Next day we were off for Leadville in good season. My animals seemed to be in fine traveling form; by sunset we arrived in South Park. It was Saturday. There we enjoyed the hospitality of a deserted, floorless cabin, where, sheltered from the wind, we could eat without swallowing an inordinate amount of sand. Close by was a fine spring, so we resolved to remain until Sunday afternoon. We were awakened at dawn by a bevy of magpies perched on the tent; Coonskin was so annoyed that he crept to the door and shot the chief disturber, in spite of the bad luck promised him by a popular legend.
South Park is one of three great preserves in Colorado. There once roamed buffalo, deer, elk, antelope and wolves, while on the mountains bordering the valley were quantities of mountain sheep. A few deer, sheep and bear are said to be still found in that section. Coyotes are heard nightly, and the evening we trailed out of the Park a traveler with a prairie schooner said he had seen two gray wolves.
Our afternoon trip through the Park was a painful one. Mosquitoes attacked us from every quarter, and it was mosquito netting, pennyroyal and kerosene alone that saved our lives. When we consider that Mosquito Pass, the highest pass of the Rockies, 13,700 feet, was named after a mosquito we may derive some idea of the size of the insect.
It was late in the night, when, after brief stops at two sheep ranches run by Mexicans, and another at a small settlement, we entered the canyon. It required two days of hard climbing to cross Western Pass. The snow-capped peaks of the range looked grand and beautiful, and the noisy streams in the canyons leading from the summit on both sides were stocked with trout.
The morning we trailed out of the canyon into the Arkansas Valley was clear and lovely. After traveling some distance up the valley, the smoke of the Leadville smelters burst into view, and a mile beyond the city itself could be seen nestling against the towering mountains.
This famous mining camp gave us royal welcome. The report in the papers that Pye Pod would lecture that evening drew an enthusiastic throng, applauding and crowding closely about the donkeys, all eager for the chromos that Coonskin sold while I talked.
Next morning we crossed the valley and pitched camp on the banks of Twin Lake, two lovely sheets of water at the mouth of the canyon leading to Independence Pass.
This pass is one of the loftiest of the Continental Divide—that snowy range from which the rivers of Western America flow east or west through undisputed domains. Trailing up, the ascent gradually became very precipitous and the trail a severe trial. Over this pass, climbed the overland stages and freighting wagons with their four and eight-horse teams. It was, in ante-railroad days, a popular route, and the now deserted cabins of Independence once composed a lively mining camp. Although the trail was kept in good order, yet wagons and teams frequently toppled over the narrow trail, and mules, horses and passengers met their death on the rocks below.
We men walked to relieve our animals and arrived at the summit at sundown. Looking backward, for six or seven miles the view surpassed in grandeur any scene of the kind I had ever viewed. The stream appeared to be spun from liquid fleece from the mountain sides, and tumbled and foamed over the rocks and fallen trees in its bed until it looked like a strand of wool in a hundred snarls.
While resting, a heavy snow squall descended, and drove us on across the pass into the western canyon for shelter. This canyon surpassed in grandeur and size the other. Knowing our sure-footed steeds would keep the trail much better than we, Coonskin and I got in the saddle, but more than once I nearly went over Mac's head.