About ten o'clock, we bade these fearless and generous fellows a farewell as hearty and honest as any that was ever uttered; wishing them a long and happy life in their mountain home; and they bade us a pleasant and prosperous journey. We took up our march again down Little Bear River for Brown's Hole. It was six or eight "camps," or days' travel, ahead of us; the way infested with hostile Indians—destitute of game and grass; a horrid journey! We might escape the Sioux; we might kill one of our horses, and so escape death by starvation! But these few chances of saving our lives were enough. Dangers of {295} the kind were not so appalling to us then as they would have been when leaving the frontier. We had been sixty odd days among the fresh trails of hostile tribes, in hourly expectation of hearing the war-whoop raised around us; and certain that if attacked by a war party of the ordinary number, we should be destroyed. We had, however, crept upon every height which we had crossed with so much caution, and examined the plains below with so much care, and when danger appeared near, wound our way among the timber and heights till we had passed it with so much success, that our sense of danger was blunted to that degree, and our confidence in our ability to avoid it so great, that I verily believe we thought as little of Indians as we did of the lizards along our track.
We still clung to the stream. It was generally about fifty yards wide, a rapid current, six inches deep, rushing over a bed of loose rocks and gravel, and falling at the rate of about two hundred feet to the mile. During the day, a grisly bear and three cubs and an elk showed themselves. One of the men gave chase to the bears, with the intention of killing one of them for food; but they eluded his pursuit by running into brush, through which a horse {296} could not penetrate with sufficient speed to overtake them. The man in pursuit, however, found a charming prize among the brush; a mule—an excellent pack mule, which would doubtless be worth to him at Brown's Hole £20. It was feeding quietly, and so tame as to permit him to approach within ten yards, without even raising its head over the hazel bushes that partly concealed it. A double prize it was, and so accidental; obtained at so little expense; ten minutes time only—two pounds a minute! But alas for the £20! He was preparing to grasp it, and the mule most suddenly—most wonderfully—most cruelly metamorphosed itself into an elk! fat as marrow itself, and sufficient in weight to have fed our company for twelve days. It fled away, before our "maid and her milk pail companion" could shake his astonished locks, and send a little lead after it, by way of entreaty, to supply us starving wretches with a morsel of meat.
After this incident had imparted its comfort to our disappointed appetites, we passed on, over, around, in, and among deep ravines, and parched, sterile, and flinty plains for the remainder of our ten miles' march, and encamped on the bank of the river. The last of our meat was here cooked and {297} eaten. A sad prospect! No game ahead, no provisions in possession. We caught three or four small trout from the river, for breakfast, and slept.
I had now become much debilitated by want of food and the fatigues of the journey. I had appropriated my saddle horse to bear the packs that had been borne by Kelly's before its death; and had, consequently, been on foot ever since that event, save when my guide could relieve me with the use of his saddle beast. But as our Spanish servant, the owner and myself, had only his horse's services to bear us along, the portion to each was far from satisfying to our exceeding weariness. Blair and Wood also, had had only one horse from El Puebla. We were, therefore, in an ill condition to endure a journey of seven days, over a thirsty country, under a burning sun, and without food.
FOOTNOTES:
[132] This was the upper stretch of Blue River. Rising in the continental divide, it flows in three branches which unite at Dillon, Summit County, thence continuing in a north-westerly course, into Grand River, on the south-western border of Middle Park.—Ed.
[133] The present Holy Cross Mountain is a high peak (14,176 feet) north-west of Leadville and forming the end of the great Sawatch range. Its cross is formed by longitudinal and transverse chasms generally filled with snow. The mountain described by Farnham was on the eastern slopes of the Blue range, in Summit County.—Ed.
[134] Farnham was travelling through one of the richest mineral districts in Colorado. Gold was discovered on the upper tributaries of the Blue—the Snake, Swan, and Ten Mile creeks—as early as 1859. Silver and carbonates were later found in the vicinity of Breckenridge. The entire region is rich in minerals, and there is also considerable arable land in Blue River valley.—Ed.
[135] These were the Williams River Mountains that bound Blue River valley on the north-east, separating it from Williams Fork, a parallel tributary of Grand River.—Ed.
[136] "Old Park" is that now known as Middle Park—a broad valley fifty by seventy miles, the source of Grand River, and now embraced in Grand County, Colorado. Its name "Old Park" is said to have arisen from the fact that after being persistently worked by hunters the game was driven into North Park, which was then termed "New Park," whereupon Middle became "Old Park." See Chittenden, Fur-Trade, ii, p. 750.—Ed.