CHAPTER III.

LIGHT IN THE EAST.

[Sidenote: 1776]

Two hundred and thirty-six years had passed since Coronado's gaily caparisoned army moved out from Compostela. The bright yellow leggings and rich green coats of the soldiers, their waving white plumes and coats of mail, had long since turned to rags and rust, while the bones of the troopers had crumbled to dust. With the defeat of their expedition, the curtain of silence descended upon this vast Rocky Mountain region. The Indian Chiefs whom Coronado fought had long been wrapped in the mantle of death, and their places had been filled by the children of their children's children. The buffalo herds and the Indian bands still roamed the plains together, and the tender calves grew strong and became the leaders of the herd. It was the endless procession of life and death, of strength and weakness, of growth and decay. The wild flowers bloomed, and shed abroad their fragrance; the trees budded and blossomed, and their leaves withered and fell; the earth was clothed in its carpet of green, that yellowed with the autumn's frosts; the period of seed time and harvest came, but there was no seed time and there was no harvest. The summer rains fell upon valley and plain, and the rivers ran unceasingly to the sea, as they had done for centuries, and as they will do until time shall be no more; rivers, born on the dome of the Great Divide, and nurtured by the clouds amongst which they nestle. Each season, the stately peaks stretched their arms aloft towards the heavenly orbs to receive their snow's feathery drapery that fell like a benediction over them. Mountains, radiant in their ever-changing hues of yellow and green, of purple and gold; mountains, whose breath was fragrant with the delicate perfume from their carpet of a thousand species of wild flowers; mountains, kissed by pearly rain drops, glowing with morning sun baths, draped in slumber-robes of silvery moon-beams--glorious, sunlit, sky-communing mountains, standing in their grandeur, silent, proud, eternal.

In Macaulay's eloquent and elevated treatment of the thirteenth century of English history, we find this pleasing sentiment, applicable to Colorado's rivers and mountains:

"The sources of the noble rivers which spread fertility over continents, and bear richly ladened fleets to the sea, are to be sought in the wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in maps and rarely explored by travelers."

We find similarity in our own uncharted streams and mountains; in the unapplied wealth of waters that our rivers bore to the seas; in the unwritten history of the Jesuit Fathers; in the romance of Spanish glory and Spanish defeat; in the tragedy of the red men; in the civilization that perished; in half a century's attainments in good government, in refining domestic influences, in Christianity, in intellectual growth, and in riches almost beyond computation.

Again we face the mysterious. Once more the names of Cortez and Montezuma meet, not as on the battle fields of Mexico that left one a conqueror and the other a prisoner; not as aliens and rivals, but in the friendly attitude of mutual interest and mutual trust. Montezuma led into battle a people whose beginnings can never be known. Montezuma County, Colorado, with Cortez as its County Seat, sheltered a pre-historic race, whose beginning and end we can never fathom. At the southwestern corner of our State, at the only spot in the United States where four states come squarely together, we find Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, equally sharing in this unfathomable mystery. There, covering a stretch of country equal in extent to about eighty miles square, had lived a civilized people who followed the peaceful pursuit of agriculture, who farmed by irrigation and whose reservoirs were high up near the mountain tops. Their dwellings were amidst the cliffs along the canons tributary to the San Mancos and San Juan Rivers, as well as in the rocky and almost inaccessible gorges of those rivers themselves. The abandoned houses built of hand-dressed stone, are falling into ruins, but they still show painstaking care in their construction, and in their well-planned architecture. The decaying towns, towers and fortresses give every evidence of a state of preparedness for war. Whether these people were conquered, enslaved and carried into exile; whether they were warred upon by the marauding bands, and so weakened that they scattered and became lost; whether they may have been the very Aztecs, who, becoming more civilized and more prosperous, moved South, were finally subdued by Cortez and became the Mexican nation, are conjectures only, for those ancient foot prints have been forever submerged by the passing years.

A vast area of the country of the Cliff Dwellers has been made into a National Park and given the name of Mesa Verde. For three years the restoration of the principal ruins has been carried on by eminent scientists under direction of the General Government. Spruce Tree House, one of the restored dwellings, is over two hundred feet long and it is estimated that when inhabited, it sheltered about four hundred people.

In the East the light is breaking. A ray here and a ray there, at first, just the faintest touch of the awakening before the glorious bursting of the dawn. A voyager crossed the trackless seas, following Columbus; then another and another, all carrying the advance lights that were finally to illuminate the darkness and unfold the mysteries of a New World. It took one hundred years for nine voyagers on tours of discovery, scattered through the entire century, to sow the seeds of colonization along the Coast, which, when planted, failed to grow, withered and died. Much of the time of these navigators was spent in sailing up and down the eastern coast, seeking a channel through our Continent in search of the unknown, lying beyond.

Came John Cabot, an Italian Mariner, bearing the English Flag, authorized to take possession of any lands he found. Four of his ships went to the bottom and the son continued the discoveries started by his father. Came Cortereal from Portugal in 1501, who left signs of his visit along our Coast at various points between the Bay of Fundy and the coast of Labrador, and then his vessels and all on board plunged to the bottom. The following year a brother came with a searching party and they all found graves beneath the waves that for four hundred years have been sweeping over them. Another brother about to start to seek the others, was prevented by command of the King.

Came Ponce de Leon from Spain in 1512, having been with Columbus on his second voyage in 1493. He bore a patent from the King to what was supposed to be the marvellous Island of Bimini, which he renamed Florida, from "Pascua Florida," meaning in Spanish "Easter Sunday." Instead of finding a spring that the Indians claimed to possess great curative properties and supposed to be a fountain of perpetual youth, he found his death in an arrow wound from the Indians. Here he passed over the site of St. Augustine, which later became the oldest community in the United States, having been located in 1565.

Came Pineda from Spain in 1519, entering the Gulf of Mexico, sailing all along the Florida Coast, by Louisiana, past Texas, searching for the "Western Passage." Here he met Cortez, the Governor-General of New Spain. Came Narvaez in 1520, the Spanish slave gatherer, who lost his life on the trip, lost it in a bad cause. And then in 1524 came Verrazano, the Spanish Pirate and outcast. One hundred years later, when Spain sought to establish her claim to the country he had visited which might inure to her through his discovery, she said he was a very honorable gentleman, that her colors were flying at his prow, instead of the black flag of the Freebooter. Oh, Spain! Spain! The more I study you, the less I admire you! Then came Gomez in 1525 from Portugal commissioned to sail all the way along our coast from Newfoundland to Florida, in search of a channel through the American Continent to the Western Sea.

He was followed sixty years later by Greenville, a cousin of Sir Walter Raleigh, flying the English Flag. Raleigh's eyes were filled with visions of a golden future--a man of whom we would say in these days, that he always had an eye to the "main chance." "Whosoever commands the sea," he said, "commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world, commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself." For a little practical expression of that philosophy, he threw his cloak down in the mud one day for his proud Queen to step upon. Even he little realized the wealth-product beneath its soiled folds, for from that little incident came the introduction of the potato into England. Raleigh became a great favorite of the Queen, and what he asked she granted. He asked of her a royal charter for his cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, and funds for an expedition to the New World. It resulted in those ships taking back to England the potato and tobacco. Forty-three years before, we sent them their Christmas dinner in the delectable wild turkey; we now gave them as an accompaniment, the mealy and nutritious potato. Came Davis in this same year of 1585, who discovered the Straits named for him, and also Falkland Islands, which he found in 1592.

And the century closed, with the lights going out all along the Atlantic Coast, for the attempts at colonization were failing. The roots of home-making would not take hold, with the buccaneers stirring up the savages to fight the colonists on one side, and the loneliness of the impassable sea terrifying them on the other.

The next century found Champlain in 1603, making his voyage to Canada, starting the French settlement at Quebec, in 1608, and sailing up the St. Lawrence and around the lakes, hunting for locations for settlements, and for a way to China. There was Lord de la Warr, coming over in 1607, and finding a little English settlement on the mainland at Jamestown in Virginia. The same year came the capable Captain Smith, a soldier of fortune, who killed his Turkish task master, and whose life was saved by a Senorita, to be saved again by Pocahontas.

There was the distinguished Sir Henry Hudson in 1607, trying to find another Cape Horn above Greenland; failing, he sailed south, entered New York harbor, thence up the Hudson River seeking China. Up past the monument of Grant, past the beautiful Palisades, by West Point and Poughkeepsie, beyond Albany, and all the time the water becoming more shallow and the banks narrower, until he had gone one hundred and fifty miles, sailing north instead of southwest to Southern California, which would put him opposite the country he was seeking. Turn back! Sir Henry, turn back! Your prow will soon be fast in the mud, your vessel's sides will scrape the river's banks, your boat will dam up the waters of the Hudson, and all the surrounding country will be inundated! It is not yet the day of the airship, so that you can sail over the Rocky Mountains, nor is it the time of tunnels, so that you can find a passage beneath them! Just north of you, at that very moment, sixty miles away, Champlain has turned back, and neither of you know it. This country is not for you, nor for him. There are no great waterways along which you both may sail, touching the shores, planting the flags of your countries, and claiming this Continent for your Kings. Go back! Sir Henry, and when Champlain has colonized Canada, and established Quebec, sail in and take it away from him! Which was the very thing that was done twenty-one years later. Where might seemed right then, so sometimes it seems right now, after all these years of Christianization.

The settlements are coming fast now. All up and down the Coast, the people are gathering; the Plymouth Fathers have come; the Scotch are at Nova Scotia; the Swedes and Dutch are at Delaware and New Jersey; the French are in Virginia and Louisiana; the English are in New England; the Spanish have killed all the Huguenots and are in Florida. Then there is the conscientious William Penn, Quakerlike, out among the Indians buying their lands, and we are saying to him "why buy, when you can take all without asking?" And there is Daniel Boone, the native-born American explorer, hero of every boy and girl, who has made his way through the wilderness and with an axe blazed his way, as later he marked his path by rocks and mounds of earth, all the way to the Mississippi River.

The echoes of Liberty Bell, ringing out our independence and ringing in the Continental Congress, had not ceased their reverberations, when the curtain that Coronado's defeat had rung down more than two centuries before, was again lifted, and we behold a new stage with a new setting, that had been prepared by the Church of Rome. Padre Junthero Serra who, as President of the California Missions, had for so long urged upon the Church the importance of laying out a route from the settlement of Santa Fe to the West, finally prevailed. Friar Francisco Andasio Dominquez, and Friar Sylvester Velez de Escalante, were selected for this undertaking, and on July 29, 1776, started from Santa Fe with eight soldiers and guides. Their route took them out of New Mexico, into Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. They were gone one summer, passed through the present site of Salt Lake City and laid out a route that could be followed. Otherwise their trip was wholly unproductive of any beneficial or permanent results. There are stations adjoining each other on the Rio Grande Railroad between Delta and Grand Junction named "Dominquez" and "Escalante" for these two explorers. If the laurels of Coronado's discovery are ever successfully removed from his crown, his mantle will fall upon the shoulders of these two Friars.

So we come to the close of the century with the glorious dawn breaking all along the East, glowing in the heavens, shining over the people, over the farms and the mills, over the towns and the country, bringing prosperity and contentment to thousands. Its beams are resting on our own Declaration of Independence; on our own Continental Congress; on the benign countenance of the revered Washington, as he bids the people an affectionate adieu in the stirring words of his great farewell address, from which we quote this noble sentiment--and may it abide with us forever:

"Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to the grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that heaven may continue to use the choicest token of its beneficence--that your Union and brotherly affection may be perpetual, that the free constitution which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained, that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue, that in fine the happiness of the people of these states under the auspices of liberty may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, affection and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it."

How rapidly we have passed over these three hundred years, from the days of the great Queen Isabella, to the time of the immortal Washington! How lightly we have moved along, flitting here and there, as the bee gathers honey for the comb, picking out events that seemed essential in the preparation of the frame work for our picture; passing by the great events of history, past the smiling and the weeping, past the feasting and the hungering, past the living and the dying--of all those who smiled and wept, who feasted and hungered, who lived and died, in that crowded three hundred years of human endeavor!

And now for our picture: A simple picture of simple events, simply painted, with touches of human nature colorings, of the everyday joys and sorrows, of the hopes and disappointments that came to us out of the great West beyond the Mississippi River--in that portion of the marvellous century just closed, the most wonderful century of this most wonderful world!