CHAPTER V
An Ascent—A Misfortune—A Death—The Mountain of the Holy Cross—Leaping Pines—Killing a Buffalo—Asses and Tyrants—Panther, &c.—Geography—Something about descending the Colorado of the West—Dividing Ridges—A Scene—Tumbleton's Park—A War Whoop—Meeting of Old Fellow Trappers—A Notable Tramp—My Mare—The etiquette of the Mountains—Kelly's Old Camp, &c.—A Great Heart—Little Bear River—Vegetables and Bitterness—Two White Men, a Squaw and Child—A Dead Shot—What is Tasteful—Trapping—Blackfoot and Sioux—A Bloody Incident—A Cave—Hot Spring—The Country—A Surprise—American and Canadian Trappers—The Grand River—Old Park—Death before us—The Mule—Despair.
The ascent to this height was not so laborious as the one near the Arkansas. It lay up the face of a mountain which formed a larger angle with the plane of the horizon than did the other. But it was clothed with a dense forest of pines, a species of double-leaved hemlock, and spruce and fir trees, which prevented our animals from {254} falling over the precipices, and enabled us to make long sweeps in a zigzag course, that much relieved the fatigue of the ascent. We however met here a misfortune of a more serious nature to us, than the storm that pelted us on the other ridge. One of the horses belonging to our guide sickened just before arriving at the summit, and refusing to bear farther the burthen which he had heretofore borne with ease and apparent pride, sunk under it. We roused him; he rose upon his legs, and made a willing attempt to do his duty; but the poor animal failed in his generous effort.
We, therefore, took off his pack, put it upon my saddle horse, and drove him before us to the summit, from whence we enjoyed the beautiful prospect we have just described. But we felt little interest in the expanse of sublimity before us; our eyes and sympathies, too, were turned to the noble animal which was now suffering great pain. He had been reared in the mountains; and it seemed to be his highest pleasure to tread along their giddy brinks. Every morning at his post, with the other horse belonging to his master, he would {255} stand without being fastened, and receive his burthen; and with every demonstration of willingness, bear it over the mountains and through torrents till his task was ended in the night encampment. Such a horse, in the desolate regions we were traversing, the bearer of our wearing apparel and food, the leader of our band of animals, the property of our kind old Kentuckian, the one-third of all his worldly estate, was no mean object of interest. After noticing him awhile, we perceived symptoms of his being poisoned, administered whatever medicine we possessed suited to the case, and left him to his fate for the night. Rain during the day, frost during the night; ice in our camp kettles an inch in thickness.
We were out early on the morning of the 25th, and found our guide's horse living. We accordingly saddled, packed and started down the valley of a small head stream of Grand River.[132] The sick horse was driven slowly along for about five miles when he refused to go farther. It now became evident that he had been eating the wild parsnips at our last encampment on the other side of the ridge. That he must die became, therefore, certain, and we unpacked {256} to see the breath from his body before he should be left to the merciless wolves. He died near daylight down, and as the path before us was rough and bushy, we determined to remain on the spot for the night. Our anxiety for the life of this excellent animal had well nigh led us to pass unobserved one of the most singular curiosities in nature—a cross of crystallized quartz in the eastern face of a conical mountain!
On the western side of the stream which we were following down, were a collection of butes or conical peaks clustered around one, the top of which was somewhat in the form of the gable end of an ancient church. This cluster was flanked on each side by vast rolls or swells of earth and rock, which rose so high as to be capped with snow. In the distance to the West, were seen through the openings between the butes, a number of spiral peaks that imagination could have said formed the western front of a vast holy edifice of the eternal hills. On the eastern face of the gable bute were two transverse seams of what appeared to be crystallized quartz. The upright was about sixty feet in length, the cross seam about twenty feet, thrown {257} athwart the upright near its top and lying parallel to the plane of the horizon. I viewed it as the sun rose over the eastern mountains and fell upon the glittering crystals of this emblem of the Saviour's suffering, built with the foundations and treasured in the bosom of these granite solitudes. A cross in a church, however fallen we may suppose it to be from the original purity of worship, excites, as it should, in the minds of all reasonable men, a sacred awe arising from the remembrance of the scene in Judea which spread darkness like the night over the earth and the sun. But how much more impressive was this cross of living rock—on the temple of nature where priest never trod; the symbol of redeeming love, engraven when Eden was unscathed with sin, by God's own hand on the brow of his everlasting mountains.
The trappers have reverently named this peak, the "Mountain of the Holy Cross."[133] It is about eight hundred feet in height above the level of the little brook, which runs a few rods from its base. The upper end of the cross is about one hundred feet below the summit. There are many dark {258} and stately groves of pine and balsam fir in the vicinity. About the brooks grow the black alder, the laurel, and honeysuckle, and a great variety of wild flowers adorn the crevices of the rocks. The virgin snows of ages whiten the lofty summits around; the voice of the low murmuring rivulets trembles in the sacred silence: "O solitude, thou art here," the lip moves to speak. "Pray, kneel, adore," one seems to hear softly breathed in every breeze. "It is holy ground."
26th. On march at six o'clock and travelled down the small stream which had accompanied us on the 24th and 25th. As we advanced, the valleys opened, and the trees, pine, fir, white oak, cotton wood, quaking-asp, &c., became larger and taller. The wild flowers and grass became more luxuriant. As we were on an Indian trail, our course was as nearly a right line as the eye of that race could trace among the lower hills. Hence we often left the stream and crossed the wood swells, not hills, not mountains; but vast swelling tracts of land that rise among these vales like half buried spheres, on which, frequently for miles about us, pine and fir trees of the largest {259} size had been prostrated by the winds. To leap our animals over these, and among them, and into them, and out of them, and still among them, floundering, tearing packs and riders—running against knots and tumbling upon splintery stubs and rocks, were among the amusements of getting through them. The groves of small quaking-asp too, having been killed by the elk, in some places had fallen across our track so thickly that it became necessary to raise the foot over one at almost every step.
Here my Puebla mare performed many a feat of "high and lofty tumbling." She could leap the large pines, one at a time, with satisfaction to herself, that was worthy of her blood. But to step, merely step, over one small tree and then over another, seemed to be too much condescension. Accordingly she took a firm unalterable stand upon her reserved rights, from which neither pulling nor whipping seemed likely to move her. At length she yielded, as great men sometimes do, her own opinion of constitutional duty to the will of the people, and leaped among them with a desperation that ought to have annihilated a square mile of such obstacles. But instead {260} thereof, she turned a somersault into about the same quantity of them, and there lay "alone in her glory," till she was tumbled out and set up again.
The valley, during the day's journey, had appeared five miles in width.[134] On its borders hung dark mountains of rock, some of which lying westward, were tipped with shining ice. Far beyond these appeared the Anahuac ridge. Snow in the south was yet in sight—none seen in the east north. The valley itself was much broken, with minor rocky declivities, bursting up between the "swells," and with fields of large loose stones laid bare by the torrents. The buffalo were seen grazing in small detached herds on the slopes of the mountains near the lower line of snow, those green fields of the skies. Many "elk signs," tracks, &c., were met; but none of these animals were seen. Our guide informed me that their habit is to "follow the snow." In other words, that as the snow in summer melts away from the lowlands, they follow its retiring banks into the mountains; and when it begins in autumn to descend again, they descend with it, and pass the winter in the valley. {261} He also accounted for the absence of the male deer in a similar way; and added that the does, when they bring forth their young, forsake their male companions until the kids are four or five months old; and this for the reason that the unnatural male is disposed to destroy his offspring during the period of its helplessness. Some rain fell to-day.