It Was A Military Post, But At Present
Consists Of A Few Frame Houses Put Down Recently On The Bare And
Burning Plain.
The settlers have "great expectations," but of
what?
The Mountains look hardly nearer than from Greeley; one
only realizes their vicinity by the loss of their higher peaks.
This house is freer from bugs than the one at Greeley, but full
of flies. These new settlements are altogether revolting,
entirely utilitarian, given up to talk of dollars as well as to
making them, with coarse speech, coarse food, coarse everything,
nothing wherewith to satisfy the higher cravings if they exist,
nothing on which the eye can rest with pleasure. The lower floor
of this inn swarms with locusts in addition to thousands of black
flies. The latter cover the ground and rise buzzing from it as
you walk.
I. L. B.
Letter IV
A plague of flies - A melancholy charioteer - The Foot Hills - A
mountain boarding-house - A dull life - "Being agreeable" - Climate
of Colorado - Soroche and snakes.
CANYON, September 12.
I was actually so dull and tired that I deliberately slept away
the afternoon in order to forget the heat and flies. Thirty men
in working clothes, silent and sad looking, came in to supper.
The beef was tough and greasy, the butter had turned to oil, and
beef and butter were black with living, drowned, and half-drowned
flies. The greasy table-cloth was black also with flies, and I
did not wonder that the guests looked melancholy and quickly
escaped. I failed to get a horse, but was strongly recommended
to come here and board with a settler, who, they said, had a
saw-mill and took boarders. The person who recommended it so
strongly gave me a note of introduction, and told me that it was
in a grand part of the mountains, where many people had been
camping out all the summer for the benefit of their health. The
idea of a boarding-house, as I know them in America, was rather
formidable in the present state of my wardrobe, and I decided on
bringing my carpet-bag, as well as my pack, lest I should be
rejected for my bad clothes.
Early the next morning I left in a buggy drawn by light broncos
and driven by a profoundly melancholy young man. He had never
been to the canyon; there was no road. We met nobody, saw
nothing except antelope in the distance, and he became more
melancholy and lost his way, driving hither and thither for
about twenty miles till we came upon an old trail which
eventually brought us to a fertile "bottom," where hay and barley
were being harvested, and five or six frame houses looked
cheerful. I had been recommended to two of these, which
professed to take in strangers, but one was full of reapers, and
in the other a child was dead. So I took the buggy on, glad to
leave the glaring, prosaic settlement behind. There was a most
curious loneliness about the journey up to that time. Except for
the huge barrier to the right, the boundless prairies were
everywhere, and it was like being at sea without a compass. The
wheels made neither sound nor indentation as we drove over the
short, dry grass, and there was no cheerful clatter of horses'
hoofs. The sky was cloudy and the air hot and still. In one
place we passed the carcass of a mule, and a number of vultures
soared up from it, to descend again immediately. Skeletons and
bones of animals were often to be seen. A range of low, grassy
hills, called the Foot Hills, rose from the plain, featureless
and monotonous, except where streams, fed by the snows of the
higher regions, had cut their way through them. Confessedly
bewildered, and more melancholy than ever, the driver turned up
one of the wildest of these entrances, and in another hour the
Foot Hills lay between us and the prairie sea, and a higher and
broken range, with pitch pines of average size, was revealed
behind them. These Foot Hills, which swell up uninterestingly
from the plains on their eastern side, on their western have the
appearance of having broken off from the next range, and the
break is abrupt, and takes the form of walls and terraces of rock
of the most brilliant color, weathered and stained by ores, and,
even under the grey sky, dazzling to the eyes. The driver
thought he had understood the directions given, but he was
stupid, and once we lost some miles by arriving at a river too
rough and deep to be forded, and again we were brought up by an
impassable canyon. He grew frightened about his horses, and said
no money would ever tempt him into the mountains again; but
average intelligence would have made it all easy.
The solitude was becoming somber, when, after driving for nine
hours, and traveling at the least forty-five miles, without any
sign of fatigue on the part of the broncos, we came to a stream,
by the side of which we drove along a definite track, till we
came to a sort of tripartite valley, with a majestic crooked
canyon 2,000 feet deep opening upon it. A rushing stream roared
through it, and the Rocky Mountains, with pines scattered over
them, came down upon it. A little farther, and the canyon became
utterly inaccessible. This was exciting; here was an inner
world. A rough and shaky bridge, made of the outsides of pines
laid upon some unsecured logs, crossed the river. The broncos
stopped and smelt it, not liking it, but some encouraging speech
induced them to go over. On the other side was a log cabin,
partially ruinous, and the very rudest I ever saw, its roof of
plastered mud being broken into large holes. It stood close to
the water among some cotton-wood trees. A little higher there
was a very primitive saw-mill, also out of repair, with some logs
lying about.
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