Part 28

The mountains ahead came into plainer view, as we left the park; we caught a glimpse of the curious Sawtooth range off at the left, saw that the rounded outlines of the bluffs on each side were changing to abrupt walls, and trending inward, and then the hush of night and the quiet of weariness came to still our conversation and turn our thoughts into meditative channels. Darkness enveloped the world and we pulled slowly through it by the light of a thousand brilliant stars--the same stars that shone on the Madame and Chum; that, beyond the Range, shed soft light on the shepherds and herdsmen of the great plains; that trembled in the eddies of the Mississippi; that were watched by wakeful people on the slopes of laurel-crowned Alleghanian hills; that caught faintly the eye of revelers--for it must now be after the opera--in New York; that spoke a mysterious language to the watcher upon the far ocean; and, oh, best of all! that looked in at a curtained New England window and saw a child in peaceful slumbers. Little daughter under the ancient elms,--planet in the far sky,--father passing under the massive shadow of gigantic cliffs whose pine-fringed bulwarks are lost in the thick gloom above! What an immeasurable triangle, yet how swiftly does the mercury of thought compass it and link its points together?

XXIX

AT OURAY AND RED MOUNTAIN.

Bathed in the tenderest purple of distance, Tinted and shadowed by pencils of air, Thy battlements hang o'er the slopes and the forests, Seats of the gods in the limitless ether, Looming sublimely aloft and afar. Above them, like folds of imperial ermine, Sparkle the snowfields that furrow thy forehead,-- Desolate realms, inaccessible, silent, Chasms and caverns where Day is a stranger, Garners where storeth his treasures the Thunder, The Lightning his falchion, his arrows the Hail. --BAYARD TAYLOR.

Ouray is--what shall I say? The prettiest mountain town in Colorado? That wouldn't do. A dozen other places would deny it, and the cynics who never saw anything different from a rough camp of cabins in some quartz gulch, would sneer that this was faint praise. Yet that it is among the most attractive in situation, in climate, in appearance, and in the society it affords, there can be no doubt. There are few western villages that can boast so much civilization.

Ouray stands in a bowl-shaped valley--a sort of broad pit in fact--hollowed out of the northern flank of that mass of mountains which holds the fountains of so many widely destined rivers. A narrow notch in the bowl southward lets the Uncompahgre break through to the lowlands, and furnishes us with a means of ingress; otherwise the most toilsome climbing would be the only way to get into or out of town. From this point diverge three or four short but exceedingly lofty, and several lesser ranges, like the spokes of a wheel from its hub. Eastward stretches the continental divide of the Sierra San Juan proper; southward the Needles and the circling heights that enclose Baker's park; westward the Sierra San Miguel; northward the spurs of Uncompahgre; and the diminishing foothills and mesas that sink gradually into the Gunnison valley.

Yet the first comers--it is only seven years ago, but the mists of antiquity seem to gather about it--did not enter that way, but came over the range from the south. Prospectors for precious metals, they ascended the Rio Las Animas from Baker's park, until they found its head, and stood upon the dividing crest of the range. Here a streamlet trickled northward, and they followed its broadening current down the unknown gorges into which it sank. The walls were often too steep to allow any foothold for them, and then they would wade in the icy water and stumble over the slippery bowlders that had fallen from above. When a dozen miles of this work had been accomplished, they found themselves entering a cañon so narrow, that by stretching out their arms they could almost touch both of its walls; and so irregular that a few rods before and behind was all the distance that ever could be seen at once. Uncertain when they would be brought to a standstill by some pool or precipitous fall, and compelled to struggle back against a torrent which scarcely allowed them to move downstream in safety, they pushed on until they suddenly emerged into a beautiful round valley, filled with copses of trees and sunny glades. In this haven the chilled and weary prospectors rested for the night. While one man--there were no more than three, I believe,--built the fire, sliced the fat bacon and molded the bread; the second went to the river with his fishing-line, and the third started out with his gun. By the time the bread was baked the angler came back with eighteen trout and the hunter returned for help to bring in a bear he had killed within a couple of hundred yards. So runs the tradition, and there is no reason to discredit it.

Now, where the bear was shot and the trout caught, stands a town of fifteen hundred people, which forms the center for supplying a wide circuit of mining localities, including Red Mountain, Mt. Sneffles, Mineral Point and Mineral Farm, Bear Creek, and half a dozen other places of lesser note; and which affords a good market for the agriculturists of the lower valleys, and the cattle breeders of neighboring mesas. Prosperity, comfort, and even much luxury prevail now; but some of the trials of the earliest settlers, beset by isolation, winter, famine, and the fear of Indians, would be worth recounting could I have unlimited space.

This is not a miner's guide, and nothing could be drier reading for a stranger than a catalogue of diggings and minerals. The ores abound in a thousand ledges which run up and down, and here and there, all through the mountains, from the metamorphic limestones of the outer ledges to the storm-hewn trachyte that caps the hoary summits. What I have said concerning the ore of the opposite (southern) side of the San Juan system of mountains, and the way in which it occurs, applies well enough to this side also. It could not well be otherwise, for the age and general geology of the two regions is as nearly alike as the two sides of the same mountain-chain are very likely to be. In a word the ores are varied, but chiefly ores of galena and copper, occurring in fissure veins and carrying a "high grade" proportion of silver (in various forms) and a considerable quantity of gold. The extraordinary variety of minerals, and the vast bulk of the ore deposits are the two noteworthy features of the region. These ores, moreover, as a rule, are not "refractory" though containing antimonial elements which in an excess would make them so. Works for their concentration, _i.e._, the sifting out (after pulverization) of the worthless vein-matter, in order to save the expenses of transportation, are run to great advantage.

Ouray's principal claim to our notice as sightseers lay in its beautiful situation, and the attractive bits of mountain scenery in its neighborhood,--a collection of pictures which it would be hard to duplicate in an equally limited space anywhere else in the whole Rocky mountains.

The valley in which the town is built is at an elevation of about 7,500 feet above the sea, and is pear-shaped, its greatest width being not more than half a mile while its length is about twice that down to the mouth of the cañon. Southward--that is toward the heart of the main range,--stand the two great peaks Hardin and Hayden. Between is the deep gorge down which the Uncompahgre finds its way; but this is hidden from view by a ridge which walls in the town and cuts off all the farther view from it in the direction, save where the triangular top of Mt. Abrams peers over. Westward are grouped a series of broken ledges, surmounted by greater and more rugged heights. Down between these and the western foot of Mt. Hayden struggles Cañon creek to join the Uncompahgre; while Oak creek leaps down a line of cataracts from a notch in the terraced heights through which the quadrangular head of White House mountain becomes grandly discernible,--the easternmost buttress of the wintry Sierra San Miguel.

All of these mountains, though extremely rugged, precipitous, and adorned with spurs and protruding shoulders of naked rock, yet slope backward somewhat, and through one of these depressions passes a most remarkable and picturesque wagon road to Silverton, constructed at immense cost and displaying wonderful engineering skill. But at the lower side of the little basin, where the path of the river is beset with close cañon-walls, the cliffs rise vertical from the level of the village, and bear their forest-growth many hundreds of feet above. These mighty walls, two thousand feet high in some places, are of metamorphic rock, and their even stratification simulates courses of well-ordered masonry. Stained by iron and probably also by manganese, they are a deep red-maroon; this color does not lie uniformly, however, but is stronger in some layers than in others, so that the whole face of the cliff is banded horizontally in pale rust color, or dull crimson, or deep and opaque maroon. The western cliff is bare, but on the more frequent ledges of the eastern wall scattered spruces grow, and add to its attractiveness. Yet, as though Nature meant to teach that a bit of motion,--a suggestion of glee was needed to relieve the sombreness of utter immobility and grandeur however shapely, she has led to the sunlight by a crevice in the upper part of the eastern wall that we cannot see, a brisk torrent draining the snowfields of some distant plateau. This little stream, thus beguiled by the fair channel that led it through the spruce woods above, has no time to think of its fate, but is flung out over the sheer precipice eighty feet into the valley below. We see the white ghost of its descending, and always to our ears is murmured the voice of the Naiads who are taking the breathless plunge. Yet by what means the stream reaches that point from above, cannot be seen, and the picture is that of a strong jet of water bursting from an orifice through the crimson wall and falling into rainbow-arched mist and a tangle of grateful foliage, that hides its further flowing.

As Mr. Weston well says, and as I have insisted in my chapters upon the southern side of the San Juan range, the indescribable charm of this scenery is due not so much to its gigantic proportions, its grotesque and massively-grand outlines, or its variety of composition, as to the contrasts of color and condition. "Even now (May) while I write," he says, "it is warm and summery in town, the side hills are covered with flowers and the whistle of the humming bird's wing is heard in the air; yet I can look up at White House peak and see the snow banners blowing from its summit, as in the coldest day in winter. In the autumn, more especially, are the contrasts of color seen, and the landscape, as it then appears, if painted on canvas, would, I believe, be laughed at, if shown in Europe or the Eastern States, as an impossibility. I have climbed the heights above Ouray, and looked down on it, when the atmosphere of the valley seemed of a hazy blue, the sloping sides of the surrounding mountains being clothed with the golden yellow and the red brown of the quaking aspen and the dwarf oak, the varied greens of the spruce, balsam, cedar and yellow pine, and above that the brown gray of the trachyte peaks, their snow-capped summits forming a charming contrast against the lovely violet blue of the evening sky."

This valley alone, with its everchanging panorama of summer and winter, of verdurous spring and the noise of gushing waters, of flaming autumn and the drapery of haze etherializing the world, presenting under always novel aspect the forms and colors so lavishly displayed--this nook alone would satisfy a generation of artists. But the enchantment of the half hidden gorges, the allurement of the beckoning peaks urge us to explore beauties beyond.

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I cannot redescribe the way in which these bristling peaks of purple and green trachyte cut the tremulous sky, nor try to make you understand anew the abysses that sink narrowly between the closely crowded mountains. If the reader will kindly turn back to where I have endeavored to convey to him some idea of the Alps that lie about Baker's park and at the head of the Rio Dolores and the Rio de La Plata, he will learn what I might repeat of scenes this side of the divide; for some of those former peaks can be seen from here, and this, too, equally with the southern slope, "is Silver San Juan."

The ride across the hills towards Red mountain was something to be remembered. The great walls of maroon rock and the precipices that rose in terraced grandeur upon their shoulders, coming into view one by one as we ascended from the basin to the foothills, were all wet with the night dews, and gleamed like mirrors under the morning sun. The foothills themselves were rugged jumbles of rocks heaped about the base of the mountains, and full of deep crevices where the streams coursed far out of sight and hearing. They were covered with a mingled growth of spruces, cedars, small oaks and several other shrubby trees. There were open spaces where a dense chapparal or heather of small thorny bushes of various kinds hid the ground; and other slopes where tall grass and innumerable flowers formed favorite pastures for sedate groups of donkeys. Passing the dizzy brink of the chasm into which Bear creek makes its awful leap, snatching a beauty beyond portrayal from the very jaws of terror, we enter a rank forest of aspens and spruces. One might fire a pistol-ball across to the side of Mt. Hayden, which rises an almost sheer wall of indigo-gray from a gulf between us and it, whose creviced-bottom is out of sight below. Deep and varied shadows lie in the little ravines that seam its almost vertical slopes, and streaks of dusty snow lurk in the higher crannies feeding trickling cascades of sunbright water that drop like tears into the unfathomed cañon.

Through the trees southward, to the right of the triangular peak of Engineer mountain, and the great barrier of Abrams, we could now catch a glimpse of a rounded summit as gaudy as the hat of a cardinal. This was the Red mountain, of which so much has been heard. The road there follows the course of Red Mountain creek from its mouth for two miles through dense pine timber. At this point, four miles from Ouray, and two thousand feet higher, it enters a flat valley or park two miles long, which is covered with willows and with prairies of long grass that every autumn is mowed for hay. This park contains many ponds and miry places, and is said to be underlaid everywhere with bog iron-ore. On either side of the park is a high range of mountains and trachyte peaks, that on the west being the divide between the Red Mountain district and Imogene basin in the Sneffels district, and that on the east being the divide between the Red Mountain district and the Uncompahgre district and Poughkeepsie gulch. At the upper end of the park commences the chain of scarlet peaks, from twelve to thirteen thousand feet in altitude, which are regarded as the volcanic center toward which all the lodes of the surrounding region seem to converge.

The history of this new "camp," Red Mountain, is a short one. In the summer of 1881 three men discovered the Guston mine, but as the ore was low grade it was worked only because it gave an excess of lead which was just then in demand at the Pueblo smelter. In August, 1882, John Robinson, one of the owners, was hunting deer, and while resting, carelessly picked up a small bowlder, after the manner of prospectors who never stop a moment anywhere but they scrutinize every bit of stone within reach, out of pure habit. Astonished at the weight of this piece he broke it in two and found it to be solid galena. This clue led to the discovery of the Yankee Girl lead close by. A month later the owners had sold the prospect-hole for $125,000, but retained two other apparently equally valuable mines near at hand. In the Yankee Girl rich ore was found only a dozen feet below the surface; and though it had to be packed upon mules and burros all the way down to Silverton, it yielded a profit of over fifty dollars a ton.

Upon the heels of this discovery there was a great rush of miners and speculators toward the scarlet heights, and several large settlements--principally Ironton and Red Mountain Town--sprang up on the rough and forested hillside. Claim stakes dotted the mountain as thick as the poles in a hop-field, and astonishing success attended nearly every digging. Among them all the first lode opened, the Yankee Girl, held supremacy, as is so often the case; but a few months later a neighboring property, the National Belle, leaped far to the front at a single bound.

This occurred by the accident of a workman breaking through the tunnel wall into a cavity. Hollow echoes came back from the blows of his pick, and stones thrown were heard to roll a long distance. Taking a candle, one of the men descended and found himself in an immense natural chamber, the flickering rays of the light showing him the vaulted roof far above, seamed with bright streaks of galena and interspersed with masses of soft carbonates, chlorides and pure white talc. On different sides of this remarkable chamber were small openings leading to other rooms or chambers, showing the same wonderful rich formation. Returning from this brief reconnoisance a party began a regular exploration. They crept through the narrow opening into an immense natural tunnel running above and across the route of their working drift for a hundred feet or more, in which they clambered over great bowlders of pure galena, and mounds of soft gray carbonates, while the walls and roof showed themselves a solid mass of chloride and carbonate ores of silver. Returning to the starting point they passed through another narrow tunnel of solid and glittering galena for a distance of forty feet, and found indications of other large passages and chambers beyond. "It would seem," cries the local editor in his account of this romantic disclosure, "as though Nature had gathered her choice treasures from her inexhaustible storehouse, and wrought these tunnels, natural stopping places and chambers, studded with glittering crystals and bright mineral to dazzle the eyes of man in after ages, and lure him on to other treasures hidden deeper in the bowels of the earth.... The news of the discovery spread like wildfire, and crowds came to see the sight, and to many of them it was one never to be forgotten."

This was only the first of these surprises, for many cavities have since been divulged, great and small, in each of which crude wealth had been locked up since the world was made. The character of the ores, the occurrence of these cavities, and the extremely short distances beneath the turf at which rich ore is struck, have combined to cause much discussion among geologists as to the true history of the district.

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One of the most striking scenes in the neighborhood of Ouray is the passage through which Cañon creek makes its way down to join the Uncompahgre just above the village. A wild and interesting gorge leads upward toward the western foot of Mt. Hayden, the trail carrying one along the edge of a little cliff, and the walls rapidly contracting so that little room is left even for the foot-trail. A quarter of a mile, perhaps less, above the village, these walls suddenly close together, and the steep, brush-grown slope, is lost in a lofty crag, towering far above the tallest spruces, and standing squarely across the gorge. In this escarpment a zigzag crevice shows itself extending from top to bottom: at the top you may look some distance within it, but at the foot the protruding masses on one side, the sharp curve on the opposite, and the deep shadows, never illumined by the highest sun, shut off all searching by the eye. Out of this narrow, upright, cave-like crevice, as though from its original strong fountains, gushes the deep and turbulent stream, cold as ice and sparkling with a million imprisoned bubbles of air. Get as near as you can to its aperture--crane your head around the very corner of these mountain water-gates, and you can see nothing but darkness, in which only the outlines of the nearest irregularities in the rocky walls are dimly defined, while the beetling ledges above shut out the narrow line of sky that might be seen were the sides of the cañon smooth. Retreating down stream a little way, you look past bright pillars of rosy quartzite, across the glittering pathway of foam flecked water, glorying in its escape, up to the lofty gates and the shadowy crevice between, whence the river comes ceaselessly and with singing; you note the color-touches of the flowers and blossoming vines; the soft hangings of the ferns under the damp ledges, the emerald foliage of the poplar standing bravely beneath the shadow of the cliffs and the darker forms of giant spruces--you see this contrast of brightness and color and sunshine just without the damp gloom of the mysterious portals; and you tell yourself that there are few scenes in the Rockies that can equal it.

There is a roundabout way to get to the top of these cliffs and look down into the chasm; and at one point, where it is much more than one hundred feet in depth, a person may easily step across from edge to edge. Though it would probably be impossible in the lowest stage of water to make one's way up from below against the swift flood that fills the whole width of the chasm, yet by going above it is possible to work your way down stream for a long distance into the crevice. A cave exists there, entered at the surface of the water, and occasional picnic parties are made up to go to it. These consist mainly of young people whom age has not sobered, for during the latter part of the way it is needful that the gentlemen wading should carry the ladies across frequent portages--to borrow a word from a reverse custom. The cave entrance at the water side is only an ante-chamber to the real cavern. To reach that a ladder and rope is required, by which the men first ascend to a second higher chamber and then draw the ladies up. The entrance is a hatchway so narrow that portly persons have been known to express fears as to their getting through.