There are great tracts where fire has killed part or all of the timber but left much of it standing, while in other places nature has defied the power of fire and the hills are re-clothed with young trees. A recent storm had further beautified the region with a few inches of snow, but as the day advanced a chinook began to blow so that when Deadwood was reached, soon after noon, only the northern exposures retained an appearance of winter.
Deadwood is a most peculiar little city and very attractive in its peculiarity, being crowded snugly into a depression between a number of steep pine-wooded hills, which gives an appearance suggestive of a bird's nest securely located among the forks of a branching tree, and as is the case in a nest, business is chiefly transacted at the lowest depth of the enclosure. As the busy center of a great gold-mining region, the metropolis of the Hills, and the outgrowth of an exciting historical past, it claims and receives interesting attention. And while the whole Black Hills region is still distinctly a man's country, it is called woman's paradise, and surely nowhere else are the daughters of Eve received with a more gracious courtesy or surrounded by an equally unobtrusive protecting care.
Approaching Deadwood. [Page 176.]
The streets leading up to the residences lack very little of standing on end, and the houses appear to have been hung in place by means of hooks and wire cord like pictures on a wall. The smelter has no reception day but admits visitors as if their pleasure were a guarantee of profit.
The finest scenery in the Hills is said to be that of the Spearfish Cañon, north of Deadwood, and the finest of that at the Falls, but this may be doubtful as other points are very beautiful, especially where the Burlington & Missouri Road requires a distance of seven miles to climb the cañon wall.
Piedmont being the nearest town to Crystal Cave, we took the early evening train on the Elk Horn Road and soon were located, and shocked to learn that the proprietor of the cave had started several days before to drive to Wind Cave for specimens. The cave was closed and no one there. The trip had been taken for the one purpose of exploring Crystal Cave, and a letter sent in advance to announce our coming, but the train carrying it was an hour late so he drove off without the mail.
There seemed at first nothing to be done but take the next returning train, which, under the circumstances, was objectionable. A night's rest and a telegram that had to be sent twelve miles by special messenger, improved the situation. The proprietor was unavoidably detained at Wind Cave, but secured a reliable guide, expressed me the cave keys, and has since married the "specimen" he had gone in quest of. May great happiness dwell at the cave many years!
The morning of the third day after our arrival found arrangements all complete, and soon after the train left Piedmont it entered Elk Creek Cañon, which is always beautiful, but on that morning was exceptionally so on account of a sudden change in the weather having covered every visible portion of the passing landscape with heavy frost. The trees on distant hills that ordinarily are black, were, for once, all softly white, and when the tall pines in the cañon were shaken by a breeze, they cast a shower of flakes like snow.
Here the cañon walls are in Carboniferous Limestone with a pleasing variety of color in the strata, and the erosion-carving not overdone, the most notable piece being the Knife-blade. This, at first view, appears to be a high, round tower, but the train following the curve, reveals the fact that it is not a tower, but a thin, curved knife-blade. The sun just for one instant shone through a rift in the clouds, and added special charm to the scene.