THE GREAT WESTWARD FLOOD OF EMIGRATION—CROSSING THE PLATTE RIVER IN 1868 (from a painting).
The timber was now below us, and our horses picked their way over an indistinct trail through patches of snow. Occasionally, there were suspicious places, where the snow was deeply impacted, which might conceal a treacherous way, a chasm bridged with nothing more substantial than cakes of ice. Yet, on this lonesome mountain, chilled by perpetually arctic winds, swathed by eternal snows, and covered by giant bowlders that menaced everything by their apparent instability, there was no scarcity of animal life. The mountain rat, chipmunk, woodchuck, Rocky Mountain sheep and a few lions make this uninviting region their haunt, while ptarmigan, or mountain grouse, are fairly plentiful. One enthusiastic photographer who climbed Hallett some years before, claimed to have found a herd of mountain sheep so tame that he was able to take their pictures, but none of us had such good fortune.
FREMONT’S PASS, NORTH PARK.
At one point of the elevation we had an enrapturing view of Middle Park and Grand Lake, whose waters looked like a vast sea of quicksilver, on which the sunlight danced in a glorious reflection. North Park might have been also visible from this same lofty point of observation but for the intervention of Mummy Mountain, the monumental mark of Medicine Bow range, far to the northwest, too distant for our cameras to reproduce the view with satisfaction.
Our visits to Table Mountain and Mount Hallett had proven so delightful that our previously contemplated trip to Middle Park was now undertaken with the most pleasant anticipations. Returning to Longmont, we proceeded over the Union Pacific to Sunset, an arm of the road that stretches out into the Front range until it fairly grasps the beautiful scenery of that marvelously grand region. Georgetown would have been a more convenient point of departure for Midland Park, but we chose to avoid staging, and by means of pack animals to reach the park by the quickest, even though it was a more troublesome, route. Middle Park is separated from North Park by an east and west sweep of the great Continental Divide, and like its northern sister is completely encircled by lofty mountains, whose sentinels are Long’s Peak, Gray’s Peak and Mount Lincoln, with elevations above sea level of respectively 14,500, 14,200 and 14,300 feet. The elevation of the park itself is about 7,500 feet, and its area some 3,000 square miles, or about one-third less than the State of Connecticut. It is drained principally by the Blue and Grand Rivers, whose waters flow generally through smiling meadows until they escape from the park. We traveled by horse through Berthoud Pass to Hot Sulphur Springs, which is on a small tributary of Grand River, and only about twelve miles from the south boundary of the park. From this point we went to Grand Lake, the beautiful body of water that we had seen from the heights of Mount Hallett. If the scene was grand when viewed from that distant elevation, it was sublimely picturesque when we reached its shores. The western shore line of the lake washes the vertical base of towering mountains, which enclose it on three sides, and throw their giant shadows into its pellucid depths, where reflections of brown peaks mingle with the beautiful green of tall tufted pines. Its bed appears to be a glacier basin, for all about are cliffs that bear distinct marks of an ice deluge that thousands of years ago, perhaps, invaded this retreat of nature and tore asunder the earth, ground its way through stone, scoured the face of the mountains, and scooped a depression in the plain.