IV

DENVER, C. T., June 18, 1866.

At Fort Ellsworth I was informed that the military station between Fossil Creek and Big Creek had been discontinued; yet this is not the case. Toward sunset the driver handed me a mail-bag, asking me to pick out the letters for Fort Fletcher, the name given to this post; and the assortment had scarcely been made, before the coach was surrounded by a crowd of soldiers (apparently new recruits) clamoring vociferously, first for tobacco and then for newspapers. It was difficult to decide which want was the keener. I gave them what cigars I had in my pocket, but was destitute of papers, and could only inform them that the Fenians had not yet taken Montreal. I felt no less disappointed than the poor fellows themselves, that I could not better supply their wants.

My companions were no less interested than myself in the projected railroad routes to Colorado, and we therefore scanned the Smoky Hill Valley from every elevation, with regard to two considerations, — settlement and railroad ties. So far, everything was favorable. The Smoky Hill was everywhere marked by a line of timber, and we noticed that at each junction with its numerous affluents, there were large groves. The bluffs on the southern side were frequently covered, to their summits, with a growth of red cedar. All the bottom-land is exceedingly rich and well adapted for farming, while the broad, rolling uplands furnish the finest pasturage in the world. Near Big Creek, coa1 has been found, and there are also rumors of tin and copper. With a sufficient force the road may be extended from Fort Riley to Big Creek in a year’s time, and carry permanent settlement with it.

At Big Creek Station, which we reached after dark, we took on board Mr. Scott, the Superintendent of the Middle Division of the road. There was still no moon, and, fortunately, no mosquitoes also. The night was fresh, yet scarcely cool enough to require the blankets I had procured for the journey. Half-asleep and half-awake, now lulled into slumber by the slowness of our progress, now bumped into angry wakefulness in crossing some deep gully, we dragged through the night, and in the morning found ourselves at Downer’s, forty-four miles further. Here an empty coach had just arrived from Denver, the third I had met going eastward without passengers. The Colorado people, it seems, are still afraid of this route.

Our breakfast here was another "square meal," — pork fat and half-baked biscuits. At all the stations the people complained of lack of supplies; some were destitute of everything but beans. They gave us what they had, and we were very willing to pay a dollar rather than go hungry; but one would naturally expect that where a stage goes decent food can be transported. As there is but one change of teams at the stations, we were obliged to take the same mules which had just arrived from Cornell Springs, twenty miles further; hence our progress was very slow and discouraging. On arriving there, a second tired team was harnessed to carry us thirty miles, to Monument Station; so that we lost full four hours during this day’s journey.

The driver of the down coach informed us that the Cheyennes had appeared at Monument Station the day before, but they had committed no depredations, and appeared to be friendly. The chief had even invited him, on account of his red hair, to join their tribe. Mr. Scott, however, who has had eight years’ experience of the Indians of the Plains, seemed to place little faith in their professions. They are reported to have declared that they must and will retain the Smoky Hill country, as it is the best range for game between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains.

From the first rise after leaving Downer’s, we saw, far away to the right, a long range of chalk bluffs, shining against a background of dark blue cloud. They seemed like a stretch of the southern coast of England, breasting the rolling green ocean of the Plains. Over great swells, covered with the short, sweet buffalo-grass, and starred with patches of crimson anemone, pink verbena, unknown orange and salmon-red flowers, we drove for two hours, watching the isolated towers and fantastic masses of rock detach themselves from the line of the bluff. They assumed the strangest and most unexpected forms. Here was a feudal castle of the Middle Ages; there a shattered, irregular obelisk, or broken pyramid; and finally, rising alone from the level of a meadow, we beheld three perpendicular towers, eighty feet high, resting on a common base. Their crests were of a bright orange hue, fading downward into white. Beyond them extended the shattered battlements of a city, sparkling in the sunshine. The blue ridges beyond the Smoky Hill, ten miles away, formed the background of this remarkable picture.

The green of the Plains here began to be varied with belts of dark purple, which we found to be what is called "bunch-grass," a very fine and wiry growth, but said to be excellent forage. At a distance it resembled the heather bloom on the English moors. Over these brilliant green and purple tints, the snowy fortresses of chalk started up with a dazzling effect. There is not the least approach to monotony in the scenery of the Plains; but continual, inspiring change.

We were to have another new experience that day. Our route, for some distance, lay over an elevated plateau, around which, for an hour or two, dark thunder-clouds collected. Out of one of these dropped a curtain of rain, gray in the centre, but of an intense indigo hue at the edges. It slowly passed us on the north, split, from one minute to another, by streaks of vivid rose colored lightning, followed by deafening detonating peals, when, just as we seemed to have escaped, it suddenly wheeled and burst upon us.

it was like a white squall on a tropic sea. We had not lowered the canvas curtains of the coach before a dam gave way over our heads, and a torrent of mingled wind, rain, bail, and thunder overwhelmed us. The driver turned his mules as far as possible away from the wind, and stopped; the coach rocked and reeled as if about to overturn; the hail smote like volleys of musketry, and in less than fifteen minutes the whole plain lay four inches under water. I have never witnessed anything even approaching the violence of this storm; it was a marvel that the mules escaped with their lives. The bullets of hail were nearly as large as pigeons’ eggs, and the lightning played around us like a succession of Bengal fires. We laid the rifles in the bottom of the coach, and for half an hour sat in silence, holding down the curtain, and expecting every moment to be overturned. Then the tornado suddenly took breath, commenced again twice or thrice, and ceased as unexpectedly as it came.

For a short time the road was a swift stream, and the tufts of buffalo-grass rose out of an inundated plain, but the water soon found its level, and our journey was not delayed, as we had cause to fear. Presently Mr. Scott descried a huge rattlesnake, and we stopped the coach and jumped out. The rattles were too wet to give any sound, and the snake endeavored to escape. A German frontiersman who was with us fired a revolver which stunned rather than wounded the reptile. Then, poising a knife, he threw it with such a secure aim that the snake’s head was pinned to the earth. Cutting off the rattles, which I appropriated, we did him no further injury.

The Monument Station is so called from a collection of quadrangular chalk towers, which rise directly from the plain. At first sight, they resemble a deserted city, with huge bastioned walls; but on a nearer approach they separate into detached masses, some of which suggest colossal sitting statues. It is almost impossible to divest one’s mind of the impression that these are the remains of human art. The station-house is built of large blocks, cut out with a hatchet and cemented with raw clay. Here we found stone-ware instead of pewter, although the viands were about as "square" as those at the preceding stations. The Indians had not again made their appearance. They professed to have a camp four or five miles further down the Smoky Hill, and I was a little disappointed that, after so many rumors and warnings, I was likely to get over the Plains without seeing a single redskin.

During this day’s journey we kept more away from the Smoky Hill, but we still saw, from time to time, its line of timber and cedared bluffs in the distance. Near Monument Station we found it much diminished in volume, but with good, arable bottom-lands. Up to this point, two hundred and fifty miles west of Fort Riley, we could not detect the least impediment to the construction of a railroad. Nor was there yet any indication of the Great American Desert.

We had now shorter stations for some distance, and made the distance to Pond Creek, forty-six miles, by two o’clock in the morning. It was scarcely possible to sleep, and yet we were too much fatigued to keep entirely awake. I have an indistinct impression that there was a two-story frame house at Pond Creek, and that we were delayed there for an hour or two. I know that Mr. Scott informed us, as he took leave, that we were two hundred and twenty-five miles from Denver. At this point there is a new military post, called Fort Wallace. Fort Lyon, on the Arkansas, is but forty-five miles distant, in a southwestern direction, and the road thence to Santa Fe about four hundred miles further. If the Eastern Branch of the Pacific Railroad should follow the Smoky Hill route (which is certainly the shortest and most practicable), Pond Creek will probably become, for a while, the starting-point of New Mexican travel and traffic.

We reached Willow Springs, eighteen miles, by sunrise. A forlorn place it was! The station-men lived in holes cut in a high clay bank, and their mules had similar half-subterranean lodgings. I saw no provisions, and they said they could give us no breakfast. The team was speedily changed, and we set out for Cheyenne Wells, twenty-five miles distant, through a country more nearly approaching barrenness than any we had yet seen. The timber almost entirely disappeared ; the lateral streams ceased, and finally the Smoky Hill itself, now so near its source, became a bed of waterless sand. Still there was buffalo-grass everywhere, and the antelopes were very abundant. The fresh, delicious air of the Plains — only equalled by that of the African Desert — refreshed us after the wearisome night, and our appetites became keen with enforced fasting.

At Cheyenne Wells we found a large and handsome frame stable for the mules, but no dwelling. The people lived in a natural cave, extending for some thirty feet under the bluff. But there was a woman, and when we saw her we augured good fortunes. Truly enough, under the roof of conglomerate limestone, in the cave’s dim twilight, we sat down to antelope steak, tomatoes, bread, pickles, and potatoes — a royal meal, after two days of detestable fare.

Here we saw the last of Smoky Hill Fork. The road strikes across a broad plateau for twenty miles, and then descends to the Big Sandy, a branch of the Arkansas. It is a fine, hard, natural highway, over which we made good time. The country swarmed with antelopes, which provoked several shots from the coach, but without effect. Two of them, to our surprise, appeared to be pursuing a large gray wolf. They made boldly after it as often as it stopped, and were evidently bent on driving it quite away from their pasturage. While we were speculating on their movements, a lovely little fawn sprang up from the grass and made away over the hills. The old antelopes were evidently its parents, and their boldness in facing and intimidating the wolf was now explained.

From the western edge of the water-shed, we overlooked many a league of brown, monotonous, treeless country, through which meandered, not the water, but the dry, sandy bed of the Big Sandy. We really seemed to have reached at last the Great American Desert. At the stage station we found two men living in a hole in the ground, with nothing but alkaline water to offer us. I tasted it, and finding the flavor not disagreeable, drank — which brought later woe upon me. Beyond this point even the buffalo-grass died out, and we rolled along in the burning sun and acrid dust, over dreary, gray undulations of weeds and cactus. At Grady’s Station, eighteen miles further, there was but one man, a lonely troglodyte, burrowing in the bank like a cliff-swallow.

Very soon, however, the grass began to appear again, the country became green, and the signs of desolation vanished. A distance of forty miles embraced all we had seen of the Desert — in fact, all there is of it upon this route. In these forty miles a scattered settlement here and there is not impossible, but is very unlikely. The adjoining country, for a hundred miles both to the east and west, is adapted to grazing, and will support a moderate population. The road, however, will soon be carried from Cheyenne Wells up the divide, entirely avoiding the Big Sandy. This new route, I am told, shortens the distance to Denver by twenty miles, and has good grass and water all the way.

Toward evening I was struck with a peculiar tint in the shadow of a cloud along the horizon. After half an hour’s study, I pronounced it to be a mountain — and, of course, Pike’s Peak. My fellow-travellers dissented at first from this opinion, but as the clouds dissolved, the outline of a snowy peak came out sharp and clear. It was something like that of the Jungfrau, but stood alone, surrounded by no sisterhood of Alps. At sunset we saw not only Pike’s Peak, but the tops of the Sangre de Cristo range, and the Spanish Peaks, like little pimples on the line of the horizon.

What a night followed! The hard "hack" bumped and jolted over the rough roads; we were flung backward and forward, right and left, pummelled, pounded, and bruised, not only out of sleep, but out of temper, and into pain and exasperation. At one o’clock yesterday morning we were at Hedinger’s Lake, ninety-seven miles from Denver. I thanked Heaven that no fifth night in the coach awaited me. The hours dragged on with incredible slowness, until dawn brought some refreshment, showing us a country of high hills, occasional pine groves, and far-flashing snowy mountains.

Before sunset we drove into Denver; but of the last day’s ride to-morrow!  NEXT