Part 16

From the long, slanting niche which lets the road down across this broken and sliding rock, where men are always at work to throw aside the ceaselessly falling crumbs of the cliff, one gets his first view of Ophir gulch,--a valley half a dozen miles in length, without an acre of level ground in the whole of it. This end is closed by Lookout mountain, the opposite by the lofty crags of Mt. Wilson. On the north, Silver mountain cuts the sky in ragged outline, and, braced against its base, Yellow mountain rises straight from the creek-side to an almost equal altitude. In the crevice between stand the score or so of log cabins, which constitute what many persons consider the liveliest camp in the whole San Juan.

It is only eight years since the value of this locality was made known, but now the mountains on both sides of the gulch are pitted like a pepper-box with prospecting tunnels, and there are perhaps twenty mines shipping ore in profitable quantities, even under the great disadvantages of their isolation. The leads in general run northeast and southwest, but good openings have been found all the way from the brink of the creek to the shattered combing that casts its ragged shadow down the long, white slopes. Systematic development has been carried on in very few mines as yet, but the indications promise great things for the future. Half a dozen gold workings in particular are very rich, and several sales have been made exceeding $50,000 for a single location.

Remounting, the ride homeward through the mellow afternoon, was very delightful. The mountains rose on either side high above where the hardiest trees could manage to exist, gorgeously stained in great chevrons of red, orange and rust yellow. Lookout and its brother peaks seemed vast stacks of triangles, all upright and baseless, backed with long slides of varied umber tints. On some of these slides the grass has grown, long tongues of it penetrating far toward the bright walls overhead, while elsewhere mile-wide slopes of grayish white lie untouched by any blemish or projection. Everything is triangular,--the outlines of the peaks and the reverse in the gorges between; the shape of the fallen fragments; of the long spear-points of verdure that climb them, and of the trees and even the separate leaves that blend into those acute green patches; of the broad strokes of vivid color that have been painted so lavishly on these splendid slopes; even of the splitting and cleavage of every cliff-face and toppling spire that glistens in the slanting light and throws a slender-pointed shadow across the velvet brim of the valley.

Backward, where the forests lie unbroken on the southern wall of the gulch, long ranks and patches of aspens were interspersed with the reigning evergreens, and these the frosts had touched with various hues from its full palette--bright green still where the leaves were protected, yellow on the warm side of the ridges, vivid orange and scarlet along the crests,--so that these patches glowed like red and yellow flame against the dark spruces and firs.

Near timber-line there is a remarkable picture. Down from the northern mountain there trickle reddish streamlets over a space several rods in width. A few yards below the road all this water collects itself into a basin, which, begun by some trivial obstruction, has been able to build up its walls by slow deposition, until a great iron tank, with walls twenty-five or thirty feet high, and several feet thick, contains all but a trickling overflow of the mineral water. This tank is surrounded with pretty trees, and its wavy red outline holds a fountain as richly green as an emerald; or blue if you look at it from some one of the surrounding heights, so that the Spanish way of calling a spring _ojo_--an eye--seems very natural.

Beyond this highly tinted natural reservoir, built out like a balcony on the steep hillside, you look across to undulating verdant knolls, where shapely trees are scattered thinly, up beyond a deep maroon slope, falling from a noble, iron brown bluff, and so on away to the gray and lofty peaks, in whose rifts and vertical gorges the shadow lies blue as the farther edge of the sea, and whose clustering, cumulative spires, culminate in gleaming apices of snow.

Rico is the next point. It is accessible from the north by wagon roads, but the entrance from this side is by stage from Rockwood Station on the railway, midway between Durango and Silverton. The road bears northward, and the views to the eastward are far-reaching and noble. The traveler alive to the resources of the region, will note the rich, thick grass, and the great pine timber, with poplars between to serve for log house and fencing purposes; he will also regret the limited possibilities for agriculture. Toward the head of this valley the woods thicken, and the road gets rougher and starts up the long slope that ultimately carries it over the hill. The ragged outlines of the San Miguel range come into view ahead, while the valley below, a solid "heather" of scrubby oak bushes, briers, ferns, and so on, seems carpeted in a queer design of tints of green and yellow, interspersed with all the mixtures of orange, scarlet and crimson that the deft fingers of the early frost could devise.

Over the long hill and past the spruces, an hour's trotting takes the buckboard through the long hay meadows of Hermosa park, whence it ascends a four-mile hill to the summit of the last range dividing the waters of the Rio Las Animas from those of the Rio Dolores. And how we rattle down that Dolores slope! An Englishman riding on the Pennsylvania's sixty-miles an hour train from New York to Philadelphia, the other day, exclaimed, "It's wonderful! I think if something should drop one of you Yankees astride a thunderbolt, the first thing you would do would be to say, '_chk! chk!_'" I thought of that as we started, almost at a gallop, down that steep and winding mountain road. Corners--we snapped around them. Hollows and ridges--we bounced into and out of them. Down long, rough slopes, cut in the side of a hill so steep that just under the hub it fell away hundreds of feet almost like a precipice; down through the full blaze of the afternoon rays in the frost-turned aspens, where

"Tremulous, floating in air, o'er depths of azure abysses, Down through the golden leaves the sun was pouring his splendors,"

we rushed at a pace that Phæton, in his first hours of freedom, might have enjoyed in his chariot, but which to us, in an old buckboard, was simply torture. Why we didn't pitch off the imminent verge, why we didn't fall to pieces against some one of the thousand rocks we assaulted, why our bones were not broken and our diaphragms bursted, is incomprehensible.

Rico is situated in the center of a volcanic upburst which has parted the sandstones and limestones once spread thousands of feet thick over the area, and whose edges now stand as bold bluffs all around this break, which is nearly four miles in breadth and about eight in length. The town itself is made up of a scattered, gardenless collection of log cabins and some frame buildings, with a log suburb called Tenderfoot Town, and numbers about six hundred people. It is very dull, compared with most Colorado camps, but this is owing to the fact that everybody is waiting until the railway gets a little nearer.

The Rico mines are characterized by their great dissimilarity with each other. Nearly every sort of ore, of both silver and gold, is found mingled in a most heterogeneous way among the lavas, recalling that marvelously mixed mineralogical madrigal in the Colorado comic opera, _Brittle Silver_.

"I have found out a gift for my fair, I have found where the cálcites abound, Where sklópsite and zírcon appear With sárcolite scattered around.

"Then come love, and never say nay; With picrosmine thy heart I'll delight, With diaspore and mangandblend gay, And phármakósideríte."

Some true fissure-veins exist, but more irregular deposits, and both "lead" and "dry" ores occur, often in contiguous claims. The richest ores thus far are those without lead; where galena occurs it is mixed with so much zinc and antimony as to make it troublesome in treatment. A galena ore here, which will show a mill-run of thirty ounces (my authority is Mr. Amos Lane, superintendent of the smelter), is considered very good.

Rico has not yet worked far enough into her very numerous "locations" to make sure of the riches her mountains are supposed to contain. There is no doubt that the cliffs about her are full of silver and gold, stored up in what, under more favorable circumstances, would be profitable quantities; also that there is in the near neighborhood a magnificent supply of bituminous and "free-burning anthracite" coal, good material for charcoal, limestone for flux, bog and magnetic iron, fire-clay and good building stone. The time will come, then, when Rico will be able cheaply to treat its own product, but this will be after wagon-roads and railways have come nearer, and outside capital has lent its strength to bring to the surface the hidden, or only partially exposed, treasures of the veins.

South of the San Juan range, and somewhat isolated, is the noble La Plata group of mountains. They are volcanic, like the rest, and, of course, of Alpine appearance, while their slopes, lying far south, produce so many varieties of foliage, that they often present real bits of beauty--a word having rare application in Colorado's scenery. These mountains were prospected eight or ten years ago, and a placer bar of supposed extraordinary value was found near the head of the Rio La Plata by a company of California miners. I remember very well the picturesque little camp they had there, and the day they got their first butter for nine months. Having interested in the locality Mr. Parrott, a California capitalist, a town grew there rapidly, called Parrott City, now only sixteen miles from Durango, and arrangements were made for working the placers by hydraulic machinery. Meanwhile searching about the peaks disclosed gold quartz in some quantity, and many veins bearing dry ores of silver, absence of galena being characteristic. I see no reason why these peaks should not be equally productive with any district in the region.

But this is true, as I constantly insist, of all the San Juan. Everybody looks forward. Each proposes to do this and that, and to be happy--"when I sell my mine." Perhaps this delicious uncertainty is a part of the fun. Yet many a miner would reprove me for exaggerating the uncertainty; I only hope he is right and I am wrong. That there is a vast amount of the precious metals hidden in the veins of these mountains is undeniable. It is equally true that we know where very much of it lies. But the question stands: Is it sufficiently concentrated to make the getting it out and refining it into a useful condition, yield a margin of profit on expenses? No doubt it is in many cases, but is it in the majority of so-called "mines," or in enough to support any general population and business? Many discreet persons say "No." Many more, naturally, will answer, "Yes." I, myself, making no claim to utter a skilled, or a weighty, or any kind of an opinion except a carefully unbiased one, think the balance of chances is in favor of ultimate success; and I am not afraid to predict that through slow but permanent advancement this corner of Colorado will come to be one of the most important silver-producing regions on the globe.

Upon this event depends the fate of a great many enterprising investments. Faith in the success of these mines has caused the Denver and Rio Grande to build two hundred and fifty miles of railroad over mountains and wide plains which of themselves would never support the line. Faith in these mineral treasures has caused hundreds of men to follow the railway, and has set on foot little towns all along its track; and a part of the same faith is all that keeps alive the thriving town, Durango, where scores of well packed warehouses vie with one another in plethoras of merchandise, and thousands of men are exciting each other in pushing, plucky struggles after the supremacy of wealth. The miner picks away at his rock, and hopefully pays for his supplies until the last dollar is gone, and then goes at work earning more in the service of his more fortunate companion. The patronage of these men, always just on the brink of a "rich strike," is what keeps this southern Denver--scarcely four years old yet--alive and sturdy. The precious minerals can only be procured in this region by hard and skillful labor; they are not in carbonate-beds or placer-bars, to be picked to pieces and reduced at trifling cost. On the other hand, they are richer, and while the profits are no less than in the former case, the expense of getting out is several times greater. This means the disbursement of far more money in the locality for the same amount of value received from the mines by the owners, than in an easier district to work--Leadville, for example. Thus an ore which would yield only sixty dollars to the ton will pay to work, very likely, in a carbonate camp, since it would cost only ten dollars to get it out and through the smelter; while to get the same profit on a ton of San Juan ore, it must carry one hundred dollars to the ton, say, since it requires fifty dollars to mine it. Thus for every ten dollars spent in an easy locality, five times as much must be expended here; or, in other words, five times the population maintained under the former circumstances, will be supported here, and be permanent, for fissure-veins do not produce spasmodic and uneven results, but continuous, progressive and practically inexhaustible supplies of ore for the proprietor, wages for his workman and business for the merchant, artisan and shipper. All this is the best kind of an outlook, and means that the San Juan will always be a good country for the man of moderate means, although the mining speculator may consider it too solid and tangible to suit his purposes, and therefore be loath to praise it.

XV

THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE RIO SAN JUAN.

Dismantled towers and turrets broken, Like grim and war-worn braves who keep A silent guard, with grief unspoken, Watch o'er the graves by the Hoven weep, The nameless graves of a race forgotten; Whose deeds, whose words, whose fate are one, With the mist, long ages past begotten Of the sun. --STANLEY WOOD.

Time forbade a side excursion from Durango to the Mancos Cañon, though we were extremely anxious to make it,--_I_ because I had been there before, and the rest because they were eager to see what I had told them of.

The Rio Mancos is the next tributary of the Rio San Juan west of the Rio de la Plata. When, in 1874, I was a member of the photographic division of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey, one of the main objects of our trip was the exploration of this remote corner of the State, where we had vaguely heard of marvelous relics of a bygone civilization unequaled by anything short of the splendid ruins of Central America and the land of the Incas. After traversing the frightfully rugged trails of the San Juan and La Plata mountains, therefore, a portion of our party came out on the southern margin of the mountains, and, despite the smoldering hostility of the Indians, with which the region was filled, headed southward into the long deserted cañons. There were five of us, altogether,--Mr. W. H. Jackson (from whose skillful camera came many of the illustrations that grace my present text), the famous Captain John Moss, who went with us as "guide, philosopher and friend," myself and two mule packers.

The trail led from Parrott City, then a nameless prospect camp, washing gold without a thought of the silver ledges to be developed later there, over to Merritt's pleasant ranch on the upper Rio Mancos, then across rolling grass land and through groves of magnificent lumber pines, a distance of about fifteen miles. Spending one night at the ranch, sunrise the next morning found us eager to enter the portals of the cañon and the precincts of the area within which glorious discoveries in anthropology allured our imagination and made light the toil and privation of the undertaking.

Not five hundred yards below the ranch we came upon our first find,--mounds of earth which had accumulated over fallen houses, and about which were strewn an abundance of fragments of pottery, variously painted in colors, often glazed within, and impressed in various designs. Later the perpendicular, buttress-like walls that hemmed in the valley began to contract, and that night we camped under some forlorn cedars, just beneath a bluff a thousand feet or so in height, which, for its upper half, was absolutely vertical. This was the edge of the green table-land, or _mésa verde_, which stretches over hundreds of square miles, and is cleft by these cracks or cañons, through which the drainage of the northern uplands finds its way into the Rio San Juan.

In wandering about after supper, something like a house was discerned away up on the face of this bluff, and two of us clambered over the talus of loose débris, across a great stratum of pure coal, and, by dint of much pushing and pulling, up to the ledge upon which it stood. We came down satisfied, and next morning Mr. Jackson carried up our photographic kit and got some superb negatives. There, seven hundred measured feet above the valley, perched on a little ledge only just large enough to hold it, was a two story house made of finely cut sandstone, each block about fourteen by six inches, accurately fitted and set in mortar now harder than the stone itself. The floor was the ledge upon which it rested, and the roof the overhanging rock. There were three rooms upon the ground floor, each one six by nine feet, with partition walls of faced stone. Between the stories was originally a wooden floor, traces of which still remained, as did also the cedar sticks set in the wall over the windows and door; but this was over the front room only, the height of the rocky roof behind not being sufficient to allow an attic there. Each of the stories was six feet in height, and all the rooms, upstairs and down, were nicely plastered and painted what now looks a dull brick red color, with a white band along the floor like a base-board. There was a low doorway from the ledge into the lower story, and another above, showing that the upper chamber was entered from without. The windows were square apertures, with no indication of any glazing or shutters. They commanded a view of the whole valley for many miles. Near the house several convenient little niches in the rock were built into better shape, as though they had been used as cupboards or caches; and behind it a semi-circular wall inclosing the angle of the house and cliff formed a water reservoir holding two and a half hogsheads. The water was taken out of this from a window of the upper room. In front of the house, which was the left side to one facing the bluff, an esplanade had been built to widen the narrow ledge and probably furnish a commodious place for a kitchen. The abutments which supported it were founded upon a smooth, steeply-inclined face of rock; yet so consummate was their skill in masonry that these abutments still stand, although it would seem that a pound's weight might slide them off.

Searching further in this vicinity, we found remains of many houses on the same ledge, and some perfect ones above it quite inaccessible. The rocks also bore some inscriptions. Many edifices in the cliffs escaped our notice. The glare over everything, and the fact that the buildings, being formed of the rock on which they rested, were identical in color with it, increasing the difficulty made sufficiently great by their altitude.

Leaving here, we soon came upon traces of houses in the bottom of the valley, in the greatest profusion, nearly all of which were entirely destroyed, and broken pottery everywhere abounded. The majority of the buildings were square, but many round, and one sort of ruin always showed two square buildings with very deep cellars under them and a round tower between them, seemingly for watch and defense. In several cases a large part of this tower was still standing. The best example of this consisted of two perfectly circular walls of cut stone, one within the other. The diameter of the inner circle was twenty-two feet and of the outer thirty-three feet. The walls were thick and were perforated apparently by three equi-distant doorways. At that time we concluded this double-walled tower (later triple-walled structures of the same sort were met with) must have had a religious use; but since then I have wondered whether all of these round buildings above ground (save some which manifestly were watch towers) were not used as store-houses for snow. It was a country of long droughts and hot summers. The double or triple walls, with spaces of dead air between would make excellent refrigerators.

These groups of destroyed edifices, occupying the bottom-land, were met with all day; but no other perfect cliff-houses were found until next morning, when a little cave high up from the ground was found, which had been utilized as a homestead by being built full of low houses communicating with one another, some of which were intact, and had been appropriated by wild animals. About these dwellings were more hieroglyphics scratched on the wall, and plenty of pottery, but no implements. Further on were similar, but rather ruder, structures on a rocky bluff, but so strongly were they put together that the tooth of time had found them hard gnawing; and, in one instance, while that portion of the cliff upon which a certain house rested had cracked off and fallen away some distance without rolling, the house itself had remained solid and upright. Traces of the trails to many of these dwellings, and the steps cut in the rock, were still visible, and were useful indications of the proximity of buildings otherwise unnoticed. Yet, despite our watchfulness, Mr. Holmes' party, which went next year to study the details of the broad prehistoric picture our rapid trip sketched out, brought to light several fine buildings, high above the valley, in some of which valuable implements and utensils were discovered. None of them were so high, though, or in better condition than one of our prizes this second day.