The road thence ran along the edge of the bluff and through the woods—a road upon which we rattled at a steady trot, although on the left there was nothing to break our fall for a hundred feet or so, should an accident tip us over. The river valley, thus sunken, was sometimes narrow and the stream turbulent among rocks; sometimes a mile or two wide with willow-covered bottoms; sometimes showing islands crowded with trees and thickets, or of great bends where lay spaces of rank meadow. Two or three little houses were pointed out where head men among the Indians had lived on small farms, and the driver, who had run a stage before the red men left, told us many interesting stories of their life in this favorite valley.
Leaving the river and the verdant gorge, its cottonwoods illumined with flaming light of the sunset, the road took to the higher ground and gave us many a good jolt in crossing the small acequias which watered the upper ranches on the edge of the mesa, and then came into view of Uncompahgre park, stretching away to the westward like a prairie, and the scene of some of the finest farming in Colorado. There are about thirty ranches where, half a dozen years ago was nothing but wild pasture. The ranchmen were all poor men when they came here; now they have pleasant houses, well fenced and irrigated farms and equipments in abundance. I heard of one ranch sold lately for ten thousand dollars, and was told of another where the owner cleared six thousand dollars for his last season’s profits. Everything is raised except Indian corn, but wheat is not cultivated so extensively as it will be when milling facilities are better. Barley, oats, hay and vegetables are the principal crops, and potatoes probably offer the highest return of all. Prices have decreased to one-fifth the figures of five years ago, yet the ranchmen prosper and increase their acreage, putting surplus money into cattle which roam upon the adjacent uplands. The land is by no means all taken up, however, and improved property can be bought at reasonable prices. There is plenty of water, too, an important consideration.
In the center of the park we passed a copious spring of hot mineral water, carrying much iron, as we could tell by the circular tank of ferric oxide it had built around it, forming a bath large enough for a hundred persons at once. As yet there are few arrangements for making use of this fountain,—a fact due to the plentiful hot springs of iron and of sulphur (sulphate of lime, etc.), water close to Ouray, where a sanitarium and bath houses have been fitted up, and where persons suffering from rheumatism and kindred ailments find great benefit. So much warm water is poured into the Uncompahgre, in fact, that nothing more than a film of ice forms upon it in the coldest weather. Remembering all these varied advantages, it is no wonder the Utes loved the place and protested against its loss.
The mountains ahead came into plainer view, as we left the park; we caught a glimpse of the curious Sawtooth range off at the left, saw that the rounded outlines of the bluffs on each side were changing to abrupt walls, and trending inward, and then the hush of night and the quiet of weariness came to still our conversation and turn our thoughts into meditative channels. Darkness enveloped the world and we pulled slowly through it by the light of a thousand brilliant stars—the same stars that shone on the Madame and Chum; that, beyond the Range, shed soft light on the shepherds and herdsmen of the great plains; that trembled in the eddies of the Mississippi; that were watched by wakeful people on the slopes of laurel-crowned Alleghanian hills; that caught faintly the eye of revelers—for it must now be after the opera—in New York; that spoke a mysterious language to the watcher upon the far ocean; and, oh, best of all! that looked in at a curtained New England window and saw a child in peaceful slumbers. Little daughter under the ancient elms,—planet in the far sky,—father passing under the massive shadow of gigantic cliffs whose pine-fringed bulwarks are lost in the thick gloom above! What an immeasurable triangle, yet how swiftly does the mercury of thought compass it and link its points together?
XXIX
AT OURAY AND RED MOUNTAIN.
Bathed in the tenderest purple of distance,
Tinted and shadowed by pencils of air,
Thy battlements hang o’er the slopes and the forests,