LETTER No. XV.
Leave for Cheyenne—"Rock Springs"—Murder of Chinese—Mr. Black's "Green Pastures" and bottle of champagne—"Hell upon Wheels"—Big Horn Cowboy and Milord.
Cheyenne, Oct., 1885.
We left Salt Lake City by the Union Pacific Railway on Wednesday at 7.50 a.m., and we reached Cheyenne at 10.30 a.m. on Thursday. It is impossible for me to describe or even to mention the many objects of interest and points of beautiful scenery through which this line passes. How can one describe in a few hurried words such scenes as those to be found in "The Echo Cañon," "The Devil's Gate," "The Devil's Gate Mountain," and "The Devil's Slide"?[[6]] The makers of this road, or the early pioneers, seem to have had a great liking for his black majesty, or they would not have given his name to such splendid scenery.
[6]. It will be remembered that the Devil has another slide in the Yellowstone Park.
"THE DEVIL'S SLIDE," WEBER CAÑON.
About two hundred miles east of Ogden we passed a place called "Rock Springs," where a number of Chinamen had been brutally massacred by white miners a week or two before.
Two Chinamen had taken up a white man's "chamber," and when ordered out the Chinamen went at them with their picks. A general battle ensued, in which two men were shot. At night their village was set fire to, and it was said that several Chinamen in trying to escape from the fire were shot down by the miners, and about fifteen others perished in the flames.
Soldiers from the nearest fort were sent for, and several miners were arrested, but it was found impossible to get sufficient evidence to convict them. The Chinese Consul from Washington had just been there investigating the brutal affair, and was returning in the same train with us.
In Mr. William Black's "Green Pastures and Piccadilly" there is an interesting description of Cheyenne as it was some twelve years ago. There was a time, not long previous to Mr. Black's visit, when this now thriving little city had earned for itself the name of "Hell upon Wheels," and I was told by an inhabitant who lived there then, when the Union Pacific Railway was being made, and the city comprised a long row of saloon tents, that bowie knives and six-shooters were freely used in the settlement of disputes, and that three or four murders a week were the average, to say nothing of fights with Sioux Indians.
Cheyenne had settled down from these exciting times when Mr. Black arrived there, and he found "nothing about its outward appearance to entitle anyone to call it 'Hell on Wheels.'"
"Certainly," he says, "the Cheyenne we saw was far from being an exciting place; there was not a single corpse lying at any of the saloon doors, nor any duel being fought in the street."
Of the outskirts of Cheyenne, he says:—
"The odd fashion in which shanties and sheds—with some private houses here and there—are dotted down anyhow on the plain; their temporary look; the big advertisements; the desolate and homeless appearance of the whole place, all serve to recall the dismal scene that is spread around the Grand Stand on Epsom Downs on the morning after Derby Day, when the revellers have all returned to town.... We drove out to a lake which will no doubt form an ornamental feature in a big park, when the Black Hill miners, gorged with wealth, come back to make Cheyenne a great city."
Mr. Black will be pleased to know that his prophecy has been, to some extent, fulfilled.
Cheyenne is now a most pleasant city. The big park has been formed; the streets are broad, and lined with trees; the houses are well-built; there are stores there which would almost rival Whiteley's or Shoolbred's in the magnitude and variety of their contents, and perhaps surpass them in their outward appearance. The outskirts are now dotted, I might rather say crowded, with very charming "Queen Anne" villas, surrounded by well-laid-out lawns, flower-beds, and creeping foliage, reminding one not so much of Epsom Downs, as of that æsthetic suburb of London known as Bedford Park, only that the houses are larger and better built, and in their furniture display an exuberance of wealth and good taste. There are two fine hotels, several churches and chapels, and a delightful little club-house, where we were most hospitably entertained.
I may add that the place has none of the appearance of vulgar show which "Black Hill miners, gorged with wealth," might be supposed to have given to it; on the contrary, it has an air of quiet respectability not to be seen in many other western cities. The inhabitants are well-educated people, musical and social, and amongst them is a large community of well-bred English people.
As I have a personal interest in the matter, I will venture to give another extract from "Green Pastures and Piccadilly."
Mr. Black says that—
"As he was unanimously requested by his party to pay a tribute of gratitude to the clean and comfortable inn at the station, he must now do so; only he must also confess that he was bribed, for the good-natured landlord was pleased, as we sat at supper, to send in to us, with his compliments, a bottle of real French champagne. Good actions should never go unrewarded; so the gentle reader is most earnestly entreated, the first time he goes to Cheyenne, to stay at this inn and give large orders. Moreover, the present writer not wishing to have his conduct in this particular regarded as being too mercenary, would wish to explain that the bottle of champagne in question was, as was subsequently discovered, charged for in the bill and honestly paid for too; but he cannot allow the landlord to be deprived of all credit for his hospitable intentions merely on account of an error on the part of the clerk."
Just before I left England, and knowing that I contemplated a visit to the Rockies, Mr. Black was good enough to request me to look into his book and to see, from the circumstances, as quoted above, whether I was not fairly entitled to have that bottle of champagne produced: he also desired me to present his compliments to a "very pretty Scotch lassie" at the hotel.
Of course I pursued the inquiry; I had by chance stayed at this very hotel, but I ascertained, alas! that poor old Jones, the good-natured landlord, had long since made his pile in the good old times when he could charge crowds of passengers a dollar and a half for their meals instead of (as now) seventy-five cents only: had retired to a farm somewhere in Idaho; had died, and left an enormous fortune to his widow. I may also inform Mr. Black that "the pretty Scotch lassie" is now the mother of a large family somewhere up in the mountains.
The inn has become the property of the Union Pacific, and is, in fact, one of the dining stations of that enterprising company. I regret to say that the intelligent and civil manager, though perfectly acquainted with the circumstances (through having read "Green Pastures" in a ten cent edition), did not feel it to be a part of his duty to his employers to hand over to me the bottle of champagne, notwithstanding the credentials I presented. He did not, however, raise the slightest objection when I invited him to join me and my friend M. in drinking to the health of the writer of "Green Pastures," to the wealthy widow of the departed Jones, and to "the pretty Scotch lassie," wherever she may be.
A local newspaper thus, somewhat erroneously, recorded our visit to this city:—
"A. B. and C. D., two Englishmen who have been travelling around the world, stopped off yesterday morning, and are guests at The Pacific. They had letters of introduction to Jones(!), the former landlord of the hotel, and had been told that Cheyenne was 'Hell on Wheels.' They are disappointed."
In these western parts it is a dangerous thing sometimes to refuse a "drink," and to offer to pay for it is a mortal offence. I was told that in Cheyenne even the cowboys, with their big whips, broad-brimmed felt hats, and hip-joint boots, were a superior, well-educated class, who had a large reading-room, crowded of an evening with men who could hold their own on any subject, political, social, or literary; and that there were among them good mathematicians, and even classical scholars.
The following cutting from "The Cheyenne Democrat" exhibits the cowboy in another light:—
"He Drank.
"MILORD HAS AN ADVENTURE WITH A BIG HORN COWBOY AND A BIG HORN.
"Editor Becker, of the Big Horn 'Sentinel,' tells a good story of a nobby and snobby milord, of British extraction, who travelled from Big Horn with him and Abe Idelman on the stage-coach early this week. Milord was excessively exclusive. He wouldn't be social, and spoke to no one except the two 'John Henry' servants he had with him, and was altogether as unpleasant as his snobbishness could make him. At a dinner station there were a lot of jolly cowboys on a lark, and one of them 'treating' everybody asked the Englishman to drink. Of course, milord haughtily refused. The cowboy displayed a dangerous-looking six-shooter, and very impressively insisted on his drinking.
"'But I cawn't, you know. I don't drink, you know,' was milord's reply.
"Mr. Cowboy brought the muzzle in dangerous proximity to the knot in which milord's brains were supposed to lie hidden somewhere, and then he said he'd drink—he'd take soda water, you know.
"'Soda water nuthin,' said Mr. Cowboy. 'You'll take straight whiskey.'
"'But, aw, this American whiskey, I cawn't swallow it, you know.'
"'Well,' said the cowboy, 'I'll make a hole in the side of your head so that we can pour it in,' and he began to draw down on milord, and milord said—
"'Aw, that'll do; I'll drink it.'
"Then the cowboy invited milord's servants to drink, which horrified him.
"'They don't drink, you know,' he said.
"'Well, we'll see whether they do or not,' said Mr. Cowboy. 'The chances are you don't give 'em a "hopportunity." Come up here, you fellows, and guzzle some,' and the two 'John Henrys,' with a little show of reluctance, but really glad to get a drink, came up, and the cowboy passed a tumbler full of torchlight procession whiskey for milord, and the servants poured for themselves. Then the cowboy made the 'John Henrys' clink glasses with milord, and all drank, and there was great fun. Milord tried after that to be very jolly, and the stimulant assisted him decidedly. But in the coach he fell back into his exclusiveness and retained it throughout, and has probably got it yet.
"Now the fact is that, abstractly, the cowboy was wrong in forcing a man to drink who had no desire to do so. But, on the other hand, snobbishness is not the proper thing in this country, and sensible men generally try, while in Rome, to do as Rome does. At any rate, they don't make themselves offensive to the country in which they are travelling."
