There Must Be A Certain Amount Of Excitement To Miners As To What
Treasure Will Be Produced After Every Blast
Of gunpowder; but oh!
how I should hate the life, living underground in these
subterranean passages, which are all more
Or less wet from the
water percolating through the rock, and never able to see the sun
or the beauties of nature. The wages of the men are enormous, able
miners getting four dollars a day; sorters, or the men who break
and turn over the stone, three and a half.
Mr. W - - had a hard life when he first came out here in 1877; as
he and his partner worked with no other help for four years
underground mining, besides having to build their cabin, being
their own blacksmiths, assayer, cook, &c., and he declares he
enjoyed it immensely, with the exception, perhaps, of the first
winter, when, getting in their supplies very late, they had to
live on bacon (and that rancid) and flour, but little else.
Stores for the winter have to be brought up in October, as the
trails early become impassable, and all outer communication can
only be kept up on snow-shoes. The snow averages about seven or
eight feet, though in this basin it has been known to be thirty-
eight deep, but in the Uncompaghre Valley and down by Ouray it
averages only a few inches. Animals are left out to graze there
all the winter.
* * * * *
THE RANCH, UNCOMPAHGRE PARK, September 16. Ten miles below Ouray.
Amidst many tears and regrets, we have torn ourselves away from
the cabin, where we could have spent another month or six weeks in
perfect contentment; but a storm being predicted, and duck-shooting
and fly-fishing being part of our Colorado programme, we accepted the
loan of a house on a farm down in the valley, and are installed in it.
It wanted a certain amount of pluck, on first seeing our
accommodation, to come down. Our house is one room, thirty feet long
by about eighteen wide, an open roof with plenty of air-holes, and no
partition whatsoever, excepting what we have made by hanging three
blankets from a rafter, behind which is our bed (or lounge in
day-time), the washing-stand, a box set up longways, and a tin bason,
an arm-chair which consists of two pieces of wood, and an old
wolfskin, much worn, and a rickety table, at which I am writing now,
lighted by a candle stuck into a bottle. On the other side of the
blanket-partition is the kitchen stove, big table, store shelves, a
pile of saddles, &c. Mr. W - - sleeps in a tent outside; Henry in a
waggon: he, poor man, is not at all happy, as he imagines bears and
coyotes are nightly intending making their evening meal off his portly
form. He is the greatest coward I ever saw, and came in horror
confiding to me that he had seen a snake, yards long, which Mr. W - -
killed the day following, and it proved to be a small water-snake,
hardly ten inches.
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