Part 24

Strength to the weary, Warmth to the cold, Blood to the wasted, Youth to the old; Ah, and the rapture Thousand-fold dearer, Ne'er to be told: Learn ye the secret,-- Taste ye the sweetness.

The visitor to Poncho Springs is pretty sure to get into hot water, and, strange to say, the visitor is pretty sure to like it. There are several reasons for this peculiarity, and among the most important is this, that like the wind to the shorn lamb, the water is tempered. It needs to be tempered, indeed, for when one literally gets into hot water, one does not like to have its warmth so emphatic as to make a veal stew of the first leg that is thrust into it. Hot springs whose temperature makes any well-regulated thermometer's blood boil and sends the mercury up to 180° in the shade certainly needs tempering. When properly moderated, however, one cannot fail to enjoy a bath in the soda impregnated waters of the Poncho springs.

The village, to which the springs have given their name, is snugly tucked away in a niche in the Arkansas valley, at the mouth of Poncho pass. The waters of the south fork of the Arkansas river, clear as crystal, and flowing with a foam-flecked current, race rapidly past the town. Along the river's course the cottonwoods crowd, and to their branches, beginning to grow bare, still cling a few trembling yellow leaves. Beyond the river and to the south and west rise the hills, their sides and summits covered with dark phalanxes of pines. Turning one's back upon the town and looking toward the north and west, one sees the snow-crowned summit of the Collegiate range, with all the differences between Princeton and Harvard and Yale entirely eliminated by that distance which ever adds enchantment to the view. Closer at hand, and towering grandly into the sky, a tremendous watch-tower in the west, stands Shavano, while lesser peaks and nameless pinnacles cluster and crowd around. Great plains, broken by buttes, stretch away to the northward, but mountains and foothills circle round to the east and south and west.

In this sheltered nook lies the picturesque village of Poncho Springs, and hither do the invalids and tourists flock during the warm half of the year to drink the medicinal waters and to bathe in the healing springs. I strolled through the main street of the town, along which are built substantial frame shops and hotels, and observed evidences of stability upon every side. Poncho Springs is not the result of a temporary craze, nor is it a railway terminus town to be torn down and shipped forward as the road advances. There is a good agricultural country around the village, and the Springs will be a source of permanent prosperity. One of the most picturesque features of this picturesque town is a residence which my traveling companions called "a symphony in logs." The house is to the right of the main street and is built of hewn logs, and with gables filled in with ornamental work, with painted roof and fanciful porticos, presents a peculiarly pleasing appearance.

Passing on through the town toward the hills and crossing the river, one discovers a sign board, upon which it is announced that the distance to the hot springs is three-quarters of a mile. Putting confidence in this announcement, the visitor cheerfully advances along a good wagon road, which soon begins to twine and twist among the hills, at times making a grade of thirty degrees. Finally, just as one begins to lose faith in the guide board, the trail, with an abrupt turn to the right, descends into a gulch, and rises steeply on the other side. Clambering up this steep, the visitor sees to the left the hotel buildings, which announce the presence of the springs, while to the right are pitched a number of tents, late sleeping rooms for an army of summer visitors which, vanquished by cold breezes, has broken camp and fled.

After a bath in the conventional zinc contrivance, to which was admitted hot and cold water through most unpoetic and sternly practical faucets, all of which suggested "modern improvements" rather than a wonderful natural phenomenon, I went out in search of the hot springs, quite as much to re-establish a somewhat shaken faith in their existence as for any other purpose. My doubts soon dissolved, for back of the hotel and half-way up the grade of a steep hill, I came upon a little rivulet of soda water still steaming with the heat of its parent spring. A little further on I saw a white tumulus of volcanic formation, and scattered over its summit oval openings in which boiled and bubbled water fresh from Pluto's kitchen. In some of these springs the water was scalding hot, while in others it was merely lukewarm. Springs showing such radical differences of temperature were frequently not more than two feet apart. There are over fifty of these springs here, and no two of them precisely alike.

The Springs have lately passed from their former ownership into the hands of new men, who are very enterprising. Larger buildings have been erected, and the camp-like freedom of the place has been exchanged for something more nearly approaching ordinary hotel life. There is room for about 150 guests, and every requirement for the comfort of invalids. The advertisements issued by the proprietors dwell largely upon the similarity of these waters to those of the Arkansas Hot Springs, and recommend them as equally curative in the special ailments that have long made the Arkansas waters famous.

A few miles northward of Poncho Springs there is a cluster of mining villages, of which the chief are Maysville and Monarch. They lie well under the shadow of the mountains, and silver ore is produced steadily in considerable quantity. These towns communicate with the outside world by a branch line of railway which diverges at this point.

* * * * *

In the quiet of the evening, at this charming retreat--for we had few pleasanter halting places--the Madame bethought herself (seeing the rest of us pen and pencil in hand) that she owed a letter to her Eastern _confidante_, and also remembered that she had promised her an account of our youthful _chef_, with whom by this time we all felt tolerably well acquainted. Happy accident brought this letter under my eye and I seized the opportunity to copy it, so here it is, or at least so much of it as relates to the boy:

"MY DEAR MRS. MCANGLE:

"I must tell you about our cook; or, as my husband would, no doubt correct me, our _porter_. How our first boy fought and bled and died I wrote you before, and that the last I saw of him he was being bundled rheumatically aboard the homeward train. Well, after I had finished that visit at Pueblo San Juan with old Santiago's wife, whom I described to you, I went home--that is, you know, back to our train--just at evening. As I opened the door a bright-faced boy rose to meet me, with a pair of the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen,--just the kind of orbs young ladies waste oceans of sentiment upon, you know, in boarding-school days. He was, so he told me, a mixture of Kentuckian and Canadian Indian blood. His grandmother, the only one of his family to whom he seemed to feel any allegiance, had set him up in business as a liquor seller. 'But,' he said, 'the business was too rough for _me_, so I gave it up to a friend and came out West.'

"He proved the direct opposite of his predecessor. While Edward could cook, Burt could not; and while Edward had an abhorrence of water, Burt was never so happy as when his pots, pans and kettles were all before him and he was busy scouring. The only difficulty was, that he could not _keep_ clean, but was for ever 'clarin' up,' during which process it required considerable ingenuity to make one's way through the débris of the kitchen furniture.

"It was not long before the inside of his car was covered with tin-ware of all descriptions, pails, smoothing irons, pokers, tools,--everything that could by any possibility be hung up. He had a passion for driving nails, the larger the more fun apparently, for his nails mostly went clear through the car-walls, which soon came to bristle like a newly furnished pin-cushion.

"With an eye to our future interests in all possible contingencies, Burt laid hold of anything along the road that he thought might be of use to us, entirely ignoring any proprietary rights which others might think they had in the object 'smoudged,' as he expressed it. In this way we gradually became possessed of an endless quantity of odds and ends, which it required a decided exercise of authority to get rid of.

"In traveling, he was nearly always to be seen on the top of the car, for he had an appreciative eye for scenery,--so much so, indeed, as sometimes to interfere with his duties. His great fault was procrastination.

"When we reached Durango he became very greatly depressed, and on my inquiring the reason for his melancholy, he attributes it to the dullness of the place; 'for, ma'am, there is no excitement,--no one has been killed for two weeks. Not at all what I was led to expect.' On reaching Leadville, he became much more cheerful, as he had only been in the city six hours before seeing two fights and half of another.

"His gait was something peculiar. It can best be described by the ditty we used to sing, my dear, which commemorates so touchingly the character and adventures of Susanna in her excursions abroad,--

'When she walks she lifts her foot, And then she puts it down again.'

"Long, lank, dark-skinned, dressed in flapping coat and immensely broad and excessively slouched sombrero (until my husband bought him a cap), with his loping walk and swinging elbows, he was easily recognized at a long distance; and as he would come sailing down upon us from afar, with arms full of bundles, he reminded one a little of some huge bird of prey.

"He had a wholesome fear of rattlesnakes and grizzly bears, which the wicked men of the fort maliciously represented to him, abounded in terrible numbers, and of the most ferocious kind wherever we went. 'No, ma'am,' he said, in his slow, stately way, when I cautioned him one day about trying to shoot a bear if he happened to meet one, as they were hard to kill and especially dangerous if wounded, 'No, ma'am; if I meet a bear you just bet I don't stay to take his portrait, but shin up the first tree I come to.'

"He was continually developing new accomplishments. We learned, after a few weeks, that we had not 'prospected' him thoroughly at the beginning. He proved to have had more experience than his youthful looks and aimlessness of motive lead us to expect. We had little occasion to call into use whatever knowledge he had acquired as a bar-keeper, because the education of the gentlemen of the party had not been neglected in that direction,--wholly in an amateur way, and they were accustomed, while 'concocting elaborately commingled potations,' (as they grandiloquently termed mixed drinks) to say to one another: 'If you would have anything well done do it yourself.'

"One day, however, great delight was caused by the discovery that Burt was a barber. His services were at once required, and when, at the end of long labors, he was munificently offered two nickels, he declined them. This noble independence aroused 'Chum's' admiration. He said that he was glad to see that the boy was free from the mercenary spirit so painful to witness in the young.

"Our porter seemed to consider the whole expedition a huge joke, and ourselves a show arranged for his especial benefit. If--as it frequently happened, for a more thoroughly heedless and forgetful youth never existed--we were obliged to expostulate with him on some neglect of duty, a seriousness of countenance would remain with him for some time, but the first joke that came to his ears dispelled it. Sullen, he never was, or ill natured; and if any real emergency occurred, more willing and unselfish help could not have been tendered by a firm friend than was tendered by this servant. I repent me, indeed, Mrs. McAngle, of having made fun of him, even in the privacy of a letter to you. The odor of the steaks that he cooked still lingers in my grateful nostrils; I remember that without him, material for many jokes would have been wanting, and I look on his fast vanishing, but always picturesque figure, with regret."

* * * * *

Standing here at the very foot of the mountains that hid the enchanting netherland of "the Gunnison," we were eager to hurry on to the Pacific slope of the State; but one little side trip remained to be made, and on the second morning we coupled our cars to the express bound for Villa Grove and Bonanza. The course lay up Poncho Pass, and in five minutes the noisy locomotives announced that the ascent had begun.

It was very pretty, as, indeed, we had suspected during our walk the day before up to the hot springs, which stand near its entrance. The track is dug out of the side-hill on the northern side of the gulch, and a bright stream comes tumbling down through willows, cottonwoods, oak shrubs, wild cherry thickets and bushes of service-berry whose crimson fruit tempts you to leap off the train and taste its tart and fragrant juices. The slopes on both sides are covered with evergreens and aspens

"That twinkle to the gusty breeze."

Up through a rift in the trees we catch a glimpse of the little watering-place, and a few miles farther, pass the log-buildings of the old Toll Gate, occupying a pocket in the hills. Only now are the gray carpeted plains of the Arkansas, the village at the mouth of the cañon, and the rough high hills, away beyond the river lost to view. At the head of Poncho Pass is Mears' Station. It occupies a narrow defile, the walls rising steeply to unseen heights, and the gorges dropping apparently to unfathomable depths. We could not trace the devious course we had come, nor understand how it was possible the railway should surmount the stupendous barrier lying to the westward. Yet we knew that a day or two later our cars would roll steadily to the summit and steadily descend on the other side, for this little nook, the head of Poncho, is only the foot of Marshall Pass, by which the oceanic divide is crossed on the transcontinental route. Nor was it easier to see how we were to get away down the precipitous defiles in which the southern slope of Poncho Pass seemed to lose itself. It was with strongly excited curiosity, then, that we detached from the express and caused our cars to be coupled to the freight train, which the bulletin averred knew how to go down to Villa Grove, and would one day carry the traveller through to Saguache and the South.

When all was ready to make good this promise,--and if that miserably memorable engineer had thrust his shock of hair and bullet-head a trifle further out of the cab-window the company might have dispensed with the headlight--took the back track for a few rods, trended away on a curved side-track to the right as far as the hillside would admit, crossed the main line on a bridge, and having by this time accomplished a half circle, headed eastward again and began to climb the southern side of the gulch in a line so parallel with the lower track that a mile later you could fling down a stone from one to the other though you were a couple of hundred feet above. Half a mile more and the summit is reached,--a green saddle between the foothills of Mount Ouray on one side and the far-braced buttresses of Hunt's peak on the other. The going down is fairly straight and easy work, and it is not long before the gulches widen out, the diminished, grassy hills are left behind, and your speed increases as you strike the firmly bedded, regular track, pointing southward through a broad, treeless plain.

Perhaps I have said enough of the wonderful beauty of the Sangre de Cristo range, seen from this side; have too often told of their compact array and unbroken grandeur; of the scores of nameless peaks that vie with Hunt's, Rito Alto, Electric, the gothic Crestones and the group of pinnacled, sun-gilded summits that crowd near far-away Blanca; but in the broad morning light of this day's trip they stood up in freshened color and renewed majesty. All the cloud-curtains were rolled up, and heaven shed unhindered its clear, sharp sunbeams from end to end of the magnificent chain. The souvenirs of yesterday's storm added decoration, for the summits were all dusted and powdered, with light snow, like noble heads of the old _regime_; and this unwonted covering descended far enough below timber-line to frost the upper lines of trees, so that there was a soft gradation from the deep verdancy of the lower slopes, through hoary greenish-gray to the unbroken white of the clear-cut gables lifted into the serene and absolute solitude of the cærulean dome.

Down between the sharp edged spurs come numerous streams, watering little spaces where ranchmen had placed their cabins and fenced in their fields. Large areas now given up to the badgers and sage-brush, can be brought under irrigation, when the more favorable lower parts of the valley have been utilized. A broad road runs down here,--the old wagon road from Leadville and the Arkansas valley to Saguache, Del Norte, the San Juan region and New Mexico.

The same words apply to the more broken western side of the valley, here called Homan's Park, though it is only the upper end of the San Luis valley; and, in addition, those western hills are full of prospectors, and of places where prospecting for silver and gold has met with success. This is the celebrated Kerber Creek district, and Bonanza, Exchequer, Sedgwick and other little centers of human interest, lie back of those rugged, green hills over which the angular heads of Exchequer and Ouray mountains stand in high-chieftainship.

Of all these, Bonanza is the largest. The ores, however, are characterized by being of a low grade, but great volume, and by containing refractory elements, with a small percentage of lead, so that the large smelter at Bonanza has been compelled to cease running until it could provide itself with a more adequate outfit of fluxes, etc.

Villa Grove--a pleasant little village on San Luis creek, which drains the upper part of the park--is the railway point for all these mines and several other settlements not yet mentioned. Looking southeast from the station you can see where the track runs up into the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo to one of the great iron mines of the Colorado Coal and Iron company, whence large shipments are being made daily. Though of great importance and value, the seeing of this mine amounts to little, since it is hardly more than an open quarry.

From Villa Grove stages leave daily for Bonanza, Saguache and half a dozen other places, such as Crestone and Oriental,--little mining camps in the foothills. The roads are so smooth and level everywhere that the great six-horse Concords are unnecessary and spring wagons are used.

XXIV

THROUGH MARSHALL PASS.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortes, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific--and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent upon a peak in Darien. --KEATS.

One of the wonders of Colorado progress is the Gunnison valley. The "Gunnison," as it is usually termed, embraces a wide area, being, in popular parlance, everything in Colorado west of the Continental Divide, north of the San Juan mountains and south of the Eagle River district. In fact, this is correct enough, for nearly all this great region is tributary in its drainage to the Gunnison river,--the third great stream which unites with the Grand and the Green to form the Rio Colorado. The water-shed between it and the Rio San Juan, the only other feeder of the Rio Colorado worthy of mention, is the very high and wintry ridge of the San Juan mountains, crossing which you find yourself in Baker's Park and the region we had just come from. Betwixt the head of its northern branches and the springs that feed the Grand River basin, stand the Elk mountains and the high table lands of the Grand Mesa. From the one water-shed to the other it is about fifty miles.

Ten years ago this region had hardly a wanderer in it from one season's end to the other, and was full of Ute Indians. There were two or three agencies, and roads leading thereto, but it was all a reservation. Everything civilized that entered the district came up from Saguache through Cochetopa Pass and along Cochetopa creek into the Uncompahgre valley, where the Utes spent their winters. There was also a trail, occasionally traveled by sportsmen and explorers, leading southward from the Los Pinos agency to the headwaters of the Rio Grande and on over Cunningham Pass into Baker's Park. I marched over it in 1874, and a cruel march it was, though full of picturesque interest. An Indian trail northward to White river was about the only other internal pathway. The region, therefore, was a _terra incognita_ to Coloradoans, as well as to the rest of the civilized world.

But this mystery was soon to be cleared away. The search for gold and silver, which has led to more exploration of unknown regions than all the geographical societies of the world put together, did not hesitate to encounter the darkness that overspread the Pacific slope of the State, and to go prospecting thither as soon as ever a hope of finding "mineral" entered into the miner's heart. Close following upon the rush to Leadville, was repeated the history of the Pike's Peak sequel. Now, as then, men disappointed in not finding mines of fabulous wealth, during the first week of their stay, or shrewdly thinking to anticipate the crowd, began to walk further and further afield in search of new argentiferous rocks, so that by the summer of 1879 we began to hear not only of Ten Mile and Red Cliff, but of the Gunnison, as a district where success had met the prospector. That was only a little over four years ago. Now how well are we acquainted with this erst mysterious and Indian-haunted valley! Four years ago a mule was the best mode of conveyance hither, and an Indian trail almost the only pathway. Yesterday I rode into the heart of it in a parlor car, and found, ready for my perusal, the morning newspaper, with a day's history of all the world, from Chicago to Cathay.

The Gunnison country boasts several towns of considerable size, some of them the center of a circle of mines which radiates from them, and from which they absorb cash and conviviality. First in size is Gunnison City; and after it in importance are Crested Butte, Lake City, Ouray, Montrose, Delta and Grand Junction,--the last three being situated in the old Ute reservation in western Gunnison. Of less size, but yet centers of population, are a large number of small mining towns or "camps," such as Ruby, Crooksville, White Pine, Pitkin, Irwin, Barnum and Ohio. Each of these would require some attention from a faithful chronicler of the county, for they are all in Gunnison, where the territory is large enough to enable one to set in it the whole State of Massachusetts without crowding--that is if you lopped off Cape Cod or curled it up into Marshall Pass.