From Livingston to Helena the run was made at night. We found the latter a bustling place and well worth a visit. There is an air about a mining camp which can be seen in no old country, and Helena though now full of city airs yet has many of the characteristics of the camp. Its foundations rest upon gold bearing earth, and even now in digging cellars, quite in the town, pay dirt is found. Nearly the entire site of the city has been dug over by the miner. It was in one of its gulches, now a street, that a prospector wearied out by unsuccessful tramps and reduced to his last dollar, stuck in his pick to try for a "last chance." He had no expectation of reward, but dug down in sheer desperation before going off a pauper. The result was "The last chance mine," one of the richest ever discovered.
We stopped at the Helena hotel and found it quite equal to any in large eastern cities.
The Broadwater Hotel, however, some three to four miles out of town, is now the lion of the place. It is a cottage-built house, with 200 fine rooms, all finished in hardwoods and elegantly furnished. Its bathrooms, with huge porcelain tubs and large dressing-rooms attached to each, are especially fine and the baths are said to be medicinally good.
THE SWIMMING BATH OF THE WORLD.
But these dwindle when compared with its huge swimming bath. The natatorium building is about 350 feet long by 150, with a roof 100 feet high, supported by light arches in single spans. The tank is 300 feet by 100; at one end about four feet deep, and running to ten or more at the other. Natural hot and cold waters pour over a precipice of cyclopean masses of granite at one end, about fifty feet wide and forty high. This precipice is pierced by three large openings over which the water pours in great sheets, and so artistically that one would easily believe it a series of natural falls. The flow is so large that the tank is replenished several times a day. The temperature was to me rather high—about 80 degrees. A swim in its deep waters, however, was very fine. The whole is lighted by day through windows high up, of cathedral glass in different tints, terra cotta predominating. The hotel, with its 200 rooms, and the tank-house and grounds are illuminated at night by incandescent lights. We saw it only by day, but could easily imagine how beautiful it must look and how gay a scene it must offer when 300 or 400 people are in at night—men and gay ladies. Very decorous bathing suits are furnished to bathers, and those bringing their own, are compelled to have them of conventional modesty. I was told that 300 bathers of an evening is not an unusual number, and that it is largely frequented during nine months of the year and by the very best people of the city. The charge is fifty cents for an entrance, so as to keep out the riff-raff. Col. Broadwater has expended half a million on the house and grounds, bringing his hot water from a mineral hot spring some four miles up a gorge, and a large supply of cold pure water also from the hills. The hotel was full. We took lunch with the Colonel and some friends, and found it like everything else, first class. A steam and an electric motor road leads from the city to the hotel. By the way, why do the street car people not put in electrical motors in Chicago? At St. Paul, Helena and Spokane we have ridden upon them and were delighted. A car looks as if it were out fishing with a fishing rod springing from its top, bent just as if it were playing a gamy fish.
The hospitalities of the Broadwater very nearly cost us our connection at the railroad. We gave ourselves but little time, expecting to find a carriage ordered to be in waiting at the electric road city terminus. It was not there and we walked to our hotel to find we had but eleven minutes to get our luggage on a carriage and to reach the railroad station a mile and a half away. The porter said it was impossible to reach it in time. We ordered our traps brought down and rushed to our rooms for our small pieces. At the office were a crowd of newly arrived travelers. I called to the clerk saying I had no time to pay hotel bills. He smiled. Taking advantage of his good humor we mounted the carriage telling the driver to make the train or die. He said he would land us on the train or in—naming a rather hot place. He tore through the town at a full gallop. People in shop doors looked at us and smiled. Possibly they suspected an old gray beard was getting away with a young girl. The jehu and his horses were plucky. The station house as we drove up hid the train from us, and hid us from it. We turned the building, the train was well in motion, the engineer checked up but the train continued to move. We jumped down; the driver threw our trunk into the baggage car; I landed my valise on the platform of the next car; my daughter got her satchel on the next and she climbed up on the third. I caught on and climbed the fourth and threw the fare to the driver. Quite a crowd of people about the station admired our pluck, and when our driver yelled out "Hurrah for Chicago" a generous response went up from a score or more of throats. Success is admired everywhere, but out west it is the cure all. Every man at that station would at that moment have voted for me for—pound master. Shortly after leaving Helena the climb is commenced in scaling the real Rocky Mountains. The road bends and winds over many magnificent curves and loops, rapidly climbing upward. Now we look far above us, at a locomotive slowly creeping along the mountain side, and we look down upon the road we had a few moments before puffed along, but already hundreds of feet immediately under us. The mountains towered above us, covered by great black precipices, and mighty detached rocks standing alone or in groups. This is the true backbone of the continent, and the black scattered rocks might be vertebrae pushing through the worn cuticle. We could understand here why these are called the rocky mountains. Rough towers and jagged turrets black with the weather wear of ages are the salient features of the heights and slopes. Here they are in great groups, there isolated. Now they are compacted into massive precipices, frowning and repellent, and then scattered as if dropped by icebergs. They are, however, not mighty loose boulders, but are moored to and are a part of the mountain's foundation rocks.
We crossed some lofty trestle bridges and looked down upon a stream thick with mud from a gold washing camp near by. At length we reached the summit. Our extra locomotive was side tracked and we breathed an atmosphere perceptibly different from that we had left on the eastern side of the range. We were now upon the Pacific slope.
We halted for a few minutes at Missoula. The fine valley was bathed in the glowing red of sunset. We lost at night much beautiful wooded scenery which I once before enjoyed so much. To one simply going to Puget Sound it is worth while to stop over at Missoula and then to run down Clark's Fork by day. But we wished to have a full day at our next stopping place.
Of all the cities we have seen, the busiest was Spokane—pronounced as if there were no "e" at the end and the "a" quite broad. Seven years ago I was there. Then it had but 800 dwellers. Now there are in the neighborhood of 25,000. There are several streets with elegant business blocks, finished or being completed, of four, five, and six stories in height, comparing favorably with those of any Eastern city in architectural design and finish. The heart of the city reminds one of Chicago the spring after the great fire, and the people seem to have the same pluck, and energy, and confidence that so marked our people at that time. Some of the private houses on the steep, hugely-bowldered slope of a high hill on one side of the city are models of elegance. We visited two which were real chefs d'oeuvres of architectural design—one a Swiss chalet, the other Mooresque in design. Everything was after the original models, even to much of the furniture. I have never seen except in some model houses abroad such complete specimens. The outside of several others which we did not visit are quite as fine. Mrs. Cutter, the proud mother of the architect, exhibited her house with great hospitality, and Mrs. Moore seemed to feel that she had no right to hide her gem of a residence.
At evening we were invited to a fete champetre on a fine lake some forty miles north of the city and 800 feet elevated above it. About 300 of the elite of the town went out by rail, danced, and had supper, returning to town by 1 o'clock in the morning. The young girl with me enjoyed it greatly. A severe cold just caught forbade my appreciating anything but the sweet, sincere hospitality shown us. Judge Kinnaird, the son of one of the friends of my early Kentucky boyhood, got us the entree of Spokane's "four hundred." This is destined to continue a thriving city, but lots at $1,000, four miles from the heart of the city, will burn badly some real estate speculators. It is said a mining trade of nearly $50,000 a day naturally belongs to the town. I fear, however, there will be a bursting of a bubble when the burnt district shall be restored. A large trade will be necessary to support the great number of mechanics and laborers now lifting the town from its ashes. Hotel Spokane is a very large and good house.