XIXTHE ROYAL GORGE.

For some were hung with arras green and blue,Showing a gaudy summer morn.* * * * * * * *And one a full-fed river winding slowBy herds upon an endless plain.

For some were hung with arras green and blue,

Showing a gaudy summer morn.

* * * * * * * *

And one a full-fed river winding slow

By herds upon an endless plain.

—Tennyson.

Cañon City was by no means a bad place to stay, and we would have prolonged our visit to the benefit of our table, had not the railway yard been so busy a one that there was no rest for our cars, which were pulled about, here and there, by the necessities of train-forming, in a way we were far from enjoying, so we decided to go on. At the last minute, nevertheless, this happy-go-lucky crowd concluded that they were extremely anxious first to take a run over into the Wet Mountain valley. One gentleman, of uncertain influence, raised his voice against it, but was silenced so quickly it made his head swim. He had endeavored to point out that it would be more instructive to go down to the great coal mines, a few miles below; and far more fun to ascend Signal mountain and “see what we should see.” He tried skillfully to arouse some enthusiasm by telling how, though it seemed within rifle-shot, it was really eighteen miles away; how it can be seen from the plains not only, but also from South Park and the peaks that surround; how, in consequence, the Utes chose it as one of their telegraph stations, and the early pioneers bound for Pike’s Peak, saw from their camps the wavering smoke by day, or the signal fires at night, upon its summit, through which the Indians informed their companions of the invaders’ movements. Thus it came to be known as Signal mountain, but in this gentleman’s humble opinion the old Spanish name of “Pisgalo Peak” was better. All this was listened to with a sort of consolatory attention; nevertheless the speaker was compelled, not only to resign his plan, but to give orders otherwise.

Grown strong in the lap of the Wet Mountain valley, Grape creek assaults the red walls of rock that bar its progress to the Arkansas at the mouth of the Grand Cañon. The profusion of wild vines its waters nourish, makes its name a natural one, and they adorn its course as few streams in the West are garnished. These are particularly abundant along the rocky lower part of the stream, growing luxuriantly upon thearbors the great cottonwoods afford, and under the shelter of the warm, red walls, relieving the ruggedness of their abrupt slopes, “as if nature found she had done her work too roughly, and then veiled it with flowers and clinging vines.”

GRAND CAÑON OF THE ARKANSAS.

“The entrance to Grape Creek cañon,” writes an acquaintance, who was there a little in advance of us, “for over a mile, follows the windings of the clear flowing creek, with gently sloping hills on either side covered with low spruce and piñon, and with grass plats and brilliant flowers in season far up their slopes, and the Spanish lance and bush cactus present their bristling points wherever a little soil affords them sustenance.... About seven miles from the mouth of the creek a small branch cañon comes in from the right. It was once a deep cleft,with perpendicular sides, created in some convulsion of nature, but it has been gradually filled up with débris and broken rock until a sloping and not difficult path is made, by the sides of which a luxuriant vegetation has taken root, and the wild rose and clematis blooms with the humble blue-bell among the mossy bowlders. Climbing this path for a few hundred feet a side cleft is seen at the right, which seems to terminate in a solid wall. Following it to the breast, however, you find at the left a passage made by a water channel, with steps which ladies can easily pass with a little help, and we enter a narrow passage between high rocky walls. Turning again to the right, we follow this perhaps two hundred feet, and looking to the left we find before and above us the lofty arched dome of the “Temple.” About twenty-five feet above where we are standing is a platform, perhaps fifty feet in width and six or eight feet in depth, over which projects far above the arching roof. Though the auditorium in front is rather narrow for a large audience, the platform is grand, and may be reached without great difficulty. Music sounds finely as it rolls down from the overhanging sounding-board of stone. From the platform deep cavernous recesses are seen at the sides, which time has wrought, but which are invisible from below. Moreover, the action of water slowly percolating through the back walls, carrying lime and spar in solution, has coated them with crystals, which gleam in sparkling beauty when the sunlight touches them early in the day. Farther up the cañon the rocks do not rise to so great heights, and the vista opens out into pleasant winding valleys well covered with grass, but there are several very interesting points where the action of internal convulsions upon the granite and syenite in elder ages, when they came hot from the crucible of nature, have rolled and twisted and kneaded the great rock-masses into most curious and notable shapes.”

These beauties passed all too rapidly, the green expanse of the Wet Mountain valley opened before us. It seemed to merit its name, for the Sangre de Cristo, walling in its western side, was the abode of contending hosts of rain and snow, whose pale, dense phalanxes lent new sublimity to the noble battle-ground they had chosen; but the real “Wet Mountains,”—the old “Sierra Mojada” of the Spaniards, the “Green Horn” range of the dwellers on its eastern outlook—are the ragged range eastward.

The Wet Mountain valley has long been settled by ranchmen, and extensive herds pasture on its wide-sweeping hillsides. Grape creek, flowing from Promontory bluff and the hills to the southward, which separate this valley from Huerfano park and the drainage of the Cucharas, waters the center of the valley, and its banks are lined with meadows and farms. Each winter sees hay alone sent from these meadows to the value of not less than $150,000. Oats and barley, especially, do well, and most of the roots are grown successfully; very fine potatoeswere transferred from those fields to our boiler, so that we have the best evidence of their excellence. The improved appearance of the numerous ranches, which in one or two places are agglomerated into hamlets, shows their prosperity, and the whole picture of the valley is one of the most pleasing in Colorado,—not only in point of natural beauty, but for its commercial and human interest, for Rosita is one of the oldest towns in Colorado.

“A legend runs,”videH. H., “that there was once another ‘Little Rose,’ a beautiful woman of Mexico, who had a Frenchman for a lover. When she died her lover lost his wits, and journeyed aimlessly away to the north; he rambled on and on till he came to this beautiful little nook, nestled among mountains, and overlooking a green valley a thousand feet below it. Here he exclaimed, ‘Beautiful as Rosita!’ and settled himself to live and die on the spot. A simpler and better authenticated explanation of the name is, that, when the miners first came, six years ago, into the gulches where the town of Rosita now lies, they found several fine springs of water, each spring in a thicket of wild roses. As they went to and fro from their huts to the springs, they found in the dainty blossoms a certain air of greeting, as of old inhabitants welcoming newcomers. It seemed no more than courteous that the town should be called after the name of the oldest and most aristocratic settler,—a kind of recognition which does not always result in so pleasing a name as Rosita (Tompkinsville, for instance, or Jenkins’ Gulch). Little Rose, then, it became, and Little Rose it will remain.”

But the metropolis of the valley, and the terminus of the railway at present is the newer town of Silver Cliff, a town which saw one of the “biggest booms” on record. The story goes that the first known discovery of silver here was in July, 1877, by the Edwards brothers, who had previously been running saw-mills on Texas and Grape creeks. Returning one warm evening from one of the mills to Rosita, Mr. R. J. Edwards stopped in the shade of a low bluff, jet-stained reddish rock, which stood out from the slope of a hill on the western side of the valley seven miles north of his destination. The peculiar appearance of the rock moving his curiosity, he procured an assay of it, when, to his astonishment, he was told that it ran twenty-four ounces in silver to the ton. In a few days the entire population of Rosita had migrated to the rock which they agreed to call the Silver Cliff, and were digging holes and testing for gold, since it was thought there was more of that than of the less valuable mineral to be obtained. But their efforts came to nothing; and as quick to be discouraged as they were to have their hopes aroused, the mercurial crowd vanished, and the black striped rocks enjoyed their previous solitude through all the next autumn and winter.

Then (this was in the spring of 1878) some sensible prospectors tried for silver and located the “Racine Boy” and various other propertiesright on the brow of the cliff, which have since proved of great value. This was the signal for a second rush, but the new comers, who dug holes everywhere and anywhere, like an immense colony of prairie badgers, each thought himself sure of millions, and held his bit of ground at so high a price that nobody would buy at all. This resulted in a panic, the effect of which was really for the prosperity of the critical camp, since capital now took hold and deep developments proceeded on some properties that had proved their worth.

It did not take long to evince the fact that ninety out of every hundred of the holes scattered so indiscriminately over the velvety knolls of Round mountain and the smooth, hard plain near by, were of no value; and also, on the other hand, to show enough paying mines to make it appear that the ore (at any rate that near the surface) all lay in a particular “belt,” apparently culminating in the exposed ledges that had first attracted the miner’s eyes.

The Hardscrabble mining district, in which both Silver Cliff and Rosita are situated, takes its name from a small creek that rises in the foothills on the west side of the Wet Mountain range, or Sierra Mojada, and, forcing its way through a wild and difficult cañon, flows into the Arkansas river seven or eight miles east of Cañon City. The mountains themselves are of red granite, which has been thrown up in the wildest confusion, and which the winds and rains in many places have carved into all sorts of fantastic shapes. The range is extremely rugged, almost destitute of large timber, and is impassable for wagons, except where roads have been built at great expense through the cañons and over the divide.

The western foothills of the Sierra Mojada generally present, at a distance, a smooth, rounded appearance, with now and then a ledge of rocks sticking out of the summit or side, and while on some of them timber of considerable size is growing, in most instances the vegetation consists solely of a few stunted evergreen bushes and a very thin growth of gramma grass. The soil on these hills is generally very thin, and, on approaching them, the surface is found to be covered with loose pieces of broken rock, which the frosts have detached and the rains washed out from beneath a slight covering of earth. It is in these foothills that all the best mines of the Hardscrabble district have been found.

The geological formation of this rich mineral belt is peculiar and very interesting. Resting upon and against the granite of the Wet Mountain range and its higher foothills, and extending down into the valley beyond the southern line of the belt, lies an enormous deposit of porphyry, or trachyte, a volcanic rock poured out and consolidated during the tertiary period. Its width is at least five miles, and its length is probably fifteen or twenty. Extending into the trachyte formation from the southwest, and following its general direction, is a tongue-shaped mass of granite about three-fourths of a mile wide and at leastseven or eight miles long. When the trachyte was poured out this granite apparently formed a ridge which rose above the level of the fluid mass of the surrounding volcanic rock, and therefore was not covered by it. That it does not now stand higher than the surrounding country does not disprove this theory, because there are everywhere to be found evidences of terrible convulsions since the trachyte was deposited which have completely changed the face of this entire region. The mines here are found both in the granite and also in the trachyte. Winding through the porphyry, in a serpentine course, there is also a stream of obsidian, as it is called here, or volcanic glass, mixed with trachyte and quartz bowlders. This stream, where it has been examined, varies from a few feet to many rods in width, and in crevices of the bowlders which form the mass of it were found, on the Hecla claim, some very rich specimens of horn silver.

At Silver Cliff, and north of there especially, the trachyte rock has been shaken up and fractured in all directions, and in many places the crevices have been filled with iron and manganese, which has become oxidized, and with chloride of silver. This is the free milling ore which is found in all the mines that lie directly north of this town and adjoining it. The trachyte is of itself yellowish white; when it is stained with the black oxide of manganese and the red oxide of iron that variegates the ores, it is sure to carry silver, though this (in the form of a chloride) can rarely be seen. Sometimes, however, the silver can be seen upon the surface of a fracture in the form of a green scale, or appears in little globules of horn silver. While the rich ore is discovered in large masses, surrounded by leaner or less valuable rock, there is nowhere in the chloride belt anything that looks like a vein. The rock just covers the entire face of the country over an area two miles long and half a mile wide, and the whole mass of it contains at least a small quantity of silver.

The theory of the geologists, accepted by the miners, is, that the trachyte, after it became solidified, was shaken and broken up by some great convulsion, and that simultaneously, or afterward, silver, iron, manganese, and the other metals of which traces are found in the rock, were disseminated through crevices, either in water solutions or volatilized—in the form of gases. These solutions or gases are supposed to have come up through cracks in the earth’s crust. Such a deposit is called in the old world “stockwork,” and Professor J. S. Newberry, in writing recently of “The Origin and Classification of Ore Deposits,” mentions this as one of the two most important examples of this kind of deposit that have come under his observation. The other is the gold deposit in Bingham cañon, Utah. None of the oldest miners ever saw before any ore that looked like this at Silver Cliff, and this explains their failure to discover its value until recently. The same is true of the quartzite gold ore in Bingham cañon. The miners worked for years there getting out silver-lead ores, but threw aside the gold ore as waste, not dreaming of its value.

THE ROYAL GORGE

But the mineral belt which I have described contains other classes of mines. At Rosita, in the “Pocahontas-Humboldt” lode, the trachyte, instead of being shattered and impregnated, has been rent asunder and a true fissure formed in it, filled with gray copper, galena, zinc blende, iron and copper pyrites and heavy spar—all carrying sulphide of silver. These form a narrow pay streak from one to eighteen inches wide, andthe remainder is filled with a gangue rock, generally of a trachytic formation. This vein extends for a long distance through the hills, and is inclosed by walls that are as clearly defined as those of a room. Other smaller veins of the same character have been found in the country north of Rosita, and on some of them valuable mines have been located and developed.

Still another class of mines in the same mineral belt remains to be mentioned. Those are what Professor Newberry has called the “mechanically filled” veins, and they include the “Bassick” and the “Bull-Domingo.” The former is supposed to be a true fissure vein in the trachyte rock, the cavity of which, after the rocks were rent asunder, was filled with well rounded pebbles and bowlders, generally similar in constitution to the country rock. The interstices in this mass have been filled with tellurides of gold and silver, free gold, zinc blende, galena, and the pyrites of iron and copper carrying silver. These materials surround the stones in thin shells, the pebbles and bowlders forming nuclei about which the metallic substances crystallized. In the “Bull-Domingo,” situated in the granite tongue, the stones are generally granite or syenite, and the cementing substance is argentiferous galena, which not only surrounds the stones, but in many cases entirely fills up the irregular spaces between them. In both of these cases it is supposed that the metallic matter came up from below in the form of a hot solution.

Silver Cliff has been a trifle disappointed, however. Not only were her streets laid out broad and straight, upon a splendid town site, over a considerably larger area than has yet been occupied, but two other towns, Westcliffe, where the railway station is, and Clifton, between the two towns, invite persons to buy town lots and build houses in rivalry. At present, however, Clifton’s population consists chiefly of its town-agent, and there is one of the best opportunities to take your choice of building sites there that I know of in the Centennial state. Westcliffe has a big smelter, a hay-press, the water-works, and various other reasons for being a future village of importance.

Yet Silver Cliff is a fine town, and its streets are busy with miners and merchants and professional men, who know where their money is coming from and going to. The immense interests of the Silver Cliff Mining company, with its open, quarry-like mine, and its great mill, which has the reputation of being the finest in Colorado, employ a large number of men. Another mill, further down the creek, is running on the product of its mines, and a great deal of development-work along the whole belt is in progress, while prospects of rich strikes elsewhere keep things in a bright, hopeful condition.

As for Rosita, it was a thriving mining camp, half a dozen years before Silver Cliff and its chlorides were heard of. True fissure veins were disclosed, and a permanent town resulted, which is yet mining quietly but successfully, and making its people wealthy.

High overarched, and echoing walls between.

—Milton.

The Grand Cañon of the Arkansas, and its culminating chasm, the Royal Gorge, lie between Salida and Cañon City, and form a sufficient theme for a chapter by themselves. It was on our return from Silver Cliff that we went there.

Situated only half a dozen miles west of Cañon City, the traveler going either to Leadville or Gunnison, begins to watch for the cañon as soon as he has passed the city limits, the penitentiary and the mineral springs. If he looks ahead he sees the vertically tilted, whitish strata of sandstone and limestone, which the upthrust of the interior mountains has set on edge, broken at a narrow portal through which the graceful river finds the first freedom of the plains,—becomes of age, so to speak, and commences, however awkwardly, that manly progress that by and by will enable it to take its important place in the commerce of the world,—

“——The river,Which through continents pushes its pathway forever,To fling its fond heart in the sea.”

“——The river,

Which through continents pushes its pathway forever,

To fling its fond heart in the sea.”

Running the gauntlet of these scraggy warders of the castle of the mountain gods within, the train boldly assaults the gates of the castle itself. From the smoothness of the outer world, where the eye can range in wide vision, taking in the profiles of countless noble chains and lowlier but serviceable ridges; where the sun shines broadly, and its light and heat are reflected in shimmering volumes from expanses of whitened soil, the eager traveler now finds himself locked between precipitous hillsides, strewn with jagged fragments, as though the Titans had tossed in here the chips from their workshop of the world. He strives for language large enough to picture the heights that with ceaselessly growing altitude hasten to meet him. He searches his fancy after images and similitudes that shall help him comprehend and recall the swiftly crowding forms of Nature’s massive architecture. He taxes his eyes and mind and memory to see and preserve, until he can have leisure to study this exhibition of the depth and breadth of the barrier that so long has loomed before him in silent majesty, yet for which the worldhas found no better name than the Rocky mountains. He has gone past it,—gone over it, it may be; now he is goingthroughit. The track, as he rushes ahead, seems bodily to sink deeper and deeper into the earth, as though the apparent progress forward only resulted in impotent struggles to keep from sinking deeper, like an exhausted swimmer in swift waters. The roar of the yeasty, nebulous-green river at his side, mingles with the crashing echoes of the train, reverberating heavenward through rocks that rise perpendicularly to unmeasured heights. The ear is stunned, and the mind refuses to sanction what the senses report to it.

BROWN’S CAÑON.

Then a new surprise and almost terror comes. The train rolls round a long curve, close under a wall of black and banded granite, beside which the ponderous locomotive shrinks to a mere dot, as if swinging on some pivot in the heart of the mountain, or captured by a centripetal force that would never resign its grasp. Almost a whole circle is accomplished, and the grand amphitheatrical sweep of the wall shows no break in its smooth and zenith-cutting façade. Will the journey end here? Is it a mistake that this crevice goesthroughthe range? Does not all this mad water gush from some powerful spring, or boil out of a subterranean channel impenetrable to us?

No, it opens. Resisting centripetal, centrifugal force claims the train, and it breaks away at a tangent past the edge or round the corner of the great black wall which compelled its detour, and that of the river before it. Now what glories of rock-piling confront the wide-distendedeye. How those sharp-edged cliffs, standing with upright heads that play at hand-ball with the clouds, alternate with one another, so that first the right, then the left, then the right one beyond strike on our view, each one half obscured by its fellow in front, each showing itself level-browed with its comrades as we come even with it, each a score of hundreds of dizzy feet in height, rising perpendicular from the water and the track, splintered atop into airy pinnacles, braced behind against the almost continental mass through which the chasm has been cleft.

This is the Royal Gorge!

But how faintly I tell it—how inexpressible are the wonders of plutonic force it commemorates, how magnificent the pose and self-sustained majesty of its walls, how stupendous the height as we look up, the depth if we were to gaze timidly down, how splendid the massive shadows at the base of the interlocking headlands,—the glint of sunlight on the upper rim and the high polish of the crowning points! One must catch it all as an impression on the retina of his mind’s eye,—must memorize it instantly and ponder it afterward. It is ineffable, but the thought of it remains through years and years a legacy of vivid recollection and delight, and you never cease to be proud that you have seen it.

There is more cañon after that—miles and miles of it—the Grand Cañon of the Arkansas. In and out of all the bends and elbows, gingerly round the promontories whose very feet the river laves, rapidly across the small, sheltered nooks, where soil has been drifted and a few adventurous trees have grown, noisily through the echoing cuttings, the train rushes westward, letting you down gradually from the tense excitement of the great chasm, to the cedar-strewn ledges that fade out into the the gravel bars and the park-like spaces of the open valley beyond Cotopaxi.

Thomas Paine tells us in hisAge of Reason: “The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately.” It is good philosophy also, that the higher the strain the longer the rebound; so no excuse is needed for asking you to enjoy as heartily as we did, the story an old fellow told us at the supper station, who dropped the hint that he had been one of the “boys” who had helped push the railway through this cañon. Moreover, he helped us to a new phase of human nature as exemplified in the mind of an “old timer.”

The influence of the cañon on the ordinary tourist, perhaps, will be comparatively transient, fading into a dream-like memory of amazing mental impressions. Not so with the man who has dwelt, untutored, for many years, amid these stupendous hills and abysmal gorges. His imagination, once aroused and enlarged, continues to expand; his fiction, once created, hardens into fact; his veracity, once elongated, stretches on and on forever. Of all natural curiosities he is the most curious,—more marvelous than even the Grand Cañon itself.

Strictly sane and truthful in the day-time, he speaks only of commonplace things; but when the night comes, and the huge mountains group themselves around his camp-fire like a circle of black Cyclopean tents, he shades his face from the blaze and bids his imagination stalk forth with Titanic strides. Then, if his hearers are in sympathy, with self-repressed and nonchalant gravity, he pours forth in copious detail his strange experiences with bears and bronchos, Indians and serpents, footpads and gamblers, mines and mules, tornadoes and forest-fires. He never for a moment weakens the effect of his story by giving way to gush and enthusiasm; he makes his facts eloquent, and then relates them in the careless monotone of one who is superior to emotion under any circumstances.

We could not find our old-timer in these most favorable circumstances, but ensconced behind

“Sublime tobacco! which from east to west,Cheers the tar’s labors, or the Turkman’s rest,”

“Sublime tobacco! which from east to west,

Cheers the tar’s labors, or the Turkman’s rest,”

he seized his opportunity in our discussion of the heroic engineering by which thepenetraliaof the Royal Gorge was opened to the locomotive, and began:

“Talk about blastin’![A]The boy’s yarn about blowin’ up a mountain’s nothin’ but a squib to what we did when we blasted the Ryo Grand railroad through the Royal Gorge.

“One day the boss sez to me, sez he, ‘Hyar, you, do you know how to handle gunpowder?’

“Sez I, ‘You bet!’

“Sez he, ‘Do you see that ere ledge a thousand feet above us, stickin’ out like a hat-brim?’ Sez I, ‘You bet I do.’

“‘Wall,’ sez he, ‘that’ll smash a train into a grease-spot some day, ef we don’t blast it off.’

“’Jess so,’ sez I.

“Wall, we went up a gulch, and clum the mountain an’ come to the prissipass, and got down on all fours, an’ looked down straight three thousand feet. The river down there looked like a lariat a’ runnin’ after a broncho. I began to feel like a kite a’ sailin’ in the air like. Forty church steeples in one war’n’t nowhar to that ere pinnacle in the clouds. An’ after a while it begun rainin’ an’ snowin’ an’ hailin’ an’ thundrin’ an’ doin’ a reglar tornado biznis down thar, an’ a reglar summer day whar we wuz on top. Wall, there wuz a crevice from where we wuz, an’ we sorter slid down into it, to within fifty feet o’ the ledge, an’ then they let me down on the ledge with a rope an’ drill. When I got down thar, I looked up an’ sez to the boss, ‘Boss, how are ye goin’ to get that ‘cussion powder down?’ Yer see, we used this ere powder as’ll burnlike a pine-knot ‘thout explodin’, but if yer happen to drop it, it’ll blow yer into next week ’fore ye kin wink yer eye.

“‘Wall,’ sez the boss, sez he, ‘hyar’s fifty pound, an’ yer must ketch it.’

“‘Ketch it,’ sez I. ‘Hain’t ye gettin’ a little keerless—s’pose I miss it?’ I sez.

“‘But ye mustn’t miss it,’ sez he. ‘’T seems to me yer gettin’ mighty keerful of yourself all to wunst.’

“Sez I, ‘Boss, haul me up. I’m a fool, but not an idgit. Haul me up. I’m not so much afeared of the blowin’ up ez of the comin’ down. If I should miss comin’ onto this ledge, thar’s nobody a thousan’ feet below thar to ketch me, an’ I might get drownded in the Arkansaw, for I kain’t swim.’

“So they hauled me up, an’ let three other fellers down, an’ the boss discharged me, an’ I sot down sorter behind a rock, an’ tole ’em they’d soon have a fust-class funeral, and might need me for pall-bearer.

“Wall, them fellers ketched the dynamite all right, and put ’er in, an’ lit their fuse, but afore they could haul ’em up she went off. Great guns! ’T was wuss ’n forty thousan’ Fourth o’ Julys. A million coyotes an’ tin pans an’ horns an’ gongs ain’t a sarcumstance. Th’ hull gorge fur ten mile bellered, an’ bellered, an’ kep’ on bellerin’ wuss ’n a corral o’ Texas bulls. I foun’ myself on my back a lookin’ up, an’ th’ las’ thing I seed wuz two o’ them fellers a’ whirlin’ clean over the mountain, two thousan’ feet above. One of ’em had my jack-knife an’ tobacker, but ’t was no use cryin’. ’T was a good jack-knife, though; I do n’t keer so much fur the tobacker. He slung suthin’ at me as he went over, but it didn’t come nowhar near, ’n’ I don’t know yet what it was. When we all kinder come to, the boss looked at his watch, ’n’ tole us all to witness that the fellers was blown up just at noon, an’ was only entitled to half a day’s wages, an’ quit ’thout notice. When we got courage to peep over an’ look down, we found that the hat-brim was n’t busted off at all; the hull thing was only a squib. But we noticed that a rock ez big ez a good-sized cabin, hed loosened, an’ hed rolled down on top of it. While we sat lookin’ at it, boss sez, sez he,

“‘Did you fellers see mor’n two go up?’

“‘No,’ sez we, an’ pretty soon we heern t’ other feller a’ hollerin’, ‘Come down ’n get me out!’

“Gents, you may have what’s left of my old shoe, if the ledge had n’t split open a leetle, ’n’ that chap fell into the crack, ’n’ the big rock rolled onto the ledge an’ sorter gently held him thar. He war n’t hurt a har. We wer n’t slow about gettin’ down. We jist tied a rope to a pint o’ rock an’ slid. But you may hang me for a chipmuck ef we could git any whar near him, an’ it was skeery business a foolin’ roun’ on that ere verandy. ’T war n’t much bigger ’n a hay-rack, an’ a thousan’ foot up. We hed some crowbars, but boss got a leetle excited, an’ pertysoon bent every one on ’em tryin’ to prize off that bowlder that’d weigh a hundred ton like. Then agin we wuz all on it, fer it kivered th’ hull ledge, ’n’ whar’d we ben ef he’d prized it off? All the while the chap kep’ a hollerin’, ‘Hurry up; pass me some tobacker!’ Oh, it was the pitterfulest cry you ever heern, an’ we didn’t know what to do till he yelled, ‘I’m a losin’ time; hain’t you goin’ to git me out?’ Sez boss, ‘I’ve bent all the crowbars, an’ we can’t git you out.’

“‘Got any dynamite powder?’ sez the feller.

“‘Yes.’

“‘Well, then, why ‘n the name of the Denver ’n’ Ryo Grand don’t you blast me out,’ sez he.

“‘We can’t blast you out,’ sez boss, ‘fer dynamite busts down, an’ it’ll blow you down the canyon.’

“‘Well, then,’ sez he, ‘one o’ ye swing down under the ledge, an’ put a shot in whar it’s cracked below.’

“‘You’re wiser ’n a woman,’ sez boss. ‘I’d never thought o’ that.’

“So the boss took a rope, ’n’ we swung him down, ’n’ he put in a shot, ’n’ was goin’ to light the fuse, when the feller inside smelt the match.

“‘Heve ye tumbled to my racket?’ sez he.

“‘You bet we have, feller priz’ner!’ sez the boss.

“‘Touch ’er off!’ sez the feller.

“‘All right,’ sez boss.

“‘Hold on!’ yells the feller as wuz inside.

“‘What’s the racket now?’ sez the boss.

“‘You hain’t got the sense of a blind mule,’ sez he. ‘Do you s’pose I want to drop down the canyon when the shot busts? Pass in a rope through the crack, ’n’ I’ll tie it ’roun’ me, ’n’ then you can touch ’er off kind o’ easy like.’

“Wall, that struck us all as a pious idea. That feller knowed more ’n a dozen blind mules—sed mules weren’t fer off, neither. Wall, we passed in the rope, ’n’ when we pulled boss up, he guv me ’tother end ’n’ tole me to hole on tighter ’n’ a puppy to a root. I tuck the rope, wrapped it ’round me ’n’ climb up fifty feet to a pint o’ rock right under ’nuther pint ’bout a hundred feet higher, that kinder hung over the pint whar I wuz. Boss ’n’ t’other fellers skedaddled up the crevice ’n’ hid.

“Purty soon suthin’ happened. I can’t describe it, gents. The hull canyon wuz full o’ blue blazes, flyin’ rocks ’n’ loose volcanoes. Both sides o’ the gorge, two thousan’ feet straight up, seemed to touch tops ’n’ then swing open. I wuz sort o’ dazed ’n’ blinded, ’n’ felt ez if the prisipasses ’n’ the mountains wuz all on a tangle-foot drunk, staggerin’ like. The rope tightened ’round my stummick, ’n’ I seized onto it tight, ’n’ yelled:

“‘Hole on, pard, I’ll draw you up! Cheer up, my hearty,’ sez I, ‘cheer up! Jes az soon’z I git my footin’, I’ll bring ye to terry firmy!’

“Ye see, I wuz sort of confused ’n’ blinded by the smoke ’n’ dust, ’n’ hed a queer feelin’, like a spider a swingin’ an’ a whirlin’ on a har. At last I got so’z I could see, ’n’ looked down to see if the feller wuz a swingin’ clar of the rocks, but I could n’t see him. The ledge wuz blown clean off, ’n’ the canyon seemed ’bout three thousan’ feet deep. Mystummick began to hurt me dreadful, ’n’ I squirmed ’round ’n’ looked up, ’n’ durn my breeches, gents, ef I was n’t within ten foot of the top of the gorge, ’n’ the feller ez wuz blasted out wuz a haulin’ on me up.

“Sez I when he got me to the top, sez I, ‘Which eend of this rope wuzyouon, my friend?’

“‘I dunno,’ sez he. ‘Which eend wuzyouon?’

“‘I dunno,’ sez I.

“An’, gents, to this day we can’t tell ef it was which or ’tother ez wuz blasted out.”

TWIN LAKES.

It was afternoon and we were weary—sated—with sublimity; so we ran straight away to Leadville, and left until our return an examination of the Arkansas Valley.

And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.—Jonathan Swift.

The interest of the Grand Cañon of the Arkansas, though it culminates between the narrow walls of Royal Gorge, by no means ceases there. For many miles after, immense piles of rocks are heaped on each side, great crags frown down, and the river comes tumbling to meet you down a series of green and white cataracts. The walls are highly colored, and the whole scene exceedingly interesting. Toward the western end there is a break in the gorge, through which fine pictures of the Sangre de Cristo peaks present themselves close by, and then the rocks are heaped up again into the grand defile of Brown’s cañon, where one of our illustrations was made.

Just before entering Brown’s cañon, a branch road can be seen running off to the northward. That is the short road up to Calumet, where the Colorado Coal and Iron Company have iron mines of great value and in constant operation, for the ore is suitable for the making of Bessemer steel. These mines are open, quarry-like excavations, and the ore is therefore more easily handled than is usual. The grade on this branch, four hundred and six feet to the mile, is said to be the heaviest in the world where no cog-wheels are used. Only a few empty cars can be hauled up; and the difficulty is almost as great in descending, for it requires at least four cars, dragging with hard-set brakes, to hold an engine under control in going down. Marble and lumber in great quantities are also shipped down this little branch from the neighborhood of Calumet.

Passing some hot mineral springs, where are bathing arrangements, near the head of Brown’s cañon, the train runs into the busy yard at Salida. This town was formerly South Arkansas, and I surprise the Madame by telling her that no longer ago than 1874, I pitched a tent where it now stands upon ground which had no vestige of civilization near it. Salida is a Spanish word, meaning a junction, and is applicable in two ways. It is at the confluence of the Arkansas with its large branch from the south, and it is the junction of the northern system ofrailway which we are following to Leadville and beyond, with the main line going west from here to Utah and California. It is therefore a lively railway center,—the end of divisions, the headquarters of round-houses, repairing shops, etc. Besides, it is rapidly growing, and increasing in importance as a busy mercantile center.

THE OLD ROUTE TO LEADVILLE.

The valley of the Arkansas north of Salida, we see as we go on again, nourishes much agriculture, which continues to be seen—at least in the shape of hay ranches—as far as Riverside, the first station above Buena Vista. There Mr. Leonhardy has seven miles, more or less, under cultivation, and carries on a highly profitable farm. His extensive hay-barns are close to the track, and his horse-mowers show how scientifically it is cut. All the cereals are grown there, or at any rate have been grown; but wheat, though it becomes very plump and hard, has so precariously brief a season in which to mature, that it is not profitable, and hence no great amount is now planted. Of oats, rye and barley, however, hundreds of acres are cut annually, yielding in each case above the average number of bushels to the acre of eastern crops. I have seen some very fine samples of all these grains, which, of course, find abundant sale close at home, and hence are unheralded outside.

Then in the way of “roots,” large plantations are made, and fine results brought about. Potatoes are particularly successful, one hundred and fifty bushels, or about fifteen thousand pounds weight, being the ordinary crop expected to the acre; turnips, beets, onions, etc., doing equally well in their way. The only things that can not be produced here, in fact, are such tender plants as melons, squashes, cucumbers, and the like. Even these may often be brought to maturity if their beginnings are nurtured under glass, but as a matter of regular gardening, they are not considered profitable.

Apart from this locality not much farming is visible, except close to Salida, where the road runs over the top of a dry mesa,—one of the terraces into which the former river has cut the glacial gravels of thevalley-margin. Down in the lower “bottoms,” where irrigation is very easy, one sees some miles of continuous fields cultivated in hay and grain. The close clusters of ranch-buildings, the stacks of straw, the yellow and green squares of stubble and the black threads of the dividing fences, with the diminutive dots of men moving to and fro with wagons, recall the prairie states. We also note the number of cattle seen all along the lower part of the valley,—and the cheapness and excellence of the beef we bought in all this part of Colorado.

Buena Vista is a town of considerable size and seeming solidity, which is prettily placed among the cottonwoods. These give a name to the stream not only, but to the expansion of the valley, which is known as Cottonwood park. The supply point not only for the Chalk Creek mines on Mt. Princeton, but for the remoter settlements on the other side of the range, Buena Vista seems to have a good chance for long life. One sees here the big, trailed wagons in all their glory, and the voice of the burro is heard in the land, complaining of his burdens and bewailing the lost friskiness of his unfettered youth.

Below Granite we pass through almost a cañon. The inclined and splintered rocks of reddish granite and gneiss rise very high at certain points on the eastern bank of the river, and the water itself is in continual ebullition among large bowlders, falling meanwhile at such a grade that the track cannot follow it, but must needs rise away above it. The scene here is one of extreme desolation. There is nothingprettyin the whole landscape short of the small snow-banks that remind us of scattered sheep browsing on the crest of the range. Almost the only relief to the sterility—sterile not only in respect to pleasing vegetation, but in any comfortable suggestiveness—is when the sun shines suddenly straight down some rift-like gulch in the precipitous walls, transmuting what seemed a crystal-clear atmosphere into a golden dust finer than any flakes that ever came out of the gravels.

Now we are rapidly approaching Granite, a town twenty-five years old; and presently we catch sight of the great gold placers that formerly made the fame of this locality. They are still operated in a quiet, scientific method, and one large flume crosses the track at a height of fully fifty feet. The western bank has been ploughed up by water and turned topsy-turvy over a long area, exposing its innermost pebbles and bowlders, all well cleaned and white by their second scrubbing.[B]

Three miles west of Granite lie the charming “Twin Lakes,” but we are frustrated in our attempt to reach them on the only day we wished to spare for that purpose.

During all the summer, carriages from the lake meet passengertrains at Twin Lakes station, four miles above Granite, in order to carry visitors to this lake.

THE SHAFT HOUSE.

“Of all the health and pleasure resorts of the upper Arkansas Valley,” I have read, “the Twin Lakes are perhaps the most noted. Water is nowhere too plentiful in Colorado, the largest rivers being usually narrow and rapid streams, that seldom form an important feature in the extended landscapes, and these lakes are all the more prized for constituting an exception. They are fourteen miles south of Leadville. The larger of the two lakes is two and one-half miles in length by one and one-half in width, and the other about half that size. The greatest depth is seventy-five feet. These lakes possess peculiar merits as a place of resort. Lying at an altitude of 9,357 feet,—over one and three-fourths miles,—at the mouth of a cañon, in a little nook, surrounded by lofty mountains, from whose never-failing snows their waters are fed, their seclusion invites the tired denizens of dusty cities to fly from debilitating heat and the turmoil of traffic, to a quiet haven where Jack Frost makes himself at home in July and August. On the lakes are numerous sail and row boats, and fishing tackle can always be obtained. Both lakes are well stocked with fish, and the neighboring streams also abound in mountain trout. Surrounding the lakes are large forests of pine, thatadd their characteristic odor to the air. The nearest mountains, whose forms are reflected in the placid waters, are Mount Elbert, 14,351 feet in height, La Plata, 14,311,—each higher than Pike’s Peak,—Lake Mountain, and the Twin Peaks. Right royal neighbors are these. And across the narrow Arkansas valley rises Mount Sheridan, far above timber-line, flanked by the hoary summits of the Park range. The hotel and boarding-house accommodations are good, and will be rapidly extended. During the summer months there is an almost constant round of church and society picnics and private pleasure parties coming down to the lakes from Leadville, so that nearly every day brings a fresh influx of visitors, enlivening the resort, and dispelling all tendency to monotony.

“Twin Lakes is the highest of all the popular Rocky Mountain resorts, and furnishes an unfailing antidote for hot weather. Even in midsummer flannels are necessary articles of apparel, and thick woolen blankets are indispensable at night.”

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