A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains - Pages 1-48



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LETTER I.
Lake Tahoe--Morning in San Francisco--Dust--A Pacific Mail Train--Digger 
Indians--Cape Horn--A Mountain Hotel--A Pioneer--A Truckee Livery Stable--
A Mountain Stream--Finding a Bear--Tahoe.

   LAKE TAHOE, September 2. 
   I HAVE found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life 
and sigh. Not lovable, like the Sandwich Islands, but beautiful in its own 
way! A strictly North American beauty--snow-splotched mountains, huge 
pines, red-woods, sugar pines, silver spruce; a crystalline atmosphere, 
waves of the richest colour; and a pine-hung lake which mirrors all beauty 
on its surface. Lake Tahoe is before me, a sheet of water twenty-two miles 
long by ten broad, and in some places 1700 feet deep. It lies at a height 
of 6000 feet, and the snow-crowned summits which wall it in are from 8000 
to 11,000 feet in altitude. The air is keen and elastic. There is no sound 
but the distant and slightly musical ring of the lumberer's axe.

   It is a weariness to go back, even in thought, to the clang of San 
Francisco, which I left in its cold morning fog early yesterday, driving 
to the Oakland 

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ferry through streets with side-walks heaped with thousands of cantaloupe 
and water-melons, tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, pears, grapes, peaches, 
apricots,--all of startling size as compared with any I ever saw before. 
Other streets were piled with sacks of flour, left out all night, owing to 
the security from rain at this season. I pass hastily over the early part 
of the journey, the crossing the bay in a fog as chill as November, the 
number of "lunch baskets," which gave the car the look of conveying a 
great picnic party, the last view of the Pacific, on which I had looked 
for nearly a year, the fierce sunshine and brilliant sky inland, the look 
of long rainlessness, which one may not call drought, the valleys with 
sides crimson with the poison oak, the dusty vineyards, with great purple 
clusters thick among the leaves, and between the vines great dusty melons 
lying on the dusty earth. From off the boundless harvest-fields the grain 
was carried in June, and it is now stacked in sacks along the track, 
awaiting freightage. California is a "land flowing with milk and honey." 
The barns are bursting with fulness. In the dusty orchards the apple and 
pear branches are supported, that they may not break down under the weight 
of fruit; melons, tomatoes, and squashes of gigantic size lie almost 
unheeded on the ground; fat cattle, gorged almost to repletion, shade 
themselves under the oaks; superb "red" horses shine, 

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not with grooming, but with condition; and thriving farms everywhere show 
on what a solid basis the prosperity of the "Golden State" is founded. 
Very uninviting, however rich, was the blazing Sacramento Valley, and very 
repulsive the city of Sacramento, which, at a distance of 125 miles from 
the Pacific, has an elevation of only thirty feet. The mercury stood at 
103 degrees in the shade, and the fine white dust was stifling.

   In the late afternoon we began the ascent of the Sierras, whose saw-
like points had been in sight for many miles. The dusty fertility was all 
left behind, the country became rocky and gravelly, and deeply scored by 
streams bearing the muddy wash of the mountain gold-mines down to the 
muddier Sacramento. There were long broken ridges and deep ravines, the 
ridges becoming longer, the ravines deeper, the pines thicker and larger, 
as we ascended into a cool atmosphere of exquisite purity, and before six 
P.M. the last traces of cultivation and the last hardwood trees were left 
behind.

   At Colfax, a station at a height of 2400 feet, I got out and walked the 
length of the train. First came two great gaudy engines, the Grizzly Bear 
and the White Fox, with their respective tenders loaded with logs of wood, 
the engines with great, solitary, reflecting lamps in front above the cow-
guards, a quantity of polished brass-work, comfortable glass houses, and 

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well-stuffed seats for the engine-drivers. The engines and tenders were 
succeeded by a baggage-car, a mail-car, and Wells, Fargo, and Co.'s 
express-car, the latter loaded with bullion and valuable parcels, and in 
charge of two "express agents." Each of these cars is forty-five feet 
long. Then came two cars loaded with peaches and grapes; then two "silver 
palace" cars, each sixty feet long; then a smoking-car, at that time 
occupied mainly by Chinamen; and then five ordinary passenger-cars, with 
platforms like all the others, making altogether a train about 700 feet in 
length. The platforms of the four front cars were clustered over with 
Digger Indians, with their squaws, children, and gear. They are perfect 
savages, without any aptitude for even aboriginal civilisation, and are 
altogether the most degraded of the ill-fated tribes which are dying out 
before the white races. They were all very diminutive, five feet one inch 
being, I should think, about the average height, with flat noses, wide 
mouths, and black hair, cut straight above the eyes and hanging lank and 
long at the back and sides. The squaws wore their hair thickly plastered 
with pitch, and a broad band of the same across their noses and cheeks. 
They carried their infants on their backs, strapped to boards. The 
clothing of both sexes was a ragged, dirty combination of coarse woollen 
cloth and hide, the moccasins being unornamented. They were all hideous 
and 

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filthy, and swarming with vermin. The men carried short bows and arrows, 
one of them, who appeared to be the chief, having a lynx's skin for a 
quiver. A few had fishing-tackle, but the bystanders said that they lived 
almost entirely upon grasshoppers. They were a most impressive incongruity 
in the midst of the tokens of an omnipotent civilisation.

   The light of the sinking sun from that time glorified the Sierras, and 
as the dew fell, aromatic odours made the still air sweet. On a single 
track, sometimes carried on a narrow ledge excavated from the mountain 
side by men lowered from the top in baskets, overhanging ravines from 2000 
to 3000 feet deep, the monster train snaked its way upwards, stopping 
sometimes in front of a few frame houses, at others where nothing was to 
be seen but a log cabin with a few Chinamen hanging about it, but where 
trails on the sides of the ravines pointed to a gold country above and 
below. So sharp and frequent are the curves on some parts of the ascent, 
that on looking out of the window one could seldom see more than a part of 
the train at once. At Cape Horn, where the track curves round the ledge of 
a precipice 2500 feet in depth, it is correct to be frightened, and a 
fashion of holding the breath and shutting the eyes prevails, but my fears 
were reserved for the crossing of a trestle-bridge over a very deep chasm, 
which is itself approached by a sharp curve. This bridge appeared 

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to be overlapped by the cars so as to produce the effect of looking down 
directly into a wild gulch, with a torrent raging along it at an immense 
depth below.

   Shivering in the keen, frosty air near the summit-pass of the Sierras, 
we entered the "snow-sheds," wooden galleries, which for about fifty miles 
shut out all the splendid views of the region, as given in dioramas, not 
even allowing a glimpse of "the Gem of the Sierras," the lovely Donner 
Lake. One of these sheds is twenty-seven miles long. In a few hours the 
mercury had fallen from 103 degrees to 29 degrees and we had ascended 6987 
feet in 105 miles! After passing through the sheds, we had several grand 
views of a pine-forest on fire before reaching Truckee at 11 P.M., having 
travelled 258 miles. Truckee, the centre of the "lumbering region" of the 
Sierras, is usually spoken of as "a rough mountain town," and Mr. W. had 
told me that all the roughs of the district congregated there, that there 
were nightly pistol affrays in bar-rooms, etc., but as he admitted that a 
lady was sure of respect, and Mr. G. strongly advised me to stay and see 
the lakes, I got out, much dazed, and very stupid with sleep, envying the 
people in the sleeping-car, who were already unconscious on their 
luxurious couches. The cars drew up in a street--if street that could be 
called which was only a wide, cleared space, intersected by rails, with 
here and there a stump, and great piles of sawn logs bulking big in 

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the moonlight, and a number of irregular clap-board, steep-roofed houses, 
many of them with open fronts, glaring with light and crowded with men. We 
had pulled up at the door of a rough Western hotel, with a partially open 
front, being a bar-room crowded with men drinking and smoking, and the 
space between it and the cars was a moving mass of loafers and passengers. 
On the tracks, engines, tolling heavy bells, were mightily moving, the 
glare from their cyclopean eyes dulling the light of a forest which was 
burning fitfully on a mountain side; and on open spaces great fires of 
pine-logs were burning cheerily, with groups of men round them. A band was 
playing noisily, and the unholy sound of tom-toms was not far off. 
Mountains--the sierras of many a fireside dream--seemed to wall in the 
town, and great pines stood out, sharp and clear cut, against a sky in 
which a moon and stars were shining frostily.

   It was a sharp frost at that great height, and when an "irrepressible 
nigger," who seemed to represent the hotel establishment, deposited me and 
my carpet-bag in a room which answered for "the parlour," I was glad to 
find some remains of pine knots still alight in the stove. A man came in 
and said that when the cars were gone he would try to get me a room, but 
they were so full that it would be a very poor one. The crowd was solely 
masculine. It was then 11.30 P.M., and I had not had a meal since 6 

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A.M.; but when I asked hopefully for a hot supper, with tea, I was told 
that no supper could be got at that hour; but in half an hour the same man 
returned with a small cup of cold, weak tea, and a small slice of bread, 
which looked as if it had been much handled.

   I asked the negro factotum about the hire of horses, and presently a 
man came in from the bar who, he said, could supply my needs. This man, 
the very type of a western pioneer, bowed, threw himself into a rocking-
chair, drew a spittoon beside him, cut a fresh quid of tobacco, began to 
chew energetically, and put his feet, cased in miry high boots, into which 
his trousers were tucked, on the top of the stove. He said he had horses 
which would both "lope" and trot, that some ladies preferred the Mexican 
saddle, that I could ride alone in perfect safety; and after a route had 
been devised, I hired a horse for two days. This man wore a pioneer's 
badge as one of the earliest settlers of California, but he had moved on 
as one place after another had become too civilised for him, "but
nothing," he added, "was likely to change much in Truckee." I was 
afterwards told that the usual regular hours of sleep are not observed 
there. The accommodation is too limited for the population of 2000,(*) 
which is masculine mainly, and is liable to frequent temporary additions, 
and beds are occupied continuously, though by different

(* Nelson's Guide to the Central Pacific Railroad.)

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occupants, throughout the greater part of the twenty-four hours. 
Consequently I found the bed and room allotted to me quite tumbled-
looking. Men's coats and sticks were hanging up, miry boots were littered 
about, and a rifle was in one corner. There was no window to the outer 
air, but I slept soundly, being only once awoke by an increase of the same 
din in which I had fallen asleep, varied by three pistol-shots fired in 
rapid succession.


   This morning Truckee wore a totally different aspect. The crowds of the 
night before had disappeared. There were heaps of ashes where the fires 
had been. A sleepy German waiter seemed the only person about the 
premises, the open drinking-saloons were nearly empty, and only a few 
sleepy-looking loafers hung about in what is called the street. It might 
have been Sunday; but they say that it brings a great accession of throng 
and jollity. Public worship has died out at present; work is discontinued 
on Sunday, but the day is given up to pleasure. Putting a minimum of 
indispensables into a bag, and slipping on my Hawaiian riding-dress over a 
silk skirt, and a dust-cloak over all, I stealthily crossed the plaza to 
the livery-stable, the largest building in Truckee, where twelve fine 
horses were stabled in stalls on each side of a broad drive. My friend of 
the evening before showed me his "rig," three velvet-covered side-saddles 
almost without horns. Some 

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ladies, he said, used the horn of the Mexican saddle, but none "in this 
part" rode cavalier fashion. I felt abashed. I could not ride any distance 
in the conventional mode, and was just going to give up this splendid 
"ravage," when the man said, "Ride your own fashion; here, at Truckee, if 
anywhere in the world, people can do as they like." Blissful Truckee! In 
no time a large grey horse was "rigged out" in a handsome silver-bossed 
Mexican saddle, with ornamental leather tassels hanging from the stirrup-
guards, and a housing of black bear's-skin. I strapped my silk skirt on 
the saddle, deposited my cloak in the corn-bin, and was safely on the 
horse's back before his owner had time to devise any way of mounting me. 
Neither he nor any of the loafers who had assembled showed the slightest 
sign of astonishment, but all were as respectful as possible.

   Once on horseback my embarrassment disappeared, and I rode through 
Truckee, whose irregular, steep-roofed houses and shanties, set down in a 
clearing, and surrounded closely by mountain and forest, looked like a 
temporary encampment, passed under the Pacific Railroad, and then for 
twelve miles followed the windings of the Truckee river, a clear, rushing, 
mountain stream, in which immense pine logs had gone aground not to be 
floated off till the next freshet, a loud-tongued, rollicking stream of 
ice-cold water, on whose banks no ferns or trailers hang, 

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and which leaves no greenness along its turbulent progress. All was bright 
with that brilliancy of sky and atmosphere, that blaze of sunshine and 
universal glitter, which I never saw till I came to California, combined 
with an elasticity in the air which removes all lassitude, and gives one 
spirit enough for anything. On either side of the Truckee great sierras 
rose like walls, castellated, embattled, rifted, skirted and crowned with 
pines of enormous size, the walls now and then breaking apart to show some 
snow-slashed peak rising into a heaven of intense, unclouded, sunny blue. 
At this altitude of 6000 feet one must learn to be content with varieties 
of coniferæ, for, except for aspens: which spring up in some places where 
the pines have been cleared away, and for cotton-woods, which at a lower 
level fringe the streams, there is nothing but the bear cherry, the 
raspberry, the gooseberry, the wild grape, and the wild currant. None of 
these grew near the Truckee, but I feasted my eyes on pines(*) which, 
though not so large as the Wellingtonia of the Yosemite, are really 
gigantic, attaining a height of 250 feet, their huge stems, the warm red 
of cedar wood, rising straight and branchless for a third of their height, 
their diameter from seven to fifteen feet, their shape that of a latch, 
but with the needles long and dark, and cones a foot long. Pines cleft the 
sky; they

(* Pinus Lambertiana.)

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were massed wherever level ground occurred; they stood over the Truckee at 
right angles, or lay across it in prostrate grandeur. Their stumps and 
carcasses were everywhere; and smooth "shoots" on the sierras marked where 
they were shot down as "felled timber," to be floated off by the river. To 
them this wild region owes its scattered population, and the sharp ring of 
the lumberer's axe mingles with the cries of wild beasts and the roar of 
mountain torrents.

   The track is a soft, natural, waggon road, very pleasant to ride on. 
The horse was much too big for me, and had plans of his own; but now and 
then, where the ground admitted of it, I tried his heavy "lope" with much 
amusement. I met nobody, and passed nothing on the road but a freight 
waggon, drawn by twenty-two oxen, guided by three fine-looking young men, 
who had some difficulty in making room for me to pass their awkward 
convoy. After I had ridden about ten miles the road went up a steep hill 
in the forest, turned abruptly, and through the blue gloom of the great 
pines which rose from the ravine in which the river was then hid, came 
glimpses of two mountains, about 11,000 feet in height, whose bald grey 
summits were crowned with pure snow. It was one of those glorious 
surprises in scenery which make one feel as if one must bow down and 
worship. The forest was thick, and had an undergrowth of dwarf spruce and 
brambles, but 

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as the horse had become fidgety and "scary" on the track, I turned off in 
the idea of taking a short cut, and was sitting carelessly, shortening my 
stirrup, when a great, dark, hairy beast rose, crashing and snorting, out 
of the tangle just in front of me. I had only a glimpse of him, and 
thought that my imagination had magnified a wild boar, but it was a bear. 
The horse snorted and plunged violently, as if he would go down to the 
river, and then turned, still plunging, up a steep bank, when, finding 
that I must come off, I threw myself off on the right side, where the 
ground rose considerably, so that I had not far to fall. I got up covered 
with dust, but neither shaken nor bruised. It was truly grotesque and 
humiliating. The bear ran in one direction, and the horse in another. I 
hurried after the latter, and twice he stopped till I was close to him, 
then turned round and cantered away. After walking about a mile in deep 
dust, I picked up first the saddle-blanket and next my bag, and soon came 
upon the horse, standing facing me, and shaking all over. I thought I 
should catch him then, but when I went up to him he turned round, threw up 
his heels several times, rushed off the track, galloped in circles, 
bucking, kicking, and plunging for some time, and then throwing up his 
heels as an act of final defiance, went off at full speed in the direction 
of Truckee, with the saddle over his shoulders and the great 

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wooden stirrups thumping his sides, while I trudged ignominiously along in 
the dust, laboriously carrying the bag and saddle-blanket.

   I walked for nearly an hour, heated and hungry, when to my joy I saw 
the ox-team halted across the top of a gorge, and one of the teamsters 
leading the horse towards me. The young man said that, seeing the horse 
coming, they had drawn the team across the road to stop him, and 
remembering that he had passed them with a lady on him, they feared that 
there had been an accident, and had just saddled one of their own horses 
to go in search of me. He brought me some water to wash the dust from my 
face, and re-saddled the horse, but the animal snorted and plunged for 
some time before he would let me mount, and then sidled along in such a 
nervous and scared way, that the teamster walked for some distance by me 
to see that I was "all right." He said that the woods in the neighbourhood 
of Tahoe had been full of brown and grizzly bears for some days, but that 
no one was in any danger from them. I took a long gallop beyond the scene 
of my tumble to quiet the horse, who was most restless and troublesome.

   Then the scenery became truly magnificent and bright with life. Crested 
blue-jays darted through the dark pines, squirrels in hundreds scampered 
through the forest, red dragon-flies flashed like 

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"living light," exquisite chipmonks ran across the track, but only a dusty 
blue lupin here and there reminded me of earth's fairer children. Then the 
river became broad and still, and mirrored in its transparent depths regal 
pines, straight as an arrow, with rich yellow and green lichen clinging to 
their stems, and firs and balsam-pines filling up the spaces between them, 
the gorge opened, and this mountain-girdled lake lay before me, with its 
margin broken up into bays and promontories, most picturesquely clothed by 
huge sugar-pines. It lay dimpling and scintillating beneath the noonday 
sun, as entirely unspoilt as fifteen years ago, when its pure loveliness 
was known only to trappers and Indians. One man lives on it the whole year 
round; otherwise early October strips its shores of their few inhabitants, 
and thereafter, for seven months, it is rarely accessible except on snow-
shoes. It never freezes. In the dense forests which bound it, and drape 
two-thirds of its gaunt sierras, are hordes of grizzlies, brown bears, 
wolves, elk, deer, chipmonks, martens, minks, skunks, foxes, squirrels, 
and snakes. On its margin I found an irregular wooden inn, with a lumber-
waggon at the door, on which was the carcass of a large grizzly bear, shot 
behind the house this morning. I had intended to ride ten miles farther, 
but, finding that the trail in some places was a "blind" one, and being 
bewitched by the beauty and serenity 

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of Tahoe, I have remained here sketching, revelling in the view from the 
verandah, and strolling in the forest. At this height there is frost every 
night of the year, and my fingers are benumbed.

   The beauty is entrancing. The sinking sun is out of sight behind the 
western sierras, and all the pine-hung promontories on this side of the 
water are rich indigo, just reddened with lake, deepening here and there 
into Tyrian purple. The peaks above, which still catch the sun, are bright 
rose-red, and all the mountains on the other side are pink; and pink, too, 
are the far-off summits on which the snow-drifts rest. Indigo, red, and 
orange tints stain the still water, which lies solemn and dark against the 
shore, under the shadow of stately pines. An hour later, and a moon nearly 
full--not a pale, flat disc, but a radiant sphere--has wheeled up into the 
flushed sky. The sunset has passed through every stage of beauty, through 
every glory of colour, through riot and triumph, through pathos and 
tenderness, both a long, dreamy, painless rest, succeeded by the profound 
solemnity of the moonlight, and a stillness broken only by the night cries 
of beasts in the aromatic forests.

I.L.B. 

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LETTER II
A Lady's "Get-up"--Grizzly Bears--The "Gem of the Sierras"--A Tragic Tale--
A Carnival of Colour.

   CHEYENNE, WYOMING, September 7. 
   AS night came on the cold intensified, and the stove in the parlour 
attracted every one. A San Francisco lady, much "got up" in paint, emerald 
green velvet, Brussels lace, and diamonds, rattled continuously for the 
amusement of the company, giving descriptions of persons and scenes in a 
racy Western twang, without the slightest scruple as to what she said. In 
a few years Tahoe will be inundated in summer with similar vulgarity, 
owing to its easiness of access. I sustained the reputation which our 
countrywomen bear in America by looking a "perfect guy;" and feeling that 
I was a salient point for the speaker's next sally, I was relieved when 
the landlady, a ladylike Englishwoman, asked me to join herself and her 
family in the bar-room, where we had much talk about the neighbourhood and 
its wild beasts, especially bears. The forest is full of them, but they 
seem never to attack people unless when 

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wounded, or much aggravated by dogs, or a she-bear thinks you are going to 
molest her young.

   I dreamt of bears so vividly that I woke with a furry death-hug at my 
throat, but feeling quite refreshed. When I mounted my horse after 
breakfast the sun was high and the air so keen and intoxicating that, 
giving the animal his head, I galloped up and down hill, feeling 
completely tireless. Truly, that air is the elixir of life. I had a 
glorious ride back to Truckee. The road was not as solitary as the day 
before. In a deep part of the forest the horse snorted and reared, and I 
saw a cinnamon-coloured bear with two cubs cross the track ahead of me. I 
tried to keep the horse quiet that the mother might acquit me of any 
designs upon her lolloping children, but I was glad when the ungainly, 
long-haired party crossed the river. Then I met a team, the driver of 
which stopped and said he was glad that I had not gone to Cornelian Bay, 
it was such a bad trail, and hoped I had enjoyed Tahoe. The driver of 
another team stopped and asked if I had seen any bears. Then a man heavily 
armed, a hunter probably, asked me if I were the English tourist who had 
"happened on" a "grizzlie" yesterday. Then I saw a lumberer taking his 
dinner on a rock in the river, who "touched his hat" and brought me a 
draught of ice-cold water, which I could hardly drink owing to the 
fractiousness of the horse, and 

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gathered me some mountain pinks, which I admired. I mention these little 
incidents to indicate the habit of respectful courtesy to women which 
prevails in that region. These men might have been excused for speaking in 
a somewhat free-and-easy tone to a lady riding alone, and in an unwonted 
fashion. Womanly dignity and manly respect for women are the salt of 
society in this wild West.

   My horse was so excitable that I avoided the centre of Truckee, and 
skulked through a collection of Chinamen's shanties to the stable, where a 
prodigious roan horse, standing seventeen hands high, was produced for my 
ride to the Donner Lake. I asked the owner, who was as interested in my 
enjoying myself as a West Highlander might have been, if there were not 
ruffians about who might make an evening ride dangerous. A story was 
current of a man having ridden through Truckee two evenings before with a 
chopped-up human body in a sack behind the saddle, and hosts of stories of 
ruffianism are located there, rightly or wrongly. This man said, "There's 
a bad breed of ruffians, but the ugliest among them all won't touch you. 
There's nothing Western folk admire so much as pluck in a woman." I had to 
get on a barrel before I could reach the stirrup, and when I was mounted 
my feet only came half-way down the horse's sides. I felt like a fly on 
him. The road at first lay through a valley without 

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a river, but some swampishness nourished some rank swamp-grass, the first 
green grass I have seen in America; and the pines, with their red stems, 
looked beautiful rising out of it. I hurried along, and came upon the 
Donner Lake quite suddenly, to be completely smitten by its beauty. It is 
only about three miles long by one and a half broad, and lies hidden away 
among mountains, with no dwellings on its shores but some deserted 
lumberers' cabins.(*) Its loneliness pleased me well. I did not see man, 
beast, or bird from the time I left Truckee till I returned. The 
mountains, which rise abruptly from the margin, are covered with dense 
pine-forests, through which, here and there, strange forms of bare grey 
rock, castellated, or needle-like, protrude themselves. On the opposite 
side, at a height of about 6000 feet, a grey, ascending line, from which 
rumbling, incoherent sounds occasionally proceeded, is seen through the 
pines. This is one of the snow-sheds of the Pacific Railroad, which shuts 
out from travellers all that I was seeing. The lake is called after Mr. 
Donner, who, with his family, arrived at the Truckee river in the fall of 
the year, in company with a party of emigrants bound for California. Being 
encumbered with many cattle, he let the company pass on, and, with his own 
party of sixteen souls, which included his wife and four children, 
encamped by the lake.

(* Visitors can now be accommodated at a tolerable mountain hotel.)

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   In the morning they found themselves surrounded by an expanse of snow, 
and after some consultation it was agreed that the whole party except Mr. 
Donner who was unwell, his wife, and a German friend, should take the 
horses and attempt to cross the mountain, which, after much peril, they 
succeeded in doing; but, as the storm continued for several weeks, it was 
impossible for any rescue party to succour the three who had been left 
behind. In the early spring, when the snow was hard enough for travelling, 
a party started in quest, expecting to find the snow-bound alive and well, 
as they had cattle enough for their support, and, after weeks of toil and 
exposure, they scaled the Sierras and reached the Donner Lake. On arriving 
at the camp they opened the rude door, and there, sitting before the fire, 
they found the German, holding a roasted human arm and hand, which he was 
greedily eating. The rescue party overpowered him, and with difficulty 
tore the arm from him. A short search discovered the body of the lady, 
minus the arm, frozen in the snow, round, plump, and fair, showing that 
she was in perfect health when she met her late. The rescuers returned to 
California, taking the German with them, whose story was that Mr. Donner 
died in the fall, and that the cattle escaped, leaving them but little 
food, and that when this was exhausted Mrs. Donner died. The story never 
gained any credence, and the 

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truth oozed out that the German had murdered the husband, then brutally 
murdered the wife, and had seized upon Donner's money. There were, 
however, no witnesses, and the murderer escaped with the enforced 
surrender of the money to the Donner orphans.

   This tragic story filled my mind as I rode towards the head of the 
lake, which became every moment grander and more unutterably lovely. The 
sun was setting fast, and against his golden light green promontories, 
wooded with stately pines, stood out one beyond another in a medium of 
dark rich blue, while grey bleached summits, peaked, turreted, and snow-
slashed, were piled above them, gleaming with amber light. Darker grew the 
blue gloom, the dew fell heavily, aromatic odours floated on the air, and 
still the lofty peaks glowed with living light, till in one second it died 
off from them, leaving them with the ashy paleness of a dead face. It was 
dark and cold under the mountain shadows, the frosty chill of the high 
altitude wrapped me round, the solitude was overwhelming, and I 
reluctantly turned my horse's head towards Truckee, often looking back to 
the ashy summits in their unearthly fascination. Eastwards the look of the 
scenery was changing every moment, while the lake for long remained "one 
burnished sheet of living gold," and Truckee lay utterly out of sight in a 
hollow filled with lake and 

Page 23

cobalt. Before long a carnival of colour began which I can only describe 
as delirious, intoxicating, a hardly bearable joy, a tender anguish, an 
indescribable yearning, an unearthly music, rich in love and worship. It 
lasted considerably more than an hour, and though the road was growing 
very dark, and the train which was to take me thence was fast climbing the 
Sierras, I could not ride faster than a walk.

   The eastward mountains, which had been grey, blushed pale pink, the 
pink deepened into rose, and the rose into crimson, and then all solidity 
etherealised away and became clear and pure as an amethyst, while all the 
waving ranges and the broken pine-clothed ridges below etherealised too, 
but into a dark rich blue, and a strange effect of atmosphere blended the 
whole into one perfect picture. It changed, deepened, reddened, melted, 
growing more and more wonderful, while under the pines it was night, till, 
having displayed itself for an hour, the jewelled peaks suddenly became 
like those of the sierras, wan as the face of death. Far later the cold 
golden light lingered in the west, with pines in relief against its 
purity, and where the rose light had glowed. In the east, a huge moon 
upheaved itself, and the red flicker of forest fires luridly streaked the 
mountain sides near and far off. I realised that night had come with its 
eeriness, and putting my great horse into a 

Page 24

gallop I clung on to him till I pulled him up in Truckee, which was at the 
height of its evening revelries--fires blazing out of doors, bar-rooms and 
saloons crammed, lights glaring, gaming-tables thronged, fiddle and banjo 
in frightful discord, and the air ringing with ribaldry and profanity.

I.L.B. 

Page 25

LETTER III.
A Temple of Morpheus--Utah--A "God-forgotten" Town--A distressed Couple--
Dog Villages--A Temperance Colony--A Colorado Inn--The Bug pest--Fort 
Collins.

   CHEYENNE, WYOMING, September 8. 
   PRECISELY at 11 P.M. the huge Pacific train, with its heavy bell 
tolling, thundered up to the door of the Truckee House, and on presenting 
my ticket at the double door of a "Silver Palace" car, the slippered 
steward, whispering low, conducted me to my berth--a luxurious bed three 
and a half feet wide, with a hair mattress on springs, fine linen sheets, 
and costly California blankets. The twenty-four inmates of the car were 
all invisible, asleep behind rich curtains. It was a true Temple of 
Morpheus. Profound sleep was the object to which everything was dedicated. 
Four silver lamps hanging from the roof and burning low, gave a dreamy 
light. On each side of the centre passage, rich red curtains, green and 
crimson, striped with gold, hung from silver bars running near the roof, 
and trailed on the soft Axminster carpet. The temperature was carefully 
kept at 70 degrees. It was 29 degrees outside. Silence and freedom from 
jolting were 

Page 26

secured by double doors and windows, costly and ingenious arrangements of 
springs and cushions, and a speed limited to eighteen miles an hour.

   As I lay down, the gallop under the dark pines, the frosty moon, the 
forest fires, the flaring lights and roaring dim of Truckee faded as 
dreams fade, and eight hours later a pure, pink dawn divulged a level 
blasted region, with grey sage brush growing out of a soil encrusted with 
alkali, and bounded on either side by low glaring ridges. All through that 
day we travelled under a cloudless sky over solitary glaring plains, and 
stopped twice at solitary, glaring frame houses, where coarse, greasy 
meals, infested by lazy flies, were provided at a dollar per head. By 
evening we were running across the continent on a bee line, and I sat for 
an hour on the rear platform of the rear car to enjoy the wonderful beauty 
of the sunset and the atmosphere. Far as one could see in the crystalline 
air there was nothing but desert. The jagged Humboldt ranges flaming in 
the sunset, with snow in their clefts, though forty-five miles off, looked 
within an easy canter. The bright metal track, purpling like all else in 
the cool distance, was all that linked one with eastern or western 
civilisation.

   The next morning, when the steward unceremoniously turned us out of our 
berths soon after sunrise, we were running down upon the Great Salt Lake, 
bounded by the white Wahsatch ranges. 

Page 27

Along its shores, by means of irrigation, Mormon industry has compelled 
the ground to yield fine crops of hay and barley; and we passed several 
cabins, from which, even at that early hour, Mormons, each with two or 
three wives, were going forth to their day's work. The women were ugly, 
and their shapeless blue dresses hideous. At the Mormon town of Ogden we 
changed cars, and again traversed dusty plains, white and glaring, varied 
by muddy streams and rough, arid valleys, now and then narrowing into 
canyons. By common consent the windows were kept closed to exclude the 
fine white alkaline dust, which is very irritating to the nostrils. The 
journey became more and more wearisome as we ascended rapidly over immense 
plains and wastes of gravel destitute of mountain boundaries, and with 
only here and there a "knob" or "butte"(*) to break the monotony. The 
wheel marks of the trail to Utah often ran parallel with the track, and 
bones of oxen were bleaching in the sun, the remains of those "whose 
carcasses fell in the wilderness" on the long and drouthy journey. The 
daybreak of to-day (Sunday) found us shivering at Fort Laramie, a frontier 
post dismally situated at a height of 7000 feet. Another 1000 feet over 
gravelly levels brought us to Sherman, the highest

(* The mountains which bound the "Valley of the Babbling Waters," Utah, 
afford striking examples of these "knobs" or "buttes.")

Page 28

level reached by this railroad. From this point eastward the streams fall 
into the Atlantic. The ascent of these apparently level plateaus is called 
"crossing the Rocky Mountains," but I have seen nothing of the range, 
except two peaks like teeth lying low on the distant horizon. It became 
mercilessly cold; some people thought it snowed, but I only saw rolling 
billows of fog. Lads passed through the cars the whole morning, selling 
newspapers, novels, cacti, lollypops, pop corn, pea nuts, and ivory 
ornaments, so that, having lost all reckoning of the days, I never knew 
that it was Sunday till the cars pulled up at the door of the hotel in 
this detestable place.

   The surrounding plains are endless and verdureless. The scanty grasses 
were long ago turned into sun-cured hay by the fierce summer heats. There 
is neither tree nor bush, the sky is grey, the earth buff, the air blae 
and windy, and clouds of coarse granitic dust sweep across the prairie and 
smother the settlement. Cheyenne is described as "a God-forsaken, God-
forgotten place." That it forgets God is written on its face. Its owes its 
existence to the railroad, and has diminished in population, but is a 
depôt for a large amount of the necessaries of life which are distributed 
through the scantily settled districts within distances of 300 miles by 
"freight waggons," each drawn by four or six horses or mules, or double 
that number of oxen. At times over 100 waggons, with 

Page 29

double that number of teamsters, are in Cheyenne at once. A short time ago 
it was a perfect pandemonium, mainly inhabited by rowdies and desperadoes, 
the scum of advancing civilisation; and murders, stabbings, shootings, and 
pistol affrays were at times events of almost hourly occurrence in its 
drinking dens. But in the West, when things reach their worst, a sharp and 
sure remedy is provided. Those settlers who find the state of matters 
intolerable, organise themselves into a Vigilance Committee. "Judge
Lynch," with a few feet of rope, appears on the scene, the majority 
crystallises round the supporters of order, warnings are issued to 
obnoxious people, simply bearing a scrawl of a tree with a man dangling 
from it, with such words as "Clear out of this by 6 A.M. or --." A number 
of the worst desperadoes are tried by a yet more summary process than a 
drumhead court-martial, "strung up," and buried ignominiously. I have been 
told that 120 ruffians were disposed of in this way here in a single 
fortnight. Cheyenne is now as safe as Hilo, and the interval between the 
most desperate lawlessness and the time when United States law, with its 
corruption and feebleness, comes upon the scene is one of comparative 
security and good order. Piety is not the forte of Cheyenne. The roads 
resound with atrocious profanity, and the rowdyism of the saloons and bar-
rooms is repressed, not extirpated.

Page 30

   The population, once 6000, is now about 4000. It is an ill-arranged set 
of frame houses and shanties;(*) and rubbish heaps, and offal of deer and 
antelope, produce the foulest smells I have smelt for a long time. Some of 
the houses are painted a blinding white; others are unpainted; there is 
not a bush, or garden, or green thing; it just straggles out promiscuously 
on the boundless brown plains, on the extreme verge of which three toothy 
peaks are seen. It is utterly slovenly-looking and unornamental, abounds 
in slouching bar-room-looking characters, and looks a place of low, mean 
lives. Below the hotel windows freight cars are being perpetually shunted, 
but beyond the railroad tracks are nothing but the brown plains, with 
their lonely sights--now a solitary horseman at a travelling amble, then a 
party of Indians in paint and feathers, but civilised up to the point of 
carrying firearms, mounted on sorry ponies, the bundled-up squaws riding 
astride on the baggage-ponies; then a drove of ridgy-spined, long-horned 
cattle, which have been several months eating their way from Texas, with 
their escort of four or five much-spurred horsemen, in peaked hats, blue-
hooded coats, and high boots, heavily armed with revolvers and repeating 
rifles, and riding small wiry horses. A solitary wag-

(* The discovery of gold in the Black Hills has lately given it a great 
impetus, and as it is the chief point of departure for the diggings it is 
increasing in population and importance.--July 1879.)

Page 31

gon, with a white tilt, drawn by eight oxen, is probably bearing an 
emigrant and his fortunes to Colorado. On one of the dreary spaces of the 
settlement six white-tilted waggons, each with twelve oxen, are standing 
on their way to a distant part. Everything suggests a beyond.


   September 9. 
   I have found at the post-office here a circular letter of 
recommendation from ex-Governor Hunt, procured by Miss Kingsley's 
kindness, and I another equally valuable one of "authentication" and 
recommendation from Mr. Bowles, of the Springfield Republican, whose name 
is a household word in all the West. Armed with these, I shall plunge 
boldly into Colorado. I am suffering from giddiness and nausea produced by 
the bad smells. A "help" here says that there have been fifty-six deaths 
from cholera during the last twenty days. Is common humanity lacking, I 
wonder, in this region of hard greed? Can it not be bought by dollars 
here, like every other commodity, votes included? Last night I made the 
acquaintance of a shadowy gentleman from Wisconsin, far gone in 
consumption, with a spirited wife and young baby. He had been ordered to 
the Plains as a last resource, but was much worse. Early this morning he 
crawled to my door, scarcely able to speak from debility and bleeding from 
the lungs, begging me to go to his wife, who, the doctor said, 

Page 32

was ill of cholera. The child had been ill all night, and not for love or 
money could he get any one to do anything for them, not even to go for the 
medicine. The lady was blue, and in great pain from cramp, and the poor 
unweaned infant was roaring for the nourishment which had failed. I vainly 
tried to get hot water and mustard for a poultice, and though I offered a 
negro a dollar to go for the medicine, he looked at it superciliously, 
hummed a tune, and said he must wait for the Pacific train, which was not 
due for an hour. Equally in vain I hunted through Cheyenne for a feeding-
bottle. Not a maternal heart softened to the helpless mother and starving 
child, and my last resource was to dip a piece of sponge in some milk and 
water, and try to pacify the creature. I applied Rigollot's leaves, went 
for the medicine, saw the popular host--a bachelor--who mentioned a girl 
who, after much difficulty, consented to take charge of the baby for two 
dollars a day and attend to the mother, and having remained till she began 
to amend; I took the cars for Greeley, a settlement on the Plains, which I 
had been recommended to make my starting-point for the mountains.


   FORT COLLINS, September 10. 
   It gave me a strange sensation to embark upon the Plains. Plains, 
plains everywhere, plains generally level, but elsewhere rolling in long 
undulations, like the waves of a sea which had fallen asleep. They are 

Page 33

covered thinly with buff grass, the withered stalks of flowers, Spanish 
bayonet, and a small beehive-shaped cactus. One could gallop all over them.

   They are peopled with large villages of what are called prairie dogs, 
because they utter a short, sharp bark, but the dogs are, in reality, 
marmots. We passed numbers of these villages, which are composed of raised 
circular orifices, about eighteen inches in diameter, with sloping 
passages leading downwards for five or six feet. Hundreds of these burrows 
are placed together. On nearly every rim a small furry reddish-buff beast 
sat on his hind legs, looking, so far as head went, much like a young 
seal. These creatures were acting as sentinels, and sunning themselves. As 
we passed, each gave a warning yelp, shook its tail, and, with a ludicrous 
flourish of its hind legs, dived into its hole. The appearance of hundreds 
of these creatures, each eighteen inches long, sitting like dogs begging, 
with their paws down and all trained sunwards, is most grotesque. The Wish-
ton-Wish has few enemies, and is a most prolific animal. From its enormous 
increase and the energy and extent of its burrowing operations, one can 
fancy that in the course of years the prairies will be seriously injured, 
as it honeycombs the ground, and renders it unsafe for homes. The burrows 
seem usually to be shared by owls, and many of the people insist that a 
rattlesnake is also an inmate, but I hope 

Page 34

for the sake of the harmless, cheery little prairie dog, that this 
unwelcome fellowship is a myth.

   After running on a down grade for some time, five distinct ranges of 
mountains, one above another, a lurid blue against a lurid sky, upheaved 
themselves above the prairie sea. An American railway car, hot, stuffy, 
and full of chewing, spitting Yankees, was not an ideal way of approaching 
this range which had early impressed itself upon my imagination. Still, it 
was truly grand, although it was sixty miles off, and we were looking at 
it from a platform 5000 feet in height. As I write I am only twenty-five 
miles from them, and they are gradually gaining possession of me. I can 
look at and feel nothing else. At five in the afternoon frame houses and 
green fields began to appear, the cars drew up, and two of my fellow-
passengers and I got out and carried our own luggage through the deep dust 
to a small, rough, Western tavern, where with difficulty we were put up 
for the night. This settlement is called the Greeley Temperance Colony, 
and was rounded lately by an industrious class of emigrants from the East, 
all total abstainers, and holding advanced political opinions. They bought 
and fenced 50,000 acres of land, constructed an irrigating canal, which 
distributes its waters on reasonable terms, have already a population of 
3000, and are the most prosperous and rising colony in Colorado, being 
altogether free from 

Page 35

either laziness or crime. Their rich fields are artificially productive 
solely; and after seeing regions where Nature gives spontaneously, one is 
amazed that people should settle here to be dependent on irrigating 
canals, with the risk of having their crops destroyed by grasshoppers. A 
clause in the charter of the colony prohibits the introduction, sale, or 
consumption of intoxicating liquor, and I hear that the men of Greeley 
carry their crusade against drink even beyond their limits, and have 
lately sacked three houses opened for the sale of drink near their 
frontier, pouring the whisky upon the ground, so that people don't now 
like to run the risk of bringing liquor near Greeley, and the temperance 
influence is spreading over a very large area. As the men have no bar-
rooms to sit in, I observed that Greeley was asleep at an hour when other 
places were beginning their revelries. Nature is niggardly, and living is 
coarse and rough, the merest necessaries of hardy life being all that can 
be thought of in this stage of existence.

   My first experiences of Colorado travel have been rather severe. At 
Greeley I got a small upstairs room at first, but gave it up to a married 
couple with a child, and then had one downstairs no bigger than a cabin, 
with only a canvas partition. It was very hot, and every place was thick 
with black flies. The English landlady had just lost her "help," and was 
in a great fuss, so that I helped her to get supper ready. 

Page 36

Its chief features were greasiness and black flies. Twenty men in working 
clothes fed and went out again, "nobody speaking to nobody." The landlady 
introduced me to a Vermont settler who lives in the "Foot Hills," who was 
very kind and took a great deal of trouble to get me a horse. Horses 
abound, but they are either large American horses, which are only used for 
draught, or small, active horses, called broncos, said to be from a 
Spanish word, signifying that they can never be broke. They nearly all 
"buck," and are described as being more "ugly" and treacherous than mules. 
There is only one horse in Greeley "safe for a woman to ride." I tried an 
Indian pony by moonlight--such a moonlight--but found he had tender feet. 
The kitchen was the only sitting-room, so I shortly went to bed, to be 
awoke very soon by crawling creatures apparently in myriads. I struck a 
light, and found such swarms of bugs that I gathered myself up on the 
wooden chairs, and dozed uneasily till sunrise. Bugs are a great pest in 
Colorado. They come out of the earth, infest the wooden walls, and cannot 
be got rid of by any amount of cleanliness. Many careful housewives take 
their beds to pieces every week and put carbolic acid on them.

   It was a glorious, cool morning, and the great range of the Rocky 
Mountains looked magnificent. I tried the pony again, but found he would 
not do 

Page 37

for a long journey; and as my Vermont acquaintance offered me a seat in 
his waggon to Fort Collins, 25 miles nearer the Mountains, I threw a few 
things together and came here with him. We left Greeley at 10, and arrived 
here at 4.30, staying an hour for food on the way. I liked the first half 
of the drive; but the fierce, ungoverned, blazing heat of the sun on the 
whitish earth for the last half, was terrible even with my white umbrella, 
which I have not used since I left New Zealand; it was sickening. Then the 
eyes have never anything green to rest upon, except in the river bottoms, 
where there is green hay grass. We followed mostly the course of the River 
Cache-a-la-Poudre, which rises in the mountains, and after supplying 
Greeley with irrigation, falls into the Platte, which is an affluent of 
the Missouri. When once beyond the scattered houses and great ring fence 
of the vigorous Greeley colonists, we were on the boundless prairie. Now 
and then horsemen passed us, and we met three waggons with white tilts. 
Except where the prairie dogs have honeycombed the ground, you can drive 
almost anywhere, and the passage of a few waggons over the same track 
makes a road. We forded the river, whose course is marked the whole way by 
a fringe of small cotton woods and aspens, and travelled hour after hour 
with nothing to see except some dog towns, with their quaint little 
sentinels; but the view in front was glorious. The 

Page 38

Alps, from the Lombard plains, are the finest mountain panorama I ever 
saw, but not equal to this; for not only do five high-peaked giants, each 
nearly the height of Mont Blanc, lift their dazzling summits above the 
lower ranges, but the expanse of mountains is so vast, and the whole lie 
in a transparent medium of the richest blue, not haze--something peculiar 
to the region. The lack of foreground is a great artistic fault, and the 
absence of greenery is melancholy, and makes me recall sadly the 
entrancing detail of the Hawaiian Islands. Once only, the second time we 
forded the river, the cotton woods formed a foreground, and then the 
loveliness was heavenly. We stopped at a log house and got a rough dinner 
of beef and potatoes, and I was amused at the five men who shared it with 
us for apologising to me for being without their coats, as if coats would 
not be an enormity on the Plains.

   It is the election day for the Territory, and men were galloping over 
the prairie to register their votes. The three in the waggon talked 
politics the whole time. They spoke openly and shamelessly of the prices 
given for votes; and apparently there was not a politician on either side 
who was not accused of degrading corruption. We saw a convoy of 5000 head 
of Texan cattle travelling from Southern Texas to Iowa. They had been nine 
months on the way! They were under the charge of twenty mounted 

Page 39

vacheros, heavily armed, and a light waggon accompanied them, full of 
extra rifles and ammunition, not unnecessary, for the Indians are raiding 
in all directions, maddened by the reckless and useless slaughter of the 
buffalo, which is their chief subsistence. On the plains are herds of wild 
horses, buffalo, deer, and antelope; and in the mountains, bears, wolves, 
deer, elk, mountain lions, bison, and mountain sheep. You see a rifle in 
every waggon, as people always hope to fall in with game.

   By the time we reached Fort Collins I was sick and dizzy with the heat 
of the sun, and not disposed to be pleased with a most unpleasing place. 
It was a military post, but at present consists of a few frame houses put 
down recently on the bare and burning plain. The settlers have "great 
expectations," but of what? The mountains look hardly nearer than from 
Greeley; one only realises their vicinity by the loss of their higher 
peaks. This house is freer from bugs than the one at Greeley, but full of 
flies. These new settlements are altogether revolting, entirely 
utilitarian, given up to talk of dollars as well as to making them, with 
coarse speech, coarse food, coarse everything, nothing wherewith to 
satisfy the higher cravings if they exist, nothing on which the eye can 
rest with pleasure. The lower floor of this inn swarms with locusts in 
addition to thousands of black flies. The latter cover the ground and rise 
buzzing from it as you walk.

I.L.B. 

Page 40

LETTER IV.
A Plague of Flies--A melancholy Charioteer--The Foot Hills--A Mountain 
Boarding-House--A dull Life--"Being Agreeable"--Climate of Colorado--
Soroche and Snakes.

   CANYON, September 12. 
   I WAS actually so dull and tired I deliberately slept away the 
afternoon in order to forget the heat and flies. Thirty men in working 
clothes, silent and sad-looking, came in to supper. The beef was tough and 
greasy, the butter had turned to oil, and beef and butter were black with 
living, drowned, and half-drowned flies. The greasy table-cloth was black 
also with flies, and I did not wonder that the guests looked melancholy 
and quickly escaped. I failed to get a horse, but was strongly recommended 
to come here and board with a settler, who, they said, had a saw-mill and 
took boarders. The person who recommended it so strongly gave me a note of 
introduction, and told me that it was in a grand part of the mountains, 
where many people had been camping out all the summer for the benefit of 
their health. The idea of a boarding-house, as I know them in America, was 
rather formidable in the present state of my wardrobe, and 

Page 41

I decided on bringing my carpet-bag, as well as my pack, lest I should be 
rejected for my bad clothes. Early the next morning I left in a buggy 
drawn by light broncos and driven by a profoundly melancholy young man. He 
had never been to the canyon; there was no road. We met nobody, saw 
nothing except antelope in the distance, and he became more melancholy and 
lost his way, driving hither and thither for about twenty miles till we 
came upon an old trail which eventually brought us to a fertile "bottom," 
where hay and barley were being harvested, and five or six frame houses 
looked cheerful. I had been recommended to two of these, which professed 
to take in strangers, but one was full of reapers, and in the other a 
child was dead. So I took the buggy on, glad to leave the glaring, prosaic 
settlement behind. There was a most curious loneliness about the journey 
up to that time. Except for the huge barrier to the right, the boundless 
prairies were everywhere, and it was like being at sea without a compass. 
The wheels made neither sound nor indentation as we drove over the short, 
dry grass, and there was no cheerful clatter of horses' hoofs. The sky was 
cloudy and the air hot and still. In one place we passed the carcass of a 
mule, and a number of vultures soared up from it, to descend again 
immediately. Skeletons and bones of animals were often to be seen. A range 
of low, grassy hills, called the 

Page 42

Foot Hills, rose from the plain, featureless and monotonous, except where 
streams, fed by the snows of the higher regions, had cut their way through 
them. Confessedly bewildered, and more melancholy than ever, the driver 
turned up one of the widest of these entrances, and in another hour the 
Foot Hills lay between us and the prairie sea, and a higher and broken 
range, with pitch pines of average size, was revealed behind them. These 
Foot Hills, which swell up uninterestingly from the plains on their 
eastern side, on their western have the appearance of having broken off 
from the next range, and the break is abrupt, and takes the form of walls 
and terraces of rock of the most brilliant colour, weathered and stained 
by ores, and, even under the grey sky, dazzling to the eyes. The driver 
thought he had understood the directions given, but he was stupid, and 
once we lost some miles by arriving at a river too rough and deep to be 
forded, and again we were brought up by an impassable canyon. He grew 
frightened about his horses, and said no money would ever tempt him into 
the mountains again; but average intelligence would have made it all easy.

   The solitude was becoming sombre, when, after driving for nine hours, 
and travelling at the least forty-five miles, without any sign of fatigue 
on the part of the broncos, we came to a stream, by the side of which we 
drove along a definite track, till we came 

Page 43

to a sort of tripartite valley, with a majestic crooked canyon 2000 feet 
deep opening upon it. A rushing stream roared through it, and the Rocky 
Mountains, with pines scattered over them, came down upon it. A little 
farther, and the canyon became utterly inaccessible. This was exciting; 
here was an inner world. A rough and shaky bridge, made of the outsides of 
pines laid upon some unsecured logs, crossed the river. The broncos 
stopped and smelt it, not liking it, but some encouraging speech induced 
them to go over. On the other side was a log cabin, partially ruinous, and 
the very rudest I ever saw, its roof of plastered mud being broken into 
large holes. It stood close to the water among some cotton-wood trees. A 
little higher there was a very primitive saw-mill, also out of repair, 
with some logs lying about. An emigrant waggon and a forlorn tent, with a 
camp-fire and a pot, were in the foreground, but there was no trace of the 
boarding-house, of which I stood a little in dread. The driver went for 
further directions to the log-cabin, and returned with a grim smile 
deepening the melancholy of his face to say it was Mr. Chalmers', but 
there was no accommodation for such as him, much less for me! This was 
truly "a sell." I got down and found a single room of the rudest kind, 
with the wall at one end partially broken down, holes in the roof, holes 
for windows, and no furniture but two chairs and two unplaned wooden 

Page 44

shelves, with some sacks of straw upon them for beds. There was an 
adjacent cabin room, with a stove, benches, and table, where they cooked 
and ate, but this was all. A hard, sad-looking woman looked at me 
measuringly. She said that they sold milk and butter to parties who camped 
in the canyon, that they had never had any boarders but two asthmatic old 
ladies, but they would take me for five dollars per week if I "would make 
myself agreeable." The horses had to be fed, and I sat down on a box, had 
some dried beef and milk, and considered the matter. If I went back to 
Fort Collins, I thought I was farther from a mountain life, and had no 
choice but Denver, a place from which I shrank, or to take the cars for 
New York. Here the life was rough, rougher than any I had ever seen, and 
the people repelled me by their faces and manners; but if I could rough it 
for a few days, I might, I thought, get over canyons and all other 
difficulties into Estes Park, which has become the goal of my journey and 
hopes. So I decided to remain.


   September 16. 
   Five days here, and I am no nearer Estes Park. How the days pass I know 
not; I am weary of the limitations of this existence. This is "a life in 
which nothing ever happens." When the buggy disappeared, I felt as if I 
had cut the bridge behind me. I sat down and knitted for some 

Page 45

time--my usual resource under discouraging circumstances. I really did not 
know how I should get on. There was no table, no bed, no basin, no towel 
no glass, no window, no fastening on the door. The roof was in holes, the 
logs were unchinked, and one end of the cabin was partially removed! Life 
was reduced to its simplest elements. I went out; the family all had 
something to do, and took no notice of me. I went back, and then an 
awkward girl of sixteen, with uncombed hair, and a painful repulsiveness 
of face and air, sat on a log for half an hour and stared at me. I tried 
to draw her into talk, but she twirled her fingers and replied snappishly 
in monosyllables. Could I by any effort "make myself agreeable?" I 
wondered. The day went on. I put on my Hawaiian dress, rolling up the 
sleeves to the elbows in an "agreeable" fashion. Towards evening the 
family returned to feed, and pushed some dried beef and milk in at the 
door. They all slept under the trees, and before dark carried the sacks of 
straw out for their bedding. I followed their example that night, or 
rather watched Charles's Wain while they slept, but since then have slept 
on blankets on the floor under the roof. They have neither lamp nor 
candle, so if I want to do anything after dark I have to do it by the 
unsteady light of pine knots. As the nights are cold, and free from bugs, 
and I do a good deal of manual labour. I sleep well. At dusk 

Page 46

I make my bed on the floor, and draw a bucket of ice-cold water from the 
river; the family go to sleep under the trees, and I pile logs on the fire 
sufficient to burn half the night, for I assure you the solitude is eerie 
enough. There are unaccountable noises, (wolves), rummagings under the 
floor, queer cries, and stealthy sounds of I know not what. One night a 
beast (fox or skunk) rushed in at the open end of cabin, and fled through 
the window, almost brushing my face, and on another, the head and three or 
four inches of the body of a snake were protruded through a chink of the 
floor close to me, to my extreme disgust. My mirror is the polished inside 
of my watchcase. At sunrise Mrs. Chalmers comes in--if coming into a 
nearly open shed can be called in--and makes a fire, because she thinks me 
too stupid to do it, and mine is the family room; and by seven I am 
dressed, have folded the blankets, and swept the floor, and then she puts 
some milk and bread or stirabout on a box by the door. After breakfast I 
draw more water, and wash one or two garments daily, taking care that 
there are no witnesses of my inexperience. Yesterday a calf sucked one 
into hopeless rags. The rest of the day I spend in mending, knitting, 
writing to you, and the various odds and ends which arise when one has to 
do all for oneself. At twelve and six some food is put on the box by the 
door, and at dusk we make up our beds. A distressed emigrant 

Page 47

woman has just given birth to a child in a temporary shanty by the river, 
and I go to help her each day. I have made the acquaintance of all the 
careworn, struggling settlers within a walk. All have come for health, and 
most have found or are finding it, even if they have no better shelter 
than a waggon tilt or a blanket on sticks laid across four poles. The 
climate of Colorado is considered the finest in North America, and 
consumptives, asthmatics, dyspeptics, and sufferers from nervous diseases, 
are here in hundreds and thousands, either trying the "camp cure" for 
three or four months, or settling here permanently. People can safely 
sleep out of doors for six months of the year. The plains are from 4000 to 
6000 feet high, and some of the settled "parks," or mountain valleys, are 
from 8000 to 10,000. The air, besides being much rarefied, is very dry, 
The rainfall is far below the average, dews are rare, and fogs nearly 
unknown. The sunshine is bright and almost constant, and three-fourths of 
the days are cloudless. The milk, beef, and bread are good. The climate is 
neither so hot in summer nor so cold in winter as that of the States, and 
when the days are hot the nights are cool. Snow rarely lies on the lower 
ranges, and horses and cattle don't require to be either fed or housed 
during the winter. Of course the rarefied air quickens respiration. All 
this is from hearsay.(*) I am not under favourable circum-

(* The curative effect of the climate of Colorado can hardly be 
exaggerated. In travelling extensively through the Territory afterwards I 
found that nine out of every ten settlers were cured invalids. Statistics 
and medical works on the climate of the State (as it now is) represent 
Colorado as the most remarkable sanatorium in the world.)

Page 48

stances, either for mind or body, and at present I feel a singular 
lassitude and difficulty in taking exercise, but this is said to be the 
milder form of the affection known on higher altitudes as soroche, or 
"mountain sickness," and is only temporary. I am forming a plan for 
getting farther into the mountains, and hope that my next letter will be 
more lively. I killed a rattlesnake this morning close to the cabin, and 
have taken its rattle, which has eleven joints. My life is embittered by 
the abundance of these reptiles--rattlesnakes and moccasin snakes, both 
deadly, carpet snakes and "green racers," reputed dangerous, water snakes, 
tree snakes, and mouse snakes, harmless but abominable. Seven rattlesnakes 
have been killed just outside the cabin since I came. A snake, three feet 
long, was found coiled under the pillow of the sick woman. I see snakes in 
all withered twigs, and am ready to flee at "the sound of a shaken leaf." 
And besides snakes, the earth and air are alive and noisy with forms of 
insect life, large and small, stinging, humming, buzzing, striking, 
rasping, devouring!

I.L.B.