"'Here he comes!'
"Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling—sweeping towards us nearer and nearer—growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined, nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear. Another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider's hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go winging away like a belated fragment of a storm!
"So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for a flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail-sack after the vision had passed by and disappeared, we might have doubted whether we had seen any actual horse and man at all."
At 3 p.m. we were entering the great cañon of the Arkansas. The Royal Gorge must have been formed by some great convulsion in nature, rending the mountains from the top to the bottom, and leaving this deep chasm. The muddy mountain torrent has burrowed a channel through for itself, where it lashes and foams into fury against the obstructing rocks. It was an ingenious idea, making the line on ground literally blasted out of the rock or bridged over the torrent, while the precipices overhanging it meet above. No green thing grows on their polished sides; but there was a beautiful blending of colours in the red and blue and green veins of the rocks. We were in the deepest shadow, from the depth of the gorge. The train crept along only too quickly, and we were trying to enjoy to our utmost the stupendous grandeur of the scene by hanging out of the windows of the car, when we gradually became aware that it was fading. And though for some time longer we were going through a succession of mountain passes, which opened out before us, were passed, and looked back upon, they paled by comparison with the Royal Gorge.
Late in the afternoon we were crossing an open plain, and, separated by countless nearer summits, we saw the irregular snow-capped peaks of the Sangre de Christo, I am not sure that I did not think this irregular, indefinite view of green, far-stretching plains and blue haze on distant mountains more beautiful than the solemn grandeur of the Royal Gorge.
The Royal Gorge of the Arkansas.
Page 58.
At the small station of Salida three engines were waiting for us, and the train was broken into two, the baggage cars and one engine preceding us. We watched with the greatest interest for the beginning of the ascent of fourteen miles up the Marshall Pass, for the crossing of the Rockies, the "Great Divide," as they are called, separating as they do the Atlantic and Pacific continents. There was a grade of 217 feet to the mile, and the engines puffed and panted, emitting alternately their black columns of smoke, taking it in turns to pull us up the steep inclines—-so steep they were that everything in the cars slipped downwards, and the conductor passing through appeared to be walking up-hill. Looking upwards, the dark line of earth winding round the mountains showed us our onward track, and we looked, almost incredulous of ever reaching there, till sweeping round another curve, the length of the train often doubling itself, we were brought on a level with it. But the most dangerous thing appeared to us the crossing of the wide gullies in passing from one mountain to another, the train describing one of its deep curves on a frail wooden trestle-bridge, before continuing in the upward track.