A Grey-Green Or Buff-Grey, With Outbreaks Of
Brilliantly-Colored Rock, Only Varied By The Black-Green Of
Pines, Which Are Not The Stately Pyramidal Pines Of The Sierra
Nevada, But Much Resemble The Natural Scotch Fir.
Not many miles
from us is North Park, a great tract of land said to be rich in
gold,
But those who have gone to "prospect" have seldom returned,
the region being the home of tribes of Indians who live in
perpetual hostility to the whites and to each other.
At this great height, and most artistically situated, we came
upon a rude log camp tenanted in winter by an elk hunter, but now
deserted. Chalmers without any scruple picked the padlock; we
lighted a fire, made some tea, and fried some bacon, and after
a good meal mounted again and started for Estes Park. For four
weary hours we searched hither and thither along every
indentation of the ground which might be supposed to slope
towards the Big Thompson River, which we knew had to be forded.
Still, as the quest grew more tedious, Long's Peak stood before
us as a landmark in purple glory; and still at his feet lay a
hollow filled with deep blue atmosphere, where I knew that Estes
Park must lie, and still between us and it lay never-lessening
miles of inaccessibility, and the sun was ever weltering, and the
shadows ever lengthening, and Chalmers, who had started
confident, bumptious, blatant, was ever becoming more bewildered,
and his wife's thin voice more piping and discontented, and my
stumbling horse more insecure, and I more determined (as I am at
this moment) that somehow or other I would reach that blue
hollow, and even stand on Long's Peak where the snow was
glittering. Affairs were becoming serious, and Chalmers's
incompetence a source of real peril, when, after an exploring
expedition, he returned more bumptious than ever, saying he knew
it would be all right, he had found a trail, and we could get
across the river by dark, and camp out for the night. So he led
us into a steep, deep, rough ravine, where we had to dismount,
for trees were lying across it everywhere, and there was almost
no footing on the great slabs of shelving rock. Yet there was a
trail, tolerably well worn, and the branches and twigs near the
ground were well broken back. Ah! it was a wild place. My horse
fell first, rolling over twice, and breaking off a part of the
saddle, in his second roll knocking me over a shelf of three feet
of descent. Then Mrs. C.'s horse and the mule fell on the top of
each other, and on recovering themselves bit each other savagely.
The ravine became a wild gulch, the dry bed of some awful
torrent; there were huge shelves of rock, great overhanging walls
of rock, great prostrate trees, cedar spikes and cacti to wound
the feet, and then a precipice fully 500 feet deep!
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