 
6O A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 a few weeks forward to another wintry embrace; 
 and they make the most of their stinted time. So 
 in July and August they compress the growth and 
 the blossom of the whole year ; and we see at 
 once flowers that are passed and flowers that are 
 yet to come in the Plains below ; dandelions and . 
 buttercups, violets and roses, larkspurs and hare- 
 bells, painter's brush and blue gentian, these and 
 their various companions of spring, summer and 
 autumn, here they all are, starring the grass, droop- 
 ing over the brook, improving every bit of sunshine 
 among the trees, jealous of every lost hour in their 
 brief lives. 
 
 I wish I could repeat the roll of this army of 
 beauties for the benefit of my flower-learned read- 
 ers ; I know most of them very well by sight, as 
 the lad said of his unlearned alphabet, but cannot 
 call them by name. Blue and yellow are the domi- 
 nant colors ; of the former several varieties of little 
 bell and trumpet-shaped blossoms, pendant along 
 stalwart stalks ; again, a similar shaped flower, but 
 more delicate, a little tube in pink and white, 
 seems original here; and of the golden hues, there 
 are babies and grand-babies of the sun-flower fam- 
 ily in every shade and shape. One of these, about 
 the size of a small tea-saucer, holds a center stem 
 or spike of richest maroon red, with deepest yellow 
 leaves flaring away from it, each color the very 
 concentration and ripeness of itself, as if dyed at 
 the very fountain head. The harebell is at home 
 everywhere; drooping modestly and alone on the 
 barren and exposed mountain side at eleven thou- 
 
. 
 
 COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 6l 
 
 sand or twelve thousand feet, as well as in the pro- 
 tected parks among all its rivals ; but the fringed 
 gentian is more fastidious, and grows only where 
 nature is richer, but then in such masses, with 
 such deep blueness and such undeviating upright- 
 ness of stem, as to prove its birthright here. The 
 painter's brush, as familiarly called here, is a new 
 flower to me ; something like the soldier's pompon 
 in form, it stands stiff and distinct on a single 
 stalk, about six inches tall, with three inches' length 
 and one inch in thickness or diameter of flower, in 
 every shade of red from deepest crimson to pale 
 pink, and again in straw colors from almost white 
 to deep lemon. We picked on a single morning's 
 ride seven of different shades of red. A bunch of 
 the brightest of this flower, with sprinkling of those 
 of milder hues and a few grasses, such as could be 
 gathered in five minutes in many a patoh of Alpine 
 meadow we passed through, was enough to set a 
 flower-lover crazy with delight. It was a beacon, 
 a flame of color, and would make a room aglow like 
 brilliant picture or wood fire on the hearth. But 
 perhaps the most bewitching of the flowers we dis- 
 covered was a columbine, generous but delicate, of 
 pale but- firm purple and pure white, it was very 
 exquisite in form and shading. Higher up, where 
 only mosses could grow for rock and snow, these 
 were in great variety and richness, with white, with 
 blue and with pink blossoms. 
 
 All this wonderful wealth and variety of flower 
 is marked with strength but not coarseness; the 
 colors are more deep and delicate than are found in 
 
62 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 garden flowers ; and though frost and snow may 
 stiffen their blossoms every morning, for at ten 
 thousand feet high and above, the temperature must 
 go down to freezing every night, the dryness of 
 the air preserves them through their season, and 
 they keep on growing and flowering until their Sep- 
 tember and October winter fairly freezes them out. 
 There is no such variety and beauty in the for- 
 ests of the Rocky Mountains as those of the East 
 and the extreme West both offer. The oak, the 
 maple, the elm, the birch, all hard woods are un- 
 known. Pines, firs and spruces of various species, 
 and the cotton-wood, a soft maple or poplar, with 
 delicate white wood and a pale green and smooth 
 leaf, are all that this region can offer for trees. 
 . Nor are these generally of large size. The forests 
 seem young and the individual trees small, even 
 by the side of those of New England; there is 
 no hint among them of the giants of the Pacific 
 coast. The probability is that they are young, 
 that the Indians kept them well burned off, and 
 that, with settlement and civilization, in spite of 
 the wanton waste now in progress, and against 
 which there should be some speedy protection, the 
 forest wealth will increase. Perhaps not in these 
 first years, but by and by, when coal takes the 
 chief place for fuel, and self-interest and legisla- 
 tion work out their care of the trees, and prevent 
 devastating fires. But many a fine grove of thick 
 and tall pines, that would warm the heart of any 
 ship-builder, have we passed through; and their 
 deep colors and firm forms, contrasting with the 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 63 
 
 light and free-moving cotton-wood, give a pleasing 
 and animated life to the forest landscape. 
 
 But the silver spruce is the one gem of the 
 trees ; a sort of first cousin of the evergreen we 
 call the balsam fir in our New England yards, but 
 more richly endowed with beauty of shape and 
 color. It is scattered plentifully through these 
 mountain valleys, and looks as if a delicate silver 
 powder had been strewn over its deep green 
 needles, or rather as if a light white frost had 
 fallen all upon and enshrouded it ; and you cannot 
 help wondering why the breeze does not shake the 
 powder off, or the sun dissipate the frost, so ever 
 present is the one illusion or the other. But it 
 holds its birthright persistently, a soft white-blue- 
 green combination of positive power that comes 
 into the rather hardish gray neutral coloring of 
 the general landscape with most agreeable, even 
 inspiriting effects. This and another spruce often 
 throw themselves into a very charming form of 
 growth; gathering around an old pine, they will 
 shoot up numerous spires, thin and tall, thicker 
 and shorter, and so shade down to a close, spread- 
 ing mass in a wide semicircle around, a bit of 
 natural cathedral-like posturing in tree and shrub 
 life, so often repeated as to suggest art, so effec- 
 tive as to call out the delight and envy of every 
 landscape artist who sees it. Everywhere among 
 these high mountains, in barren rather than in 
 fertile spots, we unexpectedly find the " Mahonia 
 Holly," a favorite but winter dying shrub of our east- 
 ern lawns ; they call it here the Oregon grape, for it 
 
64 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 bears a little berry, and it is evidently killed to the 
 root every winter, for it gets only a few inches of 
 growth, and I do not find it massed at all. But 
 in its freely scattered little specimens, its deep, 
 smooth and hard green leaves kept company with 
 us until we had passed the timber line, and come 
 out among the snow fields. 
 
V. 
 
 THE MIDDLE PARK. 
 
 The Berthoud Pass " Such a Getting Down" Hill Our First 
 Night in Camp The Middle Park and Across it An Indian 
 Rescue and a Civilized Reception The Mountain Raspberries 
 The Hot Douche Springs Trout Fishing Life with the 
 Ute Indians. 
 
 HOT SPRINGS, Middle Park, August, 1868. 
 AFTER three or four hours' hard riding, from' the 
 upper Clear Creek, we suddenly came out of the 
 trees into an open space of hardy green, bordered 
 by snow, a gap or sag in the mountains, and be- 
 hold we are at the top of Berthoud Pass. The 
 waters of the Atlantic and Pacific start from our 
 very feet; the winds from the two oceans suck 
 through here into each other's embrace ; above us 
 the mountain peaks go up sharp with snow and 
 rock, and shut in our view ; but below and beyond 
 through wide and thick forests lies Middle Park; a 
 varied picture of plain and hill, with snowy peaks 
 beyond and around. To this point, at least, I would 
 advise all pleasure travelers to Colorado to come ; 
 it is a feasible excursion for any one who can sit in 
 the saddle ; it can be easily made with return in a 
 day from Empire, Georgetown or even Idaho ; and 
 
66 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 it offers as much of varied and sublime beauty in 
 mountain scenery, as any so comparatively easy a 
 trip yet within our experience possibly can. 
 
 But to follow us down into the Park is another 
 and tougher affair ; the Colorado ladies do it occa- 
 sionally, but it needs real strength and endurance 
 and an unfaltering enthusiasm. The descent is 
 sharp and rocky, and thick with timber, and worse, 
 wet and miry. Bayard Taylor, who came over in 
 June, found the path heavy with snow, and impass- 
 able to any but heroic travelers ; now the snows 
 are gone, and it is dryer than at any other season, 
 but it is a rough and hard descent, almost perpen- 
 dicular in steepness at times, and full of treacherous 
 holes of water and mire. But we all got through 
 without disaster, and found relief about two o'clock 
 in an open, grassy meadow, with a trout brook on its 
 border. The order to camp was grateful ; animals 
 were turned loose, and we lolled in the sunshine, 
 made and drank coffee, and ate our lunch of bread 
 and butter, ham and canned peaches. 
 
 But we were not in the Park yet, and after an 
 hour's rest, we remounted and moved on, on, 
 on, the road seemed interminable, through thick 
 woods, over frequent morass and occasional moun- 
 tain stream ; deceptive in glimpse of park that was 
 not the Park ; all, save our irrepressible mountain 
 leaders, weary with the long, rough ride, and eager 
 for the end. It was near dark, after traveling from 
 twenty to twenty-five miles in all, when we stopped 
 for the night, in the woods, just without the open 
 section of the Park. A bit of meadow with tall 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 6/ 
 
 grass was at hand for the animals, and, relieved of 
 saddles and packs, away they went, without let or 
 hindrance, to enjoy it. The only precaution taken 
 is to leave the lariat, a rope of twenty to thirty feet 
 long, dragging at their necks, by which to catch 
 them the more easily in the morning. Only a por- 
 tion of the herd are thus provided, however. They 
 rarely stray away far from camp ; and if they should, 
 these people make little of an hour or two's hunt to 
 find them, which they are quite sure of doing wher- 
 ever the best grass grows. The animals are pick- 
 eted only when there is danger from the Indians, 
 or a prompt start is necessary. 
 
 A big fire is soon blazing; a part prepare the 
 supper, tea and coffee, bacon, trout, potatoes, good 
 bread and butter, and, to-night, a grouse soup, the 
 best use Governor Hunt can make of an old bird 
 he shot on the road, to-day, and very good use it 
 proved, too, by help of tin pail, potatoes and butter; 
 others feed the fire, bring the water, and prepare 
 the camp for sleeping. An old canvass cloth serves 
 for table ; we squat on our blankets around it, and 
 with tin cups, tin plates, knife and fork and spoon, 
 take what is put before us, and are more than con- 
 tent. Eating rises to a spiritual enjoyment after 
 such a day; and the Trois Freres or Delmonico does 
 not offer a "squarer meal" than Governor Hunt. 
 The "world's people" make their beds against a 
 huge tree, and cut and plant boughs around the 
 heads to keep out the cold wind ; but the old camp- 
 ers drop their blankets anywhere around the fire ; 
 and after going back over the day and forward to 
 
68 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 the morrow in pleasant chat, sitting around the 
 glowing mass of flame and coal, we crawl in under 
 our blankets, in a grand circle about the now smoul- 
 dering logs, say our prayers to the twinkling stars 
 up through the trees, and, think of those new 
 spring beds invented in Springfield! 
 
 We broke up housekeeping and started into the 
 Park by nine o'clock the next morning. It isn't 
 an easy matter to make an earlier start, when we 
 have to carry our homes with us; cook and eat 
 breakfast ; wash the dishes ; catch the animals ; 
 pack up beds and provisions ; clean up camp, and 
 reconstruct not only for a day's journey, but for a 
 family moving. A short ride brought us into miles 
 of clear prairie, with grass one to two feet high, and 
 hearty streams struggling to be first into the Pa- 
 cific Ocean. This was the Middle Park, and we 
 had a long twenty-five miles ride northerly through 
 it that day. It was not monotonous by any means. 
 Frequent ranges of hills break the prairie ; the 
 latter changes from rich bottom lands with heavy 
 grass, to light, cold gravelly uplands, thin with 
 bunch grass and sage bush ; sluggish streams and 
 quick streams alternate ; belts of hardy pines and 
 tender looking aspens (cotton-wood) lie along the 
 crests or sides of hills ; farther away are higher 
 hills fully wooded, and still beyond, "the range " 
 that bounds the Park and circles it with eternal 
 snows. The sun shines warm ; there are wide red- 
 dish walls of granite or sandstone along many of 
 the hills ; some of the intervales are rich with green 
 grass ; and the sky is deep blue ; and yet the pre- 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 69 
 
 vailing tone and impression of the Park is a coldish 
 gray. You find it on the earth ; you see it in the 
 subdued, tempered, . or faded greens of leaf and 
 shrub and grass ; it hangs over the distant moun- 
 tains ; it prevails in the rocks ; you feel it in the 
 air, a certain sort of stintedness or withholding 
 impresses you, amid the magnificence- of distance, 
 of hight and breadth and length, with which you 
 are surrounded, and which is the first and greatest 
 and most constant thought of the presence. 
 
 We scattered along wildly enough ; some stop- 
 ping to catch trout; others humoring lazy mules 
 and horses ; others to enjoy at leisure the novel sur- 
 roundings, meeting, with fellow-feeling, for lunch 
 and the noon rest, but dividing again for the after- 
 noon ride. All had gone before, leaders, guides, 
 packs, and were out of sight, when my friend and 
 especial companion on this trip, Mr. Hawkins of 
 Mill City, of Springfield raising and relation, and 
 myself rose over the hill that looked down into 
 the valley that was our destination. It was a 
 broad, fine vision. Right and left, several miles 
 apart, ran miniature mountain ranges, before, six 
 miles away, rose an abrupt gray mountain wall ; 
 just beneath it, through green meadow, ran the 
 Grand River; up to us a smooth, clean, gradual 
 ascent ; along the river bank, a hundred white 
 tents, like dots in the distance, showed the en- 
 campment of six to eight hundred Ute Indians, 
 awaiting our party with "heap hungry" stomachs; 
 in the upper farther corner, under the hill-s;de, a 
 faint mist and steam in the air located the famous 
 
7O A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 Hot Springs of the Middle Park, the whole as 
 complete a picture of broad, open plain, set in 
 mountain frame, as one would dream of. It spur- 
 red our lagging spirits, and we galloped down the 
 long plane, whose six miles seemed to the eye not 
 a third so long in this dry, pure air. 
 
 Reaching the river, through the Indian encamp- 
 ment, whose mongrel curs alone gave fighting greet- 
 ing, it looked deep and was boisterous ; our animals 
 hesitated ; and we thought sympathetically of Bay- 
 ard Taylor's sad fortune in making this hard jour- 
 ney into the Middle Park to see and try the Hot 
 Springs, and then being obliged by the flood to 
 content himself with a distant view from this bank 
 of the river. But our comrades had gone over; 
 and the only question was where. Looking for 
 their track, directly there came galloping to our 
 relief a gayly costumed Indian princess, we were 
 sure she was, bare-backed for her haste to succor, 
 and full of sweet sympathy for our anxiety, and 
 tender smiles for our attractiveness in misfor- 
 tune. Plunging boldly into what seemed to us 
 the deepest and swiftest part of the stream, as 
 doubtless it was, she beckoned us to follow, with 
 every enticing expression of eye and lips and hand ; 
 and follow we, of course, did, had it been more 
 dangerous we should, and by folding ourselves up 
 on the highest parts of our animals, we got through 
 without serious wetting. But it proved that we 
 crossed in the wrong place, and that our beautiful 
 Indian princess, with beads and feathers and bright 
 eyes and seductive ways, was only a plain young 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 71 
 
 " buck," not even a maiden, not so much as a 
 squaw, not, to come down to the worst at once, so 
 near to glory and gallantry as a relationship to the 
 Chief. Nothing less than the welcome we had 
 
 from one of the best women of Colorado, whom 
 
 \ 
 
 we? parted from last in Fifth Avenue, and now 
 found spending the summer with her family in a 
 log cabin of one room, with eight hundred Indians 
 for her only neighbors, and the arrival of her 
 husband from his afternoon's fishing with two 
 bushels of fine trout packed over his horse's back, 
 here only was adequate soothing and consolation 
 for our chagrin. And we didn't go into camp that 
 night till after supper, after supper of fresh bis- 
 cuits, fried trout, and mountain raspberries ! 
 
 Let me celebrate these high mountain rasp- 
 berries before the taste goes from my mouth. 
 They grow freely on the hill-sides, from seven 
 thousand >to ten thousand feet up, on bushes 
 from six to eighteen inches high, are small and 
 red, and the only wild fruit of the region worth 
 eating. They are delicate and high-flavored to 
 extreme ; their mountain home refines and ele- 
 vates them into the very concentration and es- 
 sence of all fruitiness; they not only tickle but 
 intoxicate the palate, so wild and aromatic, in- 
 deed, are they that they need some sugar to tone 
 the flavor down to the despiritualized sense of a 
 cultivated taste. Yet they are not so sour as to 
 require sweetening, only too high-toned for the 
 stranger stomach; after sharing their native air 
 a few days, we found them best picked and eaten 
 
72 A SUMMER VACATION IN CANP. 
 
 from the vines. It is one of the motives of family 
 excursion parties into the mountains at this season 
 to lay in a supply of raspberry jam for the year; 
 while the men catch trout, the women pick rasp- 
 berries, cook and sugar them in the camp-kettle, 
 and go home laden with this rare fruity sweet- 
 meat. Here in the Middle Park we were kept in 
 full supply of the fresh fruit by the Ute squaws, 
 who, going off into the hills in the morning, often 
 two together astride the same pony, and a little 
 papoose strapped on its board over the back of 
 one, would come back at night with cups and pails 
 of the berries to exchange with the whites for their 
 own two great weaknesses, sugar and biscuit. But 
 the bears get the most of the raspberries so far. 
 They are at home with them during all the season, 
 and can pick and eat at leisure. 
 
 The Hot Springs of the Middle Park are both 
 a curiosity and a virtue. They are a considerable 
 resort already by Coloradians at this season, and 
 when convenient roads are made over into the Park, 
 there will be a great flow of visitors to them. We 
 found twenty or thirty other visitors here, scattered 
 about in the neighborhood, while parties were com- 
 ing and going every day. The springs for bathing, 
 and the rivers for fishing, are the two great attrac- 
 tions. On the hill-side, fifty feet above the Grand 
 River, and a dozen rods away, these hot sulphurous 
 waters bubble up at three or four different places 
 within a few feet, and coming together into one 
 stream flow over an abrupt bank, say a dozen feet 
 high, into a little circular pool or basin below. 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 73 
 
 Thence the waters scatter off into the river. But 
 the pool and the fall unite to make a charming 
 natural bathing-house. You are provided with a 
 hot sitz bath and douche together. The stream 
 that pours over the precipice into the pool is about 
 as large as would flow out of a full water pail turned 
 over, making a stream three to five inches in diame- 
 ter. The water is so hot that you cannot at first 
 bear your hand in it, being 110 Fahrenheit in 
 temperature, and the blow of the falling water and 
 its almost scalding heat send the bather shrieking 
 out on his first trial of them ; but with light experi- 
 ments, first an arm, then a leg, and next a shoulder, 
 he gradually gets accustomed to both heat and fall, 
 and can stand directly under the stream without 
 flinching, and then he has such a bath as he can 
 find nowhere else in the world. The invigorating 
 effects are wonderful; there is no lassitude, no chill 
 from it, as is usually experienced after an ordinary 
 hot bath elsewhere ; though the water be 1 10 warm, 
 and the air 30 to 40 cold, the shock of the fall is 
 such a tonic, and the atmosphere itself is so dry and 
 inspiring, that no reaction, no unfavorable effects 
 are felt, even by feeble persons, in coming from one 
 into the other. The first thing in the morning, the 
 last at night did we renew our trial of this hot 
 douche bath during our brief stay in the neighbor- 
 hood, and the old grew young and the young joyous 
 and rampant from the experience. Wonderful cures 
 are related as having been effected by these springs ; 
 the Indians resort to them a good deal, put their 
 sick horses into them, and arc loth to yield control 
 
 4 
 
74 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 of them to the whites ; and in view of their proba- 
 ble future value, there has been a struggle among 
 the latter for their ownership. They are now in 
 the hands of Mr. Byers of the Rocky Mountain 
 News at Denver, under a. title that will probably 
 defy all disputants. The waters look and taste 
 precisely like those of the Sharon Sulphur Springs 
 in New York. The difference is that these are 
 hot, those cold. They have deposited sulphur, iron 
 and soda in quantity all about their path, and these 
 are their probable chief ingredients. 
 
 Over a little hill from the springs, by the side of 
 the Grand River, the hill, the stream, and a half 
 mile between us and the Indian encampment, 
 we settled down in camp for two days and a half, 
 studying Indian life, catching and eating trout, tak- 
 ing hot douche baths in the springs, and making 
 excursions over the neighboring hills into side val- 
 leys. The river before us offered good fishing, but 
 better was to be found in Williams Fork, a smaller 
 stream a few miles below, where a half day's sport 
 brought back from forty to sixty pounds of as fine 
 speckled trout as ever came from brooks or lakes 
 of New England. They ranged from a quarter of 
 a pound up to two pounds weight each, and we had 
 them at every meal. 
 
 The Indians were very neighborly ; hill, stream 
 and distance were no impediment to their atten- 
 tions ; their ponies would gallop with them over all 
 in five minutes ; and from two to a dozen, men and 
 boys, never the squaws, were hanging about our 
 camp fires from early morning till late evening. 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 75 
 
 Curiosity, begging and good-fellowship were their 
 only apparent motives; they did no mischief; they 
 1 stole nothing, though food and clothing, pistols and 
 knives, things they coveted and needed above all 
 else, were loosely scattered about within reach ; 
 they only became a nuisance by being everlastingly 
 in the way and spoiling the enjoyment of one's 
 food by their wistful observation. Mrs. Browning 
 says, you remember, that observation, which is not 
 sympathy, is simply torture. And not a bit of sym- 
 pathy did they show in our eating except as they 
 shared. We 'were as liberal as our limited stores 
 would allow; but the capacity of a single Indian's 
 stomach is boundless ; what could we do for the 
 hundreds? 
 
 These Utes are a good deal higher grade of In- 
 dian than I had supposed. They are above the 
 average of our Indian tribes in comeliness and in- 
 telligence; and none perhaps are better behaved 
 or more amenable to direction from the whites. 
 There are seven different bands or tribes of them, 
 who occupy the mountains and parks of Colorado 
 and adjoining sections of New Mexico and Utah. 
 The bands number from five hundred to one thou- 
 sand each. This one consisted of about seventy- 
 five " lodges" or families, each represented by a r tent 
 of cloth stretched over a bunch of poles gathered 
 at the top, and spreading around in a small circle. 
 The poles leave a hole in the top for the smoke of 
 a fire in the center beneath, and around which the 
 family squat on their blankets and pile their stores 
 of food and skins and clothing. Probably there 
 
76 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 were six hundred in the camp near us, men, women 
 and children. They look frailer and feebler than 
 you would expect; I did not see a single Indian' 
 who was six feet high or would weigh over one 
 Hundred and seventy-five pounds ; they are all, in- 
 deed, under size, and no match in nervous or phys- 
 ical force for the average white man. Some of both 
 sexes are of very comely appearance, with fine hands 
 and delicate feet, and shapely limbs, with a bright 
 mulatto complexion, and clear, piercing eyes ; but 
 their square heads, coarse hair, hideous daubs of 
 yellow and red paint on the cheek and forehead, 
 and motley raiment, here a white man's cast-off 
 hat, coat or pantaloons, if squaw a shabby old gown 
 of calico or shirt of white cloth, alternate with In- 
 dian leggins and moccasins, bare legs and feet, a 
 dirty white or flaming red blanket, beaded jacket 
 of leather, feathers, and brass or tin trinkets hang- 
 ing on the head, from the ears, down the back or 
 breast, all these disorderly and unaccustomed com- 
 binations give them at first a repulsive and finally 
 a very absurd appearance. The squaws seem to 
 be kept in the background, and, except when brides 
 or the wives of a chief, dress much more plainly 
 and shabbily than the bucks. They are all more 
 modest and deferential in appearance and manners 
 than would be expected ; and I saw no evidence of 
 or taste for strong drink among this tribe, none 
 of them ever asked for it, while their desire for food, 
 especially for sugar and biscuit, was always mani- 
 fest. The sugar they gobble up without qualifica- 
 tion, and such unnatural food as this and fine flour 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. // 
 
 breed diseases and weaknesses that are already de- 
 stroying the race. Coughs are frequent, and dys- 
 pepsia ; sickness and deaths are quite common 
 among the children ; and this incongruous mixture 
 of white man's food and raiment and life with their 
 own, which their contact with civilization has led 
 them into, is sapping their vitality at its fountains. 
 To make matters the worse, they have got hold of 
 our quack medicines, and are great customers for 
 Brandreth and other pills, with the vain hope of 
 curing their maladies. In short, they are simple, 
 savage children, and in that definition we find sug- 
 gesteH the only proper way for the government to 
 treat them. 
 
 Their wealth consists in their horses, which they 
 breed or steal from their enemies of other tribes, 
 and of which this tribe in the Middle Park must 
 have a couple of hundred. They live on the game 
 they can find in the parks and among the moun- 
 tains, moving from one spot to another, as seasons 
 and years change, the proceeds of the skins of the 
 deer and other animals they kill, roots, nuts and 
 berries, and the gifts of the government and the 
 settlers. It is altogether even a precarious and 
 hard reliance ; the game is fast disappearing, save 
 of trout we have not seen enough in all our trav- 
 els, among the mountains to feed our small party 
 upon, if it had all been caught ; and the govern- 
 ment agents are not always to be depended upon 
 in making up deficiencies. Our neighbors had 
 lately come over from the North Park, where they 
 had hunted antelope to some purpose and with 
 
78 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 rare fortune, killing four thousand in all in two 
 or three weeks, half of them in a single grand 
 hunt. They cut the meat into thin slices and 
 dry it, so that it looks like strips of old leather ; 
 and as we went about their camp we saw the 
 little, weakly children pulling away at bits of it, 
 apparently with not very satisfactory results. Our 
 tribe was in trouble about a chief; the old one was 
 dead, and there were two or three contestants for 
 the succession ; but the wrangle was not half so 
 fierce as would arise over a contested election for 
 mayor of a white man's city. 
 
 Affairs always seemed very quiet in the Indian 
 camp in the day-time ; the braves played cards, or 
 did a little hunting; the squaws gathered wood, 
 tanned skins, braided lariats, or made fantastic 
 leather garments ; the boys chased the ponies ; but 
 at night they as invariably appeared to be having a 
 grand pow-wow, rude music and loud shouting 
 rolled up to our camp a volume of coarse sound 
 that at first seemed frightful, as if the preparatory 
 war-whoop for a grand scalping of their white 
 neighbors, but which we learned to regard as the 
 most innocent of barbaric amusements. Though 
 these Utes are quite peaceful and even long-suffer- 
 ing towards the whites, they bear eternal enmity 
 to the Indian tribes of the Plains, and are always 
 ready to have a fight with them. Each party is 
 strongest on its own territory, the Arapahoes, 
 Comanches and Cheyennes on the prairies, and 
 the Utes among the hills ; and each, while eager 
 to receive the party of the other part at home, 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 79 
 
 rarely go a-visiting. The Plains Indians are better 
 mounted and better armed ; chiefly because, keep- 
 ing up nearly constant warfare with the whites, 
 they have exacted prompter presents and larger 
 pay from the government. The Utes complain, 
 and with reason, that their friendliness causes 
 them to. be neglected and cheated ; while their 
 and our enemies thrive on government bounty. 
 
 There is now a plan for all the Ute tribes to go 
 together into the south-western corner of Colorado, 
 away from the mines and the whites, and there, 
 upon abundant pastures and fruitful mountains, en- 
 gage in a pastoral and half agricultural life ; to set 
 up stock-raising on a large scale, and such tillage as 
 they can bring themselves to, under the protection 
 and aid of the government. The scheme is a good 
 one; the Indians agree to it; and the bargain has 
 been made by the government agents here, all that 
 is needed is for the authorities at Washington to fur- 
 nish the means for carrying it into execution. So 
 far as our observation extends, the greatest trouble 
 with our Indian matters lies at Washington; the 
 chief of the cheating and stupidity gathers there ; 
 while the Indian agents here upon the ground are, 
 if not immaculate, certainly more intelligent, sensi- 
 ble; and practical, and truer to the good of the set- 
 tler and the Indian than their superiors at the seat 
 of government. 
 
VI. 
 
 FROM MIDDLE PARK BY BOULDER PASS. 
 
 The Longing Lingering in Middle Park Professor Powell and his 
 Explorations The Canyon of the Colorado Over the Boulder 
 Pass in a Snow Storm A Cold Night and a Warm Noon Camp 
 Night in a Barn By Boulder and Central to Mill City and 
 Georgetown. 
 
 MILL CITY, Colorado, August, 1868. 
 WE were loth to leave the Middle Park. I 
 counted the hot douche sulphur baths, and tried 
 to multiply them by six, then by two ; but it was 
 of no use, the Vice-President travels by time- 
 table ; and the ladies were in Denver, and the 
 grand expedition to South Park was ahead. I 
 looked longingly through the hills up the valley 
 of the Grand ; beyond I knew there lay a wilder 
 country than we had seen, and under the shadow 
 of Long's Peak, Grand Lake itself, a large and fine 
 sheet of water, alive with trout, and rich in com- 
 manding beauty. We galloped over the bare hills 
 the other way, and looked off down the valley. 
 Bits of rare stone, agates and jaspers and crystals 
 and petrifactions, lay everywhere about ; and over 
 the river, a dozen miles off, was the famous " moss 
 agate patch," where these peculiar crystallizations 
 covered the ground; Williams Fork came rollick- 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 81 
 
 ing down the opposite hill-sides through a line of 
 trees, with innumerable breakfasts of uncaught 
 trout, and a wide green meadow at the mouth for 
 camping ground; while far on in the landscape, 
 the Grand found magnificent pathway for twenty- 
 five miles through a broad field of heavy grass, 
 the gem, the kernel of the Middle Park ; then 
 turning abruptly west, it shot through the moun- 
 tains by a canyon, lapped up the Blue on the other 
 side, and, thus strengthened, poured out southward 
 for the Colorado and the Pacific Ocean. It was 
 this way we should have gone out, down the 
 Grand and up the Blue, all within the capacious 
 boundaries of the Middle Park, but time and the 
 provision bag forbade. Yet there was nothing in- 
 viting in the return by the Berthoud Pass ; there 
 could be nothing worse than its mire and its rough 
 ascent ; another way would at least be new, and 
 we voted to go out by its rival for a railroad track, 
 the Boulder Pass. The Governor (Hunt) and the 
 Indian agent, finding their talk with the Indians 
 not eloquent enough to convince by lack of food 
 and blankets, had gone back by the old route, 
 taking a dozen or twenty of the leading braves 
 with them, to seek arguments where the freight 
 was not so expensive. The Indian sees the point 
 of an idea always through a full stomach and a 
 warm back, and it required a whole beef and sev- 
 eral barrels of flour and sugar and a dozen blankets 
 to prove to them that a petty technical amendment 
 by the Senate to their last treaty was just right. 
 We had made familiar and friendly acquaintance 
 
82 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 with Professor Powell's scientific exploring party, 
 from Illinois, while in the Middle Park. They were 
 in camp there for some time, and made it the end 
 of their summer and the beginning of their winter 
 campaign. The party comprises a dozen or more 
 enthusiastic young men, interested in one depart- 
 ment or other of natural science, or eager for bor- 
 der experiences, mostly from Illinois, and giving 
 their time and labor to the expedition for the sake 
 of the education and the health. Professor Powell, 
 the originator and head, does more; the govern- 
 ment furnishes food, allowing it to be drawn from 
 the supplies of the nearest post, and the Illinois 
 University and Natural History Society contribute 
 small sums of money ; but he draws upon his pri- 
 vate purse for all deficiencies, and these must be 
 many thousands of dollars before he gets through. 
 The summer has been spent among the higher 
 Mountains and in the Parks, taking careful notes 
 with barometer and thermometer, collecting flowers 
 and birds and larger animals, and studying the rare 
 geological phenomena of the country. Their col- 
 lection of birds is very full and valuable, and num- 
 bers over two hundred different specimens. 
 
 Professor Powell, two or three of his assistants, 
 and Mr. Byers, of the Denver News, who knows all 
 these mountains better than any other man, proba- 
 bly, have just accomplished the ascent of Long's 
 Peak. This is the prominent north-eastern moun- 
 tain of the Coloradian series, is seen from the Rail- 
 road, and is fourteen thousand feet high, and has 
 heretofore defied all the efforts of explorers and- 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 83 
 
 mountaineers to reach its top. They had a terribly 
 hard climb of it, but felt amply paid in the glory 
 of the fact, and more in the glory of the landscape 
 spread before them at the summit. The plains and 
 mountains to the north beyond the Railroad, the 
 unending eastern plains, with Denver and the in- 
 tervening settlements below and to the south, the 
 whole of Middle Park, and the surrounding and far- 
 beyond mountains, all Colorado, as it were, and 
 part of Wyoming, lay beneath their eyes. Streams 
 flowed out from the mountain in all directions, and 
 no fewer than thirty-nine lakes on that and the 
 neighboring mountain sides, nearly all of and above 
 the altitude of ten thousand feet, were visible from 
 their commanding hight. 
 
 From here the explorers will follow down the 
 Grand River, out of the Park into western Colo- 
 rado, and then strike across to the other and larger 
 branch of the great Colorado River, the Green, and 
 upon that or some of its branches, near the line of 
 Utah, spend the winter in camp, studying up their 
 past achievements, and preparing for the next sum- 
 mer's campaign. The great and final object of the 
 expedition is to explore the upper Colorado River 
 and solve the mysteries of its three hundred mile 
 canyon. They will probably undertake this next 
 season by boats and rafts from their winter camp 
 on the Green ; but they may postpone the adven- 
 ture till another year, and meantime discover and 
 reveal the mountains and plains of western Colo- 
 rado and eastern Utah, which are so little known. 
 But the mocking ignorance and fascinating reports 
 
84 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 of the course and country of the Colorado ought 
 to hasten them to this interesting field. The maps 
 from Washington, that put down only what is abso- 
 lutely, scientifically known, leave a great blank space 
 here of three hundred to five hundred miles long 
 and one hundred to two hundred miles broad. Is 
 any other nation so ignorant of itself? All that 
 we do know goes to show that, beginning with the 
 union of the Grand and the Green Rivers, the Colo- 
 rado is confined for three hundred miles within per- 
 pendicular walls of rock averaging three thousand 
 feet high, up which no one can climb, down which 
 no one can safely go, and between which in the 
 river, rapids and falls and furious eddies render 
 passage frightful, certainly dangerous, possibly im- 
 possible. 
 
 The general conviction of the border population 
 is that whoever dares venture into this canyon will 
 never come out alive. But we have an authentic 
 account this season of a man who made the trip 
 last year and lives to tell the tale. He and a com- 
 panion, prospecting for gold in south-western Col- 
 orado, and driven by Indians, took to the Grand 
 River just before its union with the Green, made 
 a raft and committed themselves to the waters. 
 Foaming rapids and a whirlpool swept the com- 
 panion and all the provisions off, and they were 
 lost, while White, the surviving hero's name, with- 
 out food, passed seven days more, a second seven 
 days, upon these strange waters, between frowning 
 walls, over dangerous rapids, through delaying ed- 
 dies, before he reached Callville in Arizona, the 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 85 
 
 first settlement and the head of navigation on the 
 river. His entire journey upon the river must 
 have exceeded five hundred miles, and he repre- 
 sents that for most of the distance it was through 
 these traditional high walls, impassable as a for- 
 tress, a dungeon over a cataract. 
 
 Nearly all of the rivers of Colorado and Utah run 
 for brief distances, from one to twenty-five miles, 
 through these gorges of rock ; or they " canyon," 
 as, by making a verb out of the Spanish noun, 
 the people of the country describe the streams as 
 performing the feat of such rock passages, where 
 their banks are inapproachable, and trails or roads 
 are sent over or around ; but this rock-guarded 
 career of the great river of the interior basin of 
 the Continent is the grand canyon of the world, 
 and one of its most wonderful marvels. Its passage 
 in well protected boats by careful navigators can 
 scarcely be deemed impracticable, Jiowever dan- 
 gerous, and the country will await the Powell move- 
 ment through it with eager interest. 
 
 The whole field of observation and inquiry which 
 Professor Powell has undertaken is more interest- 
 ing and important than any which lies before our 
 men of science. The wonder is they have neg- 
 lected it so long. Here are seen the central forces 
 that formed the Continent ; here more striking 
 studies in physical geography, geology, and natural 
 history, than are proffered anywhere else New 
 knowledge and wide honors await those who cata- 
 logue and define them. I can but think the in- 
 quiry, vast and important as it is, is fortunate in its 
 
86 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 inquirer. Professor Powell is well educated, an en- 
 thusiast, resolute, a gallant leader, as his other title 
 of Major and an absent arm, won and lost in the 
 war, testify, seemingly well-endowed physically 
 and mentally for the arduous work of both body 
 and brains that he has undertaken. He is every 
 way the soul, as he is the purse of the expedition ; 
 he leads the way in all danger and difficulty,' and 
 his wife, a true helpmeet, and the only woman with 
 the party, is the first to follow. 
 
 But while talking with the Professor, our re- 
 duced party has chosen a new leader, General R. 
 F. Lord of Georgetown, ^and is packed, bridled 
 and saddled for the start. We cross the river, 
 look gratefully and regretfully for the last time on 
 the Hot Springs, pass through the Indian encamp- 
 ment, and go lingering back over the long hill 
 that we had galloped down so gladly three days 
 before. Two*thirds the day's ride was the same 
 we had passed over in coming in ; then we turned 
 to the left, the Boulder Mountain lying on the 
 opposite side of the lower end of the Park from 
 Berthoud ; and soon we pas-sed into a succession of 
 woods and open meadows, alternating with pictur- 
 esque effects, as we gradually ascended the moun- 
 tain, and offering fine views of sections of the Park 
 from occasional bluffs. The grass was thicker and 
 greener than in the more exposed parts of the Park ; 
 the pines and firs and cotton-wood were in, full va- 
 riety and beauty; and the flowers grew gayer, alto- 
 gether it was a pleasanter country to ride leisurely 
 through than we had yet met with. 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. S/ 
 
 At the end of some twenty-five miles, we camped 
 for the night, in the edge of the woods, fronting an 
 open area of water-courses, grass and willows, with 
 plenty of evidence that the beavers had a settle- 
 ment there. An old bower of evergreens was 
 cleared up and strengthened to lay our blankets 
 under; and big fires kept off the cold of a ten 
 thousand feet elevation, until three to four o'clock 
 in the morning, when, by their subsidence and the 
 increasing chill, everybody was in a shiver, and 
 glad enough that an early call to morning duty 
 soon summoned us up and astir. The water was 
 freezing, and the grass and shrubs were stiff with 
 frost, so stiff and yet so dry from lack of moisture 
 in the air, that neither then, nor after the sun had 
 softened them, was there wet to be won by walking 
 among them. It was a perfectly dry freeze, and 
 this is why these summer frosts do no more harm 
 to vegetation, and delicate flowers thaw out and go ^ 
 on in their sweet short life in these high mountains. 
 
 The clouds gathered, and the rain-drops fell, as 
 we finished breakfast and packed and saddled for 
 the cold hard ride over the mountains. In an hour 
 we were out of the timber, and a dreary waste of 
 rock, relieved only by a thin grass at first, then by 
 mosses, and always by flowers, lay before and all 
 around us. The storm grew thick and fast, hail 
 and snow; the trail wasted itself in the open area; 
 the ground was being rapidly covered with the 
 white snow; straggling was forbidden, and "close 
 up" and "push on" were the orders from the front. 
 The promised view of park and plains, of range on 
 
88 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 on range, was lost ; only thick, dark clouds, hanging 
 over impenetrable abysses, were around and below 
 us ; the storm bit like wasps ; beards gathered snow 
 and ice; the mules and horses winced under the 
 blasts, it was a forlorn looking company for a 
 pleasure party. 
 
 But there was exhilaration in the unseasonable 
 struggle; there was something jolly in the idea of 
 thus confounding the almanacs, and' finding- Feb- 
 ruary in August. At the summit of the Pass, 
 thirteen thousand feet highf the storm abated its 
 intensity to let us dismount and pick out of the 
 snow the little yellow flowers that crept up among 
 the rocks everywhere. Then it rolled over again, 
 and now witK thunder and lightning, pealing and 
 flashing close around us. Here our laggard pack 
 mules with their drivers came hurrying up and for- 
 ward; Charley Utter saying as he spurred them by 
 that perhaps we might like it, but for him "hell was 
 pleasanter and safer than a thunder-storm on the 
 range." 
 
 But as we descended the elements calmed; the 
 clouds opened visions of the new valleys, and flashes 
 of sunlight unveiled the great mysteries of the up- 
 per mountains. Summer was again around us ; and 
 though it was hardly noon, the spot we had reached 
 was so rarely charming, and the sun so refreshing, 
 that we halted, loosed our animals, made our coffee, 
 lunched, and basked on the rocks in the sunshine 
 for a long, delightful hour. We were on a narrow 
 crest of the mountain, shooting out into the valley, 
 and not over twenty feet wide. On either side, 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 89 
 
 there was a sharp almost perpendicular descent for 
 at least one thousand feet in one case, and seven 
 hundred and fifty in the other. At the foot on our 
 right were two lovely lakes, one almost an absolute 
 circle, rock and grass bound, fed by great snow- 
 banks between us and them, and feeding in turn 
 the South Boulder Creek. On our left, a grassy 
 slope, so steep that it was impossible to walk down 
 except in long zigzags, and far away at the bottom 
 among the trees ran the North Boulder from out 
 the mountains. Everywhere about us, where the 
 snow and the rocks left space, were the greenest of 
 grass, the bluest of harebells, the reddest of paint- 
 er's brush, the yellowest of sunflowers and butter- 
 cups. All, with brightest of sun and bluest of sky, 
 made up such a contrast to our morning ride that 
 we were all in raptures with the various beauties of 
 the scene, and feel still that no spot in all our travel 
 is more sacred to beauty than this of our noon camp 
 on Boulder. 
 
 But, as if to frame and fasten the picture still 
 more strongly, we were hardly in the saddle again, 
 before the storm set in anew, and we rode all the 
 afternoon under snow or rain. There is what is 
 called a road over into Middle Park by this Pass, 
 and strong wagons with oxen or mules make the 
 passage; but the difficulties they encounter are 
 frightful, mud and rocks, rivers and ravines, it 
 ishard to imagine^ how any wheels can surmount 
 them and remain whole, and few do. Our trail 
 followed the road only in part ; it made short cuts 
 over hills, through woods, and across valleys, and 
 
9O A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 was full of variety, annoyance, sometimes of diffi- 
 culty; but we found all less vexatious than the 
 descent of Berthoud Pass, and, following the South 
 Boulder Creek, came at last, wet and weary, into 
 the nearly deserted mining visage of South Boul- 
 der. Here we found welcome around the fire of 
 the post-office ; a deserted cabin was thrown open 
 to us for our baggage and our meals; and a big 
 barn's loft with fresh hay furnished a magnificent 
 bedroom. We dried, we ate, having fresh meat, 
 cream and vegetables added to our bill of fare, and 
 we slept, all in luxury. Half the village was pre- 
 occupied by a large party of men and women, some 
 twenty to thirty, from the villages farther down the 
 valley, on their way into the Park by the road we 
 had come out. They had ox teams for their bag- 
 gage, saddle animals to carry themselves, and a cow 
 to furnish fresh milk ; and thus generously, equipped 
 were jollily entering upon camp life among the 
 mountains for ten days or a fortnight. 
 
 An early start the next morning, and a rapid gal- 
 lop of ten miles over good roads, across the hills, by 
 scattered saw-mills, farm-houses, and mining-camps, 
 brought us into the valley of North Clear Creek, and 
 to the higgledy-piggledy but brisk town of Cen- 
 tral City in season for the morning stage to Denver. 
 Our old friends here gave us hearty welcome, but 
 stared at our costumes in grim dismay, and some 
 took us for " honest miners" come to town from the 
 mountains for fresh supplies. Here, too, the party 
 separated ; the Vice-President going on to Denver 
 vfrith some of the others ; but the Governor (Bross) 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 91 
 
 and myself and our Georgetown friends, first eating 
 a French dinner by way of contrast to camp diet and 
 manners, rode on over another range of hills into 
 the South Clear Creek valley. And here, again, a 
 bath at the Idaho warm springs, and a couple of 
 days' rest and recreation at Mill City and George- 
 town have prepared us for another and still more 
 select expedition into the highest mountain tops of 
 the country. 
 
VII. 
 
 OVER GRAY'S PEAK TO SOUTH PARK. 
 
 A Private Outfit for a Grand Mountain Excursion Gray's Peaks 
 and What They Showed Us The Finest Mountain View in the 
 World Saturday Night Camp in the Snake River Valley 
 Sunday Travel with Commodore Decatur A Butter Ranch 
 How Life Goes in Camp, and What it Costs The Blue River 
 Valley Breckenridge, and over the Range into South Park' 
 through Thunder and Lightning, Hail and Rain. 
 
 SOUTH PARK, Colorado, August, 1868. 
 WHILE the Vice-President, Governor Hunt, and 
 a considerable party of Denver friends were to 
 accompany our ladies into the South Park by the 
 usual wagon road from that point, Governor Bross, 
 General Lord and myself made a short cut but 
 rougher journey over two high ranges of moun- 
 tains, much of the way impassable to vehicles, and t 
 met them here. Our chief object was to ascend 
 Gray's Peaks, the highest summits yet accurately 
 measured in the Colorado mountains, and from 
 their central position commanding the widest -and 
 most majestic views to be obtained in the country. 
 Such a load as we put on our single pack mule : a 
 great overtopping cube of blankets and sacks of 
 meat and bread, and four little feet sticking out 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 93 
 
 beneath, were all that could be seen as it went 
 shaking along on a mysterious trot. Sending the 
 outfit and our outfitter, Ashley Franklin, by an 
 easier path over to where we intended to camp for 
 the night, we three started early Saturday morning 
 from Georgetown, distance fifteen miles to Gray's 
 Peaks, and, by virtue of mines among the moun- 
 tains, a good wagon road two-thirds the way. It 
 was an object to get to the summit as early as 
 possible, before afternoon haze or cloud should dim 
 the view, and we galloped rapidly through aspen 
 groves, then among larger pines, by the side of 
 rapidly descending streams, around and around, up 
 and up, and finally out above the trees/where grass 
 and flowers had all life to themselves, and again 
 above these and only thin mosses lived" among the 
 stones, and yet still higher, where the mountains 
 became great walls of rock, or immense mounds of 
 broken stone, as if they had been run through a 
 crusher for the benefit of Mr. Macadam. Such 
 was the character of Gray's Peaks. Great patches 
 of snow divided place with the rocks, and fed the 
 clear, cold rivulets that. started out, from every shel- 
 tered nook or side of the mountains ; but they only 
 added to the cold dreariness of the scene. The 
 only life was grasshoppers, here they were still 
 by thousands, by millions, sporting in the air and 
 frisking over the snow, but the latter's chill seemed 
 soon to overcome their life, for they lay dead in 
 countless numbers upon its white surface. In 
 some places the dead grasshoppers could have 
 been shoveled up by the bushels, and down at 
 
94 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 the edges of the snow cold grasshopper soup was 
 to be had ad libitum. There was a feast here for 
 the bears, but we could see none enjoying it. 
 
 Gray's Peaks, great mounds or monuments of 
 loose, broken stone, shoot up sharply from a 
 single base, in the midst of very high mountains 
 all about. Their sharpness increases the appear- 
 ance of the fact of their superior hight. Below, 
 the two seem but a rifle shot apart; above, they 
 are manifestly several miles away from each other; 
 but their common paternity, their similarity in form, 
 effect and views, entitle them to bear the common 
 name. It was probably given originally to the 
 lower peak alone by Dr. C. C. Parry of St. Louis, 
 who has been, so far, the most thorough scientific 
 explorer of the higher mountain regions of Colo- 
 rado, and in honor of the distinguished Cambridge 
 botanist, Professor Gray ; but though there are per- 
 sistent rivals for the name of the other and higher 
 peak, Dr. Parry himself, we believe, has suggested 
 that of Professor Torrey for it, the local judgment 
 insists that they shall go together with the name of 
 Gray. There are now trails for horses to the top 
 of each, that to the higher was nearly finished 
 while we were there ; and though the path to the 
 lower is the more easy and familiar, our ambition 
 was not content with anything less than the high- 
 est, and spite of fatigue and cold we struck out 
 for it. Going through a snow-drift at least fifteen 
 feet high, and coming out above all snow deposits, 
 we fastened our animals with stones at the end of 
 the path, and slowly toiled .the remaining quarter 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 95 
 
 of a mile over the loose rocks, the thin air oblig- 
 ing us to stop every three minutes to gain our 
 breath, and at high noon sat upon the highest 
 peak of the highest known mountain of the great 
 Rocky Mountain range. Dr. Parry made the lower 
 peak fourteen thousand two hundred and fifty-one 
 feet high; the highest must be at least fourteen 
 thousand five hundred. 
 
 The scene before us was ample recompense for 
 double the toil. It was the great sight in all our 
 Colorado travel. In impressiveness, in overcom- 
 ingness, it takes rank with the three or four great 
 natural wonders of the world, with Niagara Falls 
 from the Tower, with the Yosemite Valley from 
 Inspiration Point. No Swiss mountain view car- 
 ries such majestic sweep of distance, such sublime 
 combination of hight and breadth and depth ; such 
 uplifting into the presence of God ; such dwarfing 
 of the mortal sense, such welcome to the immortal 
 thought. It was not beauty, it was sublimity; it 
 was not power, nor order, nor color, it was majesty; 
 it was not a part, it was the whole ; it was not man 
 but God, that was about, before, in us. Mountains 
 and mountains everywhere, even the great Parks, 
 even the unending Plains seemed but patches among 
 the white ranges of hills stretching above and be- 
 yond one another. We looked into Middle Park 
 below us on the north ; over a single line of moun- 
 tains into South Park, below us on the south, but 
 beyond both were the unending peaks, the everlast- 
 ing hills. To the west, the broadest, noblest ranges 
 of mountains, there seemed no breaks among them 
 
96 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 except such as served to mark the end of one and 
 the beginning of another, and no possible limit to 
 their extension. The snow whitened all, covered 
 many, and brought out their lines in conspicuous 
 majesty. Over one of the largest and finest, the 
 snow-fields lay in the form of an immense cross, 
 and by this it is known in all the mountain views 
 of the territory. It is as if God h^.s set His sign, 
 His seal, His promise there, a beacon upon the 
 very center and hight of the Continent to all its 
 people and all its generations. Beyond this up- 
 lifted what seemed to be the only mountain in all 
 the range of view higher than the peak upon which 
 we stood. It is named Sopris Peak upon some of 
 the maps, but has never been explored, and is more 
 completely covered with snow than any other. 
 
 Turning to the east we find relief in the softer 
 and yet majestic and unending vision of the Plains, 
 on, on they stretch in everlasting green and gray 
 until lost in the dim haze that is just beginning to 
 rise along the horizon. Directly below us, great 
 rough seams in the mountain sides, as if fire and 
 water had been at work for ages to waste and 
 overturn ; dreary areas of red and brown and gray 
 rocks; masses of timber; bits of green in the far- 
 down valley ; flashes of darkness where little lakes 
 nestled amid the rocks, fed. by snow, and feeding 
 the streams, Nature everywhere in her original 
 forms, and her abounding waste of wealth, as if 
 here was the great supply store and workshop of 
 Creation, the fountain of Earth. Looking from 
 side to side, above, below, and around, impressed, 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 97 
 
 oppressed everywhere with the presence of the Be- 
 ginning ; it was almost unconsciously and instinct- 
 ively that we turned again and at last, as Mrs. Brown- 
 ing makes Romney Leigh, "toward^the east:" 
 
 -where faint and fair, 
 
 Along the tingling desert of the sky, 
 Beyond the circle of the conscious hills, 
 Were laid in jasper-stone as clear as glass 
 The first foundations of that new, near Day, 
 Which should be builded out of heaven, to God." 
 
 It was difficult to leave this citadel of earth, this 
 outpost of heaven ; but our time and our strength 
 were both exhausted. The long gallop, the hard 
 climb, more, the excitement of the vision of earth 
 and sky at this elevation of over fourteen thousand 
 .feet above the ocean level had used up our nerve- 
 power ; the cool breezes, too, chilled us ; and after 
 lunching, we regained our horses, and pushed down 
 the other side of the mountain from that we came up. 
 
 There was only a dim trail to follow, running 
 hither and thither around and among the hills, and 
 then across and along the valleys of the streams that 
 came in from every mountain crevice and snow- 
 bank. We crossed Colfax Park, a little gem of grass 
 and flowers, with Colfax Lake at its head, a great 
 rock bowl of clear water, high in the hill-side, and 
 pouring its surplus over a sharp natural wall of 
 stone, so named by an enthusiastic and apprecia- 
 tive miner in the lower valley, who would hardly be 
 reconciled with us that we had not brought the 
 Vice-President to witness how happily and fitly he 
 had been honored here. We passed also through 
 5 
 
98 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 many a beaver village ; but the inhabitants gave us 
 no visible welcome ; they modestly let their works 
 speak for them. The woods grew thick and mel- 
 low ; the aspen tender, the spruces silver-hung and 
 silver-tongued ; and we came at last, a long ten 
 miles from the summit of Gray's Peak, to our 
 proposed camping spot, the junction of two forks 
 of the Snake River and of the two trails from 
 Georgetown. 
 
 Here, the grass was abundant, the stream ran pure 
 and strong, unpolluted by miner's mud, fuel was 
 plenty, even the mosquitoes sang a welcome, but 
 no Ashley Franklin, no pack-mule was to be seen, 
 no blankets, no food, no nothing, that belonged to 
 us, but weariness and hunger. We sounded the 
 war-whoop of the country, a shrill, far-reaching, 
 cry ; and back the voices came, not only from our 
 lagging outfit, but from miners here and there among 
 the hills, just finishing their day's work, and won- 
 dering who had come into their wilderness now. 
 The mules took up the refrain, and bellowed from 
 "depths that overflow" their welcome to each other. 
 Soon we were at home, the coffee brewing, the ham 
 stewing, and a hole through the peach can ; Com- 
 modore Decatur, the prince of prospectors, the char- 
 acter of all Colorado characters, dropped in to bid 
 us welcome to his principality, on his way from mine 
 to cabin ; under the frosts of night and the smoke 
 of the camp fire, the merry mosquitoes flew away; 
 our tent was raised, our blankets spread ; and the 
 peace of Saturday night .and a day richly spent 
 reigned over us four and no more. 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 99 
 
 But camp life is not all comfort. This very 
 blessed Saturday night on the Snake River, the 
 wind took turns in coming out of the three or four 
 valleys that converged upon our camping-ground, 
 and blew the virulent smoke in upon us. Shift the 
 fire, change the blanket, still the smoke followed 
 us, as if charmed, and was discomfort and sleep- 
 lessness to all, poison to at least one. There was 
 a yearning for something delicate for the Sunday 
 morning breakfast, a bit of cream toast, or a soft 
 egg, and some milk-ameliorated coffee; but the 
 knurly little "Jack," that carried our a bed and 
 board," had no provision for sensitive stomachs, 
 and we had to take our victual and drink "straight," 
 plain ham and bread and butter and black cof- 
 fee, or go without. But hat best and cheapest of 
 doctors and nurses, the sun came to our relief; and 
 later in the day a pitcher of butter-milk completed 
 and capped his healing triumphs. Mr. Richardson 
 records my sarcastic contempt for buttermilk three 
 years ago, but I .take it all back now, no cup of it 
 shall ever pass from my lips again other than empty. 
 It comes to a faint and forlorn stomach like woman's 
 sympathy to a bruised heart. 
 
 Governor Bross galloped back into the hills to 
 make a call at a solitary cabin half a dozen miles 
 away; Commodore Decatur dropped in with the 
 Lord's blessing on his lips, and picked me up for a 
 ride down the river, whither we were bound ; 
 General Lord followed along with his fishing-pole, 
 lingering over the streams ; and the mule and his 
 master strolled more leisurely after, to protect the 
 
IOO A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 rear and gather in the Governor. There was a 
 rough wagon road most of the way, chiefly through 
 woods, occasionally across an open park, frequently 
 over or in the stream, but the hills kept close guard, 
 and the eye was not allowed to wander far away for 
 beauty. But the " Commodore/' who, to thirty years 
 of schools and civilization, has added twenty of bor- 
 der life in Mexico, in Nebraska and in Colorado, liv- 
 ing at times amorig the Indians, and for many a 
 season in his solitary cabin in these elevated valleys, 
 kept me entertained with his original experiences, 
 his keen observations on men and manners, and his 
 quaint yet rich philosophies. He is an old Greek 
 philosopher, with an American variation ; as wise 
 as Socrates, as enthusiastic as a child, as mysteri- 
 ous in life and purpose as William H. Seward or 
 an Egyptian sphynx, as religious as a Methodist 
 class-leader, he ranks high among the individual 
 institutions and idiosyncracies of Colorado, such as 
 Governor Hunt, Editor Goldrick and Charley Ut- 
 ter, whom not to know is to miss the next piquant 
 things to its Mountains and Parks. 
 
 We sauntered thus through ten miles in four 
 hours, gathering up at last the stragglers in the 
 rear, and came out then into a grand opening in 
 the valley. The timber disappeared ; the hills 
 sharpened into a dead wall on one side, and swept 
 away in soft rolling outlines on the other ; a wide 
 stretch of intervale lay between, while pretty groves 
 of trees tempered the distant knolls and broke the 
 abruptness of forests beyond. We were again, 
 indeed, in Middle Park, though a high range of 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. IOI 
 
 mountains and a long, hard ride separated us from 
 that part of it which we visited the week before. 
 
 Away under a bluff, a speck in the distance, was 
 a log-cabin, " the Georgia Ranch," towards which 
 we now rode with freshened speed. Here in a 
 cabin of two rooms, with a log milk-house outside, 
 the only dwellers in this rich pasture park, were a 
 man, his wife and daughter; their home and farm 
 were in Southern Colorado, but they had come up 
 here in the spring with forty or fifty cows, and 
 were making one hundred and forty-five pounds of 
 butter a week, and selling it to the miners in the 
 cabins and camps among the hills ten to fifteen 
 miles around, for seventy-five cents a pound ; when 
 the snows begin to fall in October, they will drive 
 the herd back to their southern pastures, the in- 
 crease of the cows will pay all expenses, and the 
 one hundred dollars a week or more cash for but- 
 ter and milk, is clear profit. The dairy cabin was a 
 " sight to behold," such piles of fresh golden butter, 
 such shelves of full pans of milk, there wasn't 
 room for another pound or pan; and yet the de- 
 mand far exceeds the supply, it was a favor to 
 be allowed to purchase the treasures of " Georgia 
 Ranch." It was our "Commodore's" Sunday di-^ 
 version to ride down these dozen miles, fill his 
 weekly butter-pail and his milk-can, and gallop 
 back in season, for a Sunday night supper with 
 his cabin comrade of " mush and milk." 
 
 These mining hermits in the mountains manage 
 to live well, they become adepts in cooking ; with 
 flour and meal and fresh meat, potatoes and onions, 
 
IO2 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 dried and canned fruits, the bill of fare is appetizing ; 
 and the cost of the "best tables" is from seventy-five 
 cents to one dollar a day. Nor are they always thus 
 exiles from society ; their season in the hills, hunt- 
 ing new lodes or developing old ones, is confined 
 to the summer; when cold and snow come, they 
 flee to the villages or to Denver, to live as lei- 
 surely and luxuriously as what they have made the 
 past season or hope to make the next will permit. 
 
 We "packed" a bottle of cream, filled our water 
 canteen with milk, took Decatur's Methodistic ben- 
 ediction, "May the Lord take a liking to you," 
 with a hearty "amen," and rode down the valley, 
 by numerous soda and other mineral springs, three 
 or four miles farther, to our camp for the night. 
 This was at a still more picturesque spot, a trinity 
 of rivers, a triangle of mountains. The Blue and 
 the Snake Rivers and Ten Mile Creek all meet and 
 mingle here within a few rods"; each a strong, hearty 
 stream, from its own independent circle of moun- 
 tains ; and while the waters unresisting swam to- 
 gether, the hills stood apart and away, frowning in 
 dark forests and black rock, and cold with great 
 snow-fields, overlooking the scene, which green 
 jmeadows, and blue sky, and warm sun mellowed 
 and brightened. A neck of land, holding abun- 
 dant grass and fuel, between the three rivers at the 
 point of junction, offered a magnificent camping- 
 ground. It is a spot to settle down upon and keep 
 house at for a week. Ten Mile Creek overflows 
 with trout ; General Lord took ten pounds out of a 
 single hole in a less number of minutes, a single fish 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. IO3 
 
 weighing about three pounds ; and deer and game 
 birds must be readily findable in the neighborhood. 
 The Blue isn't blue, its waters have been troubled 
 by the miners, and it gives its name and mud color 
 to the combined stream, which flows off through an 
 open, inviting valley to join the Grand, and thence 
 to make up the grand Colorado of the West 
 
 We had a lesson in precaution, after unloading, 
 and proceeding to make camp here, by finding that 
 nobody had any matches ; we could not shoot flame 
 but of our metallic-cartridge pistols ; nor had we the 
 Indian accomplishment of rubbing fire out of two 
 sticks ; so the best mule was put over the road to 
 the "Ranch" and back at a very un-mule-like-gait, 
 to bring us the means of kindling our camp fire. 
 But we had a sumptuous supper, of cream toast and 
 trout, with milk for our coffee, and a sweet night in 
 camp, though lulled to sleep by the roll of thunder 
 and the patter of a brisk shower, with high wind and 
 sharp lightning ; and we turned reluctantly up the 
 valley of the Blue, the next morning, with the reso- 
 lution to come to stay at this point another season. 
 
 We had come this way through a little obstinacy 
 of our own, instead of taking the common and short 
 cut over the hills, from the valley of the upper Snake 
 to Breckenridge, sure that the conjunction of the 
 Blue, the Snake and Ten Mile must offer something 
 worth seeing in the way pf valley and mountain 
 scenery ; and so we were quite proud of our gener- 
 ous repayment, and desire all future travelers to 
 make a note of our route, and follow it. The val- 
 ley of the Blue, both above and below where we 
 
IO4 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 struck it, is altogether one of the most interesting 
 scenic sections of the territory ; it should be taken 
 in going into or out from the Hot Springs ; there 
 is no route. so rich in interest and beauty as that 
 through it from the Middle to the South Park, or 
 vice versa, or from Georgetown over Gray's Peaks 
 into either Park, and we were sorry not to have 
 time for wider exploration of its lines. 
 4 Our day's ride now followed up the river to its 
 very head in the mountains. The first eight miles 
 was through a fine open grazing country, and we 
 found a magnificent herd of fat cattle, strongly 
 marked with Durham blood, enjoying its rich 
 grasses. They had been sent up here to fatten 
 for the summer from some of the ranches of the 
 lower valleys, and, perhaps, to furnish fresh beef to 
 the mining camps, which are quite numerous among 
 the side valleys of the neighborhood. Nearly all 
 our day's ride we were in sight of the ditches that 
 had been built to carry water to the rich beds of 
 sand that were in course of being washed over for 
 gold deposits at various localities in the valleys. 
 One of these ditches is twelve miles long ; tapping 
 the Blue away up in the mountains, it takes a vigor- 
 > ous stream along and around the mountain sides, 
 up and down, from gulch to gulch, parting with 
 portions at different points on the route to little 
 companies of miners at so much per foot ; and, de- 
 ployed into sand-banks, swept through long boxes, 
 tarried in screens and by petty dams, it does its 
 work of separating the tiny particles of gold from the 
 earth, and finds its way back to the parent stream, 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. IO5 
 
 miles from where it left it, but bringing the pol- 
 lutions of the world and of labor with it. Many 
 thousands of dollars are invested in these ditches ; 
 sometimes they are made and owned by individ- 
 uals, who also work the mines or deposits of gold to 
 which they lead, but oftener now they belong to 
 companies that have no other interest than to sell 
 water from them to those who mine alone. Gener- 
 ally they have passed out of the hands of their 
 builders, who rarely realized anything but expecta- 
 tions, vast and vain, from them. 
 
 At Breckenridge we got above the washings, 
 and the river was clear again. This is the center 
 of these upper mining interests, but a village of 
 only twenty or thirty cabins, located ten thousand 
 feet high, and scarcely habitable in winter, though 
 many of the miners do hibernate here through the 
 season of snow and cold that begins in early Octo- 
 ber and ends in June. There is a good hotel here, 
 of logs to be sure, with a broad buxom matron, 
 and black-eyed beauties of daughters, to whom, 
 after dinner, we consigned Governor Bross, with 
 warning against his fascinations, while General 
 Lord and myself, with our guide, went on over 
 the range into the South Park. The miners were 
 to be gathered in the next night for speeches from 
 the Vice-President and the Governor, and the lat- 
 ter awaited the occasion and the former's arrival. 
 
 There was a good wagon road all our way, lead- 
 ing from Breckenridge to the summit of Brecken- 
 ridge Pass, through open woods, flower-endowed 
 meadows, a broken, various and interesting moun- 
 5* 
 
IO6 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 tain country, often giving majestic views of the 
 higher and snow-crowned peaks, with glimpses of 
 valleys and parks below and beyond. The Pass is 
 just above the timber line, about twelve thousand 
 feet high, and as we mounted it, a cold storm gath- 
 ered upon the snow-fields above us, wheeled from 
 peak to peak in densely black clouds, and soon 
 broke in gusts of wind, in vivid lightning, in start- 
 lingly close and loud claps of thunder, in driving 
 snow, in pelting hail, in drizzling rain. We were 
 below the storm's fountain, but near enough to see 
 all its grand movements, to feel its awful presence, 
 to be shaken with fear, to gather inspiration. The 
 rapidity of its passage from side to side, from peak 
 to peak, was wonderful; the crashing loudness of 
 its thunderous discharges awful; one moment we 
 felt like "fleeing before the Lord," the next charmed 
 and awed into rest in His presence. 
 
 But it was dreary enough, when the thundering 
 and the flashing ceased, and the clouds stopped 
 their majestic movement, and hung in deep mists 
 over all the mountains and the valleys, and the rain 
 poured ceaselessly down. The poetry, was gone, 
 and gathering overcoats and rubber .closely about 
 us, we bent our heads to the undeviating shower, 
 and pushed gloomily and ghastily on. It seemed a 
 long ride down mountain side and through valley 
 to Hamilton, woods that made us feel even more 
 pitiful ; open valleys that made the rain more piti- 
 less; streams twisted out of place and shape by 
 ruthless miners ; desolated cabins, doorless, window- 
 less, even the storm was more inviting ; Tarryall, 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. IO/ 
 
 where thousands dug and washed sands for gold 
 three and four years ago, and now only two or 
 three cabins, mud-patched and turf-warmed, sent 
 forth -the smoke of home; a solitary dirt-washer 
 trudging along from his day's mountain work, with 
 dinner-pail and pickax, out at last, where, through 
 the opening mists, we could see the long, level 
 reaches of South Park, and into Hamilton, fifty 
 or more vacant or decaying cabins and two log 
 hotels, where one thousand men mined in '60 to 
 '64, and gayety and vice reigned, and now a dozen 
 or twenty men and three or four women were the 
 entire population ; a grimy, dirty looking village of 
 the past, for all the world in the storm like an old 
 Swiss mountain village, with manure heaps in front 
 of the houses, and a few sorry looking horses and 
 mules scattered about the pastures. 
 
 It was a comfortless promise after so comfortless 
 a ride. We passed on by the village to a plateau 
 above the river, and tried to make camp ; but 
 everything was wet, the water especially so and 
 very muddy; we couldn't start a fire; our guide 
 was obstinate for going to the hotel, and after long 
 struggling against it, we capitulated and went. We 
 gained shelter and warmth, and a good supper, and 
 chapters of country experiences around the fire with 
 the tobacco, and a small bed for two ; but there are 
 more real comfort and better air and greater clean- 
 liness and real independence in camp than in these 
 pent-up mountain inns. It was hard to accept such 
 compromise with civilization after the luxuries we 
 had enjoyed in our ground and tent homes. 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE SOUTH JJARK AND MOUNT LINCOLN. 
 
 Sunshine and Reunion in the South Park The Beauties of the 
 Park Camping Experiences The Ascent of Mount Lincoln, 
 the Mother of the Mother Mountains A Snow Storm on the 
 Summit Montgomery and Fairplay The Everlasting Plattes 
 Over the Range again into the Arkansas Valley. 
 
 UPPER ARKANSAS VALLEY, August, 1868. 
 WITH the morning at Hamilton came sunshine 
 and beautiful views of the South Park country, that 
 lay spread out before us in unending stretches of 
 green prairie ; here lifted up by a perfect embank- 
 ment to a new level and going on again in another 
 plain ; there rolling off into hills with patches of 
 evergreen ; now bringing down from the mountains, 
 still through pastures green, tributaries to the main 
 river ; offering on every hand glimpses of beckon- 
 ing repetitions of itself through and over hills; 
 while all around in the distant horizon huge moun- 
 tains stood sentinel, guarding this great upper 
 garden-spot of the territory, as if jealous lest its 
 frontiers be invaded, its lands despoiled. No so fine 
 a combination of the grand beauty of the plains, 
 of the lovely beauty of the hills, of the majestic 
 beauty of the mountains ever spread itself before 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 109 
 
 my eyes. Water-courses were abundant, groves 
 and forests were placed with sufficient frequency 
 to diversify the scene and relieve and kindle the 
 eye, while mountains, near and remote, gave their 
 impressive sanction and completeness to the pic- 
 ture. The coloring was brighter yet softer than in 
 Middle Park ; and we felt that Colorado had indeed 
 reserved her choicest landscape treasures for us to 
 the last. 
 
 Before noon, six miles away, we caught sight of 
 our companions from Denver, coming over the hill, 
 some on horseback, some in light carriages, and 
 the rest in wagons with the baggage. They looked 
 like one of the patriarchal families of Old Testa- 
 ment times, sons and daughters, servants and asses, 
 moving from one country to another, in obedience 
 to high commandment; and as if representatives 
 of another tribe, we rode out to. greet and welcome 
 them to our goodly land. We propitiated their 
 stomachs with our treasured big trout; and after 
 lunch upon the open prairie, the grand caravan 
 moved on, in somewhat disorderly array. 
 
 We made a dozen miles, along the northern line 
 of the Park, over a rich, rolling country, starred 
 by occasional lakes, darkened by frequent forests, 
 shadowed by the everlasting snow fields of the 
 mountains. The inevitable afternoon storm came 
 upon us midway, and we rode into Fairplay, the 
 most considerable town of the South Park country, 
 variously wet and considerably disgusted. The la- 
 dies stopped by the hospitable fires of the village, 
 while the men went on, and made camp on a hill 
 
IIO A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 overlooking the valley, shaded by a few old and 
 stunted pines, and circled by a miner's ditch full of 
 furiously running water. Here half a dozen fires 
 were kindled, as many tents stretched, and, the 
 storm passing away, everybody came into camp, and 
 sleep followed supper to the satisfaction of all. 
 
 We moved but a dozen miles the next day, up 
 into the mountains more closely, and near Mont- 
 gomery, from whence some of us were to ascend 
 Mount Lincoln the day after. These winding val- 
 leys, leading out from the Park proper to the moun- 
 tains, are very beautiful, and the road between Fair- 
 play and Montgomery, which lies close under the 
 highest mountains, offers a succession of brilliantly 
 picturesque mountain and valley views. The val- 
 leys are broad, and fertile with green grass, and 
 bright with flowers, and broken with forest patches, 
 while the mountains rise all about in every attitude, 
 and reach up on every hand to snow-fields, flashing 
 in the morning and reddening in the evening sun. 
 
 Our camp was a gay one that night,-^it lay scat- 
 tered along a green hill-side," a few rods from a river, 
 and directly under a forest ; fuel was abundant, and 
 the fires burned bright and high in all directions ; 
 we were not worn with the day's travel ; anticipa- 
 tion of the mountain excursion the next morning, 
 was keen and exhilarating; and song and speech 
 and dance around the central camp fire exhausted 
 the hours till bed-time. 
 
 It was a happy thought to call the parent moun- 
 tain of this region, of the whole Rocky Mountain 
 range proper, for the President who guided the 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 1 1 1 
 
 Nation so proudly through civil war and slavery to 
 peace and freedom. Peer among presidents and 
 mother among mountains is LINCOLN. The higfrer 
 Gray's Peak is as high, possibly a hundred or two 
 feet higher; but Mount Lincoln is broader, more , 
 majestic, more mountainous. Out from its wide- 
 spreading folds stretch three or four lines of snow- 
 covered mountains ; within its recesses spring the 
 waters of three great rivers, the Platte, the Arkan- 
 sas and the Colorado, that fertilize the plains of 
 half the Continent, and bury themselves, at last, 
 two in the Atlantic and the third in the Pacific 
 Ocean. This is the initial point in our geography, 
 and a fountain-head of national wealth and strength. 
 This geographical parentage, the representative as- 
 sociation of its name and office, and the enthusiasm 
 kindled by our accounts of the view from Gray's 
 Peak, spread a zest among our party for climbing 
 Mount Lincoln ; and though the morning was 
 strewn with showers, and huge black clouds hung 
 over the mountain tops in alternation with great 
 rifts of sunshine, these revealing fresh-fallen fields 
 of snow, we determined to take our chances, and 
 galloped .off, a dozen strong, women and men, up 
 the valley to Montgomery. 
 
 The rain poured relentlessly through these five 
 miles ; but then the sunshine came out, and joined 
 by half a dozen more at that point, we turned di- 
 rectly up the mountain side. For two or three 
 miles there is a rough wagon road; beyond that 
 not even a trail'that is fixed. Catching sight of 
 the distant goal, we scattered irregularly over the 
 
112 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 intervening slopes and ravines ; first through rich- 
 est grasses and most abundant and high-colored 
 fl'owers ; then across huge snow-fields, so soft un- 
 der the summer sun, that our animals could not 
 bear us without floundering in dangerous depths, 
 and we had to dismount and walk and lead; next 
 over wide but steep fields of thin mosses, delicate 
 in leaf and blossom to the last degree, pink and 
 white and blue, the very final condensed expres- 
 sion of nature ; all beauty, all tenderness, all sweet- 
 ness in essence; and at last, beyond all growth, 
 beyond all snow, out upon miles of broken stones, 
 immeasurably deep, as steep as they could lie. 
 
 To ascend over these was tough work; the wind 
 blew biting cold; clouds charged with hail and 
 snow every few minutes swept over, through us; 
 the air was so rare that the animals labored for 
 breath at every step; the sides so steep and the 
 stones so loose as to render the footing fickle, 
 even dangerous ; we could only make upward prog- 
 ress in slow degree by long, zigzag courses back 
 and forth ; and every few minutes the panting, 
 trembling horses and mules would come to a stub- 
 born stop in very fear of their footing. Then we 
 had to dismount and reassure them by leading the 
 way, or find firmer paths. But at last we got as 
 far as horses could go ; and a climb of five hundred 
 feet remained for ourselves of even steeper and still 
 loose-lying rocks to the summit Then we found 
 our hearts and lungs, if never before ; work as fast 
 as they could, shaking our very frames in the haste 
 to keep up with their duty, we still had to stop and 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 113 
 
 rest every thirty or forty feet, and let them get 
 even with the air. 
 
 Finally on the very crest of the mammoth moun- 
 tain, the one spot higher than all others, than all 
 around so far as could be seen. Our hopes our 
 fears belied, our fears our hopes in turn ; the sweep 
 of the horizon was broken by thick clouds ; and we 
 could not compare the view with its rival, from 
 Gray's Peak ; but the contending elements lent a 
 new majesty, almost a terror to the scene. Sun- 
 shine and storm were continually at war; clouds 
 and clearness constantly changing places ; now it 
 was all light to the east, and Gray's Peak and all 
 the intervening mountains to the Plains, the Plains 
 themselves, Denver itself glowed in gdden sun- 
 shine, while in the west everything was shrouded 
 in blackness and despair; then the clouds came 
 upon and over us, pelting us with snow, and pass- 
 ing by opened great lines of brightness to the west, 
 and we could see on to indefinable distances of 
 snow-covered mountains, Sopris Peak, the moun- 
 tain with the snow cross, a continent of rocks and 
 snow, dreary yet beautiful in color, majestic yet fasci- 
 nating in form. So we caught long narrow glimpses 
 of the South Park, and the Arkansas valley, south 
 of us ; and Pike's Peak in one direction and Long's 
 Peak in another were not denied us, sentinels of 
 nature in the far off corners of the territory, rising 
 above clouds, over intervening storms ; while deep 
 chasms, yawning recesses opened in ghastliness 
 through the clouds below us on every side. 
 
 The whole vision, fickle, forbidding in many fea- 
 
114 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 tures, always surprising, never satisfying, piqueing 
 us by what was withheld, astonishing us by what 
 was given, though disappointing our hopes, yet was 
 vastly finer than our fears. It was the wildest of 
 mountain views and mountain experiences, such as 
 may be welcomed as a variety, though not chosen 
 as the. reward for a single excursion. Similar ex- 
 periences in the high Alps are tamer every way; 
 there is less variety in the landscape ; less color in 
 the mountains and the. atmosphere ; above all, less 
 sweep of distance, less piling of mountain on moun- 
 tain, through the long openings in the clouds. 
 
 We waited as long as the freezing air and the 
 driving snow would let us for wider views of earth 
 and sky; but clouds and storm growing denser, 
 and having finished our lunch -of sandwiches and 
 sardines, pickles and peaches, and, coffee being out 
 of the question, a necessary flask of whisky, we re- 
 traced the tedious, hard-going way to the valley. 
 Far up, where only rocks reigned, beautiful white 
 and blue birds, like large doves, but called moun- 
 tain partridges, trotted or flew tamely about us ; 
 and a revolver sadly repaid the faith of some of 
 them. Back among the flowers, we gathered large 
 bouquets of bright painter's brush, harebells, fringed 
 gentians, lupins and quaint grasses, and rode into 
 Montgomery aglow with color and excitement, and 
 wet alike from perspiration, snow and rain. 
 
 The whole excursion up from and back to Mont- 
 gomery occupied five hours. The distance cannot 
 be more than six miles to the top ; and the hight 
 of the mountain, though never exactly measured, 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 115 
 
 must exceed fourteen thousand feet above the sea 
 level. The wildest estimates are made by the local 
 population of these higher peaks of Colorado ; but 
 unless it be Sopris Peak in the far West, it is not 
 probable that any one of them rises as high as 
 Mount Whitney in the Sierra Nevada of California, 
 which is known to be above fifteen thousand feet. 
 Gray, Lincoln, Pike's and Long's Peaks are the 
 four great mountains of explored Colorado; they 
 are all above fourteen thousand feet high, but prob- 
 ably no one goes higher than fourteen thousand 
 five hundred. 
 
 Montgomery, which lies close at the foot of 
 Mount Lincoln, on the inside, and is about ten 
 thousand feet high, is another of the deserted 
 mining towns of Colorado. There are a hundred or 
 two houses standing, but only one now occupied. 
 Several years ago, the mines in the hill-sides were 
 rich and remunerative, and a population of two 
 or three thousand were gathered there. There 
 was an opera house, and saloons and stores by the 
 dozens ; but the more readily worked ore gave out, 
 there were no means to reduce profitably what fol- 
 lowed in the mines, and fresher discoveries else- 
 where invited the people "to move on." "Buck- 
 skin Joe" is another similar town, five miles off, 
 under another spur of Mount Lincoln. There are 
 good and rich mines at both places, and new ones 
 are even still being discovered ; but like most of 
 the ores of Colorado, they await cheaper labor 
 and simpler and more searching processes of treat- 
 ment for their profitable use. 
 
1 16 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 The solitary family in Montgomery, cultivated, 
 tasteful people, such as we find everywhere among 
 these mountain recesses, gave us a rich hospitality, 
 which means a "square meal" and a hearty wel- 
 come, and, sunshine being now permanently the 
 victor, we had a pleasant 'afternoon ride down the 
 valley, by our now deserted camp of the night be- 
 fore, along the clear-running juices of old Lincoln, 
 winding about among her child-hills, their snow-tops 
 reddening under the descending sun, and giving 
 depth and richness to the verdure of valley and 
 forest. Reaching Fairplay at dusk, we found the 
 rest of the party, those who did not go up Mount 
 Lincoln, had gone ten miles farther on, with tents, 
 bag and baggage, and left us to the miserable re- 
 source of a night's life in town. But the long- 
 stretching log hotel and the country habit of close- 
 packing, no house is ever full here, so long as any 
 bed has less than four in it, or there is -a vacant 
 corner to lay a blanket, made accommodations 
 for us all, even though the village was unusually 
 crowded that night by reason of Mr. Colfax and 
 Governor Bross stopping over to make speeches. 
 But we missed the better victual, the wider space, 
 the purer air of camp; and duly anathematized 
 Governor Hunt and his various "little Indians," 
 for running away from us. 
 
 The Platte River divides, subdivides, and redi- 
 vides almost indefinitely ; and when we get up here 
 among its head waters, the brain fairly grows con- 
 fused with the number of its forks or branches. 
 The same name extends to the remotest subdivi- 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 117 
 
 sion ; and we have the " north branch of the south 
 fork of the South Platte ; and the middle fork of 
 the north branch of the south fork of the South 
 Platte, and so on ad infinitum. I wish the Colo- 
 radians would abolish the sinuosities and multipli- 
 cations, and put the Plattes into numerals, as Platte 
 i, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. I verily believe they would 
 run up to the hundreds ; but that would be better 
 than the " Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pep- 
 pers" nomenclature. Perhaps, though, they mean 
 to make their geography take the place of classics 
 as a discipline for the youthful mind ; if so, they 
 have hit upon a very ingenious substitute, not to 
 say improvement. As between learning the Plattes 
 and conjugating a Greek verb, where's the choice 
 for hardness? All the time we were in the South 
 Park, we were among Plattes, and getting to the 
 heads of Plattes, and each was big enough and 
 independent enough to go alone, and to deserve a 
 name to itself. Fairplay lies on the Platte, and so 
 did every one of our camping grounds for a week. 
 I believe I have exhausted my adjectives and 
 every known variety of picture frame in trying to 
 set the South Park landscapes in the mind's eye 
 of the reader. But their soft coloring, their rich 
 variety of outline, their long sweep of distance, 
 their greyish-green grasses, their deep-green ever- 
 greens, their silvery-green aspens, their summer pic- 
 tures in their winter frames, here August, there 
 rising around always January, only seeing can be 
 feeling and believing. Especially beautiful and ex- 
 hilarating to sense and spirit are the approaches to 
 
Il8 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 the mountains out from the central basin or prairie. 
 First, over slight and soft-rolling hills, through wide 
 valleys, around spurs of the mountains into new 
 valleys, each succeeding one narrower, finally into 
 canyons or chasms, and then up the abrupt hill- 
 side ; flowers that had deserted the plains now 
 'beginning, then trees ceasing, and snow-banks ap- 
 pearing; and finally catching the cold western 
 wind as it sweeps over the crest of pass or hill. 
 Occasionally, in the open prairie country, a ranch 
 where some successor of David tends his flocks; 
 in the narrow valleys, or on the hill-sides, the de- 
 serted cabins of gold-hunters, who had passed on ; 
 every six or eight miles a new Platte to cross ; and 
 at each ascended mountain-top the beginning of a 
 new Platte, running through tender grass out of a 
 little round lake, or oozing from under a huge 
 snow-bank. 
 
 These were our observations the next day, as 
 we galloped savagely on after the head-quarters of 
 the camp. We surprised it at lunch by our ra- 
 pidity, and then all pushed on "over the range'* 
 that divides South Park from the Arkansas val- 
 ley. The South Park country is free from rocks^ 
 or stones; the waste of the mountains is broken 
 and pulverized before, it reaches the valleys ; and 
 even when we mount above grass and trees and 
 earth, the " rock-ribbed hills" are simply great de- 
 posits of small stones, or, more correctly, broken 
 rocks. This is one great element in the softness 
 of its scenery. But as we go over the mountains 
 into the Arkansas valley, there is a change; the 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 119 
 
 roads become rough with stones ; boulders lie along 
 the path or in the hill-sides, and the water-courses 
 have thrust themselves through high walls of solid 
 rock. There is more ruggedness and coarseness in 
 nature ; and while the want of it was not felt, now 
 we welcome the new materials in the landscape. 
 Our heavy baggage teams were slow in working up 
 the huge hills and down, and we went into camp at 
 the first passable widening of the side valley. 
 
IX. 
 
 AN INDIAN SCARE THE TWIN LAKES. 
 
 Alarming Indian Reports The Savages on our Track Scenes and 
 Thoughts in Camp A Nervous Night and its Sufferings The 
 Indian Question Generally The Old False, the New True 
 Policy The Relief of the Next Morning The Arkansas Val- 
 ley and its Greetings The Twin Lakes and their Beauties 
 Sunday and Short-Cake Taylor and Trout. 
 
 TWIN LAKES, Upper Arkansas Valley, September, 1868. 
 
 THE circle of our Colorado and border travel ex- 
 perience has been made complete by an Indian 
 scare. We have shared the horrible excitement of 
 the settlers, when the hostile Indians put on their 
 war-paint, raise their war-whoop, and dash wildly 
 upon the life and property of the whites. Just as 
 we were going into camp, weary with mountain 
 travel, and our heaviest teams far behind, this side 
 the range, there dashed in, on a gaunt white horse, 
 a grim messenger from Denver, with official advices 
 to Governor Hunt that the Indians of the Plains, 
 the Cheyennes, Arapahoes and Sioux, were on 
 the "war-path;'* that from seeming friends they 
 had suddenly turned again to open foes ; and were 
 raiding furiously all among the settlements, east, 
 north and south of Denver, stealing horses and 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 121 
 
 shooting the people. We were besought to keep 
 among the mountains, the homes of the friendly 
 Utes, as the only place of safety, for our company 
 of territorial and federal officials would be a tempt- 
 ing prize for the red men ; but the messenger, who 
 proved to be a villainous sensationist, though of 
 course we did not know this then, added to his 
 written reports the alarming story that he had met 
 the hostile Indians in the mountains, only that very 
 day, that they had pursued and shot at him, the 
 rascal even showing as proof the bullet-holes in his 
 saddle, that he barely escaped by rapid riding, and 
 that they were probably but a few miles back, and 
 on our path. 
 
 Here was serious business, indeed, for such a 
 party ; burdened with overloaded wagons, tired 
 horses and defenceless women and children; and 
 all on pleasure and not on war intent. Messengers 
 were sent back to hasten to camp all stragglers, 
 and to warn the Indian agent, with his load of 
 goods and rifles in the Park, to be on his guard, 
 and to come forward. The secret could be kept 
 from no one ; the confusion and the excitement 
 quickly grew intense ; and that peculiar reckless- 
 ness or indifference as to ordinary matters, that 
 follows the presence of a deep emotion, was singu- 
 larly manifest. Tents were shabbily put up; camp 
 was disorderly made ; supper was eaten in that 
 mechanical, forced way, without regard to quantity, 
 quality or clean plates, that happens when death is 
 in the house ; and elaborate toilets were dispensed 
 with. But we huddled close in together; the ani- 
 
122 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 mals were picketed near at hand ; our fire-arms 
 were put in good order; and up and down the 
 road, trusty sentinels were posted. On each side 
 were high abrupt hills; it was a "lovely spot" for 
 an ambuscade; but the nearest anybody came to 
 being killed was when one of our sentinels, during 
 the midnight blackness of storm, suddenly entered 
 upon the ground of the other. Indian-shod in san- 
 dals, and moving with that noiseless, stealthy tread 
 that hunters unconsciously adopt, the one was al- 
 most upon the other before the latter discovered a 
 foreign presence. There was a sudden click of the 
 rifle's cock, a peremptory demand for "personal 
 explanation" without delay, and then, a friendly 
 instead of a deadly greeting. 
 
 But it was a night to remember, with a shiver, 
 lying down in that far-off wilderness with the 
 reasonable belief that before morning there was 
 an even chance of an attack of hostile Indians 
 upon our camp, more than half of whose numbers 
 were women and children, after an evening spent 
 in discussing the tender ways Indians had with 
 their captives, illustrated from the personal knowl- 
 edge of many present; aroused after the first 
 hour's feverish rest by a new messenger from an- 
 other quarter, galloping into camp, and shouting, 
 as if we were likely to forget, that "the Indians 
 were loose, and hell was to pay;" followed by the 
 coming of furious storm of rain and hail and thun- 
 der and lightning, sucking under our tents, beating 
 through them, to wet pillows and blankets, at any 
 other time a dire grievance, now hardly an added 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 123 
 
 trial ; every ear stretched for unaccustomed sound, 
 every heart beating anxiously, but every lip silent ; 
 all eagerly awaiting the slow-coming morning to 
 bring renewal of life and the opportunity to go far- 
 ther on and to safer retreats. To confess the un- 
 prosaic individual fact, while I report the general 
 truth, this deponent had the soundest, sweetest 
 night's sleep he had had in the mountains. Some 
 natures will be perverse, and if one must be ner- 
 vous, it is a great help to be conscious of it. 
 
 The experience brought serious thought to us all 
 of the whole Indian question, that puzzle to Con- 
 gress and eastern public opinion generally. And 
 the failure, which this unexpected outbreak brings 
 to the last and most promising experiment with the 
 so-called but miscalled " peace policy," will proba- 
 bly lead to a more intelligent study and understand- 
 ing of the whole subject by the country, and in the 
 end to a resolute reformation of our past treatment 
 of it. The truth here, as in many another dispute, 
 lies between the two extremes of opinion and policy. 
 The wild clamor of the border population for the A 
 indiscriminate extermination of the savages, as of 
 wolves or other wild beasts and vermin, is as un- 
 intelligent and barbarous, as the long dominant 
 thought of the East against the use of force, and 
 its incident policy of treating the Indians as of equal 
 responsibility and intelligence with the whites, are 
 unphilosophical and impracticable. The conflict 
 between these two theories, with the varying su- 
 premacy of each, has brought us nothing but dis- 
 aster and disgrace; we have alternately treated 
 
124 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 these vagrant children of the wilderness as if we 
 were worse barbarians than themselves or down- 
 right fools. It is time we respected ourselves and 
 commanded their respect. Now we do neither. 
 
 In the first place, the care of the Indians should 
 be put into a single department at Washington. - 
 Its division between the war and interior secreta- 
 ries is the cause of half our woes. The war office, 
 as representing force, which is the first element 
 in any successful dealing with ignorance and de- 
 pendence, should monopolize their care. Then we 
 should stop making treaties with tribes, cease put- 
 ting them on a par with ourselves. We know they 
 are not our equals ; we know that our right to the 
 soil, as a race capable of its superior improvement, 
 is above theirs ; and let us act openly and directly 
 our faith. The earth is the Lord's ; it is given by 
 Him to the Saints for its improvement and develop- 
 ment; and we are the Saints. This old Puritan 
 premise and conclusion are the faith and practice 
 of our people ; let us hesitate no longer to avow it 
 and act it to the Indian. Let us say to him, you 
 are our ward, our child, the victim of our destiny, 
 ours to displace, ours also to protect. We want 
 your hunting-grounds to dig gold from, to raise 
 grain on, and you must "move on." Here is a 
 home for you, more limited than you have had; 
 hither you must go, here you must stay ; in place 
 of your game, we will give you horses, cattle and 
 sheep and grain ; do what you can to multiply them 
 and support yourselves ; for the rest, "it is our busi- 
 ness to keep you from starving. You must not 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 125 
 
 leave this home we have Assigned you ; the white 
 man must not come hither ; we will keep you in 
 and him out ; when the march of our empire de- 
 mands this reservation of yours, we will assign you 
 another; but so long as we choose, this is your 
 home, your prison, your play-ground. 
 
 Say and act all this as if we meant it, and mean 
 it. If the tribes would go and submit peaceably, 
 well and good ; if they would not, use the force 
 necessary to make them. Treat them just as a 
 father.would treat an ignorant, undeveloped child. 
 If necessary to punish, punish; subject any way; 
 and then use the kindness and consideration that 
 are consistent with the circumstances. Use the 
 best of these white men of the border, these Indian 
 agents, many of whom are most capable and intelli- 
 gent and useful men, to carry out and maintain this 
 policy, so far as is possible ; use the army so far as 
 is necessary to enforce it, but withhold the soldiers 
 whenever it is not, for their presence on an Indian 
 reservation is demoralizing to both parties, but let 
 all authority proceed from a single head, and that 
 head represent a single force. 
 
 Above all, stop the treaty-making humbug. It is 
 the direct parent of all our Indian woes and theirs 
 too. Neither party keeps the bargain. The Indian 
 is cheated ; the Senate changes the provisions ; a 
 quiddling Secretary of the interior or Indian com- 
 missioner refuses to carry it out ; and from secretary 
 down through contractors and agents, something is 
 taken off the promise to the ear by each, till it is 
 thoroughly broken to the hope of the poor savage. 
 
126 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 What the Indian wants is to be fed and clothed ; 
 the treaty and those who fulfil it on our part may 
 or may not do this for him, oftenest not ; he can- 
 not tell what or how much he wants beforehand for 
 these ends, and if he did, and bargained for it, the 
 chances are ten to one that he fails to get it; or 
 getting it, squanders it at once, and now, hungry 
 and naked, he goes forth to seek relief by the sim- 
 plest law of nature ; and hence his excuse and the 
 excuse of his white sympathizers for war. 
 
 But establish Force for Bargain; Responsibility 
 for Equality ; Parentage for Antagonism ; see that 
 he is put apart and kept apart from the tide of 
 settlement, and civilization ; that he has food and 
 clothing, not in gross, but in detail; supplying 
 him the means to help himself in the simplest 
 forms possible, stock raising is practicable to all 
 the tribes, and tilling the soil possible to most, 
 and furnishing the rest from day to day ; add such 
 education as he will take, such elevation as he will 
 be awakened to, and then let him die, as die he is 
 doing and die he must, under his changed life. 
 
 This is the best and all we can do. His game 
 flies before the white man ; we cannot restore it to 
 him if we would ; we would not if we could ; it is 
 his destiny to die ; we cannot continue to him his 
 original, pure barbaric life; he cannot mount to 
 that of civilization ; the mongrel marriage of the 
 two that he embraces and must submit to, is kill- 
 ing him, and all we can do is to smooth and make 
 decent the pathway to his grave. All this is pos- 
 sible ; and it need not cost so much as the mixed 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 127 
 
 state of war and bargaining that we have heretofore 
 pursued. In the beginning there must be the dis- 
 play and the use of power to unlearn in the Indians 
 the false ideas our alternately cowardly bargaining 
 and cowardly bullying policy towards them has 
 engendered ; but once inaugurated, it will be simple 
 and successful, it will give us both peace and pro- 
 tection, and the Indians an easier path to the grave 
 than lies before them now. More briefly and sol- 
 dierly, General Sherman, now alive at last to the 
 true nature of the question, expresses the new and 
 necessary policy : " Peace and protection to the 
 Indians upon the reservations ; war and extermi- 
 nation if found off from them." 
 
 But to get back to our camp and ourselves. The 
 scare wore off under the tonic of a cool, clear morn- 
 ing, with splendid visions of fresh fields of snow 
 glancing in the sunlight, the arrival of our load of 
 rifles and Indian goods safe, a good breakfast of trout 
 and Governor Hunt's best griddle-cakes, and the 
 following summons to horse for the Twin Lakes. 
 Never party moved out of camp more gladly ; and a 
 few miles farther on, the Arkansas valley welcomed 
 us into a new country, full of the light and the 
 freshness and the joy of a newly awakened nature. 
 There was a California roll to the hills that led down 
 to the river ; the sage bush that covered them was 
 greener and more stalwart than that of the Middle 
 Park; and the river bottom held a deeper toned 
 grass, and was alive with grazing cattle ; while the 
 Sahwatch range of mountains, that divides the Ar- 
 kansas valley from the Pacific waters, was continu- 
 
128 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 ously higher than any we had yet looked up to, and 
 its bold majestic peaks bore and brought far down 
 their middles that thin new snow, which is such a 
 touching type of purity, and is never seen without 
 a real enthusiasm. Governor Bross and Vice-Pres- 
 ident Colfax, who had been off spending the night 
 among the miners of an upper gulch, greeted us, 
 too, with felicitations on our safety, and with a com- 
 pany of volunteer cavalry, that did not desert us 
 until all apprehensions of danger had passed away. 
 Crossing the river, descending the valley, and 
 then turning up among the western hills, over one, 
 two lines of them, racing and roystering along with 
 our new companions, and in our new joys, we sud- 
 denly came out over the Twin Lakes, and stopped. 
 The scene was, indeed, enchanting. At our feet, a 
 half a mile away, was the lower of two as fine sheets 
 of water as mountain ever shadowed, or wind rip- 
 pled, or sun illuminated. They took their places 
 at once in the goodly company of the Cumberland 
 Lakes of England, of Lucerne in Switzerland, of 
 Como and Laggiore in north Italy, of Tahoe and 
 Donner in California, and no second rank among 
 them all. One is about three miles by a mile and 
 a half; the other say two miles by one; and only a 
 fifty-rod belt of grass and grove separates them. 
 Above them on two sides sharply rise, dark with 
 trees and rocks until the snow caps with white, 
 the mountains of the range ; sparsely-wooded hills 
 of grass and sage bush mount gracefully in succes- 
 sive benches on a third, it was over these that we 
 came into their presence ; while to the south a nar- 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 129 
 
 row, broken valley, pushed rapidly by the moun- 
 tains towards the Arkansas, carries their outlet 
 stream to its home in the main river. Clear, hard, 
 sandy beaches alternate with walls of rock and low 
 marshy meadows in making the immediate sur- 
 roundings of both lakes. The waters are purity 
 itself, and trout abound in them. 
 
 Here we camped for that and the next day, which 
 was Sunday ; restored our Indian-broken nerves ; 
 caught trout and picked raspberries ; bathed in the 
 lakes ; rode up and around them ; looked into their 
 waters, and on over them to the mountains, first 
 green, then blue, then black, finally white, and 
 then higher to clouds, as changing in color under 
 storm, under sun, under moon, under lightning. 
 Every variety of scene, every change and com- 
 bination of cloud and color were offered us in these 
 two days ; and we worshiped, as it were, at the very 
 fountains of beauty, where its every element in na- 
 ture lay around, before, and above us. 
 
 Also, not to live forever in poetry, we patched 
 our clothes, greased our boots, washed our hand- 
 kerchiefs and towels, one would dry while another 
 was being washed, in the dry, breezy air, and ate 
 boiled onions and raspberry short-cake to repletion. 
 Bayard Taylor's letters are at least a guide to the 
 opportunities for good dinners in Colorado ; and 
 ostensibly with the purpose to explore the lakes, 
 and see the falls in the river above, possibly with a 
 thought to fall upon such hospitality as he experi- 
 enced in the little neighboring village of Dalton, 
 another collection of vacant cabins, with a new 
 6* 
 
I3O A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 court-house, and only two occupied tenements, 
 a few of us stole quietly off for a Sunday excursion. 
 We circled the lakes, as beautiful in detail as in 
 grand effect; picked out many a charming camp- 
 ing-ground for future visits ; found along the shores 
 one or two resident families, and a tent with a stove- 
 pipe through it, where a Chicago invalid was spend- 
 ing the summer, gaining vigorous strength and per- 
 manent health, and drying quantities of trout, 
 think of trout so plenty as to suggest drying them ! 
 followed up the bed of the stream two miles of 
 more above the lakes to a very pretty waterfall, 
 and a deep pool, worn out of solid rock, thick with 
 visible trout, whom we could poke with long sticks, 
 but could not seduce with fattest of grasshoppers ; 
 lunched off the mountain raspberry vines ; tracked 
 a grizzly bear ; and looked up the far-stretching 
 gorge* through rocks and bushes and vines that 
 were very seducing, but came back to Dalton in 
 time to get our invitation to dinner. There was 
 white table-cloth, and chairs, and fresh beefsteak, 
 and mealy potatoes, and soft onions, and cream for 
 coffee, and raspberry short-cake "to kill," and a 
 lady and gentleman for hostess and host ; every- 
 thing and more and better even than Taylor had 
 two years before. Going back by the lakes to 
 camp just at sunset, they were in their best estate 
 of color, of light and shade ; and water and moun- 
 tain and sky met and mingled, and led on the eye 
 from one glory to another, till the joy of the spirit 
 overcame and subdued and elevated the satisfaction 
 of the senses. 
 
x. / 
 
 FROM THE TWIN LAKES TO DENVER. 
 
 Down the Arkansas Valley A Picturesque Scene A Sensation 
 Over into South Park Who were with us, and How we Made 
 Camp and Spent the Night Governor Bross Grinding Coffee 
 Governor Hunt's " Slapjacks" An Evening in Camp with the 
 Indians Out of the Park, and into the Plains Through " the 
 Garden of the Gods" Grand Entree into Denver. 
 
 DENVER, Colorado, September, 1868. 
 
 WE entered the Arkansas valley so far up that 
 its head was visible. It leads to the lowest pass in 
 all the mountains over to the Pacific slope, not ris- 
 ing above the timber line. Like all the passes of 
 the range, it is ambitious of a railroad, and certainly 
 seems more reasonably so than many others. But 
 for many years to come our continental railroads 
 will find lower and smoother paths both north and 
 south of Colorado. 
 
 -The plan of our journey was to go from the 
 Twin Lakes down the Arkansas, around the out- 
 side of South Park, so nearly as the rock-bound 
 banks of the river would allow, through Canon City 
 and Colorado City, and up by the Plains, under the 
 eastern line of the mountains, to Denver. Thus we 
 should have circuited all the great central portions 
 
132 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 of the state, and except San Luis Park, which we 
 should have left in the south, have seen all the 
 principal centers of her population, all the distin- 
 guishing features of her geography and her natural 
 beauty. But this would have taken us directly into 
 the path of the now rampantly hostile Indians ; so 
 we drew in our lines, and made a narrower circle 
 across the South Park, and up to Denver. We lost 
 little or nothing that was distinctive, though some 
 repetitions and modifications of beautiful scenery 
 already or to be made familiar to us. But I urge 
 all who come after us to follow our intended route, 
 and even to extend their trip over into San Luis 
 Park. Here, though the testimony is contradic- 
 tory, will be found a country rich in beauty and re- 
 sources, and 'with some features not characteristic 
 of the other great Parks. 
 
 First we rode some twelve miles down the valley. 
 With a mounted escort of about twenty gallant 
 young gold miners, and the addition of two or three 
 camping parties that sought our company home as 
 a sedative to the nervousness of the Indian stories, 
 we made up a grand "outfit." All together, there 
 were from seventy-five to one hundred persons, and 
 as many animals, as it moved back over the moun- 
 tains into South Park again. The first eight miles 
 were through a broken, hilly country, the moun- 
 tains coming down to the river on each side in 
 great gashes or rolls, occasionally a broad inclined 
 plain, frequently a dry ravine. The soil was light 
 and cold, and sage bush and coarse grass and thin 
 forests were its products, other than gold. Of the 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 133 
 
 latter it holds in deposit a plentiful sprinkling al- 
 most everywhere ; and we passed the prosperous 
 mining villages of Granite and Cash Creek, their 
 peoples tearing up the ground all about in eager 
 search for the precious metal. 
 
 Little canyons and big canyons drove our road 
 away from the river and over hills and bluffs for 
 much of these eight miles ; but at the end we came 
 down into a wider and richer opening, and there 
 spread before us a fine agricultural section, the gar- 
 , den of the upper Arkansas. For thirty-five miles 
 now, the river, hugging the hills on the east, lays 
 open a broad, clean, rising plain of from one to ten 
 miles in width, before the rocks and forests of the 
 western mountains -begin. Beyond these thirty- 
 five miles, the river canyons again for a long course, 
 and farming is at an end, and travel down the val- 
 ley is turned off into South Park till the stream 
 emerges again from its rock embrasures. Tributa- 
 ries of the main stream slash and fertilize this great 
 meadow ; and it bears large crops of grain, grass 
 and roots. Some twenty farmers have brought 
 under profitable cultivation about seven hundred 
 acres of this valley; the mines in the valleys above 
 and over in South Park furnish the markets; a 
 Frenchman, one of the first of these ranchmen, and 
 whose bread and milk we devoured as we went by, 
 returned an income of from twelve to fifteen thou- 
 sand dollars two years ago, as the results of a single 
 season's farming, crops being good and prices high ; 
 and, spite of grasshoppers and drouth, the busi- 
 ness is uniformly more successful than mining. 
 
134 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 Crossing the river through the hospitable French- 
 man's grounds, we turned up the hills, and began to 
 leave this inviting country almost as soon as we 
 had entered it. It beckoned us back by scenes of 
 exquisite beauty, clothed in warm sunshine, and at 
 every convenient spot in the ascending hills, we 
 lingered for longing looks, up and down, and 
 across its lines. All around on the lower hills, 
 down to the river, guarding its passage, were 
 magnificent ruins of mountains ; huge boulders ; 
 fantastic shaped columns; lines of palisades; the 
 kernels which water could not wash nor abrasion 
 wear away ; groves of rocks ; fortresses upon the 
 river shore, the Rhine is not more thickly peopled 
 with ruined castles; with pines and aspens and 
 coarse bushes growing upon and among them all, 
 including a new species, called piny on, a stunted, 
 sprawling, thick-growing pine, looking, as sfet in a 
 grove a little way off, like an old apple orchard. 
 Starting from the opposite bank, the open, rising 
 meadow, a great inclined plain of gray and green, 
 stretching miles away up the sides of the grand 
 Sahwatch Mountains, whose tops formed a line of 
 snow fields that overlooked and cooled the whole 
 warm scene of sunshine and life below. Up and 
 down hills we toiled all the afternoon, refreshed only 
 and yet tantalized by occasional glimpses of the 
 beautiful valley behind, which seemed to spread 
 out all its beauty of form, of scene, of color, to har- 
 row us for so early deserting it. 
 
 The only other sensation of the afternoon's ride 
 was the sudden dashing into our line from behind 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 135 
 
 of a dozen or twenty Ute chiefs and warriors. As 
 we had not learned to know one kind of Indians 
 from another, their galloping in among us stirred 
 the blood a trifle ; but we soon found they were 
 friends, and pairing off among our mounted men, 
 they were grunting and gesticulating their story 
 into all our ears. They proved to be the leaders 
 of a band of Utes living down in the San Luis Park 
 country, who had learned, in the mysterious and 
 speedy manner of savages and wildernesses, of the 
 uprising of the hostile Indians of the Plains, and of 
 the presence of Governor Hunt and our party in 
 this region, and so, traveling day and night, they had 
 hurried up to meet us, and see if they were wanted, 
 either to protect us, or take the field against their 
 and our enemies. Not without a selfish thought, 
 too, perhaps, for blankets and beef. They camped 
 with us that night, were well-fed and well-promised, 
 and went back home the next day. The Governor 
 had neither authority nor means to put them into 
 the field against the Plain Indians; nor was it clear 
 that there was any occasion for it. 
 
 We pushed up near to the tops of the mountains, 
 riding far into the evening, before camping, and 
 finally pitched our tents in a great meadow, heavy 
 with grass, and interspersed with little wooded 
 knolls, within and around one of which we built 
 our fires and laid our blankets for the night. We 
 needed them all, for it was dreary cold before 
 morning, and water froze in our cups on the way 
 from the brook half a mile off. But the forenoon's 
 sun and saddle brought summer warmth back ; and 
 
136 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 we were not long in getting over the range and 
 down into South Park. We entered it about at the 
 middle, and it seemed tamer and less green than 
 in the upper sections. Alkali and salt deposits 
 whitened the surface in great patches, and so rich 
 are the springs with salt at one spot, that a large 
 establishment for evaporating the water and mak- 
 ing salt is in operation, and holds a profitable mo- 
 nopoly of the salt market of the state. We made 
 a fine noon camp by one of the everlasting Plattes, 
 and trout-catching was brisk for an hour. 
 
 Here, too, we had another Indian raid, the out- 
 posts of our old Middle Park Utes, who had heard 
 the story of the Plain Indians coming up into the 
 South Park, and moved over in a body to dispos- 
 sess them, came wildly and joyfully riding in upon 
 us, a dozen or two, with some white friends from 
 Fairplay. So our escort doubled, and we trav- 
 eled across the Park with as large and as motley 
 a retinue as ever Oriental prince moved among 
 over the deserts of Asia. Only, with true Ameri- 
 can individuality, we scattered wildly about, and 
 lingered or hurried at pleasure over the wide open 
 plains, dotted with occasional hill and lake, the lat- 
 ter repeated by mirage in the distance, or by the 
 deceptive resemblance of an alkali field, and circled 
 by the far-distant, far-reaching mountains. Every- 
 thing else failing or fatiguing, from sheer abun- 
 dance, mountain, field, grass, forest, color, the at- 
 mosphere remained, a feeling of beauty that minis- 
 tered to several senses without ever palling the 
 appetite of either. 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 137 
 
 We made grand camp that night about a mile be- 
 yond Fairplay, on a gently sloping plateau, backed 
 by a thick aspen grove, watered at its base by a 
 fresh stream, fronted by the broad Park meadows, 
 looking towards sundown, and taking the best light 
 of the full moon through its nightly circle of the 
 horizon. The dozen or twenty Utes enlisted to go 
 through with us to Denver, and made a camp for 
 themselves a few rods away among the trees. The 
 mounted men were usually the first in camp ; they 
 stripped their animals of saddles and bridles and 
 blankets, and sent them galloping off for grass and 
 water. As fast as the wagons came up, they took 
 their places in the grand circle of the camp-ground, 
 and were unloaded of tents, baggage and provi- 
 sions, and their horses loosened to join the others. 
 Smooth spots were chosen for the tents in a semi- 
 circle, and the tents put up by the most adroit in 
 that business. There was one for Governor Hunt 
 and his family; another for Mr. Witter and his, 
 consisting of himself; his wife (Mr. Colfax's sister), 
 a babe eight weeks old, think of that, you tender 
 mothers in four- walled and close-roofed houses in 
 civilization ! and Mr. Colfax's mother and father ; 
 a third for the young ladies ; Governor BrosS and v 
 the Vice-President used one of the large covered 
 wagons for lodgings ; my friend Lord and myself 
 had a little tent by ourselves ; and the rest, des- ' 
 pising such paltry interventions of effeminacy, lay 
 around in the softest, shadiest places, under the 
 wagons, under trees, always near the fires. The 
 little sheet-iron cooking-stoves, one for each of the 
 
138 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 two messes into which our original party was di- 
 vided, were simultaneously planted and fired up. 
 The.open fires were located, and the Vice-President, 
 Governor Bross, Mr. Thomas of the Rocky Moun- 
 tain News, and any other idle and otherwise in- 
 competent persons were detailed to fetch wood for 
 them. Soon a huge fire blazed in front of each 
 tent. Then the wood-haulers became water-car- 
 riers. Next the fastidious made their toilets ; and 
 Governor Hunt called for assistant cooks. 
 
 This night we were to have an extra meal. To 
 start with, and especially to provide quantity for 
 the capacious Indian stomachs, a herd of cattle 
 were driven up from the meadow, and Mr. Curtis, 
 the Indian interpreter, passing them in review, rifle 
 in hand, and, choosing a fat young cow, sent a ball 
 unerringly into her forehead, and she fell dead in- 
 stantly. It was the first time I had ever seen this 
 speedy, humane manner of butchering; and Mr. 
 Bergh, the anti-cruelty man, ought to demand its 
 universal use. The animal was soon cut up, and a 
 few choice pieces brought to our camp, but the In- 
 dians carried off the bulk to theirs, and, with forked 
 sticks and open fire, and a little salt, were soon 
 filling up their waste places. The village furnished 
 us cream and fresh supplies of sugar. Soon we had 
 beefsteak frying, mush and milk in proper prog- 
 ress, oyster soup and tomatoes stewing, hominy 
 warming, a huge section of ribs of beef roasting 
 on a forked stick before the fire, coffee and tea 
 brewing, biscuits baking at one mess, and slapjacks 
 browning at another. Governor Bross earned his 
 
. 
 
 COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 139 
 
 :pper by grinding coffee for half an hour, and after- 
 wards, his hand having grown supple, you could 
 have seen him, seated on an empty whisky-keg, 
 turning the griddle-cakes to perfection; and your 
 correspondent won his glory and victual by mak- 
 ing the " long-sweetening," i. e. white sugar melted 
 into a permanent syrup. Then there were canned 
 peaches and raspberries for dessert. All this, seated 
 on our haunches on the ground or on bended knees 
 around the board and box that served for tables, 
 each with a tin plate and cup, and knife and fork 
 and spoon to match, and all with appetites worthy 
 the food. We generally " boarded around," that is 
 ate at the mess which happened to have the most 
 inviting meal, and as there is no knowledge so 
 satisfactory as the experimental on such a subject, 
 it commonly resulted in our eating at both. It is 
 surprising how excellent food can be had in such a 
 camping expedition with a little painstaking and 
 tact in providing and cooking. Governor Hunt was 
 master of all the arts of camp-life, and under his 
 care we "fared sumptuously every day." The slap- 
 jacks and their "long-sweetening" were an incom- 
 parable dish, and took the place of bread at Gov- 
 ernor Hunt's table. 
 
 Supper over, and the dishes washed, in which last 
 operation "equal rights" were sometimes allowed 
 the women, all gathered around the central camp- 
 fires, with shawls, buffalo robes and blankets for 
 protection from the ground ; our friends traveling 
 in company, who had made separate camps adjoin- 
 ing, came over to spend the evening ; to-night our 
 
I4O A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 escort party from the Arkansas valley had supped 
 with us, and were "about to say farewell \ and their 
 Indian successors, having become happy and hilari- 
 ous, were invited and welcomed into the circle ; and 
 thus re-enforced and diversified, we made a gala 
 night of it. It was a very curious scene indeed. 
 The blaze 'of the camp-fire contrasted sharply with 
 the light of the moon, and brought out in fine re- 
 lief all the hundred varying faces and strange cos- 
 tumes gathered around. Speeches were -made and 
 songs sung; Mr. Colfax addressed the Utes, and 
 his words were interpreted to them by Mr. Curtis, 
 and the reply of their chief to us ; and then we 
 called for songs from them. Stimulated by a pile 
 of white sugar that Governor Hunt threw down at 
 their feet, they got up and responded with spirit. 
 Standing in a row, shoulders touching, and sway- 
 ing to and fro in a long line by one motion, they 
 chanted in a low, guttural way, all on one key, and 
 only musical as it was correct monotone. Then 
 there were more songs and sentiments from the 
 whites; the Indians were dismissed; our kind friends 
 from the Arkansas said good-by; and soon the fires 
 of camp were dull, and all its life still in sleep, a 
 sleep of trust and safety, there under the open sky, 
 with a village of all sorts of people a mile away, 
 and a band of savages within six rods. It was all 
 so incongruous and anomalous to our home thought 
 and life; and yet we felt as safe, and were as 
 safe, as in double-bolted houses on police-patrolled 
 streets. Only the contrasts forced themselves into 
 the wakeful moments of night and morning, as we 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 141 
 
 turned over and refastened the blankets, and piled 
 more baggage over chilly feet, and peered out into 
 the dead stillness of the camp, broken may-be by 
 the dull snoring of a heavy sleeper, and the far-off 
 browsing of a greedy mule ; sounds brought near 
 and made loud by the hush of human life, 'and the 
 reign of nature's peace. 
 
 Out of the Park and into the hills that separate 
 it from the Plains the next day. The way was 
 familiar, the road for the most part good. We scat- 
 tered along, two or three together, through fiv/or 
 six miles ; closing up for lunch, and again for night 
 camp. Our Indian escort, familiar with every rod 
 of the country, roamed at will, taking short cuts over 
 the hills, and appearing first in the rear, then far in 
 advance. We had a beautiful camp, after twenty- 
 five miles ride, in a narrow but long little valley, 
 that bowed the sun out at one end, as it welcomed 
 the moon up at the other. The next day, too, all 
 among the hills, riding another twenty-five miles ; 
 the roads improving ; ranches thickening, no lack 
 now of buttermilk or cream ; travelers grew nu- 
 merous ; daily newspapers coming in ; and the end 
 dawning. It was a pleasant mountain country, open, 
 free, lightly wooded, abundantly watered, and the val- 
 leys rich for grass and grain. The streams, too, hold 
 trout, and the hills are thick with raspberries, it is 
 up here that the Denverites come for their briefer 
 mountain excursions, and this is the common road 
 for commerce and for pleasure into the South Park. 
 
 Our night camp now was the last of the excur- 
 sion. It was near the junction of the roads lead- 
 
142 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 ing to 'Denver by the Plains and to Idaho through 
 the mountains. There was a rivalry among the 
 cooking-stoves for the best farewell supper; but 
 the slapjacks gave Governor Hunt the victory, 
 there was no equalling, no resisting them. Around 
 the camp-fire, we "talked it over;" hilarious with 
 a vein of sadness ; humorous with a touch of pathos ; 
 Mr. Colfax made his excellent speech, beginning, 
 "this is the saddest moment of my life;" we sang 
 auld-lang-syne, and prepared for an early start in 
 th^ morning. 
 
 The breakfast dishes were packed dirty, " after 
 us the Deluge," and camp was broken by eight 
 o'clock with the cry, " Ho, for Denver." The going 
 out of the mountains was very fine. The several 
 miles through Turkey Creek Canyon, the road wind- 
 ing along with the stream at the bottom of a high 
 gorge of rocks, were fresh and exhilarating ; we had 
 gone around canyons before, painfully and labori- 
 ously ; now to follow one by a narrow but firm road 
 offered new and picturesque views. This was not 
 unlike the Via Mala of Switzerland ; arid coming 
 out, the road circled a high precipitous hill midway 
 in its side, an expensive and excellent bit of road- 
 making, such as is rarely seen anywhere in America. 
 
 Here we overlooked the grand ocean of the Plains, 
 and came upon the struggles of nature to leave off 
 mountain and begin plain. Along here, as at other 
 points below, there seems to have been an especial 
 and antagonistic fold thrown up almost abruptly 
 from the level plain. Pike's Peak, which is dis- 
 tinct from the main range, is the chief endeavor or ^ 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 143 
 
 culmination of this throe of the formation. And 
 around it, as here, are grouped monuments or 
 remains of mountains, alike grotesque, command- 
 ing, impressive ; taking all shapes, and giving the 
 thought that somebody greater and higher than 
 man had made here familiar home. The collection 
 of these ruins near Pike's Peak and Colorado City, 
 which we missed seeing because of the Indian war, 
 is called "The Garden of the Gods," and the name 
 not unfitly clothes the impression they make. They 
 are not boulders or piles of rock, but what is left 
 of mountains washed and worn away by waters 
 and winds. The body is \ fine reddish granite ; 
 and they stand sentinelled about upon the bare 
 closing bluffs of the hills, with forms of such maj- 
 esty and such personality, as arouses one's wonder 
 and deepens curiosity into awe. 
 
 Down into the last ravine, and out upon the long 
 rolls of the Plains. The Platte and its branches 
 wind with their gardens of grain and their groves 
 of trees about in the far distance, making ^ pleas- 
 antly variegated map of green of the vast picture. 
 Bear Creek especially offers a charming principality 
 of its own. And far in the thin haze the steeples 
 and blocks of Denver stand upon the sky. Herds 
 of grazing cattle are scattered along on both sides 
 of the road ; and with a common hunger for home 
 and civilization, beasts and drivers spur each other 
 into rapid gait. Our day's ride of twenty-five miles 
 is finished by two o'clock, and we stop before enter- 
 ing the town to " serry the ranks," and ,try the un- 
 accustomed draughts of a suburban brewery. 
 
144 A SUMMER VACATION IN' CAMP. 
 
 A circus would have been a poor show compared 
 to the procession that then passed into Denver. 
 First were the faithful Utes, gay with bright blan- 
 kets and yellow and red paint ; a bride among them, 
 beaded and bespangled from head to foot ; then our 
 own cavaliers and cavalieresses, their plumage not 
 over gay after a fortnight's mountain use, their ani- 
 mals worn and sorry from hard riding and no oats ; 
 next carriages, ambulances and baggage^wagons, 
 out of which peered flapping sun bonnets and 
 browned faces, with every other wheel bound in 
 huge sticks from the forest to keep them from 
 dropping to pieces ; and finally Governor Evans's 
 carriage, altogether minus two* wheels, and just 
 lifted from the ground by two poles that dragged 
 their slow length along behind. Despite the so- 
 lemnity of the town over the Indian raids ; despite 
 the dignity of demeanor due to high officials, Ute 
 . chiefs, Colorado chiefs, Illinois chiefs, Washington 
 fathers,|-the street broke. into a horse, neigh a 
 mule laugh that rolled along from. block to block, 
 and turned the back doors out in affright lest 
 Cherry Creek had come to town again. And then 
 we were dismissed to assure our friends of our 
 identity, and reconstruct ourselves. 
 
XI. 
 
 MINES, MINING AND MINERS. 
 
 Review of the Mining interests of Colorado Present Condition 
 * of Affairs in the Quartz Centers Central City, Georgetown, 
 ''Mill City, Empire City, etc. Renewal of Gulch-Mining, its 
 Profits, and its Promises Present Yield of Gold and Silver, 
 and its Certain Increase Population of Colorado, and the 
 Idiosyncracies of itSuMiners. ' 
 
 DENVER, Colorado, September, 1868. 
 IT remains for me to speak of the industrial 
 interests, growth, prosperity, and promise, of Col- 
 orado. These have only been incidentally alluded 
 to so far; but they deserve special exhibition. 
 The change in its material affairs and prospects, 
 since we were here three years ago, is most marked 
 and healthy. Then-, the original era of speculation, 
 of waste, of careless and unintelligent work,- and as 
 little of it as possible, of living by wit instead of 
 labor, of reliance upon eastern " capital iiistead of 
 home industry, was, if not at its hight, still reign- 
 ing, but with signs of decay and threatening 
 despair. The next two 1 years, 1866 and 1867, 
 affairs became desperate ; the population shrunk ; 
 mines were abandoned ; mills stopped ; eastern 
 capital, tired of waiting for promised returns, dried 
 7 
 
1-16 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 ' 
 
 up its fountains; and the secrets of the rich ores 
 seemed unfathomable. Residents, who could no' 
 get away, were put to their trumps for a living ; 
 and economy and work were enforced upon all. 
 Thus weeded out, thus stimulated, the population f 
 fell back on the certainties; such mining as was 
 obviously remunerative was continued ; the doubt- 
 ful and losing abandoned ; the old and simple dirt 
 washing for gold was resumed, and followed with 
 more care; and farming rose in respectability and 
 promise. The discovery and opening of specially 
 rich silver mines near Georgetown kept hope and 
 courage alive, and freshened speculation in a new 
 quarter ; but the main fact of the new era was that 
 the people went to work, became self-reliant, and, * 
 believing that they "had a good thing" out here, 
 undertook to prove it to the world by intelligent 
 and economic industry. 
 
 These were the kernel years of Colorado ; they 
 proved her ; they have made her. Her gold prod- 
 uct went down, probably, to a million dollars say, 
 in each of 1866 and 1867; but it began- at once, 
 under the new order of things, to rise ; and agricul- 
 ture also at once shot up and ahead, and directly 
 assumed, as it has in California, the place of the 
 first interest, the great wealth. No more flour, no 
 more corn, no more potatoes at six cents to twelve 
 cents a pound freight, from the Missouri River ; 
 in one year Colorado became self-supporting in 
 food ; in the second an exporter, the feeder of Mon- < 
 tana, the contractor for the government posts and 
 the Pacific Railroad ; and now, in the third year, 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 147 
 
 with food cheaper than in " the States," she forces 
 the Mississippi and Missouri valleys to keep their 
 produce at home or send it East. She feeds the 
 whole line of the Pacific Railroad this side the con- 
 tinental divide, and has even been sending some of 
 her vegetables to Omaha. Her gold and silver 
 product is up to at least two millions this year, got 
 out at a profit of from twenty-five to fifty per cent, 
 is now at the rate of nearly if not quite three mil- 
 lions, and will certainly surpass that sum in 1869. 
 Her agricultural products must be twice as much 
 at least, certainly four millions for 1868, and per- 
 haps six millions ; though it is difficult to make 
 as certain estimates in this particular, and the In- 
 dians have worked great mischief with the ingather- 
 ing of the crops this fall. 
 
 Central City, in the midst of the mountains on 
 the north branch of Clear Creek, continues to be 
 the center of the gold quartz-mining; and business 
 there was never more healthily prosperous than 
 now. All its stamp mills are in operation, and more 
 are being erected ; for after wearily waiting through 
 two or three years for more effective processes for 
 reducing the ores, their owners have set these in 
 operation again, simplified, perfected and econo- 
 mized their working, and, from about one hundred 
 and forty mills and seven hundred and fifty stamps, 
 are now producing near fifty thousand dollars of 
 gold a week, at a cost for both mining and milling 
 of from two-thirds to three-quarters that sum. An- 
 other season will see say fifty mills and one thou- 
 sand stamps at work in this valley. The most 
 
148 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 valuable ores of the neighboring mines are not put ^ 
 through this process, but are sold at about one 
 hundred dollars a ton to Professor Hill's smelting < 
 or Swansea works, now established here, and work- 
 ing the richer and sulphuretted ores with an econ^ < 
 omy and completeness that the plain stamp mills 
 cannot do. The ores worked in the latter form the 
 principal product of the mines, and produce under 
 the stamps about twenty-five dollars a ton, while 
 the cost for mining and milling is about fifteen dol- 
 lars. If steam is used the cost goes up to twenty 
 dollars. The Swansea and the plain stamp mill 
 are the only " processes" now in use in this valley. 
 Professor Hill has proved the success and profit of 
 the former, at least for all high-class ores. He is 
 giving from eighty to one hundred and twenty-five 
 dollars a ton for such ore, and probably makes from 
 thirty to forty dollars a ton on it ; and his purchases 
 amount to some twenty thousand dollars a month. 
 He is already doubling his furnaces. But the prob- 
 lem is to apply his process profitably to lower class 
 ores ; to such as hold from twenty-five to fifty dol- 
 lars a ton, and of which there are almost literally, 
 mountains in Colorado. The free or simple gold 
 ores of this grade can be worked well enough by 
 stamps and amalgamation, as in Central City and 
 California, and the cost thereof can be ultimately 
 reduced to probably one-half of present prices ; but 
 these constitute only a fraction of the rich ores of 
 Colorado. Most of them hold both silver and gold, 
 combined with sulphurets of iron, and a process 
 which gets one leaves the other, except, of course, 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 149 
 
 smelting, which at present is too expensive for any 
 but highly-freighted ores. This is why thousands 
 of mines are unworked to-day ; why scores of mills 
 with unperfected processes, or plain stamps, stand 
 idle, rotting and rusting in all parts of the territory ; 
 and why deserted cabins and vacant villages lie scat- 
 tered in all the valleys about, telling their tragic 
 tales of loss and disappointment, monuments of 
 the enthusiasm and the credulity of miner and capi- 
 talist, who labored and invested wildly and before 
 their time. 
 
 Some silver mine discoveries have recently been 
 made in the Central City region ; indeed, there is 
 silver in all the gold ores, and gold in all the silver 
 ores of the territory, and lead and copper in most 
 besides ; but the head-quarters of the silver busi- 
 ness is at Georgetown, ten or a dozen miles over 
 the mountains from Central City, at the head of the 
 south branch of Clear Creek. Around and above 
 . this now thriving and most beautifully located of the 
 principal mining villages of Colorado ; at nine thou- 
 sand, ten thousand, on even to twelve and thirteen 
 thousand feet above the sea level, almost unap- 
 proachable save in summer, and then only by pack 
 mules or on foot, are many marvelously rich silver 
 veins in the rocks. Hundreds of mines have been 
 opened ; but only a dozen or twenty are now being 
 actually worked with profitable results. The rest 
 await purchasers from their "prospectors," or capi- 
 tal to develop them. The ore from the leading 
 mines ranges from one hundred to one thousand 
 dollars a ton. Only two mills for reducing the ore 
 
I5O A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 are in operation ; one treats the second class ore, 
 such as will average say two hundred dollars a ton, 
 reducing it by crushing or stamping, then washing 
 with salt to oxydize it, and then amalgamating with 
 quicksilver, at a cost of from fifty to one hundred 
 dollars a ton ; and the other smelting the higher 
 priced ores, at a cost probably of one hundred to 
 two hundred dollars a ton. The latter establish- 
 ment buys outright most of the ore it reduces, and 
 has paid all the way from five hundred to six hun- 
 dred and seventy-five dollars a ton for it. Both 
 processes get out from seventy-five to ninety per 
 cent of the assay value of the ore ; but they are 
 imperfect and expensive, and much of the best ore 
 is sent East for treatment. The Equator mine, 
 owned by a party of railroad men from Chicago, is 
 one of the two or. three prizes here, and sends its 
 first-class ore, worth from nine hundred to one 
 thousand dollars a ton, all the way to Newark, N. 
 J., to be reduced. Thirty tons were packed for 
 shipment the day I was there. The superior yield 
 under the closer and more economical treatment at 
 Newark more than pays for the freight, which is 
 but forty-eight dollars a ton. The Equator mine 
 claims to have yielded one hundred thousand dol- 
 lars' worth of ore this season, and brags of a mil- 
 lion next. Only a portion of its ore taken out is 
 yet worked. There are several, perhaps half a 
 dozen other mines nearly as good as this. 
 
 Georgetown now has a population of about three 
 thousand, and the best hotel in the territory. It 
 is one of the places that every tourist should visit, 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 151 
 
 partly for its silver mines, partly because the road 
 to it up the South Clear Creek is through one of 
 the most interesting sections of the mountains, 
 and partly that it is the starting-point for the as- 
 cension of Gray's Peaks. The traveler can go up 
 to the top of that mountain and back to George- 
 town between breakfast and supper ; and if he will 
 not take his tour by the Snake and Blue Rivers 
 to the Middle or South Park, he should certainly 
 make this day's excursion from Georgetown. Cen- 
 tral City and its neighborhood are much less inter- 
 esting to the mere pleasure traveler. That town, 
 with its four thousand or five thousand inhabitants, 
 is crowded into a narrow gulch, rather than valley, 
 torn with floods, and dirty with the debris of mills 
 and mines that spread themselves over everything. 
 Scattered about, in Boulder District, on the 
 Snake, over on the Upper Arkansas, up among 
 the gulches of the South Park hills, are a few 
 more quartz mills, some in operation, more not; 
 but the principal business of quartz mining is done 
 in the sections I have named, in Gilpin and Clear 
 Creek counties. Mill City, Empire, and Idaho are 
 villages in this section, with their mines and mills, 
 doing a little something, struggling to prove their 
 capacity, but hardly in a single case making money,- 
 partly because of the poverty of the ore, but chiefly 
 because it is refractory, and will not yield up its 
 possessions to any known and reasonably cheap 
 process. Time, patience, and cheaper labor will 
 bring good results out of many of these invest- 
 ments; but others will have to go to swell the 
 
152 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 great number of failures that stand confessed all 
 over this as all over every other mining country. 
 
 There are great tunneling schemes proposed or 
 started in the Georgetown silver district, by which 
 the various ore veins of a single mountain are to 
 be cut deep down in their depths, and their wealth 
 brought out of a single mouth in the valley, at a 
 much cheaper rate than by digging down from the 
 top on the vein's course and hauling up. The 
 "Burleigh drill" from Massachusetts, that has been 
 in use in the Hoosac tunnel, has been introduced 
 here for this purpose ; and successful mining on a 
 grand scale will soon take this form, not only here, 
 but in Nevada, and indeed in most of our mining 
 States. 
 
 The other form of mining, known as gulch- 
 mining or dirt-washing, is increasing again, and 
 has employed full three hundred men this season. 
 Fifty to seventy-five of these are at work in the 
 Clear Creek and Boulder valleys ; but the great 
 body of them are scattered through Park, Lake, 
 and Summit counties, on the Snake and other 
 tributaries of the Blue River ; on the upper Plattes 
 in South Park ; and on the upper Arkansas and its 
 side valleys. They have averaged twelve dollars a 
 day to a man; but the season for this kind of 
 mining is less than half the year, in some places 
 because of ice and snow ; in most for lack of water. 
 The year's product from gulch-mining will certainly 
 foot up half a million dollars, probably a hundred 
 thousand more. New gulches and fresh "bars," or 
 deposits of sand, brought down from the hills by 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 153 
 
 the streams, have been opened this, year in prepa- 
 ration for another year's work ; and it is not unrea- 
 sonable to look for a million dollars from gulch- 
 mining next year. 
 
 These figures seem small compared with the 
 amounts reported to be got out in the years fol- 
 lowing the first gold discoveries in 1859, in '60 to 
 '64, when one year's production ran up as high as 
 six or eight millions, and for several years averaged 
 probably four ; when hundreds if not thousands of 
 eager miners were gathered in a single gulch, and 
 ran over its sands with a reckless waste, taking off 
 the cream of the deposits, and then moving on to 
 new places, and, finally exhausting both their own 
 first enthusiasm, and all the best or most obvious 
 chances, turning away in disgust at a "played out'* 
 territory. But "the business is now resumed in a 
 more systematic, intelligent and economical way; 
 labor is cheaper ; miners are satisfied with more 
 moderate returns ; and there is really almost no 
 limit to these valleys and banks, under the hills 
 and along the rivers, whose sands and gravel hold 
 specks of gold in sufficient quantity to pay for wash- 
 ing over. An intelligent investigator of the subject 
 tells me that the whole of South Park would pay 
 three to four dollars a day for the labor of washing 
 it over. But I pray it may not be done while I live 
 to come to these Mountains and the Parks; for 
 gold-washing leaves a terrible waste in its track. 
 
 In the valley of the Blue and its tributaries, more 
 extensive works for gulch-mining exist than in any 
 
 other district ; there, not less than eighty-four miles 
 7 * 
 
1 54 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 of ditches to bring water to wash out the gold with 
 have been constructed, and the amount of water 
 they carry in the aggregate is eight thousand seven 
 hundred and fifty inches. One of these ditches is 
 eleven miles long; two others seven miles each; 
 another five, and so on ; and they cost from one 
 thousand to twelve hundred dollars a mile. Says 
 Mr. Thomas of the Rocky Mountain News, from 
 whose careful and elaborate investigations this 
 summer and fall, I draw many of the facts of this 
 letter : " The facilities and opportunities for gulch- 
 mining in this county (Summit) are equal if not su- 
 perior to any in Colorado. Many of the gulches, 
 now worked, will last for years to come, while much 
 ground remains yet untouched. The Blue River 
 will pay for ten miles or more, at the rate of five to 
 ten dollars per day to the man. Many places will 
 pay from three to five dollars per day to the man, 
 and will be worked when labor becomes lower and 
 living cheaper." 
 
 x - In the Granite district of the Upper Arkansas, 
 quartz gold is found in simple combinations, or 
 "free," as in California, which can be mined and 
 reduced for eight to ten dollars a ton, while it yields 
 from fifteen to one hundred dollars ; but these are 
 ores from near the surface, and it is yet a problem 
 whether they will not change on getting clown in 
 the veins, as in other Colorado mines, and become 
 " refractory," and impossible of working at a profit 
 by any yet known process. 
 
 The Cinnamon mines, just over the southern bor- 
 der in New Mexico, have attracted much attention 
 
COLORADO : ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 155 
 
 for the last two years. Several quartz mills are in 
 operation there, but the main yield, so far, is from 
 the gulches, and the total product this year is 
 about a quarter of a million dollars. San Luis 
 Park, too, is believed to be rich in mineral de- 
 posits; some promising discoveries have already 
 been made there ; and indeed in almost every quar- 
 ter of the state are the beginnings of developments 
 that inspire great faiths, each in its own particular 
 circle of prospectors and prophets. 
 
 There is apparently no limit, in fact, to the growth 
 of the mineral interests of Colorado. The product 
 this year is from two millions to two and a half; next 
 year it will be at least a million more, perhaps a mil- 
 lion and a half, or four millions; and the increase 
 will go on indefinitely. For the business is now 
 taken hold of in the right way; pursued for the most 
 part on strictly business principles; and every year 
 must show improvements in the ways and means of 
 mining and treating the ores. The mountains are 
 just full of ores holding fifteen to fifty dollars' worth 
 of the metals per ton ; and the only question, as to 
 the amount to be got out, is one of labor and cost 
 as compared with the profits of other pursuits. 
 
 The settled population of Colorado is now at 
 least fifty thousand, perhaps sixty thousand. About 
 one-quarter is Mexican, all in the southern section, 
 and ignorant and debased to a shameful degree. 
 The rest are as good a population as any new 
 state can boast of. They are drawn from all east- 
 ern sources ; but the New England leaven, though 
 possibly not the New England personality, is domi- 
 
156 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 nant in their ambition, their education, their mo- 
 rality, their progressive spirituality. The pioneer 
 miners, the "prospectors," are a class of characters 
 by themselves. Properly they never mine ; to dig 
 out and reduce ore is not their vocation ; but they 
 discover and open mines, and sell them, if they 
 can ; at any rate move on to discover others. Men 
 of intelligence, often cultivated, generally hand- 
 some, mostly moral, high-toned and gallant by 
 nature, sustained by a faith that seems imperish- 
 able, putting their last dollar, their only horse, pos- 
 sibly their best blanket, into a hole that invites 
 their hopes, working for wages only to get more 
 means to live while they prospect anew and fur- 
 ther, they suffer much, and yet enjoy a great deal. 
 Faith is comfort, and that is theirs ; they will 
 " strike it rich " some day ; and then, and not till 
 then, will they go back to the old Ohio, Pennsyl- 
 vania or New England homes, and cheer the fad- 
 ing eyes of fathers and mothers, and claim the 
 patient-waiting, sad-hearted girls, to whom they 
 pledged their youthful loves. The vicious and 
 the loafers, the gamblers and the murderers, have 
 mostly " moved on ;" what is left is chiefly golden 
 material ; and the men and the mines and farms of 
 Colorado, all alike and together, are in a healthy 
 and promising condition, and insure for her a large 
 growth and a generous future. The two things 
 she lacketh chiefly now are appreciation at the 
 East and women ; what she has of both are excel- 
 lent, but in short supply; but the Railroad will 
 speedily fill the vacuums. 
 
XII. 
 
 THE AGRICULTURE OF COLORADO. 
 
 The Farming Interests of Colorado ; their Great Attainment and 
 Greater Promise Details of the Harvest and of Prices Stock- 
 Raising The Birth and Growth of Manufactures The Colo- 
 rado Bread Coal and Iron Professor Agassiz among the 
 Mountains, looking after his Glaciers End of the Vacation 
 Summing Up of its Experiences Colorado the Switzerland 
 of America How to Travel There. 
 
 DENVER, Colorado, September, 1868. 
 INEXHAUSTIBLE as is Colorado's mineral wealth ; 
 progressive as henceforth its development; pre- 
 dominant and extensive as are its mountains ; high 
 even as are its valleys arid plains, in spite of all 
 seeming impossibilities and rivalries, Agriculture is 
 alre'ady and is destined always to be its dominant 
 interest. Hence my faith in its prosperity and its 
 influence among the central states of the Conti- 
 nent. For agriculture is the basis of wealth, of 
 power, of morality ; it is the conservative element 
 of all national and political and social growth ; it 
 steadies, preserves, purifies, elevates. Full one- 
 third of the territorial extent of Colorado, though 
 this third average as high as Mount Washington, 
 is fit, more, rich for Agricultural purposes. The 
 
158 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 grains, the vegetables and the fruits of the temper- 
 ate zone grow and ripen in profusion; and through 
 the most of it, cattle and sheep can live and fatten 
 the year around without housing or feeding. The 
 immediate valleys or bottom lands of the Arkansas 
 and Platte and Rio Grande and their numerous 
 tributaries, after they debouch from the mountains, 
 are of rich vegetable loams, and need no irrigation. 
 The uplands or plains are of a coarse, sandy loam, 
 rich in the phosphates washed from the minerals 
 of the mountains, and are not much in use yet ex- 
 cept for pastures. When cultivated, more or less 
 irrigation is introduced, and probably will always 
 be indispensable for sure crops of roots and vege- 
 tables; but for the small, hard grains, I have no 
 idea it will be generally found necessary. It is a 
 comparatively dry climate, indeed ; but showers 
 are frequent, and extend over a considerable part 
 of the spring and summer. 
 
 At a rough estimate, the agricultural wealth of 
 Colorado last year was a million bushels of corn, 
 half a million of wheat, half a million of barley, 
 oats and vegetables, 50,000 head of cattle, and 
 75,000 to 100,000 sheep. The increase this year is 
 at least 50 per cent; in the northern counties at 
 least 100. Indeed, the agriculture of the northern 
 counties, between the Pacific Railroad- at Cheyenne 
 and Denver, which has "grown to be full half that 
 of the whole state, is the development almost en- 
 tirely of the last three years. South, in the Arkan- 
 sas and Rio Grande valleys, the farming and the 
 population are older, going back to before the gold 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 159 
 
 discoveries. This is the Spanish-Mexican section, 
 and was formerly a part of New Mexico. Its agri- 
 culture is on a large but rough scale, and only the 
 immense crops and the simple habits of the people, 
 chiefly ignorant, degraded Mexicans, permit it to 
 be profitable. The soil yields wonderfully, north 
 and south. There is authentic evidence of 316 
 bushels of corn to the acre in the neighborhood of 
 Denver this season ; 60 to 75 bushels of wheat to 
 the acre are very frequently reported; also 250 
 bushels of potatoes ; and 60 to 70 of both oats and 
 barley. These are exceptional yields, of course, 
 and yet not of single acres, but of whole fields, and 
 on several farms in different counties. Probably 
 30 bushels is the average product of wheat; of 
 corn no more, for the hot nights that corn loves 
 are never felt here ; of oats say 50, and of barley 
 40, for the whole state. Exhaustion of the virgin 
 freshness of the soil will tend to decrease these 
 averages in the future ; but against that we may 
 safely putTmproved cultivation and greater care in 
 
 harvesting. 
 
 
 
 The melons and vegetables are superb ; quality, 
 quantity and size are alike unsurpassed by any gar- 
 den cultivators in the East. The irrigated gardens 
 of the upper parts of Denver fairly riot in growth 
 of fat vegetables ; while the bottom lands of the 
 neighboring valleys are at least equally productive 
 without irrigation. Think of cabbages weighing 
 from 50 to 60 pounds each ! And potatoes from 
 5 to 6 pounds, onions I to 2 pounds, and beets 6 
 to 10! Yet here they grow, and as excellent as big 
 
l6o A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 Let me borrow, in further illustration of the farm- 
 ing development of this country, some statistics 
 of this year's cultivation in a few of the leading 
 river valleys north and south. They are from Mr. 
 Thomas's personal collections for the Denver News : 
 The Cache-a-la-Poudre is the most northern side 
 valley of Colorado, and markets at Cheyenne; it 
 has at least 200,000 acres of tillable lands, and 
 probably not 5,000 are in use yet ; but among its 
 chief products this year are 25,000 bushels of oats, 
 5,000 wheat, 5,000 potatoes, 2,500 corn, 2,500 tons 
 of hay, and 1 5,000 to 20,000 pounds of butter. The 
 oat crop averaged 48 1-2 bushels per acre; and the 
 cows have generally paid for themselves in butter 
 this season. The Big Thompson, another of the 
 northern valleys, has about 2,000 acres under cul- 
 tivation, and yields this year 33,000 bushels po- 
 tatoes, with an average of 165 bushels per acre cul- 
 tivated ; 27,000 bushels oats, 8,000 bushels wheat, 
 3,300 bushels corn, 1,400 tons hay, and 7,500 pounds 
 of cheese from a single dairy. One farmer has 700 
 to 800 head of cattle, a,nd 100 to 200 horses and 
 colts. In the Platte valley, for sixty miles north 
 of Denver, or to the mouth of Cache-a-la-Poudre, 
 there were raised this year 15,000 bushels wheat, 
 27,000 bushels oats, 5,000 bushels barley, 3,000 
 bushels corn, 7,000 bushels potatoes, and 1,500 tons 
 of hay, and about 23,000 pounds of butter made. In 
 the valley of the Platte, south of Denver, twenty 
 miles long, there are 3,000 acres under cultivation, 
 nearly half in wheat, and a quarter in oats, with 
 crops of barley at 66 bushels to the acre, of wheat 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. l6l 
 
 70, and of oats 65, and the average being 30 to 35 
 of wheat, 35 to 40 of oats and barley. Bear Creek, 
 just south of Denver, has 1,225 acres cultivated, 
 divided about as those of the Platte are. In the 
 main valley of the Arkansas are nearly 6,000 acres 
 of cultivated land, half corn, and a third wheat ; in 
 Fontaine qui Bouille, a branch of the Arkansas, 
 also 6,000, with almost exactly the same division 
 among crops. The St. Charles, another tributary, 
 cultivates 1,500 acres, half corn, a third wheat, the 
 rest oats. In the Huerfana valley, still another trib- 
 utary of the Arkansas, are 5,000 acres under tillage, 
 with the usual southern division, corn largely dom- 
 inating, and here are some of the largest farms in 
 the state, ranging up to 1,500 acres in cultivation, 
 and so requiring but few farmers to make up the 
 total. In this valley, the corn crop averages from 
 30 to 50 bushels the acre, w r heat 20 to 40, and oats 
 40 to 45. These are but specimens of twice as 
 many valleys above and below Denver, in which 
 farming has been begun, but only begun, yet with 
 such profitable results as insure rapid development. 
 I now quote the prices of agricultural produce 
 this week at Denver ; they will be likely to recede 
 as the crops come into market : Barley 3c. a pound, 
 corn 3 1-2 to 4 i-2c., cheese 20 to 22c., corn meal 5c., 
 eggs 50 to 6oc. a dozen, flour $7 to 9 a sack of 100 
 pounds, oats 30. a pound, potatoes 2 to 30. a pound, 
 fresh tomatoes 30. a pound, wheat 3 3-40. a pound, 
 cabbages ic. a pound, butter 45 c. a pound retail, 
 chickens $5.50 a dozen, "good beef 12 to 150. a 
 pound. At Cheyenne, on the Pacific Railroad, 
 
1 62 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 prices are somewhat higher, like these, for in- 
 stance, for vegetables : Cabbages 6 to 8c. a pound, 
 onions 6 to Sc. a pound, turnips 2 to 40. a pound, 
 beets 5 to 7c. a pound, tomatoes 20 to 250. a 
 pound, squashes 4 to 70. a pound, cucumbers 40 to 
 5oc. a dozen. Beef is, on the whole, the cheapest 
 grown and the cheapest selling food here. It costs 
 about half the New York and Boston retail prices. 
 
 Stock-raising on the Plains is simple and profit- 
 able business. The animals can roam at will, and 
 a single man can tend hundreds. The only enemies 
 are the Indians and the diseases that the Texas 
 cattle bring up from the South. But the former 
 are the great evil ; the confusion, danger and loss 
 they have created this season sum up a serious 
 blow not only to stock-raising, but to all farming. 
 Even if the evil is suppressed hereafter, this sea- 
 son's raids are a year's loss to the agricultural in- 
 terests of Colorado. Many farmers have given 
 up in despair from danger and disaster, and re- 
 tired from the field ; others hesitate and refuse to 
 come, who otherwise would be here at once and 
 in force of capital and energy, to enter upon the 
 business. 
 
 These great interests of mining and farming 
 shade naturally into others, and already there are 
 the beginnings of various manufacturing develop- 
 ments, as there are the materials and incentives for 
 such undertakings without stint. Some fifteen or 
 twenty , flouring-mills are in operation throughout 
 the state. The Colorado wheat makes a rich hearty 
 flour, bearing a creamy golden tinge ; and I have 
 
COLORADO I ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 163 
 
 eaten no where else in America better bread than 
 is made from it. There is a baker in Georgetown, 
 whose products are as rich and light as the best of 
 German wheat bread. The wheat will rank with 
 the very best that America produces, and is more 
 like the California grain than that of "the States.'* 
 Coal mines are abundant, and several are being 
 profitably w r orked along the lower range of the 
 mountains; as, indeed, they have been found and 
 opened at intervals along the line of the Pacific 
 Railroad over the mountains, and are already sup- 
 plying its engines with a most excellent fuel, a 
 hard, dry, brown coal, very pure and free-burning ; 
 in Boulder valley and Golden City, iron is being 
 manufactured from native ore; at Golden City, 
 there is a successful manufactory of pottery ware 
 and fire brick ; also a paper-mill and a tannery, 
 and three flouring-mills ; the state already supplies 
 its own salt; soda deposits are abundant every- 
 where, and will be a great source of wealth ; woolen 
 mills are projected and greatly needed, as wool- 
 growing is the simplest of agricultural pursuits 
 here ; a valuable tin mine has been lately discov- 
 ered and its value proved, up in the mountains ; 
 and next year the Railroad will be one of Colora- 
 do's possessions, and bring harmony and unity and 
 healthy development to all her growth, social, ma- 
 terial, and political. Also, by that time she will be 
 a state, and so responsible for her own government, 
 be it good or bad. 
 
 As we go out, Professor Agassiz leads a new 
 party of eastern notables from over the Plains and 
 
164 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 into the Mountains. He is already seething with 
 enthusiasm ; all Brazil was nothing, he says, to what 
 he has seen of natural beauty and scientific revela- 
 tion in crossing the Plains ; but the half is not told 
 him. When he comes face to face with the moun- 
 tains, the mountains in perfection and the moun- 
 tains in ruin, and their phenomena of parks and 
 wealth of verdure, then indeed he may feel he is 
 among the " Gardens of the Gods/' The professor 
 finds abundant materials to sustain his wide-spread 
 glacial theories ; all these vast elevated plains, from 
 Missouri River to Mountains, from Montana to 
 Mexico, the very heart of the Continent, are but 
 in his eye the deposit of great fields of ice, stretch- 
 ing down from these hills and washing down their 
 hights. What must they have been once to have 
 lost so much and remain so Titanesque ! to be 
 still the Mother Mountains of the Continent? 
 
 Here rests the record of our Summer Vacation 
 in the Rocky Mountains. The stage ride back to 
 Cheyenne, now hardened to long journeys and 
 open air life, was a long eighteen hours' pleasure 
 under warm sun and cool stars ; and we tumbled into 
 the tender berths of Pullman's palace car, waiting 
 on the railroad track, at three o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, with a keen gratitude to Colorado and all its 
 kind friends for what rare joy of new experience and 
 rich hospitality they had given us, and as keen a 
 welcome to steam locomotion, beds, and the near 
 home. Two days of the Pacific and the North- 
 western Railroads brought us to Chicago, and there 
 
COLORADO: ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS. 165 
 
 we separated, as we gathered, about the hospitable 
 tables of Governor Bross. 
 
 Life was fresher to all of us, new to some, for the 
 health and the sentiment of the thin pure air of the 
 Mountains and the Parks* Their skies and their 
 waters repeat the fabled fountain of perpetual youth. 
 It is to them that America will go, as Europe to 
 Switzerland, for rest and recreation, for new and 
 exhilarating scenes, for pure and bracing air, for 
 pleasure and for health. They offer no wonderful 
 valley like the Yo Semite ; no continental river 
 breaking through continental mountains like the 
 Columbia; no cataract like Niagara; no forests 
 like those of the Sierra Nevada range, no nor the 
 equals, in diversified form and color and species, 
 of those of New England or of Pennsylvania; and 
 yet I am greatly mistaken if the verdict of more 
 familiar acquaintance by the American people with 
 America is not, that here, among these central 
 ranges of continental mountains and these great 
 companion parks, within this wedded circle of ma- 
 jestic hill and majestic plain, under these skies of 
 purity, and in this atmosphere of elixir, lies the 
 pleasure-ground and health-home of the nation. 
 
 Smoother ways will soon be provided, but no 
 philosophic or accustomed traveler need wait for 
 them. The true aroma of the country is to be 
 found in the saddle and in the camp. It is not 
 necessary to travel with such numbers and with 
 such protection of authority as was our fortune. 
 A smaller party, more independent of time and 
 circumstances, is on many accounts even more 
 
1 66 A SUMMER VACATION IN CAMP. 
 
 desirable. If of men purely, four to eight is a fit 
 number for an expedition ; if the two sexes are 
 combined, about double these limits will be found 1 
 desirable. We met in the Middle Park a young 
 man from Yale college, who was making a thorough 
 journey of two months through the Mountains 
 and Parks without any companions but such as he 
 picked up from day to day or week to week. He 
 had bought a pony and blankets and coffee-pot 
 in Denver, and for the rest bargained for his 
 daily rations en route, stopping for the night at 
 ranches and hotels where he found them, and in 
 cabins or tents, if the doors were open and there 
 was room, and under a hospitable tree when all 
 else was denied him. 
 
 August is the best month to come, for that is near- 
 est summer in the high mountains; the streams are 
 lower, purer and more readily forded ; the weather 
 most uniformly clear. But any time from June 15 
 to September 15 will answer for visiting either or 
 both the great Parks ; and I beg every "Across the 
 Continent" traveler to give at least a week and if 
 possible a month to the interior regions of Colorado. 1 
 But do not come unless you will visit one of the 1 
 Parks at least, go over one or two of the high 1 
 passes, and ascend either Gray's Peak or Mount I 
 Lincoln. Else you will discredit my enthusiasm, J 
 and deny yourself when you talk of having seen j 
 Colorado. 
 
By the Same A^U^^OT. 
 
 Across the Continent: 
 
 A STAGE RIDE OVER THE PLAINS 
 
 TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, THE MORMONS, 
 AND THE PACIFIC STATES, 
 
 IN THE SUMMER OF 1865, 
 
 WITH SPEAKER COLFAX. 
 
 BY SAMUEL BOWLES, 
 
 Editor of the Springfield (Mass.) Repitblican. 
 
 A volume of 400 pages price $1.50. 
 
 The opening of the Pacific Railroad widens and deepens the in- 
 terest in the interior and Pacific States of our Republic, and has 
 created a new demand for this popular record of travel to and 
 through them four years ago. It is still the most pleasant and 
 faithful guide for all travel to the Mountains and the Pacific States. 
 
 A new and revised edition of the book has therefore been pub- 
 lished, uniform in style and binding with this volume, and at the 
 reduced price of $1.50. Copies sent by mail, postage paid, on 
 receipt of that sum by SAMUEL BOWLES & COMPANY, 
 Springfield, Mass. ; and the Trade will be supplied, as heretofore, 
 through KURD & HOUGHTON, New York. 
 
 Front the New York Times. 
 
 HJr, Bowles's " ACROSS THE CONTINENT " is the ablest and most valuable report 
 ever made of the characteristics of the Western and Pacific portions of our Union. 
 
 Front the Boston Transcript. 
 This is one of the most popular books of American travel for years. 
 
 From the Philadelphia Age. 
 It is the best record of travel that has emanated from an American pen during 
 
 the present century. 
 
 From the Nation, New York. 
 
 We venture to say that to nine persons out of every ten into whose hands it 
 falls, this volume will have almost as much of the charm of novelty as Palgrave's 
 "Arabia." Mr. Bowles is never dull and never commonplace; is very often 
 really eloquent. His observations on the moral and material condition and pros- 
 
Across the Continent. 
 
 pects of the communities through which he passes are always acute, in the great 
 majority of cases original, and often profound. His descriptions of scenery are 
 admirable, and he has the rare gift of knowing when he has given the reader 
 enough of them. There is no other account of the Yo Semite Valley, or of the 
 scenery and atmospheric effects of the plains and mountains and rivers of the 
 Western Coast, which can at all compare to his. We cordially recommend every- 
 body who wants a most valuable contribution to the social and political philosophy 
 of the day, in the form of one of the most entertaining records of travel we have 
 ever lighted upon, to buy and read this book. We have ourselves closed it with 
 sincere regret that there was not more of it. 
 
 Front the London A nglo-A merican Times. 
 
 Dr. Livingstone has written of equatorial Africa ; Captain Speke of the Nile ; 
 Mr. Cameron of the Eastern Archipelago ; and Madame Pfceffer of a voyage 
 round the world ; but no author, either English or foreign, has ever produced a 
 book of travel of more absorbing interest than that now before us. It is certainly 
 a remarkable book remarkable not only for the clear insight it gives us of that 
 immense and almost boundless region traversed by the writer, but for the charm- 
 ing ease, grace, and fluency with which he tells his story. We know something 
 of the greatness of the American Republic, but we acknowledge that we never 
 experienced so profound a sense of the unlimited resources, the boundless wealth, 
 and the grand destiny of that country as we have done since reading this work. 
 We advise all Americans who desire to know more of their own country, as well 
 as all Englishmen who wish clear information regarding America, to peruse it. 
 
 From the San Francisco ', Col., B^dletin. 
 
 As a record of travel it is admirable beyond praise. It is crowded with infor- 
 mation, given in a style so fresh and piquant that even the most commonplace 
 facts are made palatable. Mr. Bowles relates his experience so pleasantly, so 
 genially, so free from the taint of snobbery and affectation, that it refreshes one to 
 read him. He appears to be overrunning with vitality. His style is a model of 
 graceful English polished yet pointed elegant, yet bristling with pith and an- 
 tithesis. 
 
 From the Paris Correspondence of the New York Tribune. 
 
 See, in proof, that quintessentially American book of Samuel Bowies', the racy 
 book of his letters, written cnrrente calamo, " ACROSS THE CONTINENT." None 
 but an American could have written it. None but a graduate of a New England 
 school-house could have so written it ; so vividly, so sj^mpathetically, so artistically, 
 even. Its classically literary defects are its realistic merits, regarded merely from 
 the point of view of art. Verily, one need read that volume this side of the water 
 to relish, to sense at their full quality, to appreciate with justly complete thankful- 
 ness, its special and eminent choice American bouquet. 
 
 From the Boston Advertiser. 
 
 Its striking descriptions of California life, of the wonders of Yo Semite Valley 
 and of the Big Trees, of the noble charms of Oregon, and his appreciative observ- 
 ations on the growth of the national life among and beyond the Rocky Mountains, 
 carry the reader in imagination into a region where all accustomed ideas and 
 scenes seem poor by constrast. We have seen no discussion of the Mormon ques- 
 tion which appears more sound, while there certainly is none more authentic and 
 trustworthy. 
 

 By the Same Author. 
 
 THE HARTFORD PUBLISHING COMPANY issue in March, 1869 
 to be sold by subscription only a fine large royal octavo volume 
 of five hundred pages, combining the chief materials of " Across 
 the Continent " and " Colorado : its Parks and Mountains," and 
 much new and valuable matter, entitled : 
 
 Our New West. 
 
 RECORDS OF TRAVEL 
 
 BETWEEN THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AND THE 
 PACIFIC OCEAN. 
 
 OVER THE PLAINS OVER THE MOUNTAINS THROUGH 
 
 THE GREAT INTERIOR BASIN OVER THE SIERRA 
 
 NEVADAS-TO AND UP AND DOIVN 
 
 THE PACIFIC COAST. 
 
 WITH 
 
 DETAILS OF THE WONDERFUL NATURAL SCENERY, AGRICULTURE, 
 
 MINES, SOCIAL LIFE, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS 
 
 OF 
 
 COLORADO, WYOMING, UTAH, IDAHO, MONTANA, NEVADA, 
 
 CALIFORNIA, OREGON, WASHINGTON, AND 
 
 BRITISH COLUMBIA ; 
 
 Including the Mormons , the Indians, and the Chinese. 
 
 BY SAMUEL BOWLES, 
 
 EDITOR OF THE SPRINGFIELD (MASS.) REPUBLICAN. 
 
 This volume will contain new steel engraved portraits of the author and his 
 traveling companions, Vice-President Colfax, and Governor Bross ; a comprehen- 
 sive but complete Map ; and sixteen full page illustrations of the scenery, the 
 cities, and the characters described in the text, all drawn and engraved expressly 
 for this book. 
 
 The whole will present the most complete, graphic, authentic and freshly-drawn 
 account, yet offered to the public, of Our New West of America, in which the 
 opening of the Pacific Railroad has stimulated and spread so wide an interest. 
 
 The price of the volume which is produced in the finest style of the typographic 
 art is $3.00. Persons wishing copies, or desiring to act as agents for its sale, will 
 address the Publishers : HARTFORD PUBLISHING CO., Hartford, Conn. ; 
 or, J. D. DENNISON, New York ; or, J. A. STODDARD, Chicago, 111. 
 
Daily, Semi-Weekly, and Weekly. 
 
 The Springfield Republican, 
 
 A NEW ENGLAND FAMILY JOURNAL 
 
 OF 
 
 News, Politics, Literature and Social Life. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 SAMUEL BOWLES & COMPANY, 
 SPRINGFIELD, MASS. 
 
 To picture the progress of the varied and busy life of New England, as to rep- 
 resent its inquisitive and active thought on all questions that concern the comfort 
 and the elevation of society ; to make, indeed, a part of that life and that thought, 
 this is the scope and aim of THE SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN newspaper. Con- 
 fessedly it has become the most representative and comprehensive of New England 
 journals ; as a record of its news, for home use or foreign enlightenment ; as an expo- 
 nent of its best thought, most intelligent, candid and advanced, on questions of po- 
 litical and religious liberty and progress, of social order and development, and of 
 literary and art culture ; and it is the ambition and effort of its conductors to main- 
 tain and extend this leadership, to still more elevate and widen the character of the 
 paper, and to vary and enlarge its interest and usefulness for all classes of our people. 
 
 The^prominent features of THE REPUBLICAN, as a Newspaper and Family Jour- 
 nal, are, completeness and promptness, intelligence and system in the preparation 
 and publication pf News of every description seeking to give not only the fact 
 but the meaning and moral of every eveat ; free, candid and piquant Editorial 
 Discussions of all public occurrences, men and things ; intelligent .and independ- 
 ent Correspondence from Boston, New York and Washington, the far West, and 
 from Europe, letters of travel, letters of fact, letters of opinion and criticism ; 
 Reviews and Extracts from New Books; special summaries of intelligence in the 
 Literary, Art and Religious worlds; Stories, Sketches, Essays, Poetry, bits of 
 Biography, Science, Agriculture, Mechanics, etc., from original contributors, or 
 from the choicest magazines and literary journals of America and Europe. No 
 other newspaper proper gives so much space as THE REPUBLICAN to all this latter 
 wide variety of Literary and Family Reading. DR. J. G'. HOLLAND (Timothy Tit- 
 comb) is writing letters from Europe for THE REPUBLICAN ; and " WARRINGTON " 
 (W. S. Robinson) contributes regularly to its columns from Boston, 
 
 THE WEEKLY REPUBLICAN is becoming more and more a general Family 
 Political, Social and Literary Journal. Its full and intelligent Review of the 
 Week, its page of especial New England items, and its two columns of financial, 
 commercial and market affairs furnish its readers all that is wanting in the way of 
 news. Especial events are given in more detail. But the great bulk of its ample 
 pages are de voted *tp Editorial Discussions, Correspondence, Literary Reviews 
 and Selections, Stories and Essays, and other interesting and instructive family 
 reading. Its circulation is rapidly extending, not only throughout New England, 
 but all over the country ; first, as the best compiler of local New England news ; 
 second, as the best representative of nationalized New England opinion ; and, 
 third, as a generous collection of the best current literature of the day. 
 
 THE DAILY REPUBLICAN is published three times a week, and the SEMI- 
 WEEKLY and WEEKLY, regularly, on a large double sheet of eight pages and 48 
 columns. Their circulation is unprecedented in the history of provincial journal- 
 ism. No papers out of the largest cities have so large or wide-spread a reading. 
 This enables the proprietors to afford the several issues at prices as low as any 
 and lower than most of its contemporaries. While most first-class daily news- 
 papers are sold at four and five cents a copy and $10 and $12 a year, THE DAILY 
 REPUBLICAN is furnished at three cents and $8 a year; THE SEMI-WEEKLY at $4 
 a year, or $3 in clubs ; and THE WEEKLY at $2, or $1.75 in clubs. 
 
Printing Binding Blank Books Albums. 
 SAMUEL BOWLES & COMPANY, 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, MASS., 
 
 OWN AND CONDUCT AN EXTENSIVE 
 
 Book and Job -Printing Office, 
 
 BOOK BINDERY, 
 
 AND 
 
 BLANK BOOK MANUFACTORY, 
 
 INCLUDING AN 
 
 ELECTROTYPING ESTABLISHMENT AND A MANU- 
 FACTORY OF PHOTOGRAPH ALBUMS. 
 
 THEIR establishment occupies one of the largest buildings on Main street, 
 Springfield, and, in capacity and completeness, has no superior in all New 
 England. .* 
 
 They run twenty-five different Printing Presses, between fifty and sixty ma- 
 chines of all kinds, and employ nearly three hundred workmen and women. 
 
 Every description of Printing, from Cards and Handbills to Books ; from the 
 simplest and plainest to the most intricate, elegant and costly. 
 
 BINDING of all sorts and in every style. 
 
 BLANK BOOKS of every fashion, made to order, or on sale, wholesale and 
 retail. 
 
 PHOTOGRAPH ALBUMS, from 25 cents to $25 each, singly or by the quantity, 
 by mail or express, at lowest manufacturers' prices. 
 
 BOOKS stereotyped, printed, bound and published. 
 . LEGAL BLANKS printed to order, or on sale in any quantity. 
 
 In brief, all Job Work and Manufacturing ever done in Printing Office and 
 Bindery, is performed at this establishment, promptly, of the best materials, by 
 the best of workmen, and in the best manner known in either art. 
 
 Orders by mail as faithfully attended to as those left in person. 
 
 * 
 
 PATENT COUNTING-ROOM CALENDAR. 
 
 MESSRS. BOWLES & COMPANY manufacture this, the most convenient Counting- 
 House Calendar in use, which is also a desirable means of advertising, for Insur- 
 ance Companies, Bankers, Merchants, and business men generally. Orders filled 
 at short notice, in lots of from 500 to 50,000, with the business cards of parties 
 ordering on each leaf, printed in such a manner that the advertisements cannot be 
 detached and destroyed as long as the Calendar is in use. 
 
 . 
 
Publications of Samuel Bowles & Company. 
 
 The Mines of Colorado, 
 
 BY O. J. HOLLISTER, 
 
 Late Editor and Proprietor of the Colorado Mining Journal, and Editor of 
 the Rocky Mountain News* 
 
 This is a popular work on COLORADO, the aim of which is to give all the in- 
 formation possible about that interesting country. It is historical, descriptive and 
 statistical ; gives a history of the discovery of gold, the early settlement and de- 
 velopment of civilization in the Rocky Mountains; describes the physical peculi- 
 arities of the country, its climate and capacity, its resources and productions, 
 especially in mining ; and has voluminous and authentic statistics with regard to 
 the present condition of the mines, the nature of the vein-stones, methods of treat- 
 ment of the ores, names of mining companies, etc., etc. 
 
 Four Hundred and Fifty pages, duodecimo, with a large and well defined Map 
 of the Territory; price $2. 
 
 EMERSON'S 
 
 New Internal Revenue Guide, 
 
 AN INDISPENSABLE MANUAL FOR ALL REVENUE OFFICERS, 
 AND VALUABLE TO EVERY TAX-PAYER, 
 
 Containing an Annotated Edition of THE NEW INTER^L REVENUE 
 ACT, imposing Taxes on Distilled Spirits and Tobacco, and for other purposes, 
 passed July, 1868. Also, the Act exempting certain manufactures from Internal 
 Tax, together with a Guide and Hand-Book to all the Internal Revenue Laws 
 now in force. Edited and Annotated by CHARLES N. EMERSON, Counselor- 
 at-Law and Assessor Tenth Massachusetts District. 
 Medium Octavo. Paper Covers. Price 50 cents. 
 
 The above books, sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price annexed. 
 
 SAMUEL BOWLES & COMPANY, 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, MASS. 
 

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