Cokeville, 800¼ miles out on the Trail from The Dalles, and near the junction of the Sublette cut-off with the more southerly trail, resolved to have a monument, and arrangements were completed for erecting one of stone from a nearby quarry that will bear witness for many centuries.
CHAPTER XLV.
THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.
From Cokeville to Pacific Springs, just west of the summit, of the Rocky Mountains at South Pass, by the road and trail we traveled, is 158 miles. Ninety miles of this stretch is away from the sound of the locomotive, the click of the telegraph or the hello girl. It is a great extension of that grand mountain range, the Rockies, from six to seven thousand feet above sea level, with scant vegetable growth, and almost a solitude as to habitation, save as here and there a sheep-herder or his typical wagon might be discovered. The bold coyote, the simple antelope, and the cunning sage hen still hold their sway as they did sixty-three years before, when I first traversed the country. The old Trail is there in all its grandeur.
"Why mark that Trail!" I exclaim. Miles and miles of it worn so deep that centuries of storm will not efface it; generations may pass and the origin of the Trail become a legend, but the marks will be there to perplex the wondering eyes of those who people the continent centuries hence, aye, a hundred centuries, I am ready to say. We wonder to see it worn fifty feet wide and three feet deep, and hasten to take snap shots at it with kodak and camera. But what about it later, after we are over the crest of the mountain? We see it a hundred feet wide and fifteen feet deep, where the tramp of thousands upon thousands of men and women, and the hoofs of millions of animals and the wheels of untold numbers of vehicles have loosened the soil and the fierce winds have carried it away, and finally we find ruts a foot deep worn into the solid rock.
"What a mighty movement, this, over the Old Oregon Trail!" we exclaim time and again, each time with greater wonderment at the marvels yet to be seen, and hear the stories of the few yet left of those who suffered on this great highway.
Nor do we escape from this solitude of the western slope till we have traveled 150 miles east from the summit, when the welcome black smoke of the locomotive is seen in the distance, at Caspar, a stretch of 250 miles of primitive life of "ye olden times" of fifty years ago.
Nature's freaks in the Rocky Mountains are beyond my power of description. We catch sight of one a few miles west of the Little Sandy, without name. We venture to call it Tortoise Rock, from the resemblance to that reptile, with head erect and extended. Farther on, as night approaches, we are in the presence of animals unused to the sight of man. I quote from my journal:
PACIFIC SPRINGS.