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 a
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 
 
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 CALIFORNIA.
 
 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 FROM CHICAGO TO OGDEN. 
 
 T 
 
 words haunted us and hindered our rest. What 
 should we eat and drink, and wherewithal should we be 
 clothed ? No Scripture was strong enough to calm our 
 anxious thoughts ; no friend's experience of comfort and 
 ease on the journey sounded credible enough to disarm 
 our fears. "Dust^is dust," said we, "and railroad is 
 railroad. All restaurant cooking in America is intoler- 
 able. We shall be wretched ; nevertheless, we go." 
 
 There is a handsome black boy at the Sherman 
 House, Chicago, who remembers, perhaps, how many 
 parcels of " life preservers " of one kind and another 
 were lifted into our drawing-room on the Pullman cars. 
 But nobody else will ever know. 
 
 Our drawing-room ? Yes, our drawing-room ; and 
 this is the plan of it : A small, square room, occupying 
 the whole width of the car, excepting a narrow passage- 
 way on one side ; four windows, two opening on this 
 passage-way and two opening out of doors ; two doors, 
 one opening into the car and one opening into a tiny 
 closet, which held a washstand basin. This closet had 
 another door, opening into another drawing-room be- 
 yond. No one but the occupants of the two drawing- 
 rooms could have access to the bath-closet. On one side 
 of our drawing-room a long sofa ; on the other two large 
 arm-chairs, which could be wheeled so as to face the 
 sofa. Two shining spittoons and plenty oi looking-
 
 4 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 glass, hooks high up on the sides, and silver-plated rods 
 for curtains overhead, completed the list of furniture. 
 Room on the floor for bags and bundles and baskets ; 
 room, too, for a third chair, and a third chair we had for 
 a part of the way, — an easy-chair, with a sloping Ijack, 
 which belonged to another of these luxurious Pullman 
 cars. A perplexing sense of domesticity crept over us 
 as we settled into corners, hung up our cologne bottles, 
 and missed the cat ! Then we shut both our doors, and 
 smiled triumphantly into each other's faces, as the train 
 glided out of the station. No one can realize until he 
 has journeyed in the delightful quiet and privacy of these 
 small drawing-rooms on the Pullman cars how much of 
 the wear and tear of railroad travel is the result of the 
 contact with people. Be as silent, as unsocial, as surly 
 as you please, you cannot avoid being more or less im- 
 pressed by the magnetism of every human being in the 
 car. Their faces attract or repel ; you like, you dislike, 
 you wonder, you pity, you resent, you loathe. In the 
 course of twenty-four hours you have expended a great 
 amount of nerve force, to no purpose ; have borne hours 
 of vicarious suffering, by which nobody is benefited. 
 Adding to this hardly calculable amount of mental wear 
 and tear the physical injury of breathing bad air, we 
 sum up a total of which it is unpleasant to think. Of 
 the two evils the last is the worst. The heart may, at 
 least, try to turn away from unhappy people and wicked 
 people, to whom it can do no good. But how is the 
 body to steel itself against unwashed people and dis- 
 eased people with whom it is crowded, elbow to elbow, 
 and knee to knee, for hours ? Our first day in our 
 drawing-room stole by like a thief. The noon sur- 
 prised us, and the twilight took us unawares. By 
 hundreds of miles the rich prairie lands had unrolled 
 themselves, smiled, and fled. On the very edges of 
 the crumbling, dusty banks of our track stood pink, 
 and blue, and yellow flowers, undisturbed. The home- 
 steads in the distances looked like shining green for- 
 tresses, for nearly every house has a tree wall on two
 
 FROM CHICAGO TO OGDEN. 5 
 
 sides of it. The trees looked like poplars, but we could 
 not be sure. Often we saw only the solid green square, 
 the house being entirely concealed from view. As we 
 drew near the Mississippi River, soft, low hills came 
 into view on each side ; tangled skeins of httle rivers, 
 shaded by tall trees, wound and unwound themselves 
 side by side with us. A big bridge lay ready, on which 
 we crossed ; everybody standing on the platform of tlie 
 cars, at their own risk, according to the explicit prohi- 
 bition of the railroad company. Burlington looked well, 
 high up on red bluffs ; fine large houses on the heights, 
 and pleasant little ones in the suburbs, with patches of 
 vineyard in the gardens. 
 
 " Make your beds now, ladies ? " said the chamber- 
 man, whose brown face showed brighter brown for his 
 gray uniform and brass buttons. 
 
 "Yes," we rephed. "That is just what we most de- 
 sire to see." 
 
 Presto ! The seats of the arm-chairs pull out, and 
 meet in the middle. The backs of the arm-chairs pull 
 down, and lie flat on level with the seats. The sofa 
 pulls out and opens into double width. The roof of our 
 drawing-room opens and lets down, and makes two more 
 bedsteads, which we, luckily, do not want ; but from 
 under their eaves come mattresses, pillows, sheets, pil- 
 low-cases, and curtains. The beds are made ; the roof 
 shut up again ; the curtains hung across the glass part 
 of the doors ; the curtains drawn across the passage-way 
 windows ; the doors shut and locked ; and we undress 
 as entirely and safely as if we were in the best bedroom 
 of a house not made with wheels. Because we are so 
 comfortable we lie awake a little, but not long ; and thai 
 is the whole story of nights on the cars when the cars 
 are built by Pullman and the sleeping is done in drawing- 
 rooms. 
 
 Next morning, more prairie, — unfenced now, undi- 
 vided, unmeasured, unmarked, save by the different tints 
 of different growths of grass or grain ; great droves of 
 cattle grazing here and there ; acres of willow saplings,
 
 6 BITS OF TKAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 pale jellowish green; and solitary trees, which look 
 like hermits in a wilderness. These, and now and 
 then a shapeless village, which looks even lonelier than 
 the empty loneliness by which it is surrounded, — these 
 are all for hours and hours. We think, " now we are get- 
 ting out into the great spaces." " This is what the word 
 'West' has sounded like." At noon we come to a spot 
 where railway tracks cross each other. The eye can 
 follow their straight lines out and away, till they look like 
 fine black threads flung across the green ground, pur- 
 poseless, accidental. A train steams slowly off to the 
 left ; the passengers wave handkerchiefs to us, and we to 
 them. They are going to Denver ; but it seems as if 
 they might be going to any known or unknown planet. 
 One man alone — short, fat — is walking rapidly away 
 into the wide Southern hemisphere. He carries two 
 big, shining brass trombones. Where can he be going, 
 and what can be the use of trombones .? He looks more 
 inexplicable than ten comets. 
 
 We cross the Missouri at Council Bluffs ; begin grum- 
 bling at the railroad corporations for forcing us to take 
 a transfer train across the river ; but find ourselves 
 plunged into the confusion of Omaha before we have 
 finished railing at the confusion of her neighbor. Now 
 we see for the first time the distinctive expression of 
 American overland travel. Here all luggage is weighed 
 and rechecked for points further west. An enormous 
 shed is filled with it. Four and five deep stand the 
 anxious owners, at a high wooden wall, behind which 
 nobody may go. Everybody holds up checks, and ges- 
 ticulates and beckons. There seems to be no sys- 
 tem ; but undoubtedly there is. Side by side with the 
 rich and flurried New-Yorker stands the poor and flurried 
 emigrant. Equality rules. Big bundles of feather-beds, 
 tied up in blue check, red chests, corded with rope, get 
 ahead of Saratoga trunks. Many languages are spoken. 
 German, Irish, French, Spanish, a little English, and 
 all varieties of American, I heard during thirty minutes 
 in that luggage-shed. Inside the wall was a pathetic
 
 FROM CHICAGO TO OGDEN. J 
 
 sight, — a poor German woman on her knees before a 
 chest, which had burst open on the journey. It seemed 
 as if its whole contents could not be worth five dollars, 
 — so old, so faded, so coarse were the clothes and so 
 battered were the utensils. But it was evidently all she 
 owned ; it was the home she had brought with her from 
 the Fatherland, and would be the home she would set up 
 in the prairie. The railroad-men were good to her, and 
 were helping her with ropes and nails. This comforted 
 me somewhat ; but it seemed almost a sin to be journey- 
 ing luxuriously on the same day and train with that poor 
 soul. 
 
 " Lunches put up for people going West." This sign 
 was out on all corners. Piles of apparently ownerless 
 bundles were stacked all along the platforms ; but every- 
 body was too busy to steal. Some were eating hastily, 
 with looks of distress, as if they knew it would be long 
 before they ate again. Others, wiser, were buying whole 
 chickens, loaves of bread, and filling bottles with tea. 
 Provident Germans bought sausage by the yard. Ger- 
 man babies got bits of it to keep them quiet. Murder- 
 ous-looking rifles and guns, with strapped rolls of worn 
 and muddy blankets, stood here and there; murderous, 
 but jolly-looking miners, four-fifths boots and the rest 
 beard, strode about, keeping one eye on their weapons 
 and bedding. Well-dressed women and men with pol- 
 ished shoes, whose goods were already comfortably 
 bestowed in palace-cars, lounged up and down, curious, 
 observant, amused. Gay placards, advertising all pos- 
 sible routes ; cheerful placards, setting forth the advan- 
 tages of travellers' insurance policies ; insulting placards, 
 assuming that all travellers have rheumatism, and should 
 take " Unk Weed ; " in short, just such placards as one 
 sees everywhere, — papered the walls. But here they 
 seemed somehow to be true and merit attention, especi- 
 ally the " Unk Weed." There is such a professional 
 croak in that first syllable ; it sounds as if the weed had 
 a diploma. 
 
 All this took two or three hours ; but they were short
 
 8 BITS OF TEA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 " All aboard ! " rung out like the last warning on Jersev 
 City wharves when steamers push off for Europe ; and 
 in the twinkling of an eye we were out again in the stilL 
 soft, broad prairie, which is certainly more like sea thaOj 
 like any other land. 
 
 Again flowers and meadows, and here and there low 
 hills, more trees, too, and a look of greater richness. 
 Soon the Platte River, which seems to be composed of 
 equal parts of sand and water, but which has too solemn 
 a history to be spoken lightly of. It has been the silent 
 guide for so many brave men who are dead ! The old 
 emigrant road, over which they went, is yet plainly to 
 be seen ; at many points it hes near the railroad. Its 
 still, grass-grown track is strangely pathetic. Soon it 
 will be smooth prairie again, and the wooden iiead- 
 boards at the graves of those who died by the way will 
 have fallen and crumbled. 
 
 Dinner at Fremont. The air was sharp and clear. 
 The disagreeable guide-book said we were only 1,176 
 feet above the sea ; but we believed we were higher. 
 The keeper of the dining-saloon apologized for not hav- 
 ing rhubarb-pie, saying that he had just sent fifty pounds 
 of rhubarb on ahead to his other saloon. " You'll take 
 tea there to-morrow night. ■" 
 
 " But how far apart are your two houses ? " said we. 
 
 " Only eight hundred miles. It's considerable trouble 
 to go back an' forth, an' keep things straight ; but I do 
 the best I can." 
 
 Two barefooted little German children, a boy and girl, 
 came into the cars here, with milk and coffee to sell. 
 The boy carried the milk, and was sorely puzzled when 
 I held out my small tumbler to be filled. It would hold 
 only half as much as his tin measure, of which the price 
 was five cents. 
 
 " Donno's that's quite fair," he said, when I gave him 
 five cents. But he pocketed it, all the same, and ran 
 on, swinging his tin can and pint cup, and calling out, 
 " Nice fresh milk. Last you'll get ! No milk any fur- 
 ther west." Little rascal ! We found it all the way
 
 FROM CHICAGO TO OGDEN. 9 
 
 plenty of it too, such as it was. It must be owned, how- 
 ever, that sage-brush and prickly pear (and if the cows 
 do not eat these, what do they eat ?) give a singularly 
 unpleasant taste to milk ; and the addition of alkali 
 water does not improve it. 
 
 Toward night of this day, we saw our first Indian 
 woman. We were told it was a woman. It was, 
 apparently, made of old India-rubber, much soaked, 
 seamed, and torn. It was thatched at top with a 
 heavy roof of black hair, which hung down from a 
 ridge-like hne in the middle. It had sails of dingy- 
 brown canvas, furled loosely around it, confined and 
 caught here and there irregularly, fluttering and faUing 
 open wherever a rag of a different color could be shown 
 underneath. It moved about on brown, bony, stalking 
 members, for which no experience furnishes name ; 
 it mopped, and mowed, and gibbered, and reached 
 out through the air with more brown, bony, clutching 
 members; from which one shrank as from the claws of 
 a bear. " Muckee ! muckee ! " it cried, opening wide a 
 mouth toothless, but red. It was the most abject, 
 loathly living thing I ever saw. I shut my eyes, and 
 turned away. Presently, I looked again. It had passed 
 on ; and I saw on its back, gleaming out from under 
 a ragged calash-like arch of basket-work, a smooth, 
 shining, soft baby face, brown as a brown nut, silken as 
 silk, sweet, happy, innocent, confiding, as if it were 
 babe of a royal line, borne in royal state. All below its 
 head was helpless mummy, — body, legs, armiS, feet 
 bandaged tight, swathed in a sohd roll, strapped to a 
 fiat board, and swung by a leathern band, going around 
 the mother's breast. Its great, soft, black eyes looked 
 fearlessly at everybody. It was as genuine and blessed 
 a baby as any woman ever bore. Idle and thoughtless 
 passengers jeered the squaw, saying : " Sell us the pap- 
 poose." "Give you greenbacks for the pappoose.'' 
 Then, and not till then, I saw a human look in the India- 
 rubber face. The eyes could flash, and the mouth could 
 show scorn, as well as animal greed. The expression
 
 lO BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 was almost malignant, but it bettered the face ; for it 
 made it the face of a woman, of a mother. 
 
 At sunset, the clouds, which had been lying low and 
 heavy all the afternoon, lifted and rolled away from the 
 outer edi^e of the world. Thunder-storms swept around 
 the horizon, followed by broken columns of rainbow, 
 which lasted a second, and then faded into gray. When 
 we last looked out, before going to bed, we seemed to 
 be whirling across the middle of a gigantic green disc, 
 with a silver rim turned up all around, to keep us from 
 faUing off, in case we should not put down the brakes 
 quick enough on drawing near the edge. 
 
 Early the next morning, we saw antelopes. They 
 were a great way off, and, while they stood still, might as 
 well have been iDig goats or small cows ; but, when they 
 were good enough to bound, no eye could mistake them. 
 The sight of these consoled us for having passed through 
 the bufifalo country in the night. It also explained the 
 nature of the steaks we had been eating. How should 
 steaks be tender cut out of that acrobatic sort of mus- 
 cle ? We passed also the outposts of Prairie Dog 
 Town. The owls and the rattlesnakes were "not re- 
 ceiving," apparently ; but the droll, little squirrel-like 
 puppies met us most cordially. The mixture of defi- 
 ance and terror, of attack and retreat, in their behavior 
 was as funny as it always is in small dogs, who bark 
 and run. in other places. But the number and manner 
 of shelters made it unspeakably droll here. I am not sure 
 that I actually saw the whole of any one prairie dog at 
 a time. What I chiefly saw was ends of tails going into 
 holes, and tips of noses sticking out to bark. 
 
 At noon, we were invited to dine at Cheyenne, — 
 " Cheyenne City," it is called. Most of the buildings 
 which we saw were one-story wooden ones, — small, 
 square, with no appearance of roofs, only a square, 
 sharp-cornered front, hke a section of board fence. 
 These all faced the railroad station, were painted with 
 conspicuous signs, — such as "Billiard Saloon," "Sam- 
 ple Room," "Meals for Fifty Cents ; " and, in the
 
 FROM CHICAGO TO OGDEN. il 
 
 doors of most of them, as the train arrived, there stood 
 a woman or a boy, ringing a shrill bell furiously. It is 
 curious, at these stations, to see how instantly the crowd 
 of passengers assorts itself, and divides into grades, — 
 of people seeking for the best ; people seeking for the 
 cheapest ; and other people, most economical of all, 
 who buy only hot drinks, having brought a grocery store 
 and a restaurant along with them in a basket-tower. 
 The most picturesque meals are set out on boards in the 
 open air, and the most interesting people eat there ; but 
 I am afraid the food is not good. However, there was 
 at Cheyenne a lively widow, presiding over a stall of 
 this sort, where the bread and cheese and pickles looked 
 clean and eatable. She had preserved strawberries also, 
 and two bottles of California wine, and a rare gift at talk- 
 ing. She was a pioneer, — had come out ahve from 
 many Indian fights. Her husband had fared less well, — 
 being brought home dead, with fourteen arrows in his 
 body ; but even this did not shake her love for the 
 West. She " would not go back to the East, not on no 
 account." " Used to live in Boston ; " but she "didn't 
 never want to see any o' them sixpenny towns agin." 
 
 In this neighborhood are found the beautiful moss 
 agates, — daintiest of all Nature's secret processes in 
 stone. Instead of eating dinner, we ran up to a large 
 shop where these stones are kept for sale, set in gold 
 which may be said to be of their own kin, since it comes 
 from Colorado. 
 
 The settings were not pleasing ; but the stones were 
 exquisitely beautiful. What geology shall tell us the 
 whole of their secret ? Dates are nothing, and names 
 are not much. Here are microscopic ferns, feathery 
 seaweeds, tassels of pines, rippling water-lines of fairy 
 tides, mottled drifts of sand or snows, — all drawn in 
 black or crowded gray, on and in and through the solid 
 stone. Centuries treasured, traced, copied, embalmed 
 them. They are too solemnly beautiful to be made into 
 ornaments and set swinging in women's ears ! 
 
 From Cheyenne to Sherman, we rode on the engine
 
 12 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 — on the foremost engine ; for we were climbing moun- 
 tains, and it needed all the power of two engines to 
 draw us up. 
 
 At Cheyenne, we were only six thousand feet above 
 the sea ; at Sherman, we should be eight thousand two 
 hundred and forty-two. The throbbing puffs, almost 
 under our feet, sounded like the quick-drawn, panting 
 breaths of some giant creature. Once in every three or 
 four minutes, the great breastplate door opened ; and 
 we looked into its heart of fire, and fed it with fuel. 
 Once in every three or four minutes, one of the keepers 
 crept along on its sides, out to its very mouth, and 
 poured oil into every joint ; he strode its neck, and 
 anointed every valve. His hand seemed to pat it lov- 
 ingly, as he came back, holding on by the shining rods 
 and knobs and handles. I almost forgot to look at the 
 stretches of snow, the forests of pines, the plateaus of 
 mountain-tops, on either hand, so absorbed was I in the 
 sense of supernatural motion. 
 
 The engineer seemed strangely quiet ; a calm, steady 
 look ahead, — never withdrawn for a moment at a time 
 from the glistening, black road before us. Now and 
 then, a touch on some spring or pulley, when great jets 
 of steam would spurt out, or whistling shrieks of warn- 
 ing come. 
 
 " Where is the rudder ? " said I, being from the 
 sea. 
 
 The engineer looked puzzled, for a second ; then, 
 laughing, said; "Oh! I don't steer her; she steers 
 herself. Put her on the track, and feed her. That's 
 all." 
 
 Up, up, up ! We are creeping, although we are 
 mounting by steam. Snow lies on every side ; and 
 clumps of firs and pines, and rocks of fantastic shapes, 
 are the only things which break this desolate loneli- 
 ness. We are so much above the tops of many moun- 
 tains that they themselves blend and become wide 
 fields, over wliich we look to the far horizon, where rise 
 still higher peaks, white with snow. We see off in all
 
 FROM CHICAGO TO OGDEN. 13 
 
 directions, as we did on the plains ; yet clouds are be- 
 low us, rolling and rising, and changing like meadow- 
 mists ! Still, we climb. The trees are stunted and 
 bent, the rocks are dark and terrible ; many of them 
 1 )ok like grotesque idols, standing erect or toppling 
 over. Wyoming has well named this region " The 
 Black Hills." 
 
 At Sherman, we dropped one of our engines, and left 
 off using the other. The descent is so sharp and sud- 
 den that no steam is needed, only the restraining 
 brakes. 
 
 A few hours later, at Laramie, we were again on a 
 plain. We had gone down hill steadily, for miles and 
 miles. The guide-book seemed incredible, when we 
 read that we were still more than seven thousand feet 
 above the sea. Yet here were wide plains, droves of 
 cattle, little runs of water, and flowers on every side. 
 The sun was setting in a broad belt of warm, yellow 
 sky ; snow lay in the crevices of the lower hills, and 
 covered the distant ranges ; winter and spring seemed 
 to have wed. 
 
 On the morning of the fourth day we looked out on a 
 desert of sage-brush and sand ; but the desert had 
 infinite beauties of shape and the sage had pathos of 
 color. Why has the sage-bush been so despised, so 
 held up to the scorn of men '^. It is simply a miniature 
 olive-tree. In tint, in shape, the resemblance is won- 
 derful. Travellers never tire of recording the sad and 
 subtle beauty of Mediterranean slopes, gray with the 
 soft, thick, rounded tops of olive orchards. The 
 stretches of these sage-grown plains have the same 
 tints, the same roundings and blendings' of soft, thick 
 foliage ; the low sand-hills have endless variety of out- 
 Hne, and all strangely sug<;estive. There are fortresses, 
 palisades, roof slopes with dormer windows, hollows 
 like cradles, and here and there vivid green oases. In 
 these oases cattle graze. Sometimes an Indian stands 
 guarding them, his scarlet legs gleaming through the 
 sage, as motionless as the cattle he watches. A little
 
 14 BITS OF TRAVEL AT 2^0 ME. 
 
 further on we come to his home, — a stack of bare 
 bean-poles, apparently on fire at the top ; his family 
 sitting by, in a circle, cross-legged, doing nothing ! 
 Then comes a tract of stony country, where the rocks 
 seem also as significant and suggestive as the sand- 
 hills, — castles, and pillars, and altars, and spires : it is 
 impossible to beheve that human hands have not 
 wrought them. 
 
 For half of a day we looked out on such scenes as these, 
 and did not weary. It is monotonous ; it is desolate : 
 but it is solemn and significant. The day will come 
 when this gray wilderness will be red with roses, golden 
 with fruit, glad and rich and full of voices. 
 
 At noon, at Evanstovvn, the observation car was at- 
 tached to the train : (when will railroad companies be 
 wise enough to know that no train ought to be run any- 
 where without such an open car.?) Twice too many 
 passengers crowded in ; everybody opened his umbrella 
 in somebody's else eye, and unfolded his map of the 
 road on other knees than his own ; but after a few miles 
 the indifferent people and those who dreaded cinders, 
 smoke, and the burning of skin, drifted back again into 
 the other cars, leaving the true lovers of sky, air, and 
 out-door room to enjoy the canons in peace 
 
 What is a caiion ? Only a valley between two high 
 hills ; that is all, though the word seems such a loud 
 and compound mystery of warfare, both carnal and 
 spiritual. But when the valley is thousands or tens of 
 thousands of feet deep, and so narrow that a river can 
 barely make its way through by shrinking and twisting 
 and leaping; when one wall is a mountain of grassy 
 slope and the other wall is a mountain of straight, 
 sharp stone ; when from a perilous road, which creeps 
 along on ledges of the wall which is a mountain of stone, 
 one looks across to the wall which is grassy slope, and 
 down at the silver line of twisting, turning, leaping 
 river, the word canon seems as inadequate as the milder 
 word valley ! This was Echo Canon. We drew near 
 Vt thx'ough rocky fields almost as grand as the cahOD
 
 FROM CIIICAuO TO OGDEN. 15 
 
 itself. Rocks of red and pale yellow color were piled 
 and strewn on either hand in a confusion so wild that it 
 was majestic : many of them looked like gatewa3^s and 
 walls and battlements of fortifications ; many of them 
 seemed poised on points, just ready to fall ; others rose 
 massive and solid, from terraces which stretched away 
 beyond our sight. The railroad track is laid (is hung 
 would seem a truer phrase) high up on the right-hand 
 wall of the canon, — that is, on the wall of stone. The 
 old emigrant road ran at the base of the opposite wall 
 (the wall of grassy slopes), close on the edge of the 
 river. Just after we entered the canon, as we looked 
 down to the river, we saw an emigrant party in sore 
 trouble on that road. The river was high and over- 
 flowed the road ; the crumbling, gravelly precipice rose 
 up hundreds of feet sheer from the water ; the cattle 
 which the poor man was driving were trying to run up 
 the precipice, but all to no purpose ; the wife and chil- 
 dren sat on logs by the wagon, apathetically waiting, — 
 nothing to be done but to wait there in that wild and 
 desolate spot till the river chose to give them right of 
 way again. They were so many hundred feet below us 
 that the cattle seemed calves and the people tiny pup- 
 pets, as we looked over the narrow rim of earth and 
 stone which upheld us in the air. But I envied them. 
 They would see the canon, know it. To us it would be 
 only a swift and vanishing dream. Even while we are 
 whirling through, it grows unreal. Flowers of blue, 
 yellow, purple are flying past, seemingly almost under 
 our wheels. We look over them down into broader 
 spaces, where there are homesteads and green meadows. 
 Then the canon walls close in again, and, looking down 
 we see only a silver thread of river; looking up, we 
 see only a blue belt of sky. Suddenly we turn a sharp 
 corner and come out on a broad plain. The canon 
 walls have opened like arms, and they hold a town 
 named after their own voices. Echo City. The arms 
 are mighty, foi they are snow-topped mountains. The 
 plain is green and the river is still. On each side are
 
 1 6 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 small canons, with green threads in their centres, show- 
 ing where the streams come down. High up on the 
 hills are a few little farm-houses, where Americans hve 
 and make butter, like the men of the Tyrol. A few miles 
 further the mountains narrow again, and we enter x 
 still wider gorge. This is Weber Canon. Here are 
 still higher walls and more wonderful rocks. Great 
 serrated ledges crop out lengthwise the hills, reaching 
 from top to bottom, high and thin and sharp. Two of 
 these, which lie close together, with apparently only a 
 pathway between (though they are one hundred feet 
 apart), are called the Devil's Slide. Why is there so 
 much unconscious tribute to that person in the unculti- 
 vated minds of all countries ? One would think him 
 the patron saint of pioneers. The rocks still wear 
 shapes of fortifications, gateways, castle fronts, and 
 towers, as in Echo Canon ; but they are most exqui- 
 sitely lined, hollowed, grooved, and fretted. 
 
 As we whirl by, they look as the fine Chinese carv- 
 ings in ivory would chiselled on massive stones by tools 
 of giants. 
 
 The canon opens suddenly into a broad, beautiful 
 meadow, in which the river seems to rest rather than 
 to run. A line of low houses, a Mormon settlement, 
 marks the banks ; fields of grain and grass glitter in 
 the early green ; great patches of blue lupine on every 
 hand look blue as blue water at a distance, the flowers 
 are set so thick. Only a few moments of this, however, 
 and we are again in a rocky gorge, where there is barely 
 room for the river, and no room for us, except on a 
 bridge. This, too, is named for that same popular 
 person, " DeviPs Gate." The river foams and roars 
 under our feet as we go through. Now comes another 
 open plain, — wide, sunny, walled about by snow 
 mountains, and holding a town. This is Ogden, and 
 the shining water which lies in sight to the left is the 
 Great Salt Lake !
 
 SALT LAKE CITY. f? 
 
 SALT LAKE CITY. 
 
 IT seems strange that the cars of the Utah Central 
 Railroad should be just like all other cars. We ex- 
 pected to find " Holiness to the Lord " inscribed on the 
 panels, and portraits of Mormon elders above the doors. 
 In fact, I am not sure that we did not expect to see even 
 the trees and shrubs along the track bearing the magic 
 initials of the " Zion Co-operative Mercantile Associa- 
 tion." However, we made up for these lacks by scruti- 
 nizing the face of every man and every woman about 
 us, and searching for some subtle token which might 
 betray that they were not living as other men and 
 women live. No doubt we made comical blunders, and 
 in our thoughts wrongfully accused many an innocent 
 bachelor of the blackest polygamy. However, we 
 were right in one case. Just as the cars moved out 
 of Ogden, there entered in at the door of our car a big, 
 burly man, perhaps fifty-five or sixty years old. His 
 face was very red ; he wore a red wig ; and, as if deter- 
 mined to make the red of his face and the red of his 
 wig both as hideous as possible, he wore about his neck 
 a scarf of a third shade of fiery red. His eyes were 
 small, light, and watery, but sharp and cruel. His face 
 was bloated, coarse, sensual : I have never seen a more 
 repulsive man. 
 
 "Oh ! that is a Mormon," we whispered, under our 
 breaths. " It must be." He strode down the car in a 
 pompous way, followed by a meek and lifeless-looking 
 old woman. He looked from right to left with an air of 
 arrogant self-consciousness, which would have beeo 
 ludicrous except for a sort of terrible certainty of powef 
 in it, which made one shudder. 
 2
 
 r8 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 " Who is that ? who is that ? " we said to the con- 
 ductor. 
 
 "That is Historian Smith. He is the second in 
 power in our church," reph'ed the conductor, with a 
 complacent smile. 
 
 Afterward we saw him doing honor to the scarlet 
 magnate, with most obsequious bowing and bending. 
 But we soon forgot our interest in the baffling fac^s of 
 Mormon men and women, and looked only at the won- 
 derful valley through which we were journeying. Surely 
 this Salt Lake Valley is itself Brigham Young's most 
 powerful auxiliary. No possible pomp which riches 
 could compass, and send out to meet the new prose- 
 lytes, would so appeal to their senses as must the first 
 view of this broad, green valley, walled in by snow- 
 topped mountains, and holding the great Salt Lake. 
 There is a solemnity in its beauty which to a religious 
 fanatic might easily seem supernatural. 
 
 Entering the valley, as we did, at Ogden, late in the 
 afternoon, and journeying southward to the city, one 
 sees a picture which cannot be forgotten. 
 
 The Wasatch Mountains, on the left, were like a 
 sohd wall, clouded purple and gray from the base half 
 way up, then mottled and barred and striped with white 
 wherever snow lay in the rifts and seams ; then, at the 
 very top, crowned and battlemented with sohd snow, 
 which not even the fiercest summer heats would entirely 
 melt. On the right lay the lake, also glistening like 
 silver, and with rippling gleams of blue. Its further 
 shore was a snow-topped mountain range ; and its 
 islands were mountains, some of them snow-topped, 
 some of them green, some of them bare and stony, and 
 red in the low sunlight. Between us and the lake on 
 the right, and between us and the Wasatch Mountains 
 on the left, lay broad fields, green with grain or grass, 
 or gay with many-colored blossoms, or yellow vrith 
 small sunflowers. These were most beautiful of all : 
 their wide belts of yellow were hke shining frames to 
 the color and beauty beyond. This sunflower is called
 
 SALT LAKE CLTY 19 
 
 the Mormon flower, and is said to spring up wherever 
 Mormons go. If other Mormon fields are like these, 
 the superstition is well-founded. Acre after acre they 
 spread, as solid as cloth of gold. The eye could not 
 bear their dazzling any more than if they were suns. 
 
 Salt Lake City lies close at the base of the Wasatch 
 range, ^o close that, as you first see the city from the 
 cars, you can fancy it a walled town, walled on one side 
 by the mountains, with a gate in every canon. As we 
 drew near it, the sunset lights had left the valley, but 
 still lit the snowy hill-tops. 
 
 I confess that my first thought was of the grand old 
 Bible words : " The angel of the Lord encampeth around 
 them that fear him." No doubt many a devout simple- 
 hearted Mormon has had the same feeling, as he ha? 
 first looked on the scene. 
 
 The next morning, as we looked down upon the city 
 from some of the lower spurs of the mountains, I found 
 myself still conscious of a peculiar solemnity in its 
 whole expression. It is compact, but not crowded. 
 Each house has its enclosure of fruit and shade trees ; 
 so that, as you look down on the city from above, it 
 seems like a city built in a huge garden. It has no 
 straggling suburbs, no poor or thriftless neighborhoods ; 
 not a dilapidated or poverty-stricken house is to be 
 seen. On each side of the principal streets, between 
 the side-walk and the road, run swift, sparkling little 
 mountain streams. Close up to the city limits, on the 
 south and west and north, come the great gray plains of 
 the unredeemed alkali bottoms, in which the city's 
 dense green looks like an oasis. Near the centre of the 
 city rises the huge, weird dome of the Tabernacle, add- 
 ing still more to the mystic expression of the scene. 
 
 Fancy a roof, smooth, gHstening, gray, and of a fault- 
 less oval, large enough to shelter seventeen thousand per- 
 sons, comfortably seated. If it surmounted any thing 
 which could be properly called a building, it would be 
 as grand as St. Peter's : but it is placed on low, straight 
 brick walls ; and the whole effect, near at hand, is like
 
 20 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 nothing more nor less than half of a gigantic egg, split 
 lengthwise. However, into all the distant views of the 
 city it enters well, and seems strangely in keeping with 
 the long slopes of the mountain bases. Beyond the 
 gray alkali plains lies the shining lake, full of mountain 
 islands ; beyond the shining lake and the mountain 
 islands rise snow-topped mountain ranges, running to 
 the north and to the south as far as the eye can see. 
 The sun sets behind these. It turns them to purple 
 mist, then to golden, then to pale gray, and sends their 
 vivid shadows way across the lake and plains. It rises 
 behind the Wasatch range ; and then that shadow also 
 is flung out beyond the city and the plains, till it quivers 
 on the lake. So the mountains might almost be said to 
 clasp hands over the city's head. At noon, when the 
 sun was hot, I looked out through the tops of green 
 locust-trees, and saw the whole eastern range blue as 
 sapphire, — so blue that the blue sky above looked white ; 
 and the snow on the summits was so white that the 
 white clouds above looked gray. The air is so rarefied 
 that the light shimmers dazzling along all outlines, and 
 the sense of distance is deceived. Peaks thirty miles 
 distant seem near at hand ; hills five miles off seem 
 within a few minutes' walk ; and the sunshine seems 
 to have a color and substance to it which I never 
 saw elsewhere, — no, not even in Italy. It takes up 
 room ! 
 
 , But, in spite of the sunshine, in spite of the beauty, 
 the very air seemed heavy with hidden sadness. No 
 stranger can walk the streets of Salt Lake City without 
 a deepening sense of mystery and pain. We have been 
 so long accustomed to the idea of polygamy as a recog- 
 nized evil, we have seen the word so long and so often 
 in print, that we are unprepared for the new sense of 
 horror which is at once aroused by the actual presence 
 of the thing. Each sunny doorway, each gay garden, is 
 a centre of conjecture, of sympathy. Each woman's 
 face, each baby's laugh, rouses thoughts hard to bear. 
 The streets are full of life ; shops are busy ; car-
 
 SALT LAKE CITY, 21 
 
 riages with fine horses drive up and down ; farm-wao^ona 
 with produce are coming in ; markets are open ; stalls on 
 corners are piled up with apples, and bits of cocoanut in 
 tin pans of water, just such as are sold in Boston or New 
 York. You can have your boots blacked or your pocket 
 picked ; boys and men of these and all other trades 
 jostle you on every hand. Over most of the shops is a 
 singular placard, a picture of one huge eye ; above it 
 the motto " HoHness to the Lord," below it the initials 
 Z. C. M. A. These stand for the words " Zion's Co- 
 operative Mercantile Association," and mean that the 
 man who sells you tape or lemons behind that counter 
 sells them at the prices fixed by the Church, and pays 
 to the Church a semi-annual percentage on all sales. 
 
 Passing out of the business streets, you find cosey, 
 tasteful little homes on every hand. Flowers at the win- 
 dows and in the gardens ; piazzas shaded by vines ; fruit 
 orchards and little patches of vegetables, or corn, or 
 wheat, all through the city. If your driver is a Gentile, 
 he turns round from time to time with such comments 
 as these : — 
 
 " That's a three-wife house." " That's a two-wife 
 
 house." " That's a new house Mr. has just built 
 
 for his last wife. " There's two of Brigham's wives 
 lives in that house." 
 
 And before one of the pleasantest little houses of all, 
 he reins up his horses into a walk, and says : — 
 
 "That's where Amelia, Brigham's last wife lives. 
 And one of Mr. Clawson's wives lives with her. Mr. 
 Clawson — he married two of Brigham's daughters." 
 
 The heart grows faint. The sunshine seems dark- 
 ened. You look up in involuntary appeal to the silent, 
 snowy mountains, from which no help comes for this 
 great wrong. Then you look earnestly into the faces of 
 all the women you see. They are standing on doorsills, 
 with laughing babies in their arms ; they are talking 
 gayly with each other on the sidewalk ; they are lead- 
 ing little children ; they are walking by the side of men ; 
 they are carrying burdens, or seeking pleasure, just as
 
 22 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 otlier women do — apparently. Their faces are not sad, 
 as we looked to find them. If we did not know we 
 were in Salt Lake City, we should say. " These are 
 simple and contented women, uncommonly healthy and 
 strong. The community, as a whole, seems remarkably 
 industrious, prosperous, and innocent, if one may judge 
 from faces and from expression of the homesteads." 
 
 These are the Mormons, of whom we have heard 
 such terrible tales of cruelty and crime. They are the 
 men who have created this blooming, thriving city, in 
 the heart of a desert ; these are the down-trodden and 
 heart-broken women for whom we have wept ! The 
 problem grows more and more perplexing with every 
 hour that you spend in the city, and with every word 
 that you hear. Men, not Mormons, who have lived 
 here for years, bear the strongest testimony to the up- 
 rightness, honesty, industry, purity of Mormon lives, 
 and to their charity also. The city is divided into 
 twenty-one wards. Every ward has its bishop, who 
 has several assistants. 
 
 " At every train, you will see a bishop or assistant 
 from every ward down at the cars, to meet any poor 
 person who may come in, and to take care of them at 
 once," said a Mormon woman to me. 
 
 " And we all take care of our own poor ; each ward 
 has to contribute. You'll not find a beggar or a suffer- 
 ing poor person in our Church. That's the greatest 
 part of our religion, ma'am.'' 
 
 This \\ Oman, though a staunch Mormon, hates polyg- 
 amy. But she says, piteously : " It's because I am 
 not religious ; I am not naturally a rehgious person. I 
 believe that polygamy is right, because the Church 
 teaches it ; but I can't say that I feel about it as a Mor- 
 mon woman ought to. And I could never have my hus- 
 band's other wife in my house ; (no, never !) though I 
 lived with his first wife for twelve years, and took care 
 of her till she died ; and she was very fond of me. She 
 was quite an old lady. It's only last year she died ; 
 and, to the very last, she was asking for me. But, ii
 
 SALT LAKE CITY. 23 
 
 any Mormon woman tells you that they Hkc polygamy, 
 they lie. It's nothing but a cross that they bear for the 
 sake of their religion." 
 
 This woman has had no children ; the younger wife 
 has had two. The husband is a man of some means. 
 If Mormon men die without making wills, their wives 
 inherit nothing. The children inherit all ; and the 
 mother takes what the children, or the Church, as guar- 
 dian of the children, may choose to give her. This 
 woman, having no children, will have no claim ; yet she 
 has earned far more of the property than her husband 
 has. 
 
 I talked with another Mormon wife, who was a woman 
 of unusual strength, physically and mentally. She was 
 one of the pioneers, having come with the first party 
 that entered the Salt Lake Valley, through the terrible 
 path which is still called " Emigration Canyon." She 
 was then in her seventeenth year ; and it was just two 
 months before the birth of her first child. 
 
 " You could never believe," she said, " to look at this 
 valley now, what it was then. Nothing in it, except a 
 little mud fort in the middle ; and into that we all 
 crowded, more like wild beasts than human beings. 
 But I was never so happy in my hfe. Many a day, I 
 only had a crust of bread to eat ; but it was just as if 
 God was there with us, all the time." 
 
 The child did not know at this time, nor till long 
 afterward, that polygamy was peculiar to the Mormons. 
 When she first found out the truth, it seemed to her, 
 she said, " just as if she had been taken out of this 
 world into some other : every thing was so changed." 
 
 When she was twenty-two years old, her husband 
 took a second wife. This was twenty-six years ago. 
 The two women hved together for twenty years, and 
 brought up their families of children together. One 
 had ten children, the other eight. Then they sepa- 
 rated. The first wife lives now some miles from the 
 city, on a small farm. Her husband comes out on Sat- 
 unlay afternoon, and returns on Monday. This is all
 
 24 BirS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 she sees of him. The rest of the time he lives with the 
 second wife in the city, where he holds an important 
 position. 
 
 It was on a Saturday that I saw her. While I was talk- 
 ing with her, the husband suddenly appeared in the door- 
 way. He had just come out from town. " Oh ! there's 
 
 Mr. , now," said she, rising, and going to meet 
 
 him as she would go to meet a neighbor. 
 
 He shook hands w ith her, and said, kindly : " How 
 d'ye do, Ma 1 " She introduced him to me ; and he sat 
 down. The chair was a little broken, and creaked under 
 his weight. 
 
 " Why, Ma ! why don't you have your chairs fixed ? " 
 he said, very pleasantly- But oh ! how hot my cheeks 
 felt. " Have her chairs fixed ! " — living alone, twenty 
 miles from the city, five miles from a neighbor, with no 
 servant in her house ! Yet this man has a kindly nature. 
 It was evident in every line of his face. He is a man 
 to whom it would be a grief to give pain to any one. 
 He is simple-hearted, affectionate, pure-minded. He is 
 also a man of some education. It must be a daily sor- 
 row to him to see his children insufficiently provided for 
 in any way ; yet his means do not enable him to make 
 eighteen children comfortable. There is discomfort, 
 deprivation in both houses. • 
 
 " If a man brings up one family of children, and pro- 
 vides for them, I think that's as much as the Lord's 
 going to require of any body," said this man's wife ; 
 " and, as for believing that the Lord's going to require 
 any thing of woman which makes them suffer as polyg- 
 amy does, I don't. But they are all good, earnest, true 
 men," she added ; " and pure men, too, according to 
 their way of looking at it. They are faithful to their 
 wives : there isn't such a thing known as a Mormon 
 man's going astray in that way." She was most earnest 
 in her efforts to impress me with this fact, and with the 
 uprightness and sincerity of the men. Much as she 
 hated polygamy herself, and fully as she believed it to 
 be wrong, she believed that the Mormon men were sin- 
 cere in regarding it as a matter of religion.
 
 SALT LAKE CITY. 25 
 
 ''There's many a man takes another wife, just be- 
 cause he thinks he ought to," said she. " I have 
 known such cases every year. The Church says they 
 must." 
 
 She had not heard of that petition from the women of 
 Utah to the United States Government, which has been 
 regarded at the East as proving so conclusively that 
 Mormon women are all anxious for deliverance from the 
 tyranny of the Church. Neither had the other woman 
 of whom I have spoken heard of this petition ; and, as 
 both these women are women of position and influ- 
 ence, I could not but regard their ignorance of the 
 petition as a significant fact, pointing strongly toward 
 the truth of the assertion of the Church newspaper, that 
 the signatures were not all genuine. 
 
 " Why," said she, " you'd never get one-third, even, of 
 the women who don't like polygamy to petition against it. 
 They believe it's right, much as they hate it. And the 
 rest of the women, they take it up, just as the martyrs 
 went to the stakes, thinking they'll get heaven by it, 
 and they can't get it any other way ; and they wouldn't 
 have it done away with, if they could. The Church 
 teaches them that no woman can go to Heaven, unless 
 she is married to some man." 
 
 " Why, I myself don't want polygamy put an end to 
 any such way," said she, flushing. " I believe God'll 
 stop it somehow, sooner or later ; but not in one day ! 
 
 Why, I should think ." But she could not tin- 
 
 ish the sentence. I finished it for her, however, in my 
 heart ; and I wonder that any persons can be so unthink- 
 ing as not to realize the cruelty of any hasty legislation 
 which would add one more burden of fear or sense of 
 humiliation to the loads which these poor women are 
 already bearing. 
 
 The next day, I heard that petition read in the Taber- 
 nacle. At the close of the afternoon services. Histo- 
 rian Smith — the man whom I have already described — • 
 came forward, holding a paper in his hand. He still 
 wore the blazing red scarf, and still looked, as he did
 
 26 BITS OF TEA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 in the cars, the very incarnation of sensuality and 
 tyranny. 
 
 With a few introductory remarks, setting forth that 
 the Church thought it best to acquaint her children with 
 all the weapons and wiles of her adversaries, he read 
 the paper. He read it slowly, dehberately, giving promi- 
 nent and scornful emphasis to the sentences which 
 spoke of the terror in which the women lived. He men- 
 tioned the number of signatures, adding, impressively : 
 " The names can be identified by all of you ; many 
 of them are the names of young children." He then 
 made a short address, evidently for the benefit of the 
 strangers present, giving a brief statement of the 
 grounds on which the Church inculcates polygamy. 
 The argument was based on the Bible prophecy of the 
 days in which seven women should lay hold of one 
 man, imploring him to take away "their reproach." 
 The term " reproach " was interpreted to mean child- 
 lessness, and was dwelt upon strenuously; and he re- 
 ferred to the remarkable healthfulness and strength of 
 the Mormon children as proof that polygamy might be 
 upheld on physical as well as Scriptural grounds. 
 
 During the whole of these extraordinary proceedings, 
 I studied the faces of the men and women about me. 
 At many parts of the petition, they exchanged satirical 
 and amused glances with each other, especially at the 
 statements in regard to the petitioners' terrors. While 
 the doctrine of polygamy was expounded and justified, 
 they looked serious, attentive, and satisfied. Certainly, 
 so far as the expression of an audience could be a 
 test, the Mormon Church was justified by her followers 
 that afternoon. I studied also the faces of the priest- 
 hood. They sit in a body, on a raised platform, which 
 fronts the congregation. In the centre of this plat- 
 form are three wide seats, with raised desks, where 
 Brigham Young and those nearest him in authority sit. 
 As the priests sit facing these central seats, their side 
 faces are in full view. I found myself insensibly com- 
 paring them with the faces of the Romish priesthood, as
 
 SALT LAKE CITY. 27 
 
 I used to see it in the streets of Rome. Here were the 
 same two types of face, — the credulous, simple, and 
 devoted; and the tyrannical and unscrupulous. They 
 were, almost without exception, plain, hardworking-look- 
 ing men, in coarse clothes ; but, if they had only been 
 robed in black and violet and scarlet, they would have 
 seemed in no wise out of place in the College of the 
 Propaganda. Tyranny and fanaticism work with the 
 same tools, and write the same handwriting, all 
 the world over. If one could banish from his mind the 
 undercurrent of consciousness of this great wrong of 
 ecclesiastical domination in Salt Lake City, it would 
 be one of the most delightful spots in the world. 
 The air, the sunshine, the snowy mountains, the blue 
 lake, the waving orchards, the bright flowers, and the 
 neat, cosey little homes, — all make up a picture of 
 beauty and thrift and peace rarely equalled. But there 
 is no escape from the shadow ; there is no forgetting 
 the wrong. 
 
 However, all diseases are self-limited. Polygamy is 
 as sure to disappear before civilization as flails are to go 
 down before steam-threshers. A shrewd old man, who 
 had lived in Salt Lake City for several years, said to me, 
 one morning, pointing to the windows of a milliner's 
 shop, before which we stood : " They needn't trouble 
 themselves to legislate about polygamy. This sort of 
 stuff," — waving his hand back and forth in front of the 
 bonnets and ribbons, — " this sort of stuff will put an 
 end to it. It's putting an end to monogamy, for that 
 matter ! It will very soon be here, as it is elsewhere, 
 more than most men can do to support even one 
 wife ! »
 
 28 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME, 
 
 FROM OGDEN TO SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 AT Ogden the Union Pacific Railroad ends and the 
 Central Pacific Railroad begins. The Pullman 
 drawing-room cars also end, and the silver palace-cars 
 begin ; and we are told that there are good reasons 
 why no mortal can engage a section of a sleeping-car 
 to be ready for him at Ogden on any particular day. 
 " Through passengers " must be accommodated first. 
 *' Through passengers," no doubt, see the justice of 
 this. Way passengers cannot be expected to. But 
 we do most emphatically reahze the bearing of it when 
 we arrive at Ogden from Salt Lake City at four o'clock 
 in the afternoon, and find anxious men standing 
 patiently in line, forty deep, before the ticket-office, 
 biding their chance of having to sit up for the two 
 nights which must be spent on the road between Ogden 
 and San Francisco. It was a desperate hour for 
 that ticket agent ; and the crowd was a study for an 
 artist. Most to be pitied of all were the married men, 
 whose nervous wives kept plucking them by the coat- 
 tails and drawing them out of the line once in five 
 minutes, to propose utterly impracticable devices for 
 circumventing or hurrying the ticket-agent. I do not 
 know whether I reveal things which should be hid, or 
 whether the information would be of value upon all 
 days ; but there is a side window to that ticket-office, 
 and a superintendent sometimes stands near it, and, by 
 lifting a green curtain, conversations can be carried on, 
 and money and tickets passed in and out. Neither do 
 1 know how m.any, if any, of the forty unfortunates 
 rode all the way bedless to San Francisco ; for our first 
 anxiety as to whether we should each get a " section '
 
 FROM OGDEN TO SAN FRANCISCO. 29 
 
 was soon merged in our second, which was almost as 
 great — what we should do with ourselves in it. A 
 latent sense of justice restrains me from attempting to 
 describe a section. It is impossible to be just to a 
 person or a thing disliked. I dislike the sleeping-car 
 sections more than I ever have disliked, ever "shnll 
 dislike, or ever can dislike any thing in the world. 
 Therefore, I will not describe one. I will speak only 
 of the process of going to bed and getting up in it. 
 Fancy a mattress laid on the bottom shelf in your cup- 
 board, and the cupboard-door shut. You have previously 
 made choice among your possessions which ones you 
 will have put underneath your shelf, where you cannot 
 get at them, and which ones you must have, and will 
 therefore keep all night on the foot of your bed (that is, 
 on your own feet). Accurate memory and judicious 
 selection, under such circumstances, are impossible. 
 No sooner is the cupboard-door shut than you remem- 
 ber that several indispensable articles are under the shelf. 
 But the door is locked, and you can't get out. By 
 which I mean that the porter has put up the curtain 
 in front of your section, and of the opposite section, 
 and you have partially undressed, and can't step out 
 into the narrow aisle without encountering the English 
 gentleman, who is going by to heat water on the stove 
 at the end of the car ; and, even if you didn't encounter 
 him, you can^'t get at the things which have been stowed 
 away under your shelf, unless you lie down at full length 
 on the floor to reach them ; and you can't lie down at 
 full length on the floor, because most of the floor is 
 under your opposite neighbor's shelf. So I said the 
 dooi was locked simply to express the hopelessness of 
 the situation. Then you sit cross-legged on your bed ; 
 because, of course, you can't sit on the edge of the 
 shelf after the cupboard-door is shut — that is, the cur- 
 tain is put up so close to the edge of your bed that, if 
 you do sit there in the natural human manner, your 
 knees and feet will be in the way of the English gen- 
 tleman when he passes. Sitting cross-legged on your
 
 30 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 bed, you take off a few of your clothes, if you have 
 courage ; and then you cast about to think what you 
 shall do with them. It is quite light in the cupboard, 
 for there is a little kerosene lamp in a tiny glass-doored 
 niche in the wall ; and it gives light enough to show 
 you that there isn't a hook or an edge of any thing on 
 which a single article can be hung. You gaze drearily 
 around on the smooth, shining panels of hard wood. It 
 is a very handsome cupboard, a good deal plated, be- 
 sides being made of fine hard woods, into which you 
 can't drive even a pin. At last you have an inspiration. 
 You stand up on the edge of your bed, and, grasping 
 the belt of your dress firmly in each hand, boldly thrust 
 one arm out above the curtain, and hook the belt over 
 the curtain-rod. It swings safely ! You sink back 
 triumphant and exhausted; come down on your travel- 
 ling-bag, and upset it ; the cork comes out of the harts- 
 horn bottle, and the hartshorn runs into the borax. Of 
 course, you can't cross the Alkali Desert without a 
 good supply of counter alkalies. By the time you have 
 saved the remainder of these, and propped the travel- 
 ling bag up again, you are frightfully cramped from 
 sitting so long cross-legged. So you lie out straight a 
 few minutes to rest. Then you get up again, more 
 cautiously than before, on the edge of the bed, and 
 hook and pin a few more garments around the curtain- 
 rod. Just as you are looking on the last one, and feel- 
 ing quite elated, the car gives a sudden jerk, and out 
 you go, head foremost into the aisle into the very arms 
 of the English gentleman. Being an English gentle- 
 man, he would look the other way if he could ; but how 
 can he .'* He must hold you up ! You don't know just 
 how you clamber back. Nothing seems very clear to 
 you for some minutes except the English gentleman's 
 face, which is indelibly stamped on your brain. 
 
 You don't sit up for the next five or six minutes, nor 
 make a sound. Then you reflect that the night is 
 really to be ten hours long, and that there are hairpins 
 and hair. There is no need of greater explicitness.
 
 FROM OGDEN TO SAN FRANCISCO. 3 « 
 
 The feeblest imagination can supply details and 
 dilemmas. You sit up again, and soon become ab- 
 sorbed in necessary transactions. You glance up to 
 the left ! Horrors upon horrors ! The cupboard-door 
 has suddenly swung off its hinges ! That is, the flank 
 piece of the curtain, which is intended to turn a corner 
 at the head of the bed, and shut you oif from your 
 neighbor in the next section, being not wide enough, 
 and having no sort of contrivance to fasten it to the 
 wooden partition, has sHd along on the rod, and left you 
 just as much exposed to the eyes of all passers-by as 
 if your cupboard had no door at all. You drop — well 
 — all you have in your hands, seize the curtain and 
 hold it in place with your thumb and finger, while you 
 grope for a pin to pin it with. Pin it, indeed ! To what ? 
 I have before mentioned that the cupboard is of panels 
 of highly-polished hard wood and silver plating. The 
 cars are called "silver" and "palace "for this reason. 
 At last you pin it to the upper edge of your pillow. 
 That seems insecure ; especially so, taking into account 
 the fact that you are a restless sleeper. But it is the 
 only thing to be done. Having done this, you look 
 down at the foot of the bed, and find a similar yawning 
 aperture there. You pin this flank curtain to the blan- 
 ket, and pin the blanket to the mattress. You do aL 
 these things, getting about on your knees, with the car 
 shaking and rocking violently over an unusually rough 
 bit of road. When the flap is firmly pinned at the 
 head and at the foot, you lean back against the middle of 
 the back of your cupboard, to rest. The glass door 
 outside your little lamp is very hot. You burn your 
 elbow on it, and involuntarily scream. 
 
 *' What is the matter, ma'am t " says the friendly, 
 conductor, who happens to be passing. You start up. 
 That is, you would, if you could ; but you can't, because 
 you are sitting cross-legged, and have the cramp be- 
 sides. But it is too late. The cupboard-door is split 
 in the middle, and there are the conductor's sympathiz- 
 ing eyes looking directly in upon you. It is evidently
 
 32 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME, 
 
 impossible to have the curtains made tight at the head 
 and foot of your shelf without their parting in the mid- 
 dle. They are too scant. At this despair sets in. 
 However, you unpin the flap at the foot of the bed, 
 repin it so as to leave only a small crack, through which 
 you hope your neighbor will be too busy to look. Then 
 you pin the two curtains together firmly in the middle, 
 all the way up and down. Then you lie down, with 
 your head on your travelling bag, and resolve to do no 
 more till the cars stop. You fall asleep from exhaus- 
 tion. When you awake, darkness reigns ; a heavy and 
 poisonous air fills your cupboard ; the car is dashing on 
 through the night faster than ever. Timidly you unpin 
 the curtains, and peer out. The narrow aisle is cur- 
 tained from one end to the other ; boots are set out at 
 irregular intervals ; snores rise in hideous chorus about 
 you ; everybody has gone to bed, nobody has opened 
 his window, and most of the ventilators are shut. With 
 all the haste you can make, you try to open the window 
 at the foot of your bed. Alas ! while the day lasted you 
 neglected to learn the trick of the fastening ; now the 
 night has come, in which no man can undo a car-window. 
 You take the skin off your fingers ; you bruise your 
 knuckles ; you wrench your shoulder and back with 
 superhuman strains, — all the time sitting cross-legged. 
 At last, just as you have made up your mind to follow 
 the illustrious precedent of Mrs. Kemble's elbow, you 
 hit the spring by accident, and, in your exultation, push 
 the window wide open. A fierce and icy blast sweeps 
 in, and your mouth is filled with cinders in a second. 
 This will never do. Now, how to get the window 
 partly down ! This takes longer than it took to get it 
 up ; but you finally succeed. By this time you are so 
 exhausted that absolute indifference to all things except 
 rest seizes you. You slip in between the sheets, and 
 shut your eyes. As you doze off", you have a vague 
 impression that you hear something tumble off the foot 
 of the bed into the aisle. You hope it is your boots, 
 and not your travelling-bag, with the bottles in it ; but
 
 FROM OGDEN TO SAN FRANCISCO. 33 
 
 you would not get up again to see, — no, not if the 
 whole car-load of passengers were to be waked up by 
 a pungent odor of ammonia and alcohol proceeding 
 from your cupboard. Strange to say, you sleep. 
 Your dreams are nightmares, — but still you sleep 
 through till daylight. 
 
 As soon as you awake you spring up and listen. All 
 is still. Some of the snores still continue. You put 
 up a fervent ejaculation of gratitude that you have 
 waked so early. You resume the cross-legged position, 
 and look about you for your possessions. It was your 
 travelling-bag, after all, which fell off the shelf. You 
 find it upside down on the floor in the aisle. You 
 find, also, one boot. The other cannot be found. A 
 horrible fear seizes you that it has gone out of the 
 window. As calmly as your temperament will permit, 
 you go on putting your remains together. The car is 
 running slowly ; and, all things considered, you think 
 you are doing pretty well, when suddenly you encoun- 
 ter, in a glistening panel on the back of your cupboard, 
 close to the head of your bed, a sight which throws you 
 into new perplexity. There is — yes, it is — the face 
 of the English gentleman. But what does it mean that 
 the eyes are closed and a red silk handkerchief is bound 
 about his florid brow ? While you stare incredulously, 
 the face turns on its pillow. A sleepy hand stretches 
 up and rubs one eye. The eye opens, gazes languidly 
 about, closes again, and the English gentleman sinks 
 off into his morning nap. You seize your pillow, prop 
 it up against the shining panel, so as to cut off this 
 extremely involuntary view ; then you stop dressing, and 
 think out the phenomenon. It is very simple. The 
 partitions between the sections do not join the walls of 
 the car by two inches or more. The polished panel 
 just behind this space is a perfect mirror, reflecting a 
 part of each section ; then you glance guiltily down to 
 the similar mirror at the foot of your bed. Sure 
 enough, the same thing ! There you see the head of 
 an excellent German frau. whom you had observed the 
 3
 
 34 BITS OF TRA l^EL A T HOME. 
 
 day before. She also is sound asleep. You prop 
 your other pillow up in that corner, lest she should 
 awake ; and then you hurry on your clothes stealthily 
 "•as a thief. The boot, however, cannot be found, and 
 you are at last constrained to go to the dressing-room 
 without it. The dressing-room is at the further end of 
 the car. Early as you are, fellow-women are there 
 before you — three of them ; one in possession of the 
 washbowl, two waiting for their turn. You fall into 
 line, thankful for being only the fourth. You sit bash- 
 fully on somebody's valise, while these strangers make 
 their toilets. You reflect on the sweet and wonderful 
 power of adaptation which disdnguishes some natures ; 
 the guileless trust in the kindliness of their own sex 
 which enables some women to treat all other women as 
 if they were their sisters. The three are relating their 
 experiences. 
 
 "Well, I got along very well," says one, "till some- 
 body opened a window ; and after that I thought I 
 should freeze to death. My husband, he called the con- 
 ductor up, and they shut the ventilators ; but I just shiv- 
 ered all night. Real good soap this is ; ain't it, now ? " 
 
 You feel yourself blushing with guilty consciousness 
 of that open window. But you brave it out silently. 
 
 " I wa'n't too cold," said the washbowl incumbent, 
 meditatively holding her false teeth under the faucet, 
 and changing them deftly from side to side, to wash 
 them well. " But I '11 tell you what did happen to me. 
 In the middle o' the night I felt suthin' against my 
 head, right on the very top o'nt. And what do you 
 think it was ? 'Twas the feet of the man in the next 
 section to ou'rn ! Well, sez I, this is more'n I can 
 stand; and I give 'em such a push. I reckon he 
 waked up, for I never felt 'em no more." 
 
 At this you fly. You cannot trust your face any 
 longer. 
 
 '• Got tired o' waitin'?" calls out No. 3. "You can 
 have my turn, if you're in a hurry. We've got all day 
 before us," and the three women chuckle drearily.
 
 FROM OGDEN TG SAN FRANCISCO. Z\ 
 
 When you reach your cupboard, Frank, the hand 
 some black porter, has already transformed your bed 
 into two chairs. The bedding is all put away out oi 
 sight ; and there, conspicuously awaiting you, stands 
 the missing boot, on a chair. You are not proud of 
 your boots. For good reasons you decided to wear 
 them on this journey ; but false shame wrings you as 
 you wonder if everybody has seen how very shabby 
 that shoe is. 
 
 The English gentleman is in the aisle, putting on his 
 boots. The German frau is bustling about in a very 
 demi-dress. Nobody seems to mind anybody ; and, 
 now that the thing is over with, you laugh to think how 
 droll it all was. And so the day begins. 
 
 We are told that in the night we have passed over 
 the Great American Desert, — sixty square miles of 
 alkali sand. This, then, on which we look out now, is 
 not the desert. We had thought it must be. All we 
 can see is sand, or sage-brush, or bunch-grass. Yet it 
 is not dreary. The tints are exquisite. "We shall 
 not be weary of it if it lasts all day," we said. And it 
 did last all day. All day long tints of gray and brown ; 
 sometimes rocky ravines, with low, dark growths on 
 their sides ; sometimes valleys, which the guide-book 
 said were fertile, but which to us looked just as gray 
 and brown as the plains. We passed a dozen or more 
 small towns, all looking alike, all looking far more deso- 
 late than the silent plains. A wide and dusty space, 
 like a ploughed field, only hardened and flattened ; rows 
 or groups of small unpainted wooden houses, all trying 
 to face the railway station, and most bearing big signs 
 on their front of something to sell or to hire or to 
 drink ; not a tree, not a flower, not a protecting fence, 
 — that is the thing called town all along the road of the 
 first day's journey westward from Ogden. But at sun- 
 set we came to something else. We had been climbing 
 up. Snow-topped mountains were in sight all about 
 us. The air was clear and cold. " Humboldt Station " 
 was the name of the station to which we had been
 
 36 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME, 
 
 looking forward for some hours, simply because it 
 meant "supper." But, when we stepped out of the 
 cars, thoughts of supper fled. Four thousand feet 
 ibove the sea, among alkali sands and stony volcanic 
 beds, there stood a brilliant green oasis. Clover fields, 
 young trees, and vegetable gardens surrounded the 
 little house. In front was a fountain, which sparkled 
 in the sun. Around it was a broad rim of grass and 
 white clover. An iron railing enclosed it. It was a 
 pathetic sight to see rough men, even men from the 
 emigrant-car, stretching their hands through the railing 
 to pick a blade of grass or a clover-blossom. One 
 great, burly fellow, lifted up his little girl, and, swing- 
 ing her over the iron spikes, set her down in the grass, 
 saying : " There ! I'd like to see ye steppin' on 
 green grass once more." It was a test of loyalty to 
 green fields, and there were no traitors. We had not 
 dreamed that we had grown so hungry for sight of true 
 summer. Just as the train was about to rtart, I remem- 
 bered a gentle-faced woman in our car who had not 
 come out. I reached into the grassy rim, without look- 
 ing, and picked a clover-leaf to carry her as token. I 
 gave it to her, without having looked closely at it. 
 
 " And a four-leaved clover, too ! " she exclaimed, as 
 she took it. 
 
 It was the first four-leaved clover I ever found. I 
 have spent hours enough to count up into weeks in 
 searching for them. I took back my gift with a super- 
 stitious reverence for it, as omen of our journey, and 
 also as a fitting memento of that bright oasis which pa- 
 tience had created in the desert, and named by the name 
 of a good and great man. 
 
 Next morning we waked up in the Sierras. We were 
 ne.irly six thousand feet above the sea. As far as we 
 could see on either hand rose snowy tops of mountains. 
 We were on them, below them, among them, all at once, 
 Some were covered with pines and firs ; some were 
 glistening and bare. We looked down into ravines and 
 gorges which were so deep they were black. Tops oi
 
 FROM OGDEN TO SAN FRANCISCO. 37 
 
 firs, which we knew must be hundreds of feet hifrh, 
 seemed to make only a solid mossy bed below us. The 
 sun shone brilliantly on the crests and upper slopes ; 
 now and then a sharp gleam of light showed a lake or 
 a river far down among the dark and icy walls. It 
 seemed almost as if these lights came from our train, 
 as if we bore a gigantic lantern, which flashed its light 
 in and out as we went winding and leaping from depth 
 to depth, from peak to peak. I think nothing could 
 happen in life which could make any human being who 
 had looked out on this scene forget it. Presently we 
 entered the snow-sheds. These were dreary, but could 
 not wholly interrupt the grandeur. Fancy miles upon 
 miles of covered bridge, with black and grimy snow- 
 drifts, or else still blacker and grimier gutters of water, 
 on each side the track (for the snow-sheds keep out only 
 part of the snow) ; through the seams between the 
 boards, sometimes through open spaces where boards 
 have fallen, whirling glimpses of snow-drifts outside, 
 of tops of trees, of tops of mountains, of bottoms of 
 canyons, — this is snow-shed travelling. And there are 
 thirty-nine miles of it on the Central Pacific Railroad. 
 It was like being borne along half blindfolded through 
 the upper air. I fell as if I knew how the Sierras might 
 look to eagles flying over in haste, with their eyes fixed 
 on the sun. 
 
 " Breakfast in a snow-shed this morning, ladies," 
 said Frank, our chamber-maid. True ; the snow-shed 
 branched off like a mining gallery, widened, and took in 
 the front of a Httle house, whose door was set wide 
 open, and whose breakfast-bell was ringing as we 
 jumped out of the cars. We walked up to the dining- 
 room over icy rock. Through openings at each side, 
 where the shed joined the house, we looked out upon 
 fields of snow, and firs, and rocky peaks ; but the sun 
 shone like the siin of June, and we had not a sensation 
 of chill. Could one be pardoned for remembering and 
 saying that even at this supreme moment there was ad- 
 ditional gladness from the fact that the trout also were
 
 38 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 warm, being on blazers ? A good breakfast on blazers, 
 in a snow-shed, seven thousand feet above the sea ! But 
 there was one man in the train (all honor to his line) 
 who breakfasted on other fare than trout and canned 
 apricots. Just as we were about to get off, I saw him 
 come leaping into the snow-shed from a high snow-drift. 
 He carried a bi^ staff in his hand. 
 
 *'Oh ! " said I, "you have been off on the snow." 
 " Indeed, have I ! " exclaimed he. " So far that I 
 thought I should be left. And it ' bears ' everywhere. 
 I jumped on the ' crust ' with all my weight." 
 
 Almost immediately we began to descend. In a few 
 miles we had gone down three thousand feet, the brakes 
 all the while holding us back, lest we should roll too 
 fast. Flowers sprang up into sight, as if conjured by a 
 miracle out of the ice ; green spaces, too, and little 
 branches, with trees and shrubs around them. The great 
 American Canyon seemed to open its arms, finding us 
 bold enough to enter. Its walls are two thousand feet 
 high, and are rifted by other canyons running down, 
 each with its tiny silver thread of water, till they are 
 lost in the abysses of fir-trees below. The mining vil- 
 lages looked gay as gardens. Every shanty had vines and 
 shrubs and flowers about it. On all the hillsides were 
 long, narrow wooden troughs, full of running water, like 
 miniature canals, but swift, hke brooks. One fancied 
 that the water had a golden gleam in it, left from the 
 precious gold it had washed. Still down, down, out of 
 snow into bloom, out of winter into spring, so suddenly 
 that the winter and the spring seemed equally unreal, 
 and we half looked for summer's grain and autumn's 
 vintage, station by station. Nothing could have seemed 
 too soon, too startling. We doubled Cape Horn, in the 
 sunny weather, as gaily as if we had been on a light- 
 boat's deck ; but we were sitting, standing, cHnging on 
 the steps and platforms of a heavy railroad train, whose 
 track bent at a sharp angle around a rocky wall which 
 rose up hundreds of feet straight in the air, and reached 
 down hundreds of feet into the green valley beneath.
 
 FROM OGDEN TO SAN FRANCISCO. 39 
 
 A flaw in an inch of iron, and the train would be lying 
 at the bottom of the wall, broken into fine bits. But, 
 whirling around the perilous bend, one had only a sense 
 of glee. After-thoughts give it another name. 
 
 We reached Colfax at noon of midsummer. Accord- 
 ing to all calendars, there had been months between 
 our breakfast and our dinner. Men and boys ran up 
 and down in the cars, offering us baskets of ripe straw- 
 berries and huge bunches of red, white, and pink roses. 
 Gay placards, advertising circuses and concerts, were 
 on the walls and fences of Colfax. Yellow stages stood 
 ready to carry people over smooth, red roads, which 
 were to be seen winding off in many ways. " Grass 
 Valley," " You Bet," and " Little York " were three of 
 the names. Summer, and slang, and history all beckon- 
 ing. 
 
 Still down. The valleys widen to plains, the snow- 
 topped mountains grow lower and dimmer and bluer, as 
 they fall back into horizon lines. Our road runs through 
 fields of grain and grass, wild oats wave almost up to 
 the very rails, and the blue lupine and the yellow 
 eschscholtzia make masses of solid blue and gold. The 
 Sacramento Valley seems all astir with wind-mills, pump- 
 ing up water for Sacramento vineyards. Sacramento is 
 noisy, — hacks, hotels, daily papers, and all. " Casa 
 Svizera " on a dingy, tumble-down building catches our 
 eye as we are hurrying out of the city ; it seems to suit 
 the vineyards into which we go. A strong, cold wind 
 blows ; it is from the western sea. We climb again. 
 Low, curving hills, lapping and overlapping, and making 
 soft liollows of shade, begin to rise on either hand. We 
 wind in among them, through great spaces of yellow, wav- 
 ing blossom — eschscholtzia, yellow lupine, and mustard 
 by the acre. It seems as if California's hidden gold 
 had grown impatient of darkness, and burst up into 
 flower ! Twilight finds us in a labyrinth of low, bare 
 hills. They are higher, though, than they look, as we 
 discover when we enter sharp cuts and climb up canyons ; 
 but their outhnes are indescribably soft and gentle.
 
 40 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOHTE. 
 
 One thinks involuntarily of some of Beethoven's Adagios. 
 The whole grand movement of the vast continent seems 
 to have progressed with harmonies and successions 
 akin to those of a symphony, and to end now with a few 
 low, tender, gracious chords. 
 
 But the confusion of the Oaklands ferry-boat dis- 
 sipates all such fancies. It seems an odd thing to cross 
 over America — prairies, deserts, mountains — and then, 
 after all, be ferried to the western edge of the continent. 
 
 But only so can we come to the city of San Francisco, 
 — half an hour, at least, on a little steam-tug. It is 
 dark, and it seems hke any other steam-tug ; but we 
 have crossed the continent. 
 / By our side in the jostling crowd are two brothers, 
 ' searching for each other. They have not met for twent} 
 years. How shall the boys (become men) know each 
 other's faces ? They do not. At last an accidental 
 word, overheard, reveals them to each other. 
 
 I looked into the two faces. Singularly upright, sweet 
 faces, both of them : faces that one would trust on sight, 
 and love on knowledge. The brother that had journeyed 
 from the East was my friend. The brother that stood 
 waiting on the Western shore was his twin ; but he 
 looked at least twenty years the older man. There are 
 spaces wider than lands can measure or the seas fill. 
 This was the moment, after all, and this was the thing 
 which will always live in my memory as significant of 
 \ crossing a continent.
 
 THE GEYSERS. 41 
 
 THE GEYSERS. 
 
 BY boat from San Francisco to Vallejo. By cars from 
 Vallejo to Calistoga. By stao;e from Calistoga 
 to the Geysers. This was the guide-book formula. It 
 was to take an afternoon and a forenoon, and the night 
 between was to be spent at Calistoga. But nothing was 
 said in the advertisement about the loveliness of the 
 sunset in the Golden Gated Bay, on which we were to 
 sail to Vallejo. It was not mentioned that Mount 
 Tamalpais would be yellow in mist on our left, and 
 Mount Diablo purple in mist on our right, and that all the 
 San Pablo shore would seem gently floating up and 
 down, and back and forth, as we passed, like the edge 
 of some enchanted country, on which no man might 
 land ; that the fortified islands in the bay would be so 
 strangely touched and lit up by the level beams of the 
 sinking sun that their bastions and towers would only 
 seem as still further token of an enchanted country ; and 
 that, when, after an hour and a half of this, we reached 
 the opening of the Napa Valley, we should be carried 
 into the heart of the very kingdom of Ceres herself, — 
 and on a festival year too, it seemed to us, as we looked 
 out of the car-windows, and saw yellow grain and green 
 vines stretching miles away on either hand, and inter- 
 rupted at last only by a mountain wall, too high for the 
 grain and vines to climb. " Surely, there can be no 
 such other valley as this in California ? " we said. " Oh, 
 yes ! much finer valleys than this," replied a statistical 
 traveller at our side. " This is a small affair. Very pretty, 
 very pretty. But the San Joaquin Valley is fifty miles wide 
 and three hundred miles long ! Contains eighteen mil-
 
 4-2 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 lion acres of land ! " he added, maliciousl}-, seeing our 
 wide-open eyes. 
 
 Since that day we have journeyed in the San Joaquin 
 Valley ; have looked off over its boundless yellow seas 
 of wheat ; have come upon distant vista views of it, 
 where it looks so like one great ocean line that no 
 stranger would ever dream of its being land ; but not 
 all its vastness and richness can dim or dwarf the 
 picture of beautiful, glowing, smihng Napa. The moun- 
 tain ranges on each side of Napa Valley are green to 
 the tops ; but clear-cut against the sky, as if they were 
 of bare rock. There is not a waste field, a barren spot 
 in it. Tall oak trees, which spread and droop like elms, 
 stand in all the vineyards and wheat-fields. It seems 
 impossible to believe that they have not been grouped 
 and placed ; but they have simply been left where they 
 were found. Each man has set his house in a park, 
 and each village stands in a wooded domain. 
 
 It was dark when we reached Calistoga. " Free car- 
 riage for the Calistoga Springs Hotel," resounded all 
 along the platform from an invisible point in the distance. 
 It was only partly visible when we reached it and clam- 
 bered in, and the road was not visible at all. Neither 
 was the hotel fully visible when we were asked to enter 
 it. It was the oddest, most twinkhng of httle starry 
 spots ; low, ambushed in trees, with a wide stoop 
 thatched with great hemlock boughs, from which hung 
 a lantern here and there. " No rooms in the hotel," 
 the landlord said. This did not seem so strange to us 
 next morning, when we learned that there were but two 
 sleeping-rooms in it. " But he had reserved rooms for 
 us in a cottage." 
 
 Out into the darkness, following a small boy, carrying 
 two candles and a handful of matches, we went. The 
 path wound and was narrow. Heavy odors of roses 
 and honeysuckles came up on each side. If we stepped 
 off to right or left, we were in soft grass. We passed 
 dim shapes of pavilions and summer-houses and arbors. 
 At last the boy swung open a little gate, and stepped up
 
 THE GEYSERS. 43 
 
 on the piazza of a house, whose door stood open. Strik- 
 ing a match on the heel of his boot, he ht our candles, 
 and threw open the doors of our sleeping-rooms — two 
 tiny closets, holding one bed, one window, one chair, 
 one washstand. There were two more such closets 
 opposite ours. These four made the cottage ! No 
 keys, no bolts ! " How shall we get any thing we want ? 
 Is there any servant in this house ? " said we. 
 
 The boy looked amazed. We were evidently new to 
 the ways of Cahfornia watering-places. " What would 
 you like .^ " he said. " I'll bring it to you." 
 
 Thus pressed, we discovered that we really did not 
 want any thing, except hot water ; but it seemed eminently 
 probable that we should want at least a dozen things as 
 soon as the boy had vanished in the thick darkness, and 
 we had no visible or invisible means of communication 
 with him. In a few moments came another boy, guiding 
 two more groping travellers into this dusky retreat. The 
 doors were shut, all was still, save the delighted mos- 
 quitoes, to whom we were given over. It was a novel 
 situation. How far were we from the hotel ? Who 
 were our opposite neighbors ? No door could be 
 fastened. Our one window must be open, or we should 
 smother ; but it seemed to be only two feet from the 
 piazza floor and only one from the foot of our beds. 
 However, as there was nothing else to be done, we went 
 to sleep ; and in the morning we only laughed at our 
 fears. Eighteen of these picturesque little cottages 
 stood in one circle around the hotel. The winding 
 path, which had seemed so long in the darkness, was 
 only a few rods long. Everybody was within sound of 
 everybody else, and the cottages and the summer-houses 
 and the arbors and the pavilions were all in full blossom 
 •— roses and honeysuckles and geraniums. It was 
 simply a cluster of bed-rooms in a garden. The wide 
 hemlock-thatched stoop of the hotel looked even more 
 picturesque by daylight than it had done the night be- 
 fore. Why does it not enter into the heads of all land- 
 lords to do this thing ? Then, when the summer heats
 
 44 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 are over, the hemlock boughs can be burnt up, the rough 
 sapling pillars of the stoop taken down, and the sun let 
 into the rooms. The dining-room of this little hotel was 
 also very picturesque. The tables were small and ar- 
 ranged in two rows. High up over each table was 
 swung an odd banner-like thing, made of strips of gay 
 paper, with fringes of blue, red, yellow, green, and pink. 
 All of these were connected together by a wire, and the 
 whole affair could be moved by a cord in the kitchen, 
 and swung slowly back and forth above the tables, to 
 keep off flies and make a cool breeze. When it was in 
 motion it made a very gay stir, like a fluttering of paro- 
 quets'- wings. 
 
 The " Great Foss " stood in the door-way, and the 
 Great Foss's horses stood outside ; six of them har- 
 nessed to a three-seated open wagon. Who is the 
 Great Foss ? Ah ! that is the question which pressed 
 upon our minds when friends said and frier>ds wrote and 
 friends reiterated : " Be sure and drive with Foss. That 
 is the great thing, after all, in the trip to the Geysers." 
 All our cross-questioning failed to elicit any thing in re- 
 gard to this modern Jehu, except the fact that he was in 
 the habit of driving six horses at full gallop around a 
 right-angled corner, and not upsetting his wagon. This 
 seemed to us an equivocal recommendation of a driver 
 on a very dangerous road. Nevertheless, we humbly 
 entreated that we might take our full share of the deli- 
 cious risk of broken legs and necks, and be able to come 
 away saying that we too had gone at full gallop around 
 right-angled corners of narrow roads, with the "daring 
 champion reinsman of the world," as an enthusiastic 
 writer has called Mr. Foss. With meek thankfulness 
 we took our seats on the middle seat, the posts of 
 greatest honor and danger, on the front seat, having 
 been secured many days in advance, by telegraph, from 
 a distant part of California. Such is the notoriety of 
 Mr. Foss's driving, and so inexphcable are the desires 
 of the human heart. But we soon forgot our disappoint- 
 ment as we drove out into the fresh morning beauty of
 
 THE GEYSERS. 45 
 
 the valley, — the same park-like fields of grain and grass 
 and oak trees on each hand, and the beautiful mountain, 
 St. Helen's, just rising above the gray mists. Soon the 
 valley narrowed ; the hills were covered with lower 
 growths : no more oaks ; farm-houses were wider apart. 
 A.11 things showed that we were drawing near the wilds. 
 In solitary spots we came upon high posts with one cross 
 arm, on which swung a mail-bag. With one dexterous 
 stroke, and without reining up his horses, Mr. Foss 
 would seize it, and send the exchange-bag whirling 
 through the air. Then we would wheel suddenly into 
 some "farmyard ; the six horses would gallop at full 
 speed round a track in shape of a figure eight, and come 
 to a sudden halt, like circus horses ; then, while the 
 horses were drinking water, all the men in the two 
 wagons would disappear in the farm-house, at a myste- 
 rious signal from Foss. We knew what it meant only 
 too well. This perpetual wayside tippling is one of the 
 worst of California's bad habits. The extent of it would 
 be simply incredible, except on actual observation. 
 
 Soon we begin to climb. The valley has disappeared. 
 We are shut in by hills. We are toihng up hills. 
 From each ascent we gain we can see only hills. All 
 the fertile beauty has gone. Only low pines, manzanita, 
 and greasewood bushes are to be seen. But the grease- 
 wood is in full white flower, and looks like a heath ; and 
 the ground is gay with low flowers — the Columbine, 
 Pink Clarkia, by the rod; a Claytonia, with a tiny white 
 star-shaped blossom, growing in great mats : a low 
 Iris, yellow and white ; Snap Dragons, yellow and blue, 
 — all these, and many others which we do not know, 
 make the stony and dusty ground bright. It is a marvel 
 on what they are living ; but they look content. Great 
 thickets of the " California Lilac." purple and white, 
 wave along the sides of the road, and as far up as we 
 can see on the hillsides. It is pathetic to find it called 
 " Lilac." I wonder if homesick miners did not name 
 it so because the odor has a slight resemblance to that 
 of the New England lilac. But its fine, feathery flower
 
 46 BITS OF TEA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 looks more like a clethra than like a lilac ; and it has a 
 long botanical name, which I forget. Ten miles of this 
 long, winding climb, and we are at the summit of the 
 mountain ridge, which we must cross to reach the Geyser 
 Canyon. 
 
 From this summit is to be had what the guide-books 
 call "one of the grandest views which the globe affords." 
 I confess to an unconquerable indifference to this type 
 of view. They seem to me singularly alike in all coun- 
 tiies ; just about so much sharp mountain-top that you 
 can see, and just about so much more that you can't 
 see, on account of mist ; just about so much shining line 
 of river or sea, and just about so much of pale blue at 
 the horizon, which might be river, or sea, or mountain, 
 or Chinese wall, or any thing else in or out of the uni- 
 verse, for all you can discover. 
 
 There is, of course, the one great suggestion and 
 stimulus of unmeasured, almost immeasurable distance. 
 This is good for conceit. Estimates are apt to adjust 
 themselves in an hour of solitude on a mountain peak. 
 But I think that true delight, true realization of the gra- 
 cious, tender, unutterable beauty of earth and all created 
 things are to be found in outlooks from lower points — 
 vistas which shut more than they show, sweet and un- 
 expected reveahngs in level places and valleys, secrets 
 of near woods, and glories of every-day paths. 
 
 All this I said to myself as we whizzed down the 
 other side of the mountain. I use the word " whizzed " 
 without any forgetfulness of the fact that it is usually 
 applied only to bullets and arrows. I have never 
 journeyed on either of those vehicles, but I would 
 unhesitatingly recommend one or other of them for 
 the descent of this Pluton Canyon. The road is simply 
 a succession of oxbows or letter S's in shape laid along 
 the precipitous wall of the canyon. The turns are so 
 sharp that you often lose sight of the leaders and of the 
 heads of the chain-horses. The road is so narrow that 
 in many places the outer wheels seem to be absolutely 
 in line with the sheer wall below, and in no place does
 
 THE GEYSERS. 47 
 
 there seem to be more than six inches margin. Instead 
 of a firm outer edge of stone, such as ought to support 
 a road hke this, there are many places where the road 
 seems to be only a bank of gravel, which at every rev- 
 olution of wheels on it shakes and sends down crumbling 
 particles into the abyss below. Down this road, round 
 these corners, on these rattling rims of gravel-banks we 
 dashed at a run — two wagons full of mortal souls. 
 
 One thousand, two thousand feet below us, on our 
 right hand, ran the Pluton River, over a rocky bed. 
 Tall pines and firs and enormous" boulders filled up the 
 abyss, so that it looked black and terrible. If a bolt, a 
 strap, a spoke had given way, as we turned one of those 
 corners, wagons, people, all would have spun out into 
 the air, as a child's top spins off when it first leaves the 
 string. It was perilous ; it was reckless. But no sober 
 sense can keep sober in such a descent ; it is only the 
 afterthought which takes note of thefoolhardiness. At 
 the time we held our breaths, with quite as much de- 
 Hght as terror. Tops of trees were below our feet one 
 minute, above our heads the next, and the next gone, left 
 behind, and more trees dancing up in their places. 
 Gigantic rocks, and gnarled roots, and fallen trees 
 covered with moss, and trickling streams, and foaming 
 cascades, and waving bushes of white blossoms, and 
 great spaces of pink and scarlet and yellow flowers be- 
 neath, all seemed to be flying up the hill as fast as 
 we were flying down. High on our left rose a wall, 
 whose top we often could not see — sometimes solid 
 rock, with tiny ferns and flowers clinging in crevices ; 
 sometimes a heavily- wooded bank, with the roots of its 
 great trees projecting, bare, and threatening to fall. I 
 have forgotten how few minutes we were in reaching the 
 bottom of the canyon. I only remember that it was a 
 matter of boast that the descent had been made in so 
 short a time ; and the fact that this can be a point of 
 pride with drivers, that this kind of road can be looked 
 on as a race-course, is more significant than any comment 
 or any statistics of speed. Is there any other country
 
 f8 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 dxcept America where such a road and snch driving 
 A^ould be permitted ? In the famous Ampezzo Pass, in 
 Italy, the road has to wind around a dolomite mountain 
 fline thousand feet high, the Antelao. Three times the 
 road crosses the walled front of that mountain. From 
 ihe lowest road you can look up to the two above, and 
 they look like mere lines on the rocky surface. From 
 the. uppermost road you look down straight into the 
 valley below, and see no sign of the roads by which you 
 have climbed, so sheer is the wall. But this road is at 
 all points wide enough for two carriages to pass at full 
 speed ; and its outer edge is a thick wall of masonry and 
 stone, at least a foot wide. 
 
 There is a little meadow in the bottom of the Pluton 
 Canyon. It is just big enough to hold a small hotel 
 and half a vegetable garden ; the other half of the 
 vegetable garden runs up hill in terraces. There is a 
 little stable too. and a bit of white paling and one arched 
 gateway, with the sign '' To Geysers," and another with, 
 " To Steam Bath ; " and the whole thing looks so much 
 as if it had set itself dov/n there in spite of the canyon 
 that it is as droll as it is picturesque. On the opposite 
 side of the canyon is a great bare rift, — another small 
 canyon splitting the side of the great one. It is bare 
 and rocky and burnt looking ; and steam curls up and 
 down and out of it, and floats off in thin, weird shapes 
 over the tall pine forests beyond. 
 
 It was just noon when we tumbled into the Pluton 
 Canyon and landed at the Geysers' Hotel. There were 
 a great many too many people, and nobody could be 
 comfortable ; by way of making things more uncomforta- 
 ble still, the Dutch landlord ordered everybody to walk 
 up the Gevser Canyon immediately after lunch. 
 
 One o'clock, a blazing sun overhead, bare, blistering 
 rocks everywhere, and a boiling tea-kettle under foot at 
 every step ! We, having been forewarned that the time 
 to see the Geysers in perfection is early in the morning, 
 utterly refused to go. Dutch landlord was indignant. 
 
 " But the guide is going now. It is the time I send 
 him up.'
 
 THE GEYSERS. 49 
 
 *' But it is too hot, and we are tired ; and there is 
 much more steam when it is cooler. We will go this 
 afternoon, or early in the morning." 
 
 " But I have not twenty-five servants to send when 
 each one Hkes. I do not know you can have guide this 
 evening, and there is not time to go after five o'clock." 
 
 " Very well. We simply shall not go now. We can 
 return without seeing the Geysers at all, if you refuse us 
 a guide." 
 
 Meekly the poor, tired throng filed out through the 
 gateway, under the scorching sun. Only we two re- 
 mained. How we laughed at the Dutchman's cross 
 face, as he struck off into his vegatable garden ! Climb- 
 ing up terrace after terrace, and then one fence, we 
 found a grassy bank, where we lay the whole afternoon, 
 under shade of an oak, and watched the shapes of the 
 hot steam curling and writhing up from the opposite 
 canyon. A superb crested pheasant came and sat on a 
 low bough, in full sight of us, and dressed his neck 
 feathers, and called to somebody he knew. We picked 
 twelve different kinds of wild flowers within a rod or 
 two of our oak, and then we went down in the cool of 
 the early twilight. 
 
 " We would hke to go up to the Geysers in the morn- 
 ing. Will you send a guide up with us at half-past 
 five ? " said we. 
 
 " Yes," growled the Dutchman. 
 
 " Be so good as to have us called at quarter before 
 five." 
 
 " Ugh ! " replied the Dutchman. 
 
 At five we luckily waked up ourselves. At quarter- 
 past five came a surly knock at the door. 
 
 " We are up," called we. 
 
 " Ugh ! " said the Dutchman. 
 
 ^ At half-past five we had just seated ourselves in the 
 dining-room, when the Dutchman appeared. 
 
 " Time to start. Guide is waiting. 
 
 " But we must have something to eat. You did not 
 call us at quarter to five, as you promised " 
 4
 
 50 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 " Nobody is called at the Geysers before quarter- 
 past five. One quarter-hour is enough for anybody to 
 dress." 
 
 " It is impossible to dress in quarter of an hour." 
 
 " Then you should not haf come to the Geysers. It is 
 military rule at Geysers." 
 
 Somebody speaks somewhere of before-breakfast cour- 
 age. There is a before-breakfast temper too, I suppose, 
 which is a good deal harder to keep than any other sort. 
 What we said at this crisis in the conversation I would 
 rather not tell ; but the Dutchman said only " Ugh ! " 
 and, of course, a person who confines himself to that 
 ejaculation can easily have the last word in any quarrel : 
 there soon seems to remain so little to be said in reply 
 to it. Even at this distance, however, there is satisfac- 
 tion in saying of that Dutchman that he was the only 
 ill-tempered, uncivil landlord we found in California, 
 and that he keeps as bad a house as I ever found any- 
 where. But our little guide had a sunny face, the dew 
 sparkled on every leaf as we set out, and in five minutes 
 we were ashamed of ourselves for having had any feel- 
 ing except pity for the poor cross man. The path led 
 at once down into shady hollows, and across a stream 
 at bottom of the Pluton Canyon ; then out and up the 
 other side, and in a few minutes we were at the entrance 
 of the Geyser Canyon. What had looked to us the day 
 before, from our hillside, like little more than a narrow 
 rift in the opposite side of the valley proved to be a 
 canyon of considerable width, with sharp sides twelve or 
 fourteen hundred feet high. 
 
 It looked as if it had been built up of old refuse mat- 
 ter from foundries ; as if for centuries men had sifted 
 ashes and thrown out clinkers and bad coal and waste 
 stones and junk and every conceivable sort of scorched 
 metallic thing into this chasm ; and as if several apothe- 
 caries' shops had burnt down there too, for there was a 
 new color and worse odor at every other step. And the 
 little guide, striking his cane or fingers into bank after 
 bank, kept bringing forth crumbs and powders, and
 
 THE GEYSERS. 51 
 
 offerino; them to us to taste or smell, with "Here is 
 pure alum ; " " Here is epsom salts ; " *' Here is sul- 
 phur ; " " Here is cinnabar ; " " Here is soda ; " till we 
 felt as if we were in the wholesale drug-shop of the 
 universe. Meantime, he skipped along from rock to 
 rock like a chamois ; and we followed on as best we 
 might, through the hot steam, which came up hissing 
 and fizzing out of every hole and from beneath every 
 stone. A brook of hot water running swiftly over and 
 among rocks ; pools and cauldrons of hot water boiling 
 and bubbling by dozens all around; black openings, 
 most fearful of all, where no water can be seen, but 
 from which roaring jets of steam come out, — this 
 is the bottom of the Geyser Canyon. It is half a mile 
 long, and up it, in it, back and forth across it, you 
 go. You think you will plant your stick on the 
 ground to steady yourself for a spring from one hot 
 stone to another, and down goes your stick, — down, 
 down into soft, smoking, sulphurous, gravelly sand, so 
 far and so suddenly that you almost fall on your face. 
 You draw the stick up and out, and a small column of hot 
 steam follows it. Next you make a misstep, and invol- 
 untarily catch hold of a projecting point of rock with 
 one hand. You let go as if it were fire itself. It does 
 not absolutely blister you ; but it is too hot to hold. 
 Your foot slips an eighth of an inch out of the guide's 
 footsteps, which you are following as carefully as if 
 life and death depended on it, and you go in over shoes 
 in water so hot that you scream and think you are 
 scalded. You are not ; but, if you had slipped a few 
 inches further to right or to left, you would have been, 
 for on each side inky-black water is boiling so that it 
 bubbles aloud. All this while, besides the hissing and 
 fizzing of the steam and boiling and bubbling of the 
 water which you see, there is a deep violoncello under- 
 tone of boiling and bubbhng and hissing and fizzing of 
 water and steam which you do not see, which are deep 
 down under your feet, — deep down to right of you, 
 deep down to left of you, — making the very canyon
 
 52 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 itself throb and quiver. How thick the crust may be 
 nobody knows. That it can be thick at all seems im- 
 probable when, prick it where you may, with ever so 
 slender a stick, the hot steam rushes out. 
 
 " Why did it not all cave in yesterday ? " and " Why 
 does it not cave in this minute .? " and " Oh ! it will 
 surely cave in to-morrow ! " you exclaim, as you take 
 your last leap out of it, and look back from a firm green 
 bank above. There can be no uncannier place in this 
 world, unless it be a volcano crater ; and one does not in 
 the least resent finding it sealed, signed, and stamped 
 with the name of Satan. " Devil's Gristmill," " Devil's 
 Inkstand," " Devil's Pulpit," " Devil's Apothecary 
 Shop," " Devil's Tea-kettle " were among the names 
 which the guide shouted back to us as he perched on 
 some especially high rock or squatted over some par- 
 ticularly horrible hole. 
 
 It was bewildering to pass, by almost a single step, 
 from scorching ashes, nauseous stenches, and blinding 
 steam, into tangled and shady woods, fragrant with 
 spice wood and bright with flowers, and to hear the 
 guide caUing out, in advance: "This is the Lover's 
 Seat," the " Lover's Retreat." But so we returned to 
 the hotel by a winding path over the upper slopes of the 
 Pluton Canyon. As we struck down to its lower level, 
 we came upon a few trickling streams of the same hot, 
 sulphurous water. Yellow Gherardias were growing 
 close on their edge, and the flowers were far larger and of 
 a deeper tint than those which grew away from the 
 water, 
 
 " We have enjoyed our visit to the Geysers very 
 much. It is a most wonderful sight ! " said we to the 
 landlord. We were sorry for having quarrelled with 
 him. " Ugh ! " said the Dutchman.
 
 HOLY CROSS VILLAGE, ETC. 53 
 
 HOLY CROSS VILLAGE AND MRS. 
 POPE'S. 
 
 IT is put down on the maps as Santa Cruz ; but wny 
 should I not speak my own language ? No one of 
 the old Padres who named the meadows and hills of 
 this sweetest of seaside places could have lingered more 
 tenderly on the sound of the soft " Santa " than I over 
 the good and stronger word " Holy." And to none of 
 them did it seem a fitter spot for a mission than it does 
 to me. The old adobe buildings which the Padres built 
 are crumbled and gone, and no man knows where the 
 Padres sleep ; but the communion of saints is never 
 banished from an air it has once filled. Sacred for ever 
 and everywhere on earth are the places whose first 
 founders and builders were men who went simply to 
 carry the news of their Christ and who sought no per- 
 sonal gain. Holy Cross Village is by the Pacific Sea, 
 — close by the sea, a hundred miles or so to the south 
 'f you go from San Francisco. You can get there in a 
 day. But it is better to take longer. It always is bet- 
 ter to take longer going anywhere, — ways are so sure 
 to be nicer than any places you set out to reach. The 
 way to Holy Cross Village is delightful, if you go by 
 San Jose and Santa Clara. First, an hour in the cars, 
 running southward through the Santa Clara Valley, — 
 parks and rich men's houses, wheat and oats, and wind- 
 mills by dozens ; then, just at sunset, San Jose, another 
 of the sacred old mission towns. It hes low, between two 
 mountain ranges. It is shady and straight and full of 
 flowers. There are pubhc gardens, with round tables 
 under the trees, with little ponds, and boats, and targets, 
 and ;Umping-boards, where it is evident that men and
 
 54 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME, 
 
 women frolic daily, after un-American fashion. There 
 is a Chinese quarter ; which is, in fact, only five steps 
 from the main street, but is in atmosphere five thousand 
 miles away. At the end of its one narrow lane stands a 
 Joss House, — small, white, high, double-gabled in roof ; 
 a dolphin, tail up, for a steeple ; a gigantic lady-bug and 
 a lobster on the ridge-pole ; square patches of bright 
 colors, interspersed with cabalistic inscriptions, like an 
 album missionary bedquilt, on the wall ; steep stairs, 
 climbing up outside the house ; and a door opening 
 into an airless little chapel, where a huge tureen full of 
 the ashes of burnt prayers stands on a low altar. The 
 prayers, rolled up in the shape of slender cigarettes, are 
 stuck like lamp-lighters in a vase close by. In a small, 
 windowless alcove at the end of the chapel we found the 
 priest, sitting on the edge of his bed, scraping opium. 
 The furniture of his bedroom consisted — besides the 
 wickerwork bedstead, which had a thin roll of bedding 
 at its head — of a teapot, two teacups, and a pipe. This 
 was all. He looked happy. There are three fine pub- 
 lic schoolhouses in San Jose, a handsome building for 
 a normal school, and the most wonderful weeping- 
 willows in the world. These are on General Negley's 
 -ground. Four of them make together a great dome 
 of green, through which little light penetrates, into 
 which you drive, and find yourself walled in on all 
 sides by quivering, drooping willow wreaths, which, 
 although they bend from a point some sixty or seventy 
 feet up in the air, still trail on the ground. All this 
 and more you will find out about San Jose before 
 the sun sets, and then you will sleep at the Auzerais 
 House, which is so good that one must be forgiven for 
 calling it by name. 
 
 Early the next morning, a top seat on the stage for 
 Santa Cruz; three miles to Santa Clara, — three miles 
 on an absolutely straight, absolutely level road, walled 
 with willows and poplars on each side. The old Padres 
 set these out ; most enduring of all memorials, most 
 indisputable title-deed to the right of gratitude from 
 generations.
 
 HOLY CROSS VILLAGE, ETC. 55 
 
 From Santa Clara, twelve miles out to the Coast 
 Range of mountains ; twelve miles across the Santa 
 Clara Valley. This road is also perfectly level ; in the 
 dust and heat of summer, intolerable ; on the day we 
 crossed it, clear and pleasant, and golden, too, as the 
 wake of a cloud in a smooth yellow sky, for the whole 
 valley was waving with yellow mustard. What the ox-eye 
 daisy is to New England, the wild mustard is to these 
 saints' valleys in CaHfornia. But the mustard has and 
 keeps right of way, as no plant could on the sparser 
 New England soil. Literally acre after acre it covers, 
 so that no spike nor spire of any other thing can lift its 
 head. In full flower, it is gorgeous beyond words to 
 describe or beyond color to paint. The petals are so 
 small, and the flower swings on so fine and thread-like 
 a stem, and the plant grows so rank and high, that the 
 effect is of floating masses of golden globules in the 
 air, as you look off through it, bringing the eye near and 
 to its level ; or, as you look down on it from a distance, 
 it is a yellow surface, too undulating for gold, too solid 
 for sea. There are wheat fields in the Santa Clara Val- 
 ley, and farms with fruit-trees ; but I recall the valley 
 only as one long level of blazing, floating, yellow bloom. 
 
 The Coast Range Mountains rise gently from the val- 
 ley ; but the road enters abruptly upon them, and the 
 change from the open sun and the vivid yellow of the 
 valley to tlie shifting shadows of hills and the glistening 
 darkness of redwood and madrone trees is very sharp. 
 The road is like all tne mountain roads in California, — 
 dizzy, dangerous, dehcious ; flowers and ferns and vines 
 and shrubs tangled to the very edges ; towering trees 
 above and towering trees below ; a rocky wall close on 
 one hand and a wooded abyss close on the other, and 
 racing horses pulling you through between. " It is 
 magnificent, but it is not driving." We stop for a bad 
 dinner at a shanty house, which is walled and thatched 
 with roses ; and we make occasional stops to water at 
 lonely Uttle settlements, where the hills have broken 
 apart and away from each other just enough to let a
 
 ■56 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME 
 
 field or two lie and tempt a few souls up into their liv- 
 ing grave. At all such spots the wistful, eager, home- 
 sick look on some of the faces wrung my heart. " Be 
 you from the east ? " said one man, as he brought out 
 the water for the horses. He had a weak, tremulous, 
 disappointed face. The pale blue eyes had lost all 
 purpose, if they ever had it. " Oh, yes ! " said we gayly. 
 " From the other edge of the continent." And then we 
 waited for the usual reply. " Well I wonder if you 
 
 know my uncle, Mr. . He lives in New York." 
 
 But no. " I thought so," was all the man said ; but 
 there was something indescribably pathetic in the 
 emphasis and the falling inflection. Early in the after- 
 noon we came out on a divide, a narrow ridge, wooded 
 less thickly, and giving us glimpses of the ocean in the 
 distance. When we reach the end of the seaward slope 
 of this, we shall have crossed the Coast Range, and shall 
 find our Holy Cross Village. A few miles this side of 
 it, the driver says : — 
 
 " Now we're coming to the Hotel de Redwood. There 
 it is." 
 
 And he points with his whip. All that can be seen on 
 either hand is the same unbroken forest of majestic 
 redwoods and pines and madrones through which we 
 have been driving for miles. 
 
 " Get out, gentlemen, and take a drink," calls a feeble 
 voice from a ragged man, taking the near leader by the 
 head. " I am the proprietor of the Hotel de Red- 
 wood." 
 
 Then we see a small white sign nailed to the bark of 
 one of the biggest trees : " Hotel de Redwood." Thol 
 door is in the other side of the tree, furthest from the 
 road. That is the reason we didn't see it ; this is the 
 kind of thing a moderate tree can be used for in this 
 country of sizes too big to sort. It is not a hotel in 
 which one would sleep, to be sure ; but it is a hotel big 
 enough for eight or ten people to stand at once in f*-^nt 
 of its little counter, where are for sale the ever-pre^ei^t 
 and innumerable drinks of the country. One hoUov
 
 HOLY CROSS VILLAGE, ETC. $7 
 
 tree for bar-room, one for shop, one for library, one for 
 museum, one for bedroom of the proprietor — five hol- 
 low trees make the Hotel de Redwood. The Hbrary 
 consists of six volumes ; the museum of a live hairless 
 South American dog, a dead California lion, and the 
 head of a bear. The bedroom — I would rather not 
 speak of the bedroom. I think the lion used to sleep in 
 it, and the proprietor killed him for his bed. 
 
 " Can't you take me into town ? " said the proprietor, 
 looking wistfully at the driver. 
 
 ''Yes, yes, Mr. Baker. Jump up. It's a light load 
 to-day ; but you must bring your violin, and play for 
 us." 
 
 So the poor vagabond fellow sprang merrily up on the 
 top of the stage ; and we drove into the village to the 
 tune of "The Traveller from Arkansas." 
 
 The village lies close to the sea. There are houses 
 from which you can throw a stone to the beach. Then, 
 a little higher up, is the business street, where shops 
 and offices and one or two quaint, small inns, with pots 
 of flowers all along their balconies, are set thick to- 
 gether, and contrive to look much wider awake than 
 they are ; then rise sudden, sharp terraces, — marking 
 old water-levels, no doubt, — up which one ought to go 
 by staircases, but up which one does chmb wearily by 
 winding roads and paths. On these terraces are the 
 homes of Santa Cruz. Not a fine house, not a large 
 house among them ; but not a house without a garden, 
 and hardly a house without such fuchsias, geraniums, 
 and roses as would make a show to be sought after in 
 any other country than this. Is it worth while, I won- 
 der, to say to people who keep a couple of scarlet 
 geraniums carefully in pots in their window, that in this 
 village scarlet geraniums live out of doors all the year 
 round, grow by dozens along fences, like currant-bushes, 
 and stick out between the slats, great bits, and branches, 
 that anybody may pick ; that they stand plentifully at 
 corners of houses, running up, hke old lilac-trees, to the 
 Becond-story windows ; that a fuchsia will grow all ovei
 
 5 8 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME 
 
 a piazza, and a white rosebush cover a small cottage, — 
 walls, eaves, roof, — till nothing but the chimney is 
 left in sight, coming out of a round bank of white and 
 green ? 
 
 Believe it who can, that has not seen it ! In Holy 
 Cross \^illage, to-day, are many scarlet geraniums and 
 fuchsias and rose-bushes, of all colors, that can '* wit- 
 ness if I He." 
 
 Walking half a mile back — no, quarter of a mile 
 back — from these terraces, you come to soft, round 
 hills, with openings of meadow-stretches, fertile and 
 rich as the prairie. Many of these are wooded heavily 
 with redwoods and pines, madrones and buckeye. 
 Through these woods wind delicious roads, rising out 
 of damp, shadowy fern-and-flower-filled hollows, to 
 broad, breezy openings, from which the sea is in full 
 sight, and across which the delicious wind sweeps 
 straight up from Monterey, or over from the mountains 
 the other side of the bay. 
 
 Walking down from the terraces seaward, and then 
 southward, you find marshy meadows, green and brown, 
 through which the road-track is hardly defined. Flow- 
 ers grow on each side, as bright and many as on the 
 prairie. Presently, the road comes to an abrupt end, 
 in a little grassy spot, divided only by a low, brushwood 
 fence from a half-moon-shaped beach of white sand, 
 between two high cHffs. The furthest cliflf has a natu- 
 ral arch in it, many feet high, through which the sea 
 beyond shows a half-circle of blue, set in yellowish 
 white, looking like a great gate of sapphire, swinging 
 slowly to and fro in an arched gateway of ivory. The 
 nearer cliff is covered with curious plants of the cactus 
 species, with yellow blossoms and red ; and the rocks 
 seem to be of a chalky nature, brilliantly veined with 
 black and yellow and pale pink. At the base of the 
 cliff, the same bright-veined rocks stretch out, in ir- 
 regular and broken floors. As the high tide comes ud 
 over these, all the depressions are kept filled with 
 water, and make beautiful aquaria, in which live limpets
 
 HOLY CROSS VILLAGE, ETC. 59 
 
 and muscles and anemones. Fine and rare seaweeds 
 are strewn around their rims, and wave from their 
 sides deep down in the water. The hne of white surf 
 breaks perpetually beyond, coming or going, — always 
 a surf ; retreating always with a kneeling face, turned 
 to the cliff, as is the law of stately surfs on all seas, leav- 
 ing the king's presence of their shores. 
 
 To go back to the village by another way, you strike 
 across the marshy meadows, following for two miles or 
 more a soft, grassy road, through flowers ; then as- 
 cending a high plateau, on which are farms and here and 
 there lime-kilns, with blazing fires, and glistening, white 
 rock piled up by their sides. You are high up above the 
 village, now ; but woods shut it out of sight. You pass 
 it, — go two miles beyond it ; then turn, and come down 
 to it by a wooded road on the steep side of a little 
 canyon, through which a small river makes to the sea. 
 A wild azalea grows in masses on this road, — azalea, 
 whose flowers are white and pink and yellow all together. 
 Down in the bottom of the canyon is a little green 
 meadow oasis, where there are a few white houses and 
 a powder-mill. The river turns, to make room for it, in 
 such a sudden and exquisite curve that you think it is 
 carrying it on one arm, as a woman carries a baby. At 
 you come out of the woods, the broad sea flashes sud- 
 denly into full sight ; and the village shows in shining 
 bits here and there, Hke something the sea might have 
 broken and thrown up. You see now that the terraces 
 are not so high as they seem ; and the village has little 
 threads of lanes and streets, fringing off into the mead- 
 ows in all directions. It is sunset : all Nature rings 
 the Angelus ; and you say in your heart, " God bless the 
 village ! " 
 
 " Mrs. Pope's" is a Httle house, where lucky strangers 
 stay. It consists of three cottages and a quarter 
 In two of the cottages, the guests lodge, and take thei) 
 meals in the cottage and a quarter. The furthest cot 
 tage of lodgings is an old one. It is, or ought to be 
 called the " Cottage of the Cloth of Gold Rose ; " for.
 
 6o BITS OF TEA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 on one of its walls, grows a cloth of gold rose-tree 
 (not bush), — a tree whose trunk lies flat against the 
 side of the house, and reaches up to the eaves before 
 it condescends to branch at all. Then it sends out 
 arms to the right and to the left, and hides the whole 
 length of the eaves, from corner to corner, with leaves 
 and roses. The cottage is very low. The boughs and 
 sprays hang half way to the ground. You can pick as 
 many Cloth of Gold roses every day as you like ; and 
 nobody will miss them. The next cottage is new. It 
 has only four rooms, a back door, a front door, a roof, and 
 a little bit of piazza. From it, you go over a pine-plank 
 path — a few seconds' walk — to the dining-room, in the 
 "cottage and a quarter." From the piazza, you look into 
 flower-beds, through which the path leads up from the 
 gate to the house. Rose-bushes, six and seven feet 
 high ; roses, of all colors, and of the rarest kinds ; helio- 
 tropes, geraniums, pinks ; a huge datura in the centre, 
 with blossoms ten inches long ; an abutilon, high as the 
 evergreen trees by its side, and so sturdy that the tame 
 blackbird who scolds in the garden, early and late, for 
 somebody to come and give him bread, can sit on the 
 topmost boughs of it. 
 
 The '' quarter" is two rooms, joined to the cottage by 
 a little glass-fronted chamber, in which ferns are to 
 grow. The outside door opens into the parlor, which is 
 a low room, with an open fire-place, where, in spite of 
 the Cloth of Gold roses, a wood fire will be blazing on 
 andirons, night and morning, in July. There is a piano, 
 \ chintz-covered lounge, fantastic shell-work, and cone- 
 work brackets in the corners, a low centre-lamp swung 
 by a chain from the ceiling, and, on the round-table under 
 it, the last " Old and New." Sixteen copies of " Old 
 and New " are taken in Holy Cross Village. This is 
 the result of the leaven left there by that brave, strong, 
 but one ideaed woman, Ehza Farnham. 
 
 The farm on which she and her beloved friend, Geor- 
 gia Bruce, toiled like men, and sowed and reaped and 
 Cs'ulded with their own hands, lies Uttle more than a mile
 
 HOLY CROSS VILLAGE, ETC. 6 1 
 
 a\vay from the town. Mrs. Farnham's house was burnt 
 down, a short time ago ; but another has been built on 
 the same spot, and a son of "Tom" — who will be so 
 well remembered by all who have read Mrs. Farnham's 
 account of her California hfe — lives in it now, with his 
 mother. The house stands in a lovely spot, on high 
 ground, from which meadows slope gently to the sea- 
 level, and then stretch away miles to the beach. When 
 that adventurous woman broke ground for her house, 
 no other house was in sight, except the Mission Build- 
 ing, and the little shanty in which she lived while her 
 own house was going up. Now the Mission is used for 
 a stable. The northern outskirts of the village lie in 
 full sight, between her farm and the sea ; and, to reach 
 the sight of her house, you must pass a thickly wooded 
 cemetery, in which there are many headstones. On the 
 day that we were there, men were tossing hay in the beau- 
 tiful, curving meadow hollows just before the house, — 
 the same meadow where Mrs. Farnham sowed the 
 first wheat which was sowed in Santa Cruz, and where 
 Georgia Bruce spent whole days in planting potatoes. 
 The air was almost heavy with the fragrance from the 
 fresh hay, and from the thickets of azalea on the ceme- 
 tery banks. The distant sea glittered like a burnished 
 shield, to which the mountains on the other side of the 
 bay were set like an opal rim. Hardship and struggle 
 seem monstrous in such an atmosphere. There must 
 have been an air of mockery to those toiling pioneers 
 in the very smile of this transcendently lovely Nature. 
 To want bread, to need shelter in such realms of luxu- 
 riance and warmth ; to suffer, to die under such skies, — 
 the heart resents and rejects the very thought with pas- 
 sionate disbelief. But such thoughts, such recollec- 
 tions, such struggle, are, after all, the needed shadow 
 to a too vivid sun. Holy Cross Village is blessed of 
 both, — blessed in its sparkHng sea, its rainless sky, it.«? 
 limitless blossom ; blessed also in the memory of Eliza 
 Farnham, and the presence to-day of Georgia Bruce 
 Kirby.
 
 6:? BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME, 
 
 THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 
 
 IT is situated in Kearny, Dupont, Jackson, and Sac- 
 ramento Streets, in the City of San Francisco. We 
 traversed it one afternoon, and went to its chief theatre 
 in the evening. Those who are unable to visit it in per- 
 son, as we did, can learn just about as much by a care- 
 ful and imaginative study of Chinese fans and the out- 
 sides of tea-chests. Never did an indefatigable nation so 
 perpetuate faithful facsimile of itself, its people, cus- 
 toms, and fashions as the Chinese do in the grotesque, 
 high-colored, historical paper with which they line, cover, 
 and wrap every article of their merchandise. When I 
 first saw the living Chow Chong walking before me on 
 Montgomery Street, in San Francisco, the sight had 
 nothing novel in it. It was amusing to see him in mo 
 tion ; but as for his face, figure, and gait, I had known 
 them since my infancy. In my seventh year, I possessed 
 his portrait. It was done on rice-paper, and set in the 
 lid of a box. Afterward, I had him on the outside of a 
 paper of crackers, and fired him off to celebrate our 
 superiority as a nation. I did not feel so sure of our 
 superiority when I came to walk behind him. In the 
 matter of shoes, he excels us. That the shoes look like 
 junks rather than shoes, and that their navigation must 
 be a difficult science, is very true; but the breadth of 
 th^ sole is a secret of dignity and equilibrium, and has, 
 I make no doubt, a great deal to do with Chow Chong's 
 philosophical serenity of bearing. The general neat- 
 ness and cleanliness of his attire, too, impressed me ; 
 also his Christian patience under the insulting and cu- 
 rious gaze of many strangers, who, like myself, had
 
 THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 63 
 
 never before seen the embodied Chinese nation on foot 
 of a morning. I followed him at a respectful distance ; 
 and he led me into the heart of his country. It lay, it 
 seemed, within ten minutes' walk from my own hotel. 
 As I looked up, and saw that the street was suddenly 
 becoming like a street of Pekin, and that the trades of 
 Hong Kong, Canton, and their suburbs were buzzing 
 on either hand of me, a rather late caution led me to 
 pause, and ask whether it might not be unsafe for me to 
 go further. 
 
 " Not at all, madam ; not at all" said the short 
 policeman to whom I spoke. " At this hour of the day, 
 you can go with perfect safety through all these streets." 
 
 '• But 1 would not advise you to let them see you tak- 
 ing notes, however," he added, glancing at my note- 
 book. " They are suspicious." 
 
 " They have been so hardly treated, it is no wonder,'* 
 repHed I. 
 
 " That's so, ma'am," answered the policeman, as he 
 walked on. He was a very short policeman. I ob- 
 served it, because I intended to mention him ; and I 
 regretted that he was not tall. I have been impressed 
 with the fact that good writers, in giving accounts of 
 city experiences, invariably meet a tall policeman. 
 
 In spite of my policeman, however, or perhaps be- 
 cause he was so short, I did take notes ; and no harm 
 came of it. The men of China looked at me, observ- 
 antly ; now and then, they exchanged significant glances 
 with each other. One or two tried to peep over my 
 shoulder ; but, seeing that I was not drawing pictures 
 of them, they took no more interest in my proceedings. 
 I looked up into their faces and smiled, and said : " I 
 never saw Chinese shops before. Very good, very 
 good." And they laughed, and moved on, — no doubt 
 inwardly moved with compassion for my ignorance. 
 
 Now and then, a woman would brush by me, turn 
 half round, and give me a quick look of such contempt 
 that I winced a little. Judged by her standard, I must 
 sipk very low, indeed. She herself did not venture to
 
 64 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 walk thus, in open daylight among her countrymen, 
 until she had lost all sense of decency, as bar race hold 
 it. What must I be, then, — a white woman, who had 
 not come to buy, but simply to look at, to lift, to taste, 
 or to smell the extraordinary commodities offered for 
 saie in the empire ? No wonder she despised me ! I 
 avenge myself by describing her hair. It was all 
 drawn back from her forehead, twisted tight from the 
 nape of the neck to the crown of the head, stiffened 
 with glue, glistening with oil, and made into four huge 
 
 • double wings, which stood out beyond her ears on 
 either side. It looked a little like two gigantic black 
 
 ' satin bats, pinned to the back of her head, or still more 
 like a windmill gone into mourning. Never, no never ! 
 xiot even on the heads of peasant women in the German 
 provinces, was there seen any thing so hideous, so gro- 
 tesque. A huge silver or gilt dart is pinned across 
 these shining black flaps, which look no more Hke hair 
 than they do like sheet-iron, — nor so much, for that 
 matter. Then comes a straight, narrow band of shin- 
 ing black cambric, an inch wide, tight around her yellow 
 neck ; and from that falls a loose, shapeless garment of 
 black cambric, — a sort of cross between a domino and 
 a night-shirt ; then straight, bagging, flapping sleeves 
 down to her knuckles ; then straight, bagging, flapping 
 blue trowsers, down to her ankles ; then queer black, 
 junk-like shoes, turned up at the toes, and slipping off 
 at the heel at every step, — there she is, the Chinese 
 woman of Dupont or Kearny Street to-day "l Could 
 she be uglier ? And her children are like unto her, 
 oiJv a few inches shorter, — that is all; and, when 
 they go by, hand-in-hand, there is something pathetic 
 in the monstrosity of them. But pass on, sister ! 
 In the sunless recesses of Quong Tuck Lane, I trust 
 thou hast had many a laugh with thy comrades over 
 the gown and hat I wore on Dupont Street that day. 
 
 Sing, Wo, & Co. keep one ot the most picturesque 
 shops on Jackson Street. It is neither grocer's, not 
 butcher's, nor fishmonger's, nor druggist's ; but a little of
 
 THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 65 
 
 all four. It is, like most of the shops on Jackson Street, 
 part cellar, part cellar-stairs, part sidewalk, and part back 
 bedroom. On the sidewalk are platters of innumerable 
 sorts of little fishes, — little silvery fishes ; little yellow 
 fishes, with whiskers ; little snaky fishes ; round, flat 
 fishes, little slices of big fishes, — never too much or too 
 many of any kind. Sparing and thrifty dealers, as well 
 as sparing and thrifty consumers, are the Celestials. 
 Round tubs of sprouted beans ; platters of square cakes of 
 something whose consistency was hke Dutch cheese, 
 whose color was vivid yellow, like bakers' gingerbread, 
 and whose tops were stamped with mysterious letters ; 
 long roots, as long as the longest parsnips, but glistening 
 white, hke polished turnips ; cherries, tied up in stingy 
 little bunches of ten or twelve, and swung in all the 
 nooks ; small bunches of all conceivable green things, 
 from celery down to timothy grass, tied tight and wedged 
 into corners, or swung over head ; dried herbs, in dim 
 recesses ; pressed chickens, on shelves (these were the 
 most remarkable things. They were semi-transparent, 
 thin, skinny, and yellow, and looked almost more like 
 huge, flattened grasshoppers than like chickens ; but 
 chickens they were, and no mistake), — all these were on 
 the trays, on the sidewalk, and on the cellar-stairs. In 
 the back bedroom were Mrs. Sing and Mrs. Wo, with 
 several little Sings or Woes. It was too dark to see 
 what they were doing ; for the only light came from the 
 open front of the shop, which seemed to run back like a 
 cave in a hill. On shelves on the sides were tea-cups 
 and tea-pots, and plates of fantastic shapes and gay col- 
 ors. Sing and Wo were most courteous : but their 
 interest centred entirely on sales ; and I could learn 
 but one fact from them, in regard to any of their goods. 
 It was either " Muchee good. Englis man muchee 
 like ; " or else, " China man like ; Enghs man no like." 
 Why should I wish to know any thing further than 
 that some articles would be agreeable to " Englis 
 man's " palate, and others would not .? This must be 
 enough to regulate my purchases. But I shall always 
 S
 
 66 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 wish I knew how those chickens were fattened, and 
 what the vivid yellow cakes were made of. 
 
 But I stop too long with Sing, Wo, & Co. The street 
 IS lined on either hand with shops just as fantastic and 
 commodities just as unheard of, — " Ty, Wing, & Co.," 
 for instance, who have mysterious, tight-shut doors and 
 red and yellow printed labels on their window-panes, but 
 not an article of merchandise anywhere to be seen. 
 Inside, only darkness and dust and cobwebs, and two 
 Chinese women eating something out of a bowl with 
 chopsticks, — one bowl, resting on all four of their knees, 
 pressed tight together, and the four chopsticks flying 
 like shuttle-cocks, back and forth between their mouths 
 and the bowl. This was all that two eager eyes, peer- 
 ing into the windows, could see. Then comes " Miss 
 Flynn, milliner." Adventurous Irishwoman, to set up 
 her shop in the heart of this Chinese Empire, — the 
 only foreigner on the street. Then comes a druggist, 
 " Chick Kee " by name. Over his door is stretched a scar- 
 let banner, with long tassels at the corners. Peacocks' 
 feathers and great, plume-like bunches of fringed blue 
 and yellow and green papers are nodding above the ban- 
 ner. Up and down on each side, in long, narrow stripes, 
 is printed his sign. It is marvellously gay, having all 
 the colors of the banner and the feathers and the papers 
 in it ; but the only thing in his window is a flat and shal- 
 low basket, with some dusty bits of old dried roots in it 
 They look as old as forgotten flag-root from Cotton Math 
 er's meeting-house. Chick Kee sits on his empty coun- 
 ter, smoking as tranquilly as if everybody had died or got 
 well, and he had left off buying drugs. Tuck Wo keeps 
 a restaurant, near by. It is in a cellar ; and I dare 
 not go down. But I see from above four iron pots, 
 boiling on Httle three-legged furnaces ; tea-cups and 
 saucers, on shelves in corners ; and great plates of 
 rolls of the fatal nut, ready to be chewed ; also a square 
 cake, of the vivid yellow. I despise myself for be- 
 ing afraid to taste that cake ; but I am. It looks so 
 like bar-soap, half saleratus, or saleratus-gingerbread, 
 half soap.
 
 THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 67 
 
 •* Moo, On, & Co." come next. Their shop is full, 
 crowded full, — bags, bundles, casks, shelves, piles, 
 bunches of utterly nondescript articles. It sounds like 
 an absurd exaggeration, but it is literally true, that the 
 only articles in his shop which I ever saw before are bot- 
 tles. There are a few of those ; but the purpose, use, 
 or meaning of every other article is utterly unknown to 
 me. There are things that look like games, like toys, 
 like lamps, like idols, Hke utensils of lost trades, like rel- 
 ics of lost tribes, like — well, like a pawnbroker's stock, 
 just brought from some other world ! That comes near- 
 est to it. "Moo, On, & Co." have apparently gone 
 back for more. Nobody is in the shop ; the door is 
 wide open. I wait and wait, hoping that some one will 
 come along who caa speak English, and of whom I may 
 ask what this extraordinary show means. Timidly I 
 touch a fluttering bit, which hangs outside. It is not 
 paper ; it is not cloth ; it is not woollen, silk, nor straw ; 
 it is not leather ; it is not cobweb ; it is not alive ; it is 
 not dead : it crisps and curls at my touch ; it waves 
 backward, though no air blows it. A sort of horror 
 seizes me. It may be a piece of an ancestor of Moo's, 
 doing ghostly duty at his shop-door. I hasten on, and 
 half fancy that it is behind me, as I halt before Dr. Li Po 
 Tai's door. His promises to cure, diplomas, and so forth, 
 are printed in gay-colored strips of labels on each side. 
 Six bright balloons swing overhead ; and peacocks' feath- 
 ers are stuck into the balloons. I have heard that Dr. Li 
 Po Tai is a learned man, and works cures. His balloons 
 are certainly very briUiant. Then comes a tailor, name 
 unknown, sitting on the sidewalk, at work. Then an aris- 
 tocratic boot-black, with a fantastic, gay-colored awning 
 set up over the insignia of his calling. Then, drollest of 
 all, an old, old woman, mending a Chinese toga. I call it 
 a toga, because I do not know the Chinese name for it ; 
 and it is no more unlike a toga than it is unlike a coat. 
 The old lady sits on a low stool, with half a dozen boxes 
 of patches around her, all scrupulously sorted, according 
 to color and fabric ; an old, battered box of buttons, too,
 
 68 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 and thread at her feet, — the very ideal of a housewife at 
 large ; mender to a race ! Every now and then, she 
 chants a few words, in a low voice, to which nobody 
 seems to listen. I suppose it is Chinese for " Here's 
 your warm patches," " Trowsers sewed up here ; " or, 
 if there is such a thing in the Chinese Empire as a con- 
 stitution, and if they have a Woman's Rii^hts party, per- 
 haps some wag has taught her to call. " Here's your Six- 
 teenth Amendment." That is what first came into my 
 head, as I looked at the poor, wrinkled, forlorn old 
 creature, sewing away on the hopelessly ragged gar- 
 ment. 
 
 Then comes a corner stand, with glass cases of can- 
 dles. Almond candy, with grains of rice thick on the 
 top ; little bowls of pickles, pears, and peppers ; plat- 
 ters of odd-shaped nuts ; and beans baked black as 
 coffee. As I stand looking curiously at these, a well- 
 dressed Chinaman pauses before me, and, making a 
 gesture with his hand toward the stand, says: "All 
 muchee good. Buy eat. Muchee good." Hung Wung, 
 the proprietor, is kindled to hospitality by this, and re- 
 peats the words : " Yaas, muchee good. Take, eat," 
 offering me, with the word, the bowl of peppers. 
 
 Next comes a very gay restaurant, the best in the 
 Empire. " Hang Fee, Low & Co." keep it, and for- 
 eigners go there to drink tea. There is a green railed 
 balcony across the front, swinging full of high-colored 
 lanterns, round and square ; tablets with Chinese let- 
 ters on bright grounds are set in panels on the walls ; 
 a huge rhinoceros stands in the centre of the railing ; a 
 tree grows out of the rhinoceros's back, and an India- 
 rubber man sits at foot of the tree. China figures and 
 green bushes in flower-pots are ranged all along the 
 railing. Nowhere except in the Chinese Empire can 
 there be seen such another gaudy, grotesque house- 
 front. We make an appointment on the spot to take 
 some of Hang Fee's tea, on our way to the Chinese 
 Theatre, the next evening ; and then we hurry home, 
 past dozens more of just such gr' iesque shops as
 
 THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 69 
 
 these, past finer and more showy shops, filled with 
 just such Japanese and Chinese goods as we can buy on 
 Broadway in New York; past dark lanes, so narrow 
 that two might shake hands from opposite windows ; 
 so black that one fancies the walls are made of char- 
 coal ; so alive with shiny black Chinese heads and 
 shiny yellow Chinese faces that one thinks invol 
 untarily of a swarm of Spanish flies ; then round a 
 corner, and presto ! there we are in America again, 
 — on Montgomery street, which might be Broadway, 
 for all that there is distinctive in its shops or its 
 crowd of people. We turn back in bewilderment, and 
 retrace our steps a little way into the Empire again, to 
 make sure that it was not a dream ! No. There are 
 the lanterns, the peacock feathers, the rhinoceros ; and 
 there is Dr. Li Po Tai himself, in a damask dressing- 
 gown, embossed with birds of paradise and palm-trees, 
 bowing out a well-dressed Caucasian of our own species 
 from his door. To complete the confusion, the Cau- 
 casian steps nimbly into a yellow horse-car, which at 
 that instant chances to be passing Dr. Li Po Tai's 
 door ; and we float back again, side by side in the 
 crowd with a Chinese man-washerwoman, round the 
 corner, into Montgomery street. 
 
 After all, we did not take tea at Hang Fee's, on our 
 way to the theatre. There was not time. As it was, 
 we were late ; and when we entered the orchestra had 
 begun to "play. Orchestra ! It is necessary to use 
 that name, I suppose, in speaking of a body of men 
 with instruments, who are seated on a stage, furnishing 
 what is called music for a theatrical performance. But 
 it is a term calculated to mislead in this instance. 
 Fancy one frog-pond, one Sunday school with pump- 
 kin whistles, one militia training, and two gongs for 
 supper, on a Fall River boat, all at once, and you will 
 have some faint idea of the indescribable noise which 
 saluted our ears on entering that theatre. To say that 
 we were deafened is nothing. The hideous hubbub of 
 din seemed to overleap and transcend all laws and
 
 70 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 spheres of sound. It was so loud we could not see ; it 
 was so loud we could not breathe ; it was so loud 
 there didn't seem to be any room to sit down ! The 
 theatre was small and low and dark. The pit and 
 greater part of the gallery were filled with Chinamen, 
 all smoking. One corner of the gallery was set apart 
 for women. That was full, also, with Chinese women. 
 Every woman's hair was dressed in the manner I have 
 described. The bat-like flaps projected so far on each 
 side of each head that each woman seemed almost to 
 be joined to her neighbors by a cartilaginous band ; 
 and, as they sat almost motionless, this eifect Was 
 heightened. The stage had no pretence of scenery. It 
 was hung with gay banners and mysterious labels. 
 Tall plumes of peacock's feathers in the corners and 
 some irregularly placed chairs were all the furniture. 
 The orchestra sat in chairs, at the back of the stage. 
 Some of them smoked in the intervals, some drank tea. 
 A little boy who drummed went out when he felt like 
 it; and the fellow with the biggest gong had evidently 
 no plan of operations at all, except to gong as long as 
 his arms could bear it, then rest a minute, and then 
 gong again. " Oh ! well," said we, as we wedged and 
 squeezed through the narrow passage-way which led to 
 our box, "it will only last a few minutes. We shall 
 not entirely lose our hearing." Fatal delusion ! It 
 never stopped. The actors came out ; the play began , 
 the play went on ; still the hideous hubbub of din con- 
 tinued, and was made unspeakably more hideous by 
 the voices of the actors, which were raised to the 
 shrillest falsetto to surmount the noise, and which 
 sounded hke nothing in Nature except the voices of 
 frantic cats. 
 
 This appears preposterous. Almost I fear I shall 
 not be beheved. But I will leave it to any jury of 
 twelve who have been to the Chinese Theatre if it be 
 possible for language even to approach a true descrip- 
 tion of the horribleness of the noises heard on its stage. 
 What may be the sounds of the Chinese language, as
 
 THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 71 
 
 spoken in ordinary life, I cannot judo;e. But, as in- 
 toned in the theatrical screech, with the constant un- 
 dertone and overtone of the gongs and drums, it is 
 incredibly like caterwauling. Throw in a few " ch "s 
 and "ts "s into the common caterwaul of the midnight 
 cat, and you have the highest art of the Chinese stage, 
 so far as it can be judged of simply by sound. We 
 have amused ourselves by practising it, by writing it ; 
 and each experiment has but confirmed our impression 
 of the wonderful similarity. At first, in spite of the 
 deafening loudness of the din, it is ludicrous beyond 
 conception. To see these superbly dressed Chinese 
 creatures, — every one of them as perfectly and ex- 
 quisitely dressed as the finest figures on their satin 
 fans or rice-paper pictures, and looking exactly like 
 them, — to see these creatures strutting and sailing and 
 sweeping and bowing and bending, beating their breasts 
 and tearing their beards, gesticulating and rushing 
 about in an utterly incomprehensible play, with cater- 
 wauling screams issuing from their mouths, is for a few 
 minutes so droll that you laugh till the tears run, and 
 think you will go to the Chinese Theatre every night as 
 long as you stay in San Francisco. I said so to the 
 friend who had politely gone with me. He had 
 been to the performance before. He smiled pityingly, 
 and yawned behind his hand. At the end of half an 
 hour, I whispered: "Twice a week will do." In fif- 
 teen minutes more, I said: "I think we will go out 
 now. I can't endure this racket another minute. But, 
 nevertheless, I shall come once more, with an inter- 
 preter. I must and will know what all this mummery 
 means." 
 
 The friend smiled again incredulously. But we did 
 go again, with an interpreter ; and the drollest thing of 
 all was to find out how very little all the caterwauling 
 and rushing and bending and bowling and sweeping and 
 strutting really meant. The difficulty of getting an 
 interpreter, was another interesting feature in the oc- 
 casion. A lady, who had formerly been a missionary
 
 72 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOMK- 
 
 in China, had promised to go with us ; and, as even 
 she was not sure of being able to understand Chinese 
 caterwauled, she proposed to take one of the boys from 
 the missionary school, to interpret to her before she 
 interpreted to us. So we drove to the school. Mrs. 
 
 went in. The time seemed very long that we 
 
 waited. At last she came back, looking both amused 
 and vexed, to report that not one of those intelligent 
 Christian Chinees would leave his studies that evening 
 to go to the theatre. 
 
 " I suppose it is an old story to them," said I. 
 
 " Not at all," said she. " On the contrary, hardly a 
 boy there has been inside the theatre. But they can- 
 not bear to lose a minute from their lessons. Mr. 
 Loomis really urged some of them ; but it was of no 
 use." 
 
 In a grocery shop on Kearny street, however, we 
 found a clever young man, less absorbed in learning ; 
 and he went with us as interpreter. Again the same 
 hideous din ; the same clouds of smoke ; the same hub- 
 bub of caterwauling. But the dramatis persona were 
 few. Luckily for us, our first lesson in the Chinese 
 drama was to be a simple one. And here I pause, 
 considering whether my account of this play will be 
 believed. This is the traveller's great perplexity. The 
 incredible things are always the only things worth tell- 
 ing ; but is it best to tell them 1 
 
 The actors in this play were three, — a lady of rank, 
 her son, and her man cook. The play opened with a 
 soliloquy by the lady. She is sitting alone, sewing. 
 Her husband has gone to America ; he did not bid her 
 farewell. Her only son is at school. She is sad and 
 lonely. She weeps. 
 
 Enter boy. He asks if dinner is ready. 
 
 Enter cook. Cook says it is not time. Boy says he 
 wants dinner. Cook says he shall not have it. This 
 takes fifteen minutes. 
 
 Mother examines boy on his lessons. Boy does not 
 know them ; tries to peep. Mother reproves ; makes
 
 THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 73 
 
 boy kneel ; prepares to whip ; whips. Mother weeps. 
 Boy catches flies on the floor ; bites her finger. 
 
 Enter cook to see what the noise means. Cook 
 takes boy to task. Boy stops his ears. Cook bawls. 
 Cook kneels to lady ; reproves her also ; tells her she 
 must keep her own temper, if she would train her boy. 
 
 Lady sulks, naturally. Boy slips behind and cuts 
 her work out of her embroidery frame. Cook attacks 
 boy. Cook sings a lament, and goes out to attend to 
 dinner ; but returns in frantic distress. During his 
 absence every thing has boiled over ; every thing has 
 been burned to a crisp. Dinner is ruined. Cook now 
 reconciles mother and son ; drags son to his knees ; 
 makes him repeat words of supplication. While he 
 does this, cook turns his back to the audience, takes off 
 his beard carefully, lays it on the floor, while he drinks 
 a cup full of tea. Exit all, happy and smiling. 
 
 This is all, literally all ! It took an hour and a half. 
 The audience listened with intensest interest. The 
 gesticulations, the expressions of face, the tones of the 
 actors all conveyed the idea of the deepest tragedy. 
 Except for our interpreter, I should have taken the 
 cook for a soothsayer, priest, a highwayman and mur- 
 derer, alternately. I should ha^-e supposed that all 
 the dangers, hopes, fears, dehghts possible in the lives 
 of three human beings were going on on that stage. 
 Now we saw how very far-fetched and preposterous 
 had probably been our theories of the play we had seen 
 before, we having constructed a most brilliant plot 
 from our interpretation of the pantomine. 
 
 After this domestic drama came a fierce spectacular 
 play, too absurd to be described, in which nations went 
 to war because a king's monkey had been killed. And 
 the kings and their armies marched in at one door and 
 out at the other, sat on gilt thrones, fought with gilt 
 swords, tumbled each other head over heels with as 
 much vigor and just about as much art as small boys 
 play the battle of Bunker Hill with the nursery chairs 
 on a rainy day. But the dresses of these warlike mon-
 
 74 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 arcbs were gorgeous and fantastic beyond description. 
 Long, gay-colored robes, blazoned and blazing with 
 gold and silver embroidery ; small flags, two on each 
 side, stuck in at their shoulders, and projecting behind ; 
 helmets, square breastplates of shining stones, and 
 such decorations with feathers as pass belief. Several of 
 them had behind each ear a long, slender bird of Para- 
 dise feather. These feathers reached out at least three 
 feet behind, and curved and swayed with each step the 
 man took. When three or four of these were on the 
 stage together, marching and countermarching, wrest- 
 ling, fighting, and tumbling, why these tail-feathers did 
 not break, did not become entangled with each other, 
 no mortal can divine. Others had huge wings of silver 
 filagree work behind their ears. These also swayed 
 and flapped at each step. 
 
 Sometimes there would be forty or fifty of these 
 nondescript creatures on the stage at once, running, 
 gesticulating, attacking, retreating, howling, bowing, 
 bending, tripping each other up, stalking, strutting, anci 
 all the while caterwauling, and all the while the drums 
 beating, the gongs ringing, and the stringed instruments 
 and the castanets and the fifes playing. It was daz- 
 zling as a gigantic kaleidoscope and deafening as a 
 cotton-mill. After the plays came wonderful tumbling 
 and somersaulting. To see such gymnastic feats per- 
 formed by men in long damask night-gowns and with 
 wide trousers is uncommonly droll. This is really the 
 best thing at the Chinese Theatre, — the only thing, in 
 fact, which is not incomprehensibly childish. 
 
 My last glimpse of the Chinese Empire was in Mr. 
 Loomis's Sunday school. I had curiosity to see the 
 faces of the boys who had refused our invitation to tht. 
 theatre. As soon as I entered the room, I was asked 
 to take charge of a class. In vain I demurred and re- 
 fused. 
 
 "You surely can hear them read a chapter in the 
 New Testament." 
 
 It seemed inhuman as well as unchristian to refuse,
 
 THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 75 
 
 for there were several classes without teachers, — many 
 good San Franciscans having gone into the country. 
 There were the eager yellow faces watching for my 
 reply. So I sat down in a pew with three Chinese 
 young men on my right hand, two on my lelt, and four 
 in the pew in front, all with English and Chinese Tes- 
 taments in their hands. The lesson for the day was the 
 fifteenth chapter of Matthew. They read slowly, but 
 with greater accuracy of emphasis and pronunciation 
 than I expected. Their patience and eagerness in try- 
 ing to correct a mispronunciation were touching. At 
 last came the end of the chapter. 
 
 " Now do you go on to the next chapter ? " said I. 
 
 " No. Arx-play-in," said the brightest of the boys. 
 " You arx-play-in what we rade to you." 
 
 I wished the floor of that Sunday-school chapel 
 would open and swallow me up. To expound the fif- 
 teenth of Matthew at all, above all to expound it in 
 English which those poor souls could understand ! In 
 despair I glanced at the clock, — it lacked thirty min- 
 utes of the end of school ; at the other teachers, — they 
 were all ghbly expounding. Guiltily, 1 said : " Very 
 well. Begin and read the chapter over again, very 
 slowly ; and when you come to any word you do not 
 understand tell me, and I will try to explain it to you." 
 
 Their countenances fell. This was not the way they 
 usually had been taught. But, with the meekness of a 
 down-trodden people, they obeyed. It worked even 
 better than I had hoped. Poor souls ! they probably did 
 not understand enough to select the v/ords which per- 
 plexed them. They trudged patiently through their 
 verses again, without question. But my Charybdis 
 was near. The sixth verse came to the brightest boy. 
 As he read, " Thus have ye made the commandment ol 
 God of none effect by your tradition," he paused after 
 the word tradition. I trembled. 
 
 "Arx-play-in trardition ! " he said. 
 
 " What ? " said I, feebly, to gain a second's more 
 time. " What word did you say ? "
 
 76 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 " Trardition ! " he persisted. " What are trardition ? 
 Arx-play-in ! " 
 
 What I said I do not know. Probably I should not 
 tell if I did. But I am very sure that never in all my 
 life have I found myself and never in all the rest of my 
 life shall I find myself in so utterly desperate a dilemma 
 as I was then, with those patient, earnest, oblique eyes 
 fixed on me, and the gentle Chinese voice reiterating, 
 " What are trardition 1 "
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 77 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 WHEN I first stepped out of the door of the Occi- 
 dental Hotel, on Montgomery street, in San 
 Francisco, I looked up and down in disappointment. 
 
 "Is this all?" I exclaimed. "It is New York, — a 
 little lower of story, narrower of street, and stiller, per- 
 haps. Have I crossed a continent only to land in 
 Lower Broadway on a dull day .? " 
 
 I looked into the shop-windows. The identical hats, 
 collars, neckties for men, the identical tortoise-shell 
 and gold ear-rings for women, which I had left behind 
 on the corners of Canal and Broome streets, stared me 
 in the face. Eager hack-drivers, whip-handles in air, 
 accosted me, — all brothers of the man who drove me to 
 the Erie Raih-oad station, on the edge of tlie Atlantic 
 Ocean, ten days before. 
 
 " What do you ask an hour ? " said I. 
 
 " Three dollars," said they all. 
 
 " Three dollars ! " echoed I, in astonishment. But I 
 jumped in, glad of any sensation of novelty, even so 
 high-priced a one, and said : — 
 
 " Show me all you can of your city in an hour." 
 
 Presto. In one minute we had turned a sharp cor- 
 ner, left the dull shops behind, and plunged into scenes 
 unfamiliar enough. I no longer wondered at the dear- 
 ness of the driving. The street was as steep as the 
 street of an Alpine village. Men and women walkiug 
 up its sidewalks were bowed over, as if nobody were 
 less than ninety. Those walking down had their bodies 
 slanted back and their knees projecting in front, as 
 people come down mountains. The horses went at 4
 
 7^ BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 fast walk, almost a trot. On corners, the driver reined 
 them up, turned them at a sharp angle, and stopped 
 them to breathe a minute. 
 
 The houses were small, wooden, light-colored, pic- 
 turesque. Hardly any two were of the same height, 
 same style, or tint. High steps ran up to the front 
 doors. In many instances, when the house was built 
 very much up-hill, the outside stair-case curved and 
 wound, to make the climb easier. Each house had a 
 little yard. Many had small square gardens. Every 
 nook and cranny and corner that could hold a flower 
 did. Roses and geraniums and fuchsias, all in full 
 blossom, — callas, growing rank and high, and evidently 
 held in no great esteem, — set, great thickets of them, 
 under stairways and behind gates. Again and again I 
 saw clumps which had dozens of the regal alabaster 
 cups waving among their green pennons four feet high. 
 Tvy geraniums clambered all over railings and flowered 
 at every twist. Acacias and palms, and many of the 
 rare tropical trees which we are used to seeing in 
 conservatories at the East, were growing luxuriantly in 
 these ghttering little door-yards. Some of the houses 
 were almost incredibly small, square, one story high, 
 with a door in the middle, between t\vo small windows. 
 Their queer flat roofs and winding ladders of steps in 
 front, with gay flowers all around, made you feel as if 
 some fanciful and artistic babies must have run away 
 and gone to housekeeping in a stolen box. Others 
 were two stories high, or even two and a half, with 
 pretty little dormer or balconied windows jutting out 
 in the second story ; but there were none large, none in 
 the least elegant, all of wood, painted in light shades of 
 buff, yellow or brown, the yellow predominating ; all 
 with more or less carved work about the eaves, window- 
 tops, and doors, and all bright with flowers. In many 
 of the gardens stood a maid-servant, watering the plants 
 with a hose. Not one drop of rain had these gay little 
 parterres had for a month ; not a drop would they havf 
 for three months to come. These were evidently the
 
 SAN FRANCISCO. 79 
 
 homes of the comfortable middle class of San Fran- 
 cisco. I am a little ashamed of having forgotten the 
 names of these streets. There were several streets of 
 this sort; but who wishes to find them must take his 
 chance, as I did. There are horse-cars that run through 
 two or three of them, up and down such grades as I 
 never saw horse-cars on elsewhere. 
 
 Then there are broader streets running along these 
 hills ; a street taking its up-hill widthwise, which has 
 a curious effect in the steepest places. Some of these 
 streets are full of shops. I think they are the Bowery 
 and Sixth Avenue of San Francisco. Others, higher 
 up, are chiefly filled with dwelling-houses, — many of 
 them very handsome, with large gardens ; some with 
 what might almost be called grounds about them ; and 
 all commanding superb views of the bay and the part of 
 the city lying below. It is odd to stand on the corner 
 of a street an"d look off over chimneys of houses only 
 two streets off ; but you do it constantly among the ups 
 and downs of San Francisco, — in many of the streets, 
 in fact in all of them. You see also the most ludicrous 
 propinquities of incongruous homes. For instance, 
 " Wang Fo " takes in washing, in a shed, next door to 
 a large and handsome house, with palm-trees and roses 
 growing thickly on all sides of it. The incongruities of 
 base-Hne are still more starthng. One man, who builds 
 on a bit of hill — and no man builds on any thing else 
 — cuts it down, before he begins, to something like the 
 level of his neighbor's house. But the next man who 
 comes along, having no prejudice against stairs, sets his 
 house on the very top of the pinnacle, and climbs up 
 forty steps to his front door. 
 
 I ought to have said that it was going away from the 
 sea that I found these streets. Going seaward, and 
 bearing to the south, you find still sharper hills, still 
 more picturesque streets. To reach them, you have to 
 go through whole tracts of business streets, ordinary 
 and shabby houses ; but, once there, you understand 
 why it should be the West End of San Francisco.
 
 So BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 The names of these streets also i forget : but how 
 can it matter ? They lie on and along crags, not hills. 
 Strangers coming to hve there are warned by physicians 
 not to walk, to their houses by the steepest way. There 
 are many instances of heart disease in San Francisco, 
 brought on by walking too perpetually up and down 
 steep places. Many of the houses on these highest sea- 
 ward streets are handsome, and have pleasant grounds 
 about them. But they are not so distinctively and 
 peculiarly picturesque and sunny and homelike as the 
 cheaper little flower-fronted houses on the other side of 
 the city. And, going only a few steps further seaward, 
 you come to or you look down on crowded lanes, of 
 dingy, tumbling, forlorn buildings, which seem as if they 
 must be for ever slipping into the water. As you look 
 up at the city from the harbor, this is the most notice- 
 able thing. The hills rise so sharply and the houses are 
 set on them at such incredible angles that it wouldn't 
 surprise you, any day when you are watching it, to see 
 the city shde down whole streets at a time. If San 
 Francisco had known that it was to be a city, and if 
 (poor, luckless place that it is, spite of all its luck) it 
 had not burnt down almost faster than it could build 
 up, it might have set on its myriad hills a city which the 
 world could hardly equal. But, as it is, it is hopelessly 
 crowded and mixed, and can never look from the water 
 like any thing but a toppling town. 
 
 But nothing can mar the beauty of its outlying circles 
 of hills. The bay chose well its stopping-place. They 
 curve and lap and arch and stretch and sink, as if at 
 some time the very sands had been instinct with joy and 
 invitation and passion and rest. Who knows the spells 
 of shorei, the secrets of seas ? ' Surely the difference 
 between stern, frowning, inaccessible cliffs, against 
 which waters dash, but cannot prevail, and soft, wooing 
 beaches, up which waves sweep far as they like, is not 
 an insignificant fact in Nature Does anybody believe 
 that, if the Pilgrims had landed where Father Junipero 
 Serra's missionaries did, witches would have been burnt
 
 SAN FRANCISCO. 8 1 
 
 in the San Joaquin Valley ? Or that if gold strewed the 
 ground to-day from Cape Cod to Berkshire, a Massa- 
 chusetts man would ever spend it like a Californian ? 
 This is the key-note to much which the expectation and 
 prophecy about California seem to me to overlook. I 
 believe that the lasting power, the true culture, the best, 
 most roundest result — physical, moral, mental, — of 
 our national future will not spring on the Western shore, 
 any more than on the Eastern. It Hes to-day like a 
 royal heir, hidden in secret, crowned with jewels, dow- 
 ered with gold and silver, nurtured on strengths of the 
 upper airs of the Sierras, biding the day when two 
 peoples, meeting midway on the continent, shall estab- 
 lish the true centre and the complete life. 
 
 It takes one hundred pages of Bancroft's "Guide- 
 book " to instruct strangers what to see in San Francisco 
 and how to see it, — one hundred pages full of hotels, 
 markets, meeting-houses, car-routes, museums, men- 
 ageries, public schools, asylums, hospitals, foundries, 
 mills, gas-works, private residences, and hack regula- 
 tions. All these appear to do very well in their way, 
 but to be singularly devoid of interest to any but the 
 most business-hke of travellers. The population of the 
 city is about one hundred and fifty thousand ; and this 
 is all I know about San Francisco, considered from a 
 statistical point of view. The hotels, I might add, have 
 been so much injured by being called the best in the 
 world that they are now decidedly poor. There is in 
 the whole city but one hotel on the European plan, — 
 which is the only endurable plan, — and this hotel is 
 not more than a third or fourth-rate house. 
 
 There are two things to do in San Francisco (besides 
 going to the Chinese theatre). One is to drive out of 
 the city, and the other is to .sail away from it. If you 
 drive, you drive out to the Cliff House, to breakfast on 
 the sight of seals. If you sail, you sail around the 
 harbor, and feast on the sight of most picturesque 
 islands. Alcatraz, Goat, and Angel islands are all for. 
 tified and garrisoned. If you are fortunate enough to 
 6
 
 8i 
 
 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 go in a Government steamer, on a fort reception day, 
 you land on these little islands, climb up their winding 
 paths to the sound of band playing, and are welcomed 
 ^to sunny piazzas and blooming gardens, with that ready 
 cordiality of which army people know the secret. The 
 islands are cliff-like ; and the paths wind up steep 
 grades, coming out on the plateau above. You see an 
 effect which is picture-like. The green sward seems to 
 meet the blue sea-line ; piles of cannon-balls glisten on 
 corners ; the officers' cottages are surrounded by gar- 
 dens : the broad piazzas are shady with roses ; the 
 soldiers' quarters are in straight lines or hollow squares ; 
 the sentinel paces up and down, without looking at you ; 
 the brass instruments shine and flash in the sun, at the 
 further end of the square ; and the sky and the bay 
 seem dancing to the same measure, above and around. 
 It is hard to believe that the scene is any thing more 
 than a pleasure spectacle, for a summer delight. On 
 one of the islands, — Alcatraz, I think, — the road up to 
 the quarters is so steep that an officer has invented a 
 most marvellous little vehicle, in which guests are hoisted 
 to the commander's door. It is black; it swings low, 
 between two huge wheels ; it has two seats, facing each 
 other ; it is drawn by a stout, short-legged horse, who 
 looks as it he had been imported out of the Liverpool 
 dray service. The vehicle looks like nothing ever seen 
 on wheels elsewhere. I can think of nothing to which 
 to compare it except to two coal-scuttles joined together, 
 one mouth making the front, one mouth making the 
 back, and the rounded sides nearly straightened and 
 overlapping each other. 
 
 The morning and the noon and the early afternoon 
 all seem one on tlie bright, rainless skies which spread 
 '^ver San Francisco's matchless bay. It will be four 
 o'clock before you get back to the city from this 
 sail around the harbor ; but you will find it hard to 
 believe it. 
 
 The drive to the Cliff House must be taken early in 
 the day, — the earlier the better ; for you must be safely
 
 SAJV FRANCISCO. S3 
 
 back again, under shelter of the city walls, before eleven 
 o'clock, when the winds rise and the sands begin to 
 blow about. To be anywhere on the outskirts, suburbs, 
 or near neighborhood of San Francisco after this hour 
 is like being out when deserts play at " Puss, puss in 
 the corner." Any thing like the whirling sand-banks 
 which are tossed up and around and sent back and 
 forth in these daily gales cannot be imagined till one 
 has seen it. Neither can the beauty of a sand-drift be 
 imagined till you have seen one which has that very 
 minute been piled up, and which will not lie where it is 
 more than one minute longer. No snow-drift can be 
 loveher. Of an exquisite pale tint, — too yellow to be 
 brown, too brown to be yellow, and too white to be 
 either ; too soft to glisten, too bright not to shine ; 
 mottled, dimpled, shadowed, and shaded ; Hned, graven, 
 as it were, from bottom to top with the finest, closest, 
 rippling curves, marking each instant's new level and 
 sweep, as water-Hnes write on beaches. There it lies — 
 in a corner of an open street, it may be, or even across 
 your road. Look quick ! Already the fine crest un- 
 dulates ; the base-line alters. In a minute more it will 
 be a cloud of torturing dust, which will cover, suffocate, 
 madden you, as it whirls away miles to east or west, to 
 nestle again for another minute in some other hollow or 
 corner. 
 
 The Cliff House stands on the very edge of the 
 Pacific Ocean. From the westward piazza you look not 
 only off; you look down on the water. The cliffs are 
 not high ; but they are bold and rocky, and stretch off 
 northward to the Golden Gate. To the south, miles 
 long, lies the placid beach. The low, quiet swell, the 
 day we were there, scarce seemed enough to bring the 
 tiniest shell. Buried deep ia the sand lay the wreck of 
 a brig, the prow pointed upward, as if still some pur- 
 pose struggled in its poor, wrecked heart. The slow, 
 incoming tide lapped and bathed it, washing, even while 
 we looked, fresh sand into the seams and higher up 
 around the keel. But out a few rods from the shore
 
 84 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 were navigators whose fates and freaks soon diverted 
 and absorbed our attention. 
 
 It is so much the fashion to be tender, not to say 
 sentimental, over the seals of the Cliff House rocks 
 that I was disappointed not to find myself falling into 
 that line as I looked at them. But the longer I looked 
 the less I felt like it. 
 
 It is, of course, a sight which ought to profoundly 
 touch the human heart, to see a colony of anything that 
 lives left unmolested, unharmed of men ; and it, per- 
 haps, adds to the picturesqueness and interest of the 
 Chff House situation to have these licensed warblers 
 disporting themselves, safe and shiny, on the rocks. 
 But when it comes to the seals themselves, I make bold 
 to declare that, if there be in the whole animal kingdom 
 any creature of size and sound less adapted than a seal 
 for a public pet, to adorn public grounds, — I mean 
 waters, — I do not know such creature's name. Shape- 
 less, boneless, limbless, and featureless ; neither fish 
 nor flesh ; of the color and consistency of India-rubber 
 diluted with mucilage ; slipping, cHnging, sticking, Hke 
 gigantic leeches ; flapping, walloping with unapproach- 
 able clumsiness ; lying still, lazy, inert, asleep, appar- 
 ently, till they are baked browner and hotter than they 
 like, then plunging off the rocks, turning once over in 
 the water, to wet themselves enough to bear more bak- 
 ing ; and all the while making a noise too hideous to 
 be described, — a mixture of bray and squeal and snuflf 
 and snort, — old ones, young ones, big ones, little ones, 
 mascuhne, feminine, and, for aught 1 know, neuter, by 
 dozens, by scores, — was there ever any thing droller in 
 the way of a philanthropy, if it be a philanthropy, or in 
 the way of a public amusement, if it be an amusement, 
 than this ? Let them be sold, and their skins given to 
 the poor; and let peace and quiet reign along that 
 delicious beach and on those grand old rocks. 
 
 Going back to the city, you drive for two or three 
 miles on the beach, still water on your right and sand- 
 hills, covered thick with blue and yellow and red
 
 SAN FRANCISCO. 85 
 
 flowers, on your left. Surely, never an ocean met mor^ 
 gracious welcome. Many of the flowers seem to be of 
 the cactus species ; but they intertwine and mat their 
 tangles so as to make great spaces of solid color. Then 
 you take a road turning sharply away from the sea^ 
 eastward. It is hard and bright red. It winds at first 
 among green marshes, in which are here and there 
 tiny blue lakes ; then it ascends and winds among more 
 sand-hills, still covered with flowers ; then higher still, 
 and out on broader opens, where the blue lupine and 
 the yellow eschscholtzia grow literally by fields full ; 
 and then, rounding a high hill, it comes out on a 
 plateau, from which the whole city of San Francisco, 
 with the bay beyond and the high mountains beyond 
 the bay, lies full in sight. This is the view which shows 
 San"^ Francisco at its best and reveals, also, how much 
 ^^tter that best ought to have been made. 
 
 I said there were but three things to do in San 
 Francisco. There are four. And the fourth is to go 
 and see Mr. Muybridge's photographs. 
 
 The s cenery of California is known to Eastern people 
 clTietiy ThTouglT" the big but inartistic pictures ot Wat- 
 kins. When it is knmvn through the pictures which 
 Mr. Muybridge is now engaged in taking, it will be seen 
 in its true beauty and true proportions. Every thing 
 depends on stand-point ; very few photographs of land- 
 scapes really render them. Of two photographs, both 
 taking in precisely the same objects and both photo- 
 graphing them with accuracy, one may be good and 
 the other worthless, to all intents and purposes. No 
 man can so take a photograph of a landscape as to 
 render and convey the whole truth of it, unless he is an 
 artist by nature, and would know how to choose the 
 point from which that landscape ought to be painted. 
 Mr. Muybridge is an artist by nature. His photographs 
 have composition. There are some of them of which it 
 is difficult to believe that they are not taken from paint- 
 ings, — such unity, such effect, such vitality do they 
 possess, in comparison with the average photograph,
 
 86 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 which has been made, hap-hazard, to cover so man^ 
 square feet and take in all that happened to be there. 
 Mr. Muybrido^e's pictures have another peculiarity, 
 which of itself would mark them superior to others. 
 The skies are always most exquisitely rendered. His 
 cloud photographs alone fill a volume ; and many of 
 them remind one vividly of Turner's studies of skies. 
 The contrast between a photographed landscape, with 
 a true sky added, and one with the usual ghastly, life- 
 less, palhd, stippled sky is something which it is impossi- 
 ble to overstate. 
 
 Mr. Muybridge has a series of eight pictures illustra- 
 tive of the California vintage, all of which are exquisitely 
 beautiful, and any one of which, painted in true color 
 simply from the photograph as it stands, would seem to be 
 a picture from a master's hand. One of the first pictures 
 in the series, representing the first breaking of the soil 
 for the vineyard, is as perfect a Millet as could be im- 
 agined. The soft tender distance, outhned by low 
 mountain ranges ; a winding road, losing itself in a 
 wood ; a bare and stricken tree on the right of the fore- 
 ground ; and in the centre a solitary man, ploughing the 
 ground. Next comes the same scene, with the young 
 vines just starting. The owner is sitting on a bank in 
 the foreground, looking off dreamily over his vineyard. 
 Then there are two pictures representing the cutting of 
 the grapes and the piling of them into the baskets and 
 the wagons. The grouping of the vintagers in these is 
 exquisite. Then there is a picture of the storehouses and 
 the ranges of casks ; all so judiciously selected and 
 placed that it might be a photograph from some old 
 painting of still life in Meran. The last picture of all is 
 of the corking the bottles. Only a group of workmen, 
 under an open shed, corking wine-bottles ; but every 
 accessory is so artistically thrown in that the whole 
 scene reminds one of Teniers. 
 
 I am not sure, after all, that there is any thing so good 
 to do in San Francisco as to spend a forenoon in Mr. 
 Muybridge's little upper chamber, looking ovtT these 
 marvellous pictures.
 
 THE WAY TO AH-WAH-NE. 87 
 
 THE WAY TO AH-WAH-NE. 
 
 AH-WAH-NE ! Does not the name vindicate itselt 
 at first si^ht and sound ? Shall we ever forgive 
 the Dr. Bunnell, who, not content with volunteer duty 
 in kilHng off Indians in the great Merced River Valley, 
 must needs name it the Yo-sem-i-te, and who adds to 
 his account of his fighting campaigns the following 
 naive paragraph ? 
 
 " It is acknowledged that Ah-wah-ne is the old Indian 
 name for the valley, and that Ah-wah-ne-chee is the 
 name of the original occupants ; but, as this was discov- 
 ered by the writer long after he had named the valley, 
 and as it was the wish of every volunteer with whom he 
 conversed that the name Yo-semite be retained, he said 
 very little about it. He will only say, in conclusion, 
 that the principal facts are befc^e the public, and that it 
 is for them to decide whether they will retain the name 
 Yo-semite or have some other." 
 
 It is easy to do and impossible to undo this species 
 of mischief. No concerted action of " the public," no 
 legislation of repentant authorities, will ever give back to 
 .he valley its own melodious name ; but I think its true 
 lovers will for ever call it Ah-wah-ne. The name seems 
 to have in its very sound the same subtle blending oi 
 solemnity, tenderness, and ineffable joy with which the 
 valley's atmosphere is filled. Ahwahne ! Blessed 
 Ahwahne ! 
 
 I look back with remorse upon the days we spent in 
 resolving to go. Philistines poured warnings into our 
 ears. I shudder to think how nearly they attained theil 
 end. At the very last, it was only lack of courage
 
 88 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 which drove us on ; it seemed easier to endure any 
 thing than to confess that we had been afraid. O Phil- 
 istines who warned, be warned in turn. Pray that ye 
 never meet us again. 
 
 Early on a Monday, the 17th of June, we set out. 
 The Oaklands ferry-boat was crowded. Groups of peo- 
 ple, evidently bound on the long overland journey ; and 
 other groups bound, like ourselves, for the Valley. 
 Everybody was discussing routes with everybody else. 
 Each was sure that he was going the only good way. 
 We were happiest, not being committed to any fixed 
 programme, and having left it to be decided on the road 
 whether we should go first to the Big Trees or to the 
 Valley. Behind us sat a woman whose lead we almost 
 resolved to follow, for the sake of seeing the effect her 
 toilet would produce on landscapes. She wore a fiery 
 scarlet cashmere gown, the overskirt profusely trimmed 
 with black lace and scarlet satin, the underskirt trimmed 
 high with the same scarlet satin. A black lace jacket, 
 a point-lace collar and sleeves, and a costly gold chain. 
 A black velvet hat, with a huge white pearl buckle and 
 ostrich plume, completed this extraordinary costume. 
 Gloves were omitted. The woman had beauty of a 
 strong, coarse type. She laughed loud and showed 
 white teeth. She also spat in the aisle or from the 
 window, like a man. Such sights as this are by no 
 means uncommon in California. One never wearies of 
 watching or ceases to wonder at the clothes and the 
 bearing of the women. Just behind this woman sat 
 another, wearing an embroidered white pique and a fur 
 collar. At one of the first stations entered a third, 
 dressed in a long, trailing black silk, bordered around the 
 bottom with broad black velvet. Her hands and arms 
 were bare, and she carried a coarse sacking bag, half 
 as big as herself, tied up at the mouth with a dirty rope. 
 
 Agents for hotels in Stockton, and for different routes 
 to the Yosemite, went up and down in the cars. It was 
 pitiful to see pusillanimous and will-less persons swaying 
 like reeds in the breeze of their noisy statements
 
 THE WAY TO AH-WAH~NE. 89 
 
 The great San Joaquin wheat valley stretched away, 
 on each side of the railway track, further than we could 
 look. Except for the oaks rising out of the wheat, it 
 might have been taken, under the gently stirring wind, 
 for a sunht sea. 
 
 Here and there went rolling along the mysterious 
 steam-threshers ; huge red wagon-like things, with tow- 
 ers and fans and a sharp clatter, doing by a single puff 
 of steam the work of many men's arms, finishing in a sin- 
 gle hour the work of many days. Here and there, also, 
 we saw a narrow road through the wheat. The crowded, 
 slender, waving columns walled it so high that a man on 
 horseback looked like a man riding in a forest, and could 
 not see over the tops of the grain. 
 
 A bad, a very bad dinner at a town named Peters ; 
 a change of cars at Stockton, — from the Central Pa- 
 cific to the Copperopolis Railroad ; a change from cars 
 to stage at Burnet ; and, before the middle of the after- 
 noon, we had really set our faces toward Ah-wah-ne. 
 The road lay at first through a fertile country, great 
 parks, shaded by oaks, and sown with wheat ; then 
 through barer and less beautiful lands, stony and un- 
 cultivated, but picturesque and almost weird from the 
 cropping out of sharp, vertical slate ledges, in all direc- 
 tions ; then into still barer and stonier tracts of old 
 mining-fields. These are dismal beyond description. 
 The earth has been torn up with pick-axes, and gullied 
 by forced streams ; the rocks have been blasted and 
 quarried and piled in confusion ; no green thing grows 
 for acres ; the dull yellow of the earth and the black 
 and white and gray of the heaped stones give a coloring 
 like that of volcanic ruins ; and the shapes into which 
 many of the softer stones have been worn by the action 
 of water are so like the shapes of bones that it adds 
 another element of horror to the picture. Again and 
 again we saw spots which looked as if graveyards full 
 of buried monsters had been broken open, and the 
 skeletons strewn about.
 
 90 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 We were to sleep at Chinese Camp. The name was 
 not attractive : and the town looked less so as we ap- 
 proached it. A narrow, huddled street of low and 
 dingy houses, set closely together as a city; a thick, 
 hedge-like row of dwarfed locust-trees stood on each 
 side, making it dark and damp ; many of the build- 
 ings were of stone, with huge, studded iron shutters to 
 both doors and windows of the first story; but stone 
 and iron were alike cobwebbed and dusty, as if enemies 
 had long since ceased to attack. At the door of the 
 hotel, a surprise awaited us. A middle-aged man, 
 with a finely cut, sensitive face, and the bearing and 
 the speech of a gentleman, came forward to receive us. 
 It was the landlord, — the Count Solinsky, a Polish ex- 
 ile. His story is only the story of thousands of the 
 pioneers of '49. Glowing hopes, bitter disappoint- 
 ments, experiment after experiment, failure after fail- 
 ure ; at last, the keeper of a little tavern and the agent 
 of an express company, he had settled down, no longer 
 looking for fortune and success. There was something 
 very pathetic in the quiet dignity with which he filled 
 the uncongenial place, accepted the inevitable burden. 
 His little daughter, twelve years old, had on her beauti- 
 ful face a wistful look, — the stamp of unconscious ex- 
 ile. " What will be the child's fate ! " I said to myself, 
 as I watched her arranging with idle, lingering fingers a 
 few bright, wild flowers in an old pitcher. Who knows "i 
 There is promise of great beauty in her face and figure. 
 Not the least of the exiled Count's griefs must be the 
 anticipation of her future, in this wild, rough land. 
 Perhaps she may yet live to be the landlady of the inn, 
 and so perpetuate the cleanliness and good service 
 which to-day make it memorable in the journey to 
 Ah-wah-ne. " I have not much I can give," said the 
 Count, with the fine instinct of hospitality ; but, if all come 
 clean on, I know that is the most. I know what is most 
 when one will travel." 
 
 It was only six o'clock, when we set out, the next 
 morning. White mists were curling up from all the hoi*
 
 THE WAY TO AH-WAH-NR. 91 
 
 lows in the hills, and the air was frosty : but, in an hour, 
 the hot sun had driven the mists away ; and the marvel- 
 lous, cloudless blue of the rainless sky stretched again 
 above us. This is a perpetual wonder to the traveller 
 in California in spring, — day after day of such radiant 
 weather : it seems like living on a fairy planet, where 
 the atmosphere is made of sunshine, and rain is im- 
 possible. 
 
 Old mining-fields still lay along our road, dismal and 
 ghastly, — sluices and gulches and pits and shelving 
 banks, toppling masses of excavated rock, and piles of 
 gravel and stones. Here and there a vineyard or fruit 
 orchard, in some hollow or on some hillside, gave us a 
 keen thrill of dehght by its glistening green, and its sug- 
 gestion of something to eat or drink besides the scorch- 
 ing gold. We passed a settlement of Digger Indians, too 
 loathsome to be looked at. We crossed a swift river in 
 a creaking rope ferry. We chmbed up the side of a 
 canyon, two thousand feet deep, with a foaming river at 
 bottom. And then we came to Garrote No. i. 
 
 " Why No. I .? " 
 
 "Because there is Garrote No. 2, three miles further 
 along." It would seem as if one so hideous name might 
 suffice to a district. 
 
 " And why do we not hurry on ? " added we, being 
 informed that we were to wait in Garrote No. i for 
 two hours and a half. Replies were unsatisfactory. 
 But only too well did we answer the question for our- 
 selves at bedtime. Then we discovered that the whole 
 programme of the route had been arranged by the 
 stage company, with a view to the single end of com- 
 peUing travellers to sleep one more night on the way. 
 (Here let me forewarn all persons going by the Big Oak 
 Flat route to the Yosemite, that there is not the slightest 
 need of spending more than one night between Bur- 
 net and Gentry's, — Gentry's being the house at the 
 entrance of the Valley. They should insist on spend- 
 ing the second night at Gentry's.) 
 
 However, ill winds blow good. This one blew to us
 
 92 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 the s^ood of a sight of the hydraulic mining, such as we 
 could not easily have seen elsewhere. The proptietor 
 of the Treadwell Mine chanced to be in town, and, hear- 
 ing of our desire to see the mine, took us to it. It lay, 
 not far off our road, eight miles ahead. How we dashed 
 over the ground, in a light buggy, behind two fast horses \ 
 It seemed like flying or ballooning, after our jolting in 
 the heavy stage. It was not much more than a sem- 
 blance of a road into which we turned off from the high- 
 way, at end of the eight miles. It led through fields, 
 across morasses, up sharp, stonyhillsides, through gaps 
 in fences. A mile from the public road, we passed a 
 small cabin, covered with white roses. Only the chim- 
 ney and one corner of the ridgepole peeped out. We 
 could not even see the windows. No one had lived in 
 it for a year ; and, in that short time, the roses had 
 buried it. The well, also, was covered in the same way 
 with pink roses. It was strange to see the look of deso- 
 lation which even roses could have, left all alone. 
 
 Just beyond the rose-buried cabin, we came suddenly 
 in sight ot the mine. It looked like an acre or two of 
 sand-quarry, or more like dozens of great, yellow clay 
 cellars, with their partition-walls broken down irregu- 
 larly, in places. It was spanned by a shining stream of 
 water, arching high in the air, and making a noise like a 
 small waterfall. This stream came from a huge, black 
 nozzle on the right side of the excavation, and played 
 with its full force, or like a jet from a fire-engine, into 
 the cliff-like side of the opposite bank. It was a part 
 of the Tuolomne River ; and it had journeyed miles 
 and miles through pipes to come to do this work. As 
 it leaped through the air, it was white and pure, and 
 flashed in the sun. After breaking against the yellow 
 clay-bank, it fell turbid and thick, in masses of gamboge- 
 colored foam, into narrow wooden sluices. These led 
 off, slanting, for many rods across the yellow cellars, 
 down a narrow wooded valley, and then through a sharp 
 ravine, into the river again. At intervals in these sluices 
 were set boxes, with wired sides and pebbled bot-
 
 THE WAY TO AH-WAH-NE. 93 
 
 toms. Into these is put that unerring constable, quick- 
 silver, which arrests, by its mastic power, every grain of 
 the precious gold. As we walked along on the rough 
 bank, by side of the sluices, the rattle and rumble of 
 the pebbles under the torrent seemed a sort of weird, 
 defiant chorus. 
 
 " Over and over and over, 
 
 And give up the gold. 
 
 The gold, the gold ; 
 And over and over and over, 
 Untold, untold, untold ! " — 
 
 I fancied it saying. There certainly was, in the sound 
 made by the rolling over of the pebbles on the wooden 
 surfaces, a strange predominance of that vowel-sound 
 of O. 
 
 High up on the bank, opposite the spot upon which 
 the stream played, was the superintendent's house. It 
 was only a one-storied shanty, papered with pictorial 
 newspapers, and floored with planed pine ; but ter- 
 races, witli little patches of garden, led up to it ; and 
 the whole scene, from the verandah, was one which 
 might well have contented an artist to stay there for days. 
 The high, yellow cliff opposite, with evergreen trees 
 on top ; the stirring arch of water, perpetually bridging 
 the space between and undermining the clitt, — some- 
 times a large part of the front edge falling at once, 
 like an avalanche ; the foaming streams down the 
 sluices ; the dark ravine : the sunny sky ; the inex- 
 pressible look of remoteness and loneliness over all; the 
 utter silence, save for the thud of the water against 
 the bank, and the rumble of the pebbly torrents over 
 the wooden pavements, — altogether, it was a vivid 
 picture, not to be forgotten. 
 
 The sweet face of the superintendent's wife was also 
 not to be forgotten, — the sharp-cut, kcen-visioned, sen- 
 Bitive-nerved New England face, with the repressed 
 wistfulness born of long, solitary days in lonely places. 
 When we said, in the flush of our enthusiastic delighi
 
 94 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 at the picturesqueness of the scene, and at the exqui- 
 site neatness and order of the littie home : — 
 
 "OMrs. ! would you not take us to board?' 
 
 she sighed, as she answered : — 
 
 "Well, I don't know what you'd do with yourselves, 
 after you got here. It's very pretty to look at once ; 
 but it's terrible si ill here, all but that water. An' some- 
 times I get listenin' to that till it seems to me it sounds 
 louder and louder every minute, till it's as loud as 
 thunder." 
 
 What genius could have invented a better analysis r^" 
 the effect produced upon the mind by dwelling on * 
 single sensation, under such circumstances ? 
 
 We found the stage waiting for us at the point wher^ 
 we had left the public road. The passengers' impa 
 tience at our short delay had been assuaged by the 
 pleasure of killing a large rattlesnake, whose rattles 
 were triumphantly displayed to us, in token of what we 
 had missed. 
 
 Now we began to climb and to enter upon forests, — 
 pines and firs and cedars. It seemed as if the whole 
 world had become forest, we could see off so far through 
 the vistas between the tall, straight, branchless trunks. 
 The great sugar-pines were from one hundred to two 
 hundred and twenty feet high, and their lowest branches 
 were sixty to eighty feet from the ground. The cedars 
 and firs and yellow pines were not much shorter. The 
 grandeur of these innumerable colonnades cannot be 
 conceived. It can hardly be realized, even while they 
 are majestically opening, receding, closing, in your very 
 sight. Sometimes a sunbeam will strike on a point so 
 many rods away, down one of these dark aisles, that it is 
 impossible to believe it sunhght at all. Sometimes, 
 through a break in the tree-tops, will gleam snowy peaks 
 of Sierras, hundreds of miles away ; but the path to 
 their summits will seem to lead straight through these 
 columns of vivid green. Perspective becomes trans- 
 figuration, miracle when it deals with such distance, 
 such color, and such giant size. It would not hava
 
 THE WAY TO AH-WAH-NE. 95 
 
 astonished me at any moment, as I grazed reverently 
 out into these measureless cloisters, to have seen beings 
 of Titanic stature moving slowly along, chanting ser- 
 vice and swinging incense in some supernatural wor- 
 ship. 
 
 The transition from such grandeur, such delight as 
 this to the grovelling misery of a night at Hogdin's 
 (^g soft, but not by rights) cannot be described. Ex- 
 cept for a sense of duty to posterity, one ought never to 
 allude to such places as Hogdin's, — that is, if there are 
 any such places as Hogdin's, which I question. It was 
 only half-past 5 o'clock when we arrived. The two 
 shanties of which Hogdin's consists were already filled. 
 Unhappy men and women, sitting on log steps, with 
 their knees drawn up, glared at us savagely, as brigands 
 might. They were wretched enough before. Now 
 we had come, what would be done 1 How many to a 
 room would it make .'* And wherewithal were we to be 
 fed.? 
 
 Only fifteen miles further was the comfortable little 
 hotel kept by Mr. Gentry, at the entrance of the Valley. 
 Would entreaties, would bribes, induce the driver to 
 take us on ? No. Entreaties and bribes, even large 
 bribes, are unavailing. Mr. Hogdin has purchased an 
 interest in the stage company, and no stage-driver dares 
 carry passengers past Mr. Hogdin's house. 
 
 Three, four, five in a room ; some on floors, without 
 even a blanket. A few pampered ones, women, with 
 tin pans for wash-bowls and one towel for six hands.: 
 The rest, men, with one tin basin in an open shed, and. 
 if they had any towel or not I do not know. That was 
 a night at Hogdin's. 
 
 Food .? Yes. Junks of beef floating in bowls of fat, 
 junks of ham ditto, beans ditto, potatoes as hard as bul- 
 lets, corn-bread steaming with saleratus, doughnuts 
 ditto, hot biscuits ditto ; the whole set out in indescrib- 
 able confusion and dirt, in a narrow, unventilated room, 
 dimly Ht by two reeking kerosene lamps. Even brave 
 and travelled souls could not help being appalled at the
 
 96 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 situatioiL Not in the wildest and most poverty-stricken 
 little town in Italy could such discomfort be encountered. 
 However, nobody dies of starvation for lack of one sun- 
 per and one breakfast. Anybody can lie awake in a 
 shed all of one night, and go witiiout washing his face 
 one morning; and, except for the barefaced imposition 
 of the unnecessary night at Hogdin's, we could have 
 laughed heartily at it the next day. 
 
 There was something uncommonly droll in the ener- 
 getic promptness and loudness with which the landlady 
 roused all her guests at half-i)ast four in the morning. 
 
 " You don't suppose we were asleep, do you '^. " called 
 out somebody, whose sense of humor had not been en- 
 tirely extinguished by hunger and no bed. 
 
 It is seven miles from Hogdin's to the highest point 
 on the road. This is seven thousand feet above the sea. 
 It is the summit of the ridge which separates the Merced 
 River from the Tuolomne. The Tuolomne we have 
 seen ; it is behind us now. The Merced is in the valley 
 we seek. Already we feel a sense of the nearness of 
 grander glories than we have seen. Vast spaces open 
 on either hand. We look off over great tracks of tree- 
 tops ; huge rocks are piled up around us in wild, almost 
 terrible confusion; the horizon line before us, and to 
 the right and to the left is of serrated, glistening snow- 
 peaks. The Sierras seem closing in upon us. The 
 road descends sharply from the summit. We have 
 almost a grateful feeling of protection in plunging 
 again into the forests, and escaping from the wide 
 oudook of the bleak, stony ridge. Down hill, seven 
 more miles, to Gentry's. The road is steep, zig-zag, 
 rough ; the horses go at full speed ; the three hours 
 have seemed like but one, when we dash up in the 
 sunny little clearing in front of " Gentry's." Tall pines 
 wall the clearing on three sides ; the third is open. 
 Looking that way, we see blue mountain tops and in- 
 finite distance. Is it Ah-wah-ne t It looks as the 
 Ancaufthal, in the .^"strian Tyrol, might in some magic 
 bummer which had melted orE all the snow. We run
 
 THE WAY TO AH-WAH-NE. 97 
 
 to the furthermost edge of the precipitous hill and bend 
 out eagerly to look into its depths. 
 
 But it is not Ah-wah-ne. Ah-wah-ne makes no such 
 half revelation of itself. Ah-wah-ne is behind and be- 
 low the dark sugar-pines on the left ; and there fastened 
 to the posts, sound aleep, stand Hutchings's mules, 
 ready to carry us down its wall.
 
 gS BITS 01^ TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 THE DESCENT INTO AH-WAH-NE. 
 
 FALSTAFF'S men could find their proper mount at 
 Gentry's when the saddle train comes up from 
 Ah-wah-ne. Ten, twenty, thirty, horses, mustangs, 
 mules, rusty black, din^y white, streaked red ; un- 
 groomcd. unfed, untrained ; harmless only because they 
 are feeble from hunger; sure to keep on, if their 
 strength holds out, to the end of the journey, simply 
 because their one instinct is to escape somewhere; 
 saddled with saddles of all possible shapes, sizes, colors, 
 and dilajjidation ; bridled with halters, likely enough, or 
 with clumsy Mexican bits, big enough to curb a masto- 
 don, or not bridled at all if they are to carry luggage; 
 ga4ant-ribbed, swollen-jointed, knock-kneed, piteous-eyed 
 beasts, — surely, nobody ever saw out of John Leech's 
 pictures so sorry horseflesh. You stand on the piazza, 
 at Gentry's, and watch the procession come slowly up. 
 Nose after nose conies into sight, followed by reluctant, 
 stumbling fore-feet ; so slow they climb it seems to take 
 a good while before you see the whole of any one horse. 
 
 They stop long before they reach the piazza, thinking 
 that their riders" may as well get off a minute or two 
 sooner. The guides w^hack their haunches and push 
 them up to the steps, and the Ah-wah-ne pilgrims slip 
 or spring from their saddles with sighs of relief. 
 
 You, who were longing for these to come out, that 
 you might go in, look on with dismay. On all sides you 
 hear ejaculations from the people waiting. " Fll never 
 gi on that horse ; " " nor on that ; " " that poor creature 
 will never live to go down again." Everybody gazes in- 
 tently toward the crest of the hill, over which the pa-
 
 THE DESCENT INTO AH-WAH-NE. 99 
 
 tbetic file is still coming. Everybody hopes to see a horse 
 better than these. But there is not a pin's choice be- 
 tween them, when they are all there. Wherever tlieir 
 riders leave them, there they stand, stock-still, till they 
 are pushed or drag<j;ed away. Heads down, tails limp, 
 le<;s out, abject, pitiable thin<rs, — you feel as if cnit-ltv 
 personified could not have the heart to lay a feather's 
 weight on their backs. 
 
 With the timid reverence natural in the mind of one 
 going toward Ah-wah-ne for one coming from it, you 
 apj)roach the newly arrived and ask concerning these 
 horses. Your pity and horror deepen when you are told 
 that the poor creatures are never {<t.i\, never sheltered. 
 They are worked all day without food, often being out 
 from six in the morning until six at night, carrying 
 people over steep, stony trails ; then they are turned 
 loose to shift for themselves in the meadows all night. 
 I5y four or five o'clock in the morning the guides are 
 out scouring the meadows to drive them in again. And 
 so their days go on. There was but one alleviation to 
 this narrative. It was the statement that every morning 
 a good many horses cannot be found. They trot all 
 night to find fields out of reach of their tormentors, or 
 theyswimoff to little islands in the Merced and hide. 
 Mr. Hutchings has lost seventy horses in this way since 
 last year. When we were told these things, we said : — 
 
 ''Very well. The horses that carry us down the wall 
 of Ah-wah-ne shall be fed. We will not go down until 
 afternoon, and they shall have all the barley they can 
 eat between now and then." 
 
 Sol White, a ruddy-faced man, whom we had chosen 
 for our guide as soon as we saw him laugh, assented with 
 a comic shrug of his shoulders to this Quixotic humanity, 
 and led oflf the astonished horses to the stable. But 
 another guide who stood by — a tall, thin man, whose 
 deep-lined face looked like that of a Scottish Covenanter 
 — said, half sadly, half gruffly : — 
 
 " 'Taint any kindness to 'em. The sooner they die 
 Ihe better."
 
 lOO BITS OF TRAVEL AT I 10 MB.. 
 
 We watched the rest of the saddle-train off, — the fat 
 women on the httle saddles, and the tall men on the 
 short mules, and the eager children on horses that 
 wouldn't budge, and the pack-mule going ahead, under 
 a mountain of everybody's valises. Each one disap- 
 peared down the steep trail so suddenly it seemed as if 
 he had pitched down headforemost; the last view of 
 each tail and pair of hind-legs showing them in the air. 
 
 Ah ! the comfort of that five hours' rest at Gentry's. 
 If all travellers to Ah-wah-ne rested thus at the 
 entrance of the Valley, we should hear less of 
 the fatigues of the journey. After three hours of the 
 severest jolting in a stage, to undertake tliree hours 
 more of horseback riding is a serious mistake for any 
 but the strong. The bread or the barley of our charity 
 to the poor horses came back to us tenfold, and that 
 speedily. 
 
 The pleasant little sitting-room, with its bright carpet 
 and lace curtains and melodeon ; the bedrooms, clean 
 as clean could be and with two beds in each ; the neat 
 dining-room and good dinner ; the log cabin for a linen 
 closet ; the running spring water ; the smiling faces 
 and prompt kindliness of the landlord and his wife, — 
 what a marvel it was to find all these in this new clearing 
 in a pine forest of the Sierra Country, seven thousand 
 feet above the sea ! 
 
 And better than the barley for the starved horses, 
 and better than five hours' rest, and the dinner, and the 
 faces of Mr. and Mrs. Kenny, was it that we entered 
 Ah-wah-ne in the late afternoon, when the impertinent 
 noon lights had passed and shadows went before us and 
 journeyed by our side. 
 
 We set out at three o'clock. Our first sensations were 
 not agreeable. We had seen how steep it looked when 
 horse and rider disappeared over that hill-crest. It felt 
 steeper. To an unaccustomed rider it is not pleasant 
 to sit on a horse whose heels are much higher than his 
 head. One's first impulse is to clutch, to brace, to 
 cling, and to guide the horse. But there is neither com-
 
 1 'HE DESCENT INI V A H- WA H-NE. 1 1 
 
 fort nor safety till you leave off doinor so. With a per- 
 fectly loose rein and every muscle relaxed, sitting as 
 you would sit in a rocking-chair, leaning back when the 
 horse rocks down, leaning forward when he rocks up, 
 and forgetting him altogether, riding down precipices is 
 as comfortai)le and safe as riding on a turnpike. I do 
 not say that it is altogether easy in the outset to follow 
 these simple directions. But, if you are wise, it soon 
 becomes so, and you look with impatient pity on the 
 obstinacy of women who persist in grasping pommels, 
 and sitting so stark stiff that it seems as if a sudden 
 lurch of the horse must inevitably send them off, before 
 or behind. 
 
 The first two miles and a half of the path down the 
 wall of Ah-wah-ne are steep, — so steep that it is best 
 not to try to say how steep. It is a narrow path, zig- 
 zagging 'down on ledges, among bowlders, through 
 thickets. It is dusty and stony ; it comes out suddenly 
 on opens, from which you look over and down thousands, 
 yes, thousands of feet ; it plunges into tangles of trees, 
 where a rider must lay his head on the horse's neck to 
 get through, for oaks and pines and firs grow on this 
 precipice ; high ceanothus bushes, fragrant with blossom, 
 make wall-like sides to the path, and bend in as if trying 
 to arch it. In so,.^e places the rocks are bright with 
 flowers and ferns, which look as if they were holding 
 on for dear life and climbing up : they project so nearly 
 at right angles from the steep surfaces. With almost 
 every step we get a new view, — more depth, more 
 valley, more wall, more towering rock. The small 
 cleared spaces in the valley are vivid light green ; 
 they seem sunken like emerald-paved wells among the 
 masses of dark firs and pines, whose tops lie solid and 
 black below us. The opposite wall of the valley looks 
 steeper than the wall we are descending. It seems 
 within stone's throw, or as if we might call across ; it 
 is less than a half-mile distant. Its top seems far higher 
 than the point from which we set out ; for it lies in full 
 sunshine, and we are in shadow. One waterfall aftei
 
 I02 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 another comes into view, streaming over its edge like 
 smooth silver hands. The guide cails cut their names : 
 "Inspiration Fall," "Bridal Veil Fall." The words 
 seem singularly meaningless, face tc face with the falls. 
 How do men dare to name things so confidently ? The 
 luggage mule, who is ahead, keeps clambering out of the 
 path, in search of something to eat. Weconu upon 
 him sometimes apparently standing bolt upright on his 
 hind-legs, he is feeding on so sharp a slope. We all 
 halt, while the guide spurs his horse up the rocks and 
 drives the mule down again. We are almost grateful 
 that the mule makes us laugh, for Ah-wah-ne overawes 
 us. It takes an hour to reach tiie bottom of the wall. 
 As we near it, the opposite wall appears to lift and grow 
 and stretch, till the sky seems pushed higher. Our trail 
 lies along the bank of the river, on sandy stretches of 
 low meadow, shaded by oaks and willows and bordered 
 by alders. Occasionally we come to fields of bowlders 
 and stones, which have broken and rolled down from 
 the walls above ; then we pass through green bits of 
 grass-grown land, threaded by little streams, which we 
 ford ; then we ride through great groves of pines and 
 firs, two and three hundred feet high. These feel dark 
 and damp, though the ground is sandy, for it is long 
 past sunset here ; but the gray spi'.s and domes and 
 pinnacles of the eastern wall of the valley are still 
 bright in sunlight. The luggage mule trots off and dis- 
 appears. After vain efforts to combine the two duties 
 of looking after him and looking after us, Sol White 
 finally gallops away, exclaiming : — 
 
 " That pesky mule'U swim the river with your bag- 
 gage, an' not be heard of for days, if I don't keep close 
 up to him. You can't miss your way. There ain't but 
 this one trail up the valley, an' its only five miles to 
 Hutchings's." 
 
 What miles they were. Mile by mile the grand rocks, 
 whose shapes and names we already knew, rose up on 
 either hand : The Cathedral Rocks, The Spires, El 
 Capitan, The Three Brothers, The Sentinel Already
 
 THE DESCENT INTO AIT-WAH-NE. 103 
 
 the twilight wrapped the western wall. The front of 
 El Capitan looked black ; but its upper edsje was lined 
 with light, as sometimes a dark clout! will be when the 
 sun is shining behind. The eastern wall was carved 
 and wrought into gigantic forms, which in the lessening 
 light grew more and more fantastic and weird every 
 moment. Bars and beams of sunlight fell, quivered, 
 and vanished on summit after summit, as we passed. 
 At last we heard the sound of waters ahead to the left. 
 Soon we saw the white line, indistinct, waving, ghostly, 
 coming down apparently from the clouds, for it was too 
 dark to see distinctly the lip of a fall two thousand and 
 seven hundred feet up in the air. This was the great 
 Yosemite Fall. Its sound is unlike that of any other 
 fall I have seen. It is not so loud as one would expect, 
 and it is not continuous or even in tone. Listening to 
 it intently, one hears strange rhythmic emphases of 
 undertone on a much lower key. They are grand. 
 They are like the notes of a gigantic violoncello, — 
 booming, surging, filling full and rounding out the har- 
 mony of supernatural music. Sometimes they have an 
 impatient and crashing twist, as if the bow escaped the 
 player's hand ; sometimes, for an hour, they are regular 
 and alike, as the beats of a metronome. Men have 
 said that these sounds are made by rocks thundering 
 down under the water. They may be. I would rather 
 not know. 
 
 For the last mile before reaching Hutchings's Hotel, 
 the trail is little more than a sandy path, winding in and 
 among huge granite bowlders, under and around oak 
 and pine trees, and over and through little runs and 
 [)Ools, when the Merced River is high. It ends abruptly, 
 in a rough and dusty place, partly cleared of bowlders, 
 pnrtly cleared of trees. Here are four buildings, which 
 stand apparently where they happened to, between the 
 rocks and trees. Three of these make up Hutchings's 
 Hotel. Two of them are cottages, used only for lodg- 
 ings. One of these is called " The Cottage by the 
 River," and stands closer than is safe to the banks of the
 
 I04 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 Merced ; the other is called " The Cottage in the Rocks,' 
 and seems half barricaded by granite bowlders. " Oh, 
 Mr. Hiitchings ! " we exclaimed. " Put us in the ' Cot- 
 tage by the River.' We cannot be happy anywhere else." 
 
 There are no such rooms in Ah-wah-ne as the rooms 
 on the river-side of this little house. This is the back 
 side ; and those who wish to see the coming and going 
 of people, the setting-off of saddle-trains, the driving up 
 and down of the laundry wagon, would better take rooms 
 on the front. But he who would like to open his eyes every 
 morning on the full shining of the great Yosemite Fall ; 
 to lie in bed, and from his very pillow watch it sway to 
 right and left under moonlight beams, which seem like 
 wands arresting or hastening the motion ; to look down 
 mto the amber and green Merced, which caresses his 
 very door-sill ; to listen at all hours to the grand violon- 
 cello tones of the mysterious waters, — let him ask, as we 
 did, for back bedrooms in the Cottage by the River. 
 
 But if he is disconcerted by the fact that his bedroom 
 floor is of rough pine boards, and his bedroom walls of 
 thin laths, covered with unbleached cotton ; that he has 
 neither chair, nor table, nor pitcher ; that his washbowl 
 is a shallow tin pan, and that all the water he wants he 
 must dip in a tin pint from a barrel out in the hall ; that 
 his bed is a sack stuffed with ferns, his one window has 
 no curtain and his door no key, — let him leave Ah-wah- 
 ne the next day. 
 
 Not that there are not tables and chairs and wash- 
 bowls and pitchers and keys in Hutchings's Hotel ; and 
 not that you cannot, by a judicious system of "jump- 
 ing" and coaxing and feeing, very soon collect these 
 useful articles, and lock them up in your room, and live 
 decently and with sufficient comfort for weeks in the 
 muslin-walled bedroom; but the soul which in its first 
 hours in Ah-wah-ne can be hindered or interrupted by 
 sense of lack or loss on account of its body's being 
 poorly lodged will never thrive in Ah-wah-ne air. It 
 has come to the wrong place of all places in the world, 
 and the sooner it takes itself and body 3wav the bettei 
 tor it and for Ah-wah-ne.
 
 AH-WAH-NE DAYS. 105 
 
 AH-WAH-NE DAYS. 
 
 THEY do not dawn like days elsewhere. How should 
 they, seeing that the sun has been long up before 
 he looks over into Ah-wah-ne ? They burst, they flash, 
 they begin like a trumpet peal. One moment it is 
 morning twilight. The swaying torrent of the Great 
 Fall looks dim at the edges, and Uie pines and firs, high 
 in the air by its side, look black. The next moment it 
 is broad day. The Fall shines like molten silver under 
 the streaming sunlight, and the firs and pines are 
 changed in a twinkling from black to green. This 
 miracle of dayspring was the first sight I saw in Ah- 
 wah-ne. I was but half awake. From my pillow I 
 looked out on the upper half of the Great Fall. An 
 oval of gray sky ; white foam pouring from it, and 
 falling into a bed of black fir-tops ; waving branches of 
 near trees just beyond my window, — these were all I 
 saw. Boom ! boom ! boom ! sounded the mysterious vio- 
 loncello accompaniment, measuring and making rhyth- 
 m.ical the roar of the Fall. Suddenly, as suddenly as a 
 light-house flashes its first beam seaward, came a great 
 blaze of yellow hght from the east, making the water daz- 
 zling bright, and throwing out into relief every green spire 
 fir or pine on the precipice. With the sudden flood 
 of light seemed to come a sudden flood of louder sound. 
 I sprang to the window in wonder, which was not 
 without a vague terror ; but in that very second the 
 transformation was past, the quiet look of full day had 
 settled on all things. Almost I doubted the vision I 
 had seen. It was simply broad daylight ; that was all. 
 The air was full of fleecy-winged seeds from Balm of
 
 lo6 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 Gilead trees. They went slowly, sinking and rising, oul 
 steadily to the north, like a snowy flock following an in- 
 visible shepherd. As they passed, they seemed to spin 
 fine silken lines athwart the Fall ; and they came so 
 fast and thick they hindered my seeing. There was a 
 strange sweetness of peace and promise in their pres- 
 ence. The Great Fall so loud, so vast : they so small, 
 so still. Three thousand feet from my window-sill up 
 to the top of the wall over which the torrent of waters 
 fell ; within my hand's reach, the current, silent, irre- 
 sistible, unmeasured, on which centuries of forest were 
 gliding into place. 
 
 This was the first beginning of my first day in Ah- 
 wah-ne. Two hours later was the second beginning of 
 the same day. It is odd how much bustle there can be 
 in Ah-wah-ne. Sit on the hotelward piazza of Hutch- 
 ings's River Cottage from seven till nine, and no mo- 
 ment goes by empty. The little clearing is dusty ; the 
 sun beats down ; people crossing from house to house, 
 zigzag, to get into shade of the oaks or into dust an inch 
 or so less deep. On every piazza sit groups ready to 
 set out on excursions, and waiting for their guides to 
 bring up the horses and mules. Under the trees, be- 
 yond the hotel, is a long line of the unfortunate beasts, 
 saddled hap-hazard and tied to the fence, waiting the 
 evil that may betide them. They have been saddled 
 since four or five o'clock ; perhaps they will stand there 
 till three. Now and then a man comes riding over the 
 bridge, driving in a few more, which he has just caught. 
 Poor things ! They miscalculated distances, and did 
 not run away quite far enough in the night. Sometimes 
 a wiry, weather-beaten old guide dashes round and 
 round the clearing (I think I will call it plaza, since I 
 do not know what name the Ah-wah-ne-chee had for 
 little clearings) — dashes round the plaza, trying to 
 break in a vicious mule or mustang. Sometimes the 
 mustang gets the better ; sometimes the guide. Then 
 comes the laundry wagon, tilting up and down on its 
 two big wheels, stopping at everybody's doof foi
 
 AH-WAH-NE DAYS. 107 
 
 clothes for the laundry. It is painted bright blue, 
 and, being the only thing seen going about on wheels 
 in Ah-\vah-ne, looks marvellously queer. 
 
 Then comes along an Indian woman, with a pappoose 
 on her back. Half naked, dirty beyond words, her stiff, 
 vicious-looking hair falling around her forehead like 
 fringed eaves, her soulless eyes darting quick glances 
 to right and left, in search of a possible charity, she 
 strides through the plaza, and disappears among the 
 thickets and bowlders. She belongs to a colony which 
 has camped half a mile below. They will dance a 
 hideous dance for a few pennies. They are descendants 
 of Tenaya, no doubt ; but Tenaya would scorn them 
 to-day. 
 
 Next comes a party of riders from one of the hotels 
 below. They all sit straight, and try to prick their 
 horses into a quicker gait, as they pass Hutchings's 
 piazzas. Some of the women are dressed in bloomers, 
 and ride astride. One can hardly believe one's eyes look- 
 ing at them. They who have had strength of mind and 
 body to persevere in learning to ride in this way say it 
 is far easier and safer. But it would still remain a ques- 
 tion whether there are not evils more to be disliked than 
 fatigue and tumbling from one's horse 'i We wonder 
 vaguely where these riders can be going. The high 
 granite walls appear to shut in upon all sides. There 
 seems no way for any thing but water to get in, and no 
 way for anything at all to get out. One forgets the 
 trail by which he himself came down, and hstens doubt- 
 ingly to the mention of others leading up on other places 
 in the wall. Once in, once down in this magic abyss, 
 which men have chosen to call a valley, all the rest of 
 the world seems incredible, unreal, and unattainable. 
 But the riders ride on, and are soon out of sight among 
 the oaks and willows which shade the meadow beyond 
 the hotel. They are going to Lake Ah-wi-yah, known 
 now, thanks to some American importer of looking- 
 glasses, as Mirror Lake. If they reach the lake early 
 enough, they will see a water surface, two acres in ex-
 
 ro8 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 tent, so smooth, so clear that the whole of the South 
 Dome will be reflected in it. Across the lake, even 
 to the roots of the sedges and white violets, reaches 
 the pale picture of the majestic granite mountain, over 
 four thousand feet high. The Ah-wah-ne-chee lived 
 chiefly on acorns and wore wild beasts' skins ; but 
 there were poets among them who named this benignant 
 gray stone mountain, for ever gazing calmly into the 
 lake, " Tis-sa-ack," " Goddess of the Valley." 
 
 As this party disappears on the left, another winds 
 slowly off on the right, — people going away from Ah- 
 wah-ne. Every morning these are to be seen, and 
 " Saddle-train for Gentry's will start at half-past six " is 
 posted on the hotel walls. But the train rarely leaves 
 at half-past six. There are obstacles in the way. As 
 I have before said, there are the horses to be caught. 
 But this is not the greatest obstacle. There is breakfast 
 to be eaten (I was on the point of saying "caught"). 
 Mealtime at Hutchings's is a species of secular pass- 
 over : breakfast is a freebooting foray, lunch a quieter 
 foraging excursion, dinner a picnic. As soon as one 
 learns the order or disorder of the thing, one can get 
 on ; but it is droll to watch the newly arrived or the 
 obstinately fastidious traveller, sitting in blank astonish- 
 ment at the absence of most which he expects to find in 
 a dining-room. Mr. Hutchings is an enthusiast, a 
 dreamer, a visionary. He loved Ah-wah-ne well enough 
 years ago to make his home in its uninhabited solitude, 
 and find in its grand silences all the companionship he 
 needed. He loves it well enough to-day to feel all the 
 instinct of loving hospitahty in his welcome to every 
 traveller who has journeyed to find it by reason of the 
 fame of its beauty. All this is plainly to be seen in his 
 mobile, artistic face, and in the affectionate ring of every 
 word that he speaks of the Valley. 
 
 But landlords are not made of such stuff as this. 
 Artistic sensibility and enthusiasm do not help a man 
 to order dinner. Mr. Hutchings has been for some time 
 seeking a business partner, to relieve him of the practical
 
 AH-WAH-NE DAYS. 109 
 
 cares of the hotel. When he finds the right person for 
 this position, and is thus left at leisure himself to be 
 the host of Ah-wah-ne, and not of a house, Ah-vvah-ne 
 will gain a most eloquent interpreter and travellers 
 thither will fare better. 
 
 When the morning saddle-train is fairly off and the 
 last excursion party has ridden away a lull settles down 
 on the little plaza. A few horses are still left standing 
 at the tethering-posts. They are the lamest and laziest 
 and feeblest, — the refuse ones, that no guide takes un- 
 less he must. Poor things, their heads sink lower and 
 lower, their tails shrink, and their legs shorten, the 
 longer they stand. They do not move a muscle for 
 hours, except to shift the burden of their hfeless weight 
 slowly from one leg to another. 
 
 In this after-breakfast lull of our first Ah-wah-ne day 
 we met John Murphy, guide. We had set our affections 
 upon the ruddy face of Sol White, who had brought us 
 into the Valley, and we had tried hard to press him into 
 our service for the whole of our stay. But Mr. Hutch- 
 ings was inexorable. Sol White could not be spared 
 from the saddle-train. 
 
 " Then, Mr. White," said we, confidentially, " tell us 
 who of all the guides you think we should lilce best." 
 
 " I reckon you'd hke John Murphy. He's settled 
 consid'able ; but there ain't no better guide in the Valley. 
 He knows every inch on't. I reckon he's just the sort 
 o' man you folks 'd take to." 
 
 When John Murphy walked slowly toward us, as we 
 sat on the piazza, I understood what the word " settled " 
 had meant. Upon every inch of the tall, almost gaunt, 
 frame was set the indefinable stamp of years of frontier 
 life. No firmness was lost from the fibre, no elasticity 
 from the action ; but the firmness and the elasticity 
 were as unlike those of a young man as the 3^oung man's 
 would be unlike the boy's. To Sol White, no doubt. 
 Murphy seemed old. As he came nearer, I saw that he 
 was the very man whose face had so strongly impressed 
 me at Gentry's, the day before, when, on overhearing
 
 i.io BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME, 
 
 my proposition to have the horses fed, he had muttered *. 
 " 'Tain't no kindness to 'em. The sooner they die the 
 better." It was an uncommon face ; it was at once 
 hard and tender, sad and droll, shrewd and simple. The 
 eyes looked strangely younger than the weather-beaten 
 cheeks and lined temples, and the voice was low and 
 deep-toned. 
 
 " I did calkalate to give up guidin'," said Murphy. 
 " I wa'n't goin' out again with anybody." 
 
 " Why so .'^ " said we. 
 
 " Because I can't have anythin' 's I think it ought to 
 be. I won't put folks on some o' these horses. An' I 
 can't stand it to be goin' about with folks an' see 'm so 
 dissatisfied all the time, an' blamin' me, too, for what 
 ain't no fault o' mine." 
 
 " But, Mr. Murphy," we pleaded, " we will not be 
 dissatisfied with any thing ; and, if we are, we won't 
 blame you. Do be our guide. We shall stay a week, 
 and we want you to be with us every day." 
 
 " Well, I did tell Mr. Hutchings I was done guidin'. 
 But I'll stick to you 's long 's you stay. But it's the last 
 guidin' I shall do till things is fixed very different. 
 You'll be the last, sure." 
 
 So John Murphy became our guide. How well we 
 learned to know the pathetic, twinkling face before we 
 parted from it. How familiar to our eyes became the 
 queer brown-gingham Garibaldi, a little too short, which 
 seemed in Murphy's esteem to be suited to all weathers. 
 
 After dinner we set out for the Pohono Fall. Not 
 even the frequent hearing from the Hps of companions 
 of its other name — " The Bridal Veil " — could banish 
 from my thoughts the sweet vowel cadences by which 
 tlie Ah-wah-ne-chee had called it. Pohono was an 
 evil spirit. His breath was a fatal wind, sweeping over 
 this precipice and swaying the Fall. The Ah-wah-ne- 
 chee hurried past it in fear, and would never sleep 
 within sound of its waters. They beheved, also, that 
 the voices of its drowned victims were continually to be 
 heard calling, through the roar and the foam : " Shun 
 Pohono ! "
 
 AH-WAH-NE DAYS. ill 
 
 Perhaps Pohono had cast an evil eye upon me this 
 day, not knowing how reverently I was drawing near. 
 Surely, nobody in the party had fuller faith in the legend 
 of his wickedness and his power. But I was not per- 
 mitted to reach his shrine that afternoon. Why I did 
 not keep on is a secret between the mule, John Murphy, 
 and me. I will not tell it. When at last I said : " Mr. 
 Murphy, I must get off this minute. I will wait here 
 by the road till you come back," he rephed seriously: 
 " Well, I didn't much think you could." But his face 
 expressed the regret which his reticence did not utter. 
 And, as he tied that mule to a low branch of a live oak, 
 J heard some kicks on ribs and an unflattering epithet. 
 
 " Won't ye be skeared ? " said Murphy, as he re- 
 mounted his horse. " Ye hain't no occasion to be ; but 
 I dunno but ye'll be lonesome." 
 
 Lonesome ! They were almost my best hours in Ah 
 wah-ne. As the last voice and hoof-fall died away in 
 the distance, and the little cloud of dust settled slowly 
 down on the brakes, an indescribable delight took pos- 
 session of me. The silence seemed more than silence ; 
 it seemed to quiver without sound, just as the warm air 
 shimmered without stir along all the outlines of the 
 rocky walls. On my left hand rose the granite watch- 
 tower Loya (Sentinel Rock), on my right the colossal 
 buttress Tutocanula (El Capitan). The Cathedral, the 
 Spires, the Three Brothers, all were in full sight. Wher- 
 ever I stood, the mountain walls seemed to shut close 
 around me in a circle. I said to myself, again and 
 again : " Only between three and four thousand feet 
 high." But the figures had lost their meaning. All 
 sense of estimated distance was swallowed up, oblit- 
 erated by the feeling of what seemed to be immeasurable 
 height. It is said by some that the eye does not recog- 
 nize differences of magnitude beyond a certain hmit; 
 that, for instance, a fall three thousand feet high does 
 not look much higher than one fifteen hundred feet. 
 This seems a safe proposition. Who can either prove 
 or disprove it ? But it would be hard to make one look-
 
 112 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 ing up to the dim upper edge of the wall of Ah-wah-nc 
 believe that the grandeur does not gain, infinitely gain, 
 by each height to which it mounts. 
 
 The road was sandy, and ran through forests of oaks 
 and pines, which stretched to the base of the Valley 
 walls on either hand. The ground was covered in some 
 places with a dense growth of brakes ; then came bare 
 and sandy stretches, strewn with drift-wood by the 
 spring freshets of the Merced, which was close at hand 
 on the right. I walked down to its very edge, and tried 
 
 . to look up from thence to the top of El Capitan, which 
 rose abruptly from the further bank. To do this, it is 
 
 ' necessary to throw the head back, almost as if to look 
 at a ceihng, so vertical is that grand wall. Its surface 
 was of a sharp, dark gray, with black and white mark- 
 ings, so curiously blended they looked almost like giant 
 hieroglyphs. In an earlier and stronger hght afterward 
 I saw El Capitan, of a pale pearl gray, hardly darker 
 than the soft ashes of a wood-fire, and the hieroglyphs 
 all melted away into indistinct tintings of brown and 
 yellowish white. 
 
 Presently I heard axe-strokes in the distance, — two 
 axes alternating with each other in rhythmic precision. 
 After a time I walked toward them. Suddenly they 
 stopped, and in that instant began a loud crash, which 
 seemed to come rapidly nearer and nearer me. I could 
 see nothing, but I involuntarily stepped back. The 
 noise came nearer, but grew fainter. Then came the 
 heavy thud on the ground ; the tree had fallen. I could 
 just distinguish the quivering top of it between the trees, 
 a little way off. The crashing noise, which had seemed 
 to journey toward me so inexphcably, was the noise of 
 the breaking branches of other trees, past which it fell. 
 I went close to it. Two woodsmen were sitting on the 
 ground by it, and looked up in undisguised astonish- 
 ment at the sight of me. The tree still trembled and 
 vibrated along its whole length. Drops of water, like 
 tears, were trickling out fast from its under side, — 
 water which had been stored away for the summer in the
 
 AH-WAH-NE^ DAYS. 113 
 
 cistern fissures of its rough bark. It was a pine, and 
 nearly two hundred feet high ; the cirding rings which 
 had kept record of its birthdays showed clear on the 
 yellow disk, as on a dial-plate. 
 
 '' How old was it ? " said I. The men bent over and 
 counted in silence. 
 
 "Well nigh on to four hundred years it must hev 
 ben/' said they. 
 
 "And how long have you been cutting it down ?" 
 
 A quick gleam passed over their faces. They had 
 caught my feehng before I had put it in words. 
 
 " Well, about two hours, or mebbe three," replied one 
 of them, glancing up at the sun. 
 
 " Only think of that ! " I said. " Four hundred years 
 growing, and cut down in three hours." 
 
 " I vow, I never thought o' that before, Jim. Did 
 you ? " said the youngest of the two. 
 
 "No, dunno's I did," rephed Jim, hacking medita- 
 tively at the stump and looking down. 
 
 It was near sunset when the party came back from 
 Pohono's Fall. I had spent the last hour sitting on an 
 old oak log, in front of the majestic stone face of " Tu- 
 tock-ah-nu-lah." Three thousand feet up in the air, cut 
 on an inaccessible peak, serene, sad, majestic, there it 
 lives. It does not vanish on a slight change of position 
 by the observer, as do other stone faces, sculptured by 
 Nature's hand on mountain-walls. It seems to turn and 
 gaze after you, whether you go up or down the Valley. 
 It is watchful. It is the face of the first chieftain who 
 ruled the Children of the Sun who lived in Ah-wah-ne. 
 He loved Tis-sa-ack, the goddess, whose face, as I have 
 said, is reflected each morning in Lake Ah-wi-yah. 
 When she flew away, the down from her wings floated 
 over the lake, and, sinking to the ground, sprang up in 
 white violets, which blossom to this day on the shores 
 of Ah-wi-yah. Tu-tock-ah-nu-lah left his kingdom and 
 roved the earth in pursuit of his love. But, that hi? 
 people might not forget him, he carved his face on this 
 rock. 
 
 8
 
 114 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 " Oh ! has not the time seemed long to you ? " ex- 
 claimed everybody, in sympathizing tones, as the party 
 rode up. Murphy looked observantly into my face, a 
 twinkle came into his eye, and, as he mounted me once 
 more on that mule, he said, in a low tone : 
 " I reckon ye like bein' alone ; don't yer ?" 
 "Yes, Mr. Murphy," said I. "As well as if I were 
 A woman of the Ah-wah-ne-chee."
 
 PI-WY-ACK AND YO-WI-HE. 11$ 
 
 PI-WY-ACK AND YO-WI-HE. 
 
 IN the language of the Ah-wah-ne-chee, who always 
 spoke truth, "Pi-wy-ack" means "white water" or 
 " shower of shining crystals," and " Yo-wi-he " means 
 "the twisting" or "the meandering." These were the 
 names of the two great falls by which the Merced (River 
 of Mercy) leaps into Ah-wah-ne. Then came the white 
 men, liars ; they called the upper fall " Nevada," and 
 the lower one " Vernal ; " and the lies prevailed ; being, 
 as Hes are apt to be, easier said than the truth. 
 
 Ah-wah-ne guides tell you that you can see both these 
 falls in one day, leaving Hutchings's early in the morn- 
 ing and returning late in the afternoon. This is true, if 
 the verb to see means simply to look at. John Murphy 
 defined it better : 
 
 " Now, I'll tell you the way to see them two falls," he 
 said. " You jest make your calkerlations to stay over 
 night to Snow's an' you'll re'ly see 'em. There don't 
 nobody see a thing that jest rides up to it, an' turns 
 round an' rides away. It's jest the greatest place for 
 moonlight, up on that Nevada Fall, you ever see." 
 
 Sol White was right. John Murphy was "jest the 
 sort o' person " we " folks would take to." How much 
 of Ah-wah-ne we should have lost or have but half 
 known except for him ! 
 
 So we set out for Pi-wy-ack in the early afternoon. 
 We too rode through the mysterious opening in the line 
 of tethering posts, where we had watched party after 
 party disappear, just beyond the hotel. Right into an 
 oak and willow wood, right into a swamp, right into an 
 overflow of the Merced River itself rode Murphy. His
 
 Il6 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 white horse was up to the saddle-girths in water. It 
 plunged and seemed to stumble. Murphy glanced 
 quietly over his shoulder at us. 
 
 "Keep right behind me, and there's no danger. 
 Don't bear to the left. It's ten foot deep just off 
 there." 
 
 It was good generalship to make us concentrate our 
 attention on the one point of keeping close in his steps. 
 No doubt we could have ridden as safely a little to the 
 left ; but we should have been twice as frightened at 
 the place we were in if we had not been occupied in try- 
 ing to avoid a worse one. It was an ugly slough, — 
 water ten feet deep on the left ; the current running 
 quite fast ; the horses stumbling over the hidden rocks ; 
 and close on the right a confusion of high rocks, up 
 which no horse could possibly clamber. But it only 
 lasted a minute or two, and nobody fell in ; and then 
 we came out at once on the meadows. Ah ! the beauty 
 of the eastern meadow land of Ah-wah-ne, shaded by 
 oaks and pines, and spruces and maples, in groves, 
 without underbrush ; threaded by little streams, which 
 zigzag capriciously among thickets of alders and white 
 azalea ; and between, white shining bars and stretches 
 of sand, like miniature beeches. They lose themselves 
 in each other or in the Merced ; or stop of a sudden, as 
 if changing their mind. You leap them, you ford them, 
 you indulge your horse in sipping them, one after an- 
 other, just for the pleasure of it. They seem almost a 
 relief sometimes from the grandeur of the lofty walls on 
 every side. So, also, do the flowers, with which great 
 spaces here and there are bright, — red lilies and yellow, 
 deep blue larkspur, rose^colored everlasting, columbine, 
 wild roses, and yellow honeysuckles, besides many others 
 which do not grow out of Ah-wah-ne. After looking up 
 at the terrible To-coy-ae and Tis-sa-ack, bald granite 
 domes four and five thousand feet high, after following 
 the line of overlapping arches and columns and peaks 
 of stone ; high up in the air on either hand as far as you 
 can see, seeming to tower and grow, and threaten to
 
 Fl-WY-ACK AND VO-WI-HE. 117 
 
 topple under your very gaze, — there is a sense of pro- 
 tection in the neighborhood of an azalea, a new com- 
 radeship with a daisy. They have summ^^red and 
 wintered in Ah-wah-ne, and are not atraid. 
 
 Two miles of this meadow, and then the Valley ends, 
 or, rather, branches into three, so narrow that they are 
 called canyons. As we came near this point, the great 
 walls seemed to have wheeled and opened. All the 
 familiar summits looked new and strange, and new 
 summits, almost grander, came into view. Our path 
 lay up the canyon down which the Merced comes. The 
 noise of its coming soon grew loud. The path winds 
 close along its edge. Out of Ah-wah-ne, we should not 
 call it a path. Steep, narrow, full of bowlders, between 
 which your horse turns and twists at such sharp angles 
 you sway to right and left dizzily, under low-hanging 
 Doughs, between bushes which catch you on either side, 
 up and up and up it leads ; and the Merced on the 
 left leaps and foams and roars, louder and louder, mile 
 by mile. Now we caught glimpses of its white foam 
 between the dark pines ; then it would plunge into still 
 darker depths, and be out of sight for a time. As we 
 came out upon open points here and there, and looked 
 back, we could see no valley behind, no valley anywhere, 
 only peaks and chasms and walls. Except for the green 
 tops of the trees, struggling up among them or clinging 
 to their sides, the sight would have been desolate. Yet 
 it was among those peaks and chasms that we had seen 
 the azaleas. Up from those abysses we had climbed, 
 and still were to climb ; for we seemed hardly midway. 
 Far up on the right, so far up that the pine-trees looked 
 like bushes on an almost vertical wall, Murphy pointed 
 out to us a dark line. That, he said, was our path. 
 
 " But we shall have to wait at Lady Franklin's Rock," 
 he said, " until the party that went up this morning gets 
 down. There ain't no passing on that trail when / tn 
 guidin', — at least, not if I can help it." 
 
 Just as he said this, we turned a corner, and came sud- 
 denly in sight of Pi-wy-ack. The Ah-wah-ne-chee
 
 Ii8 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HUME. 
 
 spoke well. Three hundred and fifty feet of "white 
 water," " shining crystals," there it was, with solid walls 
 of glittering fir and pine on either hand. Lady Frank- 
 lin — bless her loyal woman's heart — was carried in a 
 litter up to this point, and rested on the broad flat rock 
 which bears her name. 
 
 But Pi-wy-ack could not have been so beautiful when 
 she saw it as on this day ; for now the water was so high 
 that the rock was wet, and the thick moss with which 
 it is covered glistened as with dew. As we sat waiting, 
 we heard the crackling of branches, and presently there 
 came toward us four figures, bending low, running, part- 
 ing the wet bushes above their heads, leaping from stone 
 to stone. They were black and shiny. They looked 
 like some novel specimen of upright seal or walrus ; 
 but they were men and women. They had come down 
 under the spray of Pi-wy-ack. As they threw off the 
 India-rubber wraps, and, sputtering and splashing, 
 stamped on the ground, water dripped from them. But 
 their eyes flashed with delight. They seemed almost to 
 have brought the rainbows from the Fall along with 
 them. The rest of their party, feebler or more timo- 
 rous, were coming on horseback by the trail ; it was for 
 them we were to wait. It seemed long, for we were 
 impatient, the passion for climbing deepens so fast and 
 the lure of a mountain summit ahead is so magnetic. 
 As soon as they came, we pushed breathlessly on, turn- 
 ing around a sharp corner of the rock-wall, and losing 
 sight of Pi-wy-ack at once. Now the real climbing 
 began. We smiled to think we had called it steep, 
 lower down in the canyon. The trail zigzagged up prec- 
 ipice after precipice ; it bent at as sharp angles as a 
 ship's course, tacking in a gale. At each corner the 
 horses stopped to breathe ; and, if we had the nerve to 
 look off" and over, we looked down on the tops of the 
 heads of the riders coming close behind us, on the very 
 next bend below. They seemed winding in a stately 
 dance. Further down one could hardly bear to look. 
 The chasms into which we had looked before seemed
 
 PI-WY-ACK AND YO-WI-HE. 119 
 
 to be merged in one gigantic abyss, the bottom of which 
 was made of sharp mountain peaks and granite needles 
 and ridges. We welcomed every shade of tree or shel- 
 ter of rock which seemed to stand between us and the 
 edge of this fathomless space; and yet the sense of 
 grandeur was so great that it left little room for terror. 
 We were drawing near to peaks higher than those we 
 had left behind. Hundreds or, for aught we could feel, 
 thousands of feet below us thundered the river. On 
 the further side of it rose up Mah-tah, a perpendicular 
 rock-mountain, two thousand feet above the top of the 
 fall we were climbing to reach. What patriot first called 
 this peak " Cap of Liberty" considerate history forgets. 
 As we approached the head of the canyon, we came 
 out on fields of piled bowlders and low bushes. The trail 
 was now literally a trail, — nothing but great, dusty hoof- 
 tracks between these bowlders ; and, as there rarely 
 seemed any especial reason for following them, each 
 horse picked his way much as he liked. To this I owe 
 it that my first view of the Yo-wi-he Fall was so sudden 
 that the whiteness of it blinded me for a second, as hght- 
 ning does. For some minutes I had been absorbed in 
 an ignoble contest with my horse. I had not observed 
 that the roar of the Fall sounded louder. I looked up 
 unexpectant, and the avalanche of dazzling foam flashed 
 full before me. It is nearly twice as high as Pi-wy-ack 
 and of much statelier movement. About midway — say 
 three hundred feet from the top — the water falls against 
 a projecting ledge. This twists and turns and throws 
 out the upper half of the Fall in narrow, waving sepa- 
 rate lengths, which look hke myriads of gigantic Roman 
 candles, made of snow-flakes, as they fall, fall, fall, 
 perpetually, in front of the main body of water, that 
 continues still unbroken, though it spreads suddenly 
 out into a silvery sheet one hundred and thirty feet 
 wide, and has a dist'nct swaying motion, as of a supple 
 grace, which yielded way a httle for courtesy, and not 
 of need. Again we said of the Ah-wah-ne-chee : " How 
 well they told the truth ! " It had not seemed before-
 
 I20 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 hand as if " Yo-wi-he," " The Meandering," could be 
 a good name for a grand waterfall. As near the base 
 of the Fall as the Fall will let it stand — in fact, so near 
 that in some winds half the piazza is drenched with 
 spray — stands Mr. Snow's little inn, " La Casa Nevada." 
 
 How we thanked Murphy for having brought us to 
 sleep there. 
 
 "And now about the moon, Mr. Murphy. When 
 will it be up 'i " 
 
 Murphy looked confused. 
 
 "Well, ye see I hain't been keepin' much run on her 
 lately, an' the fact is, I'd forgot, when I spoke to you 
 about seein' the Falls, how late she is. There won't be 
 no moonlight here to-night till nigh one o'clock." 
 
 "Never mind. Well sleep till one, and then get up 
 and see the moonlight." 
 
 Nobody can be sure, after a half-day's horseback rid- 
 ing in Ah-wah-ne, of waking up at the hour they resolve 
 upon. It was long after one o'clock that night when 
 three shapeless figures, rolled up in Mrs. Snow's bed- 
 blankets and comforters, went stumbling about in that 
 trackless waste of bowlders, looking for the moon. The 
 ground was black, the bowlders were black, the bushes 
 were black. Blacker still loomed up the pine and fir- 
 forests on either hand ; and, above them, actually glis- 
 tening like walls of black crystal, towered the granite 
 peaks. The moon had shone her little hour in the can- 
 yon and gone on. A faint light in the dark sky to the 
 south, outlining more distinctly the jagged summits and 
 serrated forest tops, told that she was still shining th» 
 other side. The Fall showed ghastly whitish gray, 
 the rapids all the way down from the base of the Fall 
 to the bridge gleamed, but did not look white ; the stars 
 shone piercingly ; and the silence was terrible, in spite 
 of the roar of the water. We felt our way about ; we 
 lost the path again and again, and hardly dared to move, 
 for fear of falling headlong down some precipice. The 
 air was sharply cold, but the bed-blankets and comforters 
 were very inconvenient. At last somebody said to
 
 P2-WY-ACK AND YO-WI-HE, I2l 
 
 somebody : " Don't you think we are fools ? " And 
 then we groped our way back to bed. 
 
 The next morning we climbed to the top of the Fall. 
 Since the Fall is only seven hundred feet high, why it 
 need be a four hours' cHmb up and down one side of it 
 is not evident. But the path is steep, — partly through 
 woods of fir, cedar, and maple ; partly over sandy and 
 vocky cliffs, where the trail is close to the edge and is 
 full of sharp-cornered bits of granite, broken so fine it 
 looks like gray loaf-sugar and is uncommonly hard to 
 the feet. All the way up are wonderful glimpses of the 
 Fall. Seen from the side, the long, slender shafts of 
 foam look more Hke snowy Roman candles than ever. 
 And, as you can often look between them and the main 
 sheet of the Fall, it is easy to fancy them thrown off 
 by invisible pyrotechnists (aquatechnists .^ ) under the 
 rocks. The swaying of the great avalanche to the right 
 is also more clearly seen ; and the stream on the left, 
 which from below had looked merely like a stray thread 
 of the Fall, proves to be almost another river, itself 
 leaping and falling in cascades of such beauty one might 
 well have cHmbed up for their sake alone. As we sank 
 down breathless on the rocks at the top of the f'all, 
 Murphy said : — 
 
 '' Now you must keep on and take a look into the 
 Little Yosemite Valley. It is only a few steps." 
 
 There was, then, a miniature Ah-wah-ne. We won- 
 dered and pressed on. The " few steps " were half or 
 three-quarters of a mile along the river's sandy and 
 rocky bank, through live oak and manzinita bushes and 
 over mats of tiny low flowers, growing as thickly as our 
 moss pinks. They were purple and blue and yellow 
 and white, and I never saw one of them anywhere else, 
 — not even anywhere else in Ah-wah-ne. They were 
 almost too tiny to pick. They shrivelled and became 
 nothing in one's fingers, and they seemed to have little 
 root, coming off the dry rock surface at a touch ; but 
 they made solid masses of color under our feet. 
 
 Little Ah-wah-ne is like Ah-wah-ne the greater, — a
 
 122 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 brilliant emerald meadow, with the Merced running 
 through it, shut in on the east and the west by buttressed 
 and pinnacled walls, from two to three thousand feet 
 high, and belted here and there by dark fir fc-ests. It 
 also has its stately pleasure domes, and streams run fast 
 and free down its sides. It is two thousand feet higher 
 than Ah-wah-ne, and will be as well known and loved 
 some day. 
 
 From the top of the square granite rock off which the 
 Merced leaps in the Pi-wy-ack Fall runs a narrow staii- 
 caseway down to the bottom of the canyon. It is a 
 staircase, and not a ladder ; for the steps are not 
 rounds, and there is a railing to cling to. But it feels 
 like a ladder, and most persons can get down easier by 
 going backward. You land at the mouth of a shallow 
 cave, whose whole roof is fringed with the dainty maid- 
 en's-hair fern. There is only a narrow rocky rim be- 
 tween you and the mad river, which is foaming down 
 the canyon. On each side the stone walls rise almost 
 vertically and are thickly wooded with firs and cedars. 
 There you are, you and the river, together at the bottom 
 of this crevice. It is easy to see what would become 
 of you if the river were suddenly to crowd a little. 
 Every pine, every cedar, every moss is ghstening. The 
 bowlders are black, they are so wet. You can look 
 orily a little way down the canyon, for the spray rises 
 in clouds, which lap and roll and spread like steam. 
 Going a few steps into it, and looking back to the Fall, 
 you see that just at the upper edge it is emerald green, 
 for a hand's-breadth, perhaps, — no more ; then it breaks 
 all at once, in an instant, into millions of distinct drops, 
 sparkling, whirling, round as dew-drops, falling in per- 
 petual shower. Ah ! the Ah-wah-ne-chee. And ah ! 
 the miracle of water at its freest. Why should some 
 water be stately and some be frolicful ? Yo-wi-he leaps 
 from as sharp an edge as Pi-wy-ack ; but Yo-wi-he is 
 full of majestic dignity, and Pi-wy-ack is radiant with 
 fun. 
 
 Perhaps Pi-wy-ack gets clearer sight of its own rain-
 
 FI-WY-ACJ^ AND YO-WI-HE. 123 
 
 bows. No need here to travel for the magic rainbow 
 end, where the money lies. It follows you, it trips you 
 up, it tangles itself around your feet. As I first walked 
 back toward the Fall, after going as far out in the spray 
 as I dared, I accidentally sHpped on a rolling stone. 
 I looked down quickly, to find a firmer footing ; and 
 I looked down upon a broad band of the most brilliant 
 rainbow. I exclaimed at the sight ; but, as I exclaimed, 
 the rainbow slipped to the left, then as I advanced it 
 slowly retreated, as if luring me to the Fall. Suddenly 
 as it came it vanished, on the surface of a wet bowlder. 
 A step or two back into the spray, and it danced under 
 my feet ; a step or two forward, and it was gone. 
 
 "These ain't any thing," said Murphy. "The place 
 where you get the rainbows is down there," pointing 
 into what looked like the mouth of a steaming cauldron, 
 some rods down the canyon. 
 
 Through this we must go if we walked down to Lady 
 Franklin's Rock. Remembering the choked breath 
 and dripping hair of the people we had seen the day 
 before, we hesitated ; but, remembering also the joy 
 which flashed in their eyes, we longed. 
 
 " It's pretty bad now," said Murphy, reflectively. 
 "Dunno's I've ever taken anybody through when the 
 river was higher. But you're pretty sure-footed. I 
 guess you'd git along well enough. An' ye won't never 
 be sorry ye did it. I can tell ye that." 
 
 Never, indeed! Only sorry that I cannot remember 
 it more vividly. Leaping from stone to stone, poising 
 on slippery logs under water, clinging to Murphy's hand 
 as to a life-preserver, blinded, choked, stifled, drenched, 
 down into that canyon, through that steaming spray, we 
 went. It was impossible to keep one's eyes open wide 
 for more than half a second at a time. The spray drove 
 and pelted, making great gusts of wind by its own 
 weight as it fell. It seemed to whirl round and round, 
 and wrap us, as if trying to draw us down into the black 
 depths. It was desperately uncomfortable, and danger- 
 ous, no doubt. But what of that } We were taken into
 
 n4 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 the heart of a carnival of light. Rainbows rioted every- 
 where, and we were crowding and jostling through as 
 we could. The air was full of them, the ground danced 
 with them, they climbed and chased and tumbled mock- 
 ingly over our heads and shoulders, and across our 
 faces. I nearly lost my footing, laughing at one, made 
 chiefly of blue and purple, which flitted across Murphy's 
 left eyebrow. They wheeled and broke into bits and 
 flew ; they swung and revolved and twined. When I 
 looked at them in the air, I could think of nothing but a 
 gigantic loom, on which threads of rainbow were being 
 shutded and woven with magic swiftness. When I 
 loolvcd down into the confusion of dark bowlders and 
 pools under our feet, I could think of nothing but gigan- 
 tic mill-hoppers spinning round, and grinding up purple 
 and blue and yellow and green and red. I held out my 
 hand and caught the threads in the loom, — stopped 
 them, turned them, snapped them. I leaned down and 
 dipped into the purple and blue and yellow and green 
 and red, and lifted them in the hollow of my palm. I 
 do not think anybody could have come nearer to the 
 secrets of rainbows if he had sat in the sky and watched 
 the first one made. 
 
 There was nobody waiting at the Rock to laugh at us 
 as we also came, running, bending over, parting the wet 
 bushes over our heads, panting, stamping, dripping, and 
 looking like upright seals or walruses. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Murphy, how thankful we are to you for 
 making us come down that way ! " we exclaimed. 
 
 " I told ye ye wouldn't never be sorry if ye did," re- 
 plied Murphy, shaking out the wet India-rubber coats 
 and rolling them up in a bundle, which looked more like 
 a seal than we had. 
 
 The east meadow land of Ah-wah-ne looked lovelier 
 than ever as we rode slowly back through it at sunset. 
 Long shadows linked tree to tree in the groves ; the 
 little brooks reflected bits of crimson cloud and yellow 
 sky ; the azalea blossoms seemed to expand, like white 
 wings, in the dimmer light; and the primroses were all 
 shut.
 
 PI-WY-ACK AND YO-WI-HE. 125 
 
 Just before we reached Hutchings's we passed a tent, 
 where an adventurous party of pleasure-seekers were 
 camping out. A small boy, with his head and the 
 greater part of his face tied up in a blue veil, was piling 
 brush on a large bonfire, close to the door of the tent. 
 " To keep off the black flies ? " called I, as I rode by- 
 "Yes, and skeeters, too," said he, lifting up roguish 
 eyes, reddened by the smoke. 
 
 " Oh, dear ! " said I, " do you like camping out ? " 
 " Yes, indeed," shouted he. " It's splendid. We 
 killed six rattlesnakes yesterday ! "
 
 1^6 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 PATILLIMA AND LOYA. 
 
 OTANDING one evening in the little clearing before 
 O Hutchings's Hotel, and looking up three thousand 
 feet in the air, to the upper edge of Ah-wah-ne's south- 
 ern wall, I saw a small point of bright hght. It looked 
 as a star might which had fallen and caught in a tree. 
 While I was looking at it, Murphy passed by ; and, in 
 answer to my eager question what the light could be, he 
 replied : — 
 
 " That's folks camping out on Glacier Point. That's 
 where I'm going to take you to-morrow." 
 
 " Take us there ! " I exclaimed. I realized for the 
 first time how I had been overawed by Ah-wah-ne. If 
 Murphy had said to me that "folks were camping out" 
 in the Little Dipper, which lay calm and bright and ap- 
 parently little further off on the sky, I should have 
 accepted the statement as readily. Murphy laughed. 
 
 " Why, 'tain't much higher than 'twas where you came 
 down from Gentry's. I'm goin' to take you more'n a 
 thousand feet higher'n that, too. That ain't three 
 quarters o' the way up to Sentinel Dome." 
 
 The shining point held my eyes spell-bound. I 
 watched it late into the evening. Once I thought I de- 
 tected a slight flicker in it ; but with that exception it 
 looked no more like a watch-fire than did the other 
 countless outpost watch-fires in the sky above it. 
 
 The Ah-wah-ne-chee had an odd name for this jutting 
 point. They called it Er-na-ting Law-oo-too, or Bear- 
 skin. But there was evidently a man or woman among 
 them who loved musical sounds, and rebelled against 
 these uncouth words ; for another name has come down
 
 PATILLIMA AND LOYA. 127 
 
 which is melody itself, — "Patillima." Nobody knows 
 what it means ; but I think it means " Picture of the 
 Emerald Meadow." Does it not sound as if it might? 
 It does when you are looking over its dizzy edge, down 
 into the radiant Ah-wah-ne. 
 
 We set out at half-past six in the morning. One can- 
 not grow used to the splenaor of Ah-wah-ne morning ; 
 it is the dew and ghtter and awaking of dawn, fiiled, ' 
 flushed, and overflowed with the light and the warmth 
 of noon. One fears, at first, that the noon will arrive 
 arid, hfeless, and beggared. But the miracle is as long 
 as the day. Until the sun drops out of sight the mar 
 vellous shining and balm and zest of the air last. We 
 rode westward down the Valley. On our left hand rose 
 the wall ; dayhght made it look only the more inaccessi- 
 ble. We rode on and on, past the lower hotels, — Black's 
 and Leydig's. 
 
 " Oh ! we would rather stay at the upper end of the 
 Valley, even if Hutchings had nothing but acorns to 
 eat ! " we exclaimed, as we more and more lost sight of 
 the Great Fall, and looked at the dreary sand-fields in 
 which the other hotels stand. 
 
 " But how far behind we are leaving Glacier Point, 
 Mr. Murphy ! " said we. " It must be a mile back." 
 
 "Yes," said Murphy, his eyes twinkhng. "The trail 
 begins a mile 'n a half west. Ye hev' to work round 
 considerable on sech a wall 's that to git up." 
 
 At the entrance of the trail we found a small toll- 
 Jiouse, kept by a far-seeing Irishman, named Macaulay, 
 who built the trail. It cost $3,000 and it took eleven 
 months of steady, hard labor to build it, though it is 
 only six or seven miles long. But it is a marvellous 
 piece of work. It is broad, smooth, and well protected 
 on the outer edge, in all dangerous places, by large 
 rocks ; so that, although it is far the steepest trail out 
 of the Valley, zigzagging back and forth on a sheer 
 granite wall, one rides up it with little alarm or giddi- 
 ness, and with such a sense of gratitude to the builder 
 that the dollar's toll seems too small. Looking off on
 
 128 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 the Valley side, however, requires nerve. You can see 
 usually, one terrace below you, — the one from which 
 you have just turned, at an acute angle, into the one on 
 which you are. Sometimes you can just see round the 
 last bend of the one next below, and see a horse's head 
 slowly climbing up. But this is the most. Below that, 
 only tops of trees and empty space, out, out, down, 
 down, to the very bottom of Ah-wah-ne. It is incredi- 
 ble while you see it. You seem to be ascending on a 
 series of narrow shelves, swung like book-shelves, one 
 above another, but from earth to sky. You gain a few 
 feet at each turn ; but you double and double the length 
 of the face of the wall, more times than you can count, 
 with each turn. The bottom of the valley looks further 
 and further away, and yet the sky looks no nearer. 
 
 On this day a large party was coming up just below 
 us. Looking down on the long line of horses, winding 
 and turning at slow pace, one could think of nothing but 
 a circus suddenly tilted up, and the manoeuvres going 
 on just the same on the wall. 
 
 In this party was one man never to be forgotten. He 
 belonged to that class of healthy, irrepressible, loud- 
 voiced travellers whom no grandeur can awe, no senti- 
 ment silence. Malicious fate had set him on a horse 
 named January. January was lazy and slow of foot. 
 Feeling along the path, echoing among the rocks, ris- 
 ing, sinking, doing every thing a voice can do, except 
 die away, went the stentorian cry of that man : — 
 
 " Git up, Jenuerry ! Git up, Jenuerry ! " 
 
 At first we laughed at it. Then we looked grave. 
 Then we set our teeth. Then we sinned with oui 
 tongues as we spoke one with another concerning that 
 man. All the way from the bottom of the wall to the 
 top he shouted, and gave no rest. The self-satisfied, 
 jubilant hilarity of his tone was indescribably exasperat- 
 ing. Another sentence which we heard from his lips, 
 however, had something so redeeming in it, that I 
 treasured it. It was as we reached the summit of 
 Glacier Point.
 
 PATILLIMA AND LOYA. 1 29 
 
 "The most romantic mind can here find enough of 
 the picturesque to satisfy its wildest desires," So say- 
 ing, he wheeled his horse and trotted off, the whole 
 party following swiftly, saying to their guide : " Come 
 on, Guide ! We've gazed enough." They had been on 
 the Point perhaps five minutes. 
 
 " I do hate to see folks do that way," muttered Mur- 
 phy, looking contemptuously after them. 
 
 "Git up, Jenuerry ! " "Git up, Jenuerry ! " came 
 faintly back from the depths of the wood, as the party 
 plunged off to the left, on the trail to Clark's. 
 
 Three weeks later, by one of those deliciously im- 
 probable coincidences which fate itself must chuckle 
 over when it brings them about, it happened that we saw 
 this irrepressible, loud-voiced traveller again. 
 
 It was at night, on the Central Pacific Railroad, be- 
 tween Lake Donner and Truckee. We had been stand- 
 ing on the platform of the car for half an hour, watching 
 the gleaming lights from the lake, where the Indians 
 were" fishing by torchlight. When we returned to our 
 seat, we found it occupied by a sleeping man, whose 
 head rested comfortably on our bags and bundles. It 
 was the rider of January. As gently and gravely as we 
 could, we roused him, and reclaimed our seat. I hope 
 it is counted unto us for righteousness that we resisted 
 the impulse to wake him by the cry, " Git up, Jenuerry ! " 
 
 Standing on Glacier Point, we saw why the Ah-wah- 
 ne-chee had called it Er-na-ting Law-00-too. Its shape 
 is not unhke that of a stretched bearskin, the head mak- 
 ing the extreme point of the plateau. But we did not 
 spend most of our time on Glacier Point standing. We 
 spent it crouched between high rocks, or lying flat on 
 our breasts, peering over the edge, drinking in the love- 
 liness of this marvellous miniature picture of Ah-wah- 
 ne. Its green was as vivid as ever. Its river and its 
 lake shone like crystals ; but its towering trees looked 
 no higher than mosses. Great spaces of forest looked 
 a hand's-breadth wide. Mr. Tamon's fruit orchard, four 
 acres square, and containing five hundred trees, made 
 9
 
 i^O BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 merely a tiny dark spot in the glowing green meadow, 
 No living thing, man or beast, could be distinguished 
 from that height. The few buildings seemed hardly 
 •separate from the gray rocks among which they stood. 
 There was no motion, no sound. Vivid, bright, beauti- 
 ful, hke the sudden picture shown by a wizard's spell of 
 some supernatural land, there the Valley lay. We knew 
 that we had come from it : we knew that we should 
 return to it ; but not even this knowledge could make it 
 seem real that we were on a level with the top of the 
 Great Fall on the opposite side of the Valley, — could 
 make the Great Fall look any less as if it came from the 
 sky. We, also, seemed to be on a field of sky. To-wi- 
 he and Pi-wy-ack were in full sight, looking, in the radi- 
 ant distance, not so much Hke foaming waterfalls as like 
 broad molten silver bands, by which the dark spaces of 
 forest might be linked together and welded to the granite 
 mountains. 
 
 But grander than the falls and more wonderful than 
 all the other mountain walls, was the great South Dome, 
 Tis-sa-ack. Seen from this point, its expression is so 
 significant that even its stupendous size is partially for- 
 gotten. When half of Tis-sa-ack fell, the northeast 
 front was left a sheer, straight granite surface, nearly 
 six thousand feet high. The top is still rounded. No 
 human foot has ever trod it or ever will. The longer I 
 looked at it, this day, the more its contour assumed the 
 likeness of a colossal visor, closed. But this pecuhar 
 expression is seen from no other point. Therefore, I 
 think that it was here on PatilHma that the Ah-wah-ne- 
 chee first crowned it " Goddess of the Valley," and first 
 wove the legend of the mysterious maiden, with yellow 
 hair and blue eyes, who sat upon its crest and won the 
 love of Tu-tock-ah-nu-lah, and then disappeared for ever, 
 leaving Tis-sa-ack to guard her memory and her secret 
 together. 
 
 " I hate to hurry ye," said Murphy, after we had been 
 a half an hour here ; "but, if we're goin' to the top oi 
 Sentinel Dome, we must re'ly be goin'. We hain't got 
 none too much time now."
 
 PATILLIMA AND LOYA. 131 
 
 A few more minutes he gave us, touched by our en- 
 treaties ; but then he sternly followed us about from 
 rock to rock with our horses, and compelled us to mount. 
 The trail led down into the woods again, along a little 
 brook-course, over beds of ferns, among which blue for- 
 get-me-nots waved as they wave on the shores of the 
 Alban Lake. The magic Valley, the colossal domes, 
 the radiant infinite distances, all had disappeared in the 
 twinkling of an eye. It might be any other sweet forest 
 out of Ah-wah-ne through which we were quietly riding. 
 Just as I was thinking how wonderful the transition 
 seemed, and how hard it was to reahze that we were 
 really three thousand feet high and riding on the rim of 
 Ah-wah-ne, Murphy cantered up by my side, and said, 
 in a low tone : — 
 
 "Ye wouldn't think now, would ye, when ye're in 
 these woods, that ye was jest on the edge of the Val- 
 ley ? " Was there any shade of feeling, any point of 
 beauty which this silent and half-grim old guide did not 
 know ? 
 
 " I always think it's a real rest after the Pint to get in 
 here," he continued ; " an' it kind ©'prepares ye for the 
 Dome." 
 
 " An' here's a first-rate place to eat your lunch," he 
 added, stopping under a big pine, whose scraggy roots 
 thrust out hke wharves into the brook. The poor, hun- 
 gry horses eyed our gingerbread, and nibbled disconso- 
 lately at bushes they did not Hke. There was not a 
 blade of grass. We fed them with all that we could 
 spare, and they took the crumbs from our hands grate- 
 fully as dogs. Oh ! the pitifulness of the Ah-wah-ne 
 horses. It is hard to bear the sight of it. 
 
 When we left the woods, we struck out into open, 
 rocky fields. There was hardly a vestige of a trail, to 
 our inexperienced eyes ; but Murphy rode on, turning 
 to the right and to the left, and as we followed him we 
 could see that on either hand of our way the rocks and 
 stones and pebbles and sand looked even less hke a 
 road than those under our feet. Before us rose Loya,
 
 132 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 the bald, gray dome, the sentinel ; on its top one \ovi 
 pine tree, and on the side nearest us a bi^ belt of snovo. 
 
 "Ye'U have to walk up the rest of the way," said 
 Murphy. " This snow won't bear the horses." 
 
 I jumped from my horse just in the edge of the first 
 snow-drift ; and I alighted on beds of tiny, low flowers, 
 growing hke those I had seen at the top of the Nevada 
 Fall, in thick mats, but with even smaller blossoms, all 
 of a delicate pink color. The snow-drifts bore us, and 
 in some spots the crust crackled under our feet as it 
 does in the New England winter. Yet the air was soft 
 and balmy, and almost at the top of the Dome I picked 
 one little yellow pansy. The pine-tree was low, and so 
 bent it seemed to have crouched in terror. One long, 
 gnarled branch grew out for many feet to the south ; 
 but on the north side all was bare and scarred. We 
 looked at the snow-drifts, at the tiny flowers, at the tree 
 all before we looked off at the Sierras. Only b^ 
 glimpses at first could we bear the grandeur of the sight. 
 We were one thousand feet above the highest fall in 
 Ah-wah-ne. Ah-wah-ne itself — "-hrunk to a narrow 
 abyss, with vivid gleams of green and silver at its bot- 
 tom — was only a near hne in the vast distance on which 
 we looked. Little Ah-wah-ne was an emerald spot, 
 walled by bare granite masses. Mountains seemed 
 piled on mountains ; and yet, beyond them and between 
 them, we could see the great valley stretches of the San 
 Joaquin and the Sacramento, and to the west a dim blue 
 line, which marked the Golden Gate, Looking north- 
 ward across the Valley, we could see Mount Hoffman, 
 eleven thousand feet high, covered with snow ; and the 
 gigantic North Dome, seeming almost to nestle under 
 its shadow. Only one thing except the far Sierras was 
 higher than we. That was the eternally sealed mask of 
 Tis-sa-ack. 
 
 The Sierra Nevada, in its immortal white, lay only 
 thirty miles away, every peak sharp-cut on the intense 
 blue of the cloudless sky. Beyond Ah-wah-ne we saw, 
 coming: from tht. north, the slender thread of white
 
 "^ATILLIMA AISTD LOYA. 133 
 
 which makes Ah-wah-ne's Great Fall. It seemed some- 
 how to be the one thing which hnked it with the human 
 world, proved it real, and made it safe. 
 
 " You folks ought to go round the whole Valley and 
 camp out," said Murphy, who had watched us more and 
 more approvingly. "It wouldn't take more than two 
 weeks, and there's lots of places you'd like as well's 
 you do this." 
 
 " Mr. Murphy, do you believe that you are speaking 
 truth ? " said we, severely. 
 
 Murphy's eyes smiled a little, but he said no more. 
 He liked our loyalty to Loya. 
 
 On our way down, we stopped for a few moments to 
 ^■est on Union Point, half way between Glacier Point 
 rfnd the Valley. Here we found an Irishman living in a 
 sort of pine-plank wigwam, from the top of which waved 
 the United States flag. In a low tree, on the very edge 
 of the precipice, I saw a small bunch of flowers. " Oh ! 
 somebody has lost a bouquet," I exclaimed. But, 
 when I tried to take it from the crotch in the branch, I 
 found it was firmly wedged in and confined by a twig 
 bent across the opening. The Irishman came running 
 up, and, handing it to me, with a broad smile on his 
 ugly red face, said : — 
 
 *' It was me tied it up. I thought some leddy 'd be 
 comin' along that 'd hke it." 
 
 " I will keep it always, in memory of Union Point and 
 you," exclaimed I. 
 
 Alas ! long before I reached the bottom of that dizzy 
 wall it had fallen from my belt. But, nevertheless, it is 
 true that I keep it still in memory of Union Point and 
 the lonely, chivalrous Irish gentleman who hves there 
 and looks down into Ah-wah-ne.
 
 134 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 POHONO. 
 
 '*]\ /TR. MURPHY,' said I, <' do you believe that the 
 iVl Evil Spirit of the Bridal Veil Fall would let me 
 come near enough to see it, this afternoon ? " 
 
 Murphy stared at me for a moment in real alarm, 
 thinking I had lost my senses. Then he broke into 
 one of the few laughs I ever heard from his lips, and 
 made a reply which must have seemed to a bystander 
 singularly irrelevant. 
 
 " That pesky mule hain't been seen since that after- 
 noon. I reckon he's swum the river, and as like 's not 
 he won't never be heard from again. 'Tain't no great 
 loss, nuther ; though I dunno but he did 's well 's any 
 on 'em for a pack mule. I allers did hate mules," con- 
 tinued Murphy. " I never could see no sense in 'em ; 
 an' I rtckon yoti don't ever want to see another." 
 
 And Murphy's eyes glistened mischievously at the 
 reminiscence of the untimely end of my trip to Pohono. 
 
 Why the Ah-wah-ne-chee should have given this sad 
 name to the most beautiful fall in their valley, and have 
 associated with it such gloomy legends and supersti- 
 tions, it is not easy to conceive. The stream which 
 makes the Fall rises in a small lake, on which there is 
 said to be a perpetual strong wind ; and there is a tra- 
 dition that once an old woman who was gathering seeds 
 just above the Fall, fell into the stream and was carried 
 over the precipice. But these facts are not sufficient to 
 account for the terror which the Indians felt at approach- 
 ing the Fall. They always hurried by at the top of 
 their speed ; nothing would induce them to sleep near 
 it ; and even to point toward it, as they journeyed up
 
 P OHO NO. 135 
 
 or down the Valley was considered certain death. The 
 air of Ah-wah-ne is so much rarer and more stimulating 
 than other air, life seems there so much less a thing of 
 the accredited five senses than anywhere else, that such 
 legends and superstitions take hold on the imagination 
 in spite of one. I confess that, as I rode toward Pohono 
 that afternoon, I could not for one moment forget that 
 we were doing what an Ah-wah-ne-chee would not have 
 done for his life ; and, musical as is the word Pohono, 
 is it all a fancy that it sounds as if it might be the name 
 of a malignant and treacherous spirit ? 
 
 To reach Pohono from Hutchings's, you follow the 
 trail down the Valley for some six miles westward. 
 Much of the wa}'' it is on the bank of the Merced, which 
 at times spreads out foaming and shallow, and then 
 narrows again into a deep, dark, resistless-looking cur- 
 rent. In these narrow depths the Merced has most 
 exquisite spaces tinted with amber and malachite, 
 shaded up to black. As it glides swiftly along, the 
 serrated tops of the firs and pines are reflected in these 
 shining surfaces like spear-points and plumes of ranks 
 of soldiery in the shield and bosses of a leader flashing 
 by. And above and before the serrated spear-points 
 and plumes stand, silent, massive, impregnable for 
 ever, the high buttresses of rock. 
 
 The last two miles of the way lay near the southern 
 wall of the Valley, through wild lands, almost like jun- 
 gles, — firs and cedars and maples and Balm of Gilead 
 and dog-wood and alders growing densely ; and on each 
 hand and as far as we could see thickets of white azalea, 
 Ah-wah-ne azalea, — not azalea as New England knows 
 it, in gaunt, straggling bushes, bare-stemmed nearly to 
 the top and with flowers set somewhat scantily on the 
 spreading ends of branches, — but azalea in thickets, in 
 banks which would be solidly leafy and green from bot- 
 tom to top if they were not solidly snowy, but which are 
 so snowy that only little points and tips of green are 
 left in sight. The blossoms are very large, tinted in 
 the centre with pale yellow and sometimes veined with
 
 136 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 rose-pink ; and I have had branches on which these 
 royal flowers were set in bunches two hand's-breadths 
 broad, like great flattened snowballs. 
 
 Our first sight of the Fall was at a moment when the 
 wind, or the breath of Pohono, was lifting its whole 
 fleecy mass and swinging it to the west. " Can it be 
 water ? " we exclaimed. It looked like a fluttering cloud, 
 driven before the wind and clinging to the rock. But in 
 a second it swayed back again, with an undulating mo- 
 tion no cloud could show. And yet the fleecy, filmy 
 grace of its shape seemed too ethereal for water, and the 
 sound seemed, for some inexplicable reason, to come 
 from a point much further to the left. But, in looking 
 up at it from the base, — and that is looking up nine 
 hundred feet, — all wonder at its fine-spun, gossamer 
 fleeciness is swallowed up in wonder at its zone of rain- 
 Dow. At some hours of the day, and when the spray is 
 very heavy, there are five or six of these rainbow belts 
 arching across it, sinking and rising and swaying to 
 right and left with it. 
 
 But I shall never believe that this effect can be so 
 beautiful as that we saw produced by one broad, bril- 
 liant rainbow, — a perfect semicircle, — its apex in the 
 centre of the Fall and its bases reaching to our very 
 feet. We sat on a high bowlder, some rods away from 
 the Fall ; and yet, when a sudden gust of wind blew 
 the spray toward us, we were wet as in a shower. The 
 bright, broad zone of color, arching, and yet seeming to 
 belt and confine the flowing lengths of fleecy white, — 
 expanding and spanning them still when they seemed 
 to seek to be free, — deepening, flashing with brighter 
 color, like renewed jewels, and clasping closer when 
 they seemed to sink and yield, — there was an infinite 
 tenderness of triumphant passion, of mingled compli- 
 ance and compulsion, surrender and conquest, in the 
 whole expression of the movement of the two, as they 
 swung and swayed and shone and melted together in the 
 radiant air. Almost one felt as if he knew more than 
 he should, in watching them ; as if, perchance, they be-
 
 POHONO. 137 
 
 lieved themselves alone. As the sun sunk lower, the 
 rainbow zone rose higher and higher and grew narrower 
 and fainter. The parting grew near, I would not have 
 seen it. As we rode slowly home, in the early twilight, 
 the pinnacles and spires and towers of rock on the 
 southern side of the Valley were changed by shadows 
 into fantastic shapes. 
 
 The serene and majestic face of Tu-tock-ah-nu-la 
 alone looked unaltered. Neither light nor shade can 
 change the benignant, watchful look on its grand and clear- 
 cut features. Just beyond it a rounded peak took sud- 
 denly the shape of a man's head, in a pointed monkish 
 cowl. As we rode on, it slowly changed to the outline 
 of a Bedouin, half wrapped in a cloak and riding a gi- 
 gantic camel. The long neck of the camel and the 
 folds of the cloak were perfect ; and a sharp ledge line, 
 lower down, gleamed like a spear, poised low in the 
 rider's hand. The weird effect of such phantom shapes 
 as these, when seen three thousand feet up in the air 
 and of such great size, cannot be imagined. A little 
 further on, a colossal cat-hke face suddenly looked out 
 from the sky. The mouth grinned and the ears were 
 erect. It was rather the face of a tiger than of a cat, 
 and yet it had no fierceness of expression. In a mo- 
 ment it was gone, and we could see that the left ear 
 had been a pine tree. No doubt the tree was two hun- 
 dred feet high, but it did not seem in the least out of 
 proportion as an ear on the gigantic head. 
 
 Behind this head, in the far southeast, we could see 
 clouds rest, six thousand feet above us. Its top was 
 still rosy pink with the sunset glow, which had so long 
 left the Valley; and below the pink lay a broad snow- 
 belt, silver white. 
 
 As Murphy lifted me from my horse, he looked at 
 me closely, and said, with a Httle hesitation of manner : 
 
 " Feel a httle stiff, don't ye ? " 
 
 Pride rebelled at the suggestion; but candor con- 
 quered, and I replied : 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Murphy. I must own that I do. So many
 
 138 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 hours on horseback is a pretty severe thing to one un- 
 accustomed to riding." 
 
 " I only wonder the ladies stand it so well's they do," 
 said Murphy courteously, detecting, I have no doubt, 
 my foolish pride. " But, if you was to take a good 
 long hot-bath to-night, you'd feel as good as new to- 
 morrow," 
 
 " A long hot-bath," exclaimed I, remembering the 
 shallow milk-pan which served me for wash-bowl. " Are 
 any corners of the Merced heated ? " 
 
 " Yes," replied Murphy, with perfect gravity. " A 
 good deal of the Merced is kept hot all the time." 
 
 It was my turn to stare now. Murphy twinkled, but 
 did not speak till I said : 
 
 " What do you mean, Mr. Murphy ? " 
 
 "Jest what I say," he replied, slowly, enjoying my 
 bewilderment " There's a good deal of the Merced 
 kept hot all the time in the bath-tubs in Mr. Smith's 
 saloon. And, what's more, you won't find any nicer 
 bath-rooms anywhere, not even in San Francisco." 
 
 This sounded incredible. The fourth of the three 
 buildings in the little plaza was a long, low, dark-brown 
 house, with a piazza on two sides, which I knew was 
 called saloon, and at which, for that reason, I had looked 
 without interest. But I was soon to discover that it was 
 one of the wonders of Ah-wah-ne. 
 
 This long, low, dark-brown house, called the " Cos- 
 mopohtan Saloon " and kept by a Mr. Smith, consists of 
 nine rooms. A billiard-room, where are two fine billiard- 
 tables ; a reading-room, where are the California news- 
 papers, and a long writing-table, with stationery ready 
 to one's hand ; a small sitting-room, furnished with 
 sofas and comfortable easy-chairs, and intended exclu- 
 sively for the use of ladies ; and five small bath-rooms, 
 perfectly appointed in all respects and kept with the 
 most marvellous neatness. A small store-room at the 
 end completes the list of the rooms. 
 
 The bath-tubs shine ; the floors of the bath-rooms 
 are carpeted ; Turkish towels hang on the racks ; soaps.
 
 FOHONO. 139 
 
 bottles of cologne, and bay rum are kept in each 
 room ; a pincushion stands under each glass, and on 
 the pincushion are not only pins, but scissors, needles, 
 thread, and buttons of several kinds. Has anybody 
 ever seen public bath-rooms of this order ? And Mr. 
 Smith mentions, apologetically, that the button-hooks 
 for which he has sent have not yet arrived. 
 
 A tall and portly black man, with that fine polish of 
 civility of which the well-trained African servant is the 
 only master on this continent, attends to every require- 
 ment of Mr. Smith's customers, and exhibits the estab- 
 lishment many times a day, with most pardonable pride. 
 
 To have seen the slates of those billiard tables com- 
 :ng down the wall of Ah-wah-ne on the backs of mules 
 must have been an amazing spectacle. As we looked 
 at their great mahogany frames, it seemed more and more 
 impossible every moment. But to all our exclamations 
 Mr. Smith repHed, with great quietness, that there was 
 no difficulty in bringing any thing whatever into Ah- 
 wah-ne, and that he intended to bring a piano next year. 
 A mule can carry six hundred pounds weight of any 
 thing which can be strapped on his back ; and, once 
 strapped firmly on his back, the load will be carried 
 with far less jolt and jar than on wheels. Poor mule ! 
 The very Wandering Jew of burden and misery among 
 beasts. . From sea to sea, from continent to continent, 
 the spell of his evil destiny stretches. Cairo or Ah- 
 wah-ne, it is all one to him. But I think that never 
 even in Cairo could have been seen a mule of which so 
 little was to be seen as of the one which came down the 
 Ah-wah-ne precipices under Mr. Smith's billiard-tabiea.
 
 LAO BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME 
 
 FROM BIG OAK FLAT TO MURPHY'S. 
 
 ONLY one day's ride ; but a ride so vivid with char- 
 acteristic color, so picturesque, so pathetic in 
 panoramic narrative that I think there can hardly be in 
 all California any other one day's journey more essen- 
 tially Californian. 
 
 Big Oak Flat is a little mining town, about sixty miles 
 from Stockton. In going from Ah-wah-ne to the Cala- 
 veras Big Trees, we slept there ; but it looked so deso- 
 late, so apart, that I never thought of its having any 
 relation to the rest of the world — even to the points of 
 compass — and I remember it only as the spot where 
 this vivid day's ride began. 
 
 First down-hill — down, down, through a canyon 
 whose sides were made of bare overlapping hills, grass- 
 grown, and fringed and barred with low bushes. At 
 the bottom ran a stream ; on all sides were old mining- 
 sluices, little green vine-yards, piles of broken quartz 
 rock. Then the road ran through the bed of Moccasin 
 Creek. The Creek had shrunk, and was licking along 
 abjectly in the sand on the right ; and we rattled and 
 jolted over its pebbly channel. The low hills in the 
 distance were oddly shaped, like cones and triangles, 
 and seemed to be joined and fitted like pieces in a puzzle, 
 to be taken apart. Red chasms and crevices marked 
 their sides ; tottering old stone chimneys and blackened 
 hearthstones showed where cabins had been ; solid 
 squares of shining green vineyard and orchard, mixed, 
 surrounded the cabins of to-day. 
 
 Then we came to Keith's Fruit Garden, a bit of color 
 worth painting. A low cabin-like house, white and set
 
 FROM BIG CAR FLAT TO MURPHY'S. 14I 
 
 behind white palings. At the gate tall branching olean- 
 ders, rosy with blossoms ; from the gate to the door a 
 dark fig-tree grove ; a broad piazza, wreathed with 
 honeysuckles from eaves to sill, with hanging baskets 
 made of strung acorns and holding green vines, and 
 bird-cages holding linnets and gold-finches ; on the 
 piazza a table, set with fruit, — pears, figs, apricots, 
 plums, apples ; and this was only the 29th of June. 
 Last year's wine, too, in bottles, with red roses printed 
 on the labels ; and above the table, nailed to the wall of 
 the house, a cheap colored print of somebody, — Ceres, 
 or Flora, or Pomona, — crowned with flowers and bear- 
 ing in her hands a salver of prodigious fruit. A running 
 spring on one side the house ; and on the other a gHs- 
 tening yellow bed of straw, alive with downy, trembling, 
 peeping chickens, just out of the shell. On both sides 
 and behind, stretching away so that you peered down 
 into its alleys, lay the vineyard, shaded dark by alternat- 
 ing rows of fig, of peach, of apricot, of plum, of almond 
 trees. Last, not least, and everywhere at once, a blue- 
 eyed maid child, a little older, perhaps, than the linnets, 
 and the goldfinches, which she said she had had " al- 
 ways." Then more cabins, more vineyards, and a foam- 
 ing river on our left, the earth all red wherever it lay 
 open, and little yellow streams running about like lost 
 babies ; great piles of crushed quartz rock here and 
 there, and rough skeleton mills, with the huge round 
 wheels, w^hich had broken it up. The hills grew more 
 yellow, the country grew more bald and bare and sterile. 
 Deserted cabins, with vines running riot, and sluices, 
 dry and rusty tin pans, left out in the sun, told their 
 half of the story of the barren tract. Now we climbed 
 again, slowly, steadily, up to a broad plateau, called 
 Table Mountain. Here were huge oaks, all tremulous 
 at top with mistletoe, but seamed and seared below like 
 old fossils. Wheat-fields came into sight in the dis- 
 tance, and their pale yellow looked cooler and whole- 
 somer than the orange-tinted screams and the red earth. 
 In lonely places were twos and threes of ragged, hope-
 
 142 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 less Chinamen, bent double over the old worn-out gullies 
 and hollows, shaking the thin sands and peering and 
 groping after a penny's worth of gold. They looked 
 Rke galvanized mummies, working out some spell which 
 could bode no good to anybody. Now and then a house 
 and now and then a cross-road made the solitudes seem 
 less remote, and gave a strange, sudden reminder of 
 civilization and humanity. But in a moment we had 
 plunged again into thickets and tangles of pines and 
 manzanita ; then out upon desolate, frightful, stony 
 fields, where crowds of limestone rocks reared them- 
 selves up like hobgoblins and gnomes. And so, before 
 noon, we came to Sonora. 
 
 Sonora's main street is narrow, and walled thick with 
 green locust-trees. The buildings are chiefly half shop 
 and half house, excepting those which are all saloon. 
 They are wooden and low and of uneven heights ; the 
 shop fronts are wide open, being made of two huge 
 doors. This gives the street the look of an arbor of 
 cluttered and miscellaneous wares. In the centre of 
 the busiest part of the street, we came upon hydraulic 
 mining in one of the cellars, the hose playing away as 
 for a fire, and the yellow bank crumbling and melting 
 into the sluices. 
 
 " What is this ? " said we. 
 
 " Oh ! the man that lived there found gold in his 
 cellar. So he moved off his house and went to mining, 
 and he's taken out $10,000 already," repHed the Street. 
 
 *' But are you all living over gold mines ? " 
 
 " Shouldn't wonder. But mining isn't such lively 
 work as it used to be. It's dull times in Sonora now. 
 Twenty-dollar pieces used to chink on this street from 
 morning to night." And the Street sighed. 
 
 Next to Sonora comes Columbia, only four miles off. 
 I think there is not in sight on either hand of that four 
 miles of road, a half-acre of land which is not tunnelled, 
 trenched, scooped, torn to pieces, and turned bottom 
 side up by mining. The wildest confusion of bowlders 
 ever seen on a mountain-top looks like the orderly pre-
 
 FROM BIG OAK J^LAT TO MURPHY'S. 143 
 
 cision of a cabinet by side of these deserted mining 
 claims. The rocks are worn and fretted by the old 
 action of water into ghastly and grotesque shapes, which 
 add an element of weird horror to the picture. They 
 look like giant skeletons, like idols, hke petrified mon- 
 sters, which might come to life and hold hideous carni- 
 val in their burial-place. A httle way out of Sonora 
 stands a small church, on a high hill, surrounded by a 
 graveyard. The land on one side of it has been mined 
 away, until the hill is left standing Hke a seashore cliff, 
 steep, abrupt, many feet above the yawning, rocky 
 chasms below. The little paling of the graveyard and 
 the white gravestones nearest it look as if at any minute 
 they might topple off, by the caving in of the bank, — 
 the greed of gold has so grudged even to the dead the 
 few inches they need. 
 
 Columbia houses are like cabins, bowered in vines 
 and flowers ; and Columbia's streets hterally run with 
 gold. As we drove through, on this 29th of June, we 
 saw dozens of small boys panning out gold in the little 
 streams which ran close to their fathers' gates. 
 " For Fourth of July ? " called we. 
 " Yes, to see the circus," shouted the infant gold- 
 seekers. 
 
 " How much can you get a day ? " I said. 
 ^^ He got twenty-five cents yesterday," said a wist- 
 ful little fellow, pointing to the great man of their 
 exchange. 
 
 A httle further on we met a squad of the dismal 
 Chinamen again, walking with their shovels, pans, and 
 pickaxes slung in a clattering bundle on their backs. 
 
 After Columbia came a gentler and greener country, 
 woods again, and a glorious canyon, down which we 
 zigzagged and whirled round ox-bow bends, and came 
 to the swift, coffee-colored Stanislaus River at bottom. 
 Over this, in a swinging ferry-boat, made fast to an iron 
 cable, and then up the other side of the canyon. The 
 hills were covered densely with the low greasewood 
 bushes, which, now that the white flowers .vere fallen^
 
 144 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 had taken on a most exquisite tint of brilliant 5'ellow- 
 brown. Once out of the canyon, we bore away across 
 stretch after stretch of wilderness again. Woods, 
 woods, woods, or else bare rocky fields ; now and then 
 a dismal little village, which once had a hope of gold, 
 but now has lost it, and found nothing else in its stead. 
 Pitiful faces meet you at each turn in these luckless little 
 mining towns, — faces of women hardened and weary 
 and lifeless; faces of little children sick and without 
 joy ; faces of men dull, inert, discouraged, and brutal. 
 It is hard to fancy what will become of them. 
 
 As we drove up to the inn at " Murphy's," I could 
 have fancied myself in some little Italian village. The 
 square stone walls were gray, and in spots grimed with 
 mould ; the windows were sunk deep, like embrasures, 
 and heavy black shutters flapped and creaked. Bright 
 green locust-trees shaded it, hens and chickens were 
 running about, and the padrona and several servants 
 stood on the doorstep, smiling. Murphy's one narrow, 
 long street is picturesquely dismal, — old wooden side- 
 walks, loose, broken in in places, with grass growing up 
 in the holes ; deserted houses, with the ridge-pole sink- 
 ing low in the middle and the chimney-bricks lying 
 strewn about ; unused warerooms, with iron shutters on 
 the outside, barred tight and crossbarred by cobwebs ; 
 back yards and front yards, here and there, all gullied 
 and piled with heaps of rock, where gold used to be. 
 One we found surrounded by a high fence, the gate 
 tight locked with a padlock, and the pickaxes and pans 
 lying where they were dropped at sunset. This within 
 stone's throw of an apple-stand and a meeting-house. 
 Just beyond the street limits, in all directions, are fields 
 of mining claims, — some deserted, some still being 
 worked. The rocks are hollowed and scooped, and 
 thrown up in even wilder and more fantastic shapes than 
 those we had seen before. By moonlight they were ter- 
 rible. A few years ago Murphy's was alert and gay. 
 Gold came free, and no man stopped to ask how soon 
 the rocky treasure-house would be empty. To-day
 
 FROM BIG OAK FLAT TO MURPHTS. 145 
 
 Murphy's would hardly exist except that it is on one of 
 the routes to the Calaveras Big Trees, and most of the 
 Big Tree pilgrims by this route sleep two nights at 
 Murphy's. 
 
 For this we too had come to Murphy's. And for this 
 we too rose at five in the morning, and set out to climb 
 four hours up-hill. Twenty-three hundred feet we were 
 to rise in sixteen miles. In what good faith we did it. 
 And how sharp set were we, mile by mile, for the first 
 sight of the first Big Tree. On either side forests 
 stretched, almost unbroken for much of the way. 
 Scarcely a sign of human habitation is to be seen along 
 the road. We grew impatient, in spite of ourselves, 
 and weary of the monotonous aisles of pines. At last 
 we came out on higher ground ; distant mountains were 
 revealed, — the Coast Range in the west and to the 
 north and east the shining snow-points of the high 
 Sierras. 
 
 '• Almost there now," said the driver ; and as he 
 spoke we saw the gleam of the white house among the 
 trees. Looking eagerly to right, to left, we sprang out 
 on the piazza. Trees on all hands, majestic, straight, 
 but just such trees as we had been living with for weeks, 
 it seemed to us. What did it mean ? " Where are the 
 Big Trees ? " we exclaimed to bystanders. Bystanders 
 looked astounded. We seemed such pigmies, I sup- 
 pose, and our question so hugely impudent. 
 
 " There are a few of them," curtly replied some one, 
 with a dignified wave of his hand to the left. 
 
 We looked, we gazed ; earnestly, honestly. We said 
 no more, but we walked off at a brisk pace to the giants 
 nearer at hand. We followed a sandy road, which 
 wound in and out among the trees. Pine shingles, with 
 names of great and little men printed on them, were 
 nailed to the trunks, — history, poetry, politics, press, 
 and pulpit, all jumbled together. Bryant, and Grant, 
 and Clay, and Cobden ; Henry Ward Beecher and 
 Uncle Tom; Dr. Kane and James King, Esq., — who- 
 ever he may be, — Vermont and Florence Nightingale and
 
 146 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 Elihu Burritt. Could any thing be droller than for such 
 trees, after their centuries of royal solitude, to find them- 
 selves with labels of pine shingle tacked to their sides, 
 calling them by the names of these men of a day ? Per- 
 haps, except for the shingles, the trees might sooner 
 have seemed big ; but it took long to forget those. The 
 would-be poetical names were worst of all. 
 
 "Mother of the Forest" (set down on the catalogue 
 as being "without bark"), "Three Graces," and 
 " Beauty of the Forest," — these were the names that 
 stirred most fury in our souls. It seems strange that 
 neither satire nor resentment has taken shape in this 
 matter. Many hearts must have been touched to the 
 quick by the sight of the poor trees, by the spectacle of 
 might so dishonored. 
 
 But, in spite of the shingles, the trees were grand. 
 The inevitable underestimate at first sight wears off, 
 and the reaction from it is intense. When it takes 
 twenty-four steps to climb up a ladder set against the 
 side of a fallen tree, and your head swims a little as you 
 reach the top, with nothing to hold on by ; when you sit 
 in a pavihon built on and only just enclosing a tree- 
 stump over nine yards in diameter, on which thirty-two 
 people have danced at a time ; when you walk into a 
 fallen tree, which is half-buried in earth, and walk on 
 and on under its curving roof, and see apertures in it so 
 high above your head that you cannot reach the grasses 
 which have taken root in the crumbling bark around 
 their edges ; when, as you walk here, you see, a hun- 
 dred feet away, a tall man coming toward you, he also 
 finding the brown ceilinged chamber high enough ; 
 when you see a horse, carrying a rider, gallop through 
 the same mysterious archway, wonder does not long 
 delay ; and when, later, walking on and on in the forest, 
 you find many trees as large in circumference as these 
 standing bright and full-leaved from two to three hun- 
 dred and twenty-five feet high, wonder becomes akin to 
 veneration. 
 
 But many things in Nature move us more than size;
 
 FROM BIG OAK FLAT TO MURPHY'S. I47 
 
 wonder, even tinged with veneration, is shorter-lived 
 than tenderness. The most vivid memory I brought 
 away from the Calaveras Grove is of a tiny little striped 
 squirrel, which had fallen from its nest, high up in one 
 of the largest trees. The little thing could not have 
 been many days old ; its eyes were scarcely open and it 
 could not crawl. It lay on the ground, uttering the 
 most piteous cries. We waited and watched a long 
 time, hoping that the mother might come to its help. 
 Then we made a soft bed of leaves and moss in a deep 
 cleft of one of the roots, and hid it from sight. After 
 we had made the circuit of the grove, we returned to 
 this tree, hoping that the little creature would either 
 have died or have been found by its parents. It still 
 lay there, moaning ; but the moans were feebler. It 
 was strangely hard to come away, and leave the helpless 
 dying thing ; but I think it could not have lived long, 
 and I never think of it without remembering a good 
 word said somewhere in our Bible about that feeble folk, 
 the conies, for whom the Lord cares.
 
 I4J5 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME 
 
 LAKE TAHOE. 
 
 A LAKE six thousand feet above the sea, thirty 
 miles long, sixteen miles wide, surrounded by 
 mountains from which no summer melts all the snow, 
 walled round the edges by firs and pines, set at the rim 
 in a Mosaic of polished pebbles and brilliant flowers, — 
 is not that a lake to be loved ? And I have not yet said 
 a word of its water, which is so blue that it seems im- 
 possible it should not stain, and so clear that one can 
 see fishes swimming more than a hundred feet below his 
 boat, and so cold that ice would not cool it. For its 
 water alone it could be well loved, if it lay in a desert 
 It has had some hard fortune in way of names. A Ger- 
 man once named it Lake Bompland, and a militia gen- 
 eral named it, after a governor, Lake Bigler. But ten 
 years ago, by some marvellous good luck (I wish we 
 knew whom to thank for it), it was rechristened by the 
 old Indian name, Tahoe, pronounced by the Indians 
 Tah-oo, and meaning " Big Water." 
 
 To find Lake Tahoe, one must journey on the Overland 
 Railroad six days west from New York or one day east 
 from San Francisco, and leave the cars at Truckee. 
 Truckee is as odd as its name. It looks so much as it 
 sounds that one wonders if it could have been named 
 beforehand. Truckee has one street. It is a broad, 
 rocky, dusty field. The railroad track runs through it, 
 so close to the houses on one side that you step from 
 the cars to the hotel piazza. From the railroad side to 
 the other plank, walks are laid at intervals : but there is 
 no road, no semblance of a road, up and down the field. 
 Enormous bowlders lie here and there, and you drive
 
 1.AKE TAHOE. 149 
 
 around them. Poor Truckee has had no time to blast 
 rock on its highway, for it has been three times burnt 
 out in nine months. Opposite the hotel is a long line 
 of low wooden shops, with a row of slender evergreen 
 trees in front, — trees cut down and stuck into the 
 ground, not planted. Beyond these comes the Chinese 
 quarter, — another long row of low, huddled, rickety 
 wooden buildings, half of them black from the smoke of 
 the fires, and all of them swarming with shiny-faced 
 Chinese children. Newly cleared hill-slopes, hideous 
 with blackened stumps, come down to the very backs 01 
 the houses. Truckee sells timber, and cuts down the 
 nearest first. If anybody had had sense, the near slopes 
 would have been left covered with trees, and Truckee 
 would have had comfort and beauty ; but now it is 
 stripped, shelterless, dusty, as if it had been set down 
 in a rocky Sahara. 
 
 Blackberries and strawberries and apricots and 
 peaches and pears and apples can be bought on the side- 
 walk in Truckee early in July. You will be invited to 
 an Indian-corn dance, too, if you can read the Indian lan- 
 guage ; for you will meet the invitations on all the 
 corners. They are painted in red and white and black 
 on the foreheads and cheekbones of Indian men and 
 women. We supposed, at first, in our ignorance, that 
 this was the usual style of promenade paint on the noble 
 savage of these latitudes ; but it was explained to us 
 that it was their method of circulating the news and ex- 
 tending the invitations of a great Festival, the ccrn- 
 daiice, which was to take place a few weeks later. What 
 a delicious device of taciturnity. There they stood, — 
 men, women, wrapped in blankets, proud, impassive, 
 speechless, — looking at each other, and us, and the 
 street, their sharp, fathomless eyes gleaming out from 
 among the ghstening scarlet and white hieroglyphics on 
 their faces. " Request the pleasure of," etc., looks un- 
 commonly queer done in Indian red over an eyebrow. 
 But one needs to think before calling it silly or barbar- 
 ous. It has its merits: no words lost, for one thing;
 
 150 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 economical, too, for another; and no replies expected, 
 best of all, — though one could not be sure, perhaps, of 
 this last. I do not know that a few days later the 
 whole tribe might not have been seen painted in new 
 colors and shapes, to signify their intended absence or 
 presence. 
 
 The road from Truckee to Lake Tahoe lies along the 
 bank of the Truckee River, a small stream, which 
 comes foaming and roaring down from the High Sier- 
 ras, in a swift fashion for a carrier of wood. But wood 
 it carries — all it can lift and spin and whirl — every 
 day ; and in many places we saw it choked full of the 
 black, shiny logs, and groups of men ("log-drivers"), 
 up to their waists in the water, trying to separate them 
 and hurry them along. We saw also a " log-shoot," 
 which is a fine sight of a sunny morning, — a yellow, 
 glistening line from the top of the mountain straight 
 to the river's edge. This line is made of two split logs, 
 laid lengthwise, close, smooth side up. Down this, logs 
 are sent sliding into the river. Before the log is half 
 way down the planks beneath it are smoking, blue and 
 fast, from the friction. Sometimes they take fire. As 
 the log hits the river-edge, it often somersaults twice, 
 and leaps with such force that the water is thrown up in 
 a sparkling sheaf higher than the tops of the trees. 
 Four or five times over, taking less than half a minute 
 a time, we saw this swift, craunching slide, pale smoke- 
 wreath, and glittering water-spout. 
 
 And then we came to a foundling asylum for trout. 
 We went in, and the proprietor set all the infants fight- 
 ing for food at once, to amuse us. Their dormitories 
 were cool and well ventilated, certainly, consisting of a 
 series of unroofed tanks : and the chopped liver on 
 which they are fed must have been of the very best qual- 
 ity, for they scrambled for it faster than beggars ever 
 scrambled for pennies. The youngest of all were put 
 in shallow covered boxes, with gravelled bottoms and 
 only a little water. Those that were but four days old 
 were droll. There were millions of them in a box.
 
 LAKE TAHOE. 15 1 
 
 They looked like white currants, with two black beads 
 for eyes and a needle-point for tail. The man said 
 they would be trout presently and weigh two or three 
 
 founds apiece. It seemed unlikelier than any thing 
 ever heard. 
 
 You are three hours going from Truckee to Lake 
 Tahoe, and it is so steadily up hill that you begin to 
 wonder long before you get there why the lake does 
 not run over and down. At last you turn a sharp 
 corner, and there lies the lake, only a few rods off". 
 What color you see it depends on the hour and the day. 
 It has its own calendars — its spring-times and winters, 
 its dawns and darknesses — incalculable by almanacs. 
 
 It is apt to begin by gray, early in the morning ; then 
 the mountains around it look like pale onyx and the 
 sky, too, is gray. Then it changes to clouded sapphire, 
 and the mountains change with it also to a pale, opaque 
 blue ; then to brilliant, translucent, glittering sapphire, 
 when the right sort of sun reaches just the right height. 
 And, when there is this peculiar translucent sapphire 
 blue in the water then the mountains are of opal tints, 
 shifting and changing, as if heat were at work in their 
 centres. 
 
 Then, if at sunset the mountains take on rose or 
 ruby tints, the water becomes like a sea of pink pearl 
 molten together with silver ; and as the twilight wind 
 cools it it changes to blue, to green, to steel-gray, to 
 black. This is merely one of its calendars of color ; 
 one which I happened to write down on a day when, 
 lying all day by a second-story window, I saw no inter- 
 val of foreground at all, — only the sky arching down 
 to the lake, and the lake reaching, as it seemed, up to 
 my window-sill. I felt as one might who sailed in a 
 hollow globe of sapphire or floated in a soap-bubble. 
 
 There are two tiny steamboats on Lake Tahoe. 
 Every morning one lies at the little wharf opposite the 
 hotel, and rings its miniature bell and whistles its 
 gentle whistle; but it will wait while the head waiter 
 pu's I'p rnor" lunch, or the bridegroom runs back for
 
 152 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOMR. 
 
 the forgotten shawl. The twenty or thirty people who 
 are going off in her all know this, and nobody hurries. 
 There are several small villages on the shore of the lake ; 
 there are some Hot Springs ; there is Cornehan Beach, 
 where tiny red and yellow cornelians can be picked up by 
 handfuls ; there is Emerald Bay, where are sharp chffs 
 many hundred feet high, and water of a miraculous 
 green color. It takes all day to go anywhere and come 
 back in one of these boats, for the engines are only of 
 one tea-kettle power. In fact, as the little craft puffs 
 and wriggles out from shore, it looks as if it had the 
 Quangle Wangle for steersman, and as if Lionel and 
 his companions might come back on the rhinoceros's 
 back. The row-boats are better ; and, if you take a 
 row-boat, Fred is the man to row you. Everybody at 
 Lake Tahoe knows Fred. He it was who rowed us out 
 to one Sunday service we shall not forget. It was four 
 o'clock in the afternoon. Summer afternoons on Lake 
 Tahoe are warm till sunset — never has the mercury 
 been known to rise above 75 degrees in this magic air ; 
 and it rarely, during July and August, falls below 62 
 degrees. The delight and the stimulus of this steady, 
 clear, crisp air, snow-cooled, sun-warmed, water-fed, 
 cannot be told. Day after day of warm sunlight, such 
 as only rainless skies can show ; and night after night 
 of the sleep which only cool nights can give ; almost it 
 seems to me that miracles of cure might be wrought 
 on these shores. 
 
 The Lake Tahoe House (one of the very best in all 
 Cahfornia.) stands in a small clearing on the shore of 
 the lake. A minute-and-a-half's walk, chiefly down- 
 stairs, and you are at the water's edge. For a few 
 rods up and down the lake the trees are felled ; 
 there are also four or five small houses ; but, once 
 past these, you glide instantly into shadow of the firs 
 and pines, and can beHeve that you are the first to 
 sail by. On this Sunday we rowed to the south, keep- 
 ing close into the shore. Two miles below the hotel 
 we had seen a picturesque lumber-mill, standing in
 
 LAKE TAHOE. 153 
 
 another small clearing, which from the lake looked 
 like a flower-garden, so gay was it with solid reds and 
 blues. 
 
 Searching for this, we rowed slowly along, — now 
 coming so near the shore that we could reach the 
 brakes and mosses, now striking out far into the lake 
 to go around a fallen tree, which walled our path as 
 effectually as if we had been on foot in the woods. As 
 we drew near the mill, and saw the gay colors more 
 distinctly, we looked at each other in speechless won- 
 der. We had seen fields yellow with the eschscholtzia, 
 and spots so blue with blue-larkspur that we had taken 
 them for ponds ; but never had we seen such radiance of 
 color as this. Spaces six feet, ten feet, twelve feet square, 
 set thick with the scarlet-painted cups growing and flow- 
 ering in such fulness it hardly looked Hke itself, and fully 
 justified its common name in California, — " Painter's 
 Brush." Mingling with this, also, in great solid spaces, 
 a light blue forget-me-not, flowering in full heads ; two 
 other blue flowers grew in great profusion all about ; 
 one grew in low clumps. The flowers were set on the 
 stem like the foxglove flowers, but three rows thick, 
 making a wide spike, which on its front gleamed like a 
 row of blue steel tube-mouths, so deep was the color, 
 so lustrous the surface. What would we have given 
 to have known or to have been able to find out the 
 name of this superb flower. The other blue flower was 
 like a snap-dragon and grew on slenderer stems. Then 
 there was a royal pennyroyal, with white flowers in 
 heads hke clovers ; and a graceful branching plant, full 
 of small trumpet-shaped blossoms, of a vivid cherry 
 red. We gathered them not by handfuls or by bunches, 
 but by armtuls, and staggered back into the boat, literally 
 loaded down. 
 
 Then we said to Fred : — 
 
 " Now, row us back to that thicker part of the wood 
 where we saw those fine green ferns." 
 
 Jumping out to get the ferns, and going a few steps 
 into the wood, we came upon a still more wonderful
 
 154 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 spot. The water of the Lake had made up in the 
 spring into a small hollow among the bushes ; this was 
 now left green as a river meadow. It was not more 
 than ten or twelve feet either way, and the grass in the 
 centre was wet and rank. On its outer edges grew red 
 lihes, scarlet columbines, high green brakes, and wil- 
 lows ; but these were not its glory. Tall, stately, 
 white as Annunciation lilies, there stood forty or fifty 
 spikes of a flower we had never seen. It was from 
 two to five feet high. The blossoms were small, re- 
 sembhng syringa blossoms, but set thick on long, tas- 
 selling stems, as corn blossoms are ; and these again 
 massed thick around the central stem, making a branch- 
 ing, drooping, and yet erect and stately spike, not un- 
 like the spike of the flower of the Indian corn, except 
 that it was much thicker and more solid. It was the 
 most regal flower I ever saw growing. Among these 
 were growing many lower spikes of a tiny white flower 
 like our lady's-tresses. But even these spikes of this tiny 
 flower were at least two inches in circumference at the 
 bottom, tapering up to the top exquisitely. 
 
 Again loaded with sheaves, we climbed back into the 
 boat. Fred looked on wonderingly. There was no 
 room to step, to sit. He never carried such multi- 
 tudes before. 
 
 " Now, row out, Fred, into the middle of the lake," 
 we said, as we sank down. 
 
 By this time the sunsetting had begun. The sky 
 and the mountains and the water were all turning rose- 
 pink ; and we came shooting anon in the midst of the 
 rose-color, bringing our fiery reds and stately white! 
 We set the tall snowy spikes upright along the sides of 
 the boat ; great nodding yellow disks, too, of the ele- 
 campane and the vermillion bells of columbine. Then 
 we m.ade one huge bouquet of the scarlet painted cups 
 and the blue forget-me-nots ; one of the red trumpet 
 flower and the white pennyroyal, with a solid base of 
 the mysterious dark blue flowers ; one of the white 
 ladj's-tresses, with the red trumpets ; and one of the
 
 LAKE TAHOE. 155 
 
 stately white spikes, with branching ferns. Then, set- 
 ting these up as royal passengers, we lay down humbly 
 at their feet, and, with our heads low, looked off over 
 the rose-colored waters. Much I doubt if so gorgeous 
 a pageant will ever float again on that water. 
 
 The next day we rowed early in the morning. Fred 
 had assured us that in a still morning one could see the 
 bottom of the lake where it was one hundred and fifteen 
 feet deep. We doubted, but longed to believe. The 
 water was like glass. We rowed out toward the centre 
 of the lake. The snow-covered mountains on the 
 further side were reflected in long, white, shimmering 
 columns on the purple surface of the water. 
 
 "Thirty," "fifty," "sixty," "one hundred feet deep,' 
 Fred called out from time to time as he rowed steadily 
 on. And we, hanging half out of the boat, exclaimed 
 with irrepressible wonder at the golden-brown world 
 below, into which we were gazing. We could see the 
 bottom of the lake as clearly as we could see the bottom 
 of the boat. It was a dusty field, with huge bowlders, 
 covered with a soft brown growth, which made them 
 look like gigantic sponges. Then would come great 
 ledges of rock ; then dark hollows, unfathomably deep. 
 
 " I shpect if she be dry she be shust Hke these moun- 
 tains," said Fred, — " all canyons and pig beaks." 
 
 And in a moment more : " Here it ish one hunder 
 fifteen feet clear," he called out triumphantly, and lifted 
 his oars. 
 
 Not a stone was indistinct. We could count small 
 ones. It seemed as if we could touch them with ease ; 
 and, swift as an arrow, apparently within our hand's 
 reach, went by a shining trout. 
 
 " How far down was he, Fred ? " we called. 
 
 " Ach ! Don't know. Maype fifty feet," said Fred. 
 The trout were an old story to him. 
 
 But it was when we turned to row back that the full 
 wonder of such a transparent sea was revealed to us. 
 The sun was behind us. As we looked over the bows, 
 we could see the shadow of our boat, of our heads, of
 
 156 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 the moving oars, all distinct on the soft brown bottom 
 of the lake. This shadow lay off to the left, a little 
 ahead, ghding as we glided, pausing as we paused ; 
 then, direcdy ahead, ghding as we glided, pausing as we 
 paused, went anodier double, equally distinct, but dark 
 and shimmering on the surface. This was the reflection. 
 Over the edges of this phantom boat we seemed to 
 be leaning with even more eagerness than over the 
 edges of the one below. It was an uncanny sight. To 
 have two shadows would have been too much for even 
 Peter Schlemihl. It added much to the unreality of 
 the sight that every round stone, every small object on 
 the bottom was surrounded by a narrow line of rainbow. 
 These gave a fantastic gayety to the soft amber-brown 
 realm, and, beautiful as they made it, made it also seem 
 more supernatural. 
 
 " You pe shust in time," called Fred. " In two min- 
 ute you not see nothing. There vill pe vint." 
 
 Sure enough. Already the ripple was in sight, com- 
 ing rapidly toward us from the north. The air stirred 
 faintly, our glass sea quivered and broke noiselessly 
 under us, and the phantom boat below disappeared. 
 
 As we rowed on the shallower water, nearing the shore, 
 where we could still see the bottom distinctly, the effects 
 of the sunlight on it were exquisite. It lay in lapping 
 and interlacing circles and ovals of yellow, and the sur- 
 face ripples were reflected there in larger hues. The 
 reflection of the oars in the water on each side of us 
 looked like golden snakes, swimming fast alongside, 
 and the beautiful rainbow lines still edged every object 
 on the bottom, — even an old shoe and the ace of dia- 
 monds, which were the last things I saw on the bottom 
 of Lake Tahoe. "Not so inappropriate, eithei," said 
 we, '* ugly as they are. For the old shoe meant good 
 luck, and diamonds are trumps all the world over.'
 
 A/y BAY IN THE WILDERNESS. iS7 
 
 MY DAY IN THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 IT was the morning of our eighth day in Ah-wah-ne ; 
 and the next day we must go. 
 
 If it had been my birthday of my eightieth year in 
 Ah-wah-ne, I could not have dung to the valley more 
 fondly. As I looked up to the dark line of firs on either 
 side of the Great Fall, I pictured to myself the form of 
 that six-year-old boy of the Ah-wah-ne-chee, who, when 
 the white men entered the valley, was seen cHmbing, 
 naked, like a wild chamois, on the glistening granite 
 face of the rock-wall, midway between heaven and earth, 
 to escape the enemy. A cruel man of his tribe lured 
 him down and gave him captive to the white men, who 
 christened him Reuben, put trowsers on him, and sent 
 nim to school. But just when they thought they had 
 him tamed, he stole two horses and ran away, " to illus- 
 trate the folly of attempting to civiHze the race," says 
 the biographer of the poor Ah-wah-ne-chee ; "to illus- 
 trate the spell of Ah-wah-ne,"' say I. Swift on the 
 stolen horses I know he rode back to Ah-wah-ne, and 
 finding it in the hands of white men, fled on to some 
 still remoter walled valley, where he lives in a wigwam 
 to-day. 
 
 " John Murphy, guide," as with quaint dignity he 
 writes his name, stood near me, also looking up at the 
 Fall. 
 
 " When you come back next year, 's ye say you're 
 comin', but then folks never does come back when they 
 say they will," said Murphy, " Pll hev a trail built right 
 to the base o' thet upper fall." 
 
 "Why, Mr. Murphy, where will you put it?" I said,
 
 15S BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 looking along the sheer gray wall three thousand feet 
 high. 
 
 "There's plenty of places. I'll make it as broad 'n' 
 easy a trail 's there is in this valley," said Murphy 
 quietly ; " 'tain't half so steep as 'tis up Indian Canyon, 
 where they've just finished a new trail this week; at 
 least so they say ; I hain't seen it." 
 
 " Up Indian Canyon," I exclaimed, for I knew where 
 that lay ; it was the next one to the east of the Great 
 Fall, and in one of the steepest parts of the valley. 
 " Then why can I not go out of the valley that way, and 
 strike across to Gentry's t " 
 
 Murphy hesitated. 
 
 " Well, ye might ; an' 'twould be jest what you'd like ; 
 you could cross the Yo Semite Creek just above the 
 Fall, an' go up on to Eagle Pint ; an' the view from 
 there is finer than 'tis from Sentinel Dome where I took 
 ye yesterday. But ye see I mistrust whether the river 
 ain't too high to ford." 
 
 What more could be needed to make one resolve to 
 go ? Boom-boom-boom, sounded the deep violoncelld 
 undertones of the Fall, thundering down from the sky, 
 three thousand feet up. Ford that ? Every drop oC 
 blood in one's veins took a bound at the thought. 
 
 All the Scotchman in Murphy demurred about the 
 undertaking ; but the woodsman and the sympathizing 
 guide conquered. 
 
 " I'd like to hev ye see it first rate," he said, "but I 
 want ye to understand before we set out, that I shan't 
 cross if I think there's any resk." 
 
 This last with a determination of tone which was 
 worthy of Cromwell. 
 
 In an hour all was ready, and, in spite of shaking 
 heads and warning voices, we set out. In that short 
 time the usual amount of conflicting testimony had been 
 gathered as to the trail and the condition of the river. 
 '•The trail was finished;" "the trail was only hali 
 lone ; " " the river was much too high to be forded ; ' 
 * a man had come across yesterday, wHhout trouble."
 
 MY DAY IN THE WILDERNESS. 159 
 
 " I expect ye'd kind o' hate to give up, an' come down 
 into the valley agin ? " said Murphy, inquiringly, as we 
 rode out into the meadows. 
 
 " Mr. Murphy," I replied, " I shall not give up, and 
 come down into the valley again. There must be some 
 other way of getting across, higher up. Is theie not ? " 
 
 If Mr. Murphy perceived the truly feminine manner 
 in which I defined my position, the dehcious contrast 
 between my first sentence and my last, he did not betray 
 any consciousness of it, but answered with undisturbed 
 gravity : — 
 
 " Why, yes ; there's the old Mono Trail, a good piece 
 farther up the river. But I dunno 's you could ride so 
 far 's that. However, we don't know yet but what we 
 can get over to the first ford." And Murphy relapsed 
 into his customary thoughtful silence. 
 
 The meadow was dewy and sweet ; through the lush 
 grass and brakes we rode past red hlies, white azalias, 
 columbines, and wild roses : after half an hour of this, 
 we struck the new trail and began climbing the wall. 
 
 Almost at once, by the first two or three bends of the 
 trail, we were lifted so high above the valley, that its walls 
 seemed to round and close to the west, and the green 
 meadow and its shining river sank, sank, like a mala- 
 chite disk, slowly settling into place, at bottom. The 
 trail was steeper than any we had seen. Even Murphy 
 muttered disapprovingly at some of its grades, and 
 jumped down and walked to make the climb easier for 
 his old gray. On our left hand rose a granite wall, so 
 straight that we could see but a little way up, so close 
 that we had need to take care in turning corners not to 
 be bruised by its sharp points, and so piled up in pro- 
 jecting and overlapping masses that, mountain as it was, 
 it seemed as if it might topple at any second. On our 
 right hand — space ! nothing more ; radiant, sunny; 
 crisp, clear air: across it I looked over at the grand 
 domes and pinnacles of the southern wall of Ah-wah-ne ; 
 down through it I looked into the depths of Ah-wah-ne ; 
 away from it I turned, di/zy, shuddering, and found the
 
 l6o bITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 threatening rocks on the left friendly by contrast. Then, 
 with impatience at my own weakness, I would turn my 
 face toward the measureless space again, and compel 
 myself to look over, and across, and out and down. 
 
 But it could not be borne for many minutes ; even 
 Murphy did not like it. 
 
 " I reckon this trail won't be much of a favorite," he 
 said grimly ; " 'pears to me it's worse'n 't used to be 
 gettin' up among the trees, on the Injun trail." We 
 zigzagged so sharply that we seemed often to be merely 
 doubling on our own track, with no perceptible gain, 
 although each ascent was so steep that the horses had 
 to stop for breath every two or three minutes. But to 
 all my propositions to walk Murphy replied with firm 
 denial. 
 
 " You'll be tired enough, come night, anyhow," he 
 said, with a droll mixture of compassion and approbation 
 in his voice : " you stay where ye be ; that horse can 
 do it well enough." 
 
 But he led his own more than half the way. 
 
 New flowers, and new ferns, that I had not found 
 before in all Ah-wah-ne, hung thick on the rocky wall, 
 which, facing south, has sun all day, and can make the 
 most of Ah-wah-ne's short summers. 
 
 Every cleft was full of color or of nodding green. 
 High in the very topmost crevices waved scarlet and 
 blue blossoms like pennons, so far above our heads that 
 we could see no shape, only the fluttering color; and 
 long sprays of yellow honeysuckle swept into our very 
 faces again and again. 
 
 Suddenly, Murphy halted, and exclaimed : 
 
 " I vow ! " 
 
 Several other voices spoke at once, surprise and curi- 
 osity in their tones : a bend in the trail concealed the 
 speakers. I hurried around it, and found myself facing 
 four men working with pickaxes and spades on the 
 trail. A small fire was burning on the rocks, and a big 
 iron pot of coffee boiled and bubbled above it, exhaling 
 delicious fragrance. The men leaned on their tools and
 
 MV DAY IN THE WILDERNESS. i6l 
 
 looked at me. I looked at Murphy. Nobody spoke. 
 This was the end of the new trail ! 
 
 " I s'pose ye can get through well enough ; the 
 bushes are cut down," said one. 
 
 Murphy said something in a tone so low I could not 
 hear ; I fear it was not complimentary to my riding. 
 
 " Mr. Murphy," said I, '' I would rather ride all day 
 and all night in the woods than ride down this precipice 
 again. Pray keep on. I can follow wherever you can 
 go." 
 
 Murphy smiled pityingly at me, and went on talking 
 with the men. Then he walked away with them for a 
 few moments. When he came back, I read in his eyes 
 that we were to go on. 
 
 " There's the old Injun trail," he said, " there ain't 
 any trouble about the trail. The thing that stumps me, 
 is the river ; there don't none of these men think you 
 can get over." 
 
 " But I'm goin' to get you through to Gentry's, some- 
 how, before I sleep," added Murphy, with a new and 
 delightful doggedness spreading over his face ; and he 
 sprang into his saddle, and pushed on. One of the men 
 picked up his hatchet, and followed, saying : — 
 
 " There's a bad piece just out yonder ; I guess I'll fix 
 a little for the lady." 
 
 The "piece" consisted simply of a brook, full of 
 bowlders, water running like a mill-race, fallen trees 
 and bent saplings, and tangled bushes all woven and 
 interwoven above it. How we got over I do not know. 
 Then the knight with the hatchet went back, and we 
 began to pick our way up Indian Canyon. I could see 
 no trail. All I knew was that Murphy was zigzagging 
 along before me, on the steep side of the Canyon, 
 through thickets of interlaced growths of all sorts, and 
 over numberless little streams which were foaming 
 across our track, and that I was following him, 
 
 " Don't try to guide the horse," he called back to me 
 every few minutes. " He'll follow me, or pick out a 
 better way for himself."
 
 l52 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 The "better way" resulted presently in a most sur- 
 prising sensation. , Lifting one forefoot after the other 
 ^carefully, and setting them both down firmly on the 
 farther side of a big fallen tree, my horse whisked his 
 two hind feet over at one jump, which nearly threw m* 
 over his head. 
 
 " You villain ! " shouted Murphy, who happened to 
 be looking back. " That's because he's gettin' tired ; 
 I'll look out and not lead ye over any more trees Vg 
 enough to jump." 
 
 Many an extra half-mile did we ride before night by 
 reason of this : it was hours before I could ride my 
 horse at the smallest log without a sharp terror. 
 
 But Indian Canyon did not last long. Once at the 
 head of it, we came out into magnificent spaces of for- 
 est ; pines and firs from one hundred to three hundred 
 feet high, all about us, and as far as we could see, and 
 it seemed as if we could look off as far as upon an 
 ocean, for the trunks rose straight, and bare, and 
 branchless for fifty, sixty, eighty feet. The ground was 
 soft, with piled layers of brown pine needles, and 
 high-branching brakes, which bent noiselessly under 
 our feet. In and out among the fallen trees, now 
 to right, now to left. Murphy pushed on, through 
 these trackless spaces, as unhesitatingly as on a turn- 
 pike. 
 
 Following a few paces behind, I fell into a silence as 
 deep as his. I lost consciousness of every thing except 
 the pure animal delight of earth, and tree, and sky. I 
 did not know how many hours had passed, when Murphy 
 suddenly stopped, and said : — 
 
 " You set as if you was getting tired. I reckon you'd 
 better rest a spell here ; and I'll go down on foot to the 
 river an' see if we can get across. You'll feel better, 
 too, if you eat somethin'." And he looked at me a little 
 anxiously. 
 
 It was past noon. Murphy was right : it was high 
 time for rest and for lunch, but merely to leave the 
 saddle was not rest. The intense realization of the
 
 MV DAY IN THE WILDERNESS. 163 
 
 grandeur and the solitude was only heightened as I 
 sat all alone, in such silence as I never knew, in such 
 space as I never felt. Murphy was not gone, he said, 
 more than ten minutes, but in that ten minutes I lived 
 the life of all hermits who have ever dwelt in desert or 
 mountain. 
 
 As he came slowly towards me, I studied his face : 
 Ford ? or no ford ? 
 
 I could not gather a gleam of indication, but one 
 learns strange reticence with reticent people. I did 
 not speak, only smiled : Murphy did not speak, only 
 smiled, but shook his head, and began at once to fasten 
 the saddle-bags on his saddle again. 
 
 In a moment, he spoke. " No use. Couldn't get 
 across there myself, nohow. I never see the river so 
 high 't this time o' year." 
 
 Now what was to be done ? The old Mono trail, of 
 which Murphy had spoken, came up the other side of 
 Indian Canyon, and struck the river four miles higher. 
 We could not be many miles from that trail ; but the 
 finding it was a matter of luck and chance. We might 
 strike off on the ridges along the river, in just the line 
 to hit it. We might wander about for hours, and not 
 find it. Then, again, when we had found it, and by it 
 had reached the river, what if even there the river proved 
 unfordable ? This was Murphy's great point of per- 
 plexity, I could see. 
 
 "We should have hard work to get back to the valley 
 again to-night," he said. 
 
 I shuddered at the thought of riding down that wall 
 after dark. But I kept silence. I did not wish to seem 
 to bias his decision. At last he burst out with, — 
 
 " I'm blamed if I know what to do. I hate to give 
 up an' go back's bad 's you can. I can sleep well 
 enough under a tree, if wust comes to wust, but I 
 dunno 's 't 's right to run any risk oii't for you." 
 
 Sleeping under a tree, with brave, kind, old Murphy 
 to keep a watch-fire burning, looked to me like paradise 
 in comparison with riding down Indian Canyon at night.
 
 1 64 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME, 
 
 " Mr. Murphy," said I, " you must decide. I myself 
 would far rather ride all night, or sit all night under a 
 tree, than go down that trail again. I am not in the 
 least afraid of any thing excepting that. But I prom- 
 ised to be guided by your judgment, and I will. I will 
 turn right round now, and go back to the valley, if you 
 say so. But you must decide. Do just what you really 
 think best." 
 
 This I said because my whole heart was set on going 
 to Gentry's by the Mono trail. 
 
 Murphy pulled out his watch. It was half -past one 
 o'clock. 
 
 " I don't think we could be later'n three, gettin' to 
 the river," he said. " I'll do it ! I'll resk it ! " 
 
 "But I dunno 's now I'm doin' right," he added, as I 
 clapped my hands and sprang up. I sat down again 
 and looked at him reproachfully. 
 
 "Yes, yes, I'll resk it," he exclaimed. "I wan't 
 agoin' back on myself, but I dunno 's I'm doin' right 
 for all that." 
 
 After we were mounted, Murphy stood still for some 
 minutes, looking carefully all around, taking his bear- 
 ings. Then he rode off in a direction apparently at 
 right angles to the river. Now I was to find out — I 
 who had thought the trail up Indian Canyon well-nigh 
 impassable — what it is to ride where there is no trail. 
 Over steep slopes, thick with bowlders and bushes, and 
 no trace of a path, — along rocky ledges, where loose 
 stones rolled under the horses' feet at every step, — 
 three times Murphy tried too near the river to get up to 
 the Mono trail. At last he turned back and struck 
 down into the leveler spaces of forest again. It began 
 to seem as if we were riding round and round in circles ; 
 north and south, and east and west, seemed alike ; it 
 was hard to believe that Murphy had any plan, any in- 
 stinct. Acre after acre of pine-forest, hill after hill oi 
 bowlders and bushes, valley after valley with threading 
 streams at bottom, we crossed. Sometimes we came 
 upon great fields of low berry-bearing bushes, undei
 
 MV DAY IN THE WILDERNESS. 165 
 
 the majestic pines. There was something touching 
 in the sight of these stores of tiny fruit for the fee- 
 ble folk who Hve on wing and in nests in the wilder- 
 ness. Clumps of the strange red snow-flower, too, we 
 saw in the wildest and most desolate places. Surely 
 there can be no flower on earth whose look so allies it 
 to uncanny beings and powers. " Sarcodes sanguinea," 
 the botanists have called it ; I beheve the spirits of the 
 air know it by some other. 
 
 Imagine a red cone, from four to ten inches in height, 
 and one or two in diameter, set firmly in the ground. 
 It is not simply red, it is blood-red ; deep and bright as 
 drops from living veins. It is soft, flesh-like, and in 
 the beginning shows simply a surface of small, close, 
 lapping, sheath-like points, as a pine-cone does. These 
 slowly open, beginning at the top, and as they fold back 
 you see under each one a small flower, shaped like the 
 flower of the Indian Pipe, and of similar pulpiness. 
 This also is blood-red ; but the centre of the cone, now 
 revealed, is of a fleshy-pinkish white ; so also is the 
 tiny, almost imperceptible stem which unites the flower 
 to it. They grow sometimes in clumps, like the Indian 
 Pipe, three or four in a clump, sometimes singly. As 
 far off as one can see down the dim vistas of these 
 pine-forests will gleam out the vivid scarlet of one of 
 these superb uncanny flowers. When its time comes 
 to die, it turns black, so that in its death, also, it looks 
 like a fleshy thing linked to mysteries. 
 
 At last Murphy shouted triumphantly from ahead : 
 *' Here's the trail. Fetched it this time ; now keep up, 
 sharp ; " and he rode off down a steep and rocky hill- 
 side, at a rate which dismayed me. The trail was faint, 
 but distinct : at times on broad opens, it spread out sud- 
 denly into thousands of narrow dusty furrows ; these 
 had been made by flocks of sheep driven through earlier 
 in the season. From some of these broad opens were 
 magnificent views of the high Sierras; we were six 
 thousand feet high, but they were five and six and eight 
 thousand feet higher still ; their glistening white peaks
 
 i66 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 looked like ice-needles, sharp, thick-set against the far 
 blue sky ; between us and them, a few miles off, to the 
 left, lay the beautiful granite-walled, meadow-paved 
 abyss of Ah-wah-ne, but its narrow opening made no 
 perceptible break in the grand surfaces of green and 
 gray over which we looked to the horizon. It seemed 
 long before we reached the river. At first sight of its 
 gleam through the trees, Murphy drove his spurs into 
 his horse, and galloped towards it. Slowly he rode up 
 and down the bank, looking intently at the water. 
 Then he turned and rode back to me. As before, I 
 studied his reticent face in vain. But, when he began 
 to speak, his eyes twinkled. 
 
 "It's runnin' pretty fast, but I can get ye over: I'll 
 do it now, if I have to carry ye. But I'm goin' to ride 
 over fust to see how the stones lay," and he plunged in. 
 I had hard work to hold my horse back from following. 
 Suddenly Murphy looked back and shouted, " Come on. 
 'Taint so deep 's I thought; come right on." For a 
 second I shrank. Murphy was half across ; the water 
 was foaming high; I could see no bottom; Murphy's 
 feet were thrown up by an inexplicable gymnastic twist, 
 so that they were nearly on his horse's back, and nearly 
 to his feet the water came ; the current seemed to me 
 swift enough to carry any living thing, man or horse, off 
 his legs in a second. But shame made me bold, and I 
 rode in. At the first gurgling rush of the water under 
 me, and the first sway of my horse's body in it, I leaned 
 forward, clutched his neck, shut my eyes, drew up my 
 left foot, and tried not to think. It could not have been 
 more than four or five minutes across, by the watch ; 
 but there are other measures of time than time. When 
 I scrambled out dripping on the bank. Murphy sat on 
 his horse looking at me kindly. 
 
 " Ye done that fust rate," he said, " an' now the 
 sooner we push on the better." 
 
 I pleaded for five minutes' rest for the horses to nib- 
 ble the low green grass which grew in the little bit of 
 meadow at the ford. Poor things ! it was half-past four
 
 MY DAY IN THE WILDERNESS. 167 
 
 o'clock ; not a mouthful of food had they had since 
 morning. For the last two hours mine had been snatch- 
 ing mouthfuls of every eatable and uneatable shrub we 
 had passed. 
 
 But Murphy was inexorable. " 'Twon't do them no 
 good, the little bit they'd get, an' we've got considerable 
 ridin' to do yet." he said. 
 
 " How far is it tc Gentry's now ? " said I. 
 
 " I dunno exactly," rephed Murphy, Wise Murphy ! 
 " If we'd come out on Eagle Pint, where we calculated 
 to, it 'ud ha' been about six miles from there to Gen- 
 try's. But it's some farther from here." 
 
 Some farther ! into sunless, pathless woods, miles 
 and miles of them, — out on bare plateaus, acres and 
 acres of them, — down canyons, steep and ledged with 
 bare rocks, or jungled with trees and bushes, down one 
 side, over the stream at bottom, and up the other side, 
 across three of them, led that Mono trail. And after 
 the woods, and the plateaus, and the canyons, came 
 more woods ; " the last woods," said Murphy. These 
 were the great Tamarack Flats. Dense, dark, desolate ; 
 trees with black-seamed bark, straight and branchless, 
 unloving and grim, up to the very tops ; and even the 
 tops did not seem to blend, though they shut out the 
 sky. A strange ancient odor filled the air, as fiom cen- 
 turies of distilling essence of resins, and mouldering 
 dust of spices. Again, and again, and again, we were 
 stopped by a fallen tree, which lay, barring our path for 
 a hundred feet each way, and was crossed again itself by 
 other fallen trees, till we had to whirl and twine and ride 
 up and down to get out of the corral. Then we would 
 come to a huge snow-bank, nine, ten feet high, curiously 
 dotted and marked over the whole surface, where rain- 
 drops had pattered down, and pine-needles had fallen ; 
 around these also we had to ride, for they were too 
 soft to bear the horses' weight. 
 
 After these circuits it was very hard to find the trail 
 again, for there was no trace of it on the ground, — only 
 old blazes on the trees to indicate it. 
 
 Sometimes Murphy would tell me to wait wliere I
 
 1 68 BITS OF TRA VEi^ AT HOME. 
 
 was, and not stir, while he rode back and forth look- 
 ing for a blaze on a tree. Sometimes I spied the 
 blaze first ; and then I felt a thrill of real backwoods 
 achievement. 
 
 On one of the opens he suddenly halted, and, waiting 
 for me to come up, pointed to a mark in the dust. 
 
 '• There's something ye never see before, I reckon," 
 he said. 
 
 It was a broad print in the dust, as if a mitten had 
 beeii laid down heavily. 
 
 "That's the trail of a grizzly," exclaimed Murphy 
 exultantly, " he was the last along this road." 
 
 A little further on he stopped again, and after leaning 
 low from his horse and looking closely at the ground, 
 called back to me : — 
 
 " There's been a whole herd of deer along here, not 
 but a very little while ago. I'd ha' liked it if you could 
 ha' had a look at 'em." 
 
 " Grizzlies, deer, and if there were any other wild 
 creature there, I should have been glad to see them all. 
 Murphy and I seemed to belong to the wilderness as 
 much as they. I felt ready to meet my kin, and rather 
 lonely that they were all out of the way. But I wished 
 that they kept their house better lighted. It was fast 
 growing dark ; very dark very fast. It was already 
 impossible for me to see the blazes on the trees ; and 
 Murphy had often to ride close up to a tree to make 
 sure he was right. The blazes were old, and in many 
 places almost the color of the rest of the tree. I could 
 see that Murphy was anxious. He kept his horse at 
 the fastest gait he thought I could follow, and said to 
 me every now and then. " Ye must keep up 's well 's ye 
 can. These woods is pretty dark." 
 
 My horse was a pacer, originally ; but bad usage and 
 old age had so robbed him of his gait, that the instant 
 he moved quickly he became almost unendurable. It 
 was neither pace, trot, nor run, but a capricious mixing 
 of the three. Hunger and crossness now added to the 
 iriegularitj of his motions, and it was simply impossible
 
 MV DAY IN THE WILDERNESS. 169 
 
 for me to bear more than a few minutes at a time of 
 any thing but a walk. I felt also a singular indifference 
 to getting out of that wood. It was uncanny in its 
 gloom and damp and chill ; but I liked being there. 
 Its innumerable and impenetrable black vistas had an 
 indescribable fascination. And here and there, even in 
 the darkest distances, gleamed out the vivid warmthless 
 glow of the mysterious snow-plants ; sometimes just in 
 the edge of the snow-drifts ; sometimes on the banks of 
 inky brooks. 
 
 Very dark, very fast, it grew ; Murphy rode pitilessly 
 ahead, and I crept patiently along, keeping my eye on 
 the ghostly winding white of his horse among the trees. 
 Suddenly I saw a light to the left, and Murphy wheel- 
 ing towards it. I hurried up. Never shall I forget the 
 picture I saw. A smouldering fire, two evil-looking 
 men crouching over it ; their mules tied to a tree ; and 
 a third still more villanous-looking man leading up a 
 third mule. 
 
 But Murphy hailed them with as cheery good fellow- 
 ship as if they had been old friends. 
 
 " How far is it to Gentry's ? " 
 
 " Five miles," said they sullenly. 
 
 " 'Tain't now," exclaimed Murphy, startled into a tone 
 of real astonishment. 
 
 " Guess you'll think so before you get there ; five 
 o^<7<?<^ miles," said the man who was leading up the mule. 
 
 Murphy rode on without a word, but in a few mo- 
 ments he turned to me, and said, energetically : — 
 
 " Ye must reely keep up smart now. I couldn't pos- 
 sibly follow this trail, if it was to get much darker," and 
 he fairly galloped off ; turning back, however, to say in 
 a lower tone, " I shouldn't wonder if them men were 
 runnin' a man off from jail." 
 
 Luckily, the last three miles of the five were on the 
 high road. It had not seemed very long to me, though 
 it was so dark that I could not have followed Murphy 
 easily except for his being on a white horse ; when he 
 stopped, and, waiting for me to come up, said, " I sup-
 
 170 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME, 
 
 pose 'twould surprise ye now if I was to tell you thut 
 the road is jest out yonder ! " 
 
 " No, Mr. Murphy," I replied, " nothing could sur- 
 prise me less." 
 
 " Well, here 'tis," he said, a little crest-fallen, " and 
 our troubles are all over." 
 
 It had a friendlier look than the black wood, after all, 
 — the broad gray belt of distinct road. And then first 
 I realized how very dark it had been. Even in the road 
 it was real night. 
 
 Three miles now down to Gentry's, the very road over 
 which, eight days before, we had rattled so furiously in 
 the stage, going to Ah-wah-ne. 
 
 I jumped off my horse ; for five minutes I lay at full 
 lengdi on a mossy log. 
 
 '' I thought ye'd have to own up to bein' some tired 
 before ye was through with it," said Murphy, with more 
 compassion in his voice than in his words. " I tell j<?//, 
 though, I couldn't ha' followed that trail half an hour 
 longer. It ain't so dark yet 's it's going to be." 
 
 Gayly we cantered up to Gentry's piazza. The lamps 
 flared as the astonished landlord opened his door to see 
 who came riding so late. It was almost nine o'clock ; 
 twelve hours and more I had been in my saddle. 
 
 " Do tell," and " ye don't say," were the ejaculations 
 with which everybody received the news of our having 
 ridden out and from Ah-wah-ne by Indian Canyon and 
 the old Mono trail. 
 
 What a night's sleep it was, to be sure, which I took 
 that night at Gentry's ! and what genuine sympathy 
 there was in Murphy's voice, the next morning, when 
 he came early to my door, for any orders to take down 
 into the valley ! and I said: " Tell them I am not one 
 whit tired, Mr. Murphy." 
 
 "Well, I'm reely glad," replied Murphy. "I was 
 reely a'most afraid to ask ye." 
 
 When we bade Murphy good-bye the next day, we 
 found it hard to make him take the small gift we meant 
 as token of our friendship, and our appreciation of his
 
 MY DAY IN THE WILDERNESS. 171 
 
 kindness and faithfulness as guide. At last he con- 
 sented, saying : " I've refused a great many times to 
 take any thin' this way. But I'll tell ye what I shall do. 
 When I get a place of my own, I shall jest put this 
 money into some books, and write you folks' names in 
 em to remember ye by." 
 
 But we are beforehand with him in the matter of 
 names. 
 
 Here let his stand written, to rememtmr him by : — 
 
 John Murphy: 
 
 Best of Guides in Most Wonderfiu of Valleys.
 
 NEW ENGLAND.
 
 HIDE-AND-SEEK TOWN. I7S 
 
 HIDE-AND-SEEK TOWN. 
 
 IT lies in the uplands, and you can go within a mile 
 of it by rail. But where are the uplands, and 
 whence departs the train to find them, and what is the 
 real name of the town, it is far from my purpose to tell. 
 I christened it '' Hide-and-Seek Town " myself one day 
 as I was drawing near it, and observed how deliciously 
 it dodged in and out of view while it was yet miles away. 
 One minute it stood out on its hill like a village of light- 
 houses on a promontory of the sea, the next it skulked 
 behind an oak grove and was gone, then peered out 
 again with its head of meeting-house spires, and then 
 plunged down between two low hills, as lost as if it had 
 leaped into a well ; and so it behaved for a half hour, 
 its white houses laughing hke white teeth in a roguish 
 mouth, as we vainly strained our eyes to get one good 
 sight of the unknown place to which we were bound. 
 You can come, as I said, within a mile of it by rail ; 
 but when the little insignificant train drops you in a 
 silent nook at the entrance of a wood, and then crawls 
 away between two sandy banks of sweet fern and red 
 lilies, you are overwhelmed with a sudden sense of the 
 utter improbability of a town anywhere within reach. 
 The stage, — why does New England say " stage," and 
 not "coach" ? — which waits for you, is like hundreds 
 you have seen before, but here it looks odd, as if it 
 were Cinderella's chariot : and when you find that there 
 are nine to ride outside, besides the nine in, the inex- 
 plicableness of so many people having come at once 
 startles you. They become seventeen mysteries imme- 
 diately, and you forget that you are the eighteenth.
 
 176 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 No questions are asked as to your destination ; with a 
 leisurely manner the driver puts his passengers into the 
 coach and shuts the door gently, — no hurry. There is 
 a mile to go up hill before you reach the town. On 
 some one of the longest, steepest hills, he will swing 
 himself round in a marvellous bit of amateur acrobatism 
 from the top of the coach to the lowest step, and, put- 
 ting long arms into the windows, collect the fares, and 
 find out to which of the Hide-and-Seek houses you wish 
 to go. If you are a stranger arriving without prejudices, 
 and ready to take your chance anywhere, it is a beauti- 
 ful thing to watch the impartiality of his tone in giving 
 to you the names of the different hotels and boarding- 
 houses. The most jealous and exacting landlord could 
 not find fault with him. 
 
 At the end of his enumerations you are as much at a 
 loss as you were in the beginning, and probably end by 
 jumping out before the first house at which the stage 
 stops. Pages have been written about the inquisitive- 
 ness of the rural New Englander ; comparatively httle 
 has been said about his faculty of reticence at will, 
 which is quite as remarkable. I doubt if any man can 
 be found to match him in a series of evasive and non- 
 committal replies. This habit or instinct is so strong 
 in him, that it often acts mechanically when he would not 
 have it, as, for instance, when he is trying to tell you 
 the road to a place. 
 
 There is a mile to go up hill before you reach the 
 town. The first part of the road is walled on the right 
 hand by a wood, — a thick wall of oaks, birches, maples, 
 pines, chestnuts, hickories, beeches, ashes, spruces and 
 cornels ; yes, all these growing so close that none can 
 grow broad, but all must grow high, and, stretch up 
 however much they may, their branches are interwoven. 
 This is one of the great pleasures in Hide-and-Seek 
 Town, — the unusual variety of tree growths by the 
 road-sides and in the forests. I do not know of a sin- 
 gle New England tree which is not found in luxuriant 
 abundance.
 
 HIDE-AXD-SEEK' TOWX. 177 
 
 On the left-hand side of the road are what are called 
 by the men who own them, "pastures." Considered as 
 pastures from an animal's point of view, they must be 
 disappointing- : stones for bread to a cruel extent they 
 give. Considered as landscape, they have, to the 
 trained eye, a charm and fascination which smooth, ful- 
 some meadow levels cannot equal. There can be no 
 more exquisite tones of color, no daintier mosaic, than 
 one sees if he looks attentively on an August day at 
 these fields of gray granite. lichen-painted bowlders 
 lying in beds of light-green ferns, bordered by pink and 
 white spiraeas, and lighted up by red hlies. 
 
 The stretches of stone wall tone down to an even 
 gray in the distances, and have a dignity and signifi- 
 cance which no other expedient for boundary-marking 
 has attained. They make of each farm a little walled 
 principality, of each field an approach to a fortress : and 
 if one thinks of the patience which it must need to build 
 them by the mile, they seem at once to take a place 
 among enduring records or race memorials. I suppose 
 that a hundred years would make httle or no impression 
 on a well-built stone wall. I know that I spent many 
 happy hours in my childhood on one which was even 
 then very old, and must be now well on the w^ay to its 
 centennial. 
 
 There was a mile to go up hill. We have come half 
 wa}'. The wood wall has ceased : open fields on either 
 side give us long stretches of view to the north and to 
 the south. The road-sides are as thick-set with green 
 growths as the sides of English lanes. To my think- 
 ing they are more beautiful : copses of young locusts, 
 birches, thickets of blackbern,- and raspberry bushes, 
 with splendid waving tops like pennons ; spiraea, 
 golden rod. purple thistle, sumach with red pompons, 
 and woodbine flinging itself over each and all in posi- 
 tions of inimitable grace and abandon. How comes it 
 that the New Englander learns to carry himself so stiff- 
 ly, in spite of the perpetual dancing-master lessons ck 
 his road-sides ? With each rod thai we rise the out 
 12
 
 T78 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 look grows wider ; the uplands seem to roll away far- 
 ther and farther ; the horizons look like sea-horizons, 
 distant and misty, and the white houses of the town 
 might be signal stations. Presently we come out upon 
 a strange rocky plateau, small, with abrupt sides falling 
 off in all directions but one, like cliff walls. This is 
 the centre of the town. It is simply a flattened expanse 
 of a mountain spur. The mountain itself is only three 
 thousand feet high, and this plateau is nearly half way 
 up. 
 
 It would seem a brave thing, the climbing up here to 
 build frame-houses to take the brunt of such winds as 
 sweep across this ridge ; but the Indians were so much 
 fiercer than the winds, that I dare say those early set- 
 tlers never observed the howling of the gales which to- 
 day keep many a nervous person wide-awake of nights. 
 The mountain was a great rendezvous of hostile Indians 
 in the days when the Colony of Massachusetts Bay was 
 fighting hand to hand for life. There are some old, tat- 
 tered leather-bound books behind the counter of " the 
 store," which are full of interesting records of that time. 
 There are traditions of Governors' visits a hundred 
 years before the Revolution ; and a record of purchase 
 of twelve square miles, " not including the mountain," 
 for twenty-three pounds, from three sachems of the 
 Nipmucks. In 1743 the first settlement was made on 
 the present town site, by a man who, being too poor to 
 buy, petitioned the Colonial Government to give him 
 the land for his home, setting forth, "that your peti- 
 tioner, though a poor man, yet he humbly apprehends 
 he hath the character of an Honest and Laborious 
 man, and is minded to settle himself and his Family 
 theieon." 
 
 It was given to him on the condition that he should 
 keep a house for the accommodation of travellers 
 "going West!" Immortal phrase, which only the 
 finality of an ocean can stay. 
 
 Twenty years later, the handful of settlers voted " to 
 hire four days' preaching in May next, to begin ye first
 
 HIDE-AND-SEEK TOWN 179 
 
 Sabbath, if a minister can be conveniently procured," 
 and that Christian charity was as clearly understood 
 then as to-day may be seen by another record a few 
 pages further on, of the town's vote to pass on to the 
 next settlement, a poor tramp with his family : " Hepzi- 
 bah, his wife, Joseph, Isaac, Thankful, Jeduthun, 
 Jonathan, and Molly, their children." There is an inex- 
 plicable fascination in this faded old record on the 
 ragged page. Poor fellow ; a wife and six children in 
 such a wilderness, with no visible means of support! 
 Why did they call that first girl " Thankful " .? And 
 what can it be in the sound of the word Jeduthun, which 
 makes one so sure that, of all the six children, Jeduthun 
 was the forlornest ? As we approach the Revolutionary 
 period, the records grow more distinct. There is even 
 a sort of defiant flourish in the very tails to the y's and 
 g's, with which that ancient clerk, God rest his soul, 
 records that the town had voted, " not to pay the Min- 
 ute Men for training ; " and that the minister is to be 
 "inquired of" for his conduct in "refusing to call a 
 Fast," and for his " Publick Discourses to the Minute 
 Men, as tending to discourage people in defending their 
 Rights and Liberties,'' and, " for taking cattle suspected 
 to be Colonel Jones's." A wide range of dehnquencies, 
 surely ! A Httle later, a committee is appointed to 
 "keep him out of the pulpit." One wonders if in those 
 days ministers were in the habit, or under the necessity, 
 of knocking down in the aisles all parishioners who 
 didn't wish to hear them preach. 
 
 Even while the town was training its Minute Men, 
 the records open, " In his Majesty's name ; " but a few 
 months later, comes a significant page, beginning, " In 
 the name of the Government and People of the Province 
 of the Massachusetts Bay." This page records the 
 vote of the town, " To concur with the Continental Con- 
 gress in case they should Declare Independence." 
 Five months later is a most honorable record of a citi- 
 zen who went to the Provincial Congress, rendered his 
 account for fifty pounds for his expenses, and then, so
 
 l8o BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 that no heirs of his should demand it in future, pre- 
 sented it to the town in a formal receipt, "from him 
 who wishes them every good connected with this and 
 the F'uture State." Could any strait of the Republic 
 to-day develop such a Congressman as that ? After 
 spending a few hours in looking over these old records, 
 one feels an irresistible drawing toward the old grave- 
 yard, where sleep the clerk and his fellow-townsmen. 
 It is the "sighthest" place in the town. On the apex 
 of the ridge, where the very backbone of the hill sticks 
 out in bare granite vertebrae, it commands the entire 
 horizon, and gives such a sweep of view of both land 
 and sky as is rarely found from a hill over which runs a 
 daily used road. By common consent, this summit is 
 called Sunset Hill ; it might as well have been named 
 for the Sunrise also, for, from it, one sees as far east as 
 west ; but the Sunrise has no worshippers, and all men 
 worship the Sunset. In summer, there are hundreds of 
 strangers in Hide-and-Seek Town ; and every evening, 
 one sees on Sunset Hill, crowds who have come up 
 there to wait while the sun goes down ; chatting lovers 
 who see in the golden hazy distance only the promised 
 land of the morrow ; and silent middle-aged people to 
 whom the same hazy distance seems the golden land 
 they long ago left behind. The grave-yard lies a few 
 steps down on the south-west slope of this hill. In 
 August, it is gay with golden rods, and the old gray 
 stones are more than half sunk in high purple grasses. 
 The sun lies full on it all day long, save in the south- 
 west corner, where a clump of pines and birches keeps 
 a spot of perpetual shade. Many of the stones are lit- 
 tle more than a mosaic of green and gray Hchens. Old 
 Mortality himself could not restore their inscriptions. 
 The oldest one which is legible is dated 1786, and 
 runs : — 
 
 " Thy word commands our flesh to dust; 
 
 Return, ye sons of men ; 
 All nations rose from earth at first, 
 
 And turn to earth again."
 
 HIDE-AND-SEEK TOWN. l8l 
 
 Another, quite near, bearin^^ the same date, takes th« 
 same uncomfortable license of rhyme : — 
 
 " Alas ! this brittle clay, 
 Which built our bodies first, 
 And every month, and every day, 
 'Tis mouldering back to dust 1 " 
 
 Seven years later, a man, who was, as his grave-stone 
 sets forth, " inhumanly murdered " by one of his towns- 
 men, was laid to rest, under the following extraordinary 
 stanza : — 
 
 " Passengers, behold ! My friends, and view, 
 Breathless I lie ; no more with you ; 
 Hurried from life ; sent to the grave ; 
 Jesus my only hope to save ; 
 No warning had of my sad fate ; 
 Till dire the stroke, alas 1 too late ! " 
 
 Side by side with him sleeps a neighbor, dead in the 
 same year, whose philosophical relatives took unhand- 
 some opportunity of his head-stone to give this post- 
 humous snub : — 
 
 " How valued once, avails thee not ; 
 
 To whom related, or by whom begot ; 
 
 A little dust is all remains of thee ; 
 
 'Tis all thou art, — and all I soon must be." 
 
 The sudden relenting candor of the last phrase but 
 imperfectly atones for the gratuitous derogation of the 
 first two lines. Surely, in those old days only the very 
 queer survived ! And, among the queerest, must have 
 been the man who could carve upon a fellow-man's 
 tomb such a light tripping measure as this : — 
 
 " This languishing head is at rest ; 
 
 Its thinking and aching are o'er. 
 This quiet, immovable breast 
 
 Is heaved by affliction no more. 
 This heart is no longer the seat 
 
 Of trouble and sorrowing pain ; 
 It ceases to flutter and beat ; 
 
 It never will flutter again."
 
 1 82 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 But one cannot afford to spend in the old grave-yard^ 
 many of his summer days in Hide-and-Seek Town. 
 Fascinating as are these dead men's sunny silent homes 
 with the quaint inscriptions on their stone lintels, there 
 is a greater fascination in the sunny silent homes of the 
 living, and the roads leading to and fro among them. 
 North, south, east, and west, the roads run, cross, dou- 
 ble, and turn, and double again ; as many and as intri- 
 cate as the fine-spun lines of a spider's web. You shall 
 go no more than six or seven miles in any direction 
 without climbing up, or creeping down, to some village ; 
 and the outlying farms of each meet midway, and join 
 hands in good fellowship. 
 
 There is a fine and unbroken net-work of industry 
 and comfort over the whole region. Not a poverty- 
 stricken house to be seen ; not one ; not a single long 
 stretch of lonely wilderness ; even across the barrenest 
 and rockiest hill-tops, and through the densest woods, 
 run the compact lines of granite walls, setting the sign 
 and seal of ownership and care on every acre. The 
 houses are all of the New England type ; high, narrow- 
 angled, white, ugly, and comfortable. They seem 
 almost as silent as the mounds in the grave-yard, with 
 every Wind shut tight, save one, or perhaps two, at the 
 back, where the kitchen is ; with the front door locked, 
 and guarded by a pale but faithful " Hydrangy ;" they 
 have somehow the expression of a person with lips com- 
 pressed and finger laid across them, rigid with resolve 
 to keep a secret" It is the rarest thing to see a sign of 
 life, as you pass by on a week day. Even the hens 
 step gingerly, as if fearing to make a noise on the grass ; 
 the dog may bark a little at you if he be young ; but, if 
 he is old, he has learned the ways of the place, and only 
 turns his head languidly at the noise of wheels. At 
 sunset, you may possibly see the farmer sitting on the 
 porch, with a newspaper. But his chair is tipped back 
 against the side of the house; the newspaper is folded 
 on his knee, and his eyes are shut. Calm and blessed 
 folk! If they only knew how great is the gift of their
 
 HIDE-AND-SEEK TOWN. 183 
 
 quiet, they would take it more gladly, and be serene 
 instead of dull, thankful instead of discontented. 
 
 They have their tragedies, however ; tragedies as ter- 
 rible as any that have ever been written or lived. 
 Wherever are two human hearts, there are the elements 
 ready for fate to work its utmost with, for weal or woe. 
 On one of these sunny hill-sides is a small house, left 
 unpainted so many years, that it has grown gray as a 
 granite bowlder. Its doors are always shut, its win- 
 dows tightly curtained to the sill. The fence around it 
 is falling to pieces, the gates are off the hinges ; old 
 lilac bushes with bluish mouldy-looking leaves crowd 
 the yard as if trying their best to cover up something. 
 
 For years, no ray of sunlight has entered this house. 
 You might knock long and loud, and you would get no 
 answer ; you would pass on, sure that nobody could be 
 hving there. No one is living there. Yet, in some one 
 of the rooms sits or Hes a woman who is not dead. 
 She is past eighty. When she was a girl, she loved a 
 man who loved her sister, and not her. Perhaps then, 
 as now, men made love idly, first to one, next to an- 
 other, even among sisters. At any rate, this girl so 
 loved the man who was to be her sister's husband, that 
 it was known and whispered about. And when the day 
 came for the wedding, the minister, being, perhaps, a 
 nervous man, and having this poor girl's sad fate much 
 in his thoughts, made the terrible mistake of calling her 
 name instead of her sister's, in the ceremony. As soon 
 as the poor creature heard her name, she uttered a 
 loud shriek and fled. Strangely enough, no one had 
 the presence of mind to interrupt the minister and set 
 his blunder right, and the bride was actually married, 
 not by her own name, but by her sister's. From that 
 day the sister shunned every one. She insisted that 
 the bridegroom had been married to her; but she wished 
 never again to see a human face. She is past eighty, 
 and has not yet been able to die. Winter before last, 
 in the time of terrible cold, it was noticed for a day or 
 two that no smoke came out of the chimney of this old
 
 iS4 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 house. On the fourth day, tlie nei^ihbors broke open 
 the door and went in. They found the woman lying in- 
 sensible on the floor, nearly frozen. A few embers 
 were smouldering on the hearth. When they roused her 
 to consciousness, she cursed them fiercely for having 
 disturbed her;, but, as the warmth from fire and wine 
 began to steal into her blood, she thanked them, — the 
 only words of thankfulness heard from her lips for a 
 half century. After all, she did not want to die ! She 
 has relatives who go to the house often and carry her 
 food. She knows their voices, and, after parleying with 
 them a few minutes through the closed door, will open 
 it, take the food, and sometimes allow them to come in. 
 1 have twice seen her standing, at twilight, in the dank 
 shade of her little yard, and fumbling aimlessly at the 
 leaves of the lilacs. She did not raise her head, nor 
 look toward the road, and I dared not speak to her. A 
 gliding shape in a graveyard at midnight would not have 
 seemed half so uncanny, so little of this world. 
 
 He who stays one month in Hide-and-Seek Town 
 may take each day a new drive, and go on no day over 
 a road he has seen before. A person of a statistical 
 turn of mind, who knows the region well, has taken 
 pains to find this out. We are more indebted than we 
 reahze to this type of person. Their facts furnish cloth 
 for our fancies to come abroad in. There are souls of 
 such make that, to them, any one of these roads must 
 seem enough for a summer ; for that matter, enough for 
 any number of summers ; and, in trying to frame a few 
 of their beauties in words, to speak of them by the mile 
 would seem as queer and clumsy as if one, in describing 
 a sunset, should pull out his almanac and remind you 
 that there were likely to be three hundred and sixty odd 
 of them in a year. Yet, there is no doubt thd.t, to the 
 average mind, the statement that there are thirty dif- 
 ferent drives in a town would be more impressive than 
 it would be if one could produce on his page, as on a 
 canvas, a perfect picture of the beauty of one, or even
 
 HIDE-AND-SEEK TOWN. 185 
 
 many of its landscapes ; to choose which one of the 
 thirty roads one would best try to describe to win a 
 stranger's care and liking, is as hard as to choose be- 
 tween children. There is such an excelling quahty in 
 each. After all, choice here, as elsewhere, is a ques- 
 tion of magnetism. Places have their affinities to men, 
 as much as men to each other ; and fields and lanes 
 have their moods also. I have brought one friend to 
 meet another friend, and neither of them would speak ; 
 I have taken a friend to a hillside, and I myself have 
 perceived that the hillside grew dumb and its face 
 clouded. 
 
 If I may venture, without ever after feehng like a 
 traitor to the rest, to give chief name to one or two of 
 the Hide-and-Seek roads, I would speak of two, — one 
 is a highway, the other is a lane. The highway leads 
 in a north-westerly direction to a village on the shore of 
 a lake. It is seven miles long. Three of those miles 
 are through pine woods, — "the long woods," they are 
 called, with curt literalness, by the people who tell you 
 your way. Not so literal either, if you take the word 
 at its best, for these miles of hushed pines are as solemn 
 as eternity. The road is wide and smooth. Three 
 carriages, perhaps four, might go abreast in it through 
 these pine stretches. There is no fence on either side, 
 and the brown carpet of fallen pine-needles fringes out 
 to the very ruts of the wheels. 
 
 Who shall reckon our debt to the pine ? It takes 
 such care of us, it must love us, wicked as we are. It 
 builds us roofs ; no others keep out sun so well. It 
 spreads a finer than Persian mat under our feet, pro- 
 vides for us endless music and a balsam of heahng in 
 the air; then, when it finds us in barren places where 
 bread is hard to get, it loads itself down with cones full 
 of a sweet and wholesome food, and at last, in its death, 
 it makes our very hearthstones ring with its resonant 
 song of cheer and mirth. 
 
 Before entering these woods, you have driven past
 
 1 86 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 farms and farmhouses, and meadow lands well tilled ; 
 old unpruned apple orchards, where the climax of un- 
 gainliness comes to have a sort of pathetic grace ; fields 
 of oats and barley and Indian corn and granite bowl- 
 ders, and not an inch of roadside all the way which is 
 not thick grown with white clover. Rabbit's foot. May- 
 weed, shepherd's purse, ferns, blackberry, raspberr}'-, 
 elderberry, and here and there laurel, and in Sertember 
 blue gentians. There is one bit of meadow I recollect 
 on this road. It is set in walls of pines ; four little 
 streams zigzag through it. You cross all four on narrow 
 bridges, in a space of two or three rods ; the strips of 
 meadow and strips of brooks seem braided together into 
 a strand of green and blue, across which is flung your 
 road of gray, bordered with dark alders. This is the 
 way it must look to a bird flying over. 
 
 The lane is one of many ways to a village on a hill 
 lying west of this town. The hill is so high that, as 
 you look westward, its spires and housetops stand out 
 against the sky, with not even a tree in the background. 
 In this lane nature has run riot. It is to all the rest of 
 the Hide-and-Seek roads what California is to New 
 England. All the trees and plants are miUionnaires, — 
 twenty, thirty per cent interest on every square foot. 
 One ignorant of botany has no right to open his mouth 
 about it, and only a master of color should go into it to 
 paint. It is an outburst, a tangle, an overflow, of 
 greens, of whites, of purples, of yellows. For rods at 
 a time there are solid knitted and knotted banks of 
 vines on either hand, — woodbine, groundnut vine, wild 
 or "false" buckwheat, clivis, green-brier, and wild 
 grape. The woodbine wreaths the stone walls ; the 
 groundnut vine springs from weed to weed, bush to 
 bush, tree to tree, fantastically looping them all to- 
 gether, and then, at last, leaps off at top of a golden 
 rod or sumach bough, waving a fine spiral taper tendril 
 a foot long, loose in the air. The false buckwheat, 
 being lightest, gets a-top of the rest and scrambles
 
 HIDE-AND-SEEK TOWN. 187 
 
 along fastest, making in July a dainty running ara- 
 besque of fine, white flowers above every thing else. 
 The clivis and the green-brier fill in wherever they can 
 get a corner. They are not so pushing. Then comes 
 the wild grape, lawless master of every situation. 
 There is a spot on this lane where it has smothered 
 and well-nigh killed one young oak, and one young 
 maple and a sumach thicket. They have their heads 
 out still, and very beautiful they look, — the shining, 
 jagged-edged oak leaves, and the pointed maples, and 
 the slender sumachs, waving above and in the matted 
 canopies of the grape ; but they will never be trees. 
 The grapevine is strongest. This lane leads over high 
 hill-crests, from which you have ever-changing views, — 
 now wide sweeps to the south horizon, now dainty and 
 wood-framed bits of near valleys or lakes, now out- 
 cropping granite ledges and spots strewn thick with 
 granite bowlders, as grand and stony as Stonehenge it- 
 self. Now the lane dips down into hollows in woods 
 so thick that for rods the branches more than meet over 
 your head ; then it turns a corner and suddenly fades 
 away in the queer front door-yard of a farm-house 
 flanked by orchards and cornfields ; then it dips again 
 into a deeper hollow and denser wood, with thick 
 undergrowths, which brush your wheels like hands 
 thrust out to hold you back ; then it comes out on a 
 meadow stretch, where the lines of alders and milk- 
 weeds, and eupatoriums and asters, border it so close 
 that you may pick, on any September day, your hands 
 full of flowers, if you like, by merely leaning out of 
 your carriage ; not only flowers, but ferns, — high three- 
 branched brakes and graceful ostrich-plume ferns you 
 can reach from your seat. These are but glimpses I 
 have given of any chance half-mile on this lane. There 
 are myriads of beautiful lesser things all along it whose 
 names I do not know, but whose faces are as familiar 
 as if I had been born in the lane and had never gone 
 away. There are also numberless pictures which come
 
 i88 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME} 
 
 crowding, — of spots and nooks, and pictures on other 
 roads and lanes in this rarest of regions. No one, who 
 knows and loves summer, can summer in Hide-and-Seek 
 Town without bearing away such pictures ; if he neither 
 knows nor loves summer, if he have only a retina and 
 not a soul, he must, perforce, recollect some of them. 
 A certain bridge, for instance, three planks wide, under 
 which goes a brook so deep, so dark, it shines not like 
 water, but like a burnished shield. It comes out from 
 a wood ; and, in the black shadow of the trees along 
 the edge of the brook stand, in August, scarlet cardinal 
 flowers, ranks on ranks, two feet high, reflected in the 
 burnished shield as in a glass ; or a meadow there is 
 which is walled on three sides by high woods, and has 
 a procession of tall bulrushes for ever sauntering through 
 it with lazy spears and round-handled halberds, points 
 down, and hundreds of yellow sunflowers looking up 
 and down in the grass ; or a wood there is, which has 
 all of a sudden, in its centre, a great cleared space, 
 where ferns have settled themselves as in a tropic, and 
 grown into solid thickets and jungles in the darkness ; 
 or another, which has along the roadside for many rods 
 an unbroken line of light green, feathery ferns, so close 
 set it seems that not one more could have grown up with- 
 out breaking down a neighbor ; under these a velvety 
 line of pine-tree moss, and the moss dotted thick with 
 " wintergreen " in flower and in fruit; or a lake, with 
 three sides of soft woods or fields, and the fourth side an 
 unbroken forest slope two thousand, feet up the north 
 wall of the mountain. These are a few which come 
 first to my thought ; others crowd on, but I force mem- 
 ory and fancy together back into the strait-jacket of the 
 statistical person, and content myself with repeating 
 that there are thirty different drives in Hide-and-Seek 
 Town ! 
 
 Next winter, however, memory and fancy will have 
 their way; and, as we sit cowering over fires, and the 
 snow piles up outside our window-sills, we shall gaze
 
 HIDE-AND-SEEK TOWN. 189 
 
 dreamily into the glowing coals, and, living the summer 
 over again, shall recall it in a minuteness of joy, for 
 which summer days were too short and summer light 
 too strong. Then, w'hen joy becomes reverie, and 
 reverie takes shape, a truer record can be written, and 
 its first page shall be called 
 
 A ROAD-SIDE. 
 
 WHITE CLOVER. 
 
 In myriad snowy chalices of sweet 
 
 Thou spread'st by dusty ways a banquet fine, 
 
 So fine that vulgar crowds of it no sign 
 
 Observe ; nay, trample it beneath their feet. 
 
 O, dainty and unsullied one ! no meet 
 
 Interpretation I of thee divine. 
 
 Although all summer long I quaff thy wine, 
 
 And never pass thee but to reverent greet, 
 
 And pause in wonder at the miracle 
 
 Of thee, so fair, and yet so meekly low. 
 
 Mayhap thou art a saintly Princess, vowed, 
 
 In token of some grief which thee befell, 
 
 This pilgrimage of ministry to go, 
 
 And never speak thy lineage aloud I 
 
 II. 
 
 WILD GRAPE. 
 
 Thou gypsy camper, how earnest thou here. 
 
 With thy vagabond habits full in sight. 
 
 In this rigid New England's noonday light? 
 
 I laugh half afraid at thy riotous cheer, 
 
 In these silent roads so stony and drear ; 
 
 Thy breathless tendrils flushed scarlet and bright 
 
 Thy leaves blowing back dishevelled and white, 
 
 Thyself in mad wrestle with every thing near ; 
 
 No pine-tree so high, no oak-tree so strong, 
 
 That it can resist thy drunken embrace ; 
 
 Together, like bacchanals reeling along, 
 
 Staying each other, ye go at a pace, 
 
 A.nd the roadside laughs and reaps all your wealth : 
 
 Thou prince of highwaymen ! I drink thy health I
 
 190 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 III. 
 
 MILKWEED. 
 
 O, patient creature with a peasant face, 
 
 Burnt by the summer sun, begrimed with stains, 
 
 And standing humbly in the dusty lanes ! 
 
 There seems a mystery in thy work and place, 
 
 Which crowns thee with significance and grace ; 
 
 Whose is the millc that fills thy faithful veins ? 
 
 What royal nursling comes at night and drains 
 
 Unscorned the food of the plebeian race ? 
 
 By day I mark no living thing which rests 
 
 On thee, save buttei-flies of gold and brown, 
 
 Who turn from flowers that are more fair, more sweety 
 
 And, crowding eagerly, sink fluttering down, 
 
 And hang, like jewels flashing in the heat. 
 
 Upon thy splendid rounded purple breasts.
 
 THE MIRACLE PLAY OF 1870. 19 1 
 
 THE MIRACLE PLAY OF 1870, IN BETH- 
 LEHEM, NEW HAMPSHIRE. 
 
 ONE does not need to go to Ammergau. On a night, 
 not of appointment beforehand, so far as we knew, 
 we went to sleep in Bethlehem, New Hampshire. We 
 were content, but not expectant. Ranges of mountains, 
 solid, blue, and stately hedging us round, yet leaving 
 open for our untiring gaze so wide a circle, that, at its 
 outer rim, even in clearest days, lingers a purple haze ; 
 near fields of brown ferns, scarlet cornels, and gray 
 bowlders frosted with myriad lichens ; woods, spicy and 
 sheltered with firs, soft under foot with unnumbered 
 mosses and mats of Linnaea, and rich in all sorts of 
 forest growths of bush and shrub and low flowering 
 things : all this seemed enough. We went to sleep, as 
 I say content, but not expectant of more than we had 
 had. We heard no sound in the night. We made no 
 baste in the morning. 
 
 With the dehcious leisureliness which wraps solitary 
 people in the warm, autumn mountain weather, we set 
 ourselves to beginning the day, and by chance looked 
 out of our window. 
 
 Like children at sight of a merry juggler's show, we 
 first shouted with delight, then drew in long, silent 
 breaths, with bewilderment too like awe to find easy 
 shape in speech. O whence ! O who ! How had their 
 feet passed by so noiselessly ? Who had touched with 
 this enchantment every leaf of every tree which stood 
 within our sight? Every maple-tree blazed at top with 
 tint of scarlet or cherry or orange or pale yellow 
 Every ash-tree had turned from green to dark purple oi
 
 192 BITS OF TEA VEL AT HO MA. 
 
 to pale straw-color. Every birch-tree shimmwed and 
 quivered in the sun, as if gold-pieces were strung along 
 its branches : basswoods were flecked with white ; 
 beeches were brown and yellow , poplars were marked 
 and spotted with vermilion ; sumachs had become lad- 
 ders, and bars, and fringes of fire ; not a single tree 
 was left of soHd, dark green, except the pines and the 
 larches and the firs ; and they also seemed to have 
 shared in the transformation, looking darker and greener 
 than ever, as a setting for these masses of flashing 
 color Single trees in fields, near and far, looked like 
 great he-wn jewels; with light behind them, the tint 
 flickered and waved as it does in transparent stones 
 held up to the sun. When the wind shook them, it was 
 like nothing but the tremulousness of distant seas burn- 
 ing under sunset. The same trees, filling in by tens of 
 thousands in spaces of the forests, looked not like any 
 thing which we know and name as gem, but as one 
 could fancy mid-air spaces might be and look in some 
 supernatural realm whence the souls of ruby and ame- 
 thyst and topaz come and go, taking for a little while 
 the dusty shapes of small stones on earth. 
 
 All this in this one night ! To north, to south, to 
 east, to west, it was the same. Miles away, at the very 
 feet of the farthest green mountains, shone the glory ; 
 within our hands' reach, at neighbors' gates, stood the 
 stately splendor. 
 
 With reverent eyes we went close into territory after 
 territory ; coming nearer, we found that the scarlet or 
 the claret or the crimson or the orange, which we had 
 seen from the distance as one pure, uniform tint, was no 
 longer scarlet or claret or crimson or orange, but all of 
 these, and more than all of these, shading up and down 
 and into each other by gradations indistinguishably fine 
 and beyond all counting; alternating and interrupting 
 each other, in single leaves or in clusters on boughs, 
 with an infinity of change and combination almost like 
 caprice or frolic. 
 
 I have seen our Western prairies in their June
 
 THE MIRACLE PLAY OF 1870. 193 
 
 flowering; I have seen also the mosaic fields of blos- 
 soms in the Ampezzo Pass, at which one cannot so much 
 as look without shaded eyes, and from which Titian learnt 
 color : I have seen old altar fronts on which generations 
 and centuries of kings have lavished jewels, till they are 
 so thick set that not one more dot can be added : but I 
 have never seen such flaming, shading, shaping, chang- 
 ing, lavishing, rioting of color as in this death of the 
 autumn leaves on these Bethlehem hills. 
 
 Every day we said, " This will be the last ; " and it 
 was the last bearing away with it its own tint of glory 
 never to return. But the next day was as beaut'ful, 
 sometimes we thought more beautiful, except that 
 the brilliance of the long royal line before it had 
 dulled our sense. Bright days dazzled us and made us 
 leap in their sun. Gray days surprised us, revealing 
 new tints and more gorgeous heats in the colors ; we 
 had unthinkingly believed that sunshine helped in- 
 stead of hindering. In this was a lesson. Also in the 
 sudden discovering, hour by hour, tiny hidden leaves 
 of unnoted things, under foot in fields, tucked away 
 in hedges, lying low even in edge of dusty roads, but 
 bright and burnished and splendid as any one of 
 those loftiest in air. Strawberry leaves dappled with 
 claret spots, or winy red with rims of yellow ; raspberry 
 and blackberry shoots as brilliant as maples ; the odd 
 little shovel-shaped sorrel leaves a deep, clear cherry 
 just pricked with orange; patient old ''hardback" stick- 
 ing to its heavy plumes of seed through thick and thin 
 of wind, its pretty oval leaves all tinted with delicate 
 browns and yellows and pinks blended ; "fireweed" by 
 thickets in desolaie places, six feet tall, and no two of 
 its sharp, slender, spike-shaped leaves of a tint, some 
 mottled, some yellow, some scarlet, some green ; — all 
 ihese we found and more, whose colors I cannot define, 
 and whose names, more shame to me, I do not know. 
 And so the days of the miracle play went on, to seven, 
 to ten, to fourteen. There were few to see it ; but even 
 the busy and usually unobservant farming people took 
 13
 
 194 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 note of it. " Never'n all my days did I see such a 
 sis^ht 's 'tis here naow," said one man, driving his oxen 
 off to the right of the road to make room for me with 
 'the best part of a maple-tree on my shoulder. And, 
 " Hev yew ben daown on the Wing Road?" said 
 another. 
 
 " No," said I ; " are the leaves very fine there ? " 
 
 " Wall, I jest wish you'd go 'n' see ! I was a 
 thinkin' abaout yew only last night, 'n' I sez to my 
 wife, 's we wus drivin' along ther, sez I, ' Naow them 
 folks that's allers a gittin' these 'ere leaves 'd better 
 come daown this road.' " 
 
 And another, a good old deacon, in pathetic mixture 
 of piety and poetry: "Wall, I've lived here on this 
 Bethl'em Street all my born days, 'n' I never see no 
 sich a color to these 'ere woods afore. I guess the 
 Lord knows abaout 's well haow to fix this world o' 
 hisin 's any on 'em do thet's allers a tryin' to make 
 aout haow he might ha' done it." 
 
 There is no doubt that many years will come and go 
 before Bethlehem hills will see such sights again. All 
 her people agree in saying that they never saw such be- 
 fore ; and I myself, during fifteen autumns of such 
 mountain hving and rambhng as only a passion for 
 them can inspire have never seen any thing like it. As 
 I write, the air is full of whirhng leaves, brown and 
 yellow and red. The show is over. The winds like 
 noisy carpenters, are taking down the scenery. They 
 are capricious and lawless workmen, doing nothing for 
 a day or two, and then scurrying about madly by night 
 to make up for lost time. Soon the naked wood of the 
 stripped trees will be all that we shall see to remind us 
 of last week's pomp and spectacle. But the thing next 
 in beauty to a tree in full leaf is a tree bare ; its every 
 exquisiteness of shape revealed, and its hold on the 
 sky seeming so unspeakably assured ; and, more than 
 the beauty of shape and the outlining on sky, the solemn 
 grace of prophecy and promise which every slender 
 twig bears and reveals in its tiny gray buds.
 
 THE MIRACLE PLAY OF 1870. 195 
 
 Last night, as if in final symphony to the play and 
 grand prelude of welcome to the conquering winter 
 which draws near, the color spirits took possession of 
 the sky, and for three hours shook its very folds with the 
 noiseless cadence of their motions. There they all were, 
 the green, the pink, the fiery red, which we had been 
 daring to touch and pick in leaves off stems, now float- 
 ing and dancing in disembodied ecstasy over our heads, 
 wrapped and twined in very light of very light, as in 
 celestial garments. Fixed stars seemed reehng in their 
 embraces : the whole firmament seemed to furl and 
 sway and undulate, as if it might presently be borne off 
 like a captured banner in their passing. From the 
 zenith to the eastern and western and northern hori- 
 zons, not one spot was dark. If there had been snow 
 on the ground, it would have been ht to redness as by 
 fire. The village looked on in solemn silence ; bare- 
 headed men and women stood almost in awe at every 
 threshold and gate. This also was such sight as had 
 never before been seen from their doors. The oldest 
 man here does not remember such an aurora. It is 
 hard to believe that Lapland itself ever saw one more 
 weird, more beautiful. 
 
 Next morning white frost and a clear, sparkling air, 
 the first of the autumn ; the very street seemed alive 
 with quickening sense of its stimulus. There was 
 separate delight in each footfall ; it felt like a wing 
 stroke. 
 
 " Guess it's cleared off naow, the right way," called 
 out one old man to another, as they passed on the road 
 
 " Wall, yes. I call this abaout 's pooty a day 's ye 
 ever see fur enny kind o' bizness," replied his friend. 
 
 I did not smile at the phrase of his speech. Our 
 hearts were in unison ; and he was better oft" than I, for 
 his homely simplicitj had found words where I had 
 been dumb !
 
 196 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME, 
 
 A GLIMPSE OF COUNTRY WINTER IN 
 NEW HAMPSHIRE. 
 
 IT is worth staying: or coming to see. There is noth- 
 ing like it in cities ; it should not have name in 
 common with that black, blustering, dripping-from- 
 eaves, knee-deep-in-slosh misery, which is all that New 
 York or Boston associates with the word " winter." 
 
 It began a month ago, as gently and cautiously as if 
 Nature were trying experiment, and did not know how 
 the earth could bear it : first, snow on the distant 
 mountains, to show us of what color it would be ; glis- 
 tening white like crystal, at noon ; sohd white like white 
 rock, if the day grew cloudy ; and deep pink at sunset, 
 like pink topaz, or conch-shell pearls, or cinnamon 
 roses ; our eyes could not grow wonted to the splendor. 
 Then came fine soft showers, a few moments long, sift- 
 ing lustreless silver on every grass-blade and tree-twig; 
 in an hour or two no trace was left, on the fields or by 
 the roadside ; but going into the woods, one found 
 fringes and patches of it on fallen logs, in hollows, and 
 laps of mosses. It is sad to think how few people have 
 heart (or chance) to go into the woods after early snows 
 begin. The hush of them is sweeter than their sound 
 in summer; there are just as many colors, and all new ; 
 and as for shape, the first light outhning of snow is 
 an almost miraculous revelation of infinitesimal points, 
 curves, peaks, jags, wreathings, and intertwinings of all 
 things that grow. There is not a dark corner from 
 beginning to end of the wood ; there is not a single un- 
 illumined moss stem ; no, not one, in great spaces where 
 moss and Linncea, and partridge-berry vines are so
 
 A GLIMPSE OF COUNTRY WINTER. 197 
 
 inextricably tangled, that lifting up any all the rest 
 come with it, in mats two feet wide ; no man could 
 count the fallen beech and maple leaves in even so little 
 room of ground as he might in five minutes tread full of 
 steps ; but every one of the leaves holds its own dia- 
 mond drop of water, or carven crystal of snow : they 
 are curled into milHons of shapes ; an artist might come 
 and draw from them alone, until next year interrupted 
 him. " O, what is that ? " said my friend yesterday, as 
 I held up to her a scrolled cornucopia of amber brown, 
 with a twisted stem two inches long. It looked like a 
 fantastic goblet, cut out of something finer than wood, 
 more shining than glass, and dyed as silk can be dyed. 
 Over and round the rim, there stayed, sohd and still, 
 what might have been frozen foam of the last toast 
 drank. It was only a huge beech leaf ; it had rolled 
 itself up as it fell, and poised in a cleft of its own tree's 
 root, so as to catch in open mouth all the snow it could 
 hold. 
 
 The hardier ferns are as green as in summer ; all the 
 mosses are greener ; and the lichens are but just begin- 
 ning to show what scarlets and yellows they mix ; and 
 low-lying leaves, cornels, tiarellas, and a myriad more, 
 are tinted wondrously with claret and purple and pink ; 
 gay, almost, as were the maple and ash leaves whicu 
 made the upper air so brilliant a month ago. Only the 
 firs and spruces seem unchanged ; perhaps their dark 
 glossiness is a little deepened ; but they do not take 
 much note of these sprinkling snows ; they bide their 
 time of beauty, which will be the first hour of storm ; 
 then, moment by moment, they will be transformed into 
 a dazzling Gothic architecture, the like of which is not 
 to be found on the earth, unless perchance there may 
 be arctic cathedrals built of ice in open polar fields, 
 where no men go to worship. 
 
 The Hght snows gently went and came, until we grew 
 aware of their promise and impatient of their delay. 
 Had it been her first snowing. Nature could not better 
 have won us to be ready for her spectacle. She was
 
 198 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 honest too ; for there were days of sleet; the windows 
 froze down, and the roads were iCy and horrible. 
 
 In these days a bustle of preparation was to be heard 
 and seen in the yillage. Men who had for weeks spent 
 most of their time in a miserable sort of waking trance, 
 on tilted chairs around the stove of the village " store," 
 were to be seen hard at work " banking up " their 
 houses. The heaping and boarding of these flowerless 
 flower-beds of earth around the lower stories of country 
 houses is sensible, perhaps, but not artistic. The Ger- 
 man peasantry keep out cold by a more picturesque 
 method, pihng their fire-wood compactly round and 
 round their houses, leaving small loopholes at windows, 
 till, finally, the whole structure is a combination of 
 castle and log-cabin, by no means ugly to see. 
 
 In the days too, potatoes, if accurately quoted, in 
 market phrase, might have been said to be " lively ; " 
 for they were being shovelled and tumbled by bushels 
 into cellar windows all along the street. 
 
 The blacksmith's anvil had no rest from morning till 
 late at night. His great red fire glared out like an 
 angry watchful eye long after dark ; much I fear the 
 poor country horses fared ill in his numb and weary 
 hands. 
 
 Builders' hammers, too, rang out more vigorously 
 than ever. There are eleven new houses going up in 
 this httle town. Next summer's hospitality will have 
 open doors enough, and nobody will turn away, as 
 scores have done this year, for want of room. 
 
 In these days also came Elder MacNaughton the 
 Baptist, crying " Prepare ye the way of the Lord ; " 
 and the Baptists prepared it after a bitter fashion; 
 laying violent hands on a little meadow brook, and 
 damming it up, till it made of itself a muddy pool, some 
 six feet square. Down to this pool, on a Sunday noon, 
 came six young women, one with her lover, to be bap- 
 tized in the icy water; also there was "that sacred 
 being," as good George MacDonald says, "a maid- 
 child." The village people came in silent, solemn 
 groups to look on ; some standing closely in rows
 
 A GLIMPSE OF COUNTRY WINTER. 199 
 
 along the edge of the stream, others sitting and stand- 
 ing a few rods off on top of the high sloping bank. We 
 felt almost as if we had come upon some gathering of 
 old Covenanters, under the gray sky of a Scottish win- 
 ter ; the bare frozen fields, the black fir woods, the 
 circling mountains, the rough rocks, the uncovered 
 heads and awed faces, the low minor cadences of the 
 psalm, and more than all the unutterable silences in 
 intervals of the service, — all made up a scene which 
 we shall not forget, and which will make that little 
 meadow brook sing less merrily in our ears for many a 
 summer to come. 
 
 But the days went on : and we being strangers in the 
 land, having neither houses to build or bank, nor horses 
 to be rough-shod, nor faith in Elder MacNaughton's 
 preaching, grew almost weary of waiting for sight of 
 grand, full winter. 
 
 Already the far-away Green Mountains were white, 
 and their distant slopes seemed to lift and lie level along 
 the horizon, as one could fancy icefields lying white and 
 high among blue icebergs. Mounts Washington, Jef- 
 ferson, and Adams were a snowy wall to the east ; and 
 glistening in the sun to the south lay the Franconias, 
 gentle and gracious still under all their snows, as in 
 summer's green ; every thing far and near, great and 
 small, was silvered, or tufted, or mounded with snow. 
 But not one smallest outhne was lost or altered ; we 
 could still see on Strawberry Hill the maple branch on 
 which the yellow-hammers had their nest ; each seed- 
 plume of golden-rods which we had spared in the lanes 
 stood upright, and only more beautiful for being frosted 
 over ; stone walls and fences stretched out plainer than 
 ever, being braided of black and white ; and wheels 
 still rattled in frozen ruts half filled and barely hid by 
 snow. This was not winter. We waited for more. 
 
 At last it came, as 1 almost think it loves best to 
 come, in the night ; soft, complete, shining ; small trace 
 now of any man's landmark, by wall or fence ; no color 
 Dut white and no shape but snow, to any shrub or tree 
 or wood ; looking out, we perceived that no man could
 
 200 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 any more tell us of Labrador, or Greenland : they can- 
 not be more than the whole of winter ; the whole Jr 
 winter lay between the horizon and our doorstep. For 
 a little there was not even road ; if we had had our way, 
 no human being should have taken step to make foot- 
 print between that sunrise and sunset ; nor should there 
 have been sound, save the slide of drifts from pine 
 boughs in the forest, and the whir of httle snow-birds' 
 wings. But we discovered that it is not possible to 
 look out on such a night's snow so early that it shall 
 not be found printed here and there with the tiny star- 
 shaped impress of feet so light that they barely jarred 
 the crystals ; also that the loud shouts of merry boys 
 are no more discordant in such morning's air than the 
 gentle noises snow-birds make when they fly. 
 
 In a few hours the village surveying and road-making 
 were over, and work began and went on. Since then 
 there has been no surprise, no change ; except that 
 every day the mountains have some tint of purple, or 
 blue, or gray, or red, which they have not had before, 
 and the great dome of sky looks higher and higher. 
 After living for months on such a plateau as this, from 
 which half the sky there is can be seen at once, it will 
 seem Hke groping bhndfolded to walk about city streets 
 and see sky only by strips, through chinks ; or more, 
 perhaps, as if the great celestial umbrella had been 
 suddenly shut down on our heads, and we were darkly 
 fumbling among the wires and bones. 
 
 Each day as we walk up and down the soft roads, 
 scattering the feathery flakes with our feet, craunching 
 a few now and then, or rolling them up into balls and 
 tossing them aimlessly, the good peoole of the village 
 stare at us with mingled amazement and pity. We 
 know they look upon us compassionately, thinking in 
 their secret hearts that we must be banished by some 
 sin or misfortune into this wintry exile. But we smile 
 as we pass them, and say under our breath, " Yes, pity 
 us ; we are glad of your pity ; we need it ; for we must 
 go away next week ! "
 
 A VERMONT GRAVEYARD. 20I 
 
 A MORNING IN A VERMONT GRAVE- 
 YARD. 
 
 IT is the warmest spot I have found to-day ; a high 
 wall of soft pines and willow birches breaks the 
 force of the wind on two sides, and the noon sunhght 
 lies with the glow of a fire on the brown crisp grass. 
 The blackberry vines, which this year have brighter 
 colors than the maple-trees, flame out all over the yard 
 in fantasdc tangles and wreaths of red, and the downy 
 films of the St. John's wort and thistle seeds are flying 
 about in the air. Half an hour ago an express train 
 went by, on the river bank, many feet below, and the 
 noise seemed almost unpardonable so near the graves. 
 Since then not a sound has broken the stillness, and 
 the fleecy clouds have seemed to come down closer and 
 closer until they look like thin veils around bending 
 faces. 
 
 Do they take note, now and then, of their graves, I 
 wonder, the old worthies and unworthies who have 
 passed on 1 The Mrs. Jemima Tute by whose grave I 
 am sitting might well remember to come back to this 
 hillside sometimes, for she went through terrible days 
 here. Only a few rods off stood Bridgman's fort, from 
 which she and her seven children were carried into 
 captivity by the St. Francis Indians in the summer of 
 1755. She was then Mrs. Howe. On the 27th ot 
 July, — how well she must still recollect the day, — she 
 and two other women — Mrs. Eunice Gafiield and Mrs. 
 Submit Grout — were left alone with their children in 
 bis fort, while their husbands went to hoe corn in the 
 «neadow. No doubt the day seemed long; but when
 
 202 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 twilight set in and their husbands did not come home 
 their terror grew great. They crowded around the door 
 of the fort anxiously listening to the faintest sounds. 
 At length came the trampling of horses' feet, and 
 voices ; the excited women never stopping to make sure 
 that they were the voices of friends, hastily threw open 
 the door, when, in the language of the quaint old Bunker 
 Gay, who wrote out the story in 1809, "Lo, to their 
 inexpressible disappointment and surprise, instead of 
 their husbands, in rushed a number of hideous Indians, 
 to whom they and their tender offspring became an easy 
 prey." 
 
 Their husbands, on their way home, had been sur- 
 prised by this same party of Indians. Grout escaped 
 unhurt ; Gaffield was drowned in attempting to swim 
 the river, and the unlucky Howe, having had his thigh 
 broken by a fall, fell from his horse, was scalp'ed and 
 left for dead. He lived, however, till the next morning, 
 and was found by a party of men from Fort Hinsdale. 
 His body had been thrust through by a spear, and a 
 hatchet had been left sticking in his head, but he knew 
 his friends, spoke, and did not die till after he was 
 carried into the fort. 
 
 Mrs. Howe's experiences during her year of captivity 
 are told with simplicity and minuteness in a narrative 
 by Bunker Gay, in Bingham's " American Preceptor " 
 for the year 1809. She is also mentioned in the "Essay 
 on the life of the Honorable Major General Putnam," 
 written in 1788 by David Humphreys, one of Genera] 
 Washington's aids, and minister at Madrid. 
 
 Major Putnam met Mrs. Howe at the home of Gen- 
 eral Schuyler, who had ransomed her from the French 
 officer to whom she had been sold by her Indian master. 
 By General Schuyler's aid, she recovered five of her 
 children and returned to the colonies under Major Put- 
 nam's escort. She must have been a woman of uncom- 
 mon beauty and charm ; and her experiences as a 
 captive were in consequence rendered much more dis- 
 tressing. Major Putnam himself seems not to have
 
 A VERMONT GRAVEYARD. 2C3 
 
 escaped wholly from the power of her beauty. Hum- 
 phreys says, " She was still young and handsome, 
 though she had daughters of marriageable age. Distress, 
 which had taken somewhat from the original redun- 
 dancy of her bloom and added a softening paleness 
 to her cheeks, rendered her appearance the more 
 engaging. Her face, which seemed formed for the 
 assemblage of dimples and smiles, was clouded by care." 
 The grass is netting its meshes and roots more and 
 more closely round the base of the old slate stone at 
 her grave, and I had to separate it with my fingers and 
 tear it away before I could copy the last lines of the 
 epitaph : 
 
 " Mrs. Jemima Tute, 
 
 Successively relict of Messrs. Wm. Phipps, Caleb Howe and 
 
 Amos Tute. 
 
 The two first were killed by the Indians : 
 
 Phipps, July 5, A. D. 1743 I 
 
 Howe, June 27, 1755. 
 
 When Howe was killed she and her children, 
 
 Then seven in number, 
 
 Were carried into captivity. 
 
 The oldest daughter went to France, 
 
 And was married to a French Gentleman ; 
 
 The youngest was torn from her Breast, 
 
 And perished with hunger. 
 
 By the aid of some benevolent Gentle'n, 
 
 And her own personal heroism, 
 
 She recovered the rest. 
 
 She had two by her last Husband, 
 
 Outlived both him and them, 
 
 And died March 7th, 1805, aged 82 ; 
 
 Having passed thro' more vicissitudes, 
 
 And endured more hardships. 
 
 Than any of her cotemporaries. 
 
 No more can Savage Foes annoy, 
 
 Nor aught her wide-spread Fame destroy." 
 
 Mr. Amos Tute's grave is next to his wife's. Its 
 marble stone although fifteen years older than hers, 
 looks comparatively modern, and the inscription is clear. 
 It is strange that with the white marble ready to their
 
 304 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 hands on so many hillsides, the old Vermont settlers 
 should have put so many of their records into keeping 
 of the short-lived slate : 
 
 " Mr. Amos Tute, 
 
 who died April 1 7th, 
 
 1790, in the Solii 
 
 year of his 
 
 Age. 
 
 " Were I so tall to reach the Pole 
 
 Or grasp the ocean with my span, 
 I must be measured by my soul, 
 
 The mind's the standard of the man." 
 
 Near these two graves is that of her son Jonathan, 
 whose epitaph certainly takes place high on the list of 
 church-yard oddities : 
 
 " Here lies, cut down like unripe Fruit, 
 A son of Mr. Amos Tute 
 And Mrs. Jemima Tute, his wife. 
 Called Jonathan, of whose Frail life 
 The days all summe'd (how short the account), 
 Scarcely to fourteen years Amount. 
 Born on the Twelfth of May Was He, 
 In Seventeen Hundred Sixty-Three. 
 To Death he fell a helpless prey, 
 April the Five & Twentieth Day, 
 In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-Seven, 
 Quitting this world, we trust for Heaven. 
 But tho' his Spirit's fled on High, 
 His body mouldering here must lie. 
 Behold the amazing alteration 
 Effected by inoculation. 
 The means improved his life to save, 
 Hurried him headlong to the grave. 
 Full in the bloom of youth he fell. 
 Alas ! what human tongue can tell 
 The Mother's Grief, her Anguish show, 
 Or paint the Father's heavier woe, 
 Who now no nat'ral offspring has 
 His ample Fortune to possess, 
 To fill his Place, stand in his Stead, 
 Or bear his name when he is dead. 
 So God ordain'd. His ways are Just. 
 The empires crumble into dust. 
 Life and the world mere bubbles are. 
 Set loose to these ; for Heaven prepare."
 
 A VERMONT GRAVEYARD. 205 
 
 A few rods from the graveyard, is a small red farm 
 cottage in which live some of Mrs. Howe's descendants. 
 I stopped there one day to talk with them, and to see 
 the door of Bridgman's fort which I was told they had. 
 
 The door turned out to be not a door at all, but a sin- 
 gle board which might or might not have been part of 
 a door, and at any rate did not belong to Bridgman's 
 fort, but to another which stood a little further north, 
 and was never picketed, but in which Mrs. Howe and 
 her family had lived. The board was roughly hewn, 
 many inches thick, and had a bullet hole in it. A girl, 
 perhaps thirteen years old, was playing in the yard with 
 her httle brother. Her beauty was striking : a finely cut 
 outline and the rarest coloring. She was a great-grand- 
 daughter of Mrs. Jemima Tute, Somehow she seerned 
 to me a much closer and more direct link with the old 
 story than the board, which had doubtless been often 
 swung to and fro by her great-grandmother's hands. 
 
 Only a few steps from the immortalized Jonathan is 
 the grave of another : — 
 
 '* The unfortunate Miranda, daughter 
 Of John and Ruth Bridgman, 
 Whose remains are here interred, 
 
 Fell a prey to the flames 
 That consumed her father's house, 
 On ye 6th of June, 1771, 
 Aged 28. 
 
 The room below flamed like a stove ; 
 Anxious for those who slept above, 
 She entered on the trembling floor ; 
 She fell, she sank, and rose no more." 
 
 In another sunny corner, lie side by side the three 
 wives of Mr. Abijah Rogers. The first died in 1784. 
 Her tombstone bears the following epitaph : — 
 
 ♦* Look down on me : i slumber here ; 
 
 The grave's become my bed ; 
 And think on death that's always near, 
 
 For life may quickly fade."
 
 206 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 P'ive years later, the unlucky Mr. Rogers buried an- 
 other wife in friendly neighborhood to the first, and 
 avoided all appearance of partiality by putting on her 
 tombstone precisely the same stanza, line for line, letter 
 for letter, except that the personal pronoun in the first 
 line is represented by a capital, but this was probably 
 due to the progress of education in the country, and not 
 to any unhandsome distinction in Mr. Rogers's mind. 
 In 1798, the again bereaved widower was called to put 
 up a third stone at the third wife's grave, and this time 
 the village muse (or his own) took a new flight, as 
 below : — 
 
 " Reader, behold, and shed a tear ; 
 Think on the dust that skimbers here ; 
 And when you read the fate of me. 
 Think on the glass that runs for thee." 
 
 Last of all, the man died also, and appears to have 
 been buried as far from all three of his wives as possi- 
 ble, and to have eschewed poetical epitaphs. 
 
 It is strange to see how some one mortuary stanza 
 would have a run, so to speak, in a neighborhood, and 
 be put on stone after stone, for male and female, old and 
 young, and (we must suppose) righteous and unright- 
 eous "ahke. Here is one such which occurs no less than 
 six times in a few rods' space : — 
 
 " Sickness sore long time I bore 
 Physician's skill in vane 
 Till God did send death as a friend 
 To ease me of my pane." 
 
 One of the most moss-grown stones in the yard, 
 though not one of the oldest, is a double one, two arches 
 joined by a Siamese twin arrangement, and in memory 
 of a husband and wife. The husband died in 1789, and 
 under his name stands this strikingly matter-of-fact 
 statement : —
 
 A VERMONT GRAVEYARD. 207 
 
 " In health one night as heretofore, 
 He went to bed and rose no more ; 
 Death lurks unseen, and who can say 
 He's sure to live another day." 
 
 The other half of the stone waited just ten years for 
 its record of the widow's death. A business-like view 
 of such events must have been a family trait throughout 
 that community, for they found nothing more tender or 
 solemn to .say of her, than — 
 
 " Death is a debt to nature due, 
 Which I have paid and so must you." 
 
 By a round-about road through pine and beech woods, 
 dark with the undergrowth of shining laurel, we wind 
 down from the hill into the town below. We shall 
 pass another curious burial-ground on our left. It is 
 not enclosed ; has no tombstones ; and, so far as any- 
 body knows, there have been no interments in it for 
 thousands of years. The only traces of builders which 
 are to be seen in it, are the marks of the teeth of 
 beavers, who had dams in it when it was a pond. Now 
 it is only a muck bed. The most distinguished, or, at 
 any rate, the biggest person ever buried there, was an 
 elephant. Two years ago, some Irish laborers dug part 
 of him up. Even in a muck bed, among the Green 
 Mountains, he was not any safer than he would have 
 been in Trinity Church yard in New York ; all they 
 found of him — only forty inches of one tusk, to be 
 sure — is on exhibition at the State Capitol, and has 
 been mended with glue by the State Geologist.
 
 COLORADO.
 
 A SYMPHONY IN YELLOW AND RED. 2il 
 
 A SYMPHONY IN YELLOW AND RED. 
 
 WE owe a great debt to Mr. Whistler for having 
 reclaimed the good word " symphony " from the 
 arbitrary monopoly of music writers. At first we won- 
 dered at the daring reprisal ; but presently the right of 
 it became so plain that we only wondered no man had 
 done it before. 
 
 Henceforth they who make harmonies for the eye will 
 hold the word fraternally in common with those who 
 make harmonies for the ear, and no just person can call 
 it an affectation. And he also who seeks to render in 
 words, as others in music or color, some one of nature's 
 gracious harmonies which has greatly delighted him, 
 will do it all the better by the help of this good word in 
 the beginning. Except for it, I think I should have 
 never believed it possible to tell what I am going to try 
 to tell now. One day an artist in Colorado spoke to me 
 of Mr. Whistler's Symphony in White. 
 
 " Ah," said I, " Colorado is a symphony in yellow and 
 red." And as soon as I had said the words, the colors 
 and the shapes in which I knew them seemed instantly 
 to be arranged in my thought : places miles apart began 
 to knit themselves together into a concerted and related 
 succession ; spots and tints I had only vaguely recog- 
 nized became distinct and significant, each in its order 
 and force ; and more and more as I looked from the 
 plains to the mountains and from the mountains to the 
 plains, and stood in the great spaces crowded with gay 
 and fantastic rocks, all the time bearing in mind this 
 phrase, it grew to seem true and complete and inevitable. 
 
 I ought to say at the outset that in speaking of the
 
 2 1 2 BITS OF TEA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 coloring of Colorado, I speak only of the part of Colo- 
 rado which I know thoroughly, the vicinity of the town 
 of Colorado Springs, which lies seventy miles south ot 
 Denver, at the foot of Pike's Peak. There is a similar 
 brilliance and variety of coloring in other parts of the 
 Territory, but I know them less. 
 
 "The eye paints best in the presence, the heart in 
 the absence, of the loved object," said Bettina. To-day, 
 as I sit on a New England hillside and look westward, 
 the pale blue bar of the horizon line seems a vista, 
 rather than a barrier, and I see the Colorado plains 
 lying beyond ; see them as distinctly as if I were stand- 
 ing on their very edge, and counting the belts and bands 
 of color which I know the fiery Colorado sun is at this 
 very moment printing on their surface. 
 
 When I first saw them they were gray ; blank, bald, 
 pitiless gray, under a gray November sky. " A sea of 
 gray ice ! " I said to myself. " It is terrible." To the 
 east and the south and the north they stretched, appar- 
 ently endless ; broken only by a few buttes rising as 
 gray icebergs might, frozen fast in the gray sea. To 
 the west, a mountain wall ; mountains which looked 
 like black adamant crystaUized into immovable and giant 
 shapes. Had I passed by then, and never seen those 
 plains and mountains again, the picture would have lived 
 in my memory always as the picture of a place fit for the 
 old Scandinavian hell. I recall the scene now, as one 
 recalls a vision from a nightmare dream. No darkest 
 day ever produced it again. After I had once seen the 
 plains aglow, nothing could make them any thing but 
 beautiful. We know no face till it smiles. If the smile 
 is a true smile, the face is transfigured to us for ever. 
 
 These plains are thick-covered with grasses ; the 
 buffalo grass, which grows in low tufts or mats, with a 
 single tiny, dark, spear-shaft head on each stalk ; and 
 two or three other sorts which have fine feathery blos- 
 soms. These dry in wonderful colors, yellows and reds ; 
 the yellows shade up to scarlets, and the reds down to 
 the darkest claret. There are also numerous weeds,
 
 A SYMPHONY IN YELLOW AND RED. 213 
 
 whose tiny flowers dry on their stalks in the marvellous 
 preserving air of the plains. These too dry into yellow 
 and berry-red. I especially remember one of these 
 which eluded me for a long time. I had noticed, in my 
 drives, spots of vivid red here and there on the ground 
 at short distances from the road, but saw nothing to 
 explain them. When I walked over the same ground I 
 found only the usual grasses and indifferent-colored 
 weeds. At last, one day, I saw a big patch of this 
 color, half a rod long ; when I reached the spot, I found 
 myself walking over myriads of infinitesimal stems, not 
 more than an inch or two from the ground, each holding 
 dt top a tiny dried calyx, bright red, the size of a pin's 
 head. Singly or in small bunches they would hardly 
 be seen, and yet I afterwards recognized that they made 
 superb masses of color in many places. I carried a 
 bunch of them home, but their color had gone out. In 
 vain I set them in strong hght on a window-sill ; they 
 would not be bright red any longer. They needed the 
 free air of the plains, and the sun striking through. 
 
 There are no trees or bushes on these plains, except 
 along the small and infrequent creek courses. Looking 
 down from heights you trace the creeks from horizon to 
 horizon, not by glistening lines of water, but merely by 
 zigzag Hnes of deeper color ; in the summer by lines of 
 vivid green, in the winter by lines of dark red, pale 
 yellow, and gray. The bare cotton-wood trees are gray ; 
 the willows, of which there are several varieties grow- 
 ing luxuriantly, are yellow and red : yellow as gold, and 
 with the sheen of satin on their stems ; red as wine, 
 and taking the sun as flashingly. A little marsh filled 
 with them, and lying in a hollow of the plain, makes, on 
 a bright day, such a blaze of shaded and graduated 
 color as I do not know elsewhere. When above these 
 claret and yellow willow stems rises a copse of leafless 
 cotton-woods, of soft, filmy gray, the whitest gray ever 
 seen, the combination of color is at once so dainty and 
 so vivid that one is amazed that so subtle an effect can 
 last day after day. Yet there they stand, all through
 
 214 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 January, all through February, all through March, and 
 through April, well into May, a perpetual delight. 
 These are the months in which the coloring of the 
 plains is at its best. When spring fades the willows, 
 covers the cotton-woods with light green leaves, and 
 turns the plains to a pale olive-green, the landscape 
 becomes tame in comparison with its winter hue. I 
 have spent winter afternoons on the bluffs to the east of 
 the town, looking down on the plains when they were 
 yellow as wheat fields in August, of as even surface as 
 a close shorn lawn, and with great belts and irregular 
 spaces of paler or deeper yellow, berry-red, claret, and 
 dark brown. Looking at these miles of shaded and 
 blended colors one finds the worn-out simile of a carpet 
 almost fresh in one's thought, because so inevitable. 
 Then, when swiftly moving clouds make a play of shad- 
 ows upon the carpet, it looks more like a sea. There is 
 a peculiar tint of blue in all shadows in Colorado. 
 When they are cast upon snow the effect is indescribably 
 beautiful. A fantastic chariot in mazarine blue glides 
 noiselessly by your side as you drive ; a double in 
 ghostly clothes of blue steel slips on ahead of you as 
 you walk. These shifting blue shadows on the yellow 
 plains give them a wonderful semblance to the sea under 
 alternating sunlight and shade. 
 
 The northern horizon of this shining carpet, this sun- 
 lit sea, is a deep blue wall. This is the Divide, the 
 table-land separating the Denver plains from ours. It 
 is eight thousand feet high at its highest, and thickly 
 grown with pines ; but it looks simply like a soHd bar of 
 blue. 
 
 The western horizon is the top of a mountain range, 
 Pike's Peak, nearly fifteen thousand feet high, its central 
 and culminating point, whose tints shall be fiery red, gold- 
 en yellow, or deep purple blue, according as you see them ', 
 fiery red at dawn, yellow in the first flood of sunrise, 
 and purple just after the sun has set. The southern and 
 eastern horizons are sky or plain, you know not which. 
 Whether the sky bends and droops, or the plain hollows
 
 A SYMPHONY I A' YELLOW AND RED. 215 
 
 and curves up to the tender, vanishing line in which 
 both cease to be, you never know ; and your not know- 
 ing is the charm, the spell, under which you gaze and 
 gaze into the immeasurable distance, until myriads of 
 worlds seem to be coming and going just along the outer 
 edge of this one. On a very clear day, two blue pyra- 
 mids rise in the south, and a long, low, undulating line 
 Jke blue mist is seen at their right. These are the 
 Spanish Peaks, a hundred miles away, and the range is 
 the Sangre di Cristo. What a strange audacity of rev- 
 erence there seems in the way the Spaniard has set the 
 name of his Christ everywhere ! In the east, there are 
 a few near buttes or bluffs. They also are yellow, 
 darkened by low growths of pines and firs. They rise 
 up like fortresses. Among them lie and wind labyrinth- 
 ine valleys, — sheltered spots in which sheep-raisers 
 find warm nooks for themselves and for their sheep at 
 night. These buttes or bluffs are mainly of yellow sand- 
 stone ; the growth of firs and low oaks is so thin that it 
 does not hide the yellow tint, only makes a dark fret- 
 work over it. Coming closer to them, you see that their 
 sides are strangely rounded, and, as it were, hewn into 
 projections like towers, bastions, parapets, arches, — 
 iedges and chasms and toppled bowlders everywhere. 
 No wonder the yellow plain looks like a sunht sea, for 
 not so very long ago, as the earth reckons her ages, it 
 was a great lake, and these were the cliffs on its shores. 
 Climbing up these bluffs, and wandering in their shady 
 recesses, one thinks of Edom and Petraea. Strange 
 ■shapes of yellow sandstone are standing or lying about 
 .n a confusion which is at once suggestive and bewilder 
 ing. They are mostly rounded and grooved columns, 
 of tapering and irregular forms, sometimes broken short 
 off, but more often widening at the top into a broad cap, 
 like an anvil. Many of them are of such grotesque 
 shapes that at every turn they take new and fantastic 
 semblances, seem to have leering or malicious faces, 
 sometimes almost to be peering out and disappearing 
 mockingly behind the trees. Their color is not a uni-
 
 2i6 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 form yellow, but is of a variety of shades and tones, 
 often deepening into orange or scarlet, often shading up 
 to nearly white at top, and then finished off with the 
 anvil-like cap of dark brown, green, or red. The ground 
 is strewn with odd, round pebbles, large and small, ot 
 the same friable yellow stone. Many of them are 
 broken open into equal halves, a round hollow in the 
 centre of each, as if they were petrified husks of nuts. 
 Many of them bear fantastic resemblances to birds or 
 beasts. There was one well known for months to all 
 frequenters of the bluffs ; it was as comical a rooster as 
 could have been moulded out of clay. The gardener 
 had put it on the top of a pile of stones, where two roads 
 crossed, and it was a familiar landmark. At last, one 
 day, a traveller carried it to the Colorado Springs 
 Hotel, and showed it in triumph as a rare trophy. It 
 was recognized at once. 
 
 " Why, that is the rooster from Austin's Bluffs." 
 
 " You cannot have that. It is private property. Mr. 
 Austin's gardener put it on that pile of stones. You 
 must carry it back." 
 
 Public opinion was too strong for the traveller to 
 resist. The rooster was carried back and remounted 
 on his pedestal ; only, alas, to disappear again, in the 
 grasp of some less honest visitor, who, I hope, may read 
 this paragraph and blush to recollect how he " robbed " 
 that " roost." 
 
 Twelve miles northward of Colorado Springs is a 
 group of beautiful small valleys known as Monument 
 Park, from the great number of these strange sandstone 
 rocks. It is the liveliest of all lonely places. You drive 
 over a grassy road in the middle of a narrow green 
 meadow, the sides of which slope up like the sides of a 
 trough, the narrow strip of meadow ending abruptly at 
 the base of high yellow sandstone cliffs, covered with 
 pines, firs, and low oak shrubs. There are frequent 
 breaks in these cliffs, and passes through them ; and so 
 crowded are these passes and cliff-sides with the yellow 
 stone columns, that it is not at all hard to fancy that
 
 A SYMPHONY IN YELL W AND RED. 2 1 7 
 
 they are figures winding in and out in a procession, 
 mounting guard, lying down, sunning themselves, lead- 
 ing or embracing each other. Perverse people with 
 fancies of a realistic order have given names to many of 
 these figures and groups : The Anvil, The Quaker Wed- 
 ding, The Priest and Nun, The Pincushion, and so 
 forth. Photographers, still more perverse, have per- 
 sisted in photographing single rocks, or isolated groups, 
 with neither background nor foreground. These are to 
 be seen everywhere, labelled " Rocks in Monument 
 Park," and are admirably calculated to repel people 
 from going to what would appear to be some bare, out- 
 lying pinnacle of the universe, on which imps had played 
 at making clay figures, with high stakes for the ugliest, 
 A true picture of Monument Park would give a back- 
 ground of soft yellow and white sandstone cliffs, rounded, 
 fluted, and grooved, with waving pines thick on the top 
 and scattering down the sides, and the statue-like rocks 
 half in and half out among the trees ; and to make the 
 picture perfect, it should be taken looking west, so that 
 the green valley with its fantastic yellow side walls and 
 statues should be shut across at the farther end by a 
 high mountain range, dark blue against a shining sky. 
 Then, one seeing the picture could get some faint notion 
 of what these valleys in Monument Park are like. 
 
 The famous Garden of the Gods, for which everybody 
 asks as soon as he enters Colorado, and which nine out 
 of ten people see for the first time with a ludicrous sense 
 of disappointment, is another of these strange, rock- 
 crowded parks. Who is responsible for the inappropri- 
 ate name Garden of the Gods, I do not know : one more 
 signally unfitting could hardly have been chosen. For- 
 tress of the Gods, or Tombs of the Giants, would be 
 better. 
 
 This park lies only three miles from Colorado Springs, 
 and its grand gateway is in full sight from every part 
 of the town. Fancy two red sandstone rocks three 
 hundred feet high, of irregular outline and surface, 
 rising abruptly and perpendicularly like a wall, with a
 
 2i8 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 narrow passage-way between them. The lock on your 
 right, as you enter from the east, is of the deepest brick- 
 red ; the one on the left is paler, more of a flesh-color. 
 At their base is a thick growth of low oak bushes, vivid 
 light green in summer, in winter a scarcely less vivid 
 brown, for many of the leaves hang on until April. These 
 rocks are literally fretted full of holes and rifts ; tiny round 
 holes as smooth as if an auger had bored them ; ghastly 
 crevices and chasms smoothed and hollowed like sockets 
 in gigantic skeletons. Thousands of swallows have 
 nestsin these, and at sunset it is a beautiful sight to 
 see them circling high in the air, perching for a moment 
 on the glittering red spires and pinnacles at top of the 
 wall, and then swooping downward and disappearing 
 suddenly where no aperture is to be seen, as if with 
 their little bills they had cloven way for themselves into 
 the solid rock. Within a few feet of the top of the high- 
 est spire on the right-hand rock is a small diamond- 
 shaped opening, a muUioned window, through which is 
 always to be seen the same diamond-shaped bit of sky, 
 bright blue or soft gray, or shadowy white if a cloud 
 happens to pause so as to fill the space. 
 
 I once had the good fortune to see a white-breasted 
 sparrow sit motionless for some minutes on a point of 
 rock just above this window, when the sky was clear 
 blue, and the rock vivid red in a blazing sunHght. Such 
 a picture as that was, three hundred feet up in the air, 
 one does not see more than once in a life-time. The 
 sparrow's white breast looked Hke a tiny fleece of white 
 cloud caught on the rock. Not till two dark wings sud-j 
 denly opened out and bore the white fleece upward, dicr. 
 I know that it was a bird. 
 
 Passing through this majestic gateway, you find your- 
 self in the weirdest of places ; your red road winds along 
 over red ground thinly grass-grown, among low cedars, 
 pines, and firs, and through a wild confusion of red 
 rocks : rocks of every conceivable and inconceivable 
 shape and size, from pebbles up to gigantic bowlders, 
 from queer, grotesque little monstrosities, looking like
 
 A SYMPHONy IN YELLOW AND RED. 219 
 
 eals, fishes, cats, or masks, up to colossal monstrosities 
 looking like elephants, like huge gargoyles, like giants, 
 like sphinxes eighty feet high, all bright red, all motion- 
 less and silent, with a strange look of having been just 
 stopped and held back in the very climax of some super- 
 natural catastrophe. The stillness, the absence of living 
 things, the preponderance of grotesque shapes, the ex- 
 pression of arrested action, give to the whole place, in 
 spite of its glory of coloring, spite of the grandeur of 
 its vistas ending in snow-covered peaks only six miles 
 away, spite of its friendly and familiar cedars and pines, 
 spite of an occasional fragrance of clematis or smile of 
 a daisy or twitter of a sparrow, spite of all these, a cer- 
 tain uncanniness of atmosphere which is at first oppres- 
 sive. I doubt if one ever loved the Garden of the Gods 
 at first sight. One must feel his way to its beauty and 
 rareness, must learn it like a new language ; even if one 
 has known nature's tongues well, he will be a helpless 
 foreigner here. I have fancied that its speech was to 
 the speech of ordinary nature what the Romany is among 
 the dialects of the civilized, — fierce, wild, free, defiantly 
 tender ; and I believe no son of the Romany folk has 
 ever lived long among the world's people without droop- 
 ing and pining. 
 
 A mile to the north of the Garden of the Gods is a 
 very beautiful little park, walled in by high hills and 
 sandstone rocks of many colors, red, pink, yellow, and 
 pale gray, stained dark green and brown and red in 
 markings so fantastic and capricious, it seems impossi- 
 ble that they are not painted. The outlet from this httle 
 nook to the north is a narrow canyon, little more than 
 a cleft in the rocks. A snow- fed brook runs down 
 through this canyon and zigzags through the little park, 
 making it a luxuriant garden of cotton-wood trees, 
 shrubs, and vines, and all manner of flowers. The 
 rocks here are so towering and grand that except for 
 the relief of their briUiant hues, and the tender leafing 
 and flowering things around them, they would be over- 
 awing. There are single shafts like obelisks or i->^'Va»"ets.
 
 220 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 slender, pointed, one or two hundred feet high ; huge 
 slabs laid tier upon tier like giant sarcophagi : fretted 
 and turreted masses like abbeys fallen into ruin : and 
 all these are red or painted in mosaic tints of green and 
 brown and black and yellow. This is called Glen Eyrie ; 
 in it there is a beautiful home, and the voices ot httle 
 children are often heard high up on the rock walls, 
 where they seem as contented and as safe as the goats 
 which are their comrades. 
 
 I will describe but one more of these parks ; I am 
 told that there are scores of them all along the range of 
 foot-hills running northward from Colorado Springs. I 
 do not believe that among the scores is one to be found 
 so beautiful as Blair Athol. I do not believe that in all 
 the earth is a spot to be found more beautiful than Blair 
 Athol, unless possibly it may be some of the wild flower- 
 gardens nestled at the base of the dolomites in the Tyrol. 
 Will there ever arise in Colorado a master to paint her 
 rocks and mountains in the backgrounds of immortal 
 pictures, as Titian painted the dolomites ? 
 
 Blair Athol lies six miles to the northwest of Colorado 
 Springs. Its name has a charm of sound which is not 
 lessened when you know that the Scotchman who owns 
 and named it added to his own name, Blair, the name 
 of Athol, by reason of his love for house and lands of 
 that name in Scotland. It is a spot fit for a clan and 
 a chieftain. It lies lonely and still, biding its time. 
 The road which leads into it is so grass-grown that it 
 is hard to find. The spot where it turns off from the 
 main highway is sure to be overlooked unless one keeps 
 a close watch. It seems not to promise much, this 
 rough, grass-grown track. It points toward foot-hills 
 which are low and close-set, and more than usually bare. 
 But in Colorado roads, any minute's bend to right or 
 left may give you a delicious surprise, a new peak, a far 
 vista, a changed world. The Blair Athol road, taking 
 a sudden curve to the left, shows you such a vista: a 
 foreground of low oaks and pines, the hills falling away 
 to right and left and revealing the mouth of a glen walled 
 chicklv across by hi^h r^mes ; through this solid wall oi
 
 A SYMPHONY IN YELLOW AND RED. 22 1 
 
 green, fantastic gleams of deep red and rose pink ; rising 
 above it, a spire or two of bright yellow ; on the left 
 hand, sharp ridges of dark, iron-stained sandstone, green, 
 gray, yellow, black ; on the right hand, low, mound- 
 sliapetl hills densely grown with pines and firs, the soil 
 shining red below them. 
 
 As the road winds in, the rocks seem almost to wheel 
 and separate, so many new vistas open between the 
 pines, so many new rocks come in sight. A few steps 
 farther, and the way seems suddenly barred by a huge 
 mass of yellow rock ; a broad light streams in from the 
 left, the south ; there Hes open country. Close to the 
 base of this yellow rock wall the road chngs, still in 
 shade of the pines, and turns an abrupt corner to the 
 left. You are in the park. The yellow rock round 
 which you have turned is its east wall ; to the west it 
 is walled with rocks, rose-color and white ; to the north 
 with high, conical, pine-grown hills ; to the south with 
 sharp, almost pyramidal hills and masses of detached 
 and piled rocks, dark red and rose color. It is smooth 
 as a meadow; its curves rise to the bases of the rocks 
 gently and hngeringly. Groups of pines make wide 
 fringed circles of shades here and there ; blue anemones, 
 if it is a June day, dot the ground. A few rods farther 
 there is a break in the eastern wall, and framed in this 
 frame of yellow rock is a broad picture of the distant 
 plains in bars of sunhght and shadow, gold and purple. 
 This is the view on which must look the eastern and 
 southern piazzas of the house when it is built, and to 
 that end nature has left clear the slight eminence a httle 
 to the north of the centre of the park. No man build- 
 ing here could think of building elsewhere than on this 
 rise, and it is surely an odd thing that not a pine has 
 set foo<- in it ; that they have grouped themselves all 
 about it, with as exquisite a consideration as the king's 
 head gardener could have shown. 
 
 Presently the road stops short on the brink of a ravine, 
 in which once there must have been water, for it is full 
 of vines and shrubs, a tangle of green. Because the 
 ravine is not bridged, we turn to the right ; there is
 
 222 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 just room to creep round the base of the west wall ot 
 red rock. Turning this, lo, we are in another little park, 
 wilder and more beautiful than the first. The ground 
 is more broken, and there are thick copses of low oaks 
 and pines. The red wall on this side is even stranger 
 and more fantastic than on the other. It leans and top- 
 ples, keeping all the while a general slant northwest and 
 southeast, which is, no doubt, to the geologist an important 
 feature in its record. At its base, huge dark red and 
 pale rose-colored bowlders are piled in confusion ; its 
 top is jagged ; isolated peaks and projections on its 
 sides seem to have been wrought and carven ; one into 
 a great stone chair, one into a canopied sounding-board. 
 The stone is worn out in hollows and crevices into 
 which you can thrust your arm up to the elbow. In 
 these, generations of conies and squirrels have kept 
 their " feast of the acorn," and left the shells behind. 
 This wall is on your right ; on the left, low mounds and 
 hills, with groves of pines in front, pines so thick that 
 you get only glimpses through them of the hills behind. 
 Soon the road ceases, dies away as if the last traveller 
 had been caught up, at this point, into the air. A de- 
 licious sense of being in the wilderness steals over you. 
 Climbing up on one of the ridges of the right-hand wall, 
 you look down into the first park, and out across it to 
 the plains. Seen from this height, the grouping of the 
 pines seems even more marvellous than before. It is 
 impossible to leave off" wondering what law determined 
 it, if a landscape instinct and a prophetic sense of un- 
 built homes be in the very veins of Colorado pines. 
 The outlook eastward from this ridge is grand. It is 
 the one which the upper windows of the house will com- 
 mand : in the foreground the huge yellow rock, three 
 hundred feet long, and from one to two hundred feet 
 high ; beyond this a line of bluffs, then an interval of 
 undulating plains, then another line of bluffs, and then 
 the true plains, far, soft, and blue, as if they were an 
 outlying ocean in which the world was afloat. 
 
 Immediately below this ridge lies the exquisite little 
 cup-like park, with its groups of pines. The rocks of
 
 A SYMPHONY IN YELLOW AND RED. 223 
 
 its western wall, seen from this point, are not only dark 
 red and pale rose: they show intricate markings of 
 white and gray and yellow ; the tints are as varied and 
 beautifully combined as you would see in a bed of Sep- 
 tember asters. Underneath your feet the hollows of 
 the rock are filled in and matted with dry pine needles ; 
 here and there, in a crevice, grows a tiny baby pine, and 
 now and then gleams out a smooth white pebble, cast 
 up by some ancient wave, and wedged tight in the red 
 sandstone. 
 
 As you climb higher and higher to the north, there 
 are more rocks, more vistas, more pines and low oaks, 
 a wilder and wilder confusion of bowlders. When you 
 reach the summit, the whole northern horizon swings 
 slowly into view, and completes the semicircle of plains 
 by the dark blue belt of the Divide. At the very top 
 of this pinnacle is an old pine-tree, whose gnarled 
 roots hold great bowlders in their clutch, as eagles hold 
 prey. If the tree were to blow oif, some one of the days 
 when the wind blows ninety miles an hour in Colorado, 
 it looks as if it must go whirling through the air with 
 the rocks still tight in its talons. There seems no soil 
 here, yet the kinni-kinnick vines have spread shining 
 mats of thick green all around the base of the tree. 
 The green of these and the pine, the bright brown of 
 the fallen cones, the shading and multiplying reds of the 
 gigantic rocks, the yellow and blue of the far-off plains, 
 the white and blue of the far-off sky, — all these crowd 
 on the sight, as you sit on this crowning pinnacle of 
 Blair Athol. The silence is absolute ; but the color is 
 so intense, so full of swift motion, change, and surprise, 
 that it seems to be rhythmic like scand, and to fill the 
 air fuller. It is the final chord of the symphony in yel- 
 low and red, and as, in the slow-falling twilight, it grows 
 fainter and fainter, one recalls some of the vivid line» 
 of America's one lyric poetess : — 
 
 *' I see the chasm yawning dread ; 
 I see the flaming arch o'ei-head ; 
 I stake my life upon the red 1 "
 
 224 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 COLORADO SPRINGS. 
 
 I ONCE said of a face, at hasty first sight, "What 
 a plain face ! How is it that people have called it 
 handsome ? I see no single point of beauty in it." 
 
 That face afterward became in my eyes not only 
 noble, fine, strong, sweet, but beautiful, apart from its 
 beauty as an index and record of the loveliest nature 
 and life I have ever known. Again and again I try to 
 recall the face as I first saw it. I cannot. The very 
 lineaments seem totally changed. 
 
 It is much the same with my first impression of the 
 Colorado Springs. I shall never forget my sudden 
 sense of hopeless disappointment at the moment when 
 I first looked on the town. It was a gray day in No- 
 vember. I had crossed the continent, ill, disheartened, 
 to find a cHmate which would not kill. There stretched 
 before me, to the east, a bleak, bare, unrelieved, deso- 
 late plain. There rose behind me, to the west, a dark 
 range of mountains, snow-topped, rocky-walled, stern, 
 cruel, relentless. Between lay the town — small, 
 straight, new, treeless. 
 
 " One might die of such a place alone," I said bitterly. 
 " Death by disease would be more natural." 
 
 To-day that plain and those mountains are to me well- 
 nigh the fairest spot on earth. To-day I say, " One 
 might almost live on such a place alone. " I have 
 learned it, as I learned that human face, by heart ; and 
 there can be a heart and a significant record in the face 
 of a plain and a mountain, as much as in the face of 
 a man. 
 
 To those who care to know the position of Colorado
 
 COLORADO SPRINGS. 225 
 
 Springs geographically, it can be said that its latitude is 
 about the same as that of Washington City ; that it lies 
 in El Paso Count}'', seventy miles to the south of Den- 
 ver and five miles from the foot of Pike's Peak. For 
 myself and for those whom I might possibly win to love 
 Colorado Springs as I love it, I would say simply that 
 it is a town lying due east of the Great Mountains and 
 west of the sun. 
 
 Again, to those who are curious as to statistics and 
 dates and histories of affairs, it might be said that three 
 years ago the town of Colorado Springs did not exist, 
 and that to-day it numbers three thousand inhabitants ; 
 that it is also known as the "Fountain Colony," — a 
 name much more attractive than Colorado Springs, and 
 also more fitting for the place, since there is not a 
 spring of any sort whatever in the town, and the soda 
 and chalybeate springs, which have done so much to 
 make the region famous, are five miles away, in the 
 town of Manitou. 
 
 The trustees of the Fountain Colony are men oi 
 means, position, and great executive ability. What is 
 more, they are enthusiasts, — enthusiasts in their faith 
 in the future of this region, and enthusiasts in their de- 
 termination to exert their controlling power in the right 
 direction. They hold in their jurisdiction a tract of 
 about ten thousand acres of land ; and the money 
 derived from the sales of two-thirds of this property is 
 to be and is being expended in the construction of irri- 
 gating canals, roads, parks, schools, the planting of 
 trees, and other improvements. All deeds contain an 
 improvement clause, and a clause prohibiting the manu- 
 facture or sale of intoxicating liquors on the property. 
 Already the liquor-dealers and the company have come 
 into coUision, and the contest will wax hotter, no doubt; 
 but the company is resolved that the town shall continue 
 to be, as it began, a temperance town, and it will be an 
 evil day for the little village if ever the whiskey dealers 
 and drinkers win the fight. 
 
 The streets of the town are laid out at right angles 
 
 IS
 
 226 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 and are alternately one hundred and one hundred and 
 forty feet wide. Narrow streams of running water are 
 'carried through all the streets, as in Salt Lake City. 
 Cotton-wood trees have been planted regularly along 
 these little streams. Already these trees are large 
 enough to give some shade. Already there are in the 
 town, bakeries, laundries, livery stables, billiard halls, 
 restaurants, mills, shops, hotels, and churches. In all 
 these respects, the town is far better provided than the 
 average New England town of the same population. 
 Remoteness from centres of supphes compels towns, as 
 it compels individuals, to take care of themselves. 
 
 These things I mention for the sake of those who are 
 anxious as to statistics, and dates, and the history of 
 affairs. There is much more of the same sort that 
 might be told ; of the great increase in the value of 
 property, for instance, lots having trebled in value with- 
 in six months ; of the great success in stock-raising in 
 this region, the herds running free on the plains all 
 winter long, requiring no shelter, and feeding well on 
 the dry, sweet grasses ; of the marvellous curative 
 quahties of the climate, — asthma, throat diseases, and 
 earlier stages of consumption being, almost without ex- 
 ception, cured by this dry and rarefied air. But all 
 these things are set forth in the circulars of the Foun- 
 tain Colony, in the reports of medical associations, and 
 in pamphlets and treatises on Western immigration and 
 the future of Colorado, — set forth accurately, even elo- 
 quently. The statistician, the pioneer, the builder of 
 railroads, has his own language, his own sphere; and 
 to him one must go for the facts of a country, for the 
 catalogue of its resources, the forecasting of its destiny. 
 But it is perhaps also worth while to look at a lover's 
 portrait of it. A picture has uses, as well as a gazeteer. 
 There is more stimulus sometimes in suggestion than 
 in information; more delight in the afterglow of remi- 
 niscence than in the clear detail of observation. For 
 myself, therefore, and for those alone whom I might 
 possibly win to love Colorado Springs as I love it, I re*
 
 COLORADO SPRINGS. 227 
 
 peat that it is a town lying east of the Great Mountains 
 and west of the sun. Between it and the morning sun 
 and between it and the far southern horizon stretch 
 plains which have all the beauty of the sea added to 
 the beauty of plains. Like the sea they are ever chang- 
 ing in color, and seem illimitable in distance. But they 
 are full of tender undulations and curves, which never 
 vary except by light and shade. They are threaded 
 here and there by narrow creeks, whose course is re- 
 vealed by slender, winding lines of cotton-wood trees, 
 dark green in summer, and in winter of a soft, clear 
 gray, more beautiful still. They are broken here and 
 there by sudden rises of table-lands, sometimes abrupt, 
 sharp-sided, and rocky, looking like huge castles or lines 
 of fortifications ; sometimes soft, mound-like, and im- 
 perceptibly widening, like a second narrow tier of plain 
 overlying the first. 
 
 The sloping sides of these belts of table-land are 
 rifted and hollowed and fluted endlessly. Miniature 
 canyons, filled with green growths, nooks and dells, and 
 overlapping mounds, make up the mystery of their 
 beauty. Water-washed stones and honeycombed rocks 
 are strewed on many of them, showing that their shapes 
 were rounded ages ago by mighty waves. No wonder, 
 then, that these plains add, as I said, to the beauty of 
 plains all the beauty of the sea. Their surface is cov- 
 ered with close, low grasses, — amber brown, golden 
 yellow, and claret red in winter ; in summer of a pale 
 olive green, far less beautiful, vivid, and vitalized than 
 the browns and yellows and reds of the winter. But in 
 the summer come myriads of flowers, lighting up the 
 olive green background, making it into a mosaic of 
 white and purple and pink and scarlet and yellow. 
 Smooth, hard roads cross these plains, north, south, 
 east, west, without turning, without guide-post, without 
 landmark ; many of them seeming so aimless, endless, 
 that one wonders why they are there at all. It takes 
 but a few times driving anywhere to mark out a road. 
 If a ditch overflows and a gully is made, the next hali
 
 228 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 dozen passers-by drive a little to the right or left ; the 
 new road is begun and practically made, and after a few 
 mornings purple vetches and daisies will be blossoniing 
 in the old one. Looking northward over this sea-plain, 
 one sees at the horizon a dark blue line, hke a wall, 
 straight, even-topped, unbroken. This is the " Divide," 
 — another broad-spreading belt of table-land, lifting 
 suddenly from the plains, running from east to west, 
 and separating them. Its highest point is eight thou- 
 sand feet above the sea, and is crossed by the Denver 
 and Rio Grande Railroad. On its very summit lies a 
 lake, whose shores in June are like garden-beds of 
 flowers, and in October are blazing with the colors of 
 rubies and carnelians. 
 
 It is a gracious and beautiful country the Divide, 
 eight or ten miles in width and seventy long, well 
 wooded and watered, and with countless glens and valleys 
 full of castellated rocks and pine groves. All this one 
 learns journeying across it ; but, looking up at it from 
 Colorado Springs, it is simply a majestic wall against 
 the northern sky, — blue, deep, dark, unfathomable 
 blue, as an ocean wave might be if suddenly arrested 
 at its highest and crystallized into a changeless and 
 eternal boundary. It is thirty or forty miles away from 
 us ; but in every view we find our eyes fastening upon 
 it, tracing it, wondering how, not being built of lapis 
 lazuli or clouded sapphire, it can be so blue. It is the 
 only spot in our glorious outlook which is uniform of 
 color. Sunsets may turn the whole north sky golden 
 yellow, and the afterglow may stretch rosy red the 
 entire circle round, while the plains below fade from 
 brilliant sunlight to soft, undistinguishable gray ; but 
 the wall of the Divide remains always of its own un- 
 changing blue. Storms sweep over it, black and fierce, 
 but the blue shows through. Snow covers it and the 
 winter sky arches white above it, but still its forest 
 ranks of pines and firs stand solid, constant blue in the 
 horizon. This is a dim picture of what we who dwell 
 in this town east of the mountains and wost of the sub
 
 COLORADO SPRINGS. 229 
 
 see when we look south and east or north, — a very dim 
 picture, since it sets forth only the shapes and propor- 
 tions, and can in no wise suggest the colors. If I say 
 that even on this day (the two hundred and eleventh 
 day that I have looked on these plains) I see colors and 
 combinations of colors I never saw before, and that out 
 of the two hundred and eleven days there have been 
 no two days alike, who will believe me? No one, — 
 perhaps not even they who have dwelt by my side ; yet 
 it is true, and a calendar might be kept which would 
 prove it. In such a calendar there would be records of 
 days when the whole plain looked like a soft floor of 
 gray mist, its mounds and hills like mounds and hills 
 of vapor, slow curling and rounding; when it looked 
 like a floor of beaten gold, even, solid, shining ; or like 
 a tapestry, woven in bands of brown and yellow, — a 
 magic tapestry, too, for the bands are ever shifting, 
 deepening, paling, advancing, receding, vanishing and 
 coming again, as the clouds come or go, deepen or pale, 
 in the skies above ; or, if it be winter, like a trackless, 
 illimitable, frozen ocean, with here and there dark ice- 
 bergs looming up. Not the furthest Polar Sea can look 
 like wider, icier Arctic space than does this sunny plain 
 when it is white with snow. 
 
 In such calendar there would be records of hours 
 when, in spite of the whole sunset plains being dark- 
 ened by overhanging clouds, the sunlight floods every 
 bluff and castellated mound in the east, lifting them and 
 making them look like fairy realms, with spires and 
 slopes and turreted walls of gold ; of hours again when 
 the plains, being in strong, full light, clouds chance to 
 rest above the same bluffs, transforming them into grim 
 and dark and terrible fortresses, bearing no semblance 
 to the smiling fairy castles of gold they were the day 
 before ; of hours on some winter morning, when every 
 tiny grass-blade, flower-stalk, and shrub on the whole 
 plain has been covered with snow crystals in the night, 
 — not with the common round feathery crystals, but 
 with acicular crystals fine as a cobweb thread, an inch
 
 230 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 or an inch and a half long, and so dose set mat even 
 stout weed-stalks curve and bend under the weight of 
 their snowy fringe. Upon these myriads, acres, miles of 
 crystals flashes the hot sun, and almost in the twinkhng 
 of an eye the plain changes from soft and solid white to 
 a field of glistening sparkles, and from the ghstening 
 sparkles back to its pale yellows and browns. Even in 
 the few seconds while I have been walking past an oak 
 shrub I have seen every dried leaf on it change from 
 white to brown, so marvellous is this Colorado sun, — 
 its direct rays burning as through a burning-glass. 
 There would be records of hours when having gone a 
 few hundred feet up on the eastward slope of Cheyenne 
 Mountain, we sat down in a fragrant garden of gillias, 
 scarlet penstemons, spiraeas, wild roses, columbines, red 
 lilies, lupines, harebells, and myriads more which we 
 knew not, and looked off over the plains. Though they 
 were only three or four miles away, they looked as if we 
 might journey for days and not reach them, — so wide, 
 so remote, so deep down, so ineffably soft and misty. 
 We sat, as I say, in a garden ; but there was in the 
 garden, besides the flowers, a confusion of great rocks 
 and oak bushes and tall pines and firs. There were no 
 level spaces, only nooks between rocks and here and 
 there zigzag intervals : but on every inch of ground 
 some green or flowering thing grew ; ravines, with un- 
 suspected brooks in them, were on each hand. Parting 
 the tangles of bushes and creeping or springing down 
 <-heir sides, we found great clumps of golden and white 
 :olumbines and green ferns. 
 
 Between the pines and firs were wonderful vistas of 
 the radiant plain. Each ghmpse was a picture in itself, 
 • — now an open space of clear, sunny distance ; now a 
 Delt of cotton-wood trees, making a dark green oasis in 
 the yellow ; now the majestic bluffs, looking still more 
 castlehke, framed in the dark foreground hues of pine 
 boughs. We were in shadow. The sun had set for us ; 
 but it was yet early afternoon on the plain and it was 
 brilliant with sun. As we went slowly down, bearing
 
 COLORADO SPRING^. 231 
 
 our sheaves of flowers, the brilliance slowly faded, and 
 the lower sunset light cast soft shadows on every mound 
 and hill and hollow. The whole plain seemed dimpling 
 with shadows ; each instant they deepened and moved 
 eastward ; first revealing and then slowly hiding each 
 rise and fall in the vast surface. Away in the east, 
 sharply against the sky, Hues of rocky bluffs gleamed 
 white as city walls ; close at the base of the mountain 
 the foot-hills seemed multiplied and transfigured into 
 countless velvet mounds. The horizon Hne seemed to 
 curve more and more, as if somehow the twilight were 
 folding the world up for night, and we were on some 
 outside shore watching it. One long, low cloud lay in 
 amber and pink bars above the blue wall of the Divide, 
 a vivid rosy band of afterglow spread slowly in the east 
 and south ; and the town below us looked strangely like 
 an army, with its wide avenues and battalion-like paral- 
 lelograms of houses. 
 
 If I have dwelt long on what one sees looking north, 
 east, south from Colorado Springs, it is not because the 
 westward outlook — I had almost said uplook — is less 
 grand, less satisfving ; rather because the reverent love 
 for mountains is like a reverent love for a human being, 
 — reticent, afraid of the presumptuousness of speech. 
 
 Looking westward, we see only mountains. Their 
 summits are in the skies, ten, twelve, fourteen thousand 
 feet high. Their foot-hills and foot-hill slopes reach 
 almost to the base of the plateau on which the town 
 stands. Whether the summits or the foot-hills are more 
 beautiful one for ever wonders and is never sure. The 
 summits are sharp, some of them of bare red rock, 
 gleaming under the summer sunrise hke pyramids of 
 solid garnet, yet blue again at sunset, — of a purple 
 blue, as soft as the purple blue of grapes at their ripest. 
 Sometimes in winter, they are more beautiful still. — so 
 spotless white, stately, and solemn that if one believes 
 there is a city of angels he must believe that these are 
 the towers and gates thereof. 
 
 The foot-hills are closely grown with grass. In winter
 
 232 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 they are, like the prairies, brown and yellow and claret, 
 varying in tint and shade, according to the different 
 growths and in every shifting light from sunrise to sun- 
 set. No one who has not seen can fancy the beauty of 
 a belt of such colors as these at base of mountains of 
 red and yellow sandstone. The foot-hills lap and over- 
 lap and interrupt each other, sometimes repeating in 
 softened miniature the outline of the crowding and over- 
 lapping peaks above. Here and there sharp ridges of 
 sandstone rock have been thrown up among them. The 
 spaces between these are so hollowed and smooth 
 moulded that they look like beautiful terraced valleys, 
 with jagged red walls on either hand. When sunset 
 casts alternate beams of light and shade across these 
 valleys, and the red walls glow redder and redder, they 
 look like veritable enchanted lands; and if one looks 
 up to the snow-topped mountains above the sense of 
 enchantment is only heightened. And this is what Col- 
 orado Springs sees, looking west. Are there many spots 
 on earth where the whole rounded horizon is thus full 
 of beauty and grandeur, and where to all the grandeur 
 of outline and beauty of color is added the subtle and 
 indescribable spell of the rarefied air and light of six 
 thousand feet above the sea 1 
 
 One day last winter we saw a prismatic cloud in the 
 sky. It was high noon. The cloud lay close to the 
 sun : it was fleecy, yet solid ; white, yet brilliant with 
 all the rainbow tints of mother-of-pearl. All who saw 
 it held their breaths with a sense of something preter- 
 natural in its beauty. Every instant the tints changed. 
 They paled, they deepened, they shifted place, — pink, 
 yellow, green, separate, blended, iridescent. As one 
 holds up a mother-of-pearl shell to the light, turning it 
 slowly back and forth to catch the rays, it seemed as if 
 some invisible hand must be holding up this shining 
 cloud and moving it slowly back and forth in the sun. 
 The wonderful spectacle lasted some ten minutes ; then 
 slowly the iridescence disappeared, leaving the cloud 
 simply a white and fleecy cloud, Hke myriads of others
 
 COLORADO SPRINGS. 233 
 
 In the sky. It seemed to me emblematic of the beauty 
 of this whole panorama, which has as mystical a quahty 
 of endless change as the iridescent tints of mother-of- 
 pearl. While light lasts never shall mother-of-pearl 
 show twice exactly the same harmony, exactly the same 
 succession of tints. And I beHeve that hour after hour, 
 day after day. and year after year, these plains and 
 mountains will never show twice the same harmony, the 
 same succession. Most earnestly I believe, also, that 
 there is to be born of these plains and mountains, all 
 along the great central plateaus of our continent, the 
 very best life, physical and mental, of the coming cen- 
 turies. There are to be patriarchal families, living with 
 their herds, as patriarchs lived of old on the eastern 
 plains. Of such life, such blood, comes culture a few 
 generations later, — a culture all the better because it 
 comes spontaneously and not of effort, is a growth and 
 not a graft. It was in the east that the wise men saw 
 the star ; but it was westward to a high mountain, in a 
 lonely place, that the disciples were led for the trans-
 
 *34 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 CHEYENNE CANYON. 
 
 THERE are nine "places of divine worship" in 
 Colorado Springs, — the Presbyterian, the Cum- 
 berland Presbyterian, the Methodist, the South Method- 
 ist, the Episcopal, the Congregationalist, the Baptist, 
 the Unitarian, and Cheyenne Canyon. 
 
 Cheyenne Canyon is three miles- out of town ; but the 
 members of its congregation find this no objection. 
 They are forced just now to go over a troublesome road 
 to reach it. Until within the past month the road led 
 directly up one of the main spurs of the mountain, 
 through fine breezy fields, with glorious views in all 
 directions ; but the owners of these fields have seen fit 
 to shut them up by wire fences, which neither man nor 
 horse can pass, and now all Cheyenneans must go up 
 the creek, through a tangle of sand-bar, willow copse, 
 meadow, field, farm, ford, and scramble, which is hard 
 at first to learn, but which will soon become dearer to 
 their hearts than the old road. 
 
 The day we first drove over it we were followed by a 
 party of four laboring men, also seeking the way. Sit- 
 tings are free in the cathedral of Cheyenne Canyon. 
 
 " Is this the road to Cheyenne Canyon ? " we called 
 back to them, at a point where, to say truth, there 
 seemed very little road at all, only faint traces of wheels 
 in a meadow radiant with golden daisies. They stopped 
 singing to answer. 
 
 "Reckon so, sir. That's where we're going; but 
 we've never been before."
 
 CHEYENNE CANYON. 235 
 
 lainter, and, after leading us across the creek and up a 
 steep bank, thick with cotton-wood trees, ended in front 
 of a log cabin. In the doorway sat a girl, with a mass 
 of dark auburn hair, from which no one could easily 
 look away. Once before I have seen such hair. Very 
 sure I am that it rarely happens to a person to see 
 two such sights in a lifetime. On her knees she held 
 her boy, a superb baby, two years old. He was shining 
 from his Sunday-morning bath, and every now and then 
 he sobbed at the memory of it. Poor little fellow, "he 
 had cried hard all the time," the young girl-mother said. 
 She looked at us wistfully as she told us how to find the 
 road to the canyon. It was an event in her day our driv- 
 ing up to her door, and I was glad we had taken the wrong 
 ford. 
 
 "This is the wrong road. The ford is higher up," 
 we called out to the wagonful of men as we met them 
 following us. 
 
 "All right," they answered gaily, wheeling their ugly 
 little mules ; and, as we drove on ahead, they broke out 
 into full chorus of the hearty Methodist song : — 
 
 " If you get there before we do, 
 Tell them that we are coming too." 
 
 The ford was a picture. The creek widened just 
 above it, and was divided by three long sand-bars into 
 three small zigzagging streams, which looked as if the 
 creek were untwisting itself into shining strands. The 
 water was of amber brown, so clear that the pebbles 
 gleamed through. The sand-bars were set thick with 
 spikes of the blue penstemon, a flower like a foxglove, 
 growing here some foot or foot and a half high, with 
 its bright blue blossoms set so thick along the stem 
 that they hinder each other's opening. 
 
 As I looked up from the ford to the mouth of the 
 canyon, I was reminded of some of the grand old 
 altar-pieces of the early centuries, where, lest the pic- 
 tures of saints and angels and divine beings should 
 seem too remote, too solemn and overawing, the paint-
 
 236 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 ers used to set at the base, rows of human children, gay 
 and mirthful, leaping and laughing or playing viols. 
 So lay this sunny belt of sparkling water, glistening 
 sand, and joyous blue blossom, at the base of the 
 picture made by the dark mouth of the canyon, where 
 two great mountains had recoiled and fallen apart from 
 each other, leaving a chasm, midway in which rose a 
 smaller mountain of sharp rocks, like a giant sentry dis- 
 puting the way. Forests of pines fill the rift on either 
 side this rock, and their dark lines stretch high up, 
 right and left, nearly to the top of each mountain. 
 Higher and ruggeder peaks rise beyond, looking as if 
 they must shut the canyon sharply, as a gate closes an 
 alley; but they do not. Past them, among them, in 
 spite of them, the creek took its right of way, the 
 mountains and rocks yielded, and the canyon winds. 
 
 Entering it, one loses at first the sense of awe, of 
 grandeur. It might be any bright, brook-stirred wood. 
 Overhead a canopy of fir and willow boughs, with glim- 
 mers of sky coming through ; thickets of wild roses, 
 spiraeas, glittering green oak bushes, and myriads of 
 lovely lesser things on each hand ; tiny, threadlike 
 streams lapsing along gently between green, grassy 
 paths and sandy rims ; great bowlders, however, and 
 bits of driftwood here and there, telling a tale of slides 
 and freshets ; and presently, even while looking back, 
 we can see glimpses of the wide distances of the plain ; 
 and, almost before we know that we are in the canyon, 
 the path narrows, the walls grow high, and the brook 
 has become a swift, leaping, white-foamed torrent, 
 which we must cross carefully on a slippery, dead log. 
 In a few moments we cross again. The path seems a 
 caprice ; but there is small choice of foot-holds on the 
 sides of this canyon. This time we cross on a superb 
 pine-tree, fallen, still green, with every bough on the 
 upper side waving, and those on the lower side dipping 
 and swaying in the swift water below. Here we come 
 to a sheer rock wall on the right, and on the left three 
 high, jagged red-sandstone rocks, hundreds of feet
 
 CHEYENNE CANYON. 237 
 
 high, marked, and, as it were, mapped, with black and 
 green lichens. Tall firs, growing in the edge of the 
 creek, reach one-third of the way up these walls. Tall 
 firs, growing on their very tops, look like bushes. 
 Climbing a little further, now in shadow, now in sun, 
 now in thickets of willow close on the water's edge, 
 now on bare and gravelly slopes higher up. we come to 
 the third crossing. This is a more serious aifair. 
 Stones and driftwood. That is all. It is a species of 
 dam. It would give way if the water hurried much. 
 Around every stone is a white line of foam. Above the 
 dam is a smooth, clear space, — so clear that the shadow 
 of the upper edge of the rock wall, with the shrubs 
 waving there, is marked distinct and dark on the shin- 
 ing gravel bed. Tiny tufts of fern nod from crevices, 
 and one brave strawberry vine vainly flings out its scar- 
 let runners in the air far above our heads. The path 
 grows wilder ; fallen trees cross it, piled bowlders crowd 
 it ; the rock walls are hollowed, hewn, piled, and over- 
 piled ; they are scarred, seamed, lined with the traces 
 and records of ages, of glaciers and avalanches, of 
 flood and perhaps of fire. Surely the black seams and 
 lines look as if they might have been burned and 
 branded in. Still, the firs and pines and willows make 
 beautiful shade along the brook. It is still a flowery, 
 spicy, sunny summer wood through which the path 
 climbs. Clematis and woodbine tangle the trees to- 
 gether. Up the whole length of the highest pines 
 races the woodbine, and flings out shining streamers at 
 top ; while the clematis, as much humbler as it is more 
 oeautiful, lies in long, trailing wreaths on the lower 
 bushes, even on the ground. Again and again the path 
 crosses the brook, we forget to count how many times. 
 Each crossing is a new picture. Now sharp stone peaks, 
 seeming to wheel suddenly across the canyon, as if there 
 could be no going further ; now the walls widening and 
 curving out into a sort of horseshoe shape, with a beautiful 
 little grove of pines in the hollow ; now, turning a sharp 
 corner and springing, for a rod or more, from bowlder to
 
 238 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 bowlder, in the widest part of the creek, we come to a 
 spot where, standing midway in the stream, we look 
 down into a huge stone fortress half filled with pines, 
 and up into another stone fortress half filled with pines. 
 Just above these close-walled fortresses comes a wider 
 space, where the rocky sides take gentle slopes, with 
 here and there soft, grassy spaces, even to their very 
 tops, — grassy spaces where yellow columbines and 
 white spiraeas wave, safe from all touch save that of 
 winds and birds and insects. What an estate for a lark 
 or a butterfly, such a little grassy bit as this, a thousand 
 feet up on a rocky wall, with Colorado sun to keep him 
 warm, and all Cheyenne Creek to drink from ! Below 
 these pine-tufted, grass-tufted walls, the brook runs 
 slower. Shadows of every thing growing on the banks 
 flicker on its bed, and the flickering shadows on the 
 bed are thrown back again in flickering lights on shelv- 
 ing rocks which overhang it. A lovely mertensia, with 
 its tiny pink and blue bells, hangs over the edge of the 
 water, and a great yellow daisy stands up triumphant in 
 a sunny corner, giving the one bit of strong color 
 needed to make the picture perfect. To make the pic- 
 ture perfect, to the eye, and to make it perfect to the 
 heart, two babies lie cooing in the shade. A German 
 family, — father, mother, children, — friends, and neigh- 
 bors, are dining just here, between services. They are 
 poor people, but the table-cloth spread on the ground 
 is snowy white, and the babies look fresh and clean. 
 Who can reckon the good which such a day may do in 
 the laboring man's life 1 Soul, body, heart, all re- 
 freshed, stimulated, purified. The very canyon itself 
 seemed glorified in our eyes as we passed this cheery 
 bit of home in it. 
 
 One ' more crossing and we have reached a barrier 
 past which, though the creek can come, we cannot go. 
 In a grand stone chamber we stand and look up to its 
 northern wall, over which the creek comes leaping at 
 three steps. The wall is in sloping terraces, hollowed 
 and scooped into basins and pools. There are six
 
 CHEYENNE CANYON. 239 
 
 more such terraces of pools and basins higher up ; but 
 we cannot see them from below. Midway in the last 
 fall there is a font-like projection of rock, into w-hich 
 the stream falls, — how deep no man knows, but so 
 deep that nearly the whole body of water is thrown 
 back in a great sheaf-shaped jet of shining drops, — a 
 fountain in the centre of a fall, fantastic, unexpected 
 beautiful. Behind the sheaf of falHng drops, smooth 
 swift threads of water run in unbroken lines of descent, 
 making a background of shifting silver under the glit- 
 tering shower of diamond drops. Below the sheaf of 
 falHng drops, an amber, silent pool, marvellously un- 
 disturbed by the ceaseless fall which rains upon it, its 
 outer ripples breaking as gently on the bright gravel 
 rims at base of the rocky walls, as if only a languid 
 summer breeze had stirred its surface. It needs but 
 one wall more to make this basin of the Cheyenne 
 Falls seem the bottom of a granite well, with sides hun- 
 dreds of feet high ; yet the noon sun hes hot in its 
 depths, and the water is warm to the taste. 
 
 From the bottom of this well one looks up incredu- 
 lously to the top, which he is told he can reach by a not 
 very difficult path. ''It is only a matter of time," say 
 they who are in the habit of going to the top of Chey- 
 enne Canyon. " You must not hurry going up." 
 
 '' It is also a question of strength," will be retorted 
 by the ordinary traveller, when he finds himself invited 
 to mount some twelve or fifteen hundred feet up the 
 side of a mountain, where for many a long interval 
 there is no path, only perpendicular, sliding, roUing, 
 crunching surfaces of disintegrated rock, gravel, and 
 fine sand, in which he seems to shp back at every step 
 further than he climbs, and in which he can get a 
 breathing space only by swinging himself shar^^ly 
 around in front of a pine-tree and bracing himself 
 against it, never without fear that his weight will detach 
 the tree from its perilous slant, and he and tree shoot 
 down together in confusion. Stinging recollections 
 crowd on his m'nd, of unpleasant arithmetical problem."*
 
 240 BITS OF TRA\^EL AT HOME. 
 
 given to youth, in which a certain number of steps for- 
 ward are set in comph'cated formula with a certain 
 number of slips back, with the question at the end, 
 " How long will it take to go a mile ?" He also thinks 
 more of Bruce's spider than he has thought for many 
 years. It is an ugly, hard climb. But ah, the reward 
 of ugly, hard climbs in this world ! Mentally, morally, 
 physically, what is worth so much as outlooks from 
 high places ? All the beauty, all the mystery, all the 
 grandeur of the canyon as we had seen it below were 
 
 • only the suggestion, the faint prelude of its grandeur as 
 seen from above. 
 
 ' We looked out to the east over the tops of the peaks. 
 Long stone ridges, running south and north, seemed to 
 be interlocked with each other, as fingers can interlock 
 with fingers ; and each line of interlacement was marked 
 by the crowding tops of pines and firs. Running trans- 
 versely to these, now and then hiding them, winding 
 and winding again, sometimes at sharp angles, but still 
 keeping its direction east and west, was the dark, fir- 
 topped line of the canyon. A royal road to the plain 
 the creek had made for itself through the very heart of 
 the range, in spite of the mountains having locked and 
 interlaced themselves together. And following the 
 creek's royal road below was a royal road through the 
 air, down whose radiant vista we could look. Framed 
 between two stone walls, which slope sharp to right and 
 sharp to left, sharp as a pyramid's side, there lay the 
 plains, shining, sunny, near, and yet looking infinitely 
 remote. 
 
 By a curious freak of the apparent perspective, these 
 sharp, pyramidal Hues framing this picture seemed to 
 come toward us and vanish in an impossible "point of 
 sight " midway between us and the horizon. The effect 
 of this was to make the triangular spaces of plain look, 
 when we bent our heads low to one side, like gigantic 
 triangular banners of green and gold, flung up the can- 
 yon, and lying across from wall to wall like canopies. 
 Then when we lifted our heads they were again radiant
 
 CHEYENNE CANYON 241 
 
 distances of plain, hundreds of feet below us, and 
 seemingly days' journey away. 
 
 Creeping close to the edge of the rocky precipice, we 
 looked over at the falls, — three, four, five. The three 
 we had seen merged into one, and above that four 
 others, simply narrow lines of white foam as we looked 
 down on them from this great height, — lines of white 
 foam running swiftly down a great stone sluiceway, 
 hollowed into basins, narrowed into flumes, widened 
 into broad shelves. On one of these shelves stood 
 four men. 
 
 " They don't look bigger'n a minute ! " exclaimed a 
 man who was lying on his breast just beyond us and 
 looking over the edge. He was one of the Methodist 
 brethren who had followed us in the morning singing 
 songs. All day they had been following the creek and 
 climbing in the woods. They wore their work-day 
 clothes, grimed, stained. Evidently it was by some 
 very hard and repulsive toil that they earned bread ; 
 but to-day their faces shone with delight, and again the 
 very canyon itself became glorified in my sight by 
 reason of unconscious human witness to its good. . 
 
 From this summit we could also look westward. As 
 far as the eye could reach here also were ridges and 
 peaks and canyons and lines of dark pines and firs. 
 We bore away one trophy with us, — the top, the very 
 top, of a high balsam fir. How this victory was won is 
 the conqueror's secret still; but the trophy hangs on 
 my wall and is as regal in captivity as in freedom. 
 Seventy-three purple-blue cones are on its boughs, — 
 seventy-three, blue as ripe grapes at their bluest in the 
 sun and purple as grapes at their darkest in shadow. 
 Seventy-three ! Cones of Eshcol I call them. 
 
 Going down the canyon in the late afternoon, wc 
 found new pictures at every turn, a different beauty ir 
 every spot. The brook was still amber and brovvr 
 and white ; but it was in shadow now, no longer shininj 
 and transparent. The dancing golden light which ha*, 
 lighted its every nook and depth in the morning hi- 
 16
 
 242 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOMji. 
 
 gone, and now lay serene, radiant, hio^h up on the walls 
 of the canyon. These great spans of vivid yellow light 
 on the rocks shone marvellously through and between 
 the pines. At every step we took they moved, rising 
 higher, higher, falling to right or left, and sometimes 
 going out of a sudden, as the blaze of a fire goes out in 
 a wind. • 
 
 The canyon was incomparably more beautiful in this 
 light and shadow than it had been when the sharp 
 morning light revealed and defined every thing ; " as 
 much more beautiful," said one, thoughtfully, "as life 
 is when our eyes are fixed on radiant heights of purpose 
 and action and the little things of the moment lie in 
 shadow." 
 
 Just outside the mouth of the canyon we sat down 
 and waited for the twihght. No sun was in sight ; but 
 the plains were sunny as at noon, and the higher peaks 
 each side the canyon were golden red. Slowly the 
 light left peak after peak, until only one narrow sunbeam 
 bar was left along the upper edge of the southern sum- 
 mit. This bright bar stretched behind a line of tall 
 firs, and made them gleam out for a moment like figures 
 in shming armor. Then they grew misty and dark and 
 melted into the mountain's dim purple outline. The 
 birds' evening songs ceased, the wind died slowly away 
 and the beautiful Sunday came to an end.
 
 A COLORADO WEEK. 243 
 
 A COLORADO WEEK. 
 
 ONLY from Saturday to Saturday, and I suppose 
 the days could not have been more than twenty- 
 four hours long; but what a week it was ! Ten hours a 
 day out under a Colorado sky ; ten hours a day of Cplo- 
 rado mountain air; ten hours a day of ever-changing 
 delight ; beauty deepening to grandeur, grandeur soften- 
 ing to beauty, and beauty and grandeur together blend- 
 ing in pictures which no pencil, no pen can render, — 
 pictures born only to be stamped upon hearts, never to 
 be transferred to canvas or to page. I said that the 
 days could not have been more than twenty-four hours 
 long. I spoke hastily, and am not at all sure of any 
 thing of the kind. There is a comic story of a traveller 
 in Colorado who, having been repeatedly misled and 
 mystified by the marvellous discrepancies between real 
 and apparent distances in the rarefied air, was found 
 one day taking off his shoes and stockings to wade 
 through a little brook, not a foot wide. 
 
 " Why, man, what are you about ? Why don't you 
 step over ? " exclaimed everybody. 
 
 He shook his head and continued his preparations for 
 wading. 
 
 " No ! no ! you can't fool me," he exclaimed. " I 
 shan't be surprised if it turns out to be a quarter of a 
 mile across this brook." 
 
 One comes to have much the same feeling about out- 
 door days in Colorado. Enjoyment can be rarefied, 
 like air, so that its measures of time grow meaningless 
 and seem false, as do the measures of distance in the 
 upper air. I am not in the least sure, therefore, that
 
 244 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 these days of which I write were only twenty-four hours 
 long. I do know, however, that it was on a Saturday 
 we set out, and on the next Saturday we came home, 
 and that the week might be called the Holy Week of 
 our summer. 
 
 We set out at noon from Colorado Springs. Thirty- 
 five miles, chiefly up-hill miles, were to be driven before 
 night. The seven hours would be none too long. As 
 we drove through the busy streets of the little town, 
 hearty "good-byes" and "good-times to you" came 
 from friend after friend, on the sidewalk or in the door- 
 ways. Not the least among the charms of the simple 
 life in this far new West is the out-spoken interest and 
 sympathy between neighbors. That each man know 
 what each other man does or is going to do becomes an 
 offence or a pleasure according to the measures of good 
 will involved in the curiosity and familiarity. In older 
 communities people have crystallized into a strong indif- 
 ference to each other's affairs, which, if it were analyzed, 
 would be found to be nine parts selfishness. In the 
 primitive conditions of young colonies this is impossible. 
 Helpfulness and sympathy are born of the hard-press- 
 ing common needs and the closely-linked common life. 
 The hearty, confiding, questioning, garrulous speech of 
 the Western American really has its source in a deep 
 substratum of this kindly sympathy. It sounds odd 
 and unpleasant enough, no doubt, to Eastern ears and 
 tried by the Eastern standards of good manners ; but, 
 reflecting on it, one comes to do it a tardy justice and 
 meet it on its own ground fairly and with honest liking. 
 All this I thought as, driving out of Colorado Springs 
 that Saturday noon, we passed many persons who, al- 
 though they knew only one of our party, were evidently 
 wel aware that we were setting out for the mountains, 
 waved their hands and smiled and called out : " Good- 
 bye, good-bye. A good trip to you." Who shall say 
 that the influence of such cheery benedictions from 
 friendly hearts does not last far beyond the moment in 
 which they are spoken ; does not enter into one's good
 
 A COLORADO WEEK, 245 
 
 luck, by some moral chemistry subtler than any fof 
 Tvhich the material science can find analysis or formula ? 
 The world would be none the worse for believing this, 
 at any rate, and we should all be friendlier and readier 
 and freer in greetings. 
 
 Thirty-five miles westward and up-hill we drove that 
 afternoon, through the lovely nestled nook of Manitou 
 and up the grand Ute Pass. The oftener one goes 
 through this pass, the grander it seems. There are in 
 it no mere semblances, no delusions of atmospheric 
 effect. It is as severely, sternly real as Gibraltar. Sun- 
 light cannot soften it nor storms make it more frowning. 
 High, rocky, inaccessible, its walls tower and wind and 
 seem at every turn to close rather than to open the path 
 through which the merry little stream comes leaping, 
 foaming down. The rocks on either side are scarred 
 and grooved and seamed and wrought, as if the centu- 
 ries had rent asunder some giant fortress, but found 
 slender triumph in its fall, — two fortresses being set 
 now to guard the spot where before there had been but 
 one. The contrast is sharp and weird between the 
 sparkling amber and white brook, paved with shining 
 pebbles and shaded by tangled growths of willows and 
 clematis and tasselled festoons of wild hops, and the 
 bare red and gray rock walls, rising hundreds and hun- 
 dreds of feet, unrelieved except by straight, stern, dark, 
 unyielding firs, — so sharp, so weird a contrast that one 
 unconsciously invests both the brook and the rock walls 
 above with a living personality and antagonism, and 
 longs that the brook should escape. For a short dis- 
 tance the road is narrow and perilous — on strips of 
 ledges between two precipices, or on stony rims of the 
 crowded brook, which it crosses and recrosses twenty- 
 four times in less than three miles. Then the Pass 
 widens, the rocky walls sink gradually, round and ex- 
 pand into lovely hills — hill after hill, bearing more and 
 more off to the right and more and more off to the left 
 — until there is room for bits of meadow along the 
 brook and for groves and grassy intervals where the
 
 246 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 hills join ; room and at the same time shelter, for the 
 hills are still high. And that their slopes are sunny 
 and warm in the early spring we find record written in 
 clumps of the waving seed-vessels of the beautiful blue 
 wind-flower of Colorado, the Anemone patens. In 
 April, if we had beeii here, we should have seen these 
 slopes blue with the lovely cup-blossoms. Except in 
 color, the seed-vessels are no less beautiful. Fancy a 
 dandelion seed-globe with each one of its downy spokes 
 expanded into a hairy plume two inches or two and a 
 half in length, the soft gray hairs set thick on both sides 
 the tiny centre thread, regular as on an ostrich feather 
 and fine as the down on a butterfly's wing. I have one 
 before me as I write. It was over-ripe when I gathered 
 it. The plumes had been blown and twisted by the 
 wind, till no two are alike in their curve or direction. 
 Yet it is still a globe ; a dainty dishevelled little curly- 
 head of a thing, by whose side the finest dandehon 
 " blow " would look stupid and set and priggish. Out 
 of curiosity — not idle, but reverent — I set myself to 
 counting the plumes. They were tangled, so that it was 
 not easy. I counted twelve springing from a pin's- 
 point centre. There must be a hundred or more in all. 
 But I left off counting, for it seemed like a cruel pulling 
 of a baby's hair. 
 
 It was nightfall when we reached the ranch at which 
 we were to sleep. We had climbed several divides, ris- 
 ing, falling, rising, falling, all in the depths of pine for- 
 ests, all steadily mounting westward, toward the great 
 grand central range ; and we came out at sunset on a 
 ridge from which we could look down into a meadow. 
 The ridge sloped down to the meadow through a gate- 
 way made by two huge masses of rocks. All alone in 
 the smooth grassy forest, they loomed up in the dim 
 light, stately and straight as colossal monoliths, though 
 they were in reality composed of rounded bowlders 
 piled one above another. Because they are two and 
 alone and set over against each other, men have called 
 them The Twins. All over the world, even among the
 
 A COLORADO WEEK. 247 
 
 most uncultured people, we find this unconscious in- 
 vestiture of Niture with personality, so instinctive a 
 tendency have sensitive hearts toward a noble and 
 tender pantheism. 
 
 As we paused on this ridge, the western sky was filled 
 with red sunset clouds ; the western horizon was one 
 long line of dark blue mountain peaks, seeming to up- 
 hold the red canopy of clouds. Only at the point of the 
 sun's sinking was there a golden tint. There two blue 
 peaks stood sharply outlined against a vivid yellow sky ; 
 one fine line of gold, like an arch, spanned the interval 
 and linked the peaks together. The magic bridge lasted 
 but a second ; before we had fully caught the beautiful 
 sight, arch and yellow sea and blue peaks together were 
 all swimming in rosy clouds. 
 
 The ranch was a cluster of log cabins. When the 
 Colorado ranchman prospers, his log cabins multiply and 
 grow out from and on to one another, very much as bar- 
 nacles spread and congregate on a rock. At foot of a 
 hill and spreading up on its side, such a log-cabin 
 clump is a wonderfully picturesque sight. Theirregu- 
 lar white plaster lines in all the crevices between the 
 brown logs ; the yellow hewn ends interlocked at the 
 corners ; the low doors, square windows, and perhaps 
 flat roof, with grass waving on it, — altogether the pic- 
 ture is not unpleasing, and is beautiful compared with 
 that of the average small frame house, — high, straight, 
 sharp-angled, narrow-roofed, abominable. On entermg, 
 you will probably find the walls and ceiling papered 
 with old newspapers. The ultimate intent of illustrated 
 weeklies flashes instantly clear on one's comprehension. 
 They may be forgiven for existing. To the dwellers in 
 log cabins they are priceless. I have seen in rich men's 
 houses far uglier wall-papers than they make, and there 
 is endless entertainment in lying in bed of a morning 
 and reading up and down and across your bedroom 
 walls that sort of verse which is printed in the " Blades " 
 and " Flags " and " Spirits " and " Times " of oul 
 Union.
 
 248 BITS OF TRAVEL AT I/O ME. 
 
 When we first looked to the west the next morning 
 the two peaks which had been blue the night before and 
 circled by the fine line of gold were deep gray on a faint 
 pink sky. Our road lay directly toward them. " All 
 day we shall see," we said, " the mystic gold arch span- 
 ning the space between them, as we saw it in yester- 
 day's sunset." But we did not. Sufficient unto the 
 day is the beauty thereof in Colorado. One does not 
 remember nor anticipate the beauties of yesterday or to- 
 morrow. The gold arch was forgotten before we had 
 driven half an hour through the meadows of flowers. 
 Great patches of brilHant fire-weed on all sides. On 
 the road edges, rims of a fine feathery white flower, new 
 to us all ; dainty wild flax, its blue disks waving and 
 nodding ; clumps of scarlet " painter's-brush " gleam- 
 ing out like red torches in the grass ; tall spikes of 
 white and pink and scarlet gilia ; and everywhere, mak- 
 ing almost a latticed setting for the rest, mats and 
 spikes and bushes of yellow blossoms. Six different 
 kinds of yellow flowers we counted ; but, shame to us, 
 we knew the names of no one of them. 
 
 On a knoll in the meadows, within stone's throw of 
 the sluggish Platte River, yet well sheltered by wooded 
 hills on two sides, stood a small frame house, — the 
 house of a famous old hunter. Deer-skins and fox- 
 skins were drying on the fences ; huge elk-horns leaned 
 against the sides of the house. As we drove slowly 
 by, the old man came out. His hair was white and his 
 face thickly wrinkled ; but his eye was bright, clear, 
 and twinkling with gladness and energy, like the glad-| 
 ness and energy of youth. ^ 
 
 " Never go out but what I bring home something, sir, 
 — an antelope, if nothing more," he said, in reply to a 
 question as to the hunting in the neigborhood. Summer 
 and winter the old man ranges the hills and his name 
 is well known in the markets of Denver and Colorado 
 Springs. 
 
 Leaving the Platte meadows, we began again to climb 
 hills to the west. Divide after divide, like those we had
 
 A COLORADO WEEK. 249 
 
 climbed and crossed the day before, we climbed now, 
 Still the Great Range stood apparently as far off as ever, 
 From the tops of all the ridges we looked off to it, and, 
 looking backward, saw Pike's Peak making as high and 
 majestic a wall in the east. The hills were so alike, the 
 distance so apparently undiminished that we began to 
 feel as if we were in an enchantment, — Hving over a 
 "Story without an End," in which we should wander 
 for ever in a succession of pine-covered ridges and val- 
 leys, lured on by an endlessly retreating wall of snow- 
 topped mountains before us. But an end came ; that 
 is, an end to the pine-covered ridges. It was an end 
 which was a beginning, however. Shall we ever forget 
 the moment when, having climbed the highest of the 
 pine-covered ridges, we found ourselves on a true sum- 
 mit at last, on the summit of the eastern wall of the 
 great South Park. 
 
 The South Park is sixty miles long and forty wide, a 
 majestic, mountain-walled valley ; a valley eight or nine 
 thousand feet high. Its extreme western wall is the 
 great central range of the Rocky Mountains, but so 
 many lesser ranges are massed and built up against this 
 that the eftect to the eye is as if there lay only moun- 
 tains to the very outermost edge of the world. To the 
 north and to the south it is the same. We looked down 
 on this valley from near the centre of the eastern ridges. 
 The view had the vastness of a view from a high moun- 
 tain peak, mingled with the beauty of one from near hills. 
 A great silence, hke the great silence of the place, fell 
 upon us. The scene seemed almost unreal. From our 
 very feet to the distant western wall, forty miles away, 
 stretched the soft, smooth, olive-gray surface of the 
 valley, with belts and bars and flickering spaces of dark 
 shadow of yellow sunlight playing over it. Hare and 
 there rose hills, — some wooded, some bare and of the 
 same soft olive-gray of the valley. Some were almost 
 high enough to be called mountains ; some were low 
 and fluted in smooth water- worn grooves. These were 
 islands when South Park was a lake. They looked
 
 250 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME 
 
 hardly less like islands now, and the olive-gray plain 
 when it was a placid sea could not have had a smoother 
 tint or a tenderer light on its shimmering surface. The 
 dome of the sky looked strangely vast and high. It 
 was filled with fleecy, shifting clouds and its blue was 
 unfathomably deep. There seemed no defined horizon to 
 west or south or north ; only a great outlying continent 
 of mountain peaks, bounding, upholding, containing the 
 valley, and rounding, upholding, and piercing the dome 
 above it. There was no sound, no sight, no trace of 
 human life. The silence, the sense of space in these 
 Rocky Mountains solitudes cannot be expressed : neither 
 can the peculiar atmospheric beauty be described. It 
 is the result partly of the grand distances, partly of the 
 rarefied air. The shapes are the shapes of the north, 
 but the air is like the air of the tropics, — shimmering, 
 kindling. No pictures of the Rocky Mountains which 
 I have seen have caught it in the least. There is not 
 a cold tint here. No dome of Constantinople or Venice, 
 no pyramid of Egypt, ever glowed and swam in warmer 
 light and of warmer hue than do these colossal moun- 
 tains. Some mysterious secret of summer underlies 
 and outshines their perpetual snows Perhaps it is 
 only the ineffable secret of distance. Nowhere else in 
 the world are there mountains fourteen and fifteen thous- 
 and feet high which have all the room they need, — 
 great circles and semicircles of plains at their feet and 
 slopes a half continent long ! 
 
 As we drove down into the valley, the horizon peaks 
 slowly sank ; with each mile they changed place, les- 
 sened, disappeared, until only the loftiest ones remained 
 in sight. Winding among the hills, which had looked 
 from the summit of the valley like isolated islands, we 
 found them sometimes hnked together by long divides, 
 which we climbed and crossed, as we had those of the 
 valley walls. With each of these lifts came a fresh view 
 of the myriad mountains around us. Then we sank 
 again to the lower level, and the plain seemed again to 
 stretch endlessly before and behind and around us
 
 A COLORADO WEEK. 251 
 
 Now and then we came to small creeks, meadows, and 
 a herdsman's ranch; but these were miles and miles 
 apart, and hardly broke in on the sense of soHtude. 
 Early in the afternoon storms began to grither in the 
 horizon. In straight columns the black clouds massed 
 and journeyed ; sometimes so swiftly that the eye had 
 to move swiftly to follow them, and the spaces of sun- 
 light and shadow on the sky seemed wheeling in circles ; 
 sometimes spreading slowly and blotting out a third of 
 the horizon in gray mist. All the time we were in broad 
 hot sun, looking out from our light into their darkness. 
 We were nearing the western wall. As we came closer, 
 we saw that there were myriads of lovely parks making 
 up among the wooded foot-hills. These were the inlets 
 of the old lake days ; and of their rich soil had been 
 born exquisite groves of aspen, lying now like solid 
 mounds of green moss on the hill-sides. Toward sunset 
 the storm-columns thickened, blended, and swept down 
 on all sides. Mountain after mountain and near hill 
 after near hill were veiled in mist, — first white, then, 
 gray, then dark blue-black. At last the last blue sky, 
 the last clear spot surrendered. We were hemmed in 
 completely in a great globe of rain. Drenched and 
 dripping, but, for all that, glad of the rain — it had been 
 such a masterly storm to see — we dashed on, turning 
 northward and skirting the western hills, to the town of 
 Fair Play. Fair Play is a mining town, one of the oldest 
 in Colorado. It ought to be a beautiful village, lying as 
 it does on a well-wooded slope at foot of grand mountains 
 and on the Platte River. It is not. It is ill arranged, 
 ill built, ill kept, dreary. Why cannot a mining town 
 be clean, well-ordered, and homelike ? I have never 
 seen one such in Colorado or in California. Surely, 
 it would seem that men getting gold first hand from 
 Nature might have more heart and take more time to 
 make home pleasant and healthful than men who earn 
 their money by the ordinary slow methods. 
 
 To enter Fair Play from the south, you go down into 
 and up out of the Platte River. The Platte River just
 
 252 BITS GF TRAVEL AT HOME 
 
 there is an odd place. It consists of, first, a small 
 creek of water, then a sand-bar, then a pebble tract, 
 then an iron pipe for mining purposes, then another 
 pebble tract, then a wooden sluice-way for mining pur- 
 poses, then a sand-bar with low aspen trees on it, then 
 a second small stream of water, and lastly a pebble 
 tract, — each side of these a frightful precipice. To go 
 down the first precipice, across the creeks, sand-bars, 
 pebble tracts, pipes, and sluiceways, and up the second 
 precipice requires, for strangers new to the ways and 
 blinded by gales of rain, some nerve. This was the 
 way we entered Fair Play. We shall remember it. 
 
 At sunset the rain stopped; the clouds lifted and 
 showed us the grand summit of Mount Lincoln, which 
 we had come to ascend. 
 
 " Up to the top of that mountain in a carriage ! " we 
 exclaimed. " It is impossible." 
 
 " It is not even difficult," was the reply. " The road 
 is as good a road as }'0u have been over to-day. The 
 steepness is the only trouble. It takes five hours to go 
 from here, and it is only twelve miles to the summit." 
 
 We were incredulous. Mount Lincoln was nearly 
 fifteen thousand feet high. It rose bare, precipitously, 
 and seemed to pierce the sky. A bank of snow lay 
 along its upper line. 
 
 " There's a mine just below that snowbank," continued 
 the astonishing tale. " The miners hve in a cabin there 
 all the year round and there are loads of ore drawn 
 down every day over this road you are going on." 
 
 The sides of the mountain looked more and more 
 precipitous each moment that we gazed upon them. 
 The story must be true, but it was incredible. The 
 road must be real, but it was terrible to think of. We 
 dreaded the morning. And it was the morning of a day 
 which we would gladly live over again. So false are 
 fears in this life. 
 
 We set out early, — down into the Platte meadows; 
 up a rift between mountains, called a valley ; along the 
 edges of pine forests; past dismal little mining settle-
 
 A COLORADO WEE A'. 253 
 
 merits, where great piles of sulphur smoked lurid and 
 yellow, — seven miles of this, with the bare, brown, ter- 
 rible mountains looming up straight and near before us, 
 and we came to the base of Mount Lincoln. Seven 
 miles we had come in a little more than an hour. It 
 was to take us four hours to chmb the remaining five 
 miles. No wonder, at our first turn into the mountain 
 road, we looked at each other aghast. It seemed nearly 
 perpendicular. It was full of stones, of bowlders ; it 
 looked like the washed-out bed of a fierce mountain 
 ' torrent. The pine forest on either hand was grand and 
 stately. We could see no longer the bare summit above 
 us ; but, looking back, we saw minute by minute, by the 
 receding valley and the opening up of new views of hills 
 and ravines and parks in all directions, how fast we 
 were mounting. On all sides of us blazed enchanting 
 color, — solid spaces of fire-weed, brilliant pink, purple 
 and yellow and white asters, and blue harebells by tens 
 of thousands ; green grassy nooks under the pine trees 
 were filled or bordered or dotted with the gay blossoms. 
 The contrast between these and the devastated gully 
 in which we were climbing seemed inexpHcable. The 
 horses' sides heaved like billov/s and their breathing 
 was loud. Every two minutes they must stop to recover 
 breath. Only the strongest brakes could hold the car- 
 riage in its place. " This is nothing," said Jack, the 
 driver. " I don't mind any thing about it below timber 
 line." 
 
 Neither did we after we had been above timber line. 
 That was some three thousand feet below the summit. 
 Just there stood a group of cabins — the cabins and 
 stables of the muleteers who work for the mines. 
 
 " You'll never get up with them hosses," called out 
 one of the mule-drivers, as we passed. 
 
 Jack received the taunt in contemptuous silence. 
 
 " I hain't never been by here yet without some o' 
 them fellers tellin' me I couldn't get up," said he. 
 ''They think there can't nothin' go up this mountain 
 except a mule '
 
 254 J^iTS OF tkavEjl. at home. 
 
 "Well, when we come down all safe you can ask 
 them which knew best," said I. 
 
 " No, I don't never say nothin' to 'em," replied Jack ; 
 *' for as like as not some day I shan't get up, and then 
 they'll fling it up at me. I'm the only fellow in our 
 stable but what has had his hosses give out on this 
 road." 
 
 'We were out, fairly out on the bald, bare, blistering 
 mountain, — on Mount Bross, which we must nearly cross 
 to reach Mount Lincoln. The mountains, instead of be- 
 ing sheer soHd rock, as we had supposed, looking at them 
 from below, were simply piles, giant piles of fine-broken 
 stone, broken into sharp, fine fragments, as if it had 
 been crushed in a rolling mill, — not a single smooth 
 roadstone among them, and so little sand or gravel or 
 soil of any kind that it seemed a marvel how the great 
 mass was held together; why strong winds did not 
 blow it gradually away in showers of stones ; why it 
 was not perpetually rolling down ; how it could possibly 
 be tunnelled or driven over. 
 
 " There's the road," said Jack, pointing up to a dim 
 zigzag line of a little lighter color than the rest of the 
 mountain. " That's the worst place," indicating what 
 looked like a track on which there had been a sHde some 
 day. " I shan't refuse anybody that likes to get out 
 and walk there." 
 
 It was indeed fearful. Nothing but the grandeur of 
 the off-look into space could have held our terror in 
 check. That and the blue of the blue-bells all around 
 us in great masses, making solid color as a cloverfield 
 has. There they stood, the dainty, frail, beloved blue- 
 bells, hugging the ground for safety ; none of them 
 more than three or four inches high, but clear, shining, 
 and lovely as those which waved on the shady terraces 
 below. Blue-bells twelve thousand feet above the sea, 
 and they were not alone. There were dozens of other 
 low flowers, which we knew not, — blue, white, laven«ier, 
 and pink, — all keeping close to the ground, like mosses, 
 but all perfect of form and tint. These comforted us-
 
 A COLORADO WEEK. 255 
 
 When for very dizziness we could not look up or off, 
 we looked down to the ground, and there secure, content 
 little faces reassured us. 
 
 The road wound and doubled, making occasional 
 vertical thrusts upward. It seemed to have been made 
 by pushing down the loose stones, bracing them and 
 packing them a htde tighter ; that was all. Again and 
 again we saw ahead of us what we supposed to be the 
 road, and it proved to be only an accidental depression 
 or projection in the mountain side. The horses could 
 go only about twice or three times the carriage length 
 at a time. Then, gasping and puffing, they stopped and 
 rested five or six minutes. It seemed to me cruel to 
 compel thern to draw us. I jumped out and announced 
 my intention of walking. A very few steps showed me 
 that it was out of my power. Each step that I took 
 seemed to resound in my head. I could not breathe. 
 I was dizzy. My forehead seemed bursting from the 
 pressure of the surging blood. 
 
 '' Shade of Henry Bergh ! " I exclaimed. " Couldst 
 thou be humane at thirteen thousand feet above the sea ? 
 I cannot." And at the end of the first rod I called pite- 
 ously to Jack that I must be taken into the carriage 
 again. Two-thirds of the way up Mount Bross were 
 several small cabins, projecting like odd-shaped rocks 
 from the side of the mountain. Places for these also 
 had apparently been scooped out among the fine rolling 
 stones. This was the "Dolly Varden " Mine. Some 
 of the miners stood in the cabin-doors as we passed. I 
 gazed at them earnestly, expecting to see them look Hke 
 sons of gnomes of the upper and lower air ; but their 
 faces were fresh, healthful, and kindly. A little further 
 along Jack exclaimed : — 
 
 "We're riding over the Moose Mine now. There's 
 tunnels right under us here that you could drive a four- 
 hoss team through." Looking cautiously over the edge 
 of the precipice to the right, we could see the roofs of 
 the cabins many feet below us, and in a few moments 
 we passed the road leading down to them. It was just
 
 256 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 such a road as we were on, and we could still see noth- 
 ing but loose stone above, below, around. Mysterious 
 mountain ! Apparently a gigantic pile of tiny, rolling 
 bits of stone, and yet mined and tunnelled and counter- 
 tunnelled, and full of silver from top to bottom. 
 
 The road wound around the northern face of Mount 
 Bross and then came out on a narrow ridge or saddle con- 
 necting Mount Bross to Mount Lincoln. This was per- 
 haps the grandest point of all. To the north we looked 
 up Moant Lincoln, a thousand feet above us ; to the east 
 we looked off and down to the river level, over and through 
 and between myriads of sharp peaks and unfathomable 
 gorges, and beyond these off to a horizon of mountains. 
 To the west also we looked down into a confusion of 
 peaks and ridges wedged between canyons ; and just 
 below us lay a small lake, so smooth, so dark it looked 
 like a huge steel shield flung into the chasm. 
 
 As we ascended the last few hundred feet of Mount 
 Lincoln a fierce wind blew in our faces. It seemed as if 
 to such a wind it would be a trifling thing to whisk our 
 carriage and us off the narrow ledge of road. Very wel- 
 come was the roaring fire in the cabin of the " Present 
 Help " Mine at the summit, and very significant seemed 
 the name of the mine. 
 
 Nothing in the mining country is odder than the 
 names of the mines. They are as indicative of parent- 
 age as are the names of m.en and women ; and, over- 
 hearing them in famihar conversations, one is often 
 much bewildered. Once on a hotel piazza I overheard 
 the following sentences : — 
 
 " He's sold out i' the Moore and bought into the 
 Moskeeter; 'n he's got suthin' in Hiawatha, too." 
 
 " Well, I think Buckskin Joe's pretty good, don't you ? " 
 replied the listener. 
 
 The cabin was, like those of the Dolly Varden Mine, 
 below, built against the side of the mountain, in a spot 
 apparently scooped out of the stones. From its front 
 was a transcendent ofif-look to the south and east. Its 
 door was perhaps three feet from the edge of a sheer
 
 4 COLORADO WEEK. 257 
 
 precipice. Hundreds and, for aught I know, thousands 
 of feet down would that man fall who made a misstep ; 
 and yet the men went back and forth swiftly, and jostled 
 the mules carelessly to one side if they happened to 
 wander in there. We, however, crept slowly around 
 the cabin corner, holding by the logs, and did not 
 venture to look off until we were fairly in the doorway. 
 
 The cook was a cheery fellow, with a fine head and 
 laughing brown eyes. He was kneading bread. His 
 tin pans shone like a dairymaid's. The cabin was by 
 no means a comfortless place. One wide, long bench 
 for table ; a narrow one for chairs ; tin cups, tin pans, 
 black knives and forks, — we borrowed them all. The 
 cook made delicious coffee for us and we took our lunch 
 with as good relish as if we had been born miners. The 
 men's beds were in tiers of bunks on two sides of the 
 cabin, much wider and more comfortable than stateroom 
 berths in steamers. In each berth was a small wooden 
 box, nailed on the wall, for a sort of cupboard or bureau 
 drawer. In these lay the Sunday clothes, white shirts, 
 and so forth, neatly folded. There were newspapers 
 lying about, and when I asked the cook if he liked living 
 there, he answered : " Oh, yes ! very well. We have 
 a mail once a week." A reply which at once revealed 
 the man and was significant of the age in which he 
 lived. 
 
 There were still two hundred feet of Mount Lincoln 
 to be climbed. The little cabin had seemed to be but 
 a step below the summit-line ; but now we looked up to 
 two sharp pyramids of stones above us. Up to the first 
 point, over fine, sharp bits of stone, which slipped and 
 rolled under our feet at every step, we crawled ; up to 
 the second, over great bowlders, piled and poised and 
 tipped on each other, we scrambled and leaped, and 
 sunk down at the foot of the flag-staff. We were Hter- 
 ally on the apex point of the continent ! Here, on the 
 one hand, were the head-waters of the Arkansas River, 
 going south ; on the other, the head-waters of the Platte, 
 going east ; and just across a small divide, almost within
 
 258 BITS OF TRAVET AT HOME. 
 
 a stone's throw, the headwaters of the Grande, going 
 west to the Pacific. Well did the old Spaniards name 
 >t)^is central range "Sierra Madre " — "Mother Moun- 
 tains," It is said that the view from this peak has a 
 radius of over a hundred and fifty miles. It would be 
 easy to believe it greater. Fancy such a radius as this 
 sweeping slowly around a horizon circle of lofty peaks, 
 and the entire space from the outer horizon to the cen- 
 tral summit filled with great mountain ranges and their 
 intervening parks and valleys. The great South Park, 
 a day's journey wide, was a hand's-breadth now of soft 
 olive-gray, its wooded ridges and hills making dots of 
 dark color ; yet its tint and its outline were as distinct 
 as when seen from its near wall. 
 
 As we looked down on the narrow chains and into the 
 closer chasms, it seemed as if this great giant pyramid 
 on which we stood must hold, in some mysterious way, 
 in its secret chambers, the threads of all the other ranges, 
 as if they centred in it, radiated out from it, circled 
 around it, in an intricate bond, hke that by which the 
 spider-web is spun and swung. The near peaks and 
 ridges were bare, stony, sharp. Their chasms looked 
 unfathomable, like ghastly seams cloven to the earth's 
 very centre. Among these, to the north, were two silent, 
 black, gleaming lakes. From these nearer peaks the 
 eye journeyed downward, with a sense of relief, to 
 wooded ranges, intervals of sunny valley ; and then 
 outward, in the vast circle, to mountains with snowy 
 tops ; and at last to mountains in the furthest horizon, 
 blue, dim, and unreal, — mountains of which one could 
 unquestioningly believe that they were not of this world, 
 but of some other, — parapets of some far planet, on 
 which at that moment beings of an unknown race might 
 be standing and looking off" across the great space won- 
 deringly at us. 
 
 Who knows that among the " things prepared " there 
 may not be this : that, we being set free from all hin- 
 drances of space, as well as from those of time, there 
 vill be recognition, converse from planet to planet, the
 
 A COLORADO WEEK. 259 
 
 aniverse round as quick and complete as there id now 
 from face to face within hand's reach. On such heights 
 as this one sees clearly, and feels a -million times more 
 clearly than he sees, that this glorious world could never 
 have been fashioned solely for the uses of our present 
 helplessness. Deeper than the secret stores of gold 
 and silver and gems with which these great untouched 
 mountains are filled, there lies in them a secret, a proph- 
 ecy of life to come, into which they shall enter and of 
 which we shall be triumphant possessors. 
 
 With brakes clinched, wheels tied, and teeth set, we 
 grazed, twisted, shd down the mountain ; none too soon, 
 for a storm was gathering in the west, which gave us a 
 hard race down the valley and across the river meadows. 
 But we came in ahead at sunset, and were warming our 
 hands over a big fire in the Fair Play Hotel when it 
 burst in avalanches of cold rain. 
 
 "This is snow on the mountains," said the landlord. 
 Sure enough. Next morning all the upper peaks were 
 solid white, — so white that it was hard to see where 
 snow left off and clouds began. As we looked back and 
 up from the bed of the Platte at the majestic shining 
 pyramids and cones, we doubted our memories of the 
 day before. As well tell us we had been caught up into 
 the skies. 
 
 We were a very glad party that morning. We were 
 setting our faces toward an unanticipated pleasure ; 
 more than that, toward a pleasure we had longed for but 
 had unwillingly abandoned all hope of. We were set- 
 ting out for the Twin Lakes. We owed this to Jack. 
 Jack was a reticent fellow. A hasty observer might 
 liave thought his face a sullen one ; but there were fine 
 lines around the corners of his eyes which meant good, 
 and a smile now and then which showed a sensitive 
 nature. He had led a wild life. He had been a stage- 
 driver in Mexico ; had spent whole winters trapping on 
 the shores of Itaska Lake : had fought Indians every- 
 where ; and just now was 'ying by in inglorious quiet in 
 a Fair Play livery stable Before he had been long witb
 
 26o BITS OF TEA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 us on the mountain, he knew what we liked. The first 
 remark which betrayed his discriminating observation 
 was called out by our enthusiastic ejaculations about the 
 flowers. Without turning his head and speaking low, 
 as if in a sohloquy, he said : "■ There's great differences 
 in folks about noticin' things." 
 
 Have we the tutor of Sandford and Merton for a 
 driver ? thought I, and I smothered a laugh as I said : 
 " Yes, indeed, Jack. But what reminded you of that ? " 
 
 " I was a-thinkin' of the two people I drove up here 
 day before yesterday. I never heard 'em say one word 
 from first to last about any thin' they see ; an' they 
 wanted to turn right round an' come straight down 's 
 soon 's they got up. I don't know what such folks 's 
 them takes the trouble to travel round for. I s'pose it's 
 just for the name on't, — to say they've done it." 
 
 The words give no idea of the drollery and contemptu- 
 ousness of his manner. We could hardly reply for 
 laughing. 
 
 " Oh ! Jack, didn't they even notice the flowers ? " we 
 said. 
 
 " Don't believe they'd have said there was a flower on 
 the road," replied Jack. " All they see was the stones 
 and the steep places. The man, he swore at 'em." 
 
 " But there ain't nothin' that you'll see to-day," he 
 continued, "which is 's handsome, to my way o' thinkin', 
 's the Twin Lakes. You're goin' there, ain't you .?" 
 
 " No, Jack," we said. " We can't take the time to go 
 there." 
 
 Jack's countenance fell. 
 
 "Can't you? "he said. "I'd like first-rate to have 
 you see them lakes. They're the nicest things in this 
 country." 
 
 Again and again in the course of the day he alluded 
 to them. It evidently went sorely against him that we 
 should not see those lakes. 
 
 "You like flowers so much," he said. "You hain't 
 seen any flowers yet to what you'll see there, an' there 
 ain't no kind of difficulty in gettin' to the Twin Lakes 
 It's a plain road from Fair Play."
 
 A COLORADO WEEK. 261 
 
 " Yes, Jack," we said ; " but it is two days' journey, 
 and we can't spend so much time." 
 
 Jack fairly sprang round on his seat, and, facing us, 
 exclaimed : — 
 
 " Who's been a-telHn' you it was two days' journey ? 
 It's only thirty-five miles straight across the range. 
 You'll do it easy in one day." 
 
 And so, all by reason of Jack's having noticed the 
 "differences in people about noticin' things," we set off 
 on the fourth morning of our Holy Week for the Twin 
 Lakes. 
 
 "Jack," said I, as we were climbing up out of the 
 Platte River, " what is the reason you like the Twin 
 Lakes so much ? " 
 
 An awkward, half-shamefaced look flickered over 
 Jack's features, as if I had asked him some question 
 about his sweetheart. 
 
 " I don't know," he said, hesitatingly. " I reckon it's 
 because it's such a lonely-lookin' kind o' place. I hain't 
 been there but once." 
 
 There was a strange mixture of the hermit and the 
 adventurer in our Jack. We liked journeying in his 
 company. 
 
 We were out once more in the great, grand South 
 Park. It was glorious under the morning light. Its 
 broad stretches shone silver-gray, and its myriad-moun- 
 tained wall was blue in the south and in the east and in 
 the west snow-topped. We drove a few miles south- 
 ward, then turned sharply to the west, and followed a 
 grassy road into one of the many lovely valleys which 
 we had seen two days before, making up like inlets 
 between the foot-hills of the western wall of the Park. 
 This wall we were to cross. Its multiplying and tower- 
 ing crests looked impassable ; but we had learned the 
 marvel of the secret windings of mountain passes, and a 
 messenger had already met us, — a messenger white 
 with haste, so fast had he come down and out. 
 
 By the same road v/e would go up and in, and so 
 across. Almost immediately the valley narrowed. The
 
 262 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 creek, the messenger, became a foaming brook and the 
 road clung to its bank. It was thick set with willows, 
 bush-maples, and alders. Their branches brushed 'nto 
 our faces, they grew so close ; flowers burst into our 
 sight like magic on all sides, — fireweed, harebells, 
 painter's-brush, larkspur, asters of all colors and 
 superbly full and large. It was a fairy garden. The 
 grass was green, — real, perfect green grass, the first, 
 the only true green grass I have ever seen in Colorado. 
 Except for the towering and stony walls above our 
 heads and for the fiery scarlet or" the painter's-brush 
 and the tall spikes of larkspur, 1 could have fancied my- 
 self in a wild thicketed cave in Vermont. The green 
 grass ran up in lovely spaces under the pines and firs ; 
 the air was almost overladen with fragrance ; white 
 butterflies wheeled and circled above us and then flew 
 on ahead ; the road was set, literally set, thick with 
 borders of lavender, gray, purple, white, and yellow 
 asters. Even down the middle of the road they grew, — 
 not only asters, but harebells ; under the horses' feet, 
 safe, untouched, in the narrow central strip of grass, 
 lifted high between the two trodden furrows. 
 
 The rocky walls narrowed and still narrowed ; we 
 were at bottom of a chasm. Then imperceptibly our 
 road would rise, its borders widen, and we would find 
 ourselves on a narrow divide, with deep ravines on 
 either hand. I am at utter loss to describe how these 
 Rocky Mountain ridges underlie, overlie, cross, and 
 swallow up each other. They remind me of nothing but 
 masses of colossal crystals, so sharp their edges, so 
 straight their sides, so endless their intersections. 
 They are gigantic wedges driven into the mountains 
 and each other, and piled up again in tiers, making 
 mountains upon mountains. The ravines between them 
 seem to have been cloven by them, as an axe cleaves 
 wood and remains fast in the riif it has made. 
 
 Over and on and up and down these wedged ridges, 
 through unvarying pine and fir forests and through ever- 
 varying flower-beds, we slowly cHmbed the range. At
 
 A COLORADO WEEK. 263 
 
 last the pines and firs stopped. We were eleven thou- 
 sand feet high. The bare ridge on which we were, 
 tapered to a point before us and disappeared in the side 
 of a stony peak. A small dark lake lay in the hollow 
 just below their intersection. A sharp wind blew from 
 the left ; we were at the top. We looked over into an- 
 other ravine. A dark wooded mountain shut across it 
 like a gate ; between us and it were a bit of meadow 
 and a little stream. 
 
 After these, the ravine narrowed again and the road 
 grew steep and rocky, — very steep and very rocky. 
 Through a very carnival of bowlders, fallen pines, drift- 
 wood, and foaming water we descended. Soon, through 
 a grand rock gateway, we saw the valley of the Arkan- 
 sas, olive-gray, with meandering lines of solid green 
 marking the river course, and with strange and ex- 
 quisitely beautiful terraces in it, rising abruptly and in 
 detached curves, — the record of changing water-lines in 
 the ancient days. As we reached the edge of the val- 
 ley, we saw a faint track leading off to the left. 
 
 '^Ah ! " said Jack. " Here's the short cut." And he 
 turned into it. 
 
 "What short cut?" said I, being by nature and by 
 experience distrustful of short cuts to any thing. 
 
 '• There's a short cut through here down to the river, 
 that saves four miles. So McLaughlin said. He's 
 been through here. It don't look much worn, though ; 
 that's a fact," said Jack, as we drove into the meadow 
 grass. 
 
 Zigzagging around that meadow, now in now out of 
 sight, over boggy places and round hillocks, led that 
 " short cut." We were in no danger of losing our way, 
 for there lay the Arkansas meadows in full sight ; but 
 the road seemed to be making no special headway 
 toward them. The question was about the ford. 
 Should we hit it .? Presently we came out into a trav- 
 elled road and in full sight of the Arkansas River ; that 
 is, of several tortuous lines of alders and willows in a 
 bright green meadow. Not a gleam of water to be seea
 
 264 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 Neither did our short cut in any wise cross this trav- 
 elled road, which ran parallel with the river. There was 
 no suggestion of a track leading down to the river at 
 this point. Slowly we drove up and down that road, 
 peering into the grass on its river side for sign or trail 
 of a road leading to a ford. There was none. At last, 
 Jack, giving the horses a revengeful stroke, as if they 
 had suggested the short cut poor things ! drove rapidly 
 up the road, saying : " Well, I reckon we'll save time 
 to drive up to the ford I know, four miles up the road." 
 
 " So much for short cuts. Jack. They never turn out 
 well," said I, as we passed the point where the road we 
 had forsaken joined the one we were on. It would 
 have brought us to the ford an hour sooner. 
 
 After the ford, six miles down-stream again, through 
 the luscious meadow grass, in which cows grazed ankle- 
 deep. The mountains we had crossed stood bare and 
 red in the east, the mountains we were still to enter 
 stood soft and blue in the west, — two high ranges, and 
 the Arkansas River and its meadows between ;"and yet 
 we were in that very world of near peaks and ravines 
 and ridges upon which we had looked down from Mount 
 Lincoln the day before. We had thought it all moun- 
 tains. Yet here in one of those chasms, which had 
 looked to us like nothing more than clefts, there was 
 room for a river, and river meadows, homesteads, and 
 herds. 
 
 The sun was so low that he cast huge profiles of 
 shadow on all the northern slopes of the western moun- 
 tains, as we turned toward them. Once more to the 
 right, once more into a grassy valley making up be- 
 tween the foot-hills ; soft, round, covered only with low 
 grass and a pale bluish shrub, they fairly shimmered in 
 their ghostly gray as the twilight settled on them. One, 
 two, three, four, five we cHmbed, and seemed to get no 
 nearer the mountains. '' I'd forgotten there were so 
 many of these hills," said Jack. " You'll see the lakes 
 after the next one, sure." But we did not; nor aftei 
 the next, nor the next. At last the sight came, — beau-
 
 A COLORADO WEiiK. 265 
 
 tiful enouo;h to have been waited for. Before us a line 
 of high, sharp peaks, dark blue nearly to the top, their 
 summits just touched by the red sunset-light. They 
 seemed to curve westward and to curvs eastward till 
 they met the terraced line of hills on which we stood. 
 At their feet and at ours lay the two lakes, — dark, 
 motionless, shining, stretching close to the mountain 
 bases on all sides, and linked to each other by a narrow 
 neck of green land, across which a line of green bushes 
 stretched, looking like a second band set to strengthen 
 or to adorn the first. Afterward we saw that it was a 
 closer Hnk than we dreamed ; for beneath the line of 
 green bushes runs a Httle creek, mingling the waters of 
 the upper and the lower lake perpetually. 
 
 Jack turned and looked at us in silence. 
 
 " Yes, you were right. Jack," we said. " It is more 
 beautiful than any thing we saw yesterday, and it is a 
 very lonely-looking kind of place." 
 
 Not so lonely as we could have wished, however, 
 when we drove down the steep hills to the Log Cabin 
 Hotel, where we must sleep. People walking about, 
 white-covered camp-wagons, high-topped buggies, all 
 told us that we were too late on the list of arrivals. 
 
 " Indeed, I can't, — not to make you anyways com- 
 fortable," was the landlady's honest answer when we ap- 
 peared at her door, saying: "Here we four are, and 
 must stay. Can you take care of us 1 " It wasn't so 
 bad as it might have been, that wind-swept, fluttering 
 room in which we went to bed that night, bounded to 
 west by a chinky log wall, to north by an open window, 
 to east and south by a scant cahco curtain, which parted, 
 but did not sever us from the dining-room. Colorado 
 travellers have often fared worse, no doubt ; but, taking 
 all things into account, we thought it an odd coincidence 
 that over at the head of one very unrestful bed there 
 should have been pasted a leaf of " The Overland 
 Monthly," containing the first stanzas of an " Ode to 
 Pain." Never shall I cease to regret that we were so 
 stupefied by lack of sleep and by the repeated alarms at
 
 f 66 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 the fluttering calico curtain that we omitted to copy 
 that " Ode to Pain." The pattern of the cahco of the 
 calico curtain I recollect perfectly, — it is stamped 
 on my brain for ever; but not a line of the Ode can I 
 recall. 
 
 All the next morning we sat under a pine-tree on the 
 northern shore of the lakes and looked out upon them. 
 Marvellous, lovely twins ! Ten thousand feet above the 
 sea and thousands of miles away from it, they held all 
 its charm and none of its sadness. The soft waves 
 lapped on the shore with a sound as gentle as the sigh 
 of pines, and the water was clear as crystal sixty feet 
 down. They were seas, translated, glorified, come to 
 their spiritual resurrection, and wedded to each other 
 for all eternity. The lower lake is about three miles in 
 length ; the upper one only half as long. They are not 
 more than a mile and a half wide. But when you sit 
 on the shore, and see the great mountains' full height 
 and the dome of the sky reflected in them as in a glass, 
 and reaching only half way across, they seem much 
 wider. The mountains are wooded half way up. The 
 green line of firs and pines and aspens reproduces on 
 the mountain side exactly the line which the summits 
 make against the sky. This beautiful, jagged summit 
 line, therefore, is three times mapped in the beautiful 
 picture, — mapped first in red against the blue sky, then 
 in green on the mountain side, and then red and green 
 outlines both are mapped again together on the dark 
 amber of the lake. The picture seemed to be drawn 
 by a trembhng hand. At the slightest breeze on the 
 surface it quivered and was effaced, but returned in an 
 instant again if the breeze died down. As we drove 
 away in the early afternoon, along the terraced hills on 
 the northern shore, the lakes were motionless, and dark 
 blue as tempered steel, and the picture of the wooded 
 mountains stretched across the shining surface in Hues 
 as fine and distinct as Damascus ever graved on her 
 magic metal for blade or shield. 
 
 We followed the lake outlet down toward the Arkansas
 
 A COLORADO WEEK. 267 
 
 meadows again, over more of the soft, sage-gray hills, 
 past deserted mining villages where grass grew high 
 round blackened hearthstones, and past villages where 
 men are still mining for gold, down, down as fast as the 
 creek into the fertile bottom-lands. The Arkansas 
 here is narrow, and doubles on itself perpetually, as if 
 it sought to baffle some pursuer. Its meadow at this 
 point is a delicious bit of color. First the curving lines 
 of willows and cottonwoods, dark green ; then the rank 
 meadow grass, bright yellow-green ; then the foot-hill 
 slopes of the exquisite gray-green, paling to silver-gray 
 at top, and with the red soil gleaming through every- 
 where ; then the dark, wooded slopes of the mountains, 
 reaching up to ten or eleven thousand feet, and above 
 those the bare peaks, gray, or red, or blue, or purple, 
 according to the day and the hour. Again and again I 
 wonder at the ineffable lovehness of the soft tints in this 
 stern-visaged country. Again and again I long for an 
 artist to come who can seize the secret of their tender- 
 ness, the bloom of their beauty. The meadow grew 
 less and less, — from fields to narrow strips, from strips 
 to fringes it diminished, and the mountains came closer 
 and closer. On every side of us were weird and fan- 
 tastic rocks, shaped in all manner of semblances, so 
 distorted, so uncouth, so significant of ages of violence, 
 that they were almost fearful. At sunset we looked 
 out to the mouth of this canyon on a scene bewilder- 
 ingly beautiful. No mirage in the desert ever played a 
 more fantastic trick upon travellers eyes than did the 
 sweet light and mist slanting over the distance beyond 
 the mouth of the canyon. Against the southern sky 
 rose one of the highest mountain ranges, its summit- 
 line majestically cut into square buttress shapes in the 
 centre, and in slowly lowering peaks and undulations to 
 right and left. It was two-thirds in shadow, — deep, 
 dark blue, — the upper third so bathed in light that the 
 clouds floating above it seemed part of it, and we dis- 
 puted with each other hotly as to where the real crests 
 of the mountains were. At foot of this range, bathed
 
 268 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 in a golden light and yet misty and pale blue in parts, 
 there lay what seemed to be a great city of Oriental 
 architecture. Domes and minarets and towers and 
 roofs, — nothing could be plainer. The light streamed 
 in among them ; the beams lay in dusty gold aslant 
 across them ; shining spots here and there looked like 
 the kindling reflections of sunlight on glass surfaces. 
 What could it be .^ No city, certainly. It was into the 
 wilderness we gazed, but what did the shapes mean? 
 They were far too solid to be mere atmospheric effects, 
 optical illusions. As well as if we were touching their 
 foundations, we knew that they were solid, real. Be- 
 hind us the western sky was one sheet of gold. Float- 
 ing crimson clouds hung low over the near mountains, 
 and the east was clear blue. Slowly the city sank into 
 shadow. Even after it was wrapped in gray, the domes 
 and the minarets and the towers remained. It was a 
 city still. And we drove down into the valley almost 
 believing that some strange chance had brought us to 
 that height at the exact moment when the sun's rays 
 had revealed some unknown ruins in a hollow of the 
 great hills. 
 
 There could hardly be a sharper contrast than that 
 from the gorgeous color and fairy-like spectacle on 
 which we had been feasting at top of the hill, to the 
 dank, dark hollow into which a few moments brought 
 us, — ■ to the low, flat-roofed cabins, and the sad, worn 
 face of the woman who stood in their doorway. 
 
 The cabins were built close to the bank of the river. 
 Hills to the north and to the south shut in all the damp- 
 ness and shut out hoursful of sun. There was a heavy 
 and ill-odored moisture in the air, such as I had not 
 supposed could exist in Colorado. I shuddered at the 
 thought that we must sleep in it. 
 
 In reply to the question whether she could take care 
 of us for the night, the sad-faced woman answered : — 
 
 '' I'll do the best I can." 
 
 The expression of her face made my heart ache. 
 She looked ill, hopeless ; every feature showed refine-
 
 A COLORADO WEEK. 269 
 
 ment, and her voice and her words were those of an 
 educated woman. 
 
 " I am sure you are from the East," I said to her. 
 The tears filled her eyes instantly. 
 
 "Yes, I am from New York State," she said, and 
 turned away. 
 
 Before night we knew her whole story. It seemed to 
 be a rehef to her to tell it to us. She had been a 
 school teacher in western New York. Of delicate fibre 
 physically, and of an unusually fine and sensitive mental 
 organization, she was as unfitted for life in the Colorado 
 wildernesses as a woman could well be. Yet she had 
 borne up under it bravely until the last three years, 
 when ill health had been added to her other burdens. 
 Within the last month, two of her three children had 
 died, and this last blow had broken her heart. One had 
 died of scarlet fever, and the other, she said, " of this 
 dreadful new disease that the doctors don't know much 
 about, — the cerebro-spinal meningitis, they call it, or 
 some such name." 
 
 Poor babies ! No wonder, living in that damp hollow, 
 with the river miasms, if there were any, shut in and 
 kept over from night to night in the low-roofed cabin ! 
 
 The remaining child, a little boy of six or eight, 
 looked very pale and lifeless. He too had had the 
 fever. It would have seemed cruel to say to that help- 
 less mother, "The only chance for healthful life for 
 him and for you is a new house on some sunny hill- 
 side." Yet I yearned to say it. It will be long before 
 I forget that sad little home on the Arkansas. 
 
 The next morning — our sixth morning — we set out 
 early on our homeward way. A few miles brought us 
 to the magic city of the night before. The marvel was 
 not so strange. Here were hills, upon hills, — sharp, 
 rounded, crowded, piled with rocks, which even by day 
 bore almost the shapes they had shown to us by night, 
 
 — pinnacles, buttresses,- terraces, towers, with sharp- 
 pointed firs growing among them. It was indeed a city 
 
 — a silent, tenantless city — which reminded me of some
 
 270 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 of the stories I read in my childhood of Edom and 
 Petraea. We were in the canyon still, but it was fast 
 widening and bearing to the right. The way of the 
 Arkansas River lay south, and we could follow it no 
 longer. We must turn northward and climb the range 
 again. We had lost many hundred feet of elevation in 
 coming down this easier way by the river's road. Five 
 hours of good climbing did it. Over divide after divide, 
 as we had so many times climbed before ; under the 
 pines and among the flowers and out on the bare ridges 
 at top; then down, miles down, into the grand, stead- 
 fast, reposeful plain of the park. We were a half day's 
 journey now to the south of Fair Play and our road 
 skirted the western wall of the park. We looked up 
 into all the lovely valleys, thrusting their arms into the 
 forest slopes of the mountains. They were alike and 
 not alike, — all green and smooth and creek-fed, but no 
 two of the same outline, no two of the same depth, any 
 more than any two of the inlets on a fretted seashore. 
 A night at Fair Play again, and then we retraced our 
 road of the first two days, — eastward, instead of west- 
 ward, across the park ; eastward over the mountains 
 and through the passes, and at sunset of the eighth day 
 down into our own beloved plains. The first glimpse 
 of their immeasurable distance was grander than all we 
 had journeyed to see. 
 
 Their mystic vanishing line, where earth and sky seem 
 one, only because eyes are too weak to longer follow 
 their eternal curves, always strikes upon my sight as I 
 think there would fall upon the ear the opening perfect 
 chord of some celestial symphony, — a celestial symphony 
 which we must for ever strain to hear, must for ever know 
 to be resounding just beyond our sense, luring our very 
 souls out of this fife into the next, from earth to heaven. 
 
 Only, as I said, from a Saturday to a Saturday. But 
 what a week it had been, — the Holy Week of our sum- 
 mer I
 
 A STUDY OF RED CANYON. 271 
 
 A STUDY OF RED CANYON. 
 
 ON the fourth day of June, 1876, Pike's Peak was 
 white with snow, and glittered in the sun as if the 
 snow were soHd ice. Half-a-dozen httle fleecy clouds 
 flitted around its summit, like fairies wrapped in swan's 
 down skating back and forth on the shining surface. 
 Nowhere else in the radiant blue dome of sky was a 
 cloud to be seen. The Fountain Creek, which runs 
 eastward from Manitou toward Colorado Springs, was 
 swollen high by melting snows in the mountains, and 
 dashed along with foamy, white-capped waves. A tiny 
 island, not more than two or three feet square, full of 
 tall, waving, yellow lupines, was so nearly swallowed up 
 by the torrent that it hardly looked like an island, — 
 rather like a gay bark, with a myriad golden pennons> 
 tossing on a stormy sea. 
 
 To enter Red Canyon, one must ford this creek about 
 two miles east of Manitou. It took some nerve to drive 
 into the swift current. A second's swaying of the car- 
 riage, a sudden plunge of the horses, a muffled clattering 
 of their feet deep down beneath the water, and we were 
 out on the other side, wheels dripping like mill-wheels 
 and the horses shaking themselves like Newfoundland 
 dogs after a swim. 
 
 " If the creek should continue to rise while we are in 
 the canyon, what then ? " said I, as we rounded the 
 first rocky bank, and began to walk the horses in a soft, 
 green open. 
 
 " Stay here till it fell," was the wise and sententious 
 answer. " We couldn't ford it if it were two inches 
 higher."
 
 272 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME 
 
 How much did this thought enhance the pleasure of 
 that day ? Red Canyon was not only Red Canyon. It 
 was a possible home, lodging, shelter, — a sudden sanc- 
 tuary of refuge. Had we friends, they could not find us, 
 get at us. Red Canyon had taken possession of us, 
 had chosen to monopohze us by a grim and daring hos 
 pitality akin to that of the feudal ages. Had we ene- 
 mies, were we fugitives, Red Canyon would not give us 
 up. It was our extempore monarch and knew nothing 
 of laws of extradition. The very thought of these pos- 
 sibilities seemed to drop a veil between us and home^ 
 only three miles away ; to lend a spell as of unreckoned 
 distance and uncounted time. The day, the place, 
 became dramatic, and we were irresponsible dramatis 
 personcs, with no trouble about learning our parts. It 
 was a novel and delicious sensation, — one of the many 
 and inexhaustible surprises which they enjoy to whom 
 the gods have granted that they may live in Colorado. 
 
 And so we studied Red Canyon. First, as I said, is 
 a soft, green open or valley, not many rods wide, its left 
 wall red sandstone, in thin horizontal layers, piled up 
 from fifty to a hundred feet high, jagged edges, water- 
 worn and seamed, with pine-trees growing in their 
 crevices. On the right hand, low hills, grass-grown, a 
 copse of oak bushes close to the road on the left ; on 
 the right, one of wild cherry-trees in full bloom. The 
 sandstone ledges look in places like old ship-keels, 
 turned up, stranded, battered. The oak bushes are so 
 close to the road they brush your wheels. The road 
 winds, now right, now left ; more ledges, more grassy 
 hills, more isolated rocks, columns, obeHsks, all red. 
 Three sharp pinnacles stand out on the left and seem to 
 narrow and cut off the road. A second more, and a 
 cone-like hill beyond has risen suddenly like a green 
 fortress across the way between two red ledges. Now 
 the road winds through a cottonwood grove, and the 
 hills and ledges on each side seem to be slipping past, 
 above the tree-tops, like the sHding canvas of a painted 
 panorama. Then the rift widens into a little park.
 
 A STUDY OF RED CAN YON. 273 
 
 Close In front is one sharp sandstone peak, thick-grown 
 half way up with pines and firs, — a pyramid of red set 
 in a bowl of green. Hills upon hills rise on the right, 
 full of green firs and pinnacles of red stone. Blue 
 mertensias and penstemons grow among them. Now 
 the canyon narrows again. It is only a chasm. The 
 ledges on each side present a front as of myriads of 
 plate edges, so thin are the layers and so many. Again 
 they are rounded and smooth. One on the right looks 
 like a gigantic red whale, hundreds of rods long. Op- 
 posite him are great surfaces of slanting rock, finely 
 striated, as with engravers' tools. You can see only a 
 few rods ahead. The road is a gully. Roses begin to 
 make the air sweet. In a thicket of them, the road turns 
 sharply round a high rock, and you are again in a little 
 grassy open, some hundred yards wide. The great red 
 stone whale on the right has his backbone higher than 
 ever, and dozens of loose bowlders are riding him. On 
 the left hand the rock wall is perpendicular, serrated at 
 top, and with slanting pinnacles shooting out here and 
 there. Tall pines, also, seventy and eighty feet high, 
 rooted in rocks where apparently is no crumb of earth. 
 At the base of this wall, a thick copse of oak bushes, 
 whose young leaves are of as tender and vivid a green 
 as the leaves of slender white birches in June in New 
 England. Now we cross a broad gully. In the bottom 
 of its red and sandy bed is a thread of shining water. 
 Ahead looms up a solid mass of green, — a fir wood, — 
 out of which taller pines rise like canopies borne over 
 heads below. The walls on either hand slope back, and 
 have here and there little plateaus, which are thick with 
 foliage, a sort of brilliant repousse work in green on a 
 red background. There is a sharp buzz of insects all 
 through the air. Here comes another little thread-like 
 stream leaping across the road, and suddenly the can- 
 yon widens again. The left-hand wall is a wall of 
 green, none of its stone showing through ; but in the 
 centre of the canyon rises a huge minster-like pile of 
 red stone, with tali firs and pines for towers and spires. 
 18
 
 274 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 Next we cross a dry and stony gully, and come to gyp- 
 sum quarries, where the glistening white stone is tum- 
 bled about in fine, picturesque masses, — a sudden and 
 delicious contrast of color after the dark reds and greens 
 on which we have been looking so long. 
 
 The canyon narrows ; the road narrows ; the walls 
 seem to brace their very feet together. Pink wild roses 
 and shrubs of a beautiful white-flowered rubus overhang 
 the road. There are huge red bowlders and peaks on 
 our left ; green hills and the white quarries on our 
 right ; a disused kiln, also, whose white doorway looks 
 ghostly. The road sinks into rocky chasms, climbs 
 out, turns such short corners we cannot see the horses' 
 lengths ahead, scrambles over bowlders and slabs and 
 piles of gypsum, and comes to a dead stop in front of a 
 hill, with great masses of cleft rock on its top. This 
 is the head of the canyon, — the hard knot, as it were, 
 in which the two walls are tied. 
 
 Tiers of soft, green, conical hills shut us in on all 
 sides. A great shelf of rock juts out, and makes so 
 large a shadow that a party of four or five might be 
 comfortably bestead here for a night. It has evidently 
 been often used for such shelter, for the ashes of old 
 fires lie thick in its recesses. 
 
 Summer days seem always reckoned by minutes, and 
 not by hours. How much too short they seem in Colo- 
 rado it would not be wise to try to tell ; but no one will 
 forget who has spent many of them out of doors there. 
 
 Red Canyon has, doubtless, many secrets to keep. I 
 shall keep well my share of the secrets of this fleeting 
 fourth of June. 
 
 As we retraced our steps in the late afternoon, the 
 canyon seemed hke a new one we had never seen, so 
 changed was it by our changed point of view. It is far 
 more beautiful as you go down. The sides seem ab- 
 rupter, the contrasts more vivid, and there is ever 
 before your eyes a magnificent background of distance 
 to the north and northeast. The blue wall of the 
 divide breaks it, and the grand gates of the Garden of
 
 A STUDY OF RED CANYON. 275 
 
 the Gods glow like pinnacles of red cornelian in the 
 sunset light. 
 
 The creek, which had been so full of foamy white- 
 caps in the morning, was running so much more peace- 
 fully when we crossed it at night that our horses stood 
 still in the middle and drank at their leisure ; and the 
 gay bark, with its yellow lupine pennons, was high 
 above water, its sides looking black and worn, as if it 
 had been in battle.
 
 276 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 CENTRAL CITY AND BOB TAIL TUNNEL. 
 
 THREE hours by rail from Denver to Central City, 
 — only three hours ; but one might often journey 
 for three days and nights without making so sharp \ 
 transition. To go in three hours' time, from a broad, 
 dusty, sun-smitten plain, into cool, dark, pine-clad 
 gorges, and up and out upon mountain heights, is like 
 being hfted in one day, by some great stroke of fate, 
 from a stagnant, commonplace level of life to an atmos- 
 phere full of joy and purpose and action. Who that has 
 lived and loved has not known some such sudden up- 
 liftings ? Who that has hved in and loved Colorado 
 has not thus journeyed from one to another of her mar- 
 vellous worlds ? Not that the plain which bears Denver 
 on its bosom can ever be called commonplace, or Den- 
 ver stagnant and inert. The plain is majestic, almost 
 solemn in the suggestion of its distances and its snow- 
 topped westward wall ; and Denver is bristHng at every 
 turn and in every corner with the sharpest sort of action. 
 Nevertheless, the plain is a plain, — bare, apparent, 
 monotonous, wearying, hot ; and the mountains, — God 
 be praised for them for ever, — are reticent, unfathoma- 
 ble, eternally varied, restful, cool. So long as the world 
 stands shall the instinct of men turn to fhem for the best 
 strengths of soul and body. Three hours by railroad, I 
 said ; but the last two hours are on a species of railroad 
 for which I think some new name should be invented. 
 Simply to say '' narrow-gauge " conveys no idea, except 
 to the mind educated in railroad technicalities, of the
 
 CENTRAL CITY, ETC. 277 
 
 slender, winding, curving railroad tracks which thread 
 the canyons of these Colorado mountains. They bear 
 the same relation to the common railroads that a foot- 
 path does to a turnpike, and their agile little engines 
 climb like goats. " Let us buy it and take it home to the 
 children," said a facetious man, the other day, standing 
 at the Colorado Springs Station and watching the ar- 
 rival of the noon train on the Denver and Rio Grande 
 Railroad. And. indeed, they do look not unlike toys. 
 They make magnificent work of their playing, however, 
 whisking around curves of thirty-one and thirty-two 
 degrees and drawing heavy loads up grades of two hun- 
 dred and eleven feet to the mile. Wherever water can 
 come down, a narrow-gauge railroad can go up. Side 
 by side, on equal terms, asking no favors, it will make 
 foothold for itself on the precipices, and follow the 
 stream, leap for leap, grade to grade, coming out tri- 
 umphant, abreast, at top of the mountain. This was 
 the way we mounted to Central City, through Clear 
 Creek Canyon. 
 
 The walls of the canyon are rocky, precipitous, and 
 in places over one thousand feet high. It seems little 
 more than a rift in the mountain, and we could easily 
 fancy it closing behind us as we passed on. Fir-trees 
 and aspens made a mosaic of dark and light green, like 
 shaded malachite, on the sides. Wild roses and spi- 
 raeas and blue-bells grew on the edge of the creek and 
 far up in the clefts of the rocks. 
 
 Wherever the creek foamed whitest and swiftest, 
 there the pink roses and blue-bells waved and danced 
 gayest. Here and there other canyons broke the wall, 
 running down at sharp angles to our road, and opening 
 long, narrow vistas of view to right or left, making the 
 labyrinth of overlapping, interlacing hills seem endless. 
 Now and then we came to little oases of green, where 
 the creek widened, and cottonwood trees had found 
 space to grow and branch ; now and then to picturesque 
 little water stations, perched on the rocks, with foot- 
 bridges thrown across the creek ; though for what the
 
 278 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 master of the water-station could want to cross to the 
 opposite precipice it was hard to conceive, unless, in- 
 deed, it might be to pick more blue-bells. On one 
 of these rocky plateaus was a high swing, its beams 
 fastened by firm iron stanchions to the rock. Far out 
 over the foaming creek, nearly spanning it, the ropes 
 would reach if the swinger were bold. Could it be for 
 some child's delight '^it had been set there.'* We won- 
 dered whether even a mountain child, born in Clear 
 Creek Canyon, could be so brave. 
 
 Again and again, as we looked up the canyon, we 
 could see our engine, the whole of the first car, and 
 part of the second, doubling and twisting around sharp 
 curves ahead. The train seemed supple-jointed as a 
 serpent, and glided without jar over its sinuous path. 
 The wonder of this was so great and the beauty of the 
 scene so marvellous, that throughout the train every 
 man seemed to become friend to his neighbor ; on all 
 sides strangers were talking animatedly, joyously, shar- 
 ing each other's delight with unaffected enthusiasm. 
 Everybody said to everybody, " Oh, look ! " Not least 
 among the endless pleasures of journeying in this grand 
 old New World of ours, is the satisfaction of finding 
 out, as we do at such moments, how much true fellow- 
 ship and kinship there is at bottom between man and 
 man. There was in all that car no man so rough, no 
 woman so uncultured, as to sit stolid and unstirred by 
 the grand rocks, the leaping stream, the beauteous 
 blossoms, and the incredible marvel of our swift ascent. 
 
 As we neared Central City, the hills on either side 
 grew barer, stonier, higher; and along the creek we be- 
 gan to see the dreary traces of that dreariest of all 
 things on the earth's surface, gulch mining: long 
 stretches of pebble beds torn up, rent, piled, bare, 
 desolate ; here and there a few palid weeds struggling 
 to crowd their way down and up between the stones 
 and live in the arid sand. They only made the devas- 
 tation look ghasther. Is there not a significance in 
 this thing, that men find no way of getting gold from
 
 CENTRAL CITY, ETC. 279 
 
 the earth's depths, without so marring, blighting all the 
 fair, green beauty of its surface ? 
 
 The railway station in Central City seems invested at 
 once with historical interest when you are told that it is 
 known only by the name of " Fitz-John Porter's Folly." 
 Why that unlucky general should have been permitted 
 still further to disgrace himself on this remote and un- 
 military field, or how in the name of the very science of 
 blundering he could have spent two hundred thousand 
 dollars on this low, dark, ill-shaped purposeless building, 
 it is not worth while to ask ; but so long as the building 
 stands, men will not cease to wonder. 
 
 To get to Central City, you drive through Black 
 Hawk. Where Black Hawk leaves off and Central 
 City begins seems indefinite. Why a part of the gulch 
 should be called Black Hawk, and a part Central City, 
 seems to a stranger inexplicable ; but to the citizens of 
 those two towns seem^ evident, natural, and a sufficient 
 ground for antagonistic rivalry. To say literally how 
 "it feels" to drive in the streets of this gulch, or the 
 gulches of these streets, called respectively Black Hawk 
 and Central City, would be to commit unpardonable ex- 
 aggerations. Why the towns do not sHde down hill 
 any night, in one great avalanche of houses, stamping 
 mills, smelting works, piles of slag, ore, mules, bowl- 
 ders, and citizens, I do not know. To the unaccus- 
 tomed eye, every thing and everybody seems to have 
 been miraculously arrested in the process of toppling 
 down. The houses are perched one above another, on 
 the sides of the gulch, as if they were set on the suc- 
 cessive steps of ladders. A man sitting on his piazza 
 may rest his feet on the roof-tree of his neighbor next 
 below ; and so on all the way down. The only en- 
 durable situation, one would think, must be at the top 
 of the hill, but how climb to that? I looked to see 
 derricks for the elevation of families at the corners of 
 all the streets, but they have not yet been introduced. 
 However, many of the cross streets are made chiefly oi 
 stairs ; and I saw mules going up and down them as
 
 28o BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME 
 
 naturally as cats go up and down trees. My room at 
 the hotel was on the second floor. Out of its windows I 
 looked across a very narrow street into the basement of 
 the house opposite. I saw many small houses built 
 where the precipice was so steep that, as you looked up 
 from the street you saw the hill above the house, ap- 
 parently making a continuation of the roof. It pro- 
 duced a most curious optical illusion. No house thus 
 placed can stand so straight that it will not have the 
 look of tumbling down. Add to this apparent confusion 
 of toppling houses, intervals of bare, brown, rocky hill- 
 sides, dotted everywhere with piles of gray ore thrown 
 up at the mouths of mines, and some conception may 
 be formed of the desolateness of the scene. Not all 
 the red gold of Ophir would be compensation to an 
 artistic soul for the hourly sight of such desolation. I 
 fancied that the whole expression of the town seemed 
 to say, " We endure this but S. short time. We are 
 here only for a season, harvesters of gold. As soon as 
 the harvest is reaped, we will return to the regions of 
 life and verdure and beauty." Yet there were many of 
 the little houses which looked homelike, — had white 
 curtains, and flowers in the windows : and two or three 
 had small trees in the yards. These looked like oases 
 in Sahara. 
 
 A few weeks ago a fire broke out in this gulch. In 
 less than three hours it swept away a third of the town. 
 It seemed for a time as if nothing could stay it. High 
 up on the sides of the precipices were gathered the 
 women and children, watching their burning homes.^ 
 The fire must have looked, at bottom of that narrow 
 gulch, like a second stream, with fiery waves, rushing 
 down side by side with the creek. It was terrible to 
 imagine it. 
 
 There are treatises on metallurgy which give detailed 
 and accurate accounts of the processes by which gold 
 and silver are made ready for buying and selling. A 
 person who has seen these processes in the mills and 
 mines of Central City, ought to be able to write such a
 
 CENTRAL CITY, ETC. 281 
 
 treatise. There is, no doubt, something organically 
 wrong in the constitution of a mind which, at the end 
 of hours of wonderstruck gazing upon such mysteries, 
 and in spite of the most minute explanations of them, 
 emerges into dayhght and poverty as ignorant of gold 
 and silver as before. As ignorant, but not as irreverent. 
 The smallest gold or silver coin will for ever seem to me 
 a talisman of necromancy, a link with the powers and 
 the principalities of the air. Have I not seen it burn- 
 ing without fire, by virtue of its own sulphur ? Huge 
 piles of it lying in open air, stacked up like charcoal 
 mounds, and smouldering away sullenly at every crev- 
 ice, while the lurid sulphur gathered in yellow incrusta- 
 tions over the top, and made a superb contrast to the 
 column of amber and opal-colored smoke which rose in 
 slow coils from the furnace chimneys, and was reflected 
 like sunset clouds in the creek beneath. Have I not 
 walked cautiously through dark galleries of fiery fur- 
 naces, whose open mouths glowed and glared with an 
 evil heat, while the metal boiled and bubbled and hissed 
 within .? Have I not seen huge tubs where a part of its 
 waste was slowly turning into superb crystals, of a blue 
 which no sapphire could match, — no, not in centuries 
 of growth in the heart of a mountain ? Have I not 
 climbed stairs to a platform where every plank under 
 our feet was a trap-door, and opened into shallow, tray- 
 like boxes, with compartments, where the fine granu- 
 lated silver lay soaking, stewing, slowly cooking in 
 boiling water .'' Have I not seen the final furnaces of 
 all, where, in small, round crucibles, the last test of the 
 hottest fire is applied, and the molten metal must cease 
 its angry and resistant seething, and become calm and 
 smooth-surfaced as a mirror.'* When the workman 
 sees his own face reflected in the placid, shining sur- 
 face, he knows that the refining process is completed. 
 From that instant no more need of fire. There is a 
 Holy Scripture which has new beauty after one has 
 seen this. And there might be a scripture, also holy, 
 of human love, which would find here as fitting a meta-
 
 282 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 phor for the peace and calm of the highest earthly affec- 
 tions. It also becomes placid at the greatest fervor, 
 and reflects the loved one's face, soul, nature, life ; and 
 after that instant no more need of fire ! 
 
 " Can I not go mto a mine ? " I said. " I would like 
 to see the beginning, — the spot where the hand of 
 Nature reaches out and lays this treasure in tne hand 
 of man." 
 
 One, experienced in the interior of mines, smiled, but 
 answered me kindly : — 
 
 " Yes, yes ; you shall. There is the Bob Tail Tun- 
 nel, That is pretty dry. You shall go into that." 
 
 At the mouth of the Bob Tail Tunnel we met its 
 workmen pouring out. It was six o'clock. Their day 
 had ended. Palhd, dusty, earth-stained, they looked 
 like no joyous seekers after riches. Their begrimed 
 and careworn faces, and ragged clothes, seemed a bitter 
 satire on the words silver and gold. 
 
 Trotting slowly along, head down, meek and sleepy, 
 came a gray mule, drawing a small iron car loaded 
 with ore. 
 
 " We can go in in that," said my friend, the one ex- 
 perienced in the interior of mines, " It isn't too late, 
 Charley, is it ? " he added, turning to a big negro who 
 was driving the mule. 
 
 Charley scrutinized us. " No, no ; jump in," he said. 
 "I'll take the lady in." 
 
 "In!" It was hterally "in." The mouth of the 
 Bob Tail Tunnel was like the door to a huge brick 
 oven in the side of a mountain. Sitting on a water-pail 
 bottom side up, in that car, crouching low to my knees, 
 grasping a bit of flaring, dripping candle in one hand, 
 and rolling myself up tightly in warm wraps with the 
 other, I entered that grim cavern. An icy blast met us. 
 In five minutes it was dark as midnight. My candle 
 showed me the bottom of the car and the spots of tallow 
 on my skirts. Charley's candle showed me the shadows 
 of the mule's legs on the sides of the place we were in. 
 These were all I saw. It might have been anybody's
 
 CENTRAL CITY, ETC. 283 
 
 coal-bin, or cellar stairs, for all I could perceive. Jolt, 
 jolt, rumble, rumble, on we went. Suddenly we came 
 to a halt. By a chance gleam from Charley's candle, I 
 saw another oven door in the right-hand wall. 
 
 "Will you go down Number Two or Number Six, 
 s.r?" said Charley. "Here's where Number Two 
 leads off." 
 
 "What's the difference, Charley ? " said a reassuring 
 voice behind me. 
 
 " No great difference, sir. Number Two's the 
 longest." 
 
 " Keep on in Number Six," I whispered. 
 
 " Keep on in Number Six, Charley," said the re- 
 assuring voice behind me, — the voice of one much 
 amused, the voice of one experienced in the interior of 
 mines. 
 
 " All right, sir," said Charley. " They're blasting in 
 Number Two now," he added, as the mule began his 
 jolting trot again. 
 
 Above us, below us, around us, before and behind 
 us, pealed that blast. The echoes seemed louder than 
 the blast. It was terrific. I suppose I have been in a 
 gold mine, because I was told so ; but I know I have 
 been in the middle of a thunder-clap, for I have felt it. 
 
 Even the one experienced in the interior of mines 
 did not enjoy this. 
 
 " All right here, Charley ? " he said. And I wondered 
 what there would be to be done in case it had not been 
 "all right." 
 
 Dim reminiscences crowded my mind of accounts I 
 had read of affecting messages which miners had 
 scrawled on the walls of choked-up galleries. 
 
 " Ha, ha ! Yes, sir. All right, sir," chuckled Charley. 
 
 Charley enjoyed that blast. Presently we stopped. 
 This was the end of the track. 
 
 '•Are we a mile in ? " I asked. 
 
 " Only a few hundred feet," was the reply. I did not 
 believe it. I do not now. I firmly believe that I was 
 standing just above the highest tower of Pekin at that 
 moment.
 
 284 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 Charley led the way ; we followed. To clamber in 
 the dark over the wildest confusion of bowlders, on the 
 top of a mountain, with the risk of bumping your head 
 thrown in, — this it is to walk in the Bob Tail Tunnel. 
 Anxiously, and as well as I could by my very little can- 
 dle, I peered at the walls on either hand. 
 
 '' Here's a fine vein." " Here's the lead theyxe fol- 
 lowing now." *' Here's the pure metal, sir," said Char- 
 ley, enthusiastically, at every step of the way holding up 
 his candle to spots a little darker or lighter than the 
 rest. Occasionally I fancied I saw a gleam ; but it 
 might have been the shining of the candle-flame on a 
 wet spot. 
 
 Soon we heard the sound of pickaxes, — clink, thud, 
 clink, thud, at regular intervals ; and presently quick, 
 panting breaths, in alternation with the blows ; and in a 
 moment more we saw just ahead of us an arched open- 
 ing into a lighted chamber, and the forms of two miners 
 swinging their arms with powerful strokes, and before 
 each stroke drawing in a heavy breath. This was the 
 end of the mine. This was in keeping with my thought 
 of mystery, of some subtle bond with Nature. Inch 
 by inch, flake by flake, these two men were winning, 
 compelling way to the whole of the secret hid in the 
 rock. This was mining. Until midnight they were to 
 stand in that chamber, panting, cleaving the solid stone, 
 journeying toward the centre of the earth. Above them 
 the city would be at rest ; perhaps they would be the 
 only ones not sleeping. How strange it would seem to 
 them to come out at high noon of night, and see the 
 heaven full of stars ! As their forms bent and lifted, 
 and bent and lifted, in the dim Hght, they seemed to me 
 not human beings, doing the bidding and winning the 
 wealth of an earthly master ; but gnomes, spirits, work- 
 ing the will of invisible omnipotence, as they must have 
 worked who wrought "before ever the mountains were 
 brought forth." 
 
 Never shone any turquoise in the eyes of eager finder 
 is did the tiny oval of blue sky at the mouth oi that
 
 CENTRAL CITY, ETC. 285 
 
 tunnel as we drew near it on our return. We had been 
 in the bowels of the earth only a short half hour, as 
 clocks reckon minutes ; but no clocks can lose or gain 
 time as hearts can. We had lived the lifetime of a 
 miner ; we had felt what it might be to die his death. 
 
 Looking down on the town at sunset, from a point 
 high up on one side of the gulch, we were impressed 
 anew with the marvellousness of its existence under 
 such unfavoring conditions. Even the sunset glow 
 could not much soften the barrenness, the rocky con- 
 fusion, of the sharp and angular steeps. 
 
 " I have never seen any thing so dreary, unless it be 
 in northern New Hampshire," said a New Englander 
 of the party. " New Hampshire ! " I echoed, loving 
 New Hampshire, granite and all, and knowing well how 
 all the granite is redeemed and made gracious by 
 myriads of hchens and mosses and vines, in the barest 
 of her fields, — " New Hampshire ! It is New Hamp- 
 shire wrong side out, bottom side up, and after a spring 
 freshet ! " 
 
 But, as the shadows darkened and the gulch seemed 
 to grow deeper and deeper in the twihght, a sadder and 
 deeper thought took possession of me. This strange, 
 gold-filled rift in the mountains seemed to me like a 
 great crucible, into which had been cast the lives of 
 men and women and children. Fiery as the tests 
 through which the metals pass, must be the tests of life 
 in such a spot. How much must be consumed and 
 perish for ever, that the pure silver be refined !
 
 S86 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 GEORGETOWN AND THE "TERRIBLE 
 MINE." 
 
 GEORGETOWN is the American cousin of Bad- 
 Gastein, As Bad-Gastein crowds, nestles, wedges 
 itself into a valley among the Austrian Alps, so does 
 Georgetown crowd, nestle, wedge itself into its canyon 
 among the Rocky Mountains. And as the River Ach 
 runs through and in the streets of Gastein, so runs 
 Clear Creek in and through the streets of Georgetown. 
 But Clear Creek does not leap, like the Ach. George- 
 town has no waterfall. Neither are the sides of the 
 canyon wooded, hke the beautiful, glittering sides of the 
 Gastein Valley. Georgetown is bare and brown. 
 Georgetown is Gastein stripped of its fortune, come to 
 the New World to begin anew in the hard pioneer life. 
 In the old days of Gastein, silver and gold mines were 
 worked in all the mountains round about. Those were 
 the days of the haughty Weitmosers, whose history is 
 wrought into legends, and linked with every rock and 
 forest and waterfall in the Gastein Valley. Now the 
 Weitmoser name is seen only on tombstones, and the 
 water-wheels and sluices of the old gold mines are 
 slowly rotting away. Perhaps three hundred years 
 hence the steep sides of the Georgetown Canyon will 
 he covered again with balsams and pines ; the pinks, 
 daisies, and vetches will carpet the ground as the pink 
 heath does in Gastein ; the mill-wheels will stand still ; 
 the mines will be empty ; and pilgrims will seek the 
 heights as they seek Gastein's, not because they hold 
 silver and gold, but because they are gracious and 
 beautiful and health-giving. 
 
 To Georgetown, as to Gastein, there is but one easy
 
 GEORGETOWN, ETC. 287 
 
 way of going, — that is, by private carriage. The pub- 
 lic coaches are here, as everywhere, uncomfortable, 
 overloaded, inexorable. I know of no surer way to rob 
 a journey of all its finest pleasures, than to commit 
 one's self to one of these vehicles. It means being 
 obliged to get up at hours you abhor, to sit close to 
 people you dislike, to eat when you are not hungry, to 
 go slowest when there is nothing to see and fastest 
 when you would gladly hnger for hours, to be drenched 
 with rain, choked with dust, and never have a chance 
 to pick a flower. It means misery. 
 
 The private carriage, on the other hand, means so 
 much of delight, freedom, possession, that it is for ever 
 a marvel to me that all travellers with money, even with 
 a little money, do not journey in that way. Good 
 horses, an open carriage, bright skies overhead ; be- 
 loved faces, — eager, responsive, sympathetic, — on 
 either hand ; constant and an unrestrained interchange 
 of thought, impression, impulse, — all this, and the 
 glorious out-door world added ! Is there a way of 
 being happier ? I think not. 
 
 It was thus that we set out, early on a June day, to 
 go from Central City to Georgetown. 
 
 " Up to Georgetown," somebody said in our hearing. 
 
 " Is there any going further up 1 " we exclaimed. 
 
 It had not seemed that there could be. Did not the 
 sky rest on the tops of the sharp-precipiced hills near 
 whose summits we were clinging 1 
 
 Nevertheless it was '' up " to Georgetown at first, — 
 up through Nevada Gulch, a steeper, narrower, stonier, 
 dirtier gulch than we had yet seen, more riddled with 
 mines and crowded with more toppling houses. Then, 
 out upon what seemed an "open" by comparison with 
 the gulches, but was really only an interval of lesser 
 hills and canyons. Deserted mills, mines, and cabins 
 were here ; hardly a trace of cultivation, but every- 
 where green shrubs and luxuriant flowers, to show what 
 fertility was lying neglected in the unused soil. Three 
 miles of this, and then, turning to the left, we plunged
 
 288 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME 
 
 into a road so stony, so overgrown, it seemed hardly 
 possible it could be the one we had been told to take tc 
 reach the top of Belle vue Mountain. 
 
 Let no one forget, in going from Central City tc 
 Georgetown, to ask for and find this wild path. Its out 
 look is worth all the rest of the journey. 
 
 It was a severe climb, — we did not know how severe, 
 for our eyes were feasting on the wayside loveUnesses 
 of green oak and juniper and golden asters, white 
 daisies and purple vetches. From the bare and stony 
 gulches we had left behind, to this fragrance and color, 
 was a leap from a desert into a garden. Suddenly 
 looking up, we found that we were also looking off. 
 We were on a grand ridge or divide, around which 
 seemed to centre semicircles of mountains. So high 
 and so separated is this ridge, and yet so central in the 
 great fields of peaks which make up this part of the 
 great Rocky Mountain chain, that, while we could look 
 off far enough to see the Snowy Range, we could also 
 look down into the canyons and gorges among the 
 nearer mountains. It was a surpassing sight ! It is 
 one of the few extended views I have seen which have 
 also composition, beauty of grouping, and tenderness 
 of significance and revelation. We could see long, 
 shining, serrated spaces of the sohd, snow-covered 
 peaks, the highest on the continent, — peaks from whose 
 summit one could look, if human vision were keen 
 enough, to the Western and the Eastern Oceans. 
 These lofty serrated lengths of shining snow lay cut 
 against the uttermost horizon blue, like an alabaster 
 wall rounding the very world. Seeming to join this 
 wall, and almost in lines of concentric curves, were 
 myriads and masses of lower mountains, more than the 
 eye could count. To the very foot of the watch-tower 
 ridge on which we stood, the peaks seemed crowded. 
 We could look into the green valleys lying between 
 them, and trace the brown thread of road winding up 
 each valley. We sat under the shade of pines and firs. 
 The ground was gay with yellow lupines, daisies, and
 
 GEORGETOWN, ETC. 289 
 
 ^eat mats of killikinnick vines (the bear-berry) with 
 full clusters of delicate pink bells, as lovely as arbutus 
 blossoms, and almost as fragrant. 
 
 Ten thousand feet above the sea, and yet the air was 
 as spicy and summer-laden as in an Italian June ! Ten 
 thousand feet above the sea, and yet the warm wind 
 burnt our faces fiercely, and the snow-topped horizon 
 wall seemed like a miracle under such a tropical sun ! 
 
 On the very summit of the mountain, even here 
 among the daisies and lupines, and within sight of all 
 the solemn kingdoms of mountains, we came upon one 
 who dug for gold. He was a German, tall, broad- 
 chtsted, straight-shouldered, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired, — 
 a superbly made man. Health and power actually 
 seemed to radiate from him under the sunlight, and the 
 unconscious joyousness of their unconscious possession 
 lighted his eye and beamed in his smile. He stood all 
 day long at the mouth of a shaft, and drew up buckets 
 full of ore which might mean a few dollars of gold. It 
 was an old claim. He had two partners in the owner- 
 ship of it, and they were now working it for a few 
 months, merely to comply with the provisions of the 
 recent Miner's Act. He spoke that dehcious and 
 effective broken English which only Germans use. 
 To him the Act meant personal inconvenience ; but he 
 had thought deeper than that. " It is good for the 
 country. There will be not the wild cat any more. It 
 shall be that a man do not throw his money away that 
 another man shall move his stakes in the night." 
 
 I do not know why this man's figure seemed to me 
 more typical of the true genius and soul of gold- winning 
 than all the toihng crowds in mining towns. It was, 
 perhaps, the loneliness of the spot, the glorious lift of 
 it above the world around, or even the beauty of the 
 blossoms and the scent of the firs. It might have 
 been just such a nook in the Hartz Mountains to which 
 the genii of gold and silver led the favored mortals to 
 whom they elected to open the doors of their treasure- 
 house. 
 
 19
 
 290 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 From Bellevue Mountain to Idaho it is three miles, 
 downhill. Not downhill in the ordinary acceptation of 
 'the word, not such downhill as one may have three 
 miles of any day in northern New England ; but down- 
 hill in a canyon, — that is, downhill between two other 
 hills so sharp that they wall the road. Truly, labyrinths 
 of interlacing hills can be marvellous. Much I ques- 
 tion whether the earth holds anywhere a more delightful 
 confusion than has been wrought out of these upheavals 
 of the Rocky Mountains, and planted with firs and 
 bluebells. In a hollow made by the mouth of the can- 
 yon down which we had driven, and by the mouths of 
 several other canyons, all sharp-walled and many- 
 curved, lay Idaho. From the tops of the mountains 
 which circle it, the little handful of houses must look 
 like a handful of pebbles at the bottom of an emerald- 
 sided well. Thither come every summer multitudes of 
 men and women, — Coloradoans, Californians, and trav- 
 ellers from the East, — seeking to be made well and 
 strong by bathing in hot soda springs, which bubble 
 out of the rocks of a small creek. 
 
 For the benefit of those who, not being disciples of 
 Hahnemann, do not shudder at the thought of medi- 
 cated baths, I give the analysis of the water : — 
 
 Carbonate of Soda 30.80 
 
 Carbonate of Lime 9.52 
 
 Carbonate of Magnesia 2.88 
 
 Carbonate of Iron 4.12 
 
 Sulphate of Soda 29.36 
 
 Sulphate of Magnesia 18.72 
 
 Sulphate of Lime 3.44 
 
 Chloride of Sodium 4.16 
 
 Silicate of Soda 4.08 
 
 Chloride of Calcium and Magnesium, of each a trace. 
 
 107.00 
 
 If it were proposed to any man to go into an apothe- 
 cary's shop and take from the big jars on the shelves 
 all these carbonates, sulphates, silicates, and chlorides, 
 dissolve them in his bath-tub, and then proceed to soak
 
 GEORGETOWN, ETC. 291 
 
 himself in the water, absorbing the drugs through his 
 miUion-pored skin, he would probably see the absurdity 
 and the risk of the process. But, because Narure, for 
 some mysterious purposes, has seen fit to brew these 
 concoctions in the bowels of the earth, which spits 
 them out as fast as it can, men jump at the conclusion 
 that they are meant for healing purposes, and that one 
 cannot drink too much of them, or stay in them too 
 long. 
 
 " Do you take the baths yourself?" I asked the man 
 in charge of the "Pioneer Bathing Establishment." 
 
 " Yes'm, I'm tryin' 'em. But if I stay in more 'n fif- 
 teen minutes, I get just as weak as any thing, — real 
 weak feeling all over : it seems as if I couldn't get out. 
 But there's plenty of folks that comes and stays in an 
 hour and a half, and say it does 'em good." 
 
 ''But are you not afraid of any thing which is so 
 powerful that it makes you feel so weak in so few min- 
 utes ? Why do you take the baths at all ? Are you 
 ill .? " I said. 
 
 " No'm, I ain't sick. Leastways, nothing to speak 
 of. I hain't ever been very strong. But I thought I'd 
 try 'em. The doctors all say they're good, and I expect 
 they must be ; they ought to know. And I'm here all 
 day, with not much of any thing to do. I might as well 
 go in." 
 
 What an epitome of truth in the bathman's words ! 
 What an unconscious analysis of the process by which 
 patients are made, — lack of occupation, and an ignorant 
 faith in doctors' assertions. 
 
 Up a westward canyon from Idaho lies the road to 
 Georgetown, — twelve miles of it. There is just room 
 for it and for Clear Creek, and for narrow rims of cotton- 
 wood, willow^-, and wild roses, and for here and there a 
 bit of farm.. The sides of the canyon are sometimes 
 bare, stony ; sometimes green with pines and firs and 
 young aspens ; sometimes gray, because fire has killed 
 the pines ; sometimes gray with piles of ore thrown up 
 from mouths of mines ; always a changing succession
 
 292 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 of color ; always a changing succession of shape, of 
 contour. Ah ! the twelve miles it is to remember ; and 
 alas ! the twelve miles it is to long and yet fail to 
 describe. Canyons after canyons open and shut as we 
 pass. Just such a road as we are on flings its alluring 
 brown thread up each one. If there were no such 
 thing as a fixed purpose, and an inexorable appointed 
 day, we would follow each clew and learn each canyon 
 by heart. No two canyons are alike to true lovers of 
 canyons, any more than any two faces are alike to the 
 student of faces. To the outer edge of the concentric, 
 curving ranges of this Rocky Mountain chain one 
 might journey, in and out and up and over, and in and 
 out and in and out again, I am persuaded, all summer 
 long, for summers and summers, and find no monotony, 
 no repetition. That is, if one be a lover ; and if one 
 be not, what use in being alive ? Rather, one should 
 say, in having a name to live while one is dead. 
 
 Georgetown is a surprise at last. It has no strag- 
 gling outposts of houses, and you have become so 
 absorbed in climbing the canyon, watching the creek 
 and the mountains, the trees and the flowers, that you 
 forget that a town is to come. Suddenly you see it full 
 in view, not many rods ahead, wedged, as I said before, 
 like Bad-Gastein, — crowded, piled, choked in at the 
 end of the narrowed rift up which you have climbed. 
 In and out among the narrow streets runs the creek, 
 giving shining and inexplicable glimpses of water, here, 
 there, and everywhere, among the chimney-tops and 
 next to doorsteps. The houses are neat, comfortable, 
 and have a suggestion of home-loving and abiding, 
 quite unlike the untamed and nomadic look of Central 
 City. You turn corner after corner, crossing the moun- 
 tain side sharply at each turn, and getting up higher 
 and higher, street by street, till on the very highest 
 level you come to the Barton House, and look off from 
 its piazza over the roofs of the town. On either hand 
 are towering mountain sides, dotted wellnigh to the 
 tops with the shining pyramids of the gray ore thrown
 
 GEORGETOWN, ETC. 293 
 
 up by mines. They mark lines like ledges hundreds of 
 feet above the town. The hills are honey-combed by 
 galleries and shafts ; but they look still and peaceful 
 and sunny as the virgin hills of the Tyrol. 
 
 " Shall we go down into a silver mine .-^ Have you 
 had enough of mines?" said the one experienced in 
 mines. 
 
 " Never enough of mines," I replied. " And down 
 into a mine must be a thing quite unlike headforemost 
 into a mine. Let us go." 
 
 " Then I will take you to the * 7 errible Mine, " he 
 said. " It is the nearest, and one of the largest." 
 
 " Is it so very terrible ? " I asked. The word was not 
 alluring. 
 
 " Only ' Terrible ' by reason of the amount of money 
 sunk in it," he laughed. " It is the most picturesquely 
 situated and attractive mine I know of. But it has 
 swallowed up more money than any other three mines 
 in the region, and is only just now beginning to pa).' 
 
 As the horses' heads were turned sharp to the right 
 from the hotel door and we began to climb again, I ex- 
 claimed, incredulously : " What, still further up 1 " 
 
 "Oh, yes! two miles straight up. There might be 
 a ladder set from here to there, if one could be made 
 long enough," was the reply. If it had been a ladder it 
 would have seemed safer. A narrow shelf on the pre- 
 cipitous side of the mountain, — winding, zigzagging up 
 in a series of sharp curves, with only a slight banking 
 of the earth and the stone at the outer edge, and a sheer 
 wall hundreds of feet below, down to the foaming creek, 
 — this is the terrible road up to the "Terrible Mine." 
 It was like swinging out into space when we turned the 
 corners. Teams heavily loaded with silver ore w-ere 
 coming down. In places where two inches' room made 
 all the odds between being dashed over the precipice 
 and not, we passed them, — that is, our carriage passed 
 them. We were not in it. We were standing close to 
 the inner wall, backed up against it, holding our brealhs 
 to make ourselves thin. " Can't go on the outside, sir,
 
 294 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 with this load," was the firm though respectfully sym 
 pathizing reply of teamster after teamster ; and on the 
 outer and almost crumbling edge of the road, where the 
 heavy load of ore would have been in danger of crush- 
 ing down the entire shelf, there our wheels were airily 
 poised, waiting for the wagons to pass. More than 
 once, watching closely from behind, I failed to see even 
 a rim of road beyond' the wheel. One careless misstep 
 of a horse, one instant's refusal to obey the rein, and 
 the carriage would have toppled over and down into the 
 foam. Yet our driver seemed as unconcerned as if he 
 had been driving on a broad boulevard, and had evi- 
 dently a profound contempt for his passengers, who 
 persisted in jumping from the carriage at every turn- out. 
 
 The creek was one pauseless torrent of white foam. 
 All the beautiful amber spaces were gone. Not a 
 breath did it take ; it seemed like two miles of continu- 
 ous waterfall. Tall fir-trees shaded it, but their tops 
 were far below us ; their shining darkness made the 
 white of the foaming water all the whiter by contrast. 
 On the rocky wall on our right were waving flowers and 
 shrubs, — columbines, bluebells, spiraeas ; so slight their 
 hold they seemed but to have just alighted, like gay- 
 winged creatures, who might presently soar and pass on. 
 
 One thread-hke stream of water came down this preci- 
 pice. It zigzagged to get down as much as we were 
 zigzagging to get up. At turn after turn in the road we 
 continued to see new leaps, new falls of it, until at last 
 we saw the spot where it cleft the uppermost rock, look- 
 ing hke nothing but a narrow, fleecy wisp of cloud, 
 lying half on the gray summit and half on the blue sky. 
 
 The miners' cabins were perched here and there 
 among the bowlders, hundreds of feet up, bare, shelter- 
 less, remote. They looked more like homes for eagles 
 than for men. No path led to them ; no green thing, 
 save firs and low oaks, grew near them ; only by the 
 sharp roof-tree line could one tell them from the rocks 
 which were piled around them. 
 
 At the end of two miles, we came to a spot where 
 creek and road and precipice paused and widened. The
 
 GEORGETOWN, ETC. 295 
 
 creek was dammed up, making a smooth, clear lake, 
 with odd little pine-planked bridge-paths circling it ; the 
 road space widened into a sheltered, shady spot, where, 
 nestled against the mountain of stone, stood three or 
 four small buildings. A fountain played before one and 
 children played before the others. These were the 
 offices and homes of the men in charge of the mine, and 
 the mouth of the mine was in sight, high up on the 
 mountain side. An enormous pyramid of the glistening 
 gray ore lay in front of it. On the top of this two men 
 were at work loading the ore into small buckets, swung 
 on wire from the mouth of the mine to the top of a high 
 derrick on the edge of the creek. Back and forth and 
 back and forth glided the buckets, swift and noiseless. 
 The wire was but just visible in the air ; the buckets 
 seemed, coming and going, like huge shining shuttles, 
 frmg by invisible hands. 
 
 By gasps we threaded our way among the bowlders 
 and up to the mouth of the mine. Here, indeed, a lad- 
 der would have been a help. 
 
 Then, miners' jackets on our shoulders, candles in 
 our hands, facing an icy wind and breathing the fumes 
 of gunpowder, again we entered the earth by an oven- 
 door in a rock. We walked on the iron rails of the 
 track, down which cars loaded with ore came constantly 
 rumbhng out of the darkness. We shrank into cran- 
 nies of the rock to let them pass. The track was wet 
 and slippery. It seemed a long way, but was only a few 
 hundred feet, before we came to a vaulted chamber, so 
 dimly lighted that it looked vast. Strange sounds came 
 from its centre. As our eyes gradually grew used to 
 the darkness, a strange shape in its centre grew gradu- 
 ally distinct. The sounds and the shape were one. It 
 was a steam-engine. It was at work. Puff, puff, hiss, 
 creak, slide, — weird beyond all power of words to say 
 sounded these noises in that ghostly place. A gnome- 
 like shape, in semblance of a man, stood by, with a 
 controlling hand on the puffing engine. 
 
 " Would you hke to go down in the mine ? " said the 
 Shape, courteously.
 
 296 BITS OF TFA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 It was a hospitable gnome. This was the one entet- 
 tainment at his command. TrembHngly I said " Yes. 
 The Shape disappeared. We were left alone in the 
 vaulted chamber. The steam-engine stopped. No 
 sound broke the silence. The darkness seemed to grow 
 darker. I reached out for a friendly hand, and was just 
 about to say, "This is, indeed, the 'Terrible Mine,'" 
 when a sudden hght flashed into the place, and, spring- 
 in'^ back, I saw the head of another Shape coming up 
 from an aperture at my feet. A trap-door had been 
 flung open. The Shape had a lighted candle in the 
 band of his cap. If I were to describe him as he ap- 
 peared to me in that first instant, I should say that 
 frightful flames issued from his forehead. He smiled 
 friendlily ; t)ut I grasped the protecting hand closer. 
 
 " Is the lady coming down, sir ? The bucket will be 
 up in a minute," he said. 
 
 This was the mouth of the shaft. The Shape had 
 crawled up on a ladder. It was no more than an ordi- 
 nary front stairs to him. 
 
 I was ashamed to say how afraid I grew. The Shape 
 answered my unspoken thought. 
 
 " There's ladies goes down every day. There's no 
 danger, — not the least," he said. 
 
 " Ye wouldn't miss it, not for any thing." 
 
 The bucket came up. It was swung off to one side 
 of the trap-door. It was an extra-sized water-pail, with 
 high sides, — sides coming up just above the knees of 
 them who stood in it. It could hold just two, — no 
 more. It was necessary to stand facing in a particular 
 way to prevent its swinging round and round. By an 
 iron hook from the centre of the handle it was sus- 
 pended over the dark aperture. It was raised and 
 lowered by the steam-engine. 
 
 "' Ready ? " said the Shape who stood with his hand 
 on the engine. 
 
 " All ready," replied the Shape who stood with one 
 hand on the edge of our bucket. 
 
 " Now, keep cooL Don't mind the bucket's swinging. 
 
 I'll be
 
 GEORGETOWN, ETC. 297 
 
 down there before you are. He'll let you down slow." 
 And the friendly Shape vanished in the gloom. 
 
 It was odd how much it felt like being lowered by 
 the hair of one's head, the going down in that bucket. 
 It is odd how very Httle consciousness one has of any 
 thing solid under one's feet, standing in such buckets 
 under such circumstances. It is odder still what a com- 
 fort there is in a bit of hghted candle in this sort of 
 place. All that the candle showed me was the slanting- 
 wooden wall, against which we bumped with great force 
 every now and then. Why the sight of this should 
 (have been reassuring it is impossible to tell ; but, during 
 the hour — three minutes long — which we passed in 
 that descending, swinging, twisting, bumping bucket I 
 fixed my eyes on that candle-flame as earnestly as if it 
 had been a hght-house, and I a sailor steering to shore 
 by its guidance. 
 
 " All right, ma'am. You didn't mind it much, did 
 you ? " came suddenly from the darkness, and a pair of 
 strong hands laid violent hold on the bucket edge, and, 
 resting it firm on a wet and stony ground, helped us out. 
 This was the nethermost gallery of the mine. We were 
 five hundred feet down in the earth and there were five 
 galleries above our heads. We followed the friendly 
 Shape over rocks, piles of ore, past mouths of pits, and 
 through dripping water, to the end of the gallery, where 
 we found a party of miners drilling and picking. Here 
 and there we saw long, glistening veins of the precious 
 ore in the walls over head. It seemed to run capri- 
 ciously, branching now to right, now to left. Here and 
 there we came to dark openings in the walls, through 
 which our guide would call to men at work above us. 
 Their voices reverberated in the heavy gloom and 
 sounded preternaturally loud. 
 
 The place grew more and more weird and awesome 
 at every step. The faces of the miners we met seemed 
 to grow more and more unhuman, less and less friendly. 
 I was glad when we began to retrace our steps ; and 
 the bucket, swinging in mid-air, looked like a welcome 
 escape, a comforting link between us and the outer
 
 298 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 world. Whether bucket, shaft, steam-engine, or we 
 were in fault I do not know ; but the upward journey 
 was a terrible one. The bucket swung violently, — 
 almost round and round ; our clothes had not been 
 carefully secured, and they were caught between the 
 bucket and the shaft-sides and wrenchfed and twisted ; 
 and, to add to the horror, our candle went out. No 
 words were spoken in that bucket during those minutes ; 
 they were minutes not to be forgotten. Still the guide 
 was right : we would not " have missed it for any 
 thing." 
 
 When we offered our guide money, he said : " No, 
 thank you. I don't take any money for myself ; but, if 
 you'll read that notice," — pointing to a written paper 
 on the office wall, — "perhaps you'll give us something 
 for our reading-room." This paper stated that the 
 miners were trying to collect money enough to build a 
 small room, where they might have books and papers 
 and perhaps now and then a lecture. They had sub- 
 scribed among themselves nearly three hundred dollars. 
 
 "You see," said our guide, ''if we had some such 
 place as that, then the boys wouldn't go down to the 
 town evenings and Sundays and get drunk. When a 
 fellow's worked in a mine all day he's got to have some- 
 thing." 
 
 How the thought struck home to our hearts at that 
 minute. We had been in that airless, sunless cavern 
 only one short half hour ; yet the blue sky, the Hght, 
 the breeze, the space already seemed to us unreal. We 
 were dazzled, bewildered. What must be the effect of 
 weeks and months and years of such life ? 
 
 " Indeed, we will give you all the help we can," we 
 said; "and, what is more, we will ask everybody we 
 know to send you some papers or books." 
 
 Here is the guide's address : 
 
 Henry F. Lampshire, 
 
 Foreman of the " Terrible Mine," 
 Georgetown, 
 
 Colorado.
 
 GEORGETOWN, ETC. 299 
 
 From Georgetown down to Idaho at sunset is more 
 beautiful even than from Idaho up to Georgetown of a 
 morning. 
 
 Full speed ; sunlight gone from the left-hand wall, 
 broad gold bands of it on the right ; now and then a 
 rift or canyon opening suddenly to the west and letting 
 in a full flood of light, making it sunny in a second, 
 afternoon, when the second before it had been wellnigh 
 sombre twihght and the second after it will be sombre 
 twilight again ; red, gray, and white clouds settling 
 down in fleecy masses upon the snowy mountain towers 
 of the gateway ot the valley, — this is sunset between 
 Georgetown and Idaho. And to us there came also a 
 wayside greeting more beautiful than the clouds, bluer 
 than the sky, and gladder than the sun, — only a flower, 
 one flower ! But it was the Rocky Mountain columbine. 
 — peerless among columbines, wondrous among flowers. 
 Waving at top of a stem two feet high, surrounded bj 
 buds full two inches and a half in diameter, the innej 
 petals stainless white, the outer ones brilJi^int blu^i, ? 
 sheaf of golden-anthered stamens in the centre, — there 
 it stood, pure, joyous, stately, regal. We gared iri 
 speechless dehght into its face. There was 2 reriaift 
 solemnity in its beauty. 
 
 " That's the gladdest flower I ever saw," were thf 
 first words spoken, and the face of the man who said 
 them glowed. 
 
 Oh ! wondrous power of a fragile thing, born for a 
 single day of a single summer ! I think that the thing 
 I shall longest remember and always most vividly see Oi 
 that whole trip in the Colorado canyons will be that 
 fearless, stainless, -joyful, regnant blossom, and mj 
 friend's tribute of look, of tone, when he said, " Thj 
 gladdest flower I ever saw."
 
 300 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 BOWLDER CANYON. 
 
 CANYONS are known of their lovers. To their 
 lovers they reveal themselves ; to their lovers' 
 eyes they are no more alike than fair women are alike 
 in the eyes of their worshippers. 
 
 Also there is a rio;ht way to take a canyon, as there is 
 to take a person. One must not be driven through, — 
 no, not if a broad turnpike ran its whole length. Only 
 by slow and humble toiling on foot can one see its 
 beauties. Another is made for a swift and royal dash 
 on wheels, or on horses' backs; as distinctly "set" to 
 an allegro movement as was ever a joyous outburst of 
 the soul of Beethoven or Mozart. Harmonies obey one 
 law all Nature through, and when we learn and study 
 Nature, as we study and love art, we shall know better 
 how to "keep time " with her, and our voices will not be 
 out of tune so often. We shall not pipe to her at high 
 noon and expect her to dance, which is only a fantastic 
 way of saying that, going out at midday to look atmoun 
 tain ranges, we shall not pretend to know them ; that w 
 shall visit meadows of a morning, and not be seen drivin^g 
 eastward at sunset ; and that, if we live in Colorado, we 
 shall take our canyons right end foremost and be abso- 
 lutely certain which way they were meant to be read. 
 
 The more canyons one sees, the more this truth sinks 
 into one's heart, the more vividly one reahzes the intense 
 individuality of each canyon. Carried blindfold into 
 any one of them and set down midway, one knowing 
 them could never mistake or be in doubt. But it is hard 
 to find words in which these differences shall be distinctly 
 set forth, harder even than it is to tell just how one
 
 BOiVLDER CAA^YON. 301 
 
 human voice differs from another ; yet who ever mis- 
 took a voice he knew ? 
 
 Bowlder Canyon is one of the "allegro" movements. 
 It is sixteen miles long and one should ride swiftly 
 down it, — race, as it were, with the creek, which has 
 never yet drawn a long breath since first it plunged into 
 the gorge. To see Bowlder Canyon aright, therefore, 
 one must enter it from the Nederlands Meadows, at its 
 upper mouth ; and to reach the Nederlands Meadows 
 from Denver one must go by rail up the Clear Creek 
 Canyon (hardly less beautiful than Bowlder Canyon it- 
 self) and drive across from Central City to Nederlands. 
 The road lies through tracts of pines and over great 
 ridges, grand in their lonehness. From every ridge is a 
 new vfew of the "Snowy Range," to the west and north. 
 In strong sunlight and shadow these myriads of snow- 
 peaks, relieved against the blue sky, are of such bril- 
 liant and changing colors that it must be a very dull 
 soul indeed that could look on them without thinking of 
 many-colored jewels. On the day that I saw this view, 
 James's Peak was covered with snow and stood in full 
 light. Its sharp pyramidal lines looked as fine cut and 
 hard as if the mountain had but just been hewn from 
 alabaster. A little to the north. Long's Peak, which is 
 cleft into two peaks, was half in shadow and half in sun. 
 The peak in the shadow was as dark a blue as blue can be 
 and not be black ; and the peak in the sun was distinctly 
 and wholly pink, — a rosy pink, with an opaline qualit} 
 in the tint. The mountain did not look Hke a moun- 
 tain. The colors were so intense that the line where 
 they joined was as plainly marked to our sight as If it 
 had been on a map in our hands ; but the mountain was 
 twenty miles away. 
 
 Midway between Central City and Nederlands is a 
 ^;:ttlement, called Rawhnsville, which ought to be called 
 Oasis Town. Between two bare and brown hill-ridges, 
 a bit of meadow New England might own, and an amber 
 and white trout-stream foaming through it. The mea- 
 dow seemed fairly to be bursting into blade and leaf as
 
 302 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 we drove in, so wondrous and so surprising green was 
 it. A dusty brown road on its edge leads westward up 
 the green vista. A gate shuts it off from the highway. 
 It is the road into Colorado's beautiful mountain valley, 
 the Middle Park. From Rawlins to Nederlands only 
 ridges and hills and their connecting and interlocking 
 spurs, pines, and firs, and everywhere loneliness and 
 silence. " In" the mountains is a phrase we have come 
 to use carelessly when we mean among them. But it is a 
 significant thing that we say "in" and do not say 
 *' among." Among the Rocky Mountains it is especially 
 significant. Hour by hour one sinks and rises and climbs 
 and descends in labyrinths of wedged hills. Each hour 
 you are hemmed in by a new circle of peaks, among which 
 DO visible outlet appears ; and each hour you escape, 
 mount to a new level, and are again circled by a different 
 and more glorious horizon. You come to feel that you 
 yourself are. as it were, a member of the mountain race ; 
 the sky is the family roof, and you and they are at home 
 together under it. This it is to be " in the mountains." 
 Nederlands is a dismal little mining town, — only a 
 handful of small houses and smelting mills. Bowlder 
 Creek comes dashing through it, foaming white to the 
 very edge of the grimy street, reclaiming the land from 
 dust and stones and making it soft and green for many 
 an acre. As you drive eastward down this meadow, 
 following but never overtaking the creek, the mouth ot 
 Bowlder Canyon stands full in sight. Its gray stone 
 walls rise up, fortresslike, from the meadow-sward, — 
 the left-hand wall bare and gray; the right-hand one 
 thick set with firs from base to top. It is a picture of 
 vivid contrasts, — the green meadow, with ranks upon 
 ranks of yellow and red willow bushes making belts ot 
 bright color upon it ; between the yellows and reds, 
 gleams of white foam flashing ; and beyond, the high 
 buttress fronts of the canyon mouth, adorned with 
 evergreens, as for a triumph. One step past this gate 
 and you are in a second meadow. A tiny spot, but 
 green as the other, walled to the sky with gray stone
 
 BOWLDER CANYON. 303 
 
 and fir trees, dainty and soft under foot, lighted by the 
 flashing water and gay with flowers. Here spreads a 
 gigantic cedar tree, broad like a banyan, with gnarled 
 roots, that make seats, and low boughs, that make a 
 good roof, as who should know better than we who sat 
 composedly lunching under them while a shower of rain 
 rattled away over our heads and did not wet us. It 
 gathered blacker and blacker, however, and the canyon 
 darkened fast, as a httle room darkens when candles 
 burn down. There is none too much light at best .n a 
 narrow, rift between rocks which are hundreds of feet 
 high. When its strip of sky canopy turns black as ink 
 and rain falls in white sheets, filling it in, day seems 
 day no longer. Ahead of the storm, we dashed down 
 the canyon. Looking back, we could see it following us 
 in a strange mist wall, which advanced as solid-fronted 
 and steady and swift as an army. The noises of battle 
 were not wanting either, for the wind roared and shrieked, 
 the trees gave out great sobbing sounds as they bent in 
 the gale, and overhead the thunder crashed and echoed, 
 sharp lightning leaped from side to side, seeming a fiery 
 network over our heads. It was grand ; but it was not 
 safe, and we were glad to scramble, all dripping, into a 
 deserted log cabin. The rain came into the open chim- 
 ney-hole in the roof and fell in pitiless satire on the 
 blackened hearthstone, where no fire could be. But 
 the old bunks were dry ; and on the edges of these we 
 sat and peered out into the canyon. What a very 
 carnival of waters it was ! The creek leaped and 
 danced as if it were mad with joy, flinging itself upward 
 to meet the torrents of rain half way. All the green 
 things leaped and danced also, swaying their supple 
 bodies in rhythmic time to the tempest. The fir-trees 
 seemed as lithe as the blades of grass, and the butter- 
 cups and daisies bowed down to the ground and up to 
 their full height — down and up and down and up — and 
 never a stem of them all broke in this storm, in which it 
 was not safe for us to be out. 
 the weak things of the earth than the mighty.
 
 304 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 In the thickest of the storm an old man came slowly 
 sauntering up the road. Long, white beard dripping 
 with water ; old leather trowsers running with water ; 
 old battered hat streaming water, as if it were a pail he 
 had just put on, full of water, — he looked as if he 
 might have had something to do with the storm. See- 
 ing us, he entered the cabin, and, with a reticent nod, 
 sat down on the three-legged chair. It was to see us 
 that he came in ; by no means to escape the storm. 
 Yet he seemed in no wise disposed to talk. What use 
 he did make of us, he knows, no doubt ; it was not ap- 
 parent. His steady, reflective gaze was embarrassing. 
 He owned the htde log cabin we had noticed at the 
 entrance of the canyon. It stood in a clump of fir- 
 trees, on a high bank a few rods from the creek. The 
 vegetable garden looked flourishing, and we had said as 
 we passed, " That is a spot where a king might spend 
 the summer and raise his own peas." The king was 
 before us. His last kingdom had been in Wisconsin, 
 and he was " a-fixin' up this place to bring his family 
 out in the fall. Didn't know as they'd hke it. Calk'lated 
 they'd think 'twas kind o' lonesome." 
 
 Long before we could see that the storm had lessened 
 by a drop, he remarked that the "rain wuz about done," 
 shouldered his heavy axe, picked up his flask bottle, 
 and, with the same indirect nod with which he had 
 sauntered in, sauntered out again and .strolled away. 
 He looked more actual and human out in the rain than 
 he had in the cabin. 
 
 He was right. The rain was "about done." In the 
 twinkhng of an eye the clouds broke away, the blue sky 
 shone out, the sun blazed in on the wet tree-tops and 
 turned every leaf, every pine-needle, to a fretwork of 
 diamonds. A bird, whose voice seemed to fall from the 
 very sky, called out, " Tweep ! " " Tweep ! " in a fine, 
 high note, like the first violin notes before an orchestra 
 begins to play ; and after him other birds sang out, and 
 the joint svmphony of sight and sound burst into its 
 fullest.
 
 BOWLDER CANYON. 305 
 
 Still twelve miles down the canyon, and this is the 
 way they ran, — if I tell it breathless, it is because I try 
 to tell it true, and if I could tell it really true, the words 
 would leap and break into foam like the creek, — this is 
 the way the miles ran : — 
 
 Now between walls made of piled bowlders, piled as 
 if storms had hurled them where they hung, — bowlders 
 poised, and bowlders wedged, and bowlders half welded 
 together ; with great fir-trees crowded in among them, 
 shooting out of crevices like spears thrust through 
 from underneath ; clasping gnarled roots like anchors 
 round edges of precipices. 
 
 Now a high pyramid of rock, only a few rods ahead, 
 walled the way, and we said, " Where do we and the 
 creek go ? Surely, to the left." No ; to the right, and 
 under rather than around the rock. Like a huge sound- 
 ing-board, it ran out above our heads, its seams like 
 rafters and its rifts hke groined archways, mossy with 
 age and now shining with the dripping water. We and 
 ©ur carriage and our horses could have been safely 
 housed under it, with room to spare. 
 
 Round this, sharply to the left, and another just such 
 wall juts out on the right ; and between the two we 
 cross the foaming creek on a narrow bridge. 
 
 Fir-trees high up on the sides ; fir-trees walling the 
 topmost edge ; fir-trees standing with their roots in the 
 water ; fir-trees bent out across the stream, as if they 
 had sought to clasp hands, — the air itself seemed of a 
 verdurous color, from their masses of solemn dark 
 green. 
 
 Now through wider spaces, where one or other of the 
 walls recedes, and the broader slopes are green as 
 meadows. Now through narrow passes, where the 
 walls are straight hewn, and the narrow strip of sky 
 overhead is like a blue line drawn on gray, so closely 
 the rocks approach each other. In these rock- walls are 
 ravines, packed full of fir-trees. They look only hke 
 fissures filled with bushes. Mid-way up these rock- 
 walls are jutting projections which look like mere 
 20
 
 3o6 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 ledges. They are broad plateaus on which forests 
 grow. 
 
 Meantime the creek never slackens. Amber and 
 white and black in the arrested spaces, it whirls under 
 the bridges and round the corners, doubles on itself, 
 leaps over and high above a hundred rocks in a rod, 
 breaks into sheafs and showers of spray, foams and 
 shines and twinkles and glistens ; and if there be any 
 other thing which water at its swiftest and sunniest can 
 do, that it does also, even to jumping rope with rain- 
 bows. 
 
 And I must not forget that there are gardens all the 
 way down. In the bends of the creek, round the but- 
 ments of the bridges, in sheltered nooks under the 
 overhanging rocks, wherever there can be a few feet of 
 ground, there spring all manner of flowers, — white 
 spiraeas and pink roses and blue larkspur, and masses 
 of yellow for setting. 
 
 Sixteen miles, such miles as these, and never once 
 the creek slackens ! Said I not well that it was an 
 allegro movement ? And is one not to be forgiven who 
 tells it breathlessly, with the marvellous Colorado air 
 quickening his veins ? 
 
 Suddenly, at the last, while the canyon walls are still 
 high and the creek still foams, the road turns a corner, 
 and lo ! there he the plains in full sight, — a belt of 
 serene, dark, unfathomable blue. In a few moments 
 you come out upon a foothill, and under a dome of sky 
 which seems immeasurably wide after the narrow line 
 which roofed the canyon. 
 
 Here lies the little town of Bowlder, at the mouth of 
 the pass. It is fast growing rich and big by the out- 
 coming and ingoing from the mining region. But I 
 hold the Bowlder people lucky, not in that gold and sil- 
 ver are brought down into their streets every day, but 
 that they can walk of an afternoon up into Bowlder 
 Canyon.
 
 TllK CRADLE OF PEACE. 307 
 
 THE CRADLE OF PEACE. 
 
 ONLY half of this name is my own. I wish I could 
 honestly claim the whole ; but the sweetest word 
 in it was the thought of the man who had known and 
 loved the spot years before I saw it. I, coming later 
 and perhaps more tired, saw that the air of the land was 
 peace ; but all honor to him who first saw and said that 
 it lay in the shape of a cradle. Men going before had 
 called it a park ; and one who for some years fed herds 
 on its meadows, had given it his own name, " Bergun." 
 By this name alone it will be found recorded in the 
 books which guide travellers ; but much I mistake if 
 any traveller, having once slept and waked in it, will 
 from that day call it by any other name than ours, — 
 "The Cradle of Peace." 
 
 A giant cradle, indeed, — nine miles long and three 
 wide ; Pike's Peak for its foot and a range of battle- 
 mented mountains for its head ; lying, as it should, due 
 north and south, with high sides sloping up to the east 
 and up to the west to meet the gracious canopy of sky. 
 
 In the old, mysterious days of which men think they 
 know, when every thing was something quite different 
 from what it is to-day, all these Rocky Mountain parks 
 were lakes, it is said. 
 
 Looking down on and into the Cradle of Peace from 
 the high hills of its sides, one easily believes this, but 
 says to himself that the beauty of the primeval lake 
 was only the beauty of a promise. To-day is the fulfil- 
 ment. They are born by the baptism of water, — this 
 meadow, these grassy slopes, these pine forests ; it was 
 *hat they might be, that the lake was set and ebbed 
 iway.
 
 3o8 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 All that is left of it now is a tiny, nameless creek, 
 which zigzags along in the meadow-bottom, revealed by 
 the very willows and alders it has lifted to hide itself ; 
 revealed also by the bright green of the rich growths 
 on either hand ; just water enough in the creek to make 
 the cradle safe and prosperous for a home ; just green 
 er.ough in the meadow strip to light up the soft brown 
 and yellow slopes above, and the dark pines still further 
 above, into an enchanting picture. This is what the 
 ancient lake does for the park to-day, giving it a secret 
 of vitahty and an inherited fairness, as does some un- 
 known and unthanked old ancestor far back in the line 
 of a noble house. 
 
 I rested three days in the Cradle of Peace. Each 
 moment of each day was brimful of delights to sense 
 and soul ; each hour has left me a vivid picture, yet 
 words come slow as I seek to set those pictures in 
 frames of speech. Only he who sees can ever know 
 how surpassingly beautiful is this mountain-walled, 
 pine-walled valley, swung in the air. 
 
 On its western side the slopes rise gently to the 
 forest-hne. They are grass-grown, — chiefly with the 
 " tuft-grass," which is in July silvery white, and curled 
 in thick mats at the base, with a few slender, brown 
 stalks rising three or four inches high. This gives to 
 the whole surface a uniform tint of indescribable soft- 
 ness, as if a miraculous hoar-frost had fallen, of a pale, 
 brownish-yellow. Sometimes these slopes are broken 
 abruptly by sandy cliffs, — their fronts bright red, of 
 the red sandstone color, and their lines curving as only 
 water-worn cliffs can curve. Looking down the whole 
 length of the park, the forest-line on these western 
 slopes seems nearly straight and unbroken. Driving 
 along it, one finds that it is a series of promontories of 
 pines, making out into the smooth, grassy level ; or, 
 perhaps one ought the rather to say, remembering the 
 days of the ancient lake, that the smooth, grassy level 
 makes up in inlets into the forest. Be it called inlet of 
 smooth, grassy surface, or promontory of pine, inlet
 
 THE CRADLE OF PEACE. 309 
 
 and promontory together make, along the whole western 
 side of the park, a succession of sunny-centred, pine- 
 shadowed, miniature half-parks of wonderful beauty. 
 They round into the forest-like coves, they open out on 
 the great park like mouths of rivers. After all, is it 
 the spell of the ancient lake, that the water must still 
 lend all the shapes whose names will fit to the shapes 
 of these nooks in the western forest-edge of the Cradle 
 of Peace ? Some of them, as I said, are narrow, and 
 round into the forest like coves ; some of them are 
 acres broad, and have in their centres a thread of brook, 
 tinkling slowly down under a green meadow cover to 
 the creek below. In some of them stand, lonely, bare, 
 inexphcable, great rocks of red sandstone, grooved and 
 rounded and hollowed and smoothed, poised one above 
 another, as if only yesterday the waves had lodged 
 them there ; or standing erect, solitary, like single pil- 
 lars of temples swept away. Nothing could be more 
 weird than these huge, strange-shaped rocks, standing 
 isolated in the pine forests ; not a small stone, not a 
 tiny pebble at their base, — only the smooth, grassy 
 spaces and the silent forest about them. No ruin I 
 have ever seen of cities of men's building seemed so 
 solemn, so mysterious, so significant of centuries. On 
 the eastern side of the park, the grassy slopes are very 
 soon broken up into hills. First low, rounding foot- 
 hills, whose hues are only undulations ; next higher 
 hills and steeper, but still gentle of curve, and linked 
 each to each by soft, grass -grown hollows : lastly sharp, 
 rocky peaks, separated by deep and difficult ravines. 
 Over all these hills and to the top of the highest peaks 
 grow the same stately pines which make the forest-walls 
 of the western side of the park. The ground is cov- 
 ered many layers thick with the pine-needles, and in a 
 sunny forenoon the air is almost overpowerirgly spicy 
 with the pine fragrance. Rambling south or north, one 
 goes from hill-top to hill-top through a succession of 
 dells, no two dells alike and each dell hard to leave ; 
 some sudden, narrow, with sides so straight that one
 
 310 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 might slip swiftly to the bottom and lie as in a ham- 
 mock ; some broader and more open, but still with 
 sides so straight that, dimbing up them, one sees the 
 blue sky brought into a marvellously close horizon-hne 
 on the upper edge ; some filled full of young, waving 
 pines ; some with a narrow, water-worn gully in the 
 centre, where water runs in spring, and in summer 
 bloom white spiraeas, blue and purple penstemons, hare- 
 bells, crowfoot, and the huge white thistles, beloved of 
 butterflies ; some, almost the most beautiful of all, 
 without either pines or flowers, only the soft, white yel- 
 low, and brown and white grasses, with here and there 
 glossy green mats of kinnikinnick, — dainty, sturdy, in- 
 defatigable kinnikinnick. How shall kinnikinnick be 
 told to them who know it not ? To a New Englander 
 it might be said that a whortleberry-bush changed its 
 mind one day and decided to be a vine, with leaves as 
 glossy as laurel, bells pink-striped and sweet like the 
 arbutus, and berries in clusters and of scarlet instead of 
 black. The Indians call it kinnikinnick, and smoke it 
 in their pipes. White men call it bear-berry, I believe ; 
 and there is a Latin name for it, no doubt, in the books. 
 But kinnikinnick is the best, — dainty, sturdy, indefatiga- 
 ble kinnikinnick, green and glossy all the year round, 
 lovely at Christmas and lovely among flowers at mid- 
 summer, as content and thrifty on bare, rocky hillsides 
 as in grassy nooks, growing in long, trailing wreaths, 
 five feet long, or in tangled mats, five feet across, as 
 the rock or the valley may need, and living bravely 
 for many weeks without water, to make a house beauti- 
 ful. I doubt if there be in the world a vine I should 
 hold so precious, indoors and out. 
 
 Climbing a little higher, following one of the grassy 
 hill-top lines, as it curves into the forest, you come here 
 and there to small level opens, some so surrounded by 
 pines that you see no vistas, no glimpses of the park, 
 no distance, — only a grassy field, walled high with 
 green and roofed with blue. Some, less shut in, from 
 which you look off in all directions through vistas
 
 THE CRADLE OF PEACE. 311 
 
 framed by yellow pine timbers, — now a vista of sky and 
 cloud, now a distant mountain, now a bit of the shining 
 meadow below. A step to right, to left, the vista is 
 changed and the picture new. A forenoon flies like an 
 hour in these sunny forest chambers, with new birds, 
 new insects, new sounds, new sights on every hand. 
 There is a locust in these woods who on the wing is 
 yellow as a butterfly, on the ground is mottled brown 
 and white, like a rattlesnake. His rattle is like casta- 
 nets, and so loud that when he springs it suddenly 
 under your feet you start as if you had stumbled over 
 "bones " at a negro concert. There are golden-winged 
 woodpeckers and black and white woodpeckers, and 
 yellow birds, and orioles, and multitudes of sparrows ; 
 not singly and far apart, like the terrified survivors in 
 civilized woods, but in numbers, at ease and uncon- 
 cerned, at home in their wilderness. There are tiny 
 sparrows, no larger than the rice-birds we see in cages. 
 These fly in flocks and spend hours at a time in one 
 tree. I watched a pine-tree full of them one morning. 
 There must have been dozens ; yet never was there 
 even one still for one second. The tree itself seemed 
 all a-flutter, — dusky backs, snowy breasts, green pine- 
 needles, and yellow branches in a swift kaleidoscope of 
 shifting shape and color. 
 
 Now and then a great hawk soars out noiselessly from 
 a tree-top near by. and, circling a few times overhead, 
 sinks back again into the pines, so close to you that 
 you fancy you hear the branches open with a soft plash 
 like waves. Squirrels dart back and forth, not even 
 looking at you, and run races and fight fights in the 
 branches of a fallen pine, almost within your hand's 
 reach. When the yellow pine dies and stands stil! 
 erect, it is a weird thing to see. It looks like a ship's 
 mast, with huge grape-vine tangles fastened to it at 
 right angles. If it falls, it looks still ghasther, — like 
 some giant lizard, its body stiffened straight in death 
 and its myriad hmbs convulsed and cramped in agony. 
 My thoughts linger on these memories of the sounds
 
 312 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 and sights of those sunny out-door chambers, as mj 
 feet lingered, walking through them. But there are 
 higher levels yet and an outlook to come ; an outlook 
 all the more beautiful, all the more thrilling, because 
 you reach it by the way of the dells and the walled 
 spaces and the near horizons of the wooded foot-hills. 
 
 Following the line of some tiny brook, which has 
 ambushed in willows and alders, you will come up and 
 out among the higher peaks, the deep ravines. It is 
 hard scrambling, but well worth while. Each lift to a 
 new ridge-line opens up more and more, until, standing 
 finally on the third or fourth terrace level, you can look 
 fairly over to the west and up to the north and down 
 into the park. Now you see to perfection the sunny 
 inlet spaces in the forest on the western slope, the ten- 
 der outreaching promontories of pines, and the briglit- 
 tinted belts and winding Hues of green crops in the 
 meadow centre. Now you see the exquisite contour of 
 the up-curving sides, east and west, and the majestic 
 height of the mountains, north and south, which form 
 the cradle. 
 
 You see also still further to the west, making a vivid 
 break of hght in the wilderness of dark pines, another 
 park, higher than this and of not half its size. Few 
 men have trod there, and no man may dwell in its sweet 
 seclusion, for it has no water. Lonely and safe for ever 
 it hes ; its only mission to make a perpetual golden 
 gleam in the picture from the upper eastern wall of the 
 Cradle of Peace. 
 
 Midway in the forest rises a huge mountain of rock, 
 of most marvellous shape. Turret, roof, wall, it stands 
 a gigantic abbey, and the few pines which grow on its 
 stony sides look merely like the ivy cHnging to a ruin. 
 It is a startlingly comic thing to be told that this moun- 
 tain is called Sugar Loaf; but this is its name, and it 
 is said that, seen from the south country, the shape 
 makes the name true. To one seeing it only from the 
 east this seems incredible, and casts the fable of the 
 gold and silver shield into the shade.
 
 THE CRADLE OF PEACE. 313 
 
 The western horizon is broken by only one peak, 
 which Hes sharp cut as a pyramid against the sky. In 
 the northwest and north rise some of the grand moun- 
 tains of the central range, mighty, snow-topped, remote. 
 The park, the beautiful cradle, seems but a hand's- 
 breadth long, lying at the feet of these giants. 
 
 In the south, if it is sunset, — and only at sunset 
 should dwellers in the Cradle of Peace chmb its eastern 
 wall, — Pike's Peak stands glowing. The north and 
 northwestern side of this glorious mountain are its true 
 face of beauty. Living to the eastward of it, no one 
 knows its grandeur, no one feels its height. Smaller 
 peaks crowding close about it divide and lessen its glory. 
 Its northwestern Hne stretches along the sky in a steady, 
 harmonious descent, from fifteen thousand feet to eight 
 or ten. Miles and miles of mountain-tops welded into 
 one long, grand spur and ending at last in a sudden 
 lift, — a distinct and separated summit, as straight cut 
 as a pryamid and sharper pointed. If it is sunset, — 
 and, as I said, unless it be sunset come not, — you will 
 see this long spur, welded, forged, fitted and piled of 
 mountain masses, glowing in full light, while the park 
 is in soft shadow. Its surfaces are many-sided, sharp- 
 ridged, as if the very mountains had crystalhzed. The 
 faces which turn west are opaline pink, the faces which 
 turn east are dusky blue, and the pink and the blue 
 change and shift and pale and brighten, until the sweet 
 silence of the twilight seems marked into rhythms by 
 the mere motions of color. It is a sight solemn as 
 beautiful, and the absolute soundlessness of the great 
 forest spaces makes the solemnity almost overawing. 
 But as you go slowly down among the pines into the 
 soft grassy hollows, the silence is broken by a sound 
 subtler than stringed instrument, brook, or bird can 
 give, — a sound more of kin to Nature, it always seems 
 to me, than any one of Nature's own. It is the faint 
 and distant tinkle of the bell-cow's bell. There is a 
 home in the Cradle of Peace. Standing on one of 
 the low foot-hills, you can look down on it, and see
 
 314 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME 
 
 the brown and white herds hurrying toward it through 
 the meadow. 
 
 It is a ranch of six cabins, — log cabins, bright brown 
 outside and bright yellow in. One is the dairy, one is 
 the house of the master of the ranch, one the home of 
 his men, the other three are bedroom cabins, built 
 solely for those coming from the world to rest in the 
 Cradle of Peace. Their walls and their floors are oi 
 bare boards ; their ceilings are of paper, nailed up with 
 tacks. This is the record the realist will bring away. 
 But the artist will only remember that, the boards of the 
 walls being bright yellow pine and the clay in the chinks 
 being red sandstone clay, the sides of his room were in 
 alternate stripes of gold and red brown, a perpetual 
 feast of color to his eye ; that, the paper of the ceiling 
 being of a soft blue gray, spaced into panels by narrow 
 mouldings of the bright pellow pine, and tacked on here 
 and there by silver-headed tacks, he lay half awake in 
 his bed in the morning twilights, and gazed overhead 
 with a dreamy notion that he was looking up at a starry 
 sky through a yellow lattice-work roof. But realist and 
 artist alike will remember the evenings around the 
 cabin hearth, the light of the blazing pine-logs and the 
 voice of the master of the ranch, — Rugby boy and 
 Cambridge man, — telling how in his " longs " he used 
 to hunt seals in the caves of the wild Hebrides. 
 
 Every day Colorado sees men with the blood and the 
 love, the traditions and the culture, of Old England 
 strong within them falling under the spell of her wilder- 
 nesses and surrendering to her mountains. But I think 
 she has won no truer allegiance, no more genuine en- 
 thusiasm, than those which bind and kindle the life and 
 purpose in these cabins in the Cradle of Peace. 
 
 Beautiful Cradle of Peace ! There are some spots 
 on earth which seem to have a strong personality about 
 them, — a charm and a spell far beyond any thing which 
 mere material nature, however lovely, can exert ; a 
 charm which charms like the beauty of a human face, 
 and a spell which lasts like the bond of a human rela-
 
 THE CRADLE OF PEACE. 315 
 
 tion. In such spots we can live alone without being 
 lonely. We go away from them with the same sort of 
 sorrow with which we part from friends, and we recall 
 their looks with the yearning tenderness with which we 
 look on the photographs of beloved absent faces. 
 
 Thus I left, thus I shall always recall, the beautiful 
 Cradle of Peace.
 
 3i6 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME 
 
 A WINTER MORNING AT COLORADO 
 
 SPRINGS. 
 
 TO the east and the south and the north ,2:reat sunlit 
 plains, bounded by a rounding wall of the furthest 
 visible sky, — it might be by the Atlantic and the Arctic 
 and the Antarctic seas, for aught the horizon line tells 
 to the contrary ; to the west a grand range of the Rocky 
 Mountains, built up and up and up, — (first soft, dimp- 
 hng, crowding foot-hills ; then jagged, overlapping 
 ridges ; then sharp, glistening, snow-topped peaks, till 
 the blue is touched fifteen thousand feet high in the 
 air); fronting the mountains, making a little space of 
 shining dots and lines on the sunlit plains, the baby 
 town of Colorado Springs, the " Fountain Colony. ' It 
 IS the fourteenth day of December, v^'inter, by the cal- 
 endar. Winter, too, to the eye. Ice lies firm-frozen in 
 the gutters, and even the low foot-hills are powdered 
 with snow. The mercury registered only 14 degrees 
 this morning at six o'clock, and we are wrapped in furs 
 for our drive ; but we are going in an open carriage, 
 and our eyes must be sheltered from the blazing sun as 
 much as if it were midsummer. Winter by the calen- 
 dar, winter to the sight and touch ; but winter which 
 wooes and warms like June. 
 
 The horses bound and spring hke frolicsome kittens. 
 The electric air stirs their blood, as well as ours. Not 
 until after long driving will they settle down to a steady 
 trot. 
 
 We turn our backs on the sun. It is not yet eleven 
 o'clock ; but there is the feeling of noon in the air, and 
 it is pleasanter driving west than east. The mountains
 
 A MORNING AT COLORADO SPRINGS. 317 
 
 look only a few steps away ; but we shall have trotted 
 steadily toward them for one good half-hour before we 
 shall have reached the first of the foot-hills. 
 
 Across sandy bottoms, where silvery-gray cotton- wood 
 trees mark the courses of small brooks, through the one 
 street of poor, desolate, mistaken, discouraged "Colo- 
 rado City," up gently climbing slopes, brown and gray 
 and orange-tinted, and set here and there with sharp, 
 serrated ledges of gleaming red sandstone, and we 
 strike the line of the Fountain Creek, a dashing little 
 amber brook, which has made brave way down the pass 
 up which we are going. The road follows the creek, 
 crosses it wherever it doubles, and crowds it close for 
 room in narrow places. 
 
 Before we know that we have fairly left the plains, we 
 find ourselves shut in by hills on either side, and in the 
 very heart of Manitou. Manitou is a glen, a valley con- 
 sisting chiefly of sides, a little fairy canyon, full of rocks 
 and fir-trees, and the creek, and effervescing medicine 
 springs. It holds also three hotels, a post-office, a 
 store, a livery stable, and a few other houses. Here 
 Grace Greenwood has built a dainty cottage, in a clema- 
 tis tangle. Here Dr. Bell, an Enghshman, well known 
 in Colorado, has built a house of the pink and red stone, 
 which blends so exquisitely with the landscape that it 
 looks like a natural outgrowth of it. Here, ten years 
 hence, will be dozens of villas, perched in little grassy 
 spots on the ledges and rocky slopes. Already most of 
 the building sites are sold, — and chiefly to Englishmen. 
 To cross both an ocean and a continent for one's sum- 
 mer home seems a brave indifference to trouble. 
 
 But even this shining little nook does not keep us this 
 morning. We dash through it, still side by side with 
 the creek, following and crossing and recrossing it, and 
 in five minutes Manitou is lost to us, as the plains were 
 just back, and we are once more walled in on either 
 side, — this time by higher, closer, and rockier walls. 
 This is the real entrance of the Ute Pass. The road 
 seems leading straight into a mountain of rock. A
 
 3iS BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 strange hollowed niche faces us ; it looks like a gigantic 
 portal, barred and double-barred. On the left, many 
 feet below, runs the little amber-colored creek. No, it 
 does not run ; it skips, it threads its way, it is half in, 
 half out of sight. Between ice and snow and huge 
 bowlders, journeying is made hard for it this morning ; 
 but wherever it is clearly in sight it is still amber and 
 yellow and limpid, and fine red and white pebbles gleam 
 through it like mosaics. And wherever the ice veils it 
 the effects are yet more fantastic. We have swung 
 round the gigantic stone portal, and are fairly in the 
 pass. On little grassy bits of soil and in crevices of 
 the rock, high up above our heads, fir-trees grow at 
 perilous slants. Gray, leafless cotton-wood trees and 
 alders, graceful with dried brown catkins on every twig, 
 grow on the edges of the creek below. We look down 
 through their tops in some of the steepest places. On 
 the summits of the walls, on both sides, are magnificent 
 masses of red and yellow and brown rock, shaped like 
 castles, Hke monuments, like ruins ; some most curi- 
 ously mottled with black lines or vivid green hchens. 
 But we cannot remember to look up. The creek rivets 
 our eyes. Surely never before of a warm and sunny 
 morning were such ice fantasies to be seen and heard. 
 We jump from the carriage. The horses toil up the 
 steep road. We turn from all the grandeur of the pass, 
 and walk with downward-bent eyes, looking into a weird 
 and shining realm. How shall they be told, the mar- 
 vellous things which water and ice and sunshine are 
 doing in the bed of the Fountain Creek on this June 
 day of December ! Ice bridges ; ice arches ; ice veils 
 over little falls ; rippled water-lines frozen into ice films ; 
 ice sheaths on roots and twigs ; ice canopies on shelv' 
 ing places, with fringing rows of ice-drops rounded and 
 tapered like bells ; ice shields, round and wrought in 
 daintier patterns than Damascus ever drew ; ice colon- 
 nades, three floors deep, the stalactites all tapering to 
 the top like masts, and the sunlight making rainbow 
 bars on the lowest floor, — these are a few of the shapes 
 and semblances to which words can give names.
 
 A MORNING AT Cu LOR A DO SPRINGS. 3i9 
 
 Then there were, in wider places of the brook, round 
 capes of ice, making out into the amber water. These 
 were scolloped on the outer edges, wonderfully like the 
 shell-shaped fungi which grow on old trees. They were 
 full of fine lines, following always the scollop of the 
 outer edge, hke the hues on the fungi. Sometimes 
 there were three layers of these exquisite ice shells, all 
 transparent, all mottled, and lined with infinite intricacy 
 of design, and the water gliding above, below, between 
 them, breaking now and then on their edges suddenly 
 like a wave, — the tidal record of some other wave far 
 up the pass. 
 
 These tidal waves made their most exquisite record 
 on the thinner ice edges of some limpid pools further 
 up the creek. Here they pulsed in and out with a 
 rhythmic motion, and as each withdrawal left the ice 
 rim perfectly transparent, the swift sunlight struck it, 
 marking the outer edge with fine pencilled Hues of flash- 
 ing silver. As regular as the strokes of a metronome, 
 and seeming almost to keep time for the melody of the 
 bubbling water, they came and went, and came and 
 went ; amber, silver, amber, silver. No doubt there 
 was a liquid syllable of sound to each individual curve, 
 and there were ears finer than ours which could hear 
 it, — the cony and the fox, perhaps, for they had been 
 there before us. Their weird little, pattering foot-prints 
 were all about on the snow ; disappearing at entrances 
 of rock crevices or under fallen logs, crossing and re- 
 crossing on the ice bridges, which looked too frail to 
 bear even a cony's weight. 
 
 But conies are said to be a fearless folk : and well they 
 may be who dwell in impregnable homes in the walls of 
 the Utc Pass. There was also one tiny track of a bird. 
 Barely a third of an inch long the foot-prints were, but 
 as firmly defined on the feathery snow as if a pencil 
 had drawn them but the moment before. The little 
 creature had evidently gone to the very edge of the ice 
 to drink. There it had slipped, and, struggling to 
 regain a foothold, had made a tiny trampling. We
 
 520 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 dipped our drinking-cup at the same spot and drank to 
 the health of the unknown guest before us. Magpie ? 
 blue jay ? A happy new year to you ! And a happy 
 year they have of it, in these cedars and firs, with spicy 
 juniper berries for the picking. They flit about on all 
 the roads, as familiarly and as commonly as robins in 
 May. The blue jay has a fine crest on his head, and is 
 of such a brilliant and shimmering blue, when the sun 
 strikes him, that he looks like a bit of sky tumbled 
 down and floating about. As for the magpie, he is so 
 vivid a black and white that he lights up a pine-tree 
 almost as well as an oriole can. 
 
 Now we have reached the main fall of the creek. 
 No cony or fox has crossed here. Even the tiniest 
 bird's footfall would have dislodged this thin-fringed 
 ice and snow canopy which overhangs the fall. It 
 sways from side to side and undulates, and we look 
 momently to see it fall ; but it does not. There must 
 be ice pillars beneath it, which we cannot see. Exactly 
 in the centre, reaching almost dowrto the rushing water, 
 hangs one pendant globule, pear-shaped, flashing like a 
 diamond in the sun. " The solitaire of all the world ! " 
 said we; "and presently it shall be dissolved and 
 swallowed in a foaming draught." " And who sits at 
 the banquet?" "The name of the queen is Nature, 
 and he who loves is emperor always." 
 
 These things we said, because when to midwinter 
 at six thousand feet above the sea is added the sun 
 of June the heads and hearts of men grow gay as by 
 wine. 
 
 Then we crept out to the edge of a sharp rock, and 
 there in the warm sun we sat, looking down into the 
 huge crystal bowl into which the water had been pour- 
 ing and foaming and freezing, until the frozen foam 
 reached up half way to the top of the fall. A glorious 
 crystal beaker it was, — solid white snow at bottom, 
 granulated frost-work up the sides, and trestlework 
 of stalactites around and below it, and every moment 
 the foaming silver was building it higher and higher.
 
 A MORNING AT COLORADO SPRINGS. 321 
 
 But noon is near, and the seven homeward miles will 
 seem long. In a peculiarly narrow bend of the road, 
 where the hind wheels graze the rock wall and our 
 horses' heads look off over the precipice, we turn. We 
 are not half through the pass. For five miles more the 
 road and the creek crowd up into the heart of the moun- 
 tains ; but we count those miles as misers count gains 
 to come. MilHonaires that we are, we have yet whole 
 months of winter mornings ahead. 
 
 Now, as we descend, we see the full grandeur of the 
 pass. Across its opening, to the southwest, stand the 
 mighty mountains. Pikes Peak, fifteen thousand feet 
 high, and Cameron's Cone, only a little lower, are in 
 full sight, and it seems that the only way out must lie 
 through the sky over their tops. With every turn we 
 make new mountains rise across our path and the wails on 
 our right hand and our left seem wilder and more abrupt. 
 Then of a sudden we swing out into the open peace 
 and sunshine of lovely Manitou again, and home over 
 the plains, seven miles to the hour, the June sun burn- 
 ing our faces and the December snow dazzling our eyes. 
 And this is midwinter in Colorado.
 
 322 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 GRAND CANYON OF THE ARKANSAS. 
 
 THE Arkansas River at Pueblo is a very languid 
 stream. It goes zig-zagging along as dilatorily 
 as a boy goes to school of a May morning. In and 
 out, among and around gravelly sand-bars and long nar- 
 row strips of islands, plumy with cotton-woods, its 
 twisting and untwisting threads of water seem hardly 
 to make a respectable river. But as soon as you set 
 your face westward and follow up the way it has come 
 down, you find that it is not an aimless, characterless 
 wanderer, after all. A narrow-gauge railroad (the Denver 
 and Rio Grande) creeps up on its left side, and is very 
 soon pressed for room. The banks become vertical walls, 
 and in many places rise almost sheer from the water. 
 As the river curves, so must the railroad, and the bends 
 are sharp. Often the engine and the first car are in full 
 view to the right or the left from the rear car. The 
 river is swift and muddy. Boiling chocolate, with the 
 cream frothing on the top, is like it. Old snags, gray and 
 weather-beaten, come sailing past. Now and then, an 
 uprooted tree drifts by, head down, with the roots toss- 
 ing like arms reaching for help. The high banks are of 
 yellow sandstone, limestone, and clay. The rocks are 
 strangely rounded out, like turrets and bastions. Some- 
 times they seemed to be piled up in thin layers ; some- 
 times they look like solid hewn stone from base to top. 
 The clay or sand slopes are dotted with low pine-trees, 
 but the trees are never so thick as to shut out the pallid 
 yellow-gray tint of the clay or rock on which they stand. 
 It is an ugly color and in a strong sunlight makes a 
 glare as unpleasant to the eye as that from a white sur-
 
 GRAND CANYON OF THE ARKANSAS. 323 
 
 face ; and much more irritating to the nerves, because, 
 the color being so dull, it has no business to glare and 
 you cannot understand how it manages to do it. Never- 
 theless, the panorama of the river is a beautiful one as 
 it unfolds mile after mile. It is rimmed with cotton- 
 woods and willows. Wherever it widens it has Httle 
 islands also green with cotton-woods and willows, and 
 here and there are picturesque yellow log cabins sur- 
 rounded by meadow fields. The bluffs look like long 
 lines of fortifications, sometimes faUing into ruin ; 
 sometimes as clean cut and complete in arch, doorway, 
 embrasure, and turret as if they but waited for guns. 
 As the valley opens wider, the vista to the west is 
 longer, and mountain range after mountain range comes 
 into sight, rising like walls across the pathway of the 
 river, which sweeps ahead in curves, like a huge, shin- 
 ing sickle, reaping the meadow. The cotton-wood trees 
 are a great beauty in the picture. The cotton-wood is 
 among the trees what the mocking-bird is among birds. 
 It can take any shape it likes and deceive your eye, as 
 the mocking-bird deceives your ear. Only its color 
 betrays it. That is a light, brilhant green, almost 
 transparent in the spring. On the Atlantic seaboard 
 there is no tree tint to compare with it, unless it be the 
 tint of a young white birch in early June, when it stands 
 between you and the sun. The effect of thick rounded 
 masses of this vivid green, as seen against red sand- 
 stone or granitic rocks, or thrown up by the pale 
 olive gray of the Colorado plains, cannot be described, 
 and if it were faithfully rendered in a painting would be 
 thought crude or impossible. And when one sees this 
 plumy green arrayed on the forms of slender, drooping 
 elms, stiff, straight poplars, swaying birches, round- 
 topped sugar-maples, fantastic sycamores, and even old 
 gnarled and twisted apple-trees, it is bewildering. Yet 
 all these may be seen in capriciously blended groups in 
 the valley of the Arkansas River, between Pueblo and 
 Canyon City. Canyon City is a small village lying just 
 at the mouth of Giand Canyon of the Arkansas. You
 
 324 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 reach it, if you have come by rail, just at sunset and in 
 the sunset light it is picturesque. It has a background to 
 the west and north of mountains, which will be purple at 
 that hour and cast soft dark shadows far beyond the vil- 
 lage, out over the river valley. Next morning you look out 
 on a scene so changed that it seems hke enchantment. 
 The gold has Hterally turned to ashes, for the whole region 
 is of a pallid gray. The soil is adobe, cracked and 
 seamed and printed with the mark of each wheel, each 
 foot, which went over it in the last wet days when 
 it was mud. The mountains are comparatively bare 
 and rocky, and the foot-hills present a succession 
 of oval fronts, all of pale gray limestone or adobe clay. 
 The penitentiary, also of gray stone, stands conspicu- 
 ously in sight. The convicts, in queer tights, with 
 alternate black and white stripes going round them from 
 chin to ankles — legs, arms, body all alike — are run- 
 ning to and fro, wheeling barrows full of gray stone or 
 digging gray stone out of the gray foot-hills. They 
 look like zebras, or imps in an opera. The sun streams 
 full from the east on the bare gray foot-hills and pale 
 adobe clay, and is reflected sharply back from the moun- 
 tain wall, without a softening shadow or break to the 
 pallid glare. I have seldom seen any thing more hope- 
 lessly ugly than Canyon City of a hot morning. Yet it 
 is something to be picturesque and beautiful once in 
 every twenty-four hours, and of that Canyon City may 
 boast. Moreover, to be just to the little town, it has a 
 wide-awake look and is growing fast. The shops are 
 good and there are three hotels, all ot which are toler- 
 able. No doubt, in a few years it will be largely known 
 as a resort for invalids, for the winter climate is a very 
 pleasant one, — much warmer and milder than that oi 
 Colorado Springs, and, therefore, better for many con- 
 sumptives. Moreover, there are bubbhng up in the 
 limestone rocks at the mouth of the Grand Canyon 
 several nauseous hot springs, variously medicated, and 
 the class of people who will drink th's sort of water is a 
 large and nomadic one.
 
 GRAMD CANYON OF THE ARKANSAS. 325 
 
 The drive from Canyon City to the top of the Grand 
 Canyon is a ten-miles climb up-hill. You do well if 
 you make it in three hours. The road winds among low 
 hills, round, pointed, conical, barren except for the 
 cactuses and pinon trees. 
 
 The road is red. The hills are red, with here and 
 there a cropping out of yellow limestone. For a mile 
 or two, the road follows the course of what is called, 
 with a dismal Hteralness, " Sand Creek." A creek of 
 sand it is, indeed. Now and then, for a few rods, a 
 darkened line of moisture or perhaps a threadlike 
 glimmer of water ; but for the rest only a ghastly and 
 furrowed channel, dry as a desert. " In the spring it is 
 full, I suppose," I said, forgetting that it was a spring 
 morning then. The driver looked at me with mild 
 wonder. " Never see it higher 'n 'tis now," he replied. 
 " Dunno what they call't a creek for, anyhow." But a 
 creek it must have been at some time. The Arkansas 
 River is shallower to-day by reason of loss of its water. 
 Its bed is full of water-worn pebbles, and its banks 
 are hollowed out and terraced as nothing can hollow 
 and terrace except that master builder and destroyer, 
 water. 
 
 Three miles from the canyon we stopped to buy milk 
 at a little ranch which we had named in our hearts the 
 year before " Lone Woman's Ranch." We had found 
 living there an elderly woman, whose husband had just 
 died. She had buried him on a low hill a rod or two 
 from the house. The grave was surrounded by a high 
 paling made of split cedar logs. The little house was 
 comfortable, built of adobe bricks, and stood in a sunny 
 and sheltered nook. The farm was a good one, she 
 said, and there were a hundred and sixty acres of land ; 
 but it was a sad outlook for her, the undertaking to 
 work it herself. We had often thought of her, and 
 wondered now, as we drove up to the gate, if we should 
 find her living there still. She was there, and with hei 
 a daughter and grandchild. The lonely year of hard 
 work had told on her face, and she was gladder than
 
 326 BITS OF Travel at home. 
 
 ever of a few moments' chat, even with strangers. 
 Every thing looked as neat and well-kept as before ; 
 nothing had changed except the woman's face, which 
 had grown thin and dark, and the cedar palings around 
 the grave, which had grown white and glistening. As 
 we drove away, she called after us : "I hope you'll en- 
 joy yourselves ; but it's a dreadful ugly place up there. 
 At least, I couldn't never see any thing pretty in it." 
 
 She was right. There is nothing '• pretty " about the 
 Grand Canyon of the Arkansas. From the moment 
 when you first reach the top of the grand amphitheatre- 
 like plateau in which the rift was made, until the mo- 
 ment in which you stand on the very edge of the chasm 
 and look dizzily over and down, there is but one thought, 
 but one sense, — the thought of wonder, the sense of 
 awe. The uncultured mind to-day is but one remove 
 from the savage mind in its feeling when confronted 
 with nature at her grandest. I do not know what 
 Indians inhabited the region of the Arkansas River a 
 half century ago ; but I would hazard the statement 
 that they held many an unhallowed rite on the edge of 
 this abyss and believed that the bad Spirit lived in it. 
 The superstition is shorn of its strength and definite- 
 ness to-day, but Hngers still in a vague antagonism to 
 the spot, — a disposition to avoid it because it is not 
 "pretty." 
 
 I said that the plateau in which the rift is made was 
 amphitheatre-like. The phrase is at once a good and a 
 bad one, — bad because it is hardly possible for the 
 mind to conceive of the amphitheatre shape without a 
 good deal of limitation in size. Do what we will, the 
 Cohseum is apt to rise before us whenever we use the 
 word amphitheatre. To picture to one's self an amphi- 
 theatre whose central space shall be measured by tens, 
 twenties, and thirties of miles, shall be varied by 
 meadow parks and the forests which enclose the parks, 
 and whose circling tiers of seats shall be mountain 
 ranges, rising higher and higher, until the highest, daz- 
 zling white with snow, seem to cleave the sky, rathei
 
 GRAND CANYON OF THE ARKANSAS. 327 
 
 than to rest against it, — this is not easy. Yet it is pre- 
 cisely such an amphitheatre as this that we are in as we 
 approach the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas. From 
 every hill-summit that is gained the amphitheatre effect 
 is more and more striking, until at last its tiers of moun- 
 tain walls are in full view, — south, west, north, and east. 
 Then it is that, walking along through the groves of 
 pi non-trees and seeing so far and so clear in all ways, 
 one wonders where can be the canyon. This is a broad 
 mountain-top plateau. It seems as if one might journey 
 across it in any direction one liked, and come sooner or 
 later to the base of the horizon heights. Suddenly, 
 going southward, one finds the trees scantier, wider 
 apart, ceasing altogether. The stony ground becomes 
 stonier and stonier, until only armed cactuses and 
 thorny shrubs keep foot-hold in the confusion of rocks. 
 Then, looking southward, one sees a few rods ahead a 
 strange effect in the air. There is no precipice edge 
 visible as yet ; but the eye perceives that just beyond 
 there is a break, and there against the sky looms up a 
 wall whose base is out of sight. It is strangely near, 
 yet far. Between it and the ground you stand on is a 
 shimmer of inexplicable lights and reflections. This 
 wall is the further wall of the Great Canyon. A few 
 steps moie and you look in. You have been already 
 for some moments walking on ground which was only 
 the surface of an outjutting promontory of the nearer 
 wall. Twelve hundred feet below you roars the Arkan- 
 sas River, pent up in a channel so narrow that it looks 
 like a brook one might ford. On its narrow rims of 
 bank there are lying sticks of wood which look Hke fine 
 kindling wood. They are heavy railroad ties, floated 
 down from the timber-lands in the mountains. 
 
 This point, which it has taken a ten miles' climb to 
 reach, is only two miles from the mouth of the canyon. 
 To one looking eastward through the mouth, the 
 plains seem but a lower belt of sky, sky and plains to- 
 gether making a triangle of bars of dainty color, put up 
 like a stile, as it were from wall to wall of the canyon,
 
 328 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME, 
 
 or stretched like a curtain, or set like a band of gay tiles 
 from eaves to eaves of a huge gable, the roof being the 
 sky. There is no end to the fancies one has, looking 
 at these distant triangles of sky, or of sky and plain, 
 seen between the converging lines of canyon walls in 
 this country of wonderful perspectives. 
 
 But this single outlook from and downlook into the 
 canyon gives only a small idea of its grandeur. To 
 comprehend it, one must toil slowly westward along its 
 edge, cHmbing up and down to the upper and lower 
 promontories of its walls. It is six or seven miles long 
 and at every step its features change. Now the wall 
 rises abruptly from the water, — so abruptly that it 
 looks as if it might reach as many hundred feet below 
 as above ; and now it is broken into different slopes, as 
 if slides upon slides had narrowed it below and widened 
 it above. Now it is bare rock, hned and stained and 
 furrowed, as if wrought by tools ; now it is cleft from 
 base to top, as if streams had leaped over and worn 
 pathways for themselves. No doubt they did ; for in 
 these clefts are patches of solid green, — wild currants 
 and gooseberries and spiraeas and many a graceful 
 green-leaved thing I did not know. The rocks are all 
 granitic, the prevalent tint being red or gray, with sharp 
 markings of black. Seen closer, they are a mosaic of 
 lichens, — gray, black, hght-yellowish green, and deep 
 orange. They sparkle with mica, and have here and 
 there glistening white pebbles of quartz set in their red 
 surfaces, like snowy raisins in a crimson pudding. 
 Again and again you come out upon points from which 
 no river can be seen, so sharply do the walls turn and 
 shut off the view both ways. The further west you go, 
 the wilder and more terrible the abyss becomes, until 
 the walls begin to slope down again to the western 
 plain or park, through which the river has come. The 
 wall on which you are walking seems sometimes to be 
 nothing but a gigantic pile of separate bowlders. More 
 than once I turned back shuddering from a rocky cause- 
 way in front of which the bowlders were so loosely
 
 GRAND CANYON OF THE ARKANSAS. 329 
 
 poised that I could look down between them, through 
 fantastic window after window, into the chasm below. 
 Here and there among these toppling yet immovable 
 bowlders stood an old pifion-tree, holding on to the 
 rocks by its gnarled roots as by grappling-irons. About 
 four miles up is a second canyon, some three or four 
 hundred rods long, leading to the right, as if the river 
 had tried first to break through there, but had found 
 the mountain too strong. It is but a figure of ignorant 
 speech, however, to say that the river broke through. 
 The volcano went ahead and tunnelled its road. Water 
 never makes violent way for itself; and whenever it 
 does wear a channel through rock it works backward, 
 as at Niagara. Standing on the edge of this great 
 chasm and looking down to the narrow thread of foam 
 at its bottom, one wonders that even the most ignorant 
 mind could for a moment suppose that the water had 
 cleaved the rock. It must have been a mighty throe of 
 volcanic action which did it. A supreme moment to 
 have seen, surely, if there had been any spot just then 
 cool enough to stand on. The other day I saw a curi- 
 ous little thing, — a silver button which had burst into 
 an irregular rose-shaped flower by the same process and 
 by virtue of the same law. It was an odd thing to be 
 reminded by a dainty silver rose lying in the palm of 
 my hand of a vast rock-walled canyon, with a river rush- 
 ing through it ; yet I was, for a sudden cooHng made 
 them both. The little silver button is heated to a cer- 
 tain point, and in the process absorbs oxygen. The 
 instant it is taken out of the oven and the cold air 
 strikes it, the oxygen is violently expelled, and the silver 
 shoots upward, falls apart, and stiftens in fantasdc and 
 Irregular points, which are wonderfully petal-like in their 
 arrangement. Yet they reminded me instantly of the 
 outlines of many of the rock walls and ridges in Colo- 
 rado. Perhaps, if one could go high enough and look 
 down, one might see in the great mountain ranges a 
 similar grouping, a petal-like centring, a Titanic efflo- 
 rescence of a planet cooled suddenly at white heat.
 
 33^ f^ITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 It was late twilight when on our homeward way we 
 stopped again for a moment at " Lonely Woman's 
 Ranch." The cedar palings around the lonely grave 
 glistened whiter in the strugghng moonlight and the 
 spot looked loneher than it did in the morning. The 
 woman was more profuse than ever in her voluble wel- 
 come. She asked eagerly if we had no friends who 
 would like to buy her ranch. " One hundred and sixty 
 acres for fifteen hundred dollars." It was "a good 
 chance for anybody that wanted to come into this 
 country to settle." 
 
 " You really want to sell it ? " we said. 
 
 " Yes. I want to be nearer to town, for sake of 
 schools," she said. And then, as if a little conscience- 
 stricken at having given only a part of her reason, she 
 added, with a touching pathos in her tone : " And it is 
 so lonesome for me, too," 
 
 In the bushes behind the house an owl was hooting, 
 " Twohoo ! hoo ! hoo ! " and as we drove on both 
 echoes blended strangely in our ears : — 
 
 " Twohoo ! hoo ! hoo 1 
 Lonesome for me, too, too 1 "
 
 OUR NEW ROAD. 33 X 
 
 OUR NEW ROAD. 
 
 WHAT a new singer or a new play is to the city 
 man, a new road is to the man of the wilder- 
 ness. 
 
 I fancy the parallel might be drawn out and amplified, 
 much to the exaltation of the new road, if the man of 
 the wilderness chose to boast, and if people were sensi- 
 ble enough to value pleasures as they do other fabrics, 
 by their wear. It would be cruel, however, to make 
 the city man discontented. Poor fellow ! he is joined 
 to his idols of stone, buried alive above them now, and 
 soon he will be buried dead below them. Let him 
 alone ! It is no part of my purpose in this paper to 
 enter the lists in defence of my joys, or to make an 
 attack upon his. It is merely to describe our new 
 road ; and my pronoun " our " is by no means a narrow 
 one, — it is a big plural, taking in some four thousand 
 souls, all the dwellers in the town of Colorado Springs 
 and its near neighborhood. 
 
 The " new road " is up and across Cheyenne Moun- 
 tain. Cheyenne Mountain is the southernmost peak of 
 the grand range which Hes six miles west of our town. 
 Only those who dwell at the feet of great mountain 
 ranges know how like a wall they look, what sense of 
 fortified security they give ; people who come for a day, 
 to gaze and pass by, or even people who stay and paint 
 the hills' portraits, know very little. A mountain has 
 as much personality as a man ; you do not know one 
 any more than you know the other until you have sum- 
 mered and wintered him. You love one, and are pro- 
 foundly indifferent to another, just as it is with your
 
 332 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 feeling towards your neighbors ; and it is often as hard 
 to give good and sufficient reason for your preference 
 in the one case as in the other. But no lover of Chey- 
 enne was ever at loss to give reasons for his love. The 
 mountain is so unique in its grandeur and dignity that 
 one must be bhnd and stolid indeed not to feel its 
 influence. 
 
 As I said, it is the southernmost peak of the range 
 lying west of Colorado Springs. This is as if I said it 
 is the southern bastion of our western wall. It is only 
 two or three thousand feet above the town (the town, 
 be it remembered, lies six thousand feet above the sea). 
 Pike's Peak, a few miles farther north, in the same 
 range, is nearly twice as high ; so it is not by reason of 
 height that Cheyenne is so grand. Pausing now, with 
 my pen in my hand, I look out of my south window at 
 its majestic front, and despair of being loyal to the 
 truth I would like to tell of this mountain. Is it that 
 its eastern outline, from the summit down to the plain, 
 is one slow, steady, in-curving slope, broken only by 
 two rises of dark timber-lands, which round like bil- 
 lows ; and that this exquisite hollowing curve is for 
 ever outlined against the southern sky ? Is it that the 
 heavily cut and jagged top joins this eastern slope at a 
 sharp angle, and stretches away to the northwest in 
 broken Hues as rugged and strong as the eastern slope 
 is graceful and harmonious ; and that the two lines to- 
 gether make a perpetual, vast triangulation on the sky ? 
 Is it that when white clouds in our heavens at noon 
 journey south, they always seem to catch on its eastern 
 slope, and hang and flutter there, or nestle down in an 
 island-like bank reaching half-way up the mountain .'' 
 Is it that the dawn always strikes it some moments 
 earlier than it reaches the rest of the range, turning it 
 glowing red from plains to sky, like a great illumined 
 cathedral 1 Is it that the setting sun also loves it, and 
 flings back mysterious broken prisms of light on its fur- 
 rowed western slopes, long after the other peaks are 
 black and grim ? Is it that it holds canyons where one
 
 OUR NEW ROAD, 333 
 
 can climb, amonij fir-trees and roses and clematis and 
 columbine and blue-bells and ferns and mosses, to wild 
 pools and cascades in which snow-fed brooks tumble 
 and leap ? These questions are only like the random 
 answers of one suddenly hard pressed for the explana- 
 tion of a mystery which has long since ceased to be a 
 mystery to him, — ceased to be a mystery not because 
 it has been fathomed, but because it has become fa- 
 miliar and dear. No lover of Cheyenne but will say 
 that Cheyenne is better than all these ; that no one of 
 all these is quite truly and sufficiently told ; and I my- 
 self in the telling feel like one stammering in a language 
 but half learned, the great mountain all the while look- 
 ing down on me in serene and compassionate silence. 
 At this moment, it looks like a gigantic mountain of 
 crystals, purple and white. Every smallest ridge slope 
 fronting to the east or south is of a red purple, like the 
 purple of a Catawba grape over-ripe ; every smallest 
 ridge slope to the north or west is white like the white 
 of "alabaster, and soft with the softness of snow. The 
 plains are a clear, pais yellow, and the spot where the 
 slope melts into the level, and the purple melts uito the 
 yellow, is a triumph of shape and color from which 
 men who build and men who paint might well turn 
 away sorrowful. 
 
 Knowing well, as I do, just where among these crys- 
 talline ridges our new road winds, I yet look up in- 
 credulous at the sharp precipices and ledges. But it is 
 there, bless it! — our new uphfter, revealer, healer, 
 nearer link of approach to a nearer sky ! The workmen 
 know it as the road over to Bear creek valley, and they 
 think they have built it for purposes of traffic, and for 
 bringing down railroad ties ; it is a toll-road, and the 
 toll-gatherer takes minute reckoning of all he can see 
 passing his door. But I think there will always be 
 a traffic which the workmen will not suspect, and a 
 viewless company which will elude the toll-gatherer, on 
 this new road of ours. 
 
 It was on one of our tropical midwinter days that I
 
 334 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 first climbed it. A mile southward from the town, then 
 a sharp turn to the west, fronting the mountains as 
 directly as if our road must be going to pierce their 
 sides, across brooks where the ice was so thick that our 
 horses' hoofs and our wheels crunched slowly through, 
 up steep banks on which there were frozen glares of 
 solid ice. and across open levels where the thin snow 
 lay in a fine tracery around every separate grass-stalk, 
 — one, two, three miles of this, and we were at the 
 base of the mountain, and saw the new road, a faint 
 brown track winding up the yellow slope and disappear- 
 ing among the pines. 
 
 As we turned into the road, we saw, on our right, two 
 ranch-men leaning, in the Sunday attitude, against a 
 fence, and smoking. As we passed, one of them took 
 his pipe from his mouth and said nonchalantly, " S'pose 
 ye kiioiv this ere's a toll-road." The emphasis on the 
 word " know " conveyed so much that we laughed in 
 his face. Clever monosyllable, it stood for a whole 
 paragraph. 
 
 "Oh, yes," we said, "we know it. It's worth fifty 
 cents, isn't it, to get high up on Cheyenne Mountain .? " 
 
 " Well, yes," he rephed, reflectively, " 'spose 'tis. 
 It's a mighty good road, anyhow. Found blossom rock 
 up there yesterday," he added, with the odd, furtive, 
 gleaming expression which I have so often seen in the 
 eyes of men who spoke of a possible or probable mine ; 
 *' true blossom rock. The assayer, he was up, an he 
 says it's the real mineral, no mistake," he continued, 
 and there seemed a fine and unconscious scorn in the 
 way he fingered the dingy and torn paper half dollar 
 with which we had paid for the right to drive over what 
 might be chambers of silver and gold. 
 
 " Blossom rock," I said, " why ' blossom ' ? " To call 
 this particular surface mineral the flower of the silver 
 root lying below, is a strange fancy, surely ; it seems a 
 needlessly poverty-stricken device for Nature's realms 
 to borrow names from each other. 
 
 A few rods' steep climb, and we have left the foot-hill
 
 OUR NEW ROAD. 335 
 
 and are absolutely on the mountain. The road tacks as 
 sharply as a ship in a gale ; we are facing north instead 
 of south, and are already on a ledge so high that we 
 have a sense of looking over as well as of looking off. 
 The plains have even now the pale pink flush which 
 only distance gives, and our town, though it is only four 
 miles away, looks already like a handful of yellow and 
 white pebbles on a sand beach, so suddenly and so 
 high are we lifted above it. We are not only on the 
 mountain, we are among the rocks, — towering rocks of 
 bright red sandstone, thick-grown in spaces with vivid 
 yellow-green hchen. They are almost terrible, in spite 
 of their beauty of color, — so high, so straight, so many- 
 pointed are they. The curves of the road would seem 
 to be more properly called loops, so narrow are they, so 
 closely do they hug the sharp projections round which 
 they turn and wind and turn and wind. One is tempted 
 to say that the road has lassoed the mountain and 
 caught it, hke a conquered Titan, in a tangle of coils. 
 At every inner angle of the curves is a wide turn-out, 
 where we wait to give the horses breath, and to watch 
 if there be any one coming down. Round the outer 
 angles we go at a slow pace, praying that there may be 
 no one just the other side. When we face northward, 
 the mountain shuts off all sun and we are in cold 
 shadow ; the instant we double the outer point of the 
 ridge and face southward, we are in full sunshine ; thus 
 we alternate from twilight to high noon, and from high 
 noon to twilight, in a swift and bewildering succession. 
 On our right, we look down into chasms bristling with 
 sharp rocks and pointed tops of fir-trees ; on our left 
 the mountain-side rises, now abruptly like a wall, nowi 
 in sloping tiers. After a mile of these steep ascents, 
 we come out on a very promontory of precipices. Here 
 we turn the flank of the mountain, and a great vista to 
 the west and north opens up before us, peak rising 
 above peak, with softer hills crowding- in between ; be- 
 low us, canyon after canyon, ridge after ridge, a perfect 
 net-work of ins and outs and ups and downs, and our
 
 336 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 little brown thread of a road swinging along at easy 
 levels above it all. There is no more hard climbing. 
 There are even down slopes on which the horses trot, 
 in the shade of high pine-trees on either hand, now 
 and then coming upon a spot where the ridge has 
 widened sufficiently for the trees to dispose themselves 
 in a more leisurely and assured fashion, hke a lowland 
 grove, instead of clinging at a slant on steep sides, as 
 they are for the most part driven to do; now and then 
 coming out on opens, where a canyon lies bare and 
 yawning, like a great gash in the mountain's side, its 
 slopes of fine red or yellow gravelly sand seeming to be 
 in a perpetual slide from top to bottom, — only held in 
 place by bowlders here and there, which stick out like 
 grotesque heads of rivets with which the hill had been 
 mended. Here we find the kinnikinnick in its perfec- 
 tion, enormous mats of it lying compact, glossy, green 
 and claret-tinted, as if enamelled, on the yellow sand. 
 Painters have thought it worth while to paint over and 
 over again some rare face or spot whose beauty per- 
 petually eluded their grasp and refused to be transferred 
 to canvas. Why should I not be equally patient and 
 loyal to this exquisite vine, of which I have again and 
 again, and always vainly, tried to say what it is like, 
 and how beautiful is the mantle it flings over bare and 
 stony places ? 
 
 Imagine that a garden-border of box should lay itself 
 down and behave like a blackberry vine, — run, and 
 scramble, and overlap, and send myriads of long ten- 
 drils out in all directions, — and you will have a picture 
 of the shape, the set of the leaf, the thick matting of 
 the branches, and the utter unrestrainedness of a root 
 of kinnikinnick. Add to this the shine of the leaf of 
 the myrtle, the green of green grass in June, and the 
 claret-red of the blackberry vine in November, and you 
 will have a picture of its lustrousness and its colors. 
 The solid centres of the mats are green ; the young ten- 
 drils run out more and more vivid red to their tips. In 
 June it is fragrant with clusters of small pink and white
 
 OUR NEW ROAD. 337 
 
 bells, much like the huckleberry blossom. In De- 
 cember it is gay with berries as red as the berries of 
 the holly. Neither midsummer heat nor midwinter 
 cold can tarnish the sheen nor shrivel the fulness of its 
 leaf. It has such vitality that no barrenness, no 
 drought, deters it ; in fact, it is more luxuriant on the 
 bare, gravelly slopes of which I was just now speaking, 
 than I have ever seen it elsewhere. Yet its roots seem 
 to take slight hold of the soil. You may easily, by a 
 little care in loosening the tendrils, pull up solid mats 
 five to seven feet long. Fancy these at Christmas, in 
 one's house. I look up, as I write, at one upon my own 
 wall. It has a stem an inch in diameter, gnarled and 
 twisted like an old cedar, — the delight of an artistic 
 eye, the surprise and scorn of the Phihstine, to whom 
 it looks merely like fire-wood. From this gnarled 
 bough bursts a great growth of luxuriant green 
 branches, each branch claret-red at its tips and vivid 
 green at its centre. It has hung as a crown of late 
 dower over the head of my Beatrice Cenci for two 
 months, and not a leaf has fallen. It will hang there 
 unchanged until June, if I choose. This virtue is 
 partly its own, partly the spell of the wonderful dryness 
 of our Colorado air, in which all things do as Mrs. 
 Stowe says New Englanders do when they are old, — 
 "dry up a little and then last." 
 
 Still running westward along the north side of the 
 mountain, the road follows the ridge Hues of the huge, 
 furrow-like canyons which cleave the mountain from "its 
 base to its summit. These make a series of triangles 
 piercing the solid mass ; and we zigzag up one side, 
 round the sharp inner corner, and down the other side, 
 then round the outer point, and then up and down just 
 such another triangle, — and so on, for miles. The 
 sight of these great gorges is grand : a thousand feet 
 down to their bottom on the one hand, and a thousand 
 feet up to their top on the other. Looking forward or 
 back across them, we see the line of our road like a 
 narrow ledge on the precipice ; a carriage on it looks as 
 22
 
 338 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 if it had been let down by ropes from the top. Soon we 
 come to great tracts of pines and firs, growing scantily 
 at incredible angles on these steep slopes ; many trees 
 have been cut, and are lying about on the ground, as if 
 giants had been playing jackstraws, and had gone away 
 leaving their game unfinished. They call these trees 
 "timber;" that is "corpse" for a tree. A reverent 
 sadness always steals on my thoughts when I see a 
 dead tree lying where the axe slew it. The road winds 
 farther and farther into a labyrinth of mountain fast- 
 nesses ; gradually these become clear to the eye, a cer- 
 tain order and system in their succession. The great 
 Cheyenne Canyon stretches like a partially hewn path- 
 way between the mountain we are on and the rest of 
 the range lying to north of it. This northward wall is 
 rocky, seamed, and furrowed ; bare, water-worn cliffs, 
 hundreds of feet high, alternate with intervals of pine 
 forest, which look black and solid in the shade, but in 
 full sunlight are seen to be sparse, so that even from 
 the other side of the canyon you may watch every 
 tree's double of black shadow thrown on the ground 
 below, making a great rafter-work floor, as it were, from 
 which the trees seem to rise like columns. Above this 
 stretch away endless tiers of peaks and round hills, 
 more than one can count, because at each step some of 
 them sink out of sight and new ones crop up. Some 
 are snow-topped ; some have a dark, serrated line of 
 firs over their summits ; some look like mere masses of 
 bowlders and crags, their upper lines standing clear out 
 against the sky, like the jagged top of a ruined wall. 
 On all the slopes leading down into the canyons are 
 rows of pines, like besiegers climbing up ; and on most 
 of the upper connecting ridges hes a fine white line of 
 snow, like a silver thread knitting peak to peak. From 
 all the outer points of these gorges, as we look back to 
 the east, we have exquisite glimpses of the plains, 
 framed always in a triangle made by sloping canyon 
 walls. I doubt if it would be possible to render one of 
 these triangle pictures as we get them from between
 
 OUR NEW ROAD. 339 
 
 these intersecting and overlapping walls. A yucca 
 plant, ten inches high, may happen to come into the 
 near foreground, so "that it helps to frame them ; and 
 yet their upper horizon hne is miles and miles away. I 
 have never seen so marvellous a blending of the far and 
 the near as they give. 
 
 Still the road winds and winds, and the sense of 
 remoteness grows stronger and stronger. The silence 
 of the wilderness, what is there like it ? The silence 
 of the lonehest ruin is silence only because time has 
 hushed the sounds with which the ruin was once alive. 
 This is silence like that in which the world lay pregnant 
 before time began. 
 
 Just as this grand, significant silence was beginning 
 to make us silent, too, we came suddenly upon a little 
 open where the wilderness was wilderness no longer. 
 One man had tamed it. On our right hand stood his 
 forge, on our left his house. Both forge and house 
 were of a novel sort ; nowhere but in the heart of the 
 Rocky Mountains would they have been called by such 
 names. The forge consisted of a small pine-tree, a 
 slender post some four feet distant from it, a pile of 
 stones and gravel, a log, and a pair of bellows. The 
 house was perhaps eight feet high ; the walls reached 
 up one third that height : first, three logs, then, two 
 planks ; there the wall ended. One front post was a 
 pine-tree, the other a rough cedar stump ; from the 
 ridgepole hung a sail-cloth roof which did not meet the 
 walls ; very airy must be the blacksmith's house on a 
 cold night, in spite of the southeast winds being kept 
 otf by a huge bowlder twenty feet high. On one side 
 stood an old dead cedar-tree with crooked arms, like 
 some marine monster ; one of the arms was the black- 
 smith's pantry, and there hung his dinners for a week 
 or more, a big haunch of venison. A tomtit, not much 
 larger than a humming-bird, was feasting on it by 
 snatches. The tiny creature flew from the topmost 
 branch of the tree down to the venison, took a bite, and 
 was back again safe on the upper bough in far less time
 
 340 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 than I take to write his name ; less than a second a trip 
 he took, I think ; never once did he pause for a seo md 
 bite, never once rest on a lower branch : he fairly 
 seemed to buzz in the air, so fast he flew up and down. 
 
 " So you board the tomtit, do you ? " we said to the 
 blacksmith, who stood near by, piling boughs on a big 
 fire. 
 
 " Yes ; he's so litde I can afford to keep him," le- 
 plied the blacksmith, with a quiet twinkle in his eye 
 and the cheery tone of a good heart in his voice : " he 
 jest about lives in that tree, an' there's generally suthin' 
 there for him." 
 
 It was a spot to win a man's love, the spot the black- 
 smith had chosen for his temporary home, the little 
 open had so sheltered and sheltering a look : to the 
 south, east, north, mountain walls ; to the west a vista, 
 a suggestion of outlet, and a great friendliness of pine- 
 trees. Two small brooks ran across the clearing. A 
 thick line of bare, gray cotton-woods marked them now ; 
 in the summer they would be bowers of green, and the 
 little bridges across them would be hid in thickets of 
 fohage. The upper hne of the southern mountain wall 
 stood out against the sky in bold and fantastic shapes, 
 endlessly suggestive. That rocks not hewn by men's 
 hands should have such similitudes is marvellous. I 
 have seen photographs of ruins in Edom and Palmyra 
 which seem to be almost reproductions of these rocky 
 summit outlines of some of our Colorado peaks. 
 
 A half-mile farther on we came upon the camp of the 
 men who were building the road. " Camp " is an elas- 
 tic word. In this case, it meant merely a small pine 
 grove, two big fires, and some piles of blankets. Here 
 the road ceased. As we halted, three dogs came 
 bounding towards us, barking most furiously. One of 
 them stopped suddenly, gave one searching look at me, 
 put her tail between her legs, and with a pitiful yelp of 
 terror turned and fled. I walked slowly after her; she 
 would look back over her shoulder, turn, make one or 
 two lunges at me, barking shrilly, then with the same
 
 OUR NEW ROAD. 341 
 
 yelp of terror run swiftly away ; at last she grew brave 
 enough to keep her face toward me, but continually 
 backed away, alternating her bark of defiance with her 
 yelp of terror in a way which was irresistibly ludicrous. 
 We were utterly perplexed by her behavior until her 
 master, as soon as he could speak for laughing, ex- 
 plained it. 
 
 " Yer see, that 'ere dog's never seen a woman afore. 
 She was reared in the woods, an' I hain't never took 
 her nowheres, an' thet's jest the fact on't ; she dunno 
 what to make of a woman." 
 
 It grew droller and droller. The other dogs were 
 our good friends at once, leaped about us, snuffed us, 
 and licked our hands as we spoke to them. Poor 
 Bowser hung back and barked furiously with warning 
 and menace whenever I patted one of the other dogs, 
 but if I took a step nearer her she howled and fled in 
 the most abject way. 
 
 Two men were baking bread, and there seemed a 
 good-natured rivalry between them. 
 
 " I've got a leetle too much soda in it," said one, as I 
 peered curiously into his big bake-kettle, lifting the 
 cover, "but his'n's all burnt on the top," with a con- 
 temptuous cock of his eye towards his fellow-baker. 
 It is said to be very good, this impromptu bread, baked 
 in a shapeless lump in an iron kettle, with coals under- 
 neath and coals on the lid above. It did not look so, 
 however. I think I should choose the ovens of civili- 
 zation. 
 
 The owner of my canine foe was a man some fifty-five 
 or sixty years old. He had a striking face, a clear, 
 blue-gray eye, with a rare mixture of decision and sen- 
 timent in it, a patriarchal gray beard, and a sensitive 
 mouth. He wore a gray hat, broader-brimmed even 
 than a Quaker's, and it added both picturesqueness and 
 dignity to his appearance. His voice was so low, his 
 intonation so good, that the uncultured speech seemed 
 strangely out of place on his lips. He had lived in the 
 woods "nigh eight year," sometimes in one part of the
 
 342 BITS OF TRAILL AT HOME. 
 
 Territory, sometimes in another. He had been mmer, 
 hunter, farmer, and now road-builder. A very little 
 talk with men of this sort usually draws from them 
 some unexpected revelations of the motives or the inci- 
 dents of their career. A long lonely life produces in 
 the average mind a strange mixture of the taciturn and 
 the confidential. The man of the wilderness will jour- 
 ney by your side whole days in silence ; then, of a 
 sudden, he will speak to you of matters of the most 
 secret and personal nature, matters which it would be, 
 for you, utterly impossible to mention to a stranger. 
 We soon learned the secret of this man's life in the 
 woods. Nine years ago his wife had died. That broke 
 up his farm home, and after that " all places seemed jest 
 alike " to him, and " somehow " he "kinder took to the 
 woods." What an unconscious tribute there is in that 
 phrase to nature's power as a beneficent healer. 
 
 " There was another reason, too," he added. " My 
 wife, she died o' consumption, hereditary, an' them two 
 boys'd ha' gone the same way ef I hadn't kep' 'em out- 
 o'-doors," pointing to two stalwart young men perhaps 
 eighteen and twenty. " They hain't slep' under a roof 
 for eight year, an' now they're as strong an' hearty as 
 you'd wish to see." They were, indeed, and they may 
 thank their father's wisdom for it. 
 
 Just beyond this camp was a cabin of fir boughs. 
 Who that has not seen can conceive of the fragrant 
 loveliness of a small house built entirely of fir boughs ? 
 It adds to the spice and the green and the airy lightness 
 and the shelter of the pine-tree a something of the com- 
 pactness and deftness and woven beauty of a bird's 
 nest. I never weary of looking at it, outside and in : 
 outside, each half-confined twig lifdng its cross of soft, 
 plumy ends and stirring a little in the wind, as it used 
 to do when it grew on the tree ; inside, the countless 
 glints of blue sky showing through the boughs, as when 
 one Hes on his back under a low pine-tree and looks up. 
 This cabin has only three sides built of boughs. The 
 fourth is a high bowlder, which slants away at just the
 
 OUK NEW ROAD. 343 
 
 right angle to make a fire-place. The stone is of a soft, 
 friable kind, and the fire has slowly eaten its way in, 
 now and then cracking off a huge slice, until there is 
 quite a fine "open Franklin" for the cabin. It draws 
 well when the wind is in the right direction, as I can 
 testify, for I have made fires in it. If the wind is from 
 the east, it smokes, but I never heard of an open 
 Franklin that did not. 
 
 The coming down over our new road is so unlike the 
 going up that the very road seems changed. The beau- 
 tiful triangular pictures of the distant plains are con- 
 stantly before our eyes, widening at each turn, and 
 growing more and more distinct at each lower level we 
 reach. The blue Hne of the divide in the northern hori- 
 zon looks always hke a solid hne of blue. By what 
 process a stretch of green timber land turns into a wall 
 of lapis lazuli, does the science of optics teach } 
 
 It is nearly sunset as we descend. The plains look 
 boundless. Their color is a soft minghng of p'-nk and 
 yellow and gray ; each smallest hollow and h U has a 
 tint of its own, and hills and hollows alike seem G'mples 
 on the smooth expanse. Here and there patches of 
 ploughed land add their clear browns with a fine effect 
 of dark mosaics on the light surface. 
 
 As we pass the bare slopes where the kinnikinnick is 
 richest and greenest, we load our carriage with its love- 
 ly, shining mats. Below, on the soft pink plains, is a 
 grave we love. It lies in the shade of great pines, on a 
 low hill to the west of the town. Surely, never did a 
 little colony find ready to its hand a lovelier burial-place 
 than this. 
 
 Long ago there must have been watercourses among 
 these low hills, else these pines could never have grown 
 so high and strong. The watercourses are dried now, 
 and only barren sands he around the roots of the great 
 trees, but still they live and flourish, as green in Decem- 
 ber as in June, and the wind in their branches chants 
 endless chants above the graves. 
 
 This grave that we love lies, with four pines guarding
 
 344 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 it closely, on a westward slope which holds the very 
 last rays of the setting sun. We look up from it to the 
 glorious, snow-topped peaks which pierce the sky, and 
 the way seems very short over which our friend has 
 gone. The little mound is kept green with the faithful 
 kinnikinnick vines, and we bring them, now, from the 
 highest slopes which our new road reaches, on the 
 mountain our friend so loved.
 
 NORTH CHEYENNE CANYON. 345 
 
 NORTH CHEYENNE CANYON. 
 
 THREE miles south of Colorado Springs, on the 
 main road to Pueblo, there is a road leading to 
 the right. If you are looking for it, you will see it ; 
 otherwise you may easily pass by without observing it. 
 This is the road which leads to the ranches on the foot- 
 hills of Cheyenne Mountain. It is travelled by only two 
 classes of people, — the hard-working farmers, who live 
 on these ranches and come to town to sell butter, 
 poultry, eggs, and wood ; and pleasure-seekers, who go 
 from town, past these ranches, up into the grand re- 
 cesses of the mountain. For a mile or more the road 
 is a lane between fenced fields. In June the fields are 
 bright with red-and-white vetches, and purple lupines 
 and white daisies grow on the edges of the lane. It 
 follows closely along the bank of Cheyenne Creek, a 
 stream which is a foaming torrent in spring and only a 
 ittle thread of a brook in mid-summer. Its banks are 
 thick-grown with the willow cotton-wood and with the 
 white plum. When the plum is in flower, it makes the 
 air so spicy sweet it draws all the bees and humming in- 
 sects in the region, and makes you think you must be 
 in Araby, as you drive by. Soon the lane plunges into 
 great thickets of bushes, — low white oak, willow, plum, 
 clethra, and, above all, the wild rose. You wind and 
 wind in this tangle of green and blossom, looking out 
 and up, past the waving tops of the bushes, at the red 
 and black rocks of the precipitous mountain. The con- 
 trast is so vivid as to be bewildering and lends a pecu- 
 liar enchantment to the approach to the canyon. You 
 cross and recross the creek, — sometimes by a ford.
 
 346 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME 
 
 sometimes by a log bridge, which rolls and rattles 
 under the horse's feet ; the bushes become trees and 
 meet over your head ; great bowlders and fir-trees 
 crowd on the road, which suddenly ends in a small 
 clearing that is Hke a green, swarded well, with high 
 sides of rock. You are in the canyon. The brook, 
 still hid in its procession of leafy standard-bearers, 
 comes leaping into this open with a loud music of 
 sound. For a little space further is a footpath you may 
 follow. Then the footpath also comes to end, crowded 
 out by bowlders, by sand-slopes, by big firs, by drift- 
 wood from many a spring freshet, and by the rushing 
 brook to-day. On stones along the edge of the water 
 or in it, on mossy logs and ledges, on crumbling sand- 
 rims, you may keep on in the brook's road, if you can. 
 It is a scramble ; but it is a delight. 
 
 The walls of the canyon are black, gray, or red 
 granitic rock, with here and there sandstone. Tall 
 pines and firs grow in clumps at their base, or in slant- 
 ing rows, hke slow-climbing besiegers on their sides. 
 Now the canyon widens, and there are grassy banks to 
 the brook, even a Httle bit of sandy beach now and then, 
 and the water is amber-colored and still. Then the 
 canyon narrows, the brook foams white over huge 
 bowlders, and runs thin and shining, like shifting 
 glass surfaces over great tables and slabs of dark 
 stone. The walls on either hand are cloven in places, 
 and stand out in turrets and towers fifty, a hundred, two 
 hundred feet high. You cross the brook on logs, — logs 
 three abreast, but no one firm. A huge bowlder in the 
 middle of the stream divides it, turns it to the right and 
 to the left, and tosses each current in fantastic jets and 
 falls. Now the chasm bends to the south. Soft, green, 
 and wooded hills come in sight, tokens of the tertile 
 parks beyond. On the left hand is a level space, al- 
 most like a river interval, so thick grown with pines and 
 firs that underneath their wide-spreading branches are 
 great glooms of shade which no sun can reach. The 
 ground is strewn thick with the fir-cones and pine- needles
 
 NORTH CHEYENNE CANYON. 347 
 
 On the ritrht hand are perpendicular walls of rock, two 
 hundred feet high, on which the sky seems to rest. 
 These walls are in tiers, which lap and overlap. Tufts 
 of green growths — bushes, grasses — wave on them, 
 even to the topmost rock. At their bases are piles of 
 driftwood; its shining surfaces glisten like gray satin in 
 the sun. Whole trees, with their gnarled roots in the 
 air, have whirled down and lodged here. To look down 
 from the top to the bottom of this canyon, in a spring 
 freshet, when the brook is amusing itself with this sort o\ 
 play would be a spectacle worth seeing. One of these 
 huge dead trees a woodbine has chosen for its trellis. 
 In and out, in and out, wreathing every bough and branch, 
 it has gone faithfully from root to topmost twig, and on 
 no live tree could it possibly be so beautiful. Here is 
 the kinnikinnick, our one undying vine, with its glossy 
 green lengths looking almost like running hieroglyphs 
 on the yellow sand ; and the purple clematis, too, which 
 winds its rings and coils so tight around twigs and 
 stems that it cannot be parted from them, even if you 
 wish. But you do not wish, for the clematis alone 
 would not be half so fair as it is when it flings out it.s 
 purple bells as streamers from an oak bough or a stem 
 of spiraea. Through the fir-glooms on the left, gleam 
 red towers, which stand behind them. Far up on the 
 south slopes of the canyon are more isolated red rocks, 
 — pillars, altars, pyramids. No rounded or smoothed 
 shapes ; all abrupt, sharp-edged, jagged. Now comes 
 a still wider open, with amphitheatre-Hke walls circling 
 it ; spaces of green grass and low bushes on either side 
 the stream. A few steps, and we leave this behind, and 
 are again in a close, cleft way, whose locky sides aire 
 so near together that, as you look back, they seem 'o 
 shut behind you. The left-hand wall is a sheer pre<ji- 
 pice. In strange contrast to its massive dark stone 
 are the tufts of flowers growing out of its crevices to 
 the very top, — white spiraeas, white columbines, aud, 
 daintiest of all, the pink "shooting star." This »- a 
 flower that must belong to the same family as the t.y la-
 
 348 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME, 
 
 men, which all dwellers in Albano know so well in its 
 shady haunts under the old ilex-trees. Mad violet the 
 Italians call it, and certainly there is something mis- 
 chievous in the way it turns its petals back, as a restive 
 horse turns his ears. Colorado's "shooting star" is of 
 a delicate pink, with exquisite dark brown and bright 
 yellow markings in the centre, at the base of the pistil, 
 and its rosy petals all bent back as determinedly as 
 those of the cyclamen. Hanging and waving on a 
 mossy rock, scores of feet above one's head, it is one 
 of the most bewitching flowers in all the marvellous flora 
 of Colorado. 
 
 On the top of this flowery precipice stands one tree, 
 alone, dead, its skeleton arms stretched motionless 
 against the sky. It could not have seemed so lonely, 
 so hopelessly dead anywhere else. The very blue 
 sky itself seems to mock its desolation, to resist its 
 appeal. 
 
 The next change is an abrupt one. The sharp, pre- 
 cipitous wall ends suddenly, or, rather, trends back- 
 ward in jagged slopes to the south, and is succeeded 
 by a beautiful grassy hill, making the left wall of the 
 canyon. On its top are huge bowlders and serrated 
 rocks in confusion, looking as if a high wind might 
 topple them down. The brook buries itself in a thicket 
 of willows ; under the willows is an army of bulrushes, 
 with their bristling spear-points. Pushing through 
 these, you are in one moment up again on a bare grave 
 hillside, so steep there is no trace of a path. It is oi 
 disintegrated rock, rather than of gravel, and at every 
 step you sink ankle-deep in the sharp fragments. You 
 clutch at tiny, frail bushes above, and you brace yourself 
 against tiny, frail bushes below ; but the bushes have 
 not much firmer foot-hold than you have yourself, and 
 there seems little to hinder you from slipping to the very 
 bottom of the canyon. Wedged in the crevices of the 
 rocks here are the mats of a variety of the prickly-pear 
 cactus, now in blossom. The flower seems as strangely 
 out of place as would a queen's robe on a rough-shod
 
 NORTH CHhYENNE CANYON. 349 
 
 beggar. Its yellow petals glisten like satin, and are al- 
 most transparent, so delicate is their texture. They 
 are thick set in the shape of a cup, and in the centre is 
 a sheaf of filaments as fine as spun silk. How was it 
 l>orn of this shapeless, clumsy, pulpy, dull-tinted leaf, 
 bristling all over with fierce and cruel thorns } Well 
 does the coarse creature guard its dainty gold cups. 
 however. You will rue it, if you try to pick one. 
 
 The gravelly hillside does not last long. Well for one's 
 muscle and patience that it does not,"for a rod of it is 
 as tiring as a mile of any other sort of scrambh'ng. In 
 a few moments you reach a spot where the rocks md 
 the bushes and the fir-trees conquer and make a rough 
 terra Jirjna again. The confusion of the rocks in- 
 creases ; they look as if they must all liave been hurled 
 at each other in a fight. Bowlders are piled upon 
 bowlders, and the bed of the stream is a succession of 
 tilted slabs. Suddenly comes the sound of falling 
 water, and you see, just ahead, a beautiful succession 
 of irregular and twisting falls, — slides, rather than falls, 
 one might well call them, — and they have a certain 
 beauty and a variety of coloring which a simple vertical 
 fall must forever lack. Water can do a hundred things 
 more beautiful with itself than leaping off a precipice ; 
 but the world at large does not seem to know it. The 
 noise and spatter and froth are what the world likes 
 best. Here in these water-slides in North Cheyenne 
 canyon you shall see in one small space water moving 
 from side to side in a stately minuet motion over a 
 many-colored surface of rock, more beautiful than a 
 mosaic ; water gliding inexplicably to right or to left ; 
 water leaping suddenly, flinging one jet and then no 
 more ; water turning and d(;ubling on itself and pausing 
 in daik pools. And, for sound, you shall hear in one 
 moment a perfect orchestra of fine notes, of melodies 
 all separate, yet all in unison, any one of which is as 
 much sweeter and more delightsome than the noise of a 
 fall as is the low ripple of mirth, which is but one re- 
 move from the silent smile, pleasanier to hear than the 
 loud roar of open-mouthed laughter.
 
 35 o BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 You will not go any further up the canyon. It widens 
 soon and grows less and less wild, till it opens at last 
 into the fertile Bear Creek Valley. To journey through 
 it is pleasant ; but you will sit all the rest of the day 
 on the mossy ledges by this gliding and melodious 
 water. 
 
 At sunset you will go down. The rocky walls of the 
 canyon will seem to swing and part before you, as you 
 descend, hke gate, portcullis, bridge, opened by friendly 
 retainers, to speed their lord's guest. You will bear in 
 your hands bunches of whatever flowers you love best 
 and choose as you walk. I bore on this June day, 
 whose pictures I have so faintly outlined here, a sheaf 
 of the white columbine, — one single sheaf, one single 
 root ; but it was almost more than I could carry. In 
 the open spaces I carried it on my shoulder; in the 
 thickets I bore it carefully in my arms, like a baby. 
 When at last I had set it triumphantly in a great jar on 
 my south window-sill I counted its blossoms, and there 
 were forty- three.
 
 WA-HA-TOY-A. 351 
 
 WA-HA-TOY-A; OR, BEFORE THE 
 GRADERS. 
 
 LOOKING to the southwest from the high bluffs 
 lying east of the town of Colorado Springs, we 
 see two pale blue pyramids outlined ajjainst the sky. 
 They are so distinct and so sharp-pointed that, if it 
 were Egypt instead of Colorado, one would not doubt 
 their being chiselled pyramids of stone ; and when told 
 that they are mountains more than a hundred miles 
 away, one has a vague sense of disappointment. They 
 look at once more defined and more evanescent than is 
 the wont of mountains ; on a hazy day they are marked 
 only by a slightly deepened color ; a little more haze, 
 and they are gone, melting sometimes out of sight even 
 under your eyes, like a mirage on the horizon. From 
 the delicacy and softness of tint of these peaks, com- 
 bined with their sharp-cut pyramidal outline, they have 
 an inexpressible beauty as seen from the bluffs of 
 which I speak ; they enhance and crown the whole 
 view, so much so that when people come home from 
 the drive on the bluffs, the first question heard is al- 
 ways, "Were the Spanish Peaks in sight?" 
 
 Who called them, or why he called them, the Spanish 
 Peaks, I cannot learn. Perhaps in old Castile there are 
 peaks of the same soft tint and sharp outline ; but the 
 Indians named them better, — Wa-ha-toy-a, which, 
 being turned into English, is the Twin Sisters, or, as 
 some say, the Twin Breasts. 
 
 Gradually, as month after month one gazes on these 
 beautiful far-off peaks, they take deep hold on the 
 imagination. They seem to be the citadel-gates of
 
 352 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 some fairer realm, into which we more and more yearn 
 to look ; and when the day comes on which we set out 
 for the journey to their base, it is as if we were bound 
 for some one of the El Dorados of our youth. 
 
 Starting from Colorado Springs to seek them, one 
 must go by rail forty-five miles southward to Pueblo, 
 and thence fifty miles, still by rail, farther south to 
 Cucharas. It should be on an early June day. Then 
 the mountain-tops will be white with snow, the cotton- 
 woods along the creeks and the young grass on the 
 foot-hills will be of a tender green, the dome of the sky 
 will be vivid blue, and the radiant air will shimmer, spite 
 of its coolness. 
 
 Set down at Cucharas at sunset, one feels tempted to 
 run after the little narrow-gauge train, as it puffs away 
 into the wilderness, and cry, " Hold ! hold ! It was a 
 mistake. I will not remain." The whole town itself 
 seems a mistake, an accident : a handful of log-cabins 
 and wooden shanties m two stragghng lines, as if a 
 caravan of daguerreotype saloons had been forced to 
 halt for a rest ; plains to north, east, south of them, — 
 bare, barren, shelterless plains, with only the cactus 
 and low bunch-grass to show that the sandy soil holds 
 in it an element of life. It must be indeed a resolute 
 soul which could content itself with the outlook at 
 Cucharas. 
 
 It was twilight before we succeeded in finding the 
 springless wagon and the unmated horses which were 
 to take us six miles west to the town of Walsenburg, — 
 six miles nearer to the great Twin Sisters. The plains 
 looked vaster with each deepening shadow ; the grim, 
 gaunt cactus-stalks looked more and more fierce and 
 unfriendly ; of a deep purple, almost black, in the 
 southwest, rose Wa-ha-toy-a, no longer soft of tint and 
 luring, but a dark and frowning barrier. 
 
 " How like old skeletons these cactus plants look ! " 
 I exclaimed. " They are uncanny, with their fleshless 
 legs and arms and elbows." 
 
 " Heard of the Penitentes, I suppose ? " replied our 
 driver, with seeming irrelevance.
 
 WA-HA- TO Y-A . 353 
 
 " No," said we, wonderingly, " What are they ? ' 
 
 "Well, these cactuses are what they whip themselves 
 with. I've seen 'em with the blood streaming down 
 their backs." 
 
 It was a fearful tale to hear in the twilight, as we 
 jolted along over the road, we and our driver apparently 
 the only living creatures in the region. On our left 
 hand ran the little Cucharas creek, a dusky line of trees 
 marking its course ; beyond the creek rose here and 
 there low bluffs and plateaus, with Mexican houses 
 upon them, — houses built of mud, small, square, 
 flat-roofed, not more than six or seven feet high. 
 Surely, the native Mexican must be first cousin to the 
 mud-sparrow ! He has improved on his cousin's style 
 of architecture in only one particular, and to that he 
 has been driven in self-defence. He sometimes joins 
 his houses together in a hollow square, and puts all the 
 windows and doors on the inside. When Indians 
 attack mud-sparrows' nests, I dare say the mud- 
 sparrows will do the same thing, and leave off having 
 front doors. On our left the dusky, winding lines of 
 trees, and the dark, silent hills crowned with the mud 
 plazas ; on our right the great, gray wilderness ; in 
 front the queer, nasal old voice, almost chanting rather 
 than telling the tale of the Penitentes, — what an hour 
 it was ! 
 
 It seems that there still exists among the Roman 
 Catholic Mexicans of Southern Colorado, an order like 
 the old order of the Flagellants. Every spring, in 
 Easter week, several of the young men belonging to 
 this order inflict on themselves dreadful tortures in 
 public. The congregations to which they belong gather 
 about them, follow them from house to house and spot 
 to spot, and kneel down around them, singing and pray- 
 ing and continually exciting tneir frenzy to a higher 
 pitch. Sometimes they have also drums and fifes, 
 adding a melancholy and discordant music to tiie har- 
 rowing spectacle. The priests ostensibly disappi ova of 
 these proceedings, and never appear in public with the 
 23
 
 354 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 Penitentes. But the impression among outsiders is 
 very strong that they do secretly countenance and 
 stimulate them, thinking that the excitement tends to 
 strengthen the hold of the church on the people's 
 minds. It is incredible that such superstitions can 
 still be alive and in force in our country. Some of the 
 tortures these poor creatures undergo are almost too 
 terrible to tell. One of the most common is to make 
 in the small of the back an arrow-shaped incision ; 
 then, fastening into each end of a long scarf the prickly 
 cactus stems, they scourge themselves with them, 
 throwing the scarf ends first over one shoulder, then 
 over the other, each time hitting the bleeding wound. 
 The leaves of the yucca, or "soap-weed," are pounded 
 into a pulp and made into a sort of sponge, acrid and 
 inflaming. A man carries this along in a pail of water, 
 and every now and then wets the wound with it, to 
 increase the pain and the flowing of the blood. Almost 
 naked, lashing themselves in this way, they run wildly 
 over the plains. Their blood drops on the ground at 
 every step. A fanatical ecstasy possesses them ; they 
 seem to feel no fatigue ; for three days and two nights 
 they have been known to keep it up, without rest. 
 
 Others bind the thick lobes of the prickly pear under 
 their arms and on the soles of their feet, and then run 
 for miles, swinging their arms and stamping their feet 
 violently on the ground. To one who knows what suf- 
 fering there is from even one of these tiny httle spines 
 imbedded in the flesh, it seems past behef that a man 
 could voluntarily endure such pain. 
 
 Others He on the thresholds of the churches, and 
 every person who enters the church is asked to step 
 with his full weight on their bodies. 
 
 Others carry about heavy wooden crosses, so heavy 
 that a man can hardly lift them. Some crawl on their 
 hands and knees, dragging the cross. Crowds of 
 woni^n accompany them, singing and shouting. When 
 the penitent throws himself on the ground, they lay the 
 cross on his breast, and fall on their knees around him,
 
 VVA-/IA-TOY-A. 355 
 
 and pray ; then they rise up. place the cross on his 
 back again, and take up the dreadful journey. Now 
 and then the band will enter a house and eat a little 
 food, which in all good Catholic houses is kept ready 
 for them. After a short rest, the leader gives a signal, 
 and they set out again. 
 
 Last spring, in the eighteen hundred and seventy- 
 sixth year of our merciful Lord, four of these youn^ 
 men died from the effects of their tortures. One oi 
 them, after running for three days under the cactus 
 scourge, lay all Easter night naked upon the threshold 
 of a church. Easter morning he was found there dead. 
 What a comfort in the thought that the old prayer can 
 never cease to ascend, " Father, forgive them, for they 
 know not what they do." 
 
 The twilight had deepened into night before the tale 
 drew to a close ; and it was with a sense of grief and 
 horror, almost as if we had been transported to the 
 very hill of Calvary, that we drove into the little Mexi- 
 can town of Walsenburg, which lies in the Cucharas 
 meadows, only a few miles from the base of Wa- 
 ha-toy-a. 
 
 From the tragedy we had been hearing, to the cheer- 
 ful low comedy of Sporleder's Hotel, was a grateful 
 change. A mud-walled, rafter-roofed, rambhng, but 
 very comfortable old place was Sporleder's. From the 
 porch you stepped at once into the " office," and 
 through the office you came and went to your bedroom, 
 and to the dining-room, by a mysterious, dim-lighted 
 passage-way, or through somebody's else still dimmer- 
 lighted and more mysterious bedroom. The office was 
 a bedroom, too ; it held three beds, a wooden settle, — ■ 
 which was no doubt a bed also, though by day it held 
 saddles and hunting-gear of all sorts, — a desk, and a 
 three-cornered fire-place built out, in the picturesque 
 Mexican fashion, chimney and all into the room. They 
 look as if children might have built them for play, these 
 Mexican fire-places, but they draw well, and are won- 
 derfully picturesque. The mud-walled bedroom was
 
 35 6 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 not damp : its one little window looked into a high Jef- 
 ferson currant bush, and a cross-draught was estab- 
 lished by the accident of a tiny opening at the eaves, 
 on the left-hand side of the room, just above the edge 
 of the white-cotton ceiling which was nailed on the 
 rafters. Through this little hole moonlight twinkled all 
 iright, and daylight twinkled in the morning long before 
 the sun had pierced through the Jefferson currant bush. 
 The beds were clean and not very hard. The food was 
 wholesome. One might easily fare worse in many a 
 pretentious house. The landlord looked as if he had 
 belonged to the childhood of Hans Christian Andersen. 
 He was an old German tailor; he wore an ancient blue 
 dress-coat, and a long black-velvet waistcoat, and did 
 the honors of his clean little mud house with an old- 
 fashioned and pathetic courtesy of manner. He had 
 evidently seen much sorrow in the strange vicissitudes 
 of hfe which had brought him to be an inn-keeper in 
 Colorado. 
 
 Walsenburg is an old Mexican town. There are per- 
 haps fifty houses in it, and more than half of these are 
 the true Mexican mud huts, — mud floor, mud wall, mud 
 roof ; if there had been any way of baking mud till you 
 could see through it, they would have had mud windows 
 as well. As there was not, they compromised on win- 
 dows, and have but one to a room, and many rooms 
 without a window at all. These houses are not as un- 
 comfortable as one would suppose, and by no means as 
 ugly. The baked mud is of a good color, and the 
 gaudy Roman Catholic prints and effigies and shrines 
 with which the walls are often adorned stand out well 
 on the rich brown. The mud floors are hard, and for 
 the most part clean and smooth. Gay blankets and 
 shawls are thrown down upon them in the better class 
 or houses; chairs are rare. The houses remind on^ 
 more of bee-hives than of any thing else, they do so 
 swarm at their one small entrance ; women and girls 
 are there by dozens and scores, all wearing bright 
 shawls thrown over their heads in an indescribably
 
 WA-HA- TO Y-A. 357 
 
 graceful way. Even toddlers of six and seven have 
 their brilliant shawls thrown over their heads and trail- 
 ing in the dust behind ; I am not sure that they are not 
 born in them. The little boys are not so much clothed ; 
 in fact, many of them are not clothed at all. The most 
 irresistible one I saw wore a short white shirt reaching 
 perhaps one-third of the way to his knees ; over this, 
 for purposes of decoration, he had put a heavy woollen 
 jacket much too big for him ; thus arrayed he strutted 
 up and down with as pompous an air as if he were a 
 king in state robes; but the jacket was heavy: he 
 could not endure it long ; presently he shook one arm 
 free of its sleeve, then the other, and then in a moment 
 more dropped the garment in a crumpled pile on the 
 ground, and with an exultant fling of his thin brown legs 
 raced away, his shirt blowing back like a scanty wisp 
 tied round his waist. His mother sat on the ground 
 leaning against the wall of her house, nursing her baby 
 and laughing till all her teeth showed like a row of 
 white piano keys on her shining brown skin. I stopped 
 and praised her baby; she spoke no English, but she 
 understood the praise of the baby's eyes. By a gesture 
 she summoned the hero of the shirt, said to him a sin- 
 gle word, and in a second more he had sprung into the 
 house, reappeared with a wooden chair, and placed it 
 for me with a shy grace. Then he darted away side- 
 wise, like a dragon-fly. 
 
 All the women's voices were low and sweet; their 
 eyes were as dark and soft as the eyes of deer, and their 
 unfailing courtesy was touching. An old woman, one 
 of the oldest in the town, took me over her house, from 
 room to room, and stood by with a gratified smile while 
 I looked eagerly at every thing. The landlord's daugh- 
 ter, who had accompanied me, had mentioned to her 
 that I was a stranger and had never before seen a Mexi- 
 can town. When 1 took leave of her I said through my 
 interpreter, '" I am greatly obliged to you for showing 
 me your house." 
 
 With rapid gestures and shrugs of the shoulders she
 
 35^ BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 poured forth sentence after sentence, all the while look- 
 ing into my face with smiles and taking my hand in 
 hers. 
 
 " What does she say ? " I asked. 
 
 " She says," rephed my guide, " that her poor house 
 is not worth looking at, and she is the one who is 
 obhged that so beautiful a lady should enter it," And 
 this was a poverty-stricken old woman in a single gar- 
 ment of tattered calico, living in a mud hut, without a 
 chair or a bed ! 
 
 Early the next morning we set out again to drive still 
 farther west. Our errand was to find the engineer 
 corps who were surveying the route across the moun- 
 tains into the San Juan countr}.. The brave little nar- 
 row-gauge railroad, the Denver and Rio Grande, which 
 is pushing down toward the City of Mexico as fast as it 
 can, is about to reach one hand over into the San Juan 
 silver mines to fill its pockets as it goes along, and the 
 engineers were somewhere in this region ; just where, 
 it was hard to learn, 
 
 " Over by Early's," said one, 
 
 "At the mouth of iMiddle Canyon," said another. 
 Nobody knew positively. 
 
 At any rate there were the mountains ; we could 
 drive towards them on a venture. Wa-ha-toy-a in the 
 south, the Greenhorn and Veta along the west, and 
 beyond, the snowy, glistening tops of the main range ; 
 a grand sweep of mountain wall confronted us as we 
 drove up the Cucharas Valley. The Cucharas bottoms 
 are chiefly taken up in Mexican farms : some small and 
 carelessly tilled ; others large and as well cultivated as 
 the poor Mexican methods admit. The land is rich, 
 and when the railroad opens up a market for its produce, 
 these farms will become very valuable. We passed 
 many Mexicans ploughing in their sleepy, shambling 
 fashion. One good-natured fellow showed us his plough, 
 and only laughed at our raillery about its primitive fash- 
 ion. It looked like the invention of some shipwrecked 
 man, in a forgotten age. It was simply a long pole with
 
 WA-IIA-TOY-A. 359 
 
 a clumsy triangular wooden keel nailed on one end of 
 It ; on this was tied — yes, literally tied — a sort of iron 
 tooth or prong. This scratched the earth lightly, per- 
 haps two or three inches deep, no more. This imbecile 
 instrument was drawn by two oxen, and the man's only 
 way of guiding them was by a rope tied to the near 
 horn of the near ox. 
 
 Our road followed the river line closely. The banks 
 were rich and green ; thickets of cotton-woods and wil- 
 lows were just bursting into leaf; now and then we 
 climbed up the bank and came out on fine plateaus, with 
 broken table-lands, or " mesas," stretching away to the 
 right and covered with pinon-trees. On these were 
 herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, each tended by a 
 Mexican herder. You would take this herder, as he 
 lies on the ground, for a bundle of cast-ofF rags some- 
 body had left behind ; but as you drive past the rags 
 flutter a little, a brown face appears slowly lifted, and a 
 lazy gleam of curiosity shoots out from two shining 
 black eyes. The rags are a man or a boy. 
 
 "Oh, how do they Hve .'* " I exclaimed. "What 
 poverty-stricken creatures ! " 
 
 •' Live ! " replied the driver. " Give a Mexican five 
 cents a day and he'll lie by and do nothing, he'll feel so 
 rich. He'll squat on his heels and chew pitlon nuts 
 from morning till night. Last year they did have a 
 hard time, though; the grasshoppers cleaned them out. 
 They had nothing left to five on but 'chili' [a fiery 
 red pepper]. They had enough of that. Even the 
 grasshoppers won't eat chili." 
 
 About ten miles from Walsenburg we came to a 
 handful of frame houses scattered along the creek and 
 conspicuous among the light-green cotton-wood trees. 
 Close on the bank shone out a new pine " meeting- 
 house." '' And Baptist, at that," said the driver, with 
 a judiciously balanced inflection on the "at that," which 
 might have left us amiable, whatever our predilections 
 as to religions. This was a settlement of Georgians, — 
 "all Baptists," — and at a great sacrifice they had built
 
 360 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 this meeting-house. Just beyond the Baptist meeting- 
 house lies the farm of an old Virginian, a "lan of 
 education and refinement, who, for some inexplicable 
 reason, buried himself in this wilderness twenty-five 
 years ago, when it swarmed with Indians. He so 
 feared that white men and civilization would find him 
 out that, whenever it was necessary for him to go to 
 some trading-post, he went in and out of his hiding- 
 place by different routes, and with his horse's shoes re- 
 versed, that he might not leave a trail which could be 
 followed. There was one interval of eleven years, he 
 told me, in which he did not see the face of a white 
 woman. He still Hves alone ; a Mexican man, with his 
 wife, are his only servants ; but his ranch is a favorite 
 rendezvous for travellers, and in a few weeks the whistle 
 of the steam-engine will resound through his lands. So 
 useless is it for a man to seek, on this continent, to flee 
 civilization. 
 
 It grew no easier to find the whereabouts of the en- 
 gineers. Everybody had seen them ; nobody knew 
 where they were. We were twenty miles from Wal- 
 senburg ; noon was at hand ; our guide had no farther 
 device to suggest ; Early's had been his last hope ; we 
 were at Early's now, and neither in the log-cabin nor in 
 the "store" could any news be had of the engineers. 
 Very reluctantly we were turning to retrace our twenty 
 bootless miles, when with a low chuckle our driver 
 exclaimed, " By jingoes, if that ain't luck ! There they 
 be now ! " 
 
 There they were, to be sure, twelve of them, laugh- 
 ing, shouting, clattering down hill in a gay painted 
 wagon, coming to Early's for their nooning. Keen- 
 eyed, bronze-faced, alert-looking fellows they were ; a 
 painter might have dehghted to paint them, as a few 
 moments later, they had flung themselves on the 
 ground in a picturesque circle. As bronzed, as blis- 
 tered, as hungry, as alert as any of them, was the 
 young Frenchman who three months before had seen 
 nothing in life severer than the Ecole Polytechni ijue, or
 
 ^A-HA-TOY-A. 361 
 
 ess polished than the saloons of Paris and Washington. 
 It is a marvel how such men " take " to wild life in the 
 Rocky Mountains. Perhaps it is only the highly civil- 
 ized who can appreciate the delights of savagery. Cer- 
 tain it is that there are no men in Colorado who so 
 enjoy living in tents or in shanties, doing their own 
 cooking, raising their own potatoes, and hunting theit 
 meat, as do the sons and nephews of dukes and earls. 
 
 Our road back to Walsenburg lay on plateaus which 
 overlooked the river interval up which we had come. The 
 land was less fertile than in the meadows, but the opens 
 were grand and breezy, with exhilarating off-looks to 
 the north and e^ st. We crossed the wagon-road which 
 leads into the San Juan mining district, and saw, creep- 
 ing along in a yellow cloud of dust, one of the caravans 
 bound on the pilgrimage to that shrine of silver, — 
 eleven white-topped wagons, with ten mules to each 
 wagon. The mules walked so slowly that the hne 
 hardly seemed to advance ; its motion looked at a dis- 
 tance like the undulating motion of a huge dark snake 
 with white rings around its body. In a few weeks 
 these white-topped wagons will have disappeared from 
 the landscape, and in their stead will be seen the swift- 
 vanishing smoke of steam-engines, doing in ten hours 
 the work for which the mules took ten days. 
 
 A few miles out of Walsenburg, I saw, on a bare hill 
 to the right of our road, a strange object which looked 
 as if a vessel had been thrown up there ages ago. and 
 had lain bleaching till her timbers had slowly fallen 
 apart. I never saw, cast up on any shore, a ghasther, 
 more weather-beaten wreck than this seemed. I gazed 
 at it with increasing perplexity, which our driver ob- 
 served, and, following the direction of my eyes, ex- 
 claimed, '' Oh, there they are ! Those are the crosses 
 the Penitentes carry at Easter. They keep 'em stacked 
 up here on this hill, and there wouldn't a living creature 
 dare so much as to touch one of them nor go past them 
 without crossing themselves." As we drove nearer, 
 their semblance to a wrecked vessel lessened, but the
 
 362 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 symbolic significance of the likeness deepened. There 
 were eleven of them, some of them nine or ten feet 
 long : nine were lying on the ground, overlapping each 
 other, with their gray bars stretching upward ; the other 
 two were planted firm and erect in the ground. The 
 sight of them gave to the narrative of the Penitentes a 
 reality and an intensity which nothing else could have 
 done. The gaunt and rigid arms seemed lifted in appeal, 
 and their motionless silence seemed as pregnant with 
 woe as a cry. 
 
 The sun was just sinking behind the snowy western 
 peaks when we reached Walsenburg. We had arrived 
 at an important moment in the hist^/y of the little 
 town. The graders had just come ;• the railroad was 
 about to begin. In lazy, sauntering groups, the Mexi- 
 cans were looking on : women with babies in their arms, 
 barelegged, barefooted, their gaudy shawls close draped, 
 — they looked Hke some odd sort of fowls, with bril- 
 liant plumage close-furled ; men leaning in feigned 
 nonchalance against fences here and there ; ragged, 
 half-naked boys and girls darting about from point to 
 point, and peering with intensest curiosity at every 
 thing ; there they all were. I doubt if there were a 
 Mexican left in the town. The meadow was all astir ; 
 wagons, horses, men, stacks of implements, tents, shan- 
 ties going up like magic, — already the place looked 
 like a little city. Just as we drove up, a man advanced 
 from the crowd, dragging a ploughshare. Nobody took 
 any especial note of him. He bent himself sturdily to 
 the handles of the plough, and in a moment more soft 
 ridges of upturned earth, and a line of rich dark brown, 
 marked a narrow furrow. Swiftly he walked westward, 
 the slender, significant dark-brown furrow lengthening 
 rod by rod as he walked. His shadow lengthened 
 until it became a slenderer line than the furrow in the 
 distance, and was lost at last in the great purple shadow 
 of Wa-ha-toy-a. The railroad was begun ; the wilder- 
 ness had surrendered.
 
 THE PROCESSION OF FLOWERS. 363 
 
 THE PROCESSION OF FLOWERS IN 
 COLORADO. 
 
 I SUPPOSE the little black boys Avho hang on lamp- 
 posts along the route of a grand city procession are 
 not the best reporters of the parade. They do not 
 know the names of the officials, and they would be 
 likely to have very vague ideas as to the numbei of 
 minutes it took the procession to pass any given point ; 
 but nobody in all the crowd will have a more vivid im- 
 pression of the trappings of the show, of the colors 
 and the shapes, and of the tunes the bands played. I 
 am fitted for a chronicler of the procession of 
 flowers in Colorado only as little black boys are for 
 chroniclers of Fourth of July processions. Of the 
 names of the dignitaries, and the times at which they 
 reached particular places, I am sadly ignorant ; but 
 there is hardly a color or a shape I do not know by 
 sight and by heart, and as for the music of delight 
 which the bands play, its memory is so vivid with me 
 that I think its rhythm would never cease to cheer me 
 if I were banished for ever to Arctic snows. 
 
 The first Colorado flower I saw was the great blue 
 wind-flower, or anemone. It was brought to me one 
 morning, late in April, when snow was lying on the 
 ground, and our strange spring-winter seemed to be 
 coming on fiercely. The flower was only half open, 
 and only half way out of a gray, furry sheath some two 
 inches long ; it looked like a Maltese kitten's head, 
 with sharp-pointed blue ears, — the daintiest, most 
 wrapped-up little blossom. " A crocus, out in chin- 
 chilla fur ! " I exclaimed.
 
 364 BITS OF TEA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 " Not a crocus at all ; an anemone," said they who 
 knew. 
 
 It is very hard, at first, to believe that these anemones 
 do not belong to the crocus family. They push up 
 through the earth in clusters of conical, gray, hairy 
 buds, and open cautiously, an inch or two from the 
 ground, precisely as the crocuses do ; but, day by day, 
 inches at a time, the stem pushes up, until you suddenly 
 find, some day, in a spot where you left low clumps of 
 what you will persist, for a time, in calling blue cro- 
 cuses, great bunches of waving blue flowers, on slender 
 stems from six to twelve inches high, the blossoms 
 grown larger and opened wider, till they look like small 
 tulip cups, like the Italian anemones. A week or two 
 later you find at the base of these clumps a beautiful 
 fringing mat of leaves, resembling the buttercup leaf, 
 but much more deeply and numerously slashed on the 
 edges. These, too, grow at last, away from the 
 ground and wave in the air ; and, by the time they are 
 well up, many of the flowers have gone to seed, and on 
 the top of each stem flutters a great ball of fine, feathery 
 seed plumes, of a green or claret color, almost as beau- 
 tiful as the blossom itself. These anemones grow in 
 great profusion on the foot-hills of the mountains to the 
 west of Colorado Springs. They grow even along the 
 roadsides, at Manitou. They have, apparently, ca- 
 prices of fondness for certain localities, for you shall 
 find one ridge blue with them, and another, near by, 
 without a single flower. 
 
 About the same time as the anemone, or a little 
 before, comes the low white daisy, harbinger of spring 
 in Colorado, as is the epigaea in New England. This 
 little blossom opens at first, Hke the anemone, close to 
 the ground, and in thick-set mats, the stems so short, 
 you can get the flower only by uprooting the whole mat. 
 It has a central root like a turnip, from which all the 
 mats radiate, sometimes a dozen from one root. Take 
 five or six of these home, and fill a low dish with them, 
 and the little brown blades of leaves will freshen and
 
 THE PROCESSION OF FLOWERS. 365 
 
 grow up like grass, and the daisies will peer up higher 
 and higher, until the dish looks like a bit of a waving 
 field ot daisies. 
 
 Next after these comes the mountain hyacinth, popu- 
 larly so called for no other reason than that its odor is 
 like the odor of the hyacinth. It is in reality a lily. 
 It is the most ethereal and delicate of all our wild 
 flowers, and yet it springs up, like the commonest of 
 weeds, in the commonest of places ; even in the dusty 
 edges of the streets, so close to the ruts that wheels 
 crush it, it lifts its snowy chalice. On neglected opens, 
 in pathways trodden every day, you may see these lilies 
 by dozens, trampled down ; and yet at first sight you 
 would take them for rare and fragile exotics. The 
 blossom is star-shaped, almost precisely like the white 
 jessamine, and of such fine and transparent texture that 
 it is almost impossible to press it ; one, two, sometimes 
 half a dozen flowers, rising only two or three inches 
 high from the centre of a little bunch of slender green 
 leaves, in shape like the blades of the old-fashioned 
 garden-pink, but of a bright green color. It is one of 
 the purest looking blossoms. To see it as we do, 
 growing lavishly in highways, trodden under foot of 
 man and beast, is a perpetual marvel which is never 
 quite free from pain. 
 
 After these three forerunners comes a great outburst 
 of flowering : yellow daisies of several varieties, yellow 
 mustard, a fine feathery, white flower, and vetches of all 
 sizes, shapes, colors, more than you can count. And 
 Here I am not speaking of what happens in nooks and 
 corners of the foot-hills, in fields, or by-ways, or places 
 hard to come at. I am speaking of what happens in 
 the streets of Colorado Springs, along all the edges of 
 the sidewalks, in little spaces left at crossings, in un 
 occupied lots, — in short, everywhere in the town where 
 man and his houses have left room. It is not the usual 
 commonplace of exaggeration ; it is only the simplest 
 and most graphic form of exact statement you can find 
 to say that by the middle of June the ground is a
 
 366 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 mosaic of color. The vetches are bewildering. There 
 are sixteen varieties of vetch which grow in one small 
 piece of table-land between the Colorado Springs Hotel 
 and the railroad station. They are white, with purple 
 markings, all shades of purple, and all shades of red ; 
 some of them grow in spikes, standing erect ; some in 
 scrambling and running vines, with clusters of flowers ; 
 some with single blossoms, like the sweet-pea, and as 
 varied in color. They all lie comparatively low, partly 
 from the want of bushes and shrubs to chmb on, partly 
 because they are too wise to go very far away from their 
 limited water supply in so dry a country ; they must 
 keep close to the ground, or choke. That this is a bit 
 of specific precaution on their part, and not a peculiarity 
 of their varieties, is proved by the fact that all along 
 the creeks, in the cotton-wood and willow copses, v»^e find 
 the same vetches growing up boldly, many feet into the 
 ^ir, just as they do in Italy, leaping from shrub to 
 shrub, and catching hold on any thing which omt.s to 
 hand. 
 
 By the third week in June, we have added tft these 
 brilliant parterres of red, purple, white, and yellow in 
 our streets, the superb spikes of the blue penstemon. 
 This is a flower of which I despair to give any idea to 
 one a stranger to it. The blossoms are shaped like the 
 common foxglove blossom ; they grow on the stems in 
 single, double, or triple rows, as may be. I have seen 
 stems so tight packed with blossoms that they could 
 not stand erect, but bent over, like a bough too heavily 
 loaded with fruit. Before the blue pentstemon opens, 
 it is a delicate pink bud ; when it first opens, it is a 
 clear, bright blue, as blue as the sky ; day by day its 
 tints change, sometimes to a purplish-blue ; sometimes 
 back again towards its childhood's pink, so that out of 
 a hundred spikes of blue penstemon you shall ^ee no 
 two of precisely the same tint ; when they are their 
 deepest, most purple blue, they look like burnished 
 steel ; when they are at their palest pink, they are as 
 delicate as a pink apple-blossom. O New Englanderl
 
 THE PROCESSION OF FLOWERS. 367 
 
 groping reverently among scattered sunny knolls and in 
 moist wood depths for scanty handfuls of pale blossoms, 
 what would you do at such a banquet as this, spread 
 before you whenever you stepped outside your door, ly- 
 ing between you and the post-office every day ? For, 
 let me repeat, these flowers of which I have spoken thus 
 far, are only the flowers which grow wild in our streets, 
 and there are yet many that I have not mentioned : there 
 is the dark blue spider-wort, which is everywhere ; and 
 there are several yellow flowers, and one of pale pink, 
 and several of white, I recollect, whose names I do not 
 know; neither do I know how to describe their shapes. 
 I am as helpless as the little black boy on the Fourth of 
 July, — I can describe only the colors. 
 
 Leaving the streets of the town, and going southwest 
 towards the foot-hills of the Cheyenne Mountain, we 
 come to a new and a daintier show. As soon as we 
 strike the line of the little creek which we must follow 
 up among the hills, we find copses of wild plum and 
 wild roses in full bloom. The wild rose grows here in 
 great thickets, as the black alder grows in New Eng- 
 land swamps. The trees are above your head, and 
 each bough is so full of roses it would seem an im- 
 possibility for it to hold one rose more. We bear wild 
 roses home, by whole trees, and keep them in our 
 rooms in great masses which will well-nigh fill a win- 
 dow. I have more than once tried to count the roses 
 on such a sheaf in my window, and have given it up. 
 
 Along the banks of the brook are white daisies, and 
 pink ; vetches, and lupines, white, yellow, and purple. 
 The yellow ones grow in superb spikes, one or two feet 
 from the ground ; and the white ones in great branching 
 plants, six or seven from a single root. On the first 
 slopes of the foot-hills begins the giha. This is a 
 flower hard to describe. Take a single flowei of a ver- 
 bena cluster; fancy the tubular part an inch or two 
 ]ong, and the flowers set at irregular intervals up and 
 down the length of a slender stem; this is the best my 
 ignorance can do to convey the idea of the shape of the
 
 368 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 gilia. And of the color, all I can say is that the gilia is 
 what the botanists call a sporting flower; and I believe 
 there is no shade of red, from the brightest scarlet up 
 through pale pinks, to white, which you may not see in 
 one half acre where gihas grow. It is a dancing sort 
 of flower, flutters on the stem, and the stem sways in 
 the lightest wind, so that it always seems either coming 
 towards you or running away. 
 
 There is a part of Cheyenne Mountain which I and 
 one other have come to call "our garden." The pos- 
 sessive pronoun has no legal title behind it ; it is an 
 audacious assumption not backed by any squatter sove- 
 reignty, nor even by any contribution towards the culti- 
 vation of the soil ; but ever since we found out the 
 place, it has been mysteriously worked "on shares" 
 for our benefit ; and as long as we live we shall call it 
 our garden. It lies five or six hundred feet above the 
 town, four miles away, and has several plateaus of pine 
 groves from which we look off into eastern distances 
 back of the sunrise ; it holds two or three grand ra- 
 vines, each with a brook at bottom ; it is walled to the 
 west by the jagged and precipitous side of the mountain 
 itself. The best part of our " procession of flowers " is 
 always here. 
 
 Here on the plateaus, under the shade of the pines, 
 are the anemone in stintless numbers, daisies, and kin- 
 nikinnick. In June the kinnikinnick vines are full of 
 little pinkish-white bells, shaped like the wintergreen 
 bell, and as fragrant as the linnaea blossom. Here are 
 three low-growing varieties of the wild rose, none more 
 than two or three inches from the ground : one pure 
 white, one white with irregular red markings, and one 
 deep pink. The petals are about one-third larger than 
 those of the common wild rose. 
 
 Here are blue violets, and in moist spots the white 
 violet with a purple and yellow centre. Here is the 
 common red field lily of New England, looking in- 
 explicably away from home among penstemons and 
 gilias, as a country belle might in court circles. Here
 
 THE PROCESSION OF FLOWERS. 369 
 
 is the purple clematis ; a half-parasitic plant this seems 
 to be, for you find it wound up and up to the very top 
 of an oak or cherry bush, great lengths of its stem 
 looking as dead as old drift-wood, but whorls of lovely 
 fringing green leaves and purple, cup-shaped blossoms 
 bursting out at intervals, sometimes a foot apart. How 
 sap reaches them, through the cracked and split stems, 
 it is hard to see ; but it does, for you can carry one 
 home, trellis and all, set it in water, and the clematis 
 will live as long as the oak bush will. 
 
 Here is the purple penstemon, never but a single 
 row of blossoms on its stem ; and the scarlet pen- 
 stemon, most gorgeous of its family. This, too, has but 
 a single row of flowers on its stem ; they are small, of 
 the brightest scarlet, and the shape is somewhat differ- 
 ent from the other penstemons, — longer, slenderer, 
 and more complicated, they look like fairy gondolas 
 hung by their prows. I have seen the stems as high as 
 my shoulder, and the scarlet gondolas swinging atl the 
 way down to within a foot of the ground. 
 
 Here are great masses of a dehcate flowering shrub, 
 a rubus I think I have heard it called. Its flower is 
 like a tiny single.petalled rose, of a snow-white color. 
 On first looking at the bush, you would think it a wild 
 white rose, till you observed the leaf, which is more hke 
 a currant leaf. Here also are bushes of the Missouri 
 currant, with its golden-yellow blossoms, exhaustless in 
 perfume ; and a low shrub maple, which has a tiny, 
 apple-green flower, set in a scarlet sheath, close at the 
 base of each leaf, so small that half the world never dis- 
 covers that the bush is in flower at all. Here are blue 
 harebells, and Solomon's seal both low and high ; and 
 here is the yellow cinquefoil. In the moist spots, with 
 the white violets, grows the shooting-star, finer and 
 daintier than the Italian cyclamen ; its sharp-pointed 
 petals of bright pink fold back like rosy ears ; in its 
 centre is a dark-brown circle round a sharp needle-point 
 of yellow. There are many more, but of all the rest I 
 will speak only of one, — the great yellow columbine 
 24
 
 37" BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 This grows in the ravines. The flower is like our 
 garden columbine, but larger, and of an exquisite yel- 
 low, sometimes with white in the centre. Tt grows 
 here in such luxuriant tufts and clumps that you will 
 often find thirty and forty flower-stems springing up 
 from one root. Of this plant I recollect the botanical 
 name, which was told me only once, but I could no 
 more forget it than, if I had once sat familiarly by a 
 queen in her palace, I could forget the name of her 
 kingdom. It is the golden columbine of New Mexico, 
 the aquilegia chrysantha. 
 
 When we drive down from " our garden " there is 
 seldom room for another flower in our carriage. The 
 top thrown back is filled, the space in front of the driver 
 is filled, and our laps and baskets are filled with the 
 more delicate blossoms. We look as if we were on our 
 way to the ceremonies of Decoration Day, So we are. 
 All June days are decoration days in Colorado Springs, 
 but it is the sacred joy of life that we decorate, — not 
 the sacred sadness of death. Going northwest from the 
 town towards the viesa or table-land which lies in that 
 direction between us and the foot-hills, we find still 
 other blossoms, no less beautiful than those of wh?ch I 
 have spoken : the wild morning-glory wreathes the wil- 
 low bushes along the Fountain Creek which we must 
 cross, and in the sandy spots between the bushes grow 
 the wild heliotrope in masses, and the wild onion, whose 
 delicate clustered umbels save for their odor would be 
 priceless in bouquets. Yellow lupine, red gilias, wild 
 roses, and white spiraeas are here also ; and waving by 
 the roadsides, careless and common as burdocks in New 
 England, grows the superb mentzelia. This is a regal 
 plant ; the leaves are of a bluish-green, long, jagged, 
 shining, like the leaves of the great thistles which so 
 adorn the Roman Campagna ; the plant grows some 
 two feet or two and a half feet high, and branches 
 freely ; each branch bears one or more blossoms ; a 
 white, many-pointed starry disk, in its centre a wide 
 Jailing tuft of fine silky stamens. Here also we find a 
 large white poppy whose leaves much resemble the
 
 THE PROCESSION OF FLOWERS. 37^ 
 
 leaves of the meRtzelia ; and in the open stretches 
 beyond the creek, the ground is white and pink every 
 att'ernoon with the blossoms of four-o'clocks. There 
 must be several varieties of these, for some are large 
 and some are small, and they have a wide range of color, 
 white, pinkish-white, and clear pink. Higher up, on 
 the top of the mesa, we come to great levels which are 
 dotted with brilliant points of fiery scarlet everywhere ; 
 the first time one sees a scarlet " painter's brush " 
 (castilleia) a few rods ahead of him in the grass is a 
 moment he never forgets ; it looks hke a huge dropped 
 jewel or a feather fallen from the plumage of some gor- 
 geous bird. There are two colors of the castilleia here ; 
 one, of an orange shade of scarlet; and the other of the 
 brightest cherry red. But, beautiful as is the castilleia, 
 H is not the mesons crowning glory : vivid as is its color, 
 the pale creamy tints of the yucca blossoms ecHpse it 
 in splendor. This also is a thing a lover of flowers will 
 never forget, — the first time he saw yuccas by the 
 hundred in full flower out-of-doors. It grows in such 
 abundance on this mesa that in winter the solid green 
 of its leaves gives a tone of color to whole acres. 
 Spanish bayonet is its common name here, and not an 
 inappropriate one, for the long, blade-Hke leaves are 
 stiff and pointed as rapiers. They grow in bristHng 
 bunches directly from the root ; the outer ones spread 
 wide, and sometimes lie on the ground ; from the centre 
 of this " chevaux de frise " rise the flower-spikes, usu- 
 ally only one, sometimes two or three, from one to two 
 and a half feet high, set thick with creamy white cups 
 which look more like a magnolia flower than like any 
 thing else. I counted once seventy-two on a spike 
 about two feet long. Profusely as the yucca grows on 
 I his mesa, we do not get so many of them as we would 
 like, for the cows are fond of them and eat the blossoms 
 as fast as they come out. What a picture it is, to be 
 sure, — a vagrant cow rambling along mile after mile, 
 munching the tops of spikes of yucca blossoms. There 
 ought to be something transcendent in the quality of 
 her milk after such a day as that.
 
 372 BITS OF TEA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 Beside the castilleia and the yucca, there grow on 
 this mesa many of the vetches, especially a large white 
 variety, which I have a misgiving that I ought to call 
 astragalus, and not vetch. 
 
 The fnesa slopes away to the east and to the west ; \\ 
 is really a sort of causeway or flattened ridge ; on its 
 sides are innumerable small nooks and hollows which, 
 catching and holding a Httle more moisture than the 
 surface above, are full of oak-bushes, little green oases 
 on the bare slopes ; in these grow several flowering 
 shrubs, spiraeas, and others whose names I know not. 
 
 Crossing the mesa and entering the foot-hills again, 
 we come to little brook-fed glens and parks where grow 
 all the flowers I have mentioned ; yes, and more, for, I 
 bethink me, I have not yet spoken of the white clematis, 
 — virgin's bower, as it is called in New England. This 
 runs riot along every brook-course in the region, — 
 this and the wild hop, the white feathery clusters of the 
 one and the swinging green tassels of the other twisting 
 and intertwisting, and knitting every thing into a tan- 
 gle ; and the blue iris, also, in great spaces in moist 
 meadows, and the dainty nodding bells of the wild flax 
 a little farther up on the hills, and the yellow lady's- 
 slipper, and the coreopsis, and the mertensia, which has 
 drooping spikes of small blue-bells that are pink on the 
 outside when they are folded up. And I believe that 
 there are yet others which I do not recollect, besides 
 some which I remember too vaguely to describe, having 
 seen them perhaps only once from a car window, as I 
 saw a gorgeous plant on the Arkansas meadows, one 
 day. It was a great sheaf of waving feathery spikes of 
 yellow. It is true that a railroad train waited for me 
 while I had this plant taken up and brought on board ; 
 I nursed it carefully with water and shade all the way 
 from Pueblo to Colorado Springs, but it was dead when 
 I reached home, and nobody could tell me its name. 
 Afterwards a botanist told me that it must have been 
 stanleya pinnatifida. but I liked my name for it better, — 
 golden prince's feather.
 
 THE PROCESSION OF FLOWERS. 373 
 
 If it were possible ever to weary of the flora in the 
 vicinity of Colorado Springs, and to long for some new 
 flowers, one need but go a few hours farther south to 
 Canyon City, and he will strike an almost tropical flora. 
 Here grow twelve different varieties of cactus either in 
 the town itself or on the slopes of the hills around it ; 
 some of these varieties are very rare ; all bear brilliant 
 blossoms, yellow, scarlet, and bright purple. Here 
 grow all the flowers which we have at Colorado Springs, 
 with many others added. A short extract from a paper 
 written by an enthusiastic Canyon City botanist will 
 give to botanists a better idea of the flora of Colorado 
 than they could get from volumes of my rambling 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 " There is no pleasanter botanical trip in the vicinity 
 of Canyon City than a walk beyond the bath-rooms of 
 the hot springs to the gate of the mountains, up the 
 canyon of the Arkansas, and to the top of the Grand 
 Canyon, a distance of about four miles. The grandeur 
 of the far mountain summits covered with eternal snow, 
 the perpendicular cHfls over one thousand feet high, the 
 great river boiling and dashing along its rocky chan- 
 nel, are sources of excitement nowhere else combined ; 
 but to any one interested in flowers, their beauty, their 
 abundance, and the rare species that meet you at every 
 step make the trip wonderfully interesting. Here among 
 the rocks are the most northern known stations of the 
 ferns pellaea wrightiana and cheilanthes eatoni, and on 
 the walls of the Grand Canyon, more than a thousand 
 feet above the river, grows the very rare asplenium 
 septentrionale, which the wild big-horn or mountain 
 sheep seem to appreciate so much that it is difficult to 
 find a specimen not bitten by them. The syringa (phil- 
 adelphus microphyllus) is growing wherever it can find 
 a foot-hold, and here and there is a bunch of the rare 
 western Emory's oak, that, like several other plants, 
 seems to have wandered in from the half-explored 
 region of the great Colorado River of Arizona. The 
 lateral canyons are full of fallugia paradoxa, with its
 
 374 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 white flowers and plumed fruit, and where little streams 
 of water come dashing over the rocks and losing them- 
 selves in mist, the golden columbine of New Mexico, 
 aquilegia chrysantha, grows to perfection. The scarlet 
 penstemon, blue penstemon, the brilliant giha aggre- 
 gata, spiraeas, castilleias, and hosts of less showy but 
 equally interesting plants occupy every available piece 
 ot soil. The beauty of the flora is as indescribable as 
 the grandeur of the scenery. 
 
 " The abundance of the four-o'clock family is notice- 
 able. All of the nyctaginaceae of Colorado are found 
 about Canyon City, and some of them as yet only in 
 this part of the territory. Most of them are very inter- 
 esting, and their beauty forms a very prominent feature 
 of our flora in June and July. Abronia fragrans whitens 
 whole acres of land, and the large, conspicuous flowers 
 of mirabiHs multiflora are seen all over the town ; open- 
 ing their flowers late in the afternoon in company with 
 the vespertine mentzelias, they are fresh aud bright 
 during the most pleasant part of the summer day. The 
 Soda Spring Ledge, from which boils the cold mineral 
 water, is a locality rich in rare plants. Here grow 
 thamnosma texana, abutilon parvulum, allionia incar- 
 nata, tricuspis acuminata, mirabilis oxybaphoides, &c. 
 
 " The common flowers of Colorado are very abundant 
 around Canyon City and in its vicinity. The monarda 
 grows upon the mesas; exquisite penstemons adorn 
 the brooks ; rosa blanda and the more beautiful rosa 
 arkansana are found on the banks of the Arkansas ; 
 eriogonum and astragalus are numerous in species and 
 numberless in specimens ; the grass fields of Wet 
 Mountain Valley are full of clovers and cypripedium, 
 iris and lihes ; the botanist wandering through the can- 
 yons of the Sangre di Cristo range tramples down whole 
 fields of white and blue larkspur and delicate mertensia. 
 The summits are covered with woolly-headed thistles, 
 phlox, senecios, forget-me-nots, saxifraga, and the num- 
 berless beauties of the Alpine flora. And besides all 
 this, perhaps no locality in the world affords better op- 
 portunities to the collector to fill his herbarium with
 
 THE PROCESSION OF FLOWERS. 375 
 
 beautiful and rare specimens easily and rapidly. The 
 wealth of foliage found in moister climates does not 
 obstruct the view and hide the more modest flowers, 
 while the perpendicular range of nearly two thousand 
 feet through which he may pass on his botanical ram- 
 bles carries him from a climate as genia as that of 
 Charleston to one as thoroughly boreal as that of the 
 glaciers of Greenland." 
 
 Not the least of the delights of living in such a flower 
 garden as Colorado in June and July is the dehght of 
 seeing the delight which little children take in the 
 flowers. Whenever in winter I try to recall the face of 
 our June, I think I recall the blossoms oftenest as they 
 look in the hands of the school children. Morning, 
 noon, and evening you see troops of children going to 
 and fro, all carrying flowers ; the babies on doorsteps 
 are playing with them ; and late in the afternoon, as 
 you drive through the streets, you see many a Httle 
 sandheap in which are stuck wilted bunches of flowers, 
 that have meant a play-garden all day long to some 
 baby who has gone to sleep now, only to wake up the 
 next morning and pick more flowers to make another 
 garden. And among all the sweet sayings which I have 
 heard from the mouths of children, one of the very 
 sweetest was that of a little girl not six years old, who 
 has never known any summer less lavish than Colo- 
 rado's. As soon as the flowers come she is impatient 
 of every hour she is obliged to spend in-doors. At 
 earliest dawn she clamors to be taken up and dressed, 
 exclaiming, " I must get up early, there is so much to 
 do to-day ; there are so many flowers to be picked." 
 Coming in one day with her hands full of flowers which 
 had grown near the house, she gave them one by one to 
 her mother, gravely calling them by their names as she 
 laid them in her mother's hand. Of the last one, a tiny 
 blue flower, she did not know the name. Looking at it 
 earnestly for a moment or two, she said hesitatingly, as 
 she placed it with the rest, "And this one — this — is a 
 kiss from the good God. He sends them so."
 
 376 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 LITTLE ROSE AND THE HOUSE OF THE 
 SNOWY RANGE. 
 
 R OS IT A, which being turned from Spanish into 
 English means Little Rose, is a mining camp in 
 the silver region of the Sierra Mojada, in southern Col- 
 orado. A legend runs that there was once anothei 
 "Little Rose," a beautiful woman of Mexico, who had 
 a Frenchman for a lover. When she died, her lover 
 lost his wits and journeyed aimlessly away to the north ; 
 he rambled on and on until he came to this beautiful 
 little nook, nestled among mountains, and overlooking a 
 great green valley a thousand feet below it. Here he 
 exclaimed, " Beautiful as Rosita ! " and settled himself 
 to live and die on the spot. 
 
 A simpler and better authenticated explanation of the 
 name is, that when the miners first came, six years ago, 
 into the gulches where the town of Rosita now lies, they 
 found several fine springs of water, each spring in a 
 thicket of wild roses. As they went to and fro, from 
 their huts to the springs, they found in the dainty blos- 
 soms a certain air of greeting, as of old inhabitants 
 welcoming new-comers. It seemed no more than cour- 
 teous that the town should be called after the name of 
 the oldest and most aristocratic settler, — a kind of 
 recognition which does not always result in so pleasing 
 a name as Rosita (Tompkinsville, for instance, or Jenk- 
 ins's Gulch). Little Rose, then, it became, and Little 
 Rose it will remain. Not even a millionaire of mines 
 will ever dare to dispute this vested title of the modest 
 little flower. Each spring would brand him as a 
 usurper, for the wild rose still queens it in the Sierra 
 Mojada.
 
 LITTLE ROSE, ETC. 377 
 
 I suppose there may be many ways of approaching 
 Rosita. I know only the one by which we went last 
 June ; goin,^ from Colorado Springs, first to Canyon 
 City, by rail. 
 
 Canyon City lies at the mouth of the Grand Canyon by 
 which the Arkansas River forces its way through \\\t 
 Wet Mountain range. It is a small town, which has 
 always been hoping to be a large one. Since the 
 Arkansas comes down this way from the great South 
 Park, men thought they could carry and fetch goods on 
 the same road ; but the granite barrier is too much for 
 them. Bold and rich must the railroad company be that 
 will lay a track through this canyon. Canyon City has 
 also many hot springs, highly medicinal ; and it has hoped 
 that the world would come to them to be cured of dis- 
 eases. It has coal, too, in great quantity, and of good 
 quality ; and this seemed a certain element of pros- 
 perity. But, spite of all. Canyon City neither grows 
 nor thrives, and wears always a certain indefinable look 
 of depression and bad luck about it, just as men do 
 when things go wrong with them year after year. It is 
 surrounded on two sides by low foot-hills, which present 
 bare fronts of the gloomiest shade of drab ever seen. 
 One does not stop to ask if it be clay, sand, or rock, so 
 overpowering is one's sense of the color. It would not 
 seem that so neutral a tint could make a glare ; but not 
 even on the surfaces of white houses can the sun make 
 so blinding and intolerable a glare as it does on the 
 drab plains and drab foot-hills of Canyon City. One 
 escapes from it with a sense of relief which seems at 
 first disproportionate, — a quick exhilaration, such as is 
 producea by passing suddenly from the society of a 
 stupid person into that of a brilliant and witty one. 
 You see at once how frightfully you were being bored. 
 You had not realized it before. Through six miles of 
 this drab glare we drove, in a south-westerly direction, 
 when we set out for Rosita. On the outskirts of the 
 town we passed the penitentiary, — also of a drab color, 
 — a fine stone building. To liven things a little, the
 
 378 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 authorities have put the convicts into striped tights, 
 black and white. The poor fellows were hewing, ham- 
 mering, and wheeling drab stone, as we drove past. 
 They looked droll enough, — like two-legged zebras 
 prancing about. 
 
 The six miles of drab plain were relieved only by the 
 cactus blossoms. These were abundant and beautiful, 
 chiefly of t':ie prickly pear variety, great mats of un- 
 couth, bristling leaves, looking like oblong, green 
 griddle-cakes, made thick and stuck full of pins, points 
 out, — as repellant a plant as is to be found anywhere 
 on the face of the earth ; but lo ! out of the edge of this 
 thick and unseemly lobe springs a many-leaved chalice 
 of satin sheen, graceful, nay, regal in its poise, in its 
 quiet. No breeze stirs it ; no sun wilts it ; no other 
 blossom rivals the lustrous transparency of its petals. 
 Of all shades of yellow, from the palest cream-color up 
 to the deepest tint of virgin gold ; of all shades of pink, 
 from a faint, hardly perceptible flush, up to a rose as 
 clear and bright as that in the palm of a baby's hand. 
 Myriads of these, full-blown, half-blown, and in bud, 
 we saw on every rod of the six miles of desolate drab 
 plains which we crossed below Canyon City. As soon 
 as the road turned to the west and entered the foot-hills 
 we began to climb ; almost immediately we found our- 
 selves on grand ledges. On these we wound and rose, and 
 wound and rose, tier above tier, tier above tier, as one 
 winds and climbs the tiers of the Coliseum in Rome ; 
 from each new ledge a grander off-look to the south and 
 east ; the whole wide plain wooded in spaces, with 
 alternating intervals of smooth green fields ; Pike's 
 Peak and its range, majestic and snowy, in the north- 
 eastern horizon ; countless peaks in the north ; and, in 
 the near foreground. Canyon City, redeemed from all 
 its ugliness and bareness, nestled among its cotton-wood 
 trees as a New England village nestles among its elms. 
 It fills consciousness with delight almost too full, to 
 look ofi" at one minute upon grand mountain summits, 
 and into distances so infinite one cannot even con-
 
 LITTLE ROSE, ETC. 379 
 
 Jecture their limits, — see the peaks lost in clouds, and 
 the plains melting into skies ; and the next minute to look 
 down on one's pathway and be dazzled by a succession 
 of flowers almost as bewildering as the peaks and the 
 plains. Here, on these rocky ledges, still grow the 
 gold and pink cactus cups ; and beside these, scarlet 
 gihas, blue penstemons, white daisies and yellow spi- 
 raea, blue harebells and blue larkspur. This blue lark- 
 spur is the same which we see in old-fashioned gardens 
 in New England. In Colorado it grows wild, side by 
 side with the blue harebell, and behaves Hke it, — roots 
 itself in crevices, and sways and waves in every wind. 
 
 The crowning beauty of the flower-show on these 
 rocky ledges was a cactus, whose name I do not know. 
 It is shaped and moulded hke the sea-urchin, and grows 
 sometimes as large as the wheel of a baby-carriage. 
 Its lobes or sections are of clear apple-green, and thick 
 set with long spines of a glistening white. Tne flower 
 is a many-leaved, tubular cup, of a deep, rich crimson 
 color. They are thrown out at hap-hazard, apparently, 
 anywhere on the lobes. You will often see ten, twelve, 
 or even twenty of these blossoms on a single plant of 
 only medium size, say, eight or ten inches in diameter. 
 When we first saw one of these great, crimson-flowered 
 cacti, wedged in like a cushion or flattened ball in the 
 gnarled roots of an old cedar-bush, on the side of this 
 rocky road, we halted in silent wonder, and looked first 
 at it and then at each other. Afterward we grew 
 wonted to their beauty ; we even pulled several of them 
 up bodily, and carried them home in a box ; but this 
 familiarity bred no contempt, — it only added to our ad- 
 miration a tenor which was uncomfortable. A live 
 creature which could bite would be no harder to handle 
 and carry. It has one single root growing out at its 
 centre, Hke the root of a turnip ; this root is long and 
 slender; it must wriggle its way down among the rocks 
 like a snake. By this root you can carry the cactus, 
 and by this alone. Woe betide you if you so much as 
 attempt to tug, or lift, or carry it by its sides. You
 
 380 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 must pry it up with a stick or trowel till you can reach 
 the root, grasp it by that handle, and carry it bottom 
 side up, held off at a judicious distance from your legs. 
 
 At last we had chmbed up to the last ledge, rounded 
 the last point. Suddenly we saw before us, many hun- 
 dred feet below us, a green well, into the mouth of 
 which we looked down. There is nothing but a well to 
 which I can compare the first view from these heights 
 of the opening of Oak Creek Canyon. The sides of 
 the well slant outward. Perhaps it is more like a huge 
 funnel, little end down. The sun poured into these 
 green depths, so full and warm that each needle on the 
 fir-trees glittered, and a fine aromatic scent arose, as if 
 spices were being brewed there. One small house 
 stood in the clearing. It was only a rough-built thing, 
 of unpainted pine ; but Colorado pine is as yellow as 
 gold, and if you do not know that it is pine, you might 
 take it, at a little distance, for some rare and gleaming 
 material which nobody but kings could afford to make 
 houses of. 
 
 Down into this green well we dashed, on precipitous 
 ledges as steep as that we had climbed. Once down at 
 the bottom of the well, we stopped to look up and back. 
 It seemed a marvel that there should be a way in or 
 out. There are but two : the way we had come, scaling 
 the ledges ; and the way we were to go, keeping close 
 to Oak Creek. Close indeed ! The road clings to the 
 creek as one blind might cHng to a rope ; for miles and 
 miles they go hand in hand, cross and recross and 
 change places, hke partners in a dance, only to come 
 again side by side. It would take botany and geology, 
 and painting as well, to tell the truth of this exquisite 
 Oak Creek Canyon. Its sides were a tangle of oak, 
 beeches, willows, clematis, green-brier, and wild rose ; 
 underneath these, carpets of white violets and blue, yel- 
 low daisies and white, and great spaces of an orange- 
 colored flower I never saw before, which looked like a 
 lantana; a rich purple blossom also, for which I have 
 neither name nor similitude. Above these banks and
 
 LITTLE ROSE, ETC. 3^1 
 
 waving walls of flowers, were the immovable walls of 
 rock, now in precipices, now in piles of bowlders, now 
 in mountain-like masses. Often the canyon widens, 
 and encloses, now a few acres of rich meadow-land, 
 where a ranchman has built himself a little house, and 
 begun a farm ; now a desolate and arid tract, on which 
 no human being will ever live. At all these openings 
 there are glimpses of snowy peaks to the right and \o 
 the left. The road is literally in the mountains. At 
 last, — and at last means nearly at sunset, — we reached 
 the end of the canyon. It had widened and widened 
 until, imperceptibly, it had ceased, and we were out in a 
 vast open, with limitless distances stretching away in 
 all directions. We were on a great plateau ; we had 
 climbed around, through, and come out on top of, the 
 Sierra Mojada. We were on a plateau, yet the plateau 
 was broken and uneven, heaved up into vast, billowy 
 ovals and circles, which sometimes sharpened into 
 ridges and were separated by ravines. It was a tenant- 
 less, soundless, well-nigh trackless wilderness. Oui 
 road had forsaken the creek, and there was no longer 
 any guide to Rosita. Now and then we came to roads 
 branching to right or left ; no guide-posts told their 
 destination, and in the silence and forsaken emptiness of 
 these great spaces, all roads seemed alike inexplicable. 
 In the west, a long, serrated line of snow-topped summits 
 shone against the red sky. This was the grand Sangre 
 di Cristo range, and by this we might partly know 
 which way lay Rosita. 
 
 By a hesitating instinct, and not in any certainty, 
 we groped along in that labyrinth of billowy hills and 
 ravines, twilight settling fast upon the scene, and the 
 vastness and the loneliness growing vaster and more 
 lonely with each gathering shadow. 
 
 We were an hour loo late. We had lingered too long 
 among the flowers. Had we come out on this plateau 
 in time to see the marshaUing of the sunset, we should 
 have looked down on Rosita all aglow with its reflec- 
 tion, and have seen the great Wet Mountain valley
 
 382 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 below like one long prism of emerald laid at the feet 
 of the mountains which are called by the name of the 
 "Blood of Christ." 
 
 It was dark when we saw the Rosita lights ahead, 
 and there was a tone of unconfessed relief in the voice 
 with which my companion said : 
 
 " Ha ! there is Rosita now ! " 
 
 I think if I had driven down into a deep burrow of 
 glow-worms in Brobdingnag, I should have had about 
 the same sensations I had as we crept down into the 
 black twinkling gulches of Rosita. When I saw them 
 by daylight, I understood how they looked so weird by 
 night, but at my first view of them they seemed uncanny 
 indeed. The shifting forms of the miners seemed un- 
 humanly grotesque, and their voices sounded strange 
 and elfish. 
 
 " The House of the Snowy Range," they all replied, 
 as we asked for the name of the best inn. " That's the 
 one you'd like best. Strangers always go there." 
 
 " The House of the Snowy Range " was simple enough 
 English, I perceived, the next morning, but that night 
 it sounded to me mysterious and half terrifying, as if 
 they had said, " Palace of the Ice King," or, " Home 
 of the Spirits of the Frost. " 
 
 Never was a house better named than the House of 
 the Snowy Range. It is only an unpainted pine house, 
 two stories high, built in the roughest way, and most 
 scantily furnished. Considered only as a house, it is 
 undeniably bare and forlorn; but it is never to be con- 
 sidered only as a house. It is the House of the Snowy 
 Rancje. That means that as you sit on the roofless, 
 unrailed, unplaned board piazza, you see in the west' the 
 great Sangre di Cristo range, — more peaks than you 
 would think of counting, more peaks than you could 
 count if you tried, for they are so dazzling white that 
 they blind the eye which looks too long and too stead- 
 ily at them. These peaks range from ten thousand to 
 fifteen thousand feet in height ; they are all sharp-pointed 
 and sharp-lined to the base : no curves, no confusion of
 
 LITTLE ROSE, ETC. 3^3 
 
 over-lapping outlines. Of all the myriad peaks, lesser 
 and 2:reaten each one is distinct ; the upper line made 
 by the highest summits against the sky is sharply ser- 
 rated, as if it were the teeth of a colossal saw ; the 
 whole front, as shown sloping to the east, is still a sur- 
 face of sharp, distinct, pyramtdal peaks, wedged in with 
 each other in wonderful tiers and groupings. From the 
 piazza .if the House of the Snowy Range to the base ol 
 the nearest of these peaks is only five miles ; but you 
 look over at them through so marvellous a perspective 
 that they seem sometimes nearer, sometimes much far- 
 ther. They lie the other side of the great Wet Moun- 
 tain valley. The House of the Snowy Range is one 
 thousand feet above this valley, and gets its view of it 
 between two near and rounding hills. From the piazza, 
 therefore, you look at the Sangre di Cristo peaks across 
 the mouth, as it were, of a huge, oval, emerald well, one 
 thousand feet deep, yet illuminated with the clearest 
 sunlight. It is an effect which can never be described. 
 I am humihated as I recall it and re-read these last few 
 sentences. I think it would be the despair of the great- 
 est painter that ever lived. What use, then, are words 
 to convey it ? 
 
 The Wet Mountain valley, or park, is thirty miles 
 long and from four to five wide. It is one of the most 
 fertile spots in Colorado. In July the meadow grasses 
 grow higher than a man's knee, and the hill slopes are 
 carpeted with flowers. It is full of little streams and 
 never-failing springs, fed from the snows on the moun- 
 tain wall to the west. Here are large farms, well tilled 
 and fenced in, and with comfortable houses. The creeks 
 are full of trout, and the mountain slopes are full of game. 
 It ought to be a paradise coveted and sought for ; but the 
 sound of the pickaxe from the hills above them reaches 
 the ears of the farmers, and makes them discontented 
 with their slower gains. Man after man they are drawn 
 away by the treacherous lure, and the broad, beautiful 
 valley is still but thinly settled. This is a mistake ; but 
 it is a mistake that is destined to go on repeating itself
 
 384 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 for ever in all mining countries. The contagion of the 
 haste to be rich is as deadly as the contagion of a dis- 
 ease, and it is too impatient to take note of facts that 
 might stay its fever. It is a simple matter of statistics, 
 for instance, that in the regions of Georgetown and 
 Central City the average miner is poor, while the man 
 who sells him potatoes is well off. Yet for one man 
 who will plant potatoes, twenty will go into a mine. 
 
 I am not sure, however, that it is wholly the lure of 
 silver which draws men up from the green farms of Wet 
 Mountain valley to the hills of Rosita. It might well 
 be the spell of the little place itself. Fancy a half dozen 
 high, conical hills, meeting at their bases, but sloping 
 fast and far enough back to let their valleys be sunny 
 and open ; fancy these hills green to the very top, so 
 that cattle go grazing higher and higher, till at the very 
 summit they look no bigger than flies ; fancy these hills 
 shaded here and there with groves of pines and firs, so 
 that one need never walk too far without shade ; fancy 
 between five and six hundred little houses, chiefly of 
 the shining yellow pine, scattered irregularly over these 
 hill-sides ; remember that from the door-ways and win- 
 dows of these houses a man may look oflf on the view 
 I have described, — across a green valley one thousand 
 feet below him, up to a range of snow-topped mountains 
 fifteen thousand feet above him, — and does it not seem 
 natural to love Rosita ? Another most picturesque fig- 
 ure in the landscape is the contrast of color produced 
 by the glittering piles of quartz thrown up at the mouths 
 of the mines. There are over three hundred of these 
 mines ; they are dotted over the hill-sides, and each 
 mine has its great pyramid of loose stone, which shines 
 in the sun and is of a beautiful silvery gray color. The 
 names ofthese mines are well-nigh incredible, and produce 
 most bewildering elTects when one hears them on every 
 hand in familiar conversation. " Leviathan," " Lucille," 
 "Columbus," ''Hebe," " EHzabeth," "Essex,"" Hum- 
 boldt," "Buccaneer," "Montezuma," "Ferdinand," 
 *• Sunset," " Bald Hornet," " Silver Wing," " Evening
 
 LITTLE ROSE, ETC. 3^5 
 
 Star," and " Hell and Six," are a tew of them. Surely 
 they indicate an amount and variety of taste and re- 
 search very remarkable to be found in a small mining 
 community. 
 
 On the morning after our arrival, we drove down into 
 Wet Alountain valley, crossed it, and climbed high up 
 on one of the lower peaks of the Sangre di Cristo range. 
 From this point we looked back on the Sierra Mojada; 
 it was a sea of green mountain-tops, not a bare or rocky 
 summit among them. Rosita was out of sight, and, 
 looking at its close-set hills, one who did not know 
 would have said there was no room for a town there. 
 
 At our feet grew white strawberry-blossoms, the low 
 Solomon's seal, and the dainty wild rose, as lovely, as 
 perfect, and apparently as glad here, ten thousand feet 
 above the sea, as they seem on a spring morning in New 
 England's hills and woods. 
 
 Finding one's native flowers thousands of miles away 
 from home seems to annihilate distance. To be trans- 
 planted seems the most natural thing in the world. 
 Exile is not exile, if it be to a country where the wild 
 rose can grow and a Snowy Range give benedictioB.
 
 386 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 A NEW ANVIL CHORUS. 
 
 EVER since men began to dig for silver and gold in 
 Colorado, one of the many hard things they have had 
 to do, has been the journeying into the rich silver re- 
 gions of the San Juan country. The great Sangre di 
 Cristo range, with its uncounted peaks, all from twelve 
 to fifteen thousand feet high, is a barrier which only 
 seekers after gold or after liberty would have courage 
 to cross. One of the most picturesque sights which 
 the traveller in southern Colorado, during the past two 
 or three years, has seen, has been the groups of white- 
 topped wagons creeping westward toward the passes of 
 this range; sometimes thirty or forty together, each 
 wagon drawn by ten, fifteen, or even twenty mules ; the 
 slow-moving processions look like caravan lines in a 
 desert ; two, three, four weeks on the road, carrying in 
 people by households ; carrying in food, and bringing 
 out silver by the ton ; back and forth, back and forth, 
 patient men and patient beasts have been toiling every 
 summer from June to October. 
 
 This sort of thing does not go on for many years 
 before a railroad comes to the rescue. Engineering 
 triumphs where brute force merely evades ; the steam- 
 engine has stronger lungs than mules or men ; and the 
 journey which was counted by weeks is made in hours. 
 Such a feat as this, the Denver and Rio Grande Rail- 
 road (narrow gauge) is now performing in Colorado 
 A little more than a year ago, I saw the ploughshare cut 
 the first furrow for its track through the Cucharas 
 meadows at foot of the Spanish Peaks. One day last 
 week I looked out from car windows a.> we whTled past
 
 A NEW ANVIL CHORUS. 3^7 
 
 the same spot ; a little town stood where then was wil- 
 derness, and on either side of our road were acres of 
 sunflowers whose brown-centred disks of yellow looked 
 like trembling faces still astonished at the noise. Past 
 the Spanish Peaks ; past the new town of Veta ; into 
 the Veta Pass : up, up, nine thousand feet up, across 
 a neck of the Sangre di Cristo range itself ; down the 
 other side, and out among the foot-hills to the vast San 
 Luis valley, the plucky little railroad has already pushed. 
 It is a notable feat of engineering. As the road winds 
 among the mountains, its curves are so sharp that the 
 inexperienced and timid hold their breath. From one 
 track, running along the edge of a precipice, you look 
 up to another which you are presently to reach ; it lies 
 high on the mountain-side, four hundred feet above your 
 head, yet it looks hardly more than a stone's throw across 
 the ra\dne between. The curve by which you are to 
 climb up this hill is a thirty-degree curve. To the non- 
 professional mind it will perhaps give a clearer idea of 
 the curve to say that it is shaped like a mule-shoe, — 
 a much narrower shoe than a horse-shoe. The famous 
 horse-shoe curve on the Pennsylvania Railroad is broad 
 and easy in comparison with this. There are three of 
 these thirty-degree curves within a short distance of 
 each other ; the road doubles on itself, like the path 
 of a ship tacking in adverse winds. The grade is very 
 steep, — two hundred and eleven feet to the mile ; the 
 engines pant and strain, and the wheels make a strange 
 sound, at once sibilant and ringing on the steel rails. 
 You go but six miles an hour ; it seems like not more 
 than four, the leisurely pace is so unwonted a one for 
 steam engines. With each mile of ascent, the view 
 backward and downward becomes finer: the Spanish 
 Peaks and the plains in the distance, the dark ravines 
 full of pine-trees in the foreground, and Veta Mountain 
 on the left hand. — a giant bulwark furrowed and bare. 
 There are so many seams on the sides of this mountain 
 that they have given rise to its name, Veta, which in the 
 Spanish tongue means "vein."
 
 388 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 From the mouth of the pass to the summit, is, meas- 
 ured by miles, fourteen miles ; measured by hours, 
 three hours ; measured by sensations, the length of a 
 dream, — that means a length with which figures and 
 numbers have nothing in common. One dreams some- 
 times of flying in the air, sometimes of going swiftly 
 down or up endless stairways without resting his feet 
 on the steps ; my recollection of being lifted up and 
 through the Veta Pass, by steam, are Hke the recollec- 
 tions of such dreams. 
 
 The summit is over nine thousand feet above the sea- 
 level, — the highest point reached by a railroad on this 
 continent. Two miles beyond, and a hundred or two 
 feet lower down, is the "■ Summit House," at which we 
 passed the night. It is a little four-roomed house built 
 of mud and set down in a flower-bed of larkspur, hare- 
 bells, penstemons, gilias, white, yellow, and purple asters 
 and wild strawberries ; just above the house a spring of 
 pure water gushes out. The ceaseless running of this 
 water and the wind in the pines are the only sounds 
 which break the solitude of the spot. Once at night 
 and once in the morning, the sudden whistle of the 
 steam-engine and the swift rush of the train going by 
 fall on the silence starthngly, and are gone in a second. 
 The next day we drove eighteen miles westward, follow- 
 ing the line of the railroad down the canyon for six or 
 eight miles, then bearing off to the right and climbing 
 the high hills which make the eastern wall of the San 
 Luis Park. On our right rose the majestic Sierra 
 Blanca, — the highest mountain in Colorado, — bare 
 and colorless in the early morning light ; but trans- 
 formed into beauty later in the day when mists veiled it 
 and threw it, solid gray, against a sunny blue sky, while 
 transparent fringes of rain fell between us and it, mak- 
 ing a shifting kaleidoscope of bits of rainbow here and 
 there. The meadow intervals skirting the San Luis 
 Park at this point are very beautiful : fields high with 
 many-colored grasses and gay with flowers, with lines 
 of cotton-wood trees zigzagging through wherever they
 
 A NEW ANVIL CHORUS. 389 
 
 choose to go, and the three grand peaks of the Sierra 
 Blanca towering above all ; to the west and south a vast 
 outlook, bounded and broken only by mountain-tops so 
 fai away that they are mistily outlined on the horizon. 
 Leaving these meadow intervals, you come out on great 
 opens where nothing but sage-brush grows. 
 
 " Good to make fires of ; makes desperate hot fires," 
 said our driver. 
 
 It looked as if it had been burned at the stake 
 already, every bush of it, and been raised by some mira- 
 cle, with all its stems left still twisted in agony. There 
 cannot be on earth another so sad-visaged a thing as a 
 sage-bush, unless it be the olive-tree, of which it is a 
 miniature reproduction : the same pallid gray tint to its 
 leaf ; the same full and tender curves in its marred out- 
 lines ; the same indescribable contortions and writhings 
 of stem ; those which are short seem to be struck low 
 by pain, to be clasping and clutching at the ground in 
 despair ; those which grow two or three feet high seem 
 to be stretching up deformed and in every direction 
 seeking help. It would be easy to fancy that journey- 
 ing day after day across the sage-brush plains might 
 make a man mad ; that he might come at last to feel 
 himself a part of some frightful metempsychosis, in 
 which centuries of sin were being expiated. 
 
 Surrounded by stretches of this dreary sage-brush 
 stands Fort Garland, looking southward down the val- 
 ley. It is not a fort which could resist a siege, — not 
 even an attack from a few mounted Indians ; it must 
 have been intended simply for barracks ; a few rows of 
 low mud-walled buildings placed in a sort of hollow 
 square with openings on three sides ; a little plat of 
 green grass and a few cotton-wood trees in the centre ; 
 twt brass field-pieces pointing vaguely to the south; a 
 score or so of soldiers' houses outside ; some clothes- 
 lines on which red shirts, and here and there a blue coat, 
 were blowing ; a United States flag fluttering on the 
 flag-staff, one soldier and one sergeant ; that was all we 
 saw in the way of defences of the San Luis Valley
 
 390 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 There are two companies stationed at the post, — one a 
 company of colored cavalry, — but a quieter, more 
 peaceful, less military-looking spot than was Fort Gar- 
 land during the time we spent there it would be hard to 
 find. Over the door-way, in one of the mud-houses, 
 was the sign " Hotel." This hotel consisted appar- 
 ently of three bedrooms and a kitchen. In the 
 left-hand bedroom a travelling dentist was holding 
 professional receptions for the garrison. The shining 
 tools of his trade were spread on the centre-table and 
 on the bed ; in this room we waited while dinner was 
 being served for us in the opposite bedroom. It was 
 an odd thing at a dinner served in a small bedroom, to 
 have a man waiter stand behind your chair, politely and 
 incessantly waving a big feather brush to keep the flies 
 away. 
 
 Garland City, the present terminus of the San Juan 
 branch of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, is six 
 miles from Fort Garland. The road to it from the fort 
 lies for the last three miles on the top of a sage-grown 
 plateau. It is straight as an arrow, looks in the dis- 
 tance like a brown furrow on the pale gray plain, and 
 seems to pierce the mountains beyond. Up to within 
 an eighth of a mile of Garland City, there is no trace of 
 human habitation. Knowing that the city must be 
 near, you look in all directions for a glimpse of it ; the 
 hills ahead of you rise sharply across your way. Where 
 is the city ? At your very feet, but you do not sus- 
 pect it. 
 
 The sunset light was fading when we reached the 
 edge of the ravine in which the city lies. It was like 
 looking unawares over the edge of a precipice ; the 
 gulch opened beneath us as suddenly as if the earth had 
 that moment parted and made it. With brakes set firm, 
 we drove cautiously down the steep road ; the ravine 
 twinkled with lights, and almost seemed to flutter with 
 white tent and wagon-tops. At the farther end it wid- 
 ened, opening out on an inlet of the San Luis Park, and 
 in its centre, near this widening mouth, lay the twelve- 
 days' old city. A strange din arose from it.
 
 A NEW ANVIL CHORUS. 391 
 
 " What is going on ? " we exclaimed. 
 
 " The building of the city," was the reply. " Twelve 
 days ago there was not a house here. To-day there are 
 one hundred and five, and in a week more there will be 
 two hundred ; each man is building his own home, and 
 working night and day to get it done ahead of his neigh- 
 bor. There are four saw-mills going constantly, but 
 they can't turn out lumber half fast enough. Every- 
 body has to be content with a board at a time. If it 
 were not for that, there'd have been twice as many 
 houses done as there are." 
 
 We drove on down the ravine. The hills on either 
 side were sparsely grown with grass, and thinly covered 
 with pinon and cedar trees ; a little creek on our right 
 was half hid in willow thickets. Hundreds of white 
 tents gleamed out among them : tents with poles ; tents 
 made by spreading sail-cloth over the tops of bushes ; 
 round tents ; square tents ; big tents ; httle tents ; and 
 for every tent a camp-fire ; hundreds of white-topped 
 wagons also, at rest for the night, their great poles 
 propped up by sticks, and their mules and drivers lying 
 and standing in picturesque groups around them. It 
 was a scene not to be forgotten. Louder and louder 
 sounded the chorus of the hammers as we drew near 
 the centre of the " city ; " more and more the bustle 
 thickened ; great ox-teams, swaying unwieldily about, 
 drawing logs and planks : backing up steep places ; all 
 sorts of vehicles driving at reckless speed up and down ; 
 men carrying doors ; men walking along inside of win- 
 dow-sashes, — the easiest way to carry them ; men 
 shovelling ; men wheeHng wheelbarrows ; not a man 
 standing still ; not a man with empty hands ; every man 
 picking up something, and running to put it down some- 
 where else, as in a play, and all the while, " clink ! 
 clink ! clink ! " ringing above the other sounds, the 
 strokes of hundreds of hammers, like the anvil chorus. 
 
 " Where is Perry's Hotel ? " we ?,sked. 
 
 One of the least busy of the throng spared time to 
 point to it with his thumb as he passed us. In some
 
 392 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 bewilderment we drew up in front of a. large unfinished 
 house, through the many uncased apertures of which 
 we could see only scaffoldings, rough boards, carpen- 
 ter's benches, and heaps of shavings. Streams of men 
 were passing in and out through these openings, which 
 might be either doors or windows ; no steps led to any 
 of them. 
 
 "- Oh, yes ! Oh, yes ! can accommodate you all ! ' was 
 the landlord's reply to our hesitating inquiries. He 
 stood in the door- way of his dining-room ; the streams 
 of men we had seen going in and out were the fed and 
 the unfed guests of the house. It was supper-time : we 
 also were hungry. We peered into the dining-room : 
 three tables full of men ; a huge pile of beds on the 
 floor, covered with hats and coats ; a singular wall, made 
 entirely of doors propped upright; a triangular space 
 walled off by sail-cloth, — this is what we saw. We 
 stood outside waiting among the scaffolding and 
 benches. A black man was lighting the candles in a 
 candelabra, made of two narrow bars of wood nailed 
 across each other at right angles, and perforated with 
 holes. The candles sputtered, and the hot fat fell on 
 the shavings below. 
 
 " Dangerous way of lighting a room full of shavings," 
 some one said. 
 
 The landlord looked up at the swinging candelabra 
 and laughed. 
 
 " Tried it pretty often," he said. " Never burned a 
 house down yet." 
 
 I observed one peculiarity in the speech at Garland 
 City. Personal pronouns, as a rule, were omitted ; 
 there was no time for a superfluous word. 
 
 " Took down this house at Wagon Creek," he con- 
 tinued, " just one week ago ; took it down one morning 
 while the people were eating breakfast ; took it down 
 over their heads ; putting it up again over their heads 
 now." 
 
 This was literally true. The last part of it we our- 
 selves were seeing while he spoke, and a friend at our 
 elbow had seen the Wagon Creek crisis.
 
 A NEW ANVIL CHORUS. 393 
 
 *"M waiting for that round table for you," said the 
 landlord ; "'11 bring the chairs out here 's fast 's they 
 quit 'em. That's the only way to get the table." 
 
 So, watching his chances, as fast as a seat was va- 
 cated, he sprang into the room, seized the chair and 
 brought it out to us. and we sat there in our " reserved 
 seats " biding the time when there should be room 
 enough vacant at the table for us to take our places. 
 
 What an indescribable scene it was ! The strange- 
 looking wall of propped doors which we had seen was 
 the impromptu wall separating the bedrooms from 
 the dining-room. Bedrooms ? Yes. five of them ; that 
 is, five bedsteads in a row, with just space enough be- 
 tween them to hang up a sheet, and with just room 
 enough between them and the propped doors for a mod- 
 erate-sized person to stand upright if he faced either the 
 doors or the bed. Chairs ? Oh. no ! What do you 
 want of a chair in a bedroom which has a bed in it ? 
 Wash-stands ? One tin basin out in the unfinished 
 room. Towels ? Uncertain. 
 
 The little triangular space walled off by the sail-cloth 
 was a sixth bedroom, quite private and exclusive, and the 
 big pile of beds on the dining-room floor was to be made 
 up into seven bedrooms more between the tables after 
 everybody had finished supper. 
 
 Luckily for us we found a friend here, — a man who 
 has been from the beginning one of Colorado's chief 
 pioneers, and who is never, even in the wildest wilder- 
 ness, without resources of comfort. 
 
 " You can't sleep here," he said. '* I can do better 
 for you than this." 
 
 " Better ! " 
 
 He offered us luxury. How movable a thing is one's 
 standard of comfort ! A two-roomed pine shanty, board 
 walls, board floors, board ceilings, board partitions no*' 
 reaching to the roof, looked to us that night like a palace. 
 To have been entertained at Windsor Castle would not 
 have made us half so grateful. 
 
 It was late before the "city' grew quiet, and long
 
 594 BFTS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 ifter most of the lights were out, and most of the sounds 
 iad ceased, I heard one solitary hammer in the distance, 
 ♦link, clink, clink. I fell asleep listening to it. At day- 
 ight the chorus began again, dinning, deafening on all 
 iides ; the stir, the bustle, every motion of it began just 
 where it had left off at bed-time. I sat on a door-step 
 and watched the street. It was like a scene in an opera. 
 Every man became dramatic from the unconscious ab- 
 sorption in his every action. Even the animals seemed 
 playing parts in a spectacle. There were three old 
 sows out with their broods in search of early breakfast, 
 and they wore an expression of alertness and despatch 
 such as I never before saw in their kind. There were 
 twenty-three in all, of the Httle pigs, and very pretty 
 they were too, — just big enough to run alone, — white, 
 and black, and mottled, no two alike, and all with fine, 
 pink, curly tails. How they fought over orange-peels, 
 and sniffed at cigar-stumps, and every other minute ran 
 squealing from under some hurrying foot ! After a 
 while, two of the mothers disappeared incontinently, 
 leaving their broods behind them. The remaining sow 
 looked after them with as reproachful an expression as 
 a human mother could have worn, thus compelled to 
 an involuntary baby-farming. She proved very faithful 
 to the unwelcome trust, however, and did her best to 
 keep all the twenty-three youngsters out of harm, and 
 the last I saw of her, she. was trying to persuade them 
 all to go to bed in a willow thicket. 
 
 Then came a dash of mules and horses down the 
 street, thirty or forty of them, driven at full gallop, by 
 a man riding a calico horse and flourishing a big braided 
 leather whip with gay tassels on it. They, too, were 
 going out to meals. They were being driven down to a 
 corral to be fed. 
 
 Then came a Mexican wagon, drawn by two gray 
 and white oxen, of almost as fine a tint as the Italian 
 oxen, which are so like in color to a Maltese kitten. 
 They could not, would not hurry, nor, if they could 
 help it, turn to the right or left for anybody. Smiling
 
 A NEW ANVIL CHORUS. 395 
 
 brown faces of Mexican men shone from the front seat, 
 and laughing brown faces of Mexican babies peeped 
 out behind, from under the limp and wrinkled old wagon 
 cover, which looked hke a huge, broken-down sun- 
 bonnet. There are squashes and string-beans and 
 potatoes in the back of the wagon to sell : and, while 
 they were measuring them out, the Mexicans chattered 
 and laughed and showed white teeth, like men of the 
 Campagna. They took me for a householder, as I sat 
 on my door-step, and turned the gray oxen my way, 
 laughing and calling out : — 
 
 " Madame, potatoes, beans, buy ? " And when I 
 shook my head, they still laughed. Everything seemed 
 a joke to them that morning. 
 
 Next came a great water-wagon, with a spigot in its 
 side. Good water is very scarce in Garland City, as it 
 is, alas, in so many places in Colorado ; and an enter- 
 prising Irishman is fast lining his pockets by bringing 
 down water from a spring in the hill, north of the town, 
 and selHng it for twenty-five cents a barrel. After he 
 had filled the barrel which stood by my friend's door, 
 he brought a large lump of ice, washed it, and put it 
 into a tin water-pail of water on the table. 
 
 " Where did that ice come from ? " I exclaimed, won- 
 dering if there were any other place in the world except 
 America, where ice could be delivered to families in a 
 town twelve days old. 
 
 " Oh, just back here from Veta. The people there, 
 they laid in a big stock last winter, and when the town 
 moved on, they hadn't any use for the ice, 'n' so they 
 pack it down here on the cars every day." 
 
 " The town moved on ! What do you mean by that ? " 
 I asked, 
 
 " Why, most all these people that's puttin' up houses 
 here, lived in Veta three months ago. They're jest 
 followin' the railroad." 
 
 " Oh." said I, " I thought most of them had come 
 from Wagon Creek" (the station between Veta and 
 Garland City).
 
 39^ BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 "Well, they did stop at Wagon Creek for a spell; 
 nothin' more than to check up, though ; not enough to 
 count. Some of these houses was set up to Wagon 
 Creek a few days. 
 
 " Where iver did ye git that dog ? " he exclaimed 
 suddenly, catching sight of Douglas, a superb, pure- 
 blooded stag-hound, who had come with us from the 
 Summit House. " Mebbe ye're EngUsh ? " 
 
 " No, we are not. Are you?" 
 
 " No. I'm Irish born ; but I know an ould counthry 
 dog when I see him. Ah, but he's a foine craythur." 
 
 " Do you like this country better than the old coun- 
 try ? " I asked. 
 
 "Yes. I can make more money here; that's the 
 main thing," said the thoroughly naturalized Pat; and 
 he sprang up to the top of his water-cart and drove off, 
 whisthng. 
 
 Next came a big, black, leather-topped wagon, with a 
 black bear chained on a rack behind. The wagon rat- 
 tled along very fast, and the bear raced back and forth 
 on his shelf and shook his chain. Nobody seemed to 
 take any notice of the strange sight ; not a man turned 
 his head. One would not have thought wagons with 
 black bears dancing on platforms behind them could 
 have been common sights, even in Garland City. 
 
 These are only a few of the shifting street-scenes 1 
 watched that morning. After a time I left my door- 
 step and strolled about in the suburbs of this baby 
 "city." The suburbs were, as suburbs always are, 
 more interesting than the thoroughfares; pathetic, too, 
 with their make-shifts of shelter. Here were huts, 
 mere huts, literally made of loose boards thrown to- 
 gether ; women and children looked out from shapeless 
 doorways, and their ragged beds and bedding and 
 clothes were piled in heaps outside, or flung on the 
 bushes. Here were fenced corrals in open spaces 
 among the willows, with ill-spelt signs saying that 
 horses and mules would be fed there cheaply. Here 
 were rows of new Kansas wagons, with green and white
 
 A NEW ANVIL CHORUS. 397 
 
 bodies and scarlet wheels ; here were top-bu<i:gies and 
 carts, and a h'uge black ambulance, bound for Fort Gar- 
 land. Here were stacks of every conceivable mer- 
 chandise, which had been hastily huddled out of the 
 freight cars, and were waiting their turn to be loaded 
 on the San Juan wagons. Here stood the San Juan 
 coach, — the great, swinging, red-bodied, covered coach 
 we know so well in New England. A day and a 
 night and half a day, without stopping, he must ride 
 who will go from Garland City to Lake City in this 
 stage. The next morning I saw it set off at six o'clock. 
 A brisk, black-eyed little Frenchwoman, trig and natty, 
 with her basket on her arm, was settling herself in the 
 back seat. She had lived in Lake City a year, and she 
 liked it better than Denver. 
 
 "Mooch nicer; mooch nicer: so cool as it is in 
 summer ! Nevare hot." 
 
 "But is it not very cold in winter ? " 
 
 A true French shrug of her shoulders was her first 
 reply, followed by, — 
 
 " But no ; with snug house, and big fire, it is nevare 
 cold ; and in winter we have so many of meetings, 
 what you call sosharbles, it is a good time." Then she 
 called out sharply in French, to her husband, who was 
 disposing of their parcels in a way which did not please 
 her ; and then, seeing me wave a good-by to one on 
 top of the coach, she leaned out of the window, and 
 called with the light-hearted laugh of her race : — 
 
 " Ah, then, why does not Madame come too ? My 
 husband is better ; he takes me along." At which the 
 collective stage-coach laughed loud, the driver swung 
 his long whip around the leaders' ears, and the coach 
 plunged off at a rattling pace. 
 
 In the edge of a willow copse, on the northern out- 
 skirts of the city, I found a small shanty, the smallest I 
 had seen. It was so low, one could not enter without 
 stooping, nor stand quite upright inside. The boards 
 of which it was built were full of knot-holes ; those 
 making the roof were laid loosely across the top, aad
 
 39^ BITS OF rRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 could not have been much protection against rain. 
 The boards of a wagon-top were set up close by the 
 doorway, and on these were hanging beds, bedding, and 
 a variety of nondescript garments. A fire was burning 
 on the ground a few steps off ; on this was a big iron 
 kettle full of clothes boiling ; there were two or three 
 old pans and iron utensils standing near the fire ; an 
 old flag-bottomed chair, its wood worn smooth and 
 shining by long use ; and a wooden bench, on which 
 was a wash-tub full of clothes soaking in water. I 
 paused to look at the picture, and a woman, passing, 
 said : — 
 
 "That's Grandma's house." 
 
 '* Your grandmother ? " I said. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " she replied. " She ain't nobody's grand- 
 mother ; but we all call her Grandma. She's here with 
 her son ; he was weakly, and she brought him out 
 here. There ain't many like her. I wonder where she's 
 gone, leavin' her washin' this way." 
 
 Then we fell into talk about the new city, and what 
 the woman's husband was doing, and how hard it was 
 for them to get along ; and presently we heard foot- 
 steps. 
 
 '' Oh, there's Grandma, now," she said. 
 
 I looked up, and saw a tall, thin woman, in a short, 
 scant, calico gown, with an old woollen shawl crossed at 
 her neck, and pinned tight at the belt, after the fashion 
 of the Quaker women. Her sleeves were rolled up 
 above her elbows, and her arms were brown and mus- 
 cular as an Indian's. Her thin gray hair blew about 
 her temples under an old limp brown sun-bonnet, which 
 hid the outline of her face, but did not hide the bright- 
 ness of her keen, light-gray eyes. Her face was actually 
 seamed with wrinkles ; her mouth had fallen in from 
 want of teeth ; and yet she did not look wholly like an 
 old woman. 
 
 " Grandma, this lady's from Colorado Springs," said 
 my companion, by way of introduction. 
 
 Grandma was carrying an armful of cedar-boughs
 
 A NEW ANVIL CHORUS. 399 
 
 She threw them on the orround, and, turnino^ to me, 
 said with a smile which lighted up her whole face : — 
 
 *'How d'ye do, marm ? That's a place I've always 
 wanted to see. I've always thought I should Hke to 
 live to the Springs, ever since I've been in this country." 
 
 "Yes," I said. "It's a pleasant town; but do you 
 not like it here ?" 
 
 She glanced at her shanty and its surroundings, and 
 1 felt guilty at having asked my question ; but she 
 replied : — 
 
 " Oh, yes ! I like it very well here. When we get our 
 house built, well be comfortable. It's only for Tommy 
 I'm here. If it wan't for him I shouldn't stay in 
 this country. He's all I've got. We're all alone here, 
 that is, so far as connections goes ; but we've got 
 plenty o' friends, and God's here just the same's 
 everywhere." 
 
 She spoke this last sentence in as natural and easy a 
 tone as all the rest ; there was no more trace of cant or 
 affectation in her mention of the name of God than in 
 her mention of Tommy's. They seemed equally fa- 
 miliar and equally dear. Then she went to the fire, 
 and turned the clothes over in the water with a long 
 stick, and prepared to resume her work. 
 
 " How long have you been here ? " I asked. 
 
 "Only about a week," she said. "Tommy he's 
 working 's hard 's ever he can, to get me a house built. 
 It worries him to see me living this way ; he's got it 
 three logs high already," proudly pointing to it, only a 
 few rods farther up the hill ; " but Tommy's only a boy 
 yet ; he ain't sixteen ; but he's learning, he's learning 
 to do for hisself ; he's a real good boy, an' he's getting 
 strong every day ; he's getting his health real firm, 'n' 
 that's all I want. 'Tain't any matter what becomes of 
 me, if I can only get Tommy started all right." 
 
 " Was he ill when you brought him here ?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh, dear! yes. He was jest low; he had to he on 
 the bottom of the wagon all the way. I traded off my 
 house for a wa<ron and two horses, ai one on 'em was
 
 400 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME 
 
 a colt, — hadn't been in harness but a few times ; jest 
 that wagon and horses was all we had when I started 
 to bring him to Colorado. I'd heard how the air here 
 'd cure consumption, 'n' I jest took him 'n' started ; 'n' 
 it's saved his life, 'n' that's all I care for. He's all 
 I've got." 
 
 " Where was your home ? " I said. " Was it a long 
 journey ? " 
 
 " Way down in Missouri ; down in Sullivan county," 
 she replied. " That's where I was raised. 'Taint 
 healthy there. There wan't none o' my children healthy. 
 Tommy's all I've got left, — at least I expect so. I 
 oughter have a daughter living ; but the last letter I 
 had from her, she said she didn't suppose she'd hve 
 many weeks ; she's had the consumption too ; she's 
 married. I don't know whether she's 'live or dead now. 
 Tommy's all I've got." 
 
 "Were these two your only children.?" I ventured 
 to say. 
 
 " Oh, no ; I've had six. Two o' my sons was grown 
 men ; they was both killed in the war. Then there was 
 one died when he was nine months old, and another 
 when he was jest growd, — jest fourteen ; and then 
 there's the daughter I told ye on, an' Tommy. He's 
 the youngest. He's all I've got. He's a good boy, 
 Tommy is ; real steady. He's always been raised to 
 go to Sunday school. He's all I've got." 
 
 The abject poverty of this woman's surroundings, 
 the constant refrain of, " he's all I've got," and the 
 calm cheerfulness of her face, began to bring tears into 
 my eyes. 
 
 I " Grandma," said I, " you have had a great deal of 
 [trouble in your life ; yet you look happier than most 
 people do." 
 
 '* Oh, no ! I ain't never suffered," she said. ** I've al' 
 ways had plenty. I've always been took care of 
 God's always taken care of me." 
 
 " That must be a great comfort to you, to think that, 
 I said.
 
 A JVEJV ANVIL CHORUS. 401 
 
 " Think it ! " exclaimed the grand old woman, with 
 fire in her eye. "Think it! I don't think anything 
 about it ; I jest know it. Why, Tommy 'n' me, we was 
 snowed up last April in a canyon here, — us and old 
 man Molan, 'n' Miss Molan, 'n' Miss Smith, 'n' Miss 
 Smith's two children: snowed up in thet canyon two 
 weeks lacking two days ; 'n' I'd like to know ef any 
 thing but God 'd ha' kep' us alive then ! No, I hain't 
 never suffered. I've always had plenty. God's always 
 took care of me." And a serene smile spread over 
 her face. 
 
 "Oh, will you not tell me about that time?" I ex- 
 claimed. " If it will not hinder you too much, I would 
 be very glad to hear all about it." 
 
 " Well, you jest set right down in that chair, she said, 
 pointing to the flag-bottomed chair, " 'n' I'll tell you. 
 'Twas in that very chair Miss Molan she sat all the 
 first night. Them two chairs (pointing to another in 
 the shanty) I brought all the way from Missouri with 
 me. We had them 'n the wagon. Miss Molan she sat 
 in one, 'n' held the baby ; 'n' Miss Smith she sat in the 
 other, 'n' held the little boy ; 'n' Tommy 'n' me we 
 turned over the two water-buckets 'n' sat on them ; 'n' 
 there we sat all night long, jest 's close to each other 's 
 we could get ; 'n' old man Molan he tended the fire ; 'n' 
 it snowed, snowed, all night, 's tight as it could snow ; 
 'n' towards morning the old man says, says he, 'Well, I 
 don't know 's I can hold out till morning, but I'll try ; ' 
 'n' when morning come, there we was with snow-drifts 
 piled up aU round us higher 'n our heads, 'n' them children 
 never so much 's cried. It seems 's if the snow kep' us 
 warm. 'Twan't real winter, ye see ; if it had been, 
 we'd ha' died there, all in a heap, — froze to death, 
 sure. Well, there we had to stay, down in that canyon, 
 two weeks, a lacking two days, before we could get out. 
 It wan't deep with snow all the time, but when the 
 snow went, there was such mud-holes, there couldn't 
 nobody travel ; but the first week it snowed pretty 
 much all the time. The wagons was up on the top o' 
 26
 
 402 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 the canyon, 'n' we kep' a path trod so we could go back 
 an forth to them ; 'n' there was a kind o' shelving placa 
 o' rock in the canyon, 'n' we got the horses down in 
 there and kep' them there, 'n' we had plenty for them 
 to eat. Old man Molan, he had four sacks o' corn, 'n 
 we had three ; 'n' we had tea, 'n' coffee, 'n' flour, 'n 
 sugar, 'n' beans, 'n' dried apples. The dried apples 
 was a heap o' help. We didn't suffer. I hain't never 
 suffered ; I've always had plenty. There was one night, 
 though, we did like to got lost. We got ketched in an 
 awful storm a-goin' up to the wagons ; 'twas jest near 
 night-time ; it hed been real clear, 'n' we all of us went 
 up to the wagons to get things. All but Miss Molan, — 
 she stayed in the canyon, with the children ; 'n' there 
 came up the awfulest snow-squall I ever see. It took 
 your breath out o' your body, 'n' you couldn't see no 
 more 'n you could in the dead o' night. First I got into 
 one wagon, 'n' Tommy with me ; 'n' the rest they came 
 on, 'n' we was all calling out to each other, ' Be you 
 there ? ' 'Be you there ? ' 'N' at last we was all in the 
 wagons, 'n' there we jest sat till morning ; an' if you'll 
 beheve it, along in the night, if we didn't hear Miss 
 Molan a-caUing to us. She'd felt her way out o' thet 
 canyon, a-carrying that baby 'n' dragging the boy after 
 her. She was afraid to stay in the canyon all alone ; 
 but 'twas a meracle her getting to the wagons 's she did. 
 It was dreadful foolish in her, 'n' I told her so. That 
 morning the snow was up to our middles, and we had a 
 time on't getting back into the canyon." 
 
 I wish I could tell the whole of Grandma's story in 
 her own words ; but it would be impossible. My own 
 words will be much less graphic, but they will serve to 
 convey the main features of her narrative. 
 
 Finding me so sympathetic a Hstener, she told me bit 
 by bit the whole history of her emigration from Mis- 
 souri to Colorado. Her husband had been a farmer, 
 and, I inferred, an unsuccessful one, in Missouri, He 
 had died thirteen years ago. Her two eldest sons, 
 grown men, had been in the Confederate army, and 
 were both killed in battle. Shortly after this, the jay-
 
 A A^£PV ANVIL CHORUS. 4^3 
 
 hawkers burnt her house She escaped with only 
 Tommy and his brother, and the clothes they were 
 wearino;. 
 
 " They jest left me my two little children," she said, 
 "and that was all. But it wan't two days before the 
 neighbors they got together 'n' they gave me 's much 's 
 two wagon loads o' things, all I needed to set up aga!n 
 'n' go on. I hain't never suffered ; I've always been 
 took care of, ye see." 
 
 By hook and by crook she managed finally to get an 
 other house, with a little land, where she and Tommy 
 were living alone together, when his health began to 
 fail. He had chills, and then he raised blood ; then 
 she made up her mind, cost what it would, to carry him 
 to Colorado. Her house must have been a small and 
 poor one, because all she got in exchange for it was a 
 little covered wagon and two horses ; one, the colt 
 which had been in harness only a few times, " was," she 
 said, " not much more 'n skin an' bone, but 'twas the 
 best I could do." 
 
 So she packed her household goods and her sick boy 
 into the wagon, and set out to drive to Colorado. When 
 they reached Fort Scott in Kansas, the people at the 
 fort persuaded her to lighten her load by shipping most 
 of her things by rail to Pueblo. 
 
 " I got a big box," she said, "an' I jest put every 
 thing into it, an' a man who was shipping a lot o' things 
 o' his own, said he'd ship mine with his, 'n' I come on 
 with Tommy 'n' left 'em all ; but I kind o' mistrusted I 
 shouldn't ever see 'em again ; but the horses 'd never 
 held out to draw 'em through ; so 'twas best to let 'em 
 go, even if I did lose 'em." 
 
 When they reached Pueblo nothing could be heard of 
 the box ; she made up her mind that it was lost, and 
 pushed on with Tommy to Los Animas, where she went 
 to work in a hotel for twenty dollars a month, and 
 Tommy found a place as sheep-herder for fifteen dollars 
 a month. Putting their wages together they soon got a 
 little money ahead, enough to enable the^i to journey 
 into the San Juan country to Lake City. The highei
 
 404 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 into the mountains they went, the stronger Tommy 
 grew. He would chmb the hills like a goat, and de- 
 lighted in the wild out-door life ; but the altitude at 
 Lake City was too great for Grandma's lungs, and they 
 were obliged to turn back. 
 
 " It seemed as if I jest couldn't git a mite o' breath 
 up there," she said, " 'n' we'd got to be where I could 
 work for Tommy, an' I wan't of any account up there to 
 do any thing," 
 
 While they were hving in Lake City, the lost box was 
 recovered. A lady for whom Grandma had done some 
 work interested herself in the matter sufficiently to 
 speak of it to an express agent, and finding that there 
 seemed still to be some possibility of tracing the box, 
 sent for Grandma to come and tell her own story. " I 
 told her I didn't want to bother no Mr. Jones about it,' 
 said Grandma ; " the box was gone, I knew it was gone, 
 'n' I'd made up my mind to 't. But there wouldn't 
 nothing do, but I must go up to her house an' see this 
 Mr. JonesJ an' tell him all about it, jest who I shipped 
 it with an' all. I had the man's name on a piece o' 
 paper. I always kep' that. Well, Mr. Jones he asked 
 me a heap o' questions, an' wrote it all down in a little 
 book ; and if you'll beheve me, it wan't two weeks 
 before a letter come a-saying that my box was all safe. 
 They had been going to sell it in Pueblo, but that man 
 that shipped it, he wouldn't let 'em. He had it shipped 
 back to him to Kansas City ; he said he thought I'd 
 turn up some day. Ye see when I was in Pueblo look- 
 ing for it, it hadn't got there. There .was nine dollars 
 'n' fifty-five cents to pay on the box before we could get 
 it. Tommy and I together hadn't got so much 's that ; 
 but they took off the fifty-five cents, and some folks 
 helped me to make it up ; and when that box come, 
 there was every thing in it exactly 's I'd put 'em in 
 most a year before, only one o' the flat-irons had slipped 
 on to the looking-glass an' broke it; but the old clock 
 it went right along jest 's good 's ever ; an' all my bed- 
 quilts was dry 's could be. It was a comfort to me, 
 getting that box. It seemed 's if we had something
 
 A ISTEW ANVIL CHORUS. 405 
 
 then. I've sold most o' my bed-quilts now, — I had 
 some real handsome ones ; but they was dreadful heavy 
 to lug round ; and we've wanted money pretty bad 
 sometimes. I've sold some o' my best clothes, .too. I 
 hain't ever suffered ; we've always been took care of." 
 
 From Lake City Grandma and Tommy went back to 
 Los Animas, where they made a comfortable living, — 
 Tommy by " hauling " with his wagon and horses, and 
 Grandma by taking in washing. 
 
 "We was doing first rate," she said with an express 
 sion of something as near regret as her face was capa- 
 ble of, "an' I wish we'd never come away ; but Tommy 
 he got in with old man Molan ; old man Molan's an old 
 miner ; he's a first-rate miner they say, too, ef he wan't 
 so old — he's going on seventy now; he's mined all 
 over California 'n' made a heap of money in his turn 
 but he's always fooled it away. He was full o' coming 
 up into the mines, an' Tommy he got so full on't, too, I 
 didn't try to keep him. He's all I've got ; so we come 
 on. But it seemed like home down in Los Animas, the 
 farmers' wagons coming into town every Saturday with 
 vegetables and all sorts of green stuff; I'd like to go 
 back there, but I hear they're moving away from there 
 terrible." 
 
 " Oh yes, Grandma," I said, " there isn't much of a 
 town left there now. That was one of the towns built 
 up for a few months by the railroad. I dare say there 
 will not be a house to be seen there a year from now." 
 
 She sighed and shook her head, saying, — 
 
 " Well, it does beat all ; I Hked Los Animas. I wish 
 we'd stayed there." 
 
 It was on the journey from Los Animas to Veta that 
 they had had the terrible experience of being snowed up 
 in the canyon. In Veta they had stayed for a month or 
 two ; then they had followed the advancing railroad to 
 Wagon Creek, and now to its present terminus, Garland 
 City. 
 
 " They do say there won't be any town here, for 
 more'n a year or so," she said, looking anxiously at me ; 
 ^^ that they're going on way down to the Rio Grande
 
 4o6 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 River. But some seems to think there'll always be 
 enouo;h to keep a town going here. I suppose we shall 
 go wherever old man Molan goes, though. Tommy's 
 so took up with him ; an' I don't know 's I care ; he's 
 a good old man, if he wan't so crazy about mining ; he's 
 to work building now ; he's a good hand to work, old 's 
 he is. If we only had a church here, I wouldn't mind 
 about any thing ; they say there isn't any Sunday in 
 Colorado, but I tell them God's here the same 's every- 
 where ; and folks that wants to keep Sunday '11 keep 
 Sunday wherever they be ; but churches is a help. 
 Hev ye got good churches to the Springs ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, Grandma," I said, " more than we know 
 what to do with. There are nine different churches 
 there ; each man can go to the kind he likes best." 
 
 A look of yearning came over her face. 
 
 " That's the place I'd like to go to," she said. " I've 
 always thought I'd like to live there. But Tommy he 
 wants to go where old man PvTolan goes ; and I shan't 
 keep him ; he's all I've got, an' he's got his health first 
 rate now ; that's all I care for." 
 
 In the afternoon I carried to Grandma a piece of 
 raspberry short-cake from a workmen's picnic dinner, to 
 which I had the good fortune to be invited. " Oh, that 
 does look good," she said with childhke pleasure. 
 " Thank you for bringing it to me," and as I was slowly 
 walking away, she called after me, — 
 
 " Didn't I tell you I was always took care of ? " 
 
 Late in the day we drove back to the lonely Summit 
 House for the night, and the next morning we went 
 again over the wonderful curving railroad down the 
 pass. Going down seemed even more marvellous than 
 going up, and the views were all finer seen from above, 
 than from below. But far more lasting and vivid than 
 my memory of the beauty and grandeur and triumph of 
 the road through the pass, will be my memory of the 
 beauty and grandeur and triumph which I saw in tSo 
 face, and heard in the words, of " Grandma."
 
 SUNRISE IN COLORADO. 4©? 
 
 A CALENDAR OF SUNRISES IN COLO- 
 RADO. 
 
 IF an emperor were to come to me, saying, " O friend, 
 empire has grown wearisome to me. and of music 
 and dancing and banquets I am tired ; how shall I pro- 
 vide myself with a pleasure ? " I should reply, " Sire, 
 build an eastern wing to thy palace ; let the windows of 
 it be large ; and have thy bed so set that, turning to the 
 left, in the morning, thou shalt open thine eyes on the 
 sunrise. So shall thy days become glad, thine eyes be 
 filled with delight, and thy soul with new life." 
 
 It would be cruel to add, " And, sire, thy palace must 
 be built six thousand feet above the sea, at the foot of 
 the Rocky Mountains of North America ; " but I should 
 desire to add it : and I should pity the emperor who, 
 after he had built the eastern wing to his palace, and 
 set his bed fronting the dawn, had only such sunrise as 
 might be found, say, in Paris, or Moscow, or anywhere 
 else in the world, except at the horizon of a Colorado 
 plain, with Colorado mountains waiting in the west. 
 
 There is an audacity in speaking of sunrises. Hardly 
 is it possible to use such tones as will redeem the words 
 from triviality or irreverence, and disarm the resent- 
 ment of those who find no worship true except it is 
 silent. But I choose the word calendar as a guaranty 
 and an apology : guaranty of concise exactness and 
 simple fasb.ion, and apology for inevitable shortcoming 
 and failure ; for well I know that, after I have borrowed 
 from color all the names which its masters and adorers 
 have given it, and after I have compelled memory to 
 surrender each hidden treasure of the pictures it has
 
 4o8 BITS OF TRA VEL A T HOME. 
 
 stored, I shall still have made but an insignificant and 
 inadequate record of the sunrise pageants which I have 
 watched on these marvellous Colorado plains. 
 
 My bedroom, like the one I should counsel the em- 
 peror to build, looks to the east. I have but to turn on 
 my pillow to be ready for the sun's coming. All my 
 life, hitherto, I have had to rise, and journey a greater 
 or less distance, to meet him ; and of this has been 
 born almost as great an aversion as dear Charles Lamb 
 felt when he was bold enough to say, " That very un- 
 pleasant ceremony called sunrise." How different a 
 thing is sunrise seen from one's pillow, in absolute re- 
 pose, warmth, and that delicious, vague ecstasy of the 
 beginning of the new day which all healthfully organized 
 beings feel. Try it, O emperors ! 
 
 On the morning of February 6, 1876, the dome oC 
 sky above the vast plain in which lies the little town of 
 Colorado Springs was covered with one uniform gray 
 cloud, — not a break, not a hghtened shade anywhere. 
 While it was yet hardly possible to see, this curtain 
 slowly lifted in the eastern and southern horizon, re- 
 vealing a narrow band of clear light. No name of 
 color could be given to this luminous space. It was 
 too radiant to be called white. It was too white to be 
 called yellow. It was pure light. Presently there 
 came upon the curtain faint ripples of rose-color, reach- 
 ing in waving lines high up in the heavens. Rapidly 
 these deepened, until they were glowing red, and the 
 space of pure light at the horizon turned bright blue. 
 Then filmy silver bars formed in the blue ; and sud- 
 denly, almost in the twinkling of an eye, the gray cur- 
 tain, with its rippled red lines, broke up into cumulous 
 masses of rose red, fiery red, dark red clouds, floating 
 and sailing away to south and toward the zenith, and 
 changing shape and tint every second. Gradually these 
 changed to flame-color, and the horizon belt of bright 
 blue became pale green, while the slender silver bars in 
 it changed to gold, and looked like golden rounds of a 
 circling ladder. Next, the flame-colored clouds changed
 
 SUNRISE IN COLORADO. 409 
 
 to gold, — clear gold in the east ; in the south of an 
 amber tint. Then they grevv softer and more misty, 
 and their lower edges took on a silvery brightness. In 
 so far as changes of color can convey the thought of a 
 hush, of expectant silence, it was conveyed by this 
 softening and silvering of every tint. It was the second 
 before sunrise. As the round disc came slowly up, the 
 whole plain and the whole heavens were suffused with 
 an unutterably tender golden haze, and yellow light 
 flooded the mountains in the west. By this time I had 
 found my two eastern windows insufficient, and was 
 leaning far out of a southern window, from which 
 I could see east and south and west. 
 
 The village itself was not yet in full light ; but the 
 tops of the snowy mountains were glowing and shining 
 bars of sunlight were creeping slowly down on the 
 soft brown of the foot-hills. The zenith was pale blue, 
 filled with great masses of -white and golden clouds. 
 Above the snow-topped mountains hung the silver 
 moon, paling second by second in the deepening light ; 
 and, to complete the bewilderingly beautiful picture, a 
 flock of tiny snow-birds came flying up from the south, 
 wheeling and circling in the air. At last they flew over 
 my head, so near that the whirring of their wings 
 sounded like a wind in pine boughs. There were hun- 
 dreds of these birds. As they passed above me, the 
 vivid sunbeams shot through and through each out- 
 stretched wing, turning it for one second into a trans- 
 paremt golden web, and making the little creatures look 
 more like great black-and-gold butterflies than like 
 birds. 
 
 And so that day began. A few days later, the morning 
 opened with a similar gray cloud curtain over the whole 
 sky; but as soon as the curtain lifted at the southern 
 and eastern horizons, it revealed a space of vivid yel- 
 low, with bands of intense salmon pink in it. Soon this 
 space turned to pale, clear green, shading up to blue, 
 and the bands slowly changed from salmon to gold. 
 Above hung the gray curtain, its lower edge of a fiery
 
 41 o BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 flame red, and flecks of the same red thickly scattered 
 upon it. In the south, the clear belt at the horizor 
 was of a pale yellow, and the cloud curtain of a darl 
 opaline purple, shading down to a rose-color where . 
 joined the yellow. 
 
 Slowly, — so slowly that, watching even as closely as 
 1 was watching, I could hardly detect any motion, — 
 the cloud curtain broke up into fine, flaky, feathery 
 fragments, each of which became a pale yellow as i*: 
 floated into the higher and bluer air. There they drew 
 together again, as flocks of birds close in ; and when 
 they had once more become a solid cloud curtain, it was 
 of an indescribable silvery brown tint, as light as the 
 lightest possible gray, but with no shade of gray in it, — 
 only pure yellow-brown, and with a deep golden, almost 
 fringing edge at the bottom. Slowly it sank toward the 
 horizon, and slowly it spread up toward the zenith, still 
 silvery brown, edged above and below with gold. 
 Gradually the golden fringes on the lower edge de- 
 tached themselves and filled the clear horizon belt with 
 misty, silvery brown clouds. Into these came the sun, 
 turning them for one second into molten gold, but in 
 the next second growing pale and disappearing himself 
 in the misty vapor. 
 
 The southern sky turned for a moment to pale green, 
 with bands of pearl gray in it ; but the silvery brown 
 curtain soon conquered all other colors. Every column 
 of smoke which rose between me and the east was 
 golden ; those which were between me and the west 
 were cold and dark blue gray. The plains were flooded 
 with silvery brown mist. It was sunrise ; but the sun 
 had not risen. An hour later he came up over the top 
 of the brown cloud curtain ; again the tops of the 
 mountains were lighted up with a rosy glow, while the 
 foot-hills were in the shadow of the cloud bar ; again 
 the blue upper air was filled with floating clouds of pale 
 yellow and silvery brown. And so, to'that day there 
 were two sunrises. 
 
 The next morning the pageant was a short one. The
 
 SUNRISE IN COLORADO. 4" 
 
 same gray curtain covered the whole sky. A few mo- 
 ments before sunrise there came upon it a pale flush of 
 rose color. This slowly deepened to red; then slowly 
 faded again to pale rose, then disappeared altogether ; 
 and in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, was suc- 
 ceeded by a brilliant golden hue, with flecks of silver ; 
 then, in less time than I take to write my record of the 
 fairy spectacle, the golden gray curtain and its silver 
 flecks broke into amyriad of shining clouds, floated 
 away and dissolved, and the sun came up into a cloud- 
 less heaven of shining blue. 
 
 Another sunrise which I shall never forget was on the 
 morning of March ist. Long before dawn I had begun 
 to watch for it. The sky was dark, but clear as crystal 
 and blazing with stars. The broad moon was setting 
 in the west, and its light cast silver lines along all the 
 roofs of the houses and lit up the eastern horizon. One 
 by one the stars fade, and the sky slowly grew lighter 
 and hghter, until it looked white, — pure, cold, luminous 
 white. Then black clouds began to blow up from all 
 sides. The whole heavens looked strangely angry 
 and threatening, with alternating spaces of sharp 
 black and white. Then the black clouds changed 
 to a pale slate color and the wind whirled them about 
 furiously. Next came a faint rose tinge upon the slate, 
 making it seem almost purple. The same tinge spread 
 over the thick dark cloud belt at the horizon and rippled 
 it with red. Then the slate color changed to pale gray, 
 then to the most delicate lavender, still rippled with red.- 
 Next, with a swift, strange darkening of the atmosphere, 
 the red glow all died away, the curtain belt at the hori- 
 zon lifted, and the whole sky was filled with cumulous 
 masses of gray and white. Then in the clear hght space 
 at the horizon came one slender gold line, like a bird 
 flying with outstretched wings ; then more fine gold lines 
 — Hthe, curving, fluttering, like flying serpents. The 
 upper edge of the gray turned to gold in the east, and in 
 the south to vermiUion and rose ; the white space gradu- 
 ally changed to vivid light green, and the sunlight pour-
 
 412 BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME. 
 
 ing up from below suffused the whole mass of clouds 
 with a pale yellow light, making them soft and misty 
 and flooding the plains with an indescribably tender 
 haze, while the clouds in the west and south were still 
 stormy, — dark gray and cold slate blue. 
 
 Soon the gray conquered. It seemed to filter through 
 the golden haze, absorbing it, mixing with it, until there 
 was left at the horizon a broad belt of silvered and 
 gilded gray, shining and rippling like the phosphores 
 cent wake of a ship under stiong moonhght. 
 
 Spite of all this splendor, it was a sombre morning. 
 The luminous spaces of blue and silvery white seemed 
 icy cold among the whirling gray clouds, and the moun- 
 tains looked as gaunt and black and pitiless as if there 
 was no sun above the horizon. 
 
 But of all the sunrises whose record I have kept the onr 
 I shall longest and most vividly remember is one in which 
 I saw no sun. I opened my eyes upon a snow-storm, 
 as still and pauseless and beaudful as one in New Eng- 
 land. The whole sky was of that exquisite clear gray 
 which we never see except as the background for thick- 
 falling snowflakes. While I lay dreamily watching it, I 
 suddenly thought I detected a faint rosy tint in the at- 
 mosphere. It could not be ! No sunrise tint could 
 pierce through that thick gray! But it was. It did. 
 The color deepened. Rosier and rosier, redder and 
 redder grew the gray wall, until I sprang to the window 
 and with incredulous eyes gazed on a sight so weirdly 
 •beautiful that my memory almost distrusts itself as I 
 recall the moment. The whole eastern and southern 
 sky was deep red, — vivid yet opaque. The air was 
 filled with large snowflakes. As they slowly floated 
 down, each starry crystalline shape stood out with 
 dazzling distinctness on the red background. It was 
 but for a moment. As mysteriously as it had come the 
 ruddy glow disappeared ; the sky and the falling flakes 
 all melted together again into soft white and gray, and 
 not until another day did we see the sun which for that 
 one brief moment had crimsoned our sky.
 
 SUNRISE IN COLORADO. 4^3 
 
 These are but five sunrises from my calendar. O 
 emperor, wilt thou not build an eastern wing to thy 
 Ijalace and set thy bed frontins: the dawn ? 
 
 And by emperor I mean simply any man to whom it 
 is given to make for himself a home ; and by palace I 
 mean any house, however small, in which love dwells 
 and on which the sun can shine. 
 
 University Press: 
 John Wilson & Son, Cambridge,
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers* Publications. 
 
 BITS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 By H. H. 
 Square i8mo. Cloth, red edges. Price $1.25. 
 
 '* Some one has said that, if >.Tie could open the mail-bags, and read the 
 women's letters, they would be more entertaining than any books. This vol- 
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 The faded wonders of Europe turn out to be wholly fresh, when seen through 
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 In several instances, they leave the beaten track of the tourist ; but they 
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 Sold everywhere by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid^ 
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 BITS OF TALK 
 
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 By H. H. 
 
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 that they would read it thoughtfully. The latter suggestion is, however, 
 wholly unnecessary : the book seizes one's thoughts and sympathies, as 
 only startling truths presented with direct earnestness can do. . . . The 
 adoption of her sentiments would w holly change the atmosphere in many 
 a house to what it ought to be, and bring almost constant sunshine and 
 bliss where now too often are storm and misery." — Lawrence {Kansas) 
 yournal. 
 
 " In the little book entitled * Bits of Talk,' by H. H., Messrs. Roberts 
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 dren. Other people have doubtless held as correct views on the subjects 
 treated here, though few have ever advanced them ; and none that we are , 
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 and sparkling style. No one opening the book, even tiiough without rea- 
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 have already assigned to H. H. her high place in our catalogue of authors. She 
 is, without doubt, the most highly intellectual of our female poets. . . . The new 
 poems, while not inferior to the others in point of literary art, have in them more 
 of fervor and of feeling ; more of that lyric sweetness which catches the attention 
 and makes the song sing itself over and over afterwards in the remembering brain. 
 . . . Some of the new poems seem among the noblest H. H. has ever written. 
 They touch the high-water mark of her intellectual power, and are full, besides, ol 
 passionate and tender feeling. Among these is the ' Funeral March.' " — N. Y. 
 Tribune. 
 
 "A delightful book is the elegant little volume of 'Verses,' by H. H.,— 
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 " Since the days of poor ' L. E. L.,' no woman has sailed into fame under a 
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 Unless I am much mistaken, this enlarged volume, double the size of that origi- 
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 living English poetesses, but above all women who have ever written poetry in 
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 the American writer is quite the equal of the English, and in cotnpactness and 
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 IS a wholesome, healthful tone running through the whole of it, from those earli- 
 est lines published in the " Nation," under the title, so full of meaning to her. 
 "Lifted Over," to that last splendid address to death in "Habeas Corpus," 
 written on one of the last days of her conscious life. ... In the verse containe<l 
 in this latest volume there is the same full-pulsed love for all things beautiful . 
 for mountains and clouds, for blue skies and wide seas, for the wild-floweirs 
 hidden among the recesses of the rocks, and for the great stars that, for human 
 eyes at least, mark the boundary lines of the universe. There is no aspect of ih« 
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 away with fear or repulsion. Winter stirs her imagination no less than summer, 
 and in a sonnet on " January " she invokes it in lines that are full of deep per- 
 ception of the beauty that lies hidden in its heart. — Christian Union. 
 
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 NELLY'S Silver Mine. 
 
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