‘For you to find out all alone.’
—Percy’s Reliques.
According to the virtuous intention of the last paragraph, we went one day over to Red Cliff and the Eagle river. The branch of the railway which runs thither, leaves the main line at Malta, and takes in some very pretty scenery.
From Malta the line skirts the wide hay-meadows between the village and the Arkansas river; I saw men spreading manure there, too, and was told they had raised oats successfully. The whole mouth of California gulch, here, is a vast bed of clean, drifted gravel, the result of the gold hydraulic operations above, the placers having been worked more or less continuously for twenty years.
Rising along a tortuous path cut at a heavy grade, as usual, into the side hills, we mount slowly into Tennessee Pass, which feeds the head of the Eagle river on one side and one source of the Arkansas on the other. It is a comparatively low and easy pass, covered everywhere with dense timber, and a wagon-road has long been followed through it. There was nothing to be seen except an occasional pile of ties, or a charcoal oven, save that now and then a gap in the hills showed the gray rough summits of Galena, Homestake, and the other hights that guard the Holy Cross. At each end of the Pass is a little open glade or “park,” where settlers have placed their cabins and fenced off a few acres of level ground whereon to cut hay, for nothing else will grow at this great elevation.
One of the side-valleys, coming down to the track at right angles from the southwestward—I think it is Homestake gulch—leads the eye up through a glorious alpine avenue to where the cathedral crest of a noble peak pierces the sky. It is a summit that would attract the eye anywhere,—its feet hidden in verdurous hills, guarded by knightly crags, half-buried in seething clouds, its helmet vertical, frowning, plumed with gleaming snow,—
“Ay, every inch a king.”
It is the Mount of the Holy Cross, bearing the sacred symbol in such heroic characters as dwarf all human graving, and set on the pinnacle of the world as though in sign of possession forever. The Jesuits went hand in hand with the Chevalier Dubois, proclaiming Christian gospel in the northern forests; the Puritan brought his Testament to New England, the Spanish banners of victory on the golden shores of the Pacific were upheld by the fiery zeal of the friars of San Francisco; the frozen Alaskan cliffs resounded to the chanting of the monks of St. Peter and St. Paul. On every side the virgin continent was taken in the name of Christ, and with all the eclat of religious conquest. Yet from ages unnumbered before any of them, centuries oblivious in the mystery of past time, the Cross had been planted here. As a prophecy during unmeasured generations, as a sign of glorious fulfillment during nineteen centuries, from always and to eternity a reminder of our fealty to Heaven, this divine seal has been set upon our proudest eminence. What matters it whether we write “God” in the Constitution of the United States, when here in the sight of all men is inscribed this marvelous testimony to his sovereignty! Shining grandly out of the pure ether, and above all turbulence of earthly clouds, it says: Humble thyself, O man! Measure thy fiery works at their true insignificance. Uncover thy head and acknowledge thy weakness. Forget not, that as high above thy gilded spires gleams the splendor of this ever-living Cross, so are My thoughts above thy thoughts, and My ways above thy ways.
Red Cliff is a bright, fresh little camp, made of sweet-smelling, new lumber just out of the saw mill; it looks spruce in a most literal sense. Perhaps a thousand or fifteen hundred persons live in and about there, though you will not see a quarter of that number except on Saturday nights and Sundays. The hotel where I stopped was made of canvas, but they gave me a good meal, and when bed-time came took me off to another tent roofed shanty, which I occupied all to myself, surrounded by feminine finery and knicknacks, from tooth-powder and hair-pins to ruffled skirts and a sewing stand; however, the window-curtains consisted of two very “loud” copies of the Police Gazette, so I locked my door with extra care for fear the fair owners might unexpectedly return.