Some miles after leaving Kerber's, we began to ascend the mountain, but the ascent was so gradual you scarcely noticed it. There was no well-defined road any where—only an old Indian trail for saddle and pack animals, along which only a few wagons had ever passed before. We continued to ascend until dusk, hoping to reach and cross the summit before going into camp; but after sunset, the trail became so faint and our animals so leg-weary, we were compelled to halt at the first wood and water we came to. This we did on the bank of a beautiful stream, that washed the base of a high bluff or rather "butte," and rushed thence via Homan's Park to the Rio Grande. Several of us had rode on ahead on horseback, but the teams did not get up until after dark. Meanwhile, we had gathered wood, and built a roaring fire; and when the rest arrived, we soon had camp pitched, and the coffee boiling. We had shot some ducks on the Rio Grande, and brought along some excellent beef-steaks; and these H. and L. now broiled before the fire, on sharpened sticks, in a style the Parker House could hardly have beaten. We found excellent grass here, although so far up the Pass, and our poor tired animals cropped it eagerly. The moon was at the full that night, and the sky cloudless; but before morning the air grew bitter cold. We shivered through the night, in spite of our blankets and buffalo-robes; and the next morning at breakfast, the ice formed in our tin-cups between the intervals of eating and drinking. We were camped, in fact, on the summit of the Rocky Mountains, at a height of nine or ten thousand feet above the sea, with snow-peaks all about us, and the only wonder is that we got through the night so well. For the first time since leaving Denver, we felt a sense of loneliness and danger; and the occasional yelping of the wolves around us, in the still midnight air, did little to allay this. Our animals, also, seemed fretful and uneasy, and we suspected Indians about, but nothing came of it. We looked well to our arms before retiring, and talked much of the night away—it was so cold; and the next morning broke camp early, and were off up the Pass again.
A half an hour's ride or so brought us to the summit, which surprised us, as the ascent had been so gentle all the way up from Kerber's—far less than that of Sangre del Christo from Fort Garland. The view from the summit we found limited, compared with that from Sangre del Christo; and soon after we descended into a sheltered nook knee deep in grass, with wood and water both just at hand, where we had been advised to camp the night before, if able to reach it. Following the banks of a diminutive brook, we descended gradually to Poncho Creek; and here our really bad road began. So far, the Pass had been excellent, all things considered, and we were astonished at its bad reputation; but after we crossed Poncho Creek, and got started down its wild cañon, we soon found ample cause for it all. A narrow defile, with precipitous banks on either side from five hundred to a thousand feet high, furnished the only road-way, which here found room first on one side of the creek and then on the other, the best it could, and in many places it had to take to the bed of the creek itself, in order to round the rocky bluffs. The trouble with the Pass was, it had had no work done on it, and needed grading badly at several points. A few hundred dollars judiciously expended would have made it much superior to Sangre del Christo, we all thought. It is not so high by a thousand feet or more, nor nearly so steep, and we judged it would yet become one of the favorite routes to and from San Luis Park.
While the teams were working through, L. and I passed on ahead, with our rifles at our saddle-bows, hoping to start a bear or shoot a buck-tail deer, but saw no game of any kind. Our experience among the mountains on this trip, indeed, was unfavorable to the stirring accounts we had heard and read of great game there. The lack of trees there, except in the cañons, and especially of nut-bearing trees, and likewise of fruit-bearing bushes, must be unfavorable to animal life, as a rule, and I doubt if there ever was much there, except an occasional deer or bear, eagle or buzzard. We were surprised to find so few birds, and scarcely any squirrels, except a little red species no bigger than our ground-squirrels east. We met two of Kerber's teams toiling wearily up the Pass, as we descended it, and gave them the first news they had had from the ranch in weeks. We got several miles ahead, before we knew it, and did not halt until we reached the foot of the Pass, where it debouches into the valley of the Little Arkansas. It was an hour or more before the ambulances overtook us, and then we received a rough account of their experiences. In several places, they had had to lash ropes around them and edge them along the hillsides the best they could. In others, they would have upset repeatedly, but managed by walking and pushing to keep them on their wheels, and finally got through safe and sound. The wagon, however, being heavier and clumsier, had capsized badly, and they had driven ahead and left it, with instructions to follow on as soon as possible. Crossing the valley of the little Arkansas and a high range beyond, late in the afternoon we descended into the valley of the Arkansas proper, and at sunset went into camp on its banks, near Schwander's ranch. The Arkansas, we found, was here already a very considerable stream, but we forded it without difficulty. Our unfortunate wagon, perhaps it should be added, got along after dark, much the worse for wear; and jaded and weary with the day's journey, we were glad to pass a quiet night of it.
The next morning we crossed another lofty range, the ascent of which was wild and picturesque, and thence descended into South Park. Less in size than the San Luis, and more broken in surface, the South Park nevertheless has the same general characteristics, though more nearly circular. Its enclosing mountains are abrupt and bold, and the views from many points are very striking and charming. Passing out of it to Denver, we ascended the range from which Leutze is said to have conceived his well-known painting in the Capitol at Washington, "Westward the star of Empire takes its way." The facts are little like the painting aforesaid, because no emigrant train would ever attempt to pass over such an impossible road, as Leutze has painted: but the landscape from the point referred to is nevertheless noble and grand. The range there, I believe, is about eight thousand feet above the sea. South Park, at your feet, extends say, thirty miles north and south, by twenty east and west; down in its bosom nestles a necklace of exquisite little lakes, with streams flashing onward from the mountains to them; while beyond—all along the west, in fact—runs the perpetual Snowy Range, notched and peaked, clear cut and beautiful against the sky, though not so grand and stately as we had seen it farther south. To the north of the road the range shoots up nearly a thousand feet higher, but the view from there did not compensate us for our toil in ascending it. The whole view here, though fine in its way, lacks breadth and sublimity, as a specimen of Rocky Mountain scenery, and Leutze would have done better (in my judgment) had he gone to Sangre del Christo or perhaps Poncho Pass. The sky and general coloring of his painting are good; but how inadequately, how feebly they express the exquisite serenity and unapproachable glory of the Mountains! Bierstadt's skies, though thought impossible east, are nearer to the truth, as our critics will yet learn, when they come to know more of Colorado.
TWIN LAKES (South Park).
In South Park, we had struck a new civilization, the evidences of which grew constantly more apparent. The Mexican and the herder had given way to the Yankee and the miner, and the contrast was most striking. Ranches and settlements were more numerous, and the spirit of enterprise was everywhere observable. First we struck some saline springs, where extensive salt-works had already been erected, and they were reported to be paying well. They were said to furnish a superior article of salt, at a less price than it could be imported from the east, and the company expected thus to monopolize the salt-market of Colorado and the adjoining regions. Beyond these, ranches thickened up all the way to Fair Play, and we found some splendid duck-shooting in the marshes, that now and then skirted the road. Some of the flocks, however, carried off an immense amount of lead, or else H. and L. were indifferent shots—we were never quite able to decide which. They were our champion sportsmen, and though they bagged a number of fine ducks en route, they never were entirely satisfied. They both fired simultaneously at a great flock that rose up as we drove by, and when none dropped H. protested, "I know I hit a dozen that time, but these confounded Rocky Mountain ducks don't know what shot is. They fly away with enough honest lead in them to kill an ordinary eastern duck twice over." L. of course, confirmed this, and adduced the abundant feathers as proof of their joint achievement. B. suggested that the Indians had charmed their fowling-pieces, and meekly inquired of H., "Didn't the ducks carry off your shot-pouch also?" At Fair Play, in the northwest corner of the Park, we found a mining town of four or five hundred inhabitants, apparently busy and prosperous. Timber grew plentifully in the neighboring cañons, and now adobe huts gave place to frame and log shanties. The South Platte skirts the town, and is already a considerable stream here, although it cannot be far away from its source. At Fair Play it heads north up into the great Snowy Range, or water shed of the continent, which feeds it perpetually, and runs thence east to join the North Platte near Fort McPherson, where we had struck it by stage-coach a month before. Good "gold diggings" had been found here long before, and its entire banks about Fair Play have been dug over, "panned out," and ransacked generally. They presented a torn and ragged appearance, as if a young earthquake or two had recently broken out there, and this was not materially improved by the long and high flumes then going up. When these were completed, they expected to turn the Platte considerably aside, and to find rich "placer mines" in its sand-bars and bed again. The principal mining then in South Park, however, was farther up the Platte, at Empire, Buckskin Joe, and other euphoniously named places, none of which had we time to visit. The business generally seemed to be settling down to quartz-mining, as at Black-Hawk and Central City, and to be passing more and more into the hands of Companies. We met several huge boilers on the road, en route to various mills, and it seemed marvellous how they could ever wagon them so far across the Plains, and up into the very heart of the Mountains. Progress with them must have been slow and tedious anywhere; but when they struck a slough, or reached the mountain ranges, then came the whacks and oaths.
Judge Costello, of the Fair Play House, entertained us while there, and gave us excellent accommodations. There had been several inches of snow at Fair Play a few days before, and arriving just at nightfall after a long day's drive, we felt the cold very keenly. But the Judge soon had a roaring fire blazing on his hearth, and welcomed us to Fair Play right royally. In due time he gave us a substantial dinner, piping hot—roast-beef, chicken-fricasee, potatoes with their jackets on, dried-apple-pie and coffee—a meal that seemed supremely Sybaritic, after "roughing it" by the roadside for over a fortnight. We did ample justice to it, having breakfasted nearly twelve hours before, and then adjourned to a common bed-room, where we smoked and read the papers until midnight. We had seen none since leaving Denver, nearly a month before; but Judge C. happened to have just received a large supply, which we devoured eagerly. The elections in California and Oregon had just been held, and the North was again rocking with enthusiasm. Andrew Johnson's apostacy, it was clear, promised to be a losing game after all. The spirit of a few people at last was aroused, as after the firing on Sumter, and evidently the nation meant again neither to be bribed nor scared. True, the November elections were yet to come; but we took increased faith in the virtue and intelligence of the masses, and rejoiced that Congress was still true to Liberty. Absence from "the states" is a great purifier of one's political ideas. We see things at home clearer, and reverence the Union more, the farther we get away from New York and Washington. We forgot all the wretched hair-splitting east, by one side or the other; and came to love only the old flag, in its highest and best significance, as the symbol of freedom and justice, for each and for all men, the broad continent across and the wide world over.