There Is A Rushing Torrent In A Valley, With
Mountains, Covered With Snow And Rising To A Height Of Nearly
15,000 Feet, Overhanging It.
It is grand and awful, and has a
strange, solemn beauty like death.
And the Snowy Mountains are
pierced by the torrent which has excavated the Ute Pass, by
which, to-morrow, I hope to go into the higher regions. But all
may be "lost for want of a horseshoe nail." One of Birdie's
shoes is loose, and not a nail is to be got here, or can be got
till I have ridden for ten miles up the Pass. Birdie amuses
every one with her funny ways. She always follows me closely,
and to-day got quite into a house and pushed the parlor door
open. She walks after me with her head laid on my shoulder,
licking my face and teasing me for sugar, and sometimes, when any
one else takes hold of her, she rears and kicks, and the vicious
bronco soul comes into her eyes. Her face is cunning and pretty,
and she makes a funny, blarneying noise when I go up to her. The
men at all the stables make a fuss with her, and call her "Pet."
She gallops up and down hill, and never stumbles even on the
roughest ground, or requires even a touch with a whip.
The weather is again perfect, with a cloudless sky and a hot sun,
and the snow is all off the plains and lower valleys. After
lunch, the - - -s in a buggy, and I on Birdie, left Colorado
Springs, crossing the Mesa, a high hill with a table top, with a
view of extraordinary laminated rocks, LEAVES of rock a bright
vermilion color, against a background of snowy mountains,
surmounted by Pike's Peak. Then we plunged into cavernous Glen
Eyrie, with its fantastic needles of colored rock, and were
entertained at General Palmer's "baronial mansion," a perfect
eyrie, the fine hall filled with buffalo, elk, and deer heads,
skins of wild animals, stuffed birds, bear robes, and numerous
Indian and other weapons and trophies. Then through a gate of
huge red rocks, we passed into the valley, called fantastically,
Garden of the Gods, in which, were I a divinity, I certainly
would not choose to dwell. Many places in this neighborhood are
also vulgarized by grotesque names. From this we passed into a
ravine, down which the Fountain River rushed, and there I left my
friends with regret, and rode into this chill and solemn gorge,
from which the mountains, reddening in the sunset, are only seen
afar off. I put Birdie up at a stable, and as there was no place
to put myself up but this huge hotel, I came here to have a last
taste of luxury. They charge six dollars a day in the season,
but it is now half-price; and instead of four hundred fashionable
guests there are only fifteen, most of whom are speaking in the
weak, rapid accents of consumption, and are coughing their hearts
out. There are seven medicinal springs. It is strange to have
the luxuries of life in my room. It will be only the fourth
night in Colorado that I have slept on anything better than hay
or straw. I am glad that there are so few inns. As it is, I get
a good deal of insight into the homes and modes of living of the
settlers.
BERGENS PARK, October 31.
This cabin was so dark, and I so sleepy last night, that I could
not write; but the frost during the night has been very severe,
and I am detained until the bright, hot sun melts the ice and
renders traveling safe. I left the great Manitou at ten
yesterday. Birdie, who was loose in the stable, came trotting
down the middle of it when she saw me for her sugar and biscuits.
No nails could be got, and her shoe was hanging by two, which
doomed me to a foot's pace and the dismal clink of a loose shoe
for three hours. There was not a cloud on the bright blue sky
the whole day, and though it froze hard in the shade, it was
summer heat in the sun. The mineral fountains were sparkling in
their basins and sending up their full perennial jets but the
snow-clad, pine-skirted mountains frowned and darkened over the
Ute Pass as I entered it to ascend it for twenty miles. A narrow
pass it is, with barely room for the torrent and the wagon road
which has been blasted out of its steep sides. All the time I
was in sight of the Fountain River, brighter than any stream,
because it tumbles over rose-red granite, rocky or disintegrated,
a truly fair stream, cutting and forcing its way through hard
rocks, under arches of alabaster ice, through fringes of
crystalline ice, thumping with a hollow sound in cavernous
recesses cold and dark, or leaping in foam from heights with rush
and swish; always bright and riotous, never pausing in still
pools to rest, dashing through gates of rock, pine hung, pine
bridged, pine buried; twinkling and laughing in the sunshine,
or frowning in "dowie dens" in the blue pine gloom. And there,
for a mile or two in a sheltered spot, owing to the more southern
latitude, the everlasting northern pine met the trees of other
climates. There were dwarf oaks, willows, hazel, and spruce; the
white cedar and the trailing juniper jostled each other for a
precarious foothold; the majestic redwood tree of the Pacific met
the exquisite balsam pine of the Atlantic slopes, and among them
all the pale gold foliage of the large aspen trembled (as the
legend goes) in endless remorse. And above them towered the
toothy peaks of the glittering mountains, rising in pure white
against the sunny blue. Grand! glorious! sublime! but not
lovable. I would give all for the luxurious redundance of one
Hilo gulch, or for one day of those soft dreamy "skies whose
very tears are balm."
Bergens Park
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