The Road Being Blasted Out Of The Red Rock Which Often
Overhung It, The Canyon Only From Fifteen To Twenty Feet Wide,
The Thunder Of The Fountain, Which Is Crossed Eight Times, Nearly
Deafening.
Sometimes the sun struck the road, and then it was
absolutely hot; then one entered unsunned gorges where the snow
lay deep, and the crowded pines made dark twilight, and the river
roared under ice bridges fringed by icicles.
At last the Pass
opened out upon a sunlit upland park, where there was a forge,
and with Birdie's shoe put on, and some shoe nails in my purse, I
rode on cheerfully, getting food for us both at a ranch belonging
to some very pleasant people, who, like all Western folk, when
they are not taciturn, asked a legion of questions. There I met
a Colonel Kittridge, who said that he believed his valley, twelve
miles off the track, to be the loveliest valley in Colorado, and
invited me to his house. Leaving the road, I went up a long
ascent deep in snow, but as it did not seem to be the way, I tied
up the pony, and walked on to a cabin at some distance, which I
had hardly reached when I found her trotting like a dog by my
side, pulling my sleeve and laying her soft gray nose on my
shoulder. Does it all mean sugar? We had eight miles farther to
go - most of the way through a forest, which I always dislike when
alone, from the fear of being frightened by something which may
appear from behind a tree. I saw a beautiful white fox, several
skunks, some chipmunks and gray squirrels, owls, crows, and
crested blue-jays. As the sun was getting low I reached Bergens
Park, which was to put me out of conceit with Estes Park. Never!
It is long and featureless, and its immediate surroundings are
mean. It reminded me in itself of some dismal Highland
strath - Glenshee, possibly. I looked at it with special
interest, as it was the place at which Miss Kingsley had
suggested that I might remain. The evening was glorious, and the
distant views were very fine. A stream fringed with cotton-wood
runs through the park; low ranges come down upon it. The south
end is completely closed up, but at a considerable distance, by
the great mass of Pike's Peak, while far beyond the other end are
peaks and towers, wonderful in blue and violet in the lovely
evening, and beyond these, sharply defined against the clear
green sky, was the serrated ridge of the Snowy Range, said to be
200 miles away. Bergens Park had been bought by Dr. Bell, of
London, but its present occupant is Mr. Thornton, an English
gentleman, who has a worthy married Englishman as his manager.
Mr. Thornton is building a good house, and purposes to build
other cabins, with the intention of making the park a resort for
strangers. I thought of the blue hollow lying solitary at the
foot of Long's Peak, and rejoiced that I had "happened into it."
The cabin is long, low, mud roofed, and very dark. The middle
place is full of raw meat, fowls, and gear. One end, almost
dark, contains the cooking-stove, milk, crockery, a long deal
table, two benches, and some wooden stools; the other end houses
the English manager or partner, his wife, and three children,
another cooking-stove, gear of all kinds, and sacks of beans and
flour. They put up a sheet for a partition, and made me a
shake-down on the gravel floor of this room. Ten hired men sat
down to meals with us. It was all very rough, dark, and
comfortless, but Mr. T., who is not only a gentleman by birth,
but an M.A. of Cambridge, seems to like it. Much in this way (a
little smoother if a lady is in the case) every man must begin
life here. Seven large dogs - three of them with cats upon their
backs - are usually warming themselves at the fire.
TWIN ROCK, SOUTH FORK OF THE PLATTE, November 1.
I did not leave Mr. Thornton's till ten, because of the
slipperiness. I rode four miles along a back trail, and then was
so tired that I stayed for two hours at a ranch, where I heard,
to my dismay, that I must ride twenty-four miles farther before I
could find any place to sleep at. I did not enjoy yesterday's
ride. I was both tired and rheumatic, and Birdie was not so
sprightly as usual. After starting again I came on a hideous
place, of which I had not heard before, Hayden's Divide, one of
the great back-bones of the region, a weary expanse of deep snow
eleven miles across, and fearfully lonely. I saw nothing the
whole way but a mule lately dead lying by the road. I was very
nervous somehow, and towards evening believed that I had lost the
road, for I came upon wild pine forests, with huge masses of rock
from 100 to 700 feet high, cast here and there among them; beyond
these pine-sprinkled grass hills; these, in their turn, were
bounded by interminable ranges, ghastly in the lurid evening,
with the Spanish Peaks quite clear, and the colossal summit of
Mount Lincoln, the King of the Rocky Mountains, distinctly
visible, though seventy miles away. It seemed awful to be alone
on that ghastly ridge, surrounded by interminable mountains, in
the deep snow, knowing that a party of thirty had been lost here
a month ago. Just at nightfall the descent of a steep hill took
me out of the forest and upon a clean log cabin, where, finding
that the proper halting place was two miles farther on, I
remained. A truly pleasing, superior-looking woman placed me in
a rocking chair; would not let me help her otherwise than by
rocking the cradle, and made me "feel at home." The room, though
it serves them and their two children for kitchen, parlor, and
bed room, is the pattern of brightness, cleanliness, and comfort.
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