And now, ’tis silent all—Enchantress, fare-thee-well.
—Walter Scott.
When, some ten years ago, the writer had let his mule down into Baker’s Park, by hitching its wiry tail around successive snubbing-posts, the prediction was ventured that at some distant day a railway would penetrate these solitudes; and that it would approach from the southward, through a cañon which not even an Indian had ever been known to traverse,—the trails in that direction then leading over a terrible range, at a height far above the limit of vegetation. The prophecy has been verified, for the Denver and Rio Grande has already pushed its southwestern extension through the Cañon of the Animas, reaching Silverton in July, 1882.
Here the cores of the Rocky Mountains have been buried beneath an overflow of eruptive rock spreading over four thousand five hundred square miles of territory; or else, along with the sandstones and slates which were deposited against their sides, they have been metamorphosed into schists and quartzites. “The character of the volcanic rocks throughout the district,” says Dr. Hayden’s report, “is one of extreme interest, demonstrating an enormous amount of activity during a probably short period of time (geologically speaking), which activity was, nevertheless, accompanied by a comparatively large number of changes in the chemical and physical qualities of the ejected material.”
This geological composition gives to these mountains,—and particularly to the quartzite peaks along the southern border of the eruptive area,—a different appearance from any of the northern Rockies,—a more precipitous, Alpine and grander countenance, with sharp pinnacles, tremendous vertically walled chasms, and extensive forests of spruce clothing their lower declivities. In no other locality are so many very lofty summits to be seen crowded together. Sierra Blanca and two or three other single peaks in Colorado and Wyoming slightly outrank any here; but nowhere else can be found whole groups of mountains holding their heads up to fourteen thousand feet, and having great valleys almost at timber-line.
The old maps bear the name Sierra Madre, to designate these heights, whose snowy crests filled the northern horizon and forbade the advance of Spanish exploration. The word admits of various applications, but one which might well have been in the mind of him who first used it, is that this vast highland is the mighty Mother of our rivers. From its western slopes flow the rivulets that unite to make the Gunnison and Grand,—one of the forks of the Rio Colorado. Easterly, but on its northern face, bubbles the great spring which forms the very source of the Rio Grande del Norte. Every gulch upon its southern breast feeds the rushing streams that furnish to the Rio San Juan all the water it gets for its long journey through the wilderness.
EVA CLIFF.