Nelly's Silver Mine: A Story of Colorado Life

by Helen Hunt Jackson

The rest of the pictures were of some of the towns in Colorado, some ranches,—ranches is the word which the Coloradoans use instead of farm,—and some beautiful canyons. A canyon is either a narrow valley with very high steep sides to it, or a chasm between two rocky walls. The most beautiful and wonderful things in Colorado are the canyons; they all have streams of water running through them; in fact, the canyons may be said to be roads which rivers and creeks have made for themselves among the mountains. Sometimes the river has cut a road for itself right down through solid rock, twelve hundred feet deep. You can think how deep that must be, by looking at the walls of the room you are sitting in, as you read this story. Probably the walls of your room are about ten feet high. Now imagine walls of rock one hundred and twenty times as high as that; and only far enough apart for a small river to go through at the bottom; and then imagine beautiful great pine-trees, and many sorts of shrubs and flowers growing all the way down these sides, and along the upper edges of them, and don't you see what a wonderful place a canyon must be? You mustn't think either that they are just straight up and down walls, such as a mason might build out of bricks, or that they run straight in one direction for their whole length. They are made up often of great rocks as big as houses piled one on top of another, and all rough and full of points, and with big caves in them; and they turn and twist, just as the river has turned and twisted, to the north or south or east or west. Sometimes they take such sharp turns that, when you look ahead, all you can see is the big high wall right before you, and it looks as if you couldn't go any farther; but, when you go a few steps nearer, you will see that both the high walls bend off to the right or the left, and the river is still running between them, and you can go right on. One of the prettiest pictures which Mr. March's friend had sent him was of a canyon called Boulder Canyon. It is named after the town of Boulder, which is very near it. This is one of the most beautiful canyons in all Colorado. It is very narrow, for the creek which made it is a small creek; but the bed of the creek is full of great rocks, and the creek just goes tumbling head over heels, if a creek can be said to have head and heels. Ten miles long this canyon is, and the creek is in a white foam all the way. There is just room for the road by side of the creek; first one side and then the other. I think it crosses the creek as many as twenty-five times in the ten miles; and it is shaded all the way by beautiful trees, and flowers grow in every crevice of the rocks, and along the edge of the water. As Rob and Nelly looked at picture after picture of these beautiful places, they grew more and more excited. Rob could not keep still: he jumped down from his perch behind his mother's shoulder, and ran round to his father's knee. "Papa, papa! say you'll go? say you'll go?" and Nelly said in her quieter voice:—

"Oh papa! I didn't know there were such beautiful places in the world. Don't you think we'll go?"

Pretty soon it grew too dark to look at the pictures any longer, and Mrs. March sent the children downstairs to play in the dining-room by the fire-light.

After they had gone, she said to her husband: "Doesn't it make you more willing to go, Robert, to see how eager the children are for it?"

Mr. March sighed.

"I do not know, Sarah," he said. "Their feelings are very soon changed one way or the other. A little discomfort would soon make them unhappy. I have great fears about the rough life out there, both for them and for you."

"I wish you would not think so much about that," replied Mrs. March. "I am convinced that you exaggerate it. I am not in the least afraid; and as for the children they are so young they would soon grow accustomed to any thing. Of course there would be no danger of our not being able to have good plain food; and that is the only real necessity."

"But you seem to forget, Sarah, about schools. How are we to educate the children there?"

"Teach them ourselves, Robert," replied Mrs. March earnestly. "It will be better for them in every way. Such an out-door life as they will lead there is ten times better than all the schools in the world. Oh, Robert! if you can only be well and strong, we shall be perfectly happy. I am as eager to go as the children are."

Mrs. March had been from the beginning in favor of the move. In fact, except for her, Mr. March would never have thought of it. He was a patient and quiet man, and would have gone on bearing the suffering of his asthma till he died, without thinking of the possibility of escaping it by so great a change as the going to a new country to live. It was well for him that he had a wife of a different nature. Mrs. March had no patience with people who, as she said, would "put up with any thing, rather than take trouble." Mrs. March's way was never to "put up" with any thing which was wrong, unless she had tried every possible way of righting it. Then, when she was convinced that it couldn't be righted, she would make the best of it, and not grumble or be discontented. Which way do you think was the best?—Mr. March's or Mrs. March's? I think Mrs. March's was; and I think Rob and Nelly were very fortunate children to have a mother who taught them such a good doctrine of life. This is the way she would have put it, if she had been going to write it out in rules.