Well, her companions having more strength, didn’t feel quite so bad, though near enough so, to make their sympathies strong. The crest having been gained, the Madame lay down on a rubber coat under the cap rock to rest, while the remainder of us dispersed in search of water. But let me quote that long letter again:
“The rocks, when I had recovered strength to look about me, I saw were crumbling lavas of two colors, light drab and dark brown. Covered, as they were, with lichens of brown, green and red, they were very pretty. At last one of the gentlemen came back, carefully carrying his hat in both hands, which he had made into a sort of bowl by pressing in the soft crown. This I soon saw contained water, but such water—foul and bad tasting, for it had been squeezed from moss. But we drank it through a ‘straw,’ made by rolling up a business card, and were thankful.
“Refreshed, and becoming interested in life again, the old hymn occurred to me,—
‘Lo, on a narrow neck of land
’Twixt two unbounded seas I stand.’
Only the seas, in this case, were broad green valleys, and were bounded in the distance by lofty mountains, best of all Sierra Blanca, across whose peaks the clouds were winding their long garments as if to hide somewhat the sterility and ruggedness of their friends. Above them how intensely blue was the sky, and how the soft green foothills leaning against them satisfied your eyes with their graceful curves. Trailing among them, as though a long white string had been carelessly tossed down, ran the serpentine track of the railway, and the famous Dump Mountain sank into the merest foot-ridge at our feet. On the other side of the ledge we gazed out on the misty and limitless plains, past the rough jumble of the Sierra Mojada, and could trace where we had come across the valley of the Cuchara. Nearer by lay dozens of snug and verdant vales, in one of which glistened a little lake tantalizing to our still thirsty throats.
“We all had our photographs taken, with this magnificent scenery for a background—better even than the cockney-loved Niagara, we thought—and strolled about. Not far away we hit upon a prospect-hole. The miner was absent, but had left pick and shovel behind as tokens of possession. How intense must be the love of money that would induce a man to undertake such a terrible climb, and live in this utter loneliness and exposure! Yet they say that many of the best silver mines in Colorado are on the very tops of such bald peaks as this.
“At last, on asking my husband if he did not think he appeared like an Alpine tourist, I found him recovered sufficiently to say that we should all pine if we didn’t have dinner soon, so we turned our faces homeward. Now I hope I haven’t wasted all my adjectives, for I need the strongest of them to tell of that descent. It was frightful. Feet and knees became so sore that every movement was torture. The sun blinded and scorched me, and the fields of barren, sharp and cruel stones stretched down ahead in endless succession. Mrs. McAngle, however foolish I may be in the future in climbing up another mountain, I never, never will come down, but will cheerfully die on the summit, and leave my bones a warning to the next absurdly ambitious sight-seer. When I was on the crest, I thought what an idiot the youth in ‘Excelsior’ was, but now I hold him in high respect, for he had the great good sense, having reached the top, to stay there!”
Returning to Veta Pass, the promontory where the track winds cautiously around the brow of Dump Mountain—the name is given because of a resemblance in shape to the dump at the entrance of a mine tunnel—has been called Inspiration Point. I don’t know who christened it; perhaps some would-be hero of a novel by G. P. R. James. If, to be in character, he “paused at this point in involuntary admiration,” there was plenty of excuse, for one of the loveliest panoramas in Colorado unrolls itself at the observer’s feet.
Coming up is fine enough, if you see it on such a day as the gods gave us. The Spanish Peaks, as we approached from Cuchara, were as blue as blue could be, with half-transparent, vaporous masses hovering tenderly about them; but these mists stopped short of Veta, which stood out distinct against its cloud-flecked background, majestic in full round outlines beyond the majority of mountains,—in hue purple and sunny white, with the mingling of forests and vast sterile slopes. North of it the landscape was almost hidden under rain-veils, into which the sun shot a great sheaf-full of slanting arrows of light, and beyond, range behind range were marked with phantom-like faintness of outline. A broad canopy of leaden clouds hung overhead, down from the further eaves of which was shed a wide halo radiating from the invisible sun above; and this snowy shower had stood long unchanged before our entranced eyes, making us believe that the brown cliffs, toward which we were running so swiftly, were the gates of an enchanted land.