A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains - Pages 49-96



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LETTER V.
A Dateless Day--"Those hands of yours"--A Puritan--Persevering 
Shiftlessness--The House-Mother--Family Worship--A Grim Sunday--A "Thick-
skulled Englishman"--A Morning Call--Another Atmosphere--The Great Lone 
Land--"Ill Found"--A Log Camp--Bad Footing for Horses--Accidents--
Disappointment.

   CANYON, September. 
   The absence of a date shows my predicament. They have no newspaper; I 
have no almanack; the father is away for the day, and none of the others 
can help me, and they look contemptuously upon my desire for information 
on the subject. The monotony will come to an end to-morrow, for Chalmers 
offers to be my guide over the mountains to Estes Park, and has persuaded 
his wife "for once to go for a frolic;" and with much reluctance, many 
growls at the waste of time, and many apprehensions of danger and loss, 
she has consented to accompany him. My life has grown less dull from 
theirs having become more interesting to me, and as I have "made myself 
agreeable," we are on fairly friendly terms. My first move in the 
direction of fraternising was, however, snubbed. A few days ago, having 
finished 

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my own work, I offered to wash up the plates, but Mrs. C., with a look 
which conveyed more than words, a curl of her nose, and a sneer in her 
twang, said, "Guess you'll make more work nor you'll do. Those hands of 
yours" (very brown and coarse they were) "ain't no good; never done 
nothing, I guess." Then to her awkward daughter: "This woman says she'll 
wash up! Ha! ha! look at her arms and hands!" This was the nearest 
approach to a laugh I have heard, and have never seen even a tendency 
towards a smile. Since then I have risen in their estimation by 
improvising a lamp--Hawaiian fashion--by putting a wisp of rag into a tin 
of fat. They have actually condescended to sit up till the stars come out 
since. Another advance was made by means of the shell-pattern quilt I am 
knitting for you. There has been a tendency towards approving of it, and a 
few days since the girl snatched it out of my hand, saying, "I want this," 
and apparently took it to the camp. This has resulted in my having a 
knitting-class, with the woman, her married daughter, and a woman from the 
camp, as pupils. Then I have gained ground with the man by being able to 
catch and saddle a horse. I am often reminded of my favourite couplet,-- 

"Beware of desperate steps; the darkest day,
Live till to-morrow, will have passed away."

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   But oh! What a hard, narrow life it is with which I am now in contact! 
A narrow and unattractive religion, which I believe still to be genuine, 
and an intense but narrow patriotism, are the only higher influences. 
Chalmers came from Illinois nine years ago, pronounced by the doctors to 
be far gone in consumption, and in two years he was strong. They are a 
queer family; somewhere in the remote Highlands I have seen such another. 
Its head is tall, gaunt, lean, and ragged, and has lost one eye. On an 
English road one would think him a starving or a dangerous beggar. He is 
slightly interesting, very opinionated, and wished to be thought well-
informed, which he is not. He belongs to the straitest sect of Reformed 
Presbyterians ("Psalm-singers"), but exaggerates anything of bigotry and 
intolerance which may characterise them, and rejoices in truly merciless 
fashion over the excision of the philanthropic Mr. Stuart, of 
Philadelphia, for worshipping with congregations which sing hymns. His 
great boast is that his ancestors were Scottish Covenanters. He considers 
himself a profound theologian, and by the pine logs at night discourses to 
me of the mysteries of the eternal counsels and the divine decrees. 
Colorado, with its progress and its future, is also a constant theme. He 
hates England with a bitter, personal hatred, and regards any allusions 
which I make to the progress of Victoria as a personal insult. He trust to 
live to see the downfall of the British mon- 

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archy and the disintegration of the empire. He is very fond of talking, 
and asks me a great deal about my travels, but if I speak favourably of 
the climate or resources of any other country, he regards it as a slur on 
Colorado.

   They have one hundred and sixty acres of land, a "squatter's claim," 
and an invaluable water-power. He is a lumberer, and has a saw-mill of a 
very primitive kind. I notice that every day something goes wrong with it, 
and this is the case throughout. If he wants to haul timber down, one or 
other of the oxen cannot be found; or if the timber is actually under way, 
a wheel or a part of the harness gives way, and the whole affair is at a 
standstill for days. The cabin is hardly a shelter, but is allowed to 
remain in ruins because the foundation of a frame-house was once dug. A 
horse is always sure to be lame for want of a shoe-nail, or a saddle to be 
useless from a broken buckle, and the waggon and harness are a marvel of 
temporary shifts, patchings, and insecure linkings with strands of rope. 
Nothing is ever ready or whole when it is wanted. Yet Chalmers is a 
frugal, sober, hard-working man, and he, his eldest son, and a "hired man" 
"rise early," "going forth to their work and labour till the evening;" and 
if they do not "late take rest," they truly "eat the bread of 
carefulness." It is hardly surprising that nine years of persevering 
shiftlessness should have resulted in 

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nothing but the ability to procure the bare necessaries of life.

   Of Mrs. C. I can say less. She looks like one of the English poor women 
of our childhood--lean, clean, toothless, and speaks, like some of them, 
in a piping, discontented voice, which seems to convey a personal 
reproach. All her waking hours are spent in a large sun-bonnet. She is 
never idle for one minute, is severe and hard, and despises everything but 
work. I think she suffers from her husband's shiftlessness. She always 
speaks of me as "this" or "that woman." The family consists of a grown-up 
son, a shiftless, melancholy-looking youth, who possibly pines for a wider 
life; a girl of sixteen, a sour, repellent-looking creature, with as much 
manners as a pig; and three hard, unchildlike younger children. By the 
whole family all courtesy and gentleness of act or speech seem regarded as 
"works of the flesh," if not of "the devil." They knock over all one's 
things without apologising or picking them up, and when I thank them for 
anything they look grimly amazed. I feel that they think it sinful that I 
do not work as hard as they do. I wish I could show them "a more excellent 
way." This hard greed, and the exclusive pursuit of gain, with the 
indifference to all which does not aid in its acquisition, are eating up 
family love and life throughout the West. I write this reluctantly, and 
after a total experience of nearly 

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two years in the United States. They seem to have no "Sunday clothes," and 
few of any kind. The sewing-machine, like most other things, is out of 
order. One comb serves the whole family. Mrs. C. is cleanly in her person 
and dress, and the food, though poor, is clean. Work, work, work, is their 
day and their life. They are thoroughly ungenial, and have that air of 
suspicion in speaking of every one which is not unusual in the land of 
their ancestors. Thomas Chalmers is the man's ecclesiastical hero, in 
spite of his own severe Puritanism. Their live stock consists of two 
wretched horses, a fairly good broncho mare, a mule, four badly-bred cows, 
four gaunt and famished-looking oxen, some swine of singularly active 
habits, and plenty of poultry. The old saddles are tied on with twine; one 
side of the bridle is a worn-out strap and the other a rope. They wear 
boots, but never two of one pair, and never blacked, of course, but no 
stockings. They think it quite effeminate to sleep under a roof, except 
during the severest months of the year. There is a married daughter across 
the river, just the same hard, loveless, moral, hard-working being as her 
mother. Each morning, soon after seven, when I have swept the cabin, the 
family come in for "worship." Chalmers "wales" a psalm, in every sense of 
the word wail, to the most doleful of dismal tunes; they read a chapter 
round, and he prays. If his prayer has something 

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of the tone of the imprecatory psalms, he has high authority in his 
favour; and if there be a tinge of the Pharisaic thanksgiving, it is 
hardly surprising that he is grateful that he is not as other men are when 
he contemplates the general godlessness of the region.

   Sunday was a dreadful day. The family kept the Commandment literally, 
and did no work. Worship was conducted twice, and was rather longer than 
usual. Chalmers does not allow of any books in his house but theological 
works, and two or three volumes of dull travels, so the mother and 
children slept nearly all day. The man attempted to read a well-worn copy 
of Boston's Fourfold State, but shortly fell asleep, and they only woke up 
for their meals. Friday and Saturday had been passably cool, with frosty 
nights, but on Saturday night it changed, and I have not felt anything 
like the heat of Sunday since I left New Zealand, though the mercury was 
not higher than 91°. It was sickening, scorching, melting, unbearable, 
from the mere power of the sun's rays. It was an awful day, and seemed as 
if it would never come to an end. The cabin, with its mud roof under the 
shade of the trees, gave a little shelter, but it was occupied by the 
family, and I longed for solitude. I took the Imitation of Christ, and 
strolled up the canyon among the withered, crackling leaves, in much dread 
of snakes, and lay down on a rough table which some passing emigrant 

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had left, and soon fell asleep. When I awoke it was only noon. The sun 
looked wicked as it blazed like a white magnesium light. A large tree-
snake (quite harmless) hung from the pine under which I had taken shelter, 
and looked as if it were going to drop upon me. I was covered with black 
flies. The air was full of a busy, noisy din of insects, and snakes, 
locusts, wasps, flies, and grasshoppers were all rioting in the torrid 
heat. Would the sublime philosophy of Thomas à Kempis, I wondered, have 
given way under this? All day I seemed to hear in mockery the clear laugh 
of the Hilo streams, and the drip of Kona showers, and to see as in a 
mirage the perpetual green of windward Hawaii. I was driven back to the 
cabin in the late afternoon, and in the evening listened for two hours to 
abuse of my own country, and to sweeping condemnations of all religionists 
outside of the brotherhood of "Psalm-singers." It is jarring and painful 
yet I would say of Chalmers, as Dr. Holland says of another:-- 

"If ever I shall reach the home in heaven,
For whose dear rest I humbly hope and pray,
In the great company of the forgiven
I shall be sure to meet old Daniel Gray."

   The night came without coolness, but at daylight on Monday morning a 
fire was pleasant. You will now have some idea of my surroundings. It is a 
moral, hard, unloving, unlovely, unrelieved, un- 

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beautified, grinding life. These people live in a discomfort and lack of 
ease and refinement which seems only possible to people of British stock. 
A "foreigner" fills his cabin with ingenuities and elegancies, and a 
Hawaiian or South Sea Islander makes his grass house both pretty and 
tasteful. Add to my surroundings a mighty canyon, impassable both above 
and below, and walls of mountains with an opening some miles off to the 
vast prairie sea.(*)

   An English physician is settled about half a mile from here over a 
hill. He is spoken off as holding "very extreme opinions." Chalmers rails 
at him for being "a thick-skulled Englishman," for being "fine, polished," 
etc. To say a man is "polished" here is to give him a very bad name. He 
accuses him also of holding views subversive of all morality. In spite of 
all this, I thought he might possess a map, and I induced Mrs. C. to walk 
over with me. She intended it as a formal morning call, but she wore the 
inevitable sun-bonnet, and had her dress tied up as when washing. It was 
not till I reached the gate that I remembered that I was in my Hawaiian 
riding-dress, and that I still wore the spurs with which I had been trying 
a horse in the morning! The house was in a 

(* I have not curtailed this description of the roughness of a Colorado 
settler's life, for, with the exceptions of the disrepair and the 
puritanism, it is a type of the hard, unornamented existence with which I 
came almost universally in contact during my subsequent residence in the 
Territory.)

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grass valley which opened from the tremendous canyon through which the 
river had cut its way. The Foot Hills, with their terraces of flaming red 
rock, were glowing in the sunset, and a pure green sky arched tenderly 
over a soft evening scene. Used to the meanness and baldness of settlers' 
dwellings, I was delighted to see that in this instance the usual log 
cabin was only the lower floor of a small house, which bore a delightful 
resemblance to a Swiss châlet. It stood in a vegetable garden fertilised 
by an irrigating ditch, outside of which were a barn and cowshed. A young 
Swiss girl was bringing the cows slowly home from the hill, an 
Englishwoman in a clean print dress stood by the fence holding a baby, and 
a fine-looking Englishman in a striped Garibaldi shirt, and trousers of 
the same tucked into high boots, was shelling corn. As soon as Mrs. Hughes 
spoke I felt she was truly a lady; and oh! how refreshing refined, 
courteous, graceful English manner was, as she invited us into the house! 
The entrance was low, through a log porch festooned and almost concealed 
by a "wild cucumber." Inside, though plain and poor, the room looked a 
home, not like a squatter's cabin. An old tin was completely covered by a 
graceful clematis mixed with streamers of Virginia creeper, and white 
muslin curtains, and above all two shelves of admirably-chosen books, gave 
the room almost an air of elegance. Why do I write 

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almost? It was an oasis. It was barely three weeks since I had left "the 
communion of educated men," and the first tones of the voices of my host 
and hostess made me feel as if I had been out of it for a year. Mrs. C. 
stayed an hour and a half, and then went home to the cows, when we 
launched upon a sea of congenial talk. They said they had not seen an 
educated lady for two years, and pressed me to go and visit them. I rode 
home on Dr. Hughes's horse after dark, to find neither fire nor light in 
the cabin. Mrs. C. had gone back saying, "Those English talked just like 
savages, I couldn't understand a word they said." I made a fire, and 
extemporised a light with some fat and a wick of rag, and Chalmers came in 
to discuss my visit and to ask me a question concerning a matter which had 
roused the latent curiosity of the whole family. I had told him, he said, 
that I knew no one hereabouts; but "his woman" told him that Dr. H. and I 
spoke constantly of a Mrs. Grundy, whom we both knew and disliked, and who 
was settled, as we said, not far off! He had never heard of her, he said, 
and he was the pioneer settler of the canyon, and there was a man up here 
from Longmount who said he was sure there was not a Mrs. Grundy in the 
district, unless it was a woman who went by two names! The wife and family 
had then come in, and I felt completely nonplussed. I longed to tell 
Chalmers that it was he and such as he, there or anywhere, 

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with narrow hearts, bitter tongues, and harsh judgments, who were the true 
"Mrs. Grundys," dwarfing individuality, checking lawful freedom of speech, 
and making men "offenders for a word," but I forebore. How I extricated 
myself from the difficulty, deponent sayeth not. The rest of the evening 
has been spent in preparing to cross the mountains. Chalmers says he knows 
the way well, and that we shall sleep to-morrow at the foot of Long's 
Peak. Mrs. Chalmers repents of having consented, and conjures up doleful 
visions of what tile family will come to when left headless, and of 
disasters among the cows and hens. I could tell her that the eldest son 
and the "hired man" have plotted to close the saw-mill and go on a hunting 
and fishing expedition, that the cows will stray, and that the individual 
spoken respectfully of as "Mr. Skunk" will make havoc in the hen-house.


   NAMELESS REGION, ROCKY MOUNTAINS, September. 
   This is indeed far removed. It seems farther away from you than any 
place I have been to yet, except the frozen top of the volcano of Mauna 
Lea. It is so little profaned by man that if one were compelled to live 
here in solitude one might truly say of the bears, deer, and elk which 
abound, "Their tameness is shocking to me." It is the world of "big game." 
Just now a heavy-headed elk, with much-branched horns fully three feet 
long, stood and looked 

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at me, and then quietly trotted away. He was so near that I heard the 
grass, crisp with hoar frost, crackle under his feet. Bears stripped the 
cherry-bushes within a few yards of us last night. Now two lovely blue 
birds, with crests on their heads, are picking about within a stone's-
throw. This is "The Great Lone Land," until lately the hunting-ground of 
the Indians, and not yet settled or traversed, or likely to be so, owing 
to the want of water. A solitary hunter has built a log cabin up here, 
which he occupies for a few weeks for the purpose of elk-hunting, but all 
the region is unsurveyed, and mostly unexplored. It is 7 A.M. The sun has 
not yet risen high enough to melt the hoar-frost, and the air is clear, 
bright, and cold. The stillness is profound. I hear nothing but the far-
off mysterious roaring of a river in a deep canyon, which we spent two 
hours last night in trying to find. The horses are lost, and if I were 
disposed to retort upon my companions the term they invariably apply to 
me, I should now write, with bitter emphasis, "that man" and "that woman" 
have gone in search of them.

   The scenery up here is glorious, combining sublimity with beauty, and 
in the elastic air fatigue has dropped off from me. This is no region for 
tourists and women, only for a few elk and bear hunters at times, and its 
unprofaned freshness gives me new life. I cannot by any words give you an 
idea of 

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scenery so different from any that you or I have ever seen. This is an 
upland valley of grass and flowers, of glades and sloping lawns, and 
cherry-fringed beds of dry streams, and clumps of pines artistically 
placed, and mountain sides densely pine-clad, the pines breaking into 
fringes as they come down upon the "park," and the mountains breaking into 
pinnacles of bold grey rock as they pierce the blue of the sky. A single 
dell of bright green grass, on which dwarf clumps of the scarlet poison-
oak look like beds of geraniums, slopes towards the west, as if it must 
lead to the river which we seek. Deep, vast canyons, all trending 
westwards, lie in purple gloom. Pine-clad ranges, rising into the blasted 
top of Storm Peak, all run westwards too, and all the beauty and glory are 
but the frame out of which rises--heaven-piercing, pure in its pearly 
lustre, as glorious a mountain as the sun tinges red in either hemisphere--
the splintered, pinnacled, lonely, ghastly, imposing, double-peaked summit 
of Long's Peak, the Mont Blanc of Northern Colorado.(*)

   This is a view to which nothing needs to be added. This is truly the 
"lodge in some vast wilderness" for which one often sighs when in the 
midst 

(* Gray's Peak and Pike's Peak have their partisans, but after seeing them 
all under favourable aspects, Long's Peak stands in my memory as it does 
in that vast congeries of mountains, alone in imperial grandeur.)

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of "a bustle at once sordid and trivial." In spite of Dr. Johnson, these 
"monstrous protuberances" do "inflame the imagination and elevate the 
understanding." This scenery satisfies my soul. Now, the Rocky Mountains 
realise--nay, exceed--the dream of my childhood. It is magnificent, and 
the air is life-giving. I should like to spend some time in these higher 
regions, but I know that this will turn out an abortive expedition, owing 
to the stupidity and pigheadedness of Chalmers.

   There is a most romantic place called Estes Park, at a height of 7500 
feet, which can be reached by going down to the plains and then striking 
up the St. Vrain Canyon, but this is a distance of 55 miles, and as 
Chalmers was confident that he could take me over the mountains, a 
distance, as he supposed, of about 20 miles, we left at mid-day yesterday, 
with the fervent hope, on my part, that I might not return. Mrs. C. was 
busy the whole of Tuesday in preparing what she called "grub," which, 
together with "plenty of bedding," was to be carried on a pack mule; but 
when we started I was disgusted to find that Chalmers was on what should 
have been the pack animal, and that two thickly-quilted cotton "spreads" 
had been disposed of under my saddle, making it broad, high, and 
uncomfortable. Any human being must have laughed to see an expedition 
start so grotesquely "ill found." I had a very 

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old iron-grey horse, whose lower lip hung down feebly, showing his few 
teeth, while his fore-legs struck out forwards, and matter ran from both 
his nearly-blind eyes. It is a kindness to bring him up to abundant 
pasture. My saddle is an old McLellan cavalry saddle, with a battered 
brass peak, and the bridle is a rotten leather strap on one side and a 
strand of rope on the other. The cotton quilts covered the Rosinante from 
mane to tail. Mrs. C. wore an old print skirt, an old short-gown, a print 
apron, and a sun-bonnet, with the flap coming down to her waist, and 
looked as careworn and clean as she always does. The inside horn of her 
saddle was broken; to the outside one hung a saucepan and a bundle of 
clothes. The one girth was nearly at the breaking-point when we started.

   My pack, with my well-worn umbrella upon it, was behind my saddle. I 
wore my Hawaiian riding-dress, with a handkerchief tied over my face and 
the sun-cover of my umbrella folded and tied over my hat, for the sun was 
very fierce. The queerest figure of all was the would-be guide. With his 
one eye, his gaunt, lean form, and his torn clothes, he looked more like a 
strolling tinker than the honest worthy settler that he is. He bestrode 
rather than rode a gaunt mule, whose tail hair had all been shaven off, 
except a tuft for a tassel at the end. Two flour bags which leaked were 
tied on behind the saddle, two 

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quilts were under it, and my canvas bag, a battered canteen, a frying-pan, 
and two lariats hung from the horn. On one foot C. wore an old high boot, 
into which his trouser was tucked, and on the other an old brogue, through 
which his toes protruded.

   We had an ascent of four hours through a ravine which gradually opened 
out upon this beautiful "park," but we rode through it for some miles 
before the view burst upon us. The vastness of this range, like 
astronomical distances, can hardly be conceived of. At this place, I 
suppose, it is not less than 250 miles wide, and with hardly a break in 
its continuity, it stretches almost from the Arctic circle to the Straits 
of Magellan. From the top of Long's Peak, within a short distance, twenty-
two summits, each above 12,000 feet in height, are visible, and the Snowy 
Range, the backbone or "divide" of the continent, is seen snaking 
distinctly through the wilderness of ranges, with its waters starting for 
either ocean. From the first ridge we crossed after leaving Canyon we had 
a singular view of range beyond range cleft by deep canyons, and abounding 
in elliptical valleys, richly grassed. The slopes of all the hills, as far 
as one could see, were waving with fine grass ready for the scythe, but 
the food of wild animals only. All these ridges are heavily timbered with 
pitch pines, and where they come down on the grassy slopes they look as if 
the trees 

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had been arranged by a landscape gardener. Far off, through an opening in 
a canyon, we saw the prairie simulating the ocean. Far off, through an 
opening in another direction, was the glistening outline of the Snowy 
Range. But still, till we reached this place, it was monotonous, though 
grand as a whole: a grey-green or buff-grey, with outbreaks of brilliantly-
coloured rock, only varied by the black green of pines, which are not the 
stately pyramidal pines of the Sierra Nevada, but much resemble the 
natural Scotch fir. Not many miles from us is North Park, a great tract of 
land said to be rich in gold, but those who have gone to "prospect" have 
seldom returned, the region being the home of tribes of Indians who live 
in perpetual hostility to the whites and to each other.

   At this great height, and most artistically situated, we came upon a 
rude log camp tenanted in winter by an elk hunter, but now deserted. 
Chalmers without any scruple picked the padlock; we lighted a fire, made 
some tea, and fried some bacon, and after a good meal mounted again and 
started for Estes Park. For four weary hours we searched hither and 
thither along every indentation of the ground which might be supposed to 
slope towards the Big Thompson River, which we knew had to be forded. 
Still, as the quest grew more tedious, Long's Peak stood before us as a 
landmark in purple glow; and still at 

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his feet lay a hollow filled with deep blue atmosphere, where I knew that 
Estes Park must lie, and still between us and it lay never-lessening miles 
of inaccessibility, and the sun was ever westering, and the shadows ever 
lengthening, and Chalmers, who had started confident, bumptious, blatant, 
was ever becoming more bewildered, and his wife's thin voice more piping 
and discontented, and my stumbling horse more insecure, and I more 
determined (as I am at this moment) that somehow or other I would reach 
that blue hollow, and even stand on Long's Peak where the snow was 
glittering. Affairs were becoming serious, and Chalmers's incompetence a 
source of real peril, when, after an exploring expedition, he returned 
more bumptious than ever, saying he knew it would be all right, he had 
found a trail, and we could get across the river by dark, and camp out for 
the night. So he led us into a steep, deep, rough ravine, where we had to 
dismount, for trees were lying across it everywhere, and there was almost 
no footing on the great slabs of shelving rock. Yet there was a trail, 
tolerably well worn, and the branches and twigs near the ground were well 
broken back. Ah! it was a wild place. My horse fell first, rolling over 
twice, and breaking off a part of the saddle, in his second roll knocking 
me over a shelf of three feet of descent. Then Mrs C.'s. horse and the 
mule fell on the top of each other, and on recovering them- 

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selves bit each other savagely. The ravine became a wild gulch, the dry 
bed of some awful torrent; there were huge shelves of rock, great 
overhanging walls of rock, great prostrate trees, cedar spikes and cacti 
to wound the feet, and then a precipice fully 500 feet deep! The trail was 
a trail made by bears in search of bear cherries, which abounded!

   It was getting dusk as we bad to struggle up the rough gulch we had so 
fatuously descended. The horses fell several times; I could hardly get 
mine up at all, though I helped him as much as I could; I was cut and 
bruised, scratched and torn. A spine of a cactus penetrated my foot, and 
some vicious thing cut the back of my neck. Poor Mrs. C. was much bruised, 
and I pitied her, for she got no fun out of it as I did. It was an awful 
climb. When we got out of the gulch, C. was so confused that he took the 
wrong direction, and after an hour of vague wandering was only recalled to 
the right one by my pertinacious assertions acting on his weak brain. I 
was inclined to be angry with the incompetent braggart, who had boasted 
that he could take us to Estes Park "blindfold;" but I was sorry for him 
too, so said nothing, even though I had to walk during these meanderlings 
to save my tired horse. When at last, at dark, we reached the open, there 
was a snow-flurry, with violent gusts of wind, and the shelter of the 
camp, dark and cold as it was, was desirable. We 
 
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had no food, but made a fire. I lay down on some dry grass, with my 
inverted saddle for a pillow, and slept soundly, till I was awoke by the 
cold of an intense frost and the pain of my many cuts and bruises. 
Chalmers promised that we should make a fresh start at six, so I woke him 
at five, and here I am alone at half-past eight! I said to him many times 
that unless he hobbled or picketed the horses, we should lose them. "Oh," 
he said, "they'll be all right." In truth he had no picketing-pins. Now, 
the annals are merrily trotting homewards. I saw them two miles off an 
hour ago with him after them. His wife, who is also after them, goaded to 
desperation, said, "He's the most ignorant, careless, good-for-nothing man 
I ever saw," upon which I dwelt upon his being well-meaning. There is a 
sort of well here, but our "afternoon tea" and watering the horses drained 
it, so we have had nothing to drink since yesterday, for the canteen, 
which started without a cork, lost all its contents when the mule fell. I 
have made a monstrous fire, but thirst and impatience are hard to bear, 
and preventible misfortunes are always irksome. I have found the stomach 
of a bear with fully a pint of cherrystones in it, and have spent an hour 
in getting the kernels; and lo! now, at halfpast nine, I see the culprit 
and his wife coming back with the animals!

I.L.B. 

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   LOWER CANYON, September 21. 
   We never reached Estes Park. There is no trail, and horses have never 
been across. We started from camp at ten, and spent four hours in 
searching for the trail. Chalmers tried gulch after gulch again, his self-
assertion giving way a little after each failure; sometimes going east 
when we should have gone west, always being brought up by a precipice or 
other impossibility. At last he went off by himself, and returned 
rejoicing, saying he had found the trail; and soon, sure enough, we were 
on a well-defined old trail, evidently made by carcasses which have been 
dragged along it by hunters. Vainly I pointed out to him that we were 
going north-east when we should have gone south-west, and that we were 
ascending instead of descending. "Oh, it's all right, and we shall soon 
come to water," he always replied. For two hours we ascended slowly 
through a thicket of aspen, the cold continually intensifying; but the 
trail, which had been growing faint, died out, and an opening showed the 
top of Storm Peak not far off and not much above us, though it is 11,000 
feet high. I could not help laughing. He had deliberately turned his back 
on Estes Park. He then confessed that he was lost, and that he could not 
find the way back. His wife sat down own the ground and cried bitterly. We 
ate some dry bread, and then I 

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said I had had much experience in travelling, and would take the control 
of the party, which was agreed to, and we began the long descent. Soon 
after his wife was thrown from her horse, and cried bitterly again from 
fright and mortification. Soon after that the girth of the mule's saddle 
broke, and having no crupper, saddle and addenda went over his head, and 
the flour was dispersed. Next the girth of the woman's saddle broke, and 
she went over her horse's head. Then he began to fumble helplessly at it, 
railing against England the whole time, while I secured the saddle, and 
guided the route back to an outlet of the park. There a fire was built, 
and we had some bread and bacon; and then a search for water occupied 
nearly two hours, and resulted in the finding of a mud-hole, trodden and 
defiled by hundreds of feet of elk, bears, cats, deer, and other beasts, 
and containing only a few gallons of water as thick as pea-soup, with 
which we watered our animals and made some strong tea.

   The sun was setting in glory as we started for the four hours' ride 
home, and the frost was intense, and made our bruised, grazed limbs ache 
painfully. I was sorry for Mrs. Chalmers, who had had several falls, and 
bore her aches patiently, and had said several times to her husband, with 
a kind meaning, "I am real sorry for this woman." I was so tired with the 
perpetual stumbling of my home, as well as stiffened 

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with the bitter cold, that I walked for the last hour or two; and 
Chalmers, as if to cover his failure, indulged in loud, incessant talk, 
abusing all other religionists, and railing against England in the 
coarsest American fashion. Yet, after all, they were not bad souls; and 
though he failed so grotesquely, he did his incompetent best. The log-fire 
in the ruinous cabin was cheery, and I kept it up all night, and watched 
the stars through the holes in the roof, and thought of Long's Peak in its 
glorious solitude, and resolved that, come what might, I would reach Estes 
Park.

I.L.B. 

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LETTER VI.
A bronco Mare--An Accident--Wonderland--A Sad Story--The Children of the 
Territories--Hard Greed--Halcyon Hours--Smartness--Old-fashioned 
Prejudices--The Chicago Colony--Good luck--Three Notes of Admiration--A 
good Horse--The St. Vrain--The Rocky Mountains at last--"Mountain Jim"--A 
death hug--Estes Park.

   LOWER CANYON, September 25. 
   THIS is another world. My entrance upon it was signalised in this 
fashion. Chalmers offered me a bronco mare for a reasonable sum, and 
though she was a shifty, half-broken young thing, I came over here on her 
to try her, when, just as I was going away, she took into her head to 
"scare" and "buck," and when I touched her with my foot she leaped over a 
heap of timber, and the girth gave way, and the onlookers tell me that 
while she jumped I fell over her tail from a good height upon the hard 
gravel, receiving a parting kick on my knee. They could hardly believe 
that no bones were broken. The flesh of my left arm looks crushed into a 
jelly, but cold-water dressings will soon bring it right; and a cut on my 
back bled profusely; and the bleeding, with many bruises and the general 
shake, have made me feel weak, but circumstances 

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do not admit of "making a fuss," and I really think that the rents in my 
riding-dress will prove the most important part of the accident.

   The surroundings here are pleasing. The log cabin, on the top of which 
a room with a steep, ornamental Swiss roof has been built, is in a valley 
close to a clear, rushing river, which emerges a little higher up from an 
inaccessible chasm of great sublimity. One side of the valley is formed by 
cliffs and terraces of porphyry as red as the reddest new brick, and at 
sunset blazing into vermilion. Through rifts in the nearer ranges there 
are glimpses of pine-clothed peaks, which, towards twilight, pass through 
every shade of purple and violet. The sky and the earth combine to form a 
Wonderland every evening--such rich, velvety colouring in crimson and 
violet; such an orange, green, and vermilion sky; such scarlet and emerald 
clouds; such an extraordinary dryness and purity of atmosphere, and then 
the glorious afterglow which seems to blend earth and heaven! For colour, 
the Rocky Mountains beat all I have seen. The air has been cold; but the 
sun bright and hot during the last few days.

   The story of my host is a story of misfortune. It indicates who should 
not come to Colorado.(*) He and

(* The story is ended now. A few months after my visit Mrs. H. died a few 
days after her confinement, and was buried on the bleak hill-side, leaving 
her husband with five children under six years old, and Dr. H. is a 
prosperous man on one of the sunniest islands of the Pacific, with the 
devoted Swiss friend as his second wife.)

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his wife are under thirty-five. The son of a London physician in large 
practice, with a liberal education in the largest sense of the word, 
unusual culture and accomplishments, and the partner of a physician in 
good practice in the second city in England, he showed symptoms which 
threatened pulmonary disease. In an evil hour he heard of Colorado with 
its "unrivalled climate, boundless resources," etc., and, fascinated not 
only by these material advantages, but by the notion of being able to 
found or reform society on advanced social theories of his own, he became 
an emigrant. Mrs. Hughes is one of the most charming, cultured, and 
lovable women I have ever seen, and their marriage is an ideal one. Both 
are fitted to shine in any society, but neither had the slightest 
knowledge of domestic and farming details. Dr. H. did not know how to 
saddle or harness a horse. Mrs. H. did not know whether you should put an 
egg into cold or hot water when you meant to boil it! They arrived at 
Longmount, bought up this claim, rather for the beauty of the scenery than 
for any substantial advantages, were cheated in land, goods, oxen, 
everything, and, to the discredit of the settlers, seemed to be regarded 
as fair game. Everything has failed with them, and though they "rise 
early, and late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness," they hardly 
keep their heads above water. A young Swiss girl, devoted to them both, 
works as hard as they do. They have 

Page 76

one horse, no waggon, some poultry, and a few cows, but no "hired man." It 
is the hardest and least ideal struggle that I have ever seen made by 
educated people. They had all their experience to learn, and they have 
bought it by losses and hardships. That they have learnt so much surprises 
me. Dr. H. and these two ladies built the upper room and the addition to 
the house without help. He has cropped the land himself, and has learned 
the difficult art of milking cows. Mrs. H. makes all the clothes required 
for a family of six, and her evenings, when the hard day's work is done 
and she is ready to drop from fatigue, are spent in mending and patching. 
The day is one long grind, without rest or enjoyment, or the pleasure of 
chance intercourse with cultivated people. The few visitors who have 
"happened in" are the thrifty wives of prosperous settlers, full of 
housewifely pride, whose one object seems to be to make Mrs. H. feel her 
inferiority to themselves. I wish she did take a more genuine interest in 
the "coming-on" of the last calf, the prospects of the squash crop, and 
the yield and price of butter; but though she has learned to make 
excellent butter and bread, it is all against the grain. The children ate 
delightful. The little boys are refined, courteous, childish gentlemen, 
with love and tenderness to their parents in all their words and actions. 
Never a rough or harsh word is heard within the house. But the atmosphere 
of struggles and 

Page 77

difficulties has already told on these infants. They consider their mother 
in all things, going without butter when they think the stock is low, 
bringing in wood and water too heavy for them to envy, anxiously 
speculating on the winter prospect and the crops, yet withal the most 
childlike and innocent of children.

   One of the most painful things in the Western States and Territories is 
the extinction of childhood. I have never seen any children, only debased 
imitations of men and women, cankered by greed and selfishness, and 
asserting and gaining complete independence of their parents at ten years 
old. The atmosphere in which they are brought up is one of greed, 
godlessness, and frequently of profanity. Consequently these sweet things 
seem like flowers in a desert.

   Except for love, which here as everywhere raises life into the ideal, 
this is a wretched existence. The poor crops have been destroyed by 
grasshoppers over and over again, and that talent deified here under the 
name of "smartness" has taken advantage of Dr. H. in all bargains, leaving 
him with little except food for his children. Experience has been dearly 
bought in all ways, and this instance of failure might be a useful warning 
to professional men without agricultural experience not to come and try to 
make a living by farming in Colorado.

   My time here has passed very delightfully in spite of my regret and 
anxiety for this interesting family 

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I should like to stay longer, were it not that they have given up to me 
their straw bed, and Mrs. H. and her baby, a wizened, fretful child, sleep 
on the floor in my room, and Dr. H. on the floor downstairs, and the 
nights are frosty and chill. Work is the order of their day, and of mine, 
and at night, when the children are in bed, we three ladies patch the 
clothes and make shirts, and Dr. H. reads Tennyson's poems, or we speak 
tenderly of that world of culture and noble deeds which seems here "the 
land very far off," or Mrs. H. lays aside her work for a few minutes and 
reads some favourite passage of prose or poetry, as I have seldom heard 
either read before, with a voice of large compass and exquisite tone, 
quick to interpret every shade of the author's meaning, and soft, speaking 
eyes, moist with feeling and sympathy. These are our halcyon hours, when 
we forget the needs of the morrow, and that men still buy, sell, cheat, 
and strive for gold, and that we are in the Rocky Mountains, and that it 
is near midnight. But morning comes hot and tiresome, and the never-ending 
work is oppressive, and Dr. H. comes in from the field two or three times 
in the day, dizzy and faint, and they condole with each other, and I feel 
that the Colorado settler needs to be made of sterner stuff and to possess 
more adaptability.

   To-day has been a very pleasant day for me, though I have only once sat 
down since 9 A.M., and 

Page 79

it is now 5 P.M. I plotted that the devoted Swiss girl should go to the 
nearest settlement with two of the children for the day in a neighbour's 
waggon, and that Dr. and Mrs. H. should get an afternoon of rest and sleep 
upstairs, while I undertook to do the work and make something of a 
cleaning. I had a large "wash" of my own, having been hindered last week 
by my bad arm, but a clothes-wringer which screws on to the side of the 
tub is a great assistance, and by folding the clothes before passing them 
through it, I make it serve instead of mangle and iron. After baking the 
bread and thoroughly cleaning the churn and pails, I began upon the tins 
and pans, the cleaning of which had fallen into arrears, and was hard at 
work, very greasy and grimy, when a man came in to know where to ford the 
river with his ox-team, and as I was showing him he looked pityingly at 
me, saying, "Be you the new hired girl? Bless me, you're awful small!"

   Yesterday we saved three cwt. of tomatoes for winter use, and about two 
tons of squash and pumpkin for the cattle, two of the former weighing 140 
lbs. I pulled nearly a quarter of an acre of maize, but it was a scanty 
crop, and the husks were poorly filled. I much prefer field work to the 
scouring of greasy pans and to the wash-tub, and both to either sewing or 
writing.

   This is not Arcadia. "Smartness," which con- 

Page 80

sists in over-reaching your neighbour in every fashion which is not 
illegal, is the quality which is held in the greatest repute, and Mammon 
is the divinity. From a generation brought up to worship the one and 
admire the other little can be hoped. In districts distant as this is from 
"Church Ordinances," there are three ways in which Sunday is spent: one, 
to make it a day for visiting, hunting, and fishing; another, to spend it 
in sleeping and abstinence from work; and the third, to continue all the 
usual occupations, consequently harvesting and felling and hauling timber 
are to be seen in progress. Last Sunday a man came here and put up a door, 
and said he didn't believe in the Bible or in a God, and he wasn't going 
to sacrifice his children's bread to old-fashioned prejudices. There is a 
manifest indifference to the higher obligations of the law, "judgment, 
mercy, and faith;" but in the main the settlers are steady, there are few 
flagrant breaches of morals, industry is the rule, life and property are 
far safer than in England or Scotland, and the law of universal respect to 
women is still in full force.

   The days are now brilliant and the nights sharply frosty. People are 
preparing for the winter. The tourists from the east are trooping into 
Denver, and the surveying parties are coming down from the mountains. Snow 
has fallen on the higher ranges, and my hopes of getting to Estes Park are 
down at zero.

Page 81

   LONGMOUNT, September 25. 
   Yesterday was perfect. The sun was brilliant and the air cool and 
bracing. I felt better, and after a hard day's work and an evening stroll 
with my friends in the glorious afterglow, I went to bed cheerful and 
hopeful as to the climate and its effect on my health. This morning I 
awoke with a sensation of extreme lassitude, and on going out, instead of 
the delicious atmosphere of yesterday, I found intolerable suffocating 
heat, a blazing (not brilliant) sun, and a sirocco like a Victorian hot 
wind. Neuralgia, inflamed eyes, and a sense of extreme prostration 
followed, and my acclimatised hosts were somewhat similarly affected. The 
sparkle, the crystalline atmosphere, and the glory of colour of yesterday, 
had all vanished. We had borrowed a waggon, but Dr. H.'s strong but lazy 
horse and a feeble hired one made a poor span; and though the distance 
here is only twenty-two miles over level prairie, our tired animal, and 
losing the way three times, have kept us eight and a half hours in the 
broiling sun. All notions of locality fail me on the prairie, and Dr. H. 
was not much better. We took wrong tracks, got entangled among fences, 
plunged through the deep mud of irrigation ditches, and were despondent. 
It was a miserable drive, sitting on a heap of fodder under the angry sun. 
Half-way here we camped at a river, now only a series of mud-holes, and I 
fell asleep under the im- 

Page 82

perfect shade of a cotton-wood tree, dreading the thought of waking and 
jolting painfully along over the dusty prairie in the dust-laden, fierce 
sirocco, under the ferocious sun. We never saw man or beast the whole day.

   This is the "Chicago Colony," and it is said to be prospering, after 
some preliminary land swindles. It is as uninviting as Fort Collins. We 
first came upon dust-coloured frame-houses set down at intervals on the 
dusty buff plain, each with its dusty wheat or barley field adjacent, the 
crop, not the product of the rains of heaven, but of the muddy overflow of 
"Irrigating Ditch No. 2." Then comes a road made up of many converging 
waggon tracks, which stiffen into a wide straggling street, in which 
glaring frame-houses and a few shops stand opposite to each other. A two-
storey house, one of the whitest and most glaring, and without a verandah 
like all the others, is the "St. Vrain Hotel," called after the St. Vrain 
river, out of which the ditch is taken which enables Longmount to exist. 
Everything was broiling in the heat of the slanting sun, Which all day 
long had been beating on the unshaded wooden rooms. The heat within was 
more sickening than outside, and black flies covered everything, one's 
face included. We all sat fighting the flies in my bedroom, which was 
cooler than elsewhere, till a glorious sunset over the Rocky Range, some 
ten miles off, compelled us to go 

Page 83

out and enjoy it. Then followed supper, Western fashion, without table-
cloths, and all the "unattached" men of Longmount came in and fed silently 
and rapidly. It was a great treat to have tea to drink, as I had not 
tasted any for a fortnight. The landlord is a jovial, kindly man. I told 
him how my plans had failed, and how I was reluctantly going on tomorrow 
to Denver and New York, being unable to get to Estes Park, and he said 
there might yet be a chance of some one coming in to-night who would be 
going up. He soon came to my room and asked definitely what I could do--if 
I feared cold, if I could "rough it," if I could "ride horseback and 
lope." Estes Park and its surroundings are, he says, "the most beautiful 
scenery in Colorado," and "it's a real shame," he added, "for you not to 
see it." We had hardly sat down to tea when he came, saying, "You're in 
luck this time; two young men have just come in and are going up to-morrow 
morning." I am rather pleased, and have hired a horse for three days; but 
I am not very hopeful, for I am almost ill of the smothering heat, and 
still suffer from my fall, and not having been on horseback since, thirty 
miles will be a long ride. Then I fear that the accommodation is as rough 
as Chalmers's, and that solitude will be impossible. We have been 
strolling in the street ever since it grew dark to get the little air, 
which is moving.

Page 84

   ESTES PARK!!! September 28. 
   I wish I could let those three notes of admiration go to you instead of 
a letter. They mean everything that is rapturous and delightful--grandeur, 
cheerfulness, health, enjoyment, novelty, freedom, etc. etc. I have just 
dropped into the very place I have been seeking, but in everything it 
exceeds all my dreams. There is health in every breath of air; I am much 
better already, and get up to a seven o'clock breakfast without 
difficulty. It is quite comfortable--in the fashion that I like. I have a 
log cabin, raised on six posts, all to myself, with a skunk's lair 
underneath it, and a small lake close to it. There is a frost every night, 
and all day it is cool enough for a roaring fire. The ranchman, who is 
half hunter half stockman, and his wife are jovial, hearty Welsh people 
from Llanberis, who laugh with loud, cheery British laughs, sing in parts 
down to the youngest child, are free-hearted and hospitable, and pile the 
pitch-pine logs half-way up the great rude chimney. There has been fresh 
meat each day since I came, delicious bread baked daily, excellent 
potatoes, tea and coffee, and an abundant supply of milk like cream. I 
have a clean hay bed with six blankets, and there are neither bugs nor 
fleas. The scenery is the most glorious I have ever seen, and is above us, 
around us, at the very door. Most people have advised me to go to Colorado 
Springs, and only one mentioned this 

Page 85

place, and till I reached Longmount I never saw any one who had been 
there, but I saw from the lie of the country that it must be most superbly 
situated. People said, however, that it was most difficult of access, and 
that the season for it was over. In travelling there is nothing like 
dissecting people's statements, which are usually coloured by their 
estimate of the powers or likings of the person spoken to, making all 
reasonable inquiries, and then pertinaciously but quietly carrying out 
one's own plans. This is perfection, and all the requisites for health are 
present, including plenty of horses and grass to ride on.

   It is not easy to sit down to write after ten hours of hard riding, 
especially in a cabin full of people, and wholesome fatigue may make my 
letter flat when it ought to be enthusiastic. I was awake all night at 
Longmount owing to the stifling heat, and got up nervous and miserable, 
ready to give up the thought of coming here, but the sunrise over the 
plains, and the wonderful red of the Rocky Mountains, as they reflected 
the eastern sky, put spirit into me. The landlord had got a horse, but 
could not give any satisfactory assurances of his being quiet, and being 
much shaken by my fall at Canyon, I earnestly wished that the Greeley 
Tribune had not given me a reputation for horsemanship, which had preceded 
me here. The young men who were to escort me "seemed very innocent," he 
said, but I have not 

Page 86

arrived at his meaning yet. When the horse appeared in the street at 8.30, 
I saw, to my dismay, a high-bred, beautiful creature, stable-kept, with 
arched neck, quivering nostrils, and restless ears and eyes. My pack, as 
on Hawaii, was strapped behind the Mexican saddle, and my canvas bag hung 
on the horn, but the horse did not look fit to carry "gear" and seemed to 
require two men to hold and coax him. There were many loafers about, and I 
shrank from going out and mounting in my old Hawaiian riding-dress, though 
Dr. and Mrs. H. assured me that I looked quite "insignificant and 
unnoticeable." We got away at nine with repeated injunctions from the 
landlord in the words, "Oh, you should be heroic!"

   The sky was cloudless, and a deep brilliant blue, and though the sun 
was hot the air was fresh and bracing. The ride for glory and delight I 
shall label along with one to Hanalei, and another to Mauna Kea, Hawaii. I 
felt better quite soon; the horse in gait and temper turned out 
perfection--all spring and spirit, elastic in his motion, walking fast and 
easily, and cantering with a light, graceful swing as soon as one pressed 
the reins on his neck, a blithe, joyous animal, to whom a day among the 
mountains seemed a pleasant frolic. So gentle he was, that when I got off 
and walked he followed me without being led, and without needing any one 
to hold him he allowed me to mount on either side. In addition 

Page 87

to the charm of his movements he has the cat-like sure-footedness of a 
Hawaiian horse, and fords rapid and rough-bottomed rivers, and gallops 
among stones and stumps, and down steep hills, with equal security. I 
could have ridden him a hundred miles as easily as thirty. We have only 
been together two days, yet we are firm friends, and thoroughly understand 
each other. I should not require another companion on a long-mountain 
tour. All his ways are those of an animal brought up without curb, whip, 
or spur, trained by the voice, and used only to kindness, as is happily 
the case with the majority of horses in the Western States. Consequently, 
unless they are broncos, they exercise their intelligence for your 
advantage, and do their work rather as friends than as machines.

   I soon began not only to feel better, but to be exhilarated with the 
delightful motion. The sun was behind us, and puffs of a cool elastic air 
came down from the glorious mountains in front. We cantered across six 
miles of prairie, and then reached the beautiful canyon of the St. Vrain, 
which, towards its mouth, is a narrow, fertile, wooded valley, through 
which a bright rapid river, which we forded many times, hurries along, 
with twists and windings innumerable. Ah, how brightly its ripples danced 
in the glittering sunshine, and how musically its waters murmured like the 
streams of windward Hawaii! We lost our way over and over again, though 
the 

Page 88

"innocent" young men had been there before; indeed, it would require some 
talent to master the intricacies of that devious trail, but settlers 
making hay always appeared in the nick of time to put us on the right 
track. Very fair it was, after the brown and burning plains, and the 
variety was endless. Cotton-wood trees were green and bright, aspens 
shivered in golden tremulousness, wild grape-vines trailed their lemon-
coloured foliage along the ground, and the Virginia creeper hung its 
crimson sprays here and there, lighting up green and gold into glory. 
Sometimes from under the cool and bowery shade of the coloured tangle we 
passed into the cool St. Vrain, and then were wedged between its margin 
and lofty cliffs and terraces of incredibly staring, fantastic rocks, 
lined, patched, and splashed with carmine, vermilion, greens of all tints, 
blue, yellow, orange, violet, deep crimson, colouring that no artist would 
dare to represent, and of which, in sober prose, I scarcely dare tell. 
Long's wonderful peaks, which hitherto had gleamed above the green, now 
disappeared, to be seen no more for twenty miles. We entered on an 
ascending valley, where the gorgeous hues of the rocks were intensified by 
the blue gloom of the pitch-pines, and then taking a track to the north-
west we left the softer world behind, and all traces of man and his works, 
and plunged into the Rocky Mountains.

   There were wonderful ascents then up which I 

Page 89

led my horse: wild fantastic views opening up continually, a recurrence of 
surprises; the air keener and purer with every mile, the sensation of 
loneliness more singular. A tremendous ascent among rocks and pines to a 
height of 9000 feet brought us to a passage seven feet wide through a wall 
of rock, with an abrupt descent of 2000 feet, and a yet higher ascent 
beyond. I never saw anything so strange as looking back. It was a single 
gigantic ridge which we had passed through, standing up knife-like, built 
up entirely of great brick-shaped masses of bright-red rock, some of them 
as large as the Royal Institution, Edinburgh, piled one on another by 
Titans. Pitch-pines grew out of their crevices, but there was not a 
vestige of soil. Beyond, wall beyond wall of similar construction, and 
range above range, rose into the blue sky. Fifteen miles more over great 
ridges, along passes dark with shadow, and so narrow that we had to ride 
in the beds of the streams which had excavated them, round the bases of 
colossal pyramids of rock crested with pines, up into fair upland "parks," 
scarlet in patches with the poison oak, parks so beautifully arranged by 
nature that I momentarily expected to come upon some stately mansion, but 
that afternoon crested blue jays and chipmonks had them all to themselves. 
Here, in the early morning, deer, bighorn, and the stately elk, come down 
to feed, and there, in the night, prowl 

Page 90

and growl the Rocky Mountain lion, the grizzly bear, and the cowardly 
wolf. There were chasms of immense depth, dark with the indigo gloom of 
pines, and mountains with snow gleaming on their splintered crests, 
loveliness to bewilder and grandeur to awe, and still streams and shady 
pools, and cool depths of shadow; mountains again, dense with pines, among 
which patches of aspen gleamed like gold; valleys where the yellow 
cottonwood mingled with the crimson oak, and so, on and on through the 
lengthening shadows, till the trail, which in places had been hardly 
legible, became well defined, and we entered a long gulch with broad 
swellings of grass belted with pines.

   A very pretty mare, hobbled, was feeding; a collie dog barked at us, 
and among the scrub, not far from the track, there was a rude, black log 
cabin, as rough as it could be to be a shelter at all, with smoke coming 
out of the roof and window. We diverged towards it; it mattered not that 
it was the home, or rather den, of a notorious "ruffian" and "desperado." 
One of my companions had disappeared hours before, the remaining one was a 
town-bred youth. I longed to speak to some one who loved the mountains. I 
called the hut a den--it looked like the den of a wild beast. The big dog 
lay outside it in a threatening attitude and growled. The mud roof was 
covered with lynx, beaver, and other furs laid out to dry, 

Page 91

beaver paws were pinned out on the logs, a part of the carcass of a deer 
hung at one end of the cabin, a skinned beaver lay in front of a heap of 
peltry just within the door, and antlers of deer, old horseshoes, and 
offal of many animals, lay about the den. Roused by the growling of the 
dog, his owner came out, a broad, thickset man, about the middle height, 
with an old cap on his head, and wearing a grey hunting-suit much the 
worse for wear (almost falling to pieces, in fact), a digger's scarf 
knotted round his waist, a knife in his belt, and "a bosom friend," a 
revolver, sticking out of the breast-pocket of his coat; his feet, which 
were very small, were bare; except for some dilapidated moccasins made of 
horse hide. The marvel was how his clothes hung together, and on him. The 
scarf round his waist must have had something to do with it. His face was 
remarkable. He is a man about forty-five, and must have been strikingly 
handsome. He has large grey-blue eyes, deeply set, with well-marked 
eyebrows, a handsome aquiline nose, and a very handsome mouth. His face 
was smooth-shaven except for a dense moustache and imperial. Tawny hair, 
in thin uncared-for curls, fell from under his hunter's cap and over his 
collar. One eye was entirely gone, and the loss made one side of the face 
repulsive, while the other might have been modeled in marble. "Desperado" 
was written in large letters all over him. I almost repented of 

Page 92

having sought his acquaintance. His first impulse was to swear at the dog, 
but on seeing a lady he contented himself with kicking him, and coming up 
to me he raised his cap, showing as he did so a magnificently-formed brow 
and head, and in a cultured tone of voice asked if there were anything he 
could do for me? I asked for some water, and he brought some in a battered 
tin, gracefully apologising for not having anything more presentable. We 
entered into conversation, and as he spoke I forgot both his reputation 
and appearance, for his manner was that of a chivalrous gentleman, his 
accent refined, and his language easy and elegant. I inquired about some 
beavers' paws which were drying, and in a moment; they hung on the horn of 
my saddle. Apropos of the wild animals of the region, he told me that the 
loss of his eye was owing to a recent encounter with a grizzly bear, 
which, after giving him a death hug, tearing him all over, breaking his 
arm and scratching out his eye, had left him for dead. As we rode away, 
for the sun was sinking, he said, courteously, "You are not an American. I 
know from your voice that you are a countrywoman of mine. I hope you will 
allow me the pleasure of calling on you."(*) This

(* Of this unhappy man, who was shot nine months later within two miles of 
his cabin, I write in the subsequent letters only as he appeared to me. 
His life, without doubt, was deeply stained with crimes and vices, and his 
reputation for ruffianism was a deserved one. But in my intercourse with 
him I saw more of his nobler instincts than of the darker parts of his 
character, which, unfortunately for himself and others, showed itself in 
its worst colours at the time of his tragic end. It was not until after I 
left Colorado, not indeed until after his death, that I heard of the worst 
points of his character.)

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man, known through the Territories and beyond them as "Rocky Mountain
Jim," or, more briefly, as "Mountain Jim," is one of the famous scouts of 
the Plains, and is the original of some daring portraits in fiction 
concerning Indian frontier warfare. So far as I have at present heard, he 
is a man for whom there is now no room, for the time for blows and blood 
in this part of Colorado is past, and the fame of many daring exploits is 
sullied by crimes which are not easily forgiven here. He now has a 
"squatter's claim," but makes his living as a trapper, and is a complete 
child of the mountains. Of his genius and chivalry to women there does not 
appear to be any doubt; but he is a desperate character, and is subject to 
"ugly fits," when people think it best to avoid him. It is here regarded 
as an evil that he has located himself at the mouth of the only entrance 
to the Park, for he is dangerous with his pistols, and it would be safer 
if he were not here. His besetting sin is indicated in the verdict 
pronounced on him by my host: "When he's sober Jim's a perfect gentleman; 
but when he's had liquor he's the most awful ruffian in Colorado."

Page 94

   From the ridge on which this gulch terminates, at a height of 9000 
feet, we saw at last Estes Park, lying 1500 feet below in the glory of the 
setting sun, an irregular basin, lighted up by the bright waters of the 
rushing Thompson, guarded by sentinel mountains of fantastic shape and 
monstrous size, with Long's Peak rising above them all in unapproachable 
grandeur, while the Snowy Range, with its outlying spurs heavily timbered, 
come down upon the Park slashed by stupendous canyons lying deep in purple 
gloom. The rushing river was blood-red, Long's Peak was aflame, the glory 
of the glowing heaven was given back from earth. Never, nowhere, have I 
seen anything to equal the view into Estes Park. The mountains "of the 
land which is very far off" are very near now, but the near is more 
glorious than the far, and reality than dreamland. The mountain fever 
seized me, and, giving my tireless horse one encouraging word, he dashed 
at full gallop over a mile of smooth sward at delirious speed. But I was 
hungry, and the air was frosty, and I was wondering what the prospects of 
food and shelter were in this enchanted region, when we came suddenly upon 
a small lake, close to which was a very trim-looking log cabin, with a 
flat mud roof, with four smaller ones; picturesquely dotted about near it, 
two corrals,(*)

(* A corral is a fenced enclosure for cattle. This word, with bronco, 
ranch, and a few others, are adaptations from the Spanish, and are used as 
extensively throughout California and the Territories as is the Spanish or 
Mexican saddle.)

Page 95

a long shed, in front of which a steer was being killed, a log-dairy with 
a water-wheel, some haypiles, and various evidences of comfort; and two 
men, on serviceable horses, were just bringing in some tolerable cows to 
be milked. A short, pleasant-looking man ran up to me and shook hands 
gleefully, which surprised me; but he has since told me that in the 
evening light he thought I was "Mountain Jim, dressed up as a woman!" I 
recognised in him a countryman, and he introduced himself as Griffith 
Evans, a Welshman from the slate quarries near Llanberis. When the cabin-
door was opened I saw a good-sized log room, unchinked, however, with 
windows of infamous glass, looking two ways; a rough stone fireplace, in 
which pine logs, half as large as I am, were burning; a boarded floor, a 
round table, two rocking-chairs, a carpet-covered backwoods couch; and 
skins, Indian bows and arrows, wampum belts, and antlers, fitly decorated 
the rough walls, and equally fitly rifles were stuck up in the corners. 
Seven men, smoking, were lying about on the floor, a sick man lay on the 
couch, and a middle-aged lady sat at the table writing. I went out again 
and asked Evans if he could take me in, expecting nothing better than a 
shakedown; but, to my joy, he told me he could give me a cabin to myself, 
two minutes' 

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walk from his own. So in this glorious upper world, with the mountain 
pines behind and the clear lake in front, in the "blue hollow at the foot 
of Long's Peak," at a height of 7500 feet, where the hoar frost crisps the 
grass every night of the year, I have found far more than I ever dared to 
hope for.

I.L.B.