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.
At supper there were canned raspberries, rolls, butter, tea,
venison, and fried rabbit, and at seven I went to bed in a
carpeted log room, with a thick feather bed on a mattress,
sheets, ruffled pillow slips, and a pile of warm white blankets!
I slept for eleven hours. They discourage me much about the
route which Governor Hunt has projected for me. They think that
it is impassable, owing to snow, and that another storm is
brewing.
HALL'S GULCH, November 6.
I have ridden 150 miles since I wrote last. On leaving Twin Rock
on Saturday I had a short day's ride to Colonel Kittridge's cabin
at Oil Creek, where I spent a quiet Sunday with agreeable people.
The ride was all through parks and gorges, and among pine-clothed
hills, about 9,000 feet high, with Pike's Peak always in sight.
I have developed much sagacity in finding a trail, or I should
not be able to make use of such directions as these: "Keep along
a gulch four or five miles till you get Pike's Peak on your left,
then follow some wheel-marks till you get to some timber, and
keep to the north till you come to a creek, where you'll find a
great many elk tracks; then go to your right and cross the creek
three times, then you'll see a red rock to your left," etc., etc.
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