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The
population, once 6,000, is now about 4,000. It is an ill-arranged
set
of frame houses and shanties [7] and rubbish heaps, and offal of
deer
and antelope, produce the foulest smells I have smelt for a long
time.
Some of the houses are painted a blinding white; others are
unpainted;
there is not a bush, or garden, or green thing; it just
straggles
out promiscuously on the boundless brown plains, on the
extreme
verge of which three toothy peaks are seen. It is utterly
slovenly-looking,
and unornamental, abounds in slouching
bar-room-looking
characters, and looks a place of low, mean lives.
Below
the hotel window freight cars are being perpetually shunted, but
beyond
the railroad tracks are nothing but the brown plains, with their
lonely
sights--now a solitary horseman at a traveling amble, then a
party
of Indians in paint and feathers, but civilized up to the point
of
carrying firearms, mounted on sorry ponies, the bundled-up squaws
riding
astride on the baggage ponies; then a drove of ridgy-spined,
long-horned
cattle, which have been several months eating their way
from
Texas, with their escort of four or five much-spurred horsemen,
in
peaked
hats, blue-hooded coats, and high boots, heavily armed with
revolvers
and repeating rifles, and riding small wiry horses. A
solitary
wagon, with a white tilt, drawn by eight oxen, is probably
bearing
an emigrant and his fortunes to Colorado. On one of the dreary
spaces
of the settlement six white-tilted wagons, each with twelve
oxen,
are standing on their way to a distant part. Everything suggests
a
beyond.
[7]
The discovery of gold in the Black Hills has lately given it a
great
impetus, and as it is the chief point of departure for the
diggings
it is increasing in population and importance. (July, 1879)
September
9.
I
have found at the post office here a circular letter of
recommendation
from ex-Governor Hunt, procured by Miss Kingsley's
kindness,
and another equally valuable one of "authentication" and
recommendation
from Mr. Bowles, of the Springfield Republican, whose
name
is a household word in all the West. Armed with these, I shall
plunge
boldly into Colorado. I am suffering from giddiness and nausea
produced
by the bad smells. A "help" here says that there have been
fifty-six
deaths from cholera during the last twenty days. Is common
humanity
lacking, I wonder, in this region of hard greed? Can it not
be
bought by dollars here, like every other commodity, votes
included?
Last
night I made the acquaintance of a shadowy gentleman from
Wisconsin,
far gone in consumption, with a spirited wife and young
baby.
He had been ordered to the Plains as a last resource, but was
much
worse. Early this morning he crawled to my door, scarcely able to
speak
from debility and bleeding from the lungs, begging me to go to
his
wife, who, the doctor said was ill of cholera. The child had been
ill
all night, and not for love or money could he get any one to do
anything
for them, not even to go for the medicine. The lady was blue,
and
in great pain from cramp, and the poor unweaned infant was
roaring
for
the nourishment which had failed. I vainly tried to get hot water
and
mustard for a poultice, and though I offered a Negro a dollar to
go
for
the medicine, he looked at it superciliously, hummed a tune, and
said
he must wait for the Pacific train, which was not due for an
hour.
Equally
in vain I hunted through Cheyenne for a feeding bottle. Not a
maternal
heart softened to the helpless mother and starving child, and
my
last resource was to dip a piece of sponge in some milk and
water,
and
try to pacify the creature. I applied Rigollot's leaves, went for
the
medicine, saw the popular host--a bachelor--who mentioned a girl
who,
after much difficulty, consented to take charge of the baby for
two
dollars a day and attend to the mother, and having remained till
she
began to amend, I took the cars for Greeley, a settlement on the
Plains,
which I had been recommended to make my starting point for the
mountains.
FORT
COLLINS, September 10.
It
gave me a strange sensation to embark upon the Plains. Plains,
plains
everywhere, plains generally level, but elsewhere rolling in
long
undulations, like the waves of a sea which had fallen asleep.
They
are covered thinly with buff grass, the withered stalks of
flowers,
Spanish bayonet, and a small beehive-shaped cactus. One could
gallop
all over them.
They
are peopled with large villages of what are called prairie dogs,
because
they utter a short, sharp bark, but the dogs are, in reality,
marmots.
We passed numbers of villages, which are composed of raised
circular
orifices, about eighteen inches in diameter, with sloping
passages
leading downwards for five or six feet. Hundreds of these
burrows
are placed together. On nearly every rim a small furry
reddish-buff
beast sat on his hind legs, looking, so far as head went,
much
like a young seal. These creatures were acting as sentinels, and
sunning
themselves. As we passed, each gave a warning yelp, shook its
tail,
and, with a ludicrous flourish of its hind legs, dived into its
hole.
The appearance of hundreds of these creatures, each eighteen
inches
long, sitting like dogs begging, with their paws down and all
turned
sunwards, is most grotesque. The Wish-ton-Wish has few enemies,
and
is a most prolific animal. From its enormous increase and the
energy
and extent of its burrowing operations, one can fancy that in
the
course of years the prairies will be seriously injured, as it
honeycombs
the ground, and renders it unsafe for horses. The burrows
seem
usually to be shared by owls, and many of the people insist that
a
rattlesnake
is also an inmate, but I hope for the sake of the harmless,
cheery
little prairie dog, that this unwelcome fellowship is a myth.
After
running on a down grade for some time, five distinct ranges of
mountains,
one above another, a lurid blue against a lurid sky,
upheaved
themselves above the prairie sea. An American railway car,
hot,
stuffy and full of chewing, spitting Yankees, was not an ideal
way
of
approaching this range which had early impressed itself upon my
imagination.
Still, it was truly grand, although it was sixty miles
off,
and we were looking at it from a platform 5,000 feet in height.
As
I write I am only twenty-five miles from them, and they are
gradually
gaining possession of me.
I
can look at and FEEL nothing else. At five in the afternoon frame
houses
and green fields began to appear, the cars drew up, and two of
my
fellow passengers and I got out and carried our own luggage
through
the
deep dust to a small, rough, Western tavern, where with
difficulty
we
were put up for the night. This settlement is called the Greeley
Temperance
Colony, and was founded lately by an industrious class of
emigrants
from the East, all total abstainers, and holding advanced
political
opinions. They bought and fenced 50,000 acres of land,
constructed
an irrigating canal, which distributes its waters on
reasonable
terms, have already a population of 3,000, and are the most
prosperous
and rising colony in Colorado, being altogether free from
either
laziness or crime. Their rich fields are artificially
productive
solely; and after seeing regions where Nature gives
spontaneously,
one is amazed that people should settle here to be
dependent
on irrigating canals, with the risk of having their crops
destroyed
by grasshoppers. A clause in the charter of the colony
prohibits
the introduction, sale, or consumption of intoxicating
liquor,
and I hear that the men of Greeley carry their crusade against
drink
even beyond their limits, and have lately sacked three houses
open
for the sale of drink near their frontier, pouring the whisky
upon
the
ground, so that people don't now like to run the risk of bringing
liquor
near Greeley, and the temperance influence is spreading over a
very
large area. As the men have no bar-rooms to sit in, I observed
that
Greeley was asleep at an hour when other places were beginning
their
revelries. Nature is niggardly, and living is coarse and rough,
the
merest necessaries of hardy life being all that can be thought of
in
this stage of existence.
My
first experiences of Colorado travel have been rather severe. At
Greeley
I got a small upstairs room at first, but gave it up to a
married
couple with a child, and then had one downstairs no bigger than
a
cabin, with only a canvas partition. It was very hot, and every
place
was thick with black flies. The English landlady had just lost
her
"help," and was in a great fuss, so that I helped her to get
supper
ready.
Its chief features were greasiness and black flies. Twenty men
in
working clothes fed and went out again, "nobody speaking to
nobody."
The
landlady introduced me to a Vermont settler who lives in the
"Foot
Hills,"
who was very kind and took a great deal of trouble to get me a
horse.
Horses abound, but they are either large American horses, which
are
only used for draught, or small, active horses, called broncos,
said
to be from a Spanish word, signifying that they can never be
broke.
They nearly all "buck," and are described as being more "ugly"
and
treacherous than mules. There is only one horse in Greeley "safe
for
a woman to ride." I tried an Indian pony by moonlight--such a
moonlight--but
found he had tender feet. The kitchen was the only
sitting
room, so I shortly went to bed, to be awoke very soon by
crawling
creatures apparently in myriads. I struck a light, and found
such
swarms of bugs that I gathered myself up on the wooden chairs,
and
dozed
uneasily till sunrise. Bugs are a great pest in Colorado. They
come
out of the earth, infest the wooden walls, and cannot be got rid
of
by any amount of cleanliness. Many careful housewives take their
beds
to pieces every week and put carbolic acid on them.
It
was a glorious, cool morning, and the great range of the Rocky
Mountains
looked magnificent. I tried the pony again, but found he
would
not do for a long journey; and as my Vermont acquaintance offered
me
a seat in his wagon to Fort Collins, twenty-five miles nearer the
Mountains,
I threw a few things together and came here with him. We
left
Greeley at 10, and arrived here at 4:30, staying an hour for food
on
the way. I liked the first half of the drive; but the fierce,
ungoverned,
blazing heat of the sun on the whitish earth for the last
half,
was terrible even with my white umbrella, which I have not used
since
I left New Zealand; it was sickening. Then the eyes have never
anything
green to rest upon, except in the river bottoms, where there
is
green hay grass. We followed mostly the course of the River
Cache-a-la-Poudre,
which rises in the Mountains, and after supplying
Greeley
with irrigation, falls into the Platte, which is an affluent of
the
Missouri. When once beyond the scattered houses and great ring
fence
of the vigorous Greeley colonists, we were on the boundless
prairie.
Now and then horsemen passed us, and we met three wagons with
white
tilts. Except where the prairie dogs have honeycombed the
ground,
you can drive almost anywhere, and the passage of a few wagons
over
the same track makes a road. We forded the river, whose course is
marked
the whole way by a fringe of small cotton-woods and aspens, and
traveled
hour after hour with nothing to see except some dog towns,
with
their quaint little sentinels; but the view in front was
glorious.
The
Alps, from the Lombard Plains, are the finest mountain panorama I
ever
saw, but not equal to this; for not only do five high-peaked
giants,
each nearly the height of Mont Blanc, lift their dazzling
summits
above the lower ranges, but the expanse of mountains is so
vast,
and the whole lie in a transparent medium of the richest blue,
not
haze--something peculiar to the region. The lack of foreground is
a
great artistic fault, and the absence of greenery is melancholy,
and
makes
me recall sadly the entrancing detail of the Hawaiian Islands.
Once
only, the second time we forded the river, the cotton-woods
formed
a
foreground, and then the loveliness was heavenly. We stopped at a
log
house and got a rough dinner of beef and potatoes, and I was
amused
at
the five men who shared it with us for apologizing to me for
being
without
th
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