The Spirit of Sweetwater

PHILADELPHIA CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO.
Copyright, 1898, by Hamlin Garland
TO JESSIE VIOLA AND HARRIET EDITH GARLAND

THE MYSTERY OF MOUNTAINS
As the sun sinks And the cañons deepening in color Add mystery to silence Then the lone traveller lying out-stretched Beneath the silent pines on some high range Watches and listens in ecstasy of fear And timorous admiration.
In the roar of the stream he catches The reminiscent echo of colossal cataracts; In the cry of the cliff-bird He thinks he hears the eagle's scream Or yowl of far-off mountain-lion; In the fall of a loose rock He fancies the menacing footfall of the grizzly bear; And in the black deeps of the lower cañon His dreaming eyes detect once more Prodigious lines of buffalo crawling snake-wise Athwart the stream, Or files of Indian warriors Winding downward to the distant plain, Where camp-fires gleam like stars.


One spring day a young man of good mental furnishing and very slender purse walked over the shoulder of Mount Mogallon and down the trail to Gold Creek. He walked because the stage fare seemed too high.
Two years and four months later he was pointed out to strangers by the people of Sweetwater Springs. That is Richard Clement, the sole owner of 'The Witch,' a mine valued at three millions of dollars. This in itself was truly an epic.