COSMOPOLITAN HOTEL, HELENA, MONTANA TERRITORY, August, 1878.
YOU will see that at last I decided to move over to this hotel. I made a great mistake in not coming before and getting away from the cross old housekeeper at the International, who could not be induced by entreaties, fees, or threats, to get the creepy, crawly things out of my room. How I wish that every one of them would march over to her some fine night and keep her awake as they have kept me. It made me so unhappy to leave Mrs. Hull there with a sick child, but she would not come with me, although she must know it would be better for her and the boy to be here, where everything is kept so clean and attractive. There are six wives of officers in the house, among them the wife of General Bourke, who is in command of the regiment. She invited me to sit at her table, and I find it very pleasant there. She is a bride and almost a stranger to us.
The weather has been playing all sorts of pranks upon us lately, and we hardly know whether we are in the far North or far South. For two weeks it was very warm, positively hot in this gulch, but yesterday we received a cooling off in the form of a brisk snowstorm that lasted nearly two hours. Mount Helena was white during the rest of the day, and even now long streaks of snow can be seen up and down the peak. But a snowstorm in August looked very tame after the awful cloud-burst that came upon us without warning a few days before, and seemed determined to wash the whole town down to the Missouri River.
It was about eleven o'clock, and four of us had gone to the shops to look at some pretty things that had just been brought over from a boat at Fort Benton by ox train. Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Hull had stopped at a grocery next door, expecting to join Mrs. Joyce and me in a few minutes. But before they could make a few purchases, a few large drops of rain began to splash down, and there was a fierce flash of lightning and deafening thunder, then came the deluge! Oceans of water seemed to be coming down, and before we realized what was happening, things in the street and things back of the store were being rushed to the valley below.
All along the gulch runs a little stream that comes from the canon above the town. The stream is tiny and the bed is narrow. On either side of it are stores with basements opening out on these banks. Well, in an alarmingly short time that innocent-looking little creek had become a roaring, foaming black river, carrying tables, chairs, washstands, little bridges—in fact everything it could tear up—along with it to the valley. Many of these pieces of furniture lodged against the carriage bridge that was just below the store where we were, making a dangerous dam, so a man with a stout rope around his waist went in the water to throw them out on the bank, but he was tossed about like a cork, and could do nothing. Just as they were about to pull him in the bridge gave way, and it was with the greatest difficulty he was kept from being swept down with the floating furniture. He was dragged back to our basement in an almost unconscious condition, and with many cuts and bruises.
The water was soon in the basements of the stores, where it did much damage. The store we were in is owned by a young man—one of the beaux of the town—and I think the poor man came near losing his mind. He rushed around pulling his hair one second, and wringing his hands the next, and seemed perfectly incapable of giving one order, or assisting his clerks in bringing the dripping goods from the basement. Very unlike the complacent, diamond-pin young man we had danced with at the balls!
The cloud-burst on Mount Helena had caused many breaks in the enormous ditches that run around the mountain and carry water to the mines on the other side. No one can have the faintest conception of how terrible a cloud-burst is until they have been in one. It is like standing under an immense waterfall. At the very beginning we noticed the wagon of a countryman across the street with one horse hitched to it. The horse was tied so the water from an eaves trough poured directly upon his back, and not liking that, he stepped forward, which brought the powerful stream straight to the wagon.
Unfortunately for the owner, the wagon had been piled high with all sorts of packages, both large and small, and all in paper or paper bags. One by one these were swept out, and as the volume of water increased in force and the paper became wet and easily torn, their contents went in every direction. Down in the bottom was a large bag of beans, and when the pipe water reached this, there was a white spray resembling a geyser. Not one thing was left in that wagon—even sacks of potatoes and grain were washed out! It is a wonder that the poor horse took it all as patiently as he did.
During all this time we had not even heard from our friends next door; after a while, however, we got together, but it was impossible to return to the hotel for a long time, because of the great depth of water in the street. Mrs. Pierce, whose house is on the opposite side of the ravine, could not get to her home until just before dark, after a temporary bridge had been built across the still high stream. Not one bridge was left across the creek, and they say that nothing has been left at Chinatown—that it was washed clean. Perhaps there is nothing to be regretted in this, however, except that any amount of dirt has been piled up right in the heart of Helena. The millionaire residents seem to think that the great altitude and dry atmosphere will prevent any ill effects of decaying debris.
We went to the assay building the other day to see a brick of gold taken from the furnace. The mold was run out on its little track soon after we got there, and I never dreamed of what "white heat" really means, until I saw the oven of that awful furnace. We had to stand far across the room while the door was open, and even then the hot air that shot out seemed blasting. The men at the furnace were protected, of course. The brick mold was in another mold that after a while was put in cold water, so we had to wait for first the large and then the small to be opened before we saw the beautiful yellow brick that was still very hot, but we were assured that it was then too hard to be in danger of injury. It was of the largest size, and shaped precisely like an ordinary building brick, and its value was great. It was to be shipped on the stage the next morning on its way to the treasury in Washington.