1860.]

VISIT TO GREGORY DIGGINGS.

The tragic death of Marigny, elicited from another spectator: 'Well old fellow, so you are gone up too.'

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And at the tragic close Gaultier, Marguerite and Buridan were greeted with:

'Bound to have a big funeral, aren't you?'

Among the spectators were several ladies, and despite the boisterousness of the house there was no gross coarseness and no profanity. I took several summer trips to view the mines and natural curiosities. Within ten miles of the original Gregory Diggings, were now twenty thousand settlers. Some gold seekers were realizing a hundred dollars per day; but not one-third were paying expenses. Two or three quartz mills were just going into operation. Forty or fifty Mexican arastras each with two men and one mule or horse, were turning out about twenty-five dollars a day. The arastra is the most primitive invention for crushing quartz. The fragments of rock are spread upon a circular

THE ARASTRA.

inclosed stone bed, on which a mule walks led by one arm of an upright shaft, as in the old fashioned cider-mill, and dragging after him heavy rocks which grind out the quartz. Mining nomenclature is always curious. gulch, Tarry-all,' explains itself. 'Bob-tail' and 'Shirt-tail.'

The name of one Two rich lodes were called

Prospectors found three blackened corpses in a district of burnt pines, and named the spot 'Dead Man's Gulch.' 'Negro Gulch,' very rich, was discovered by two African citizens of American descent. Another ravine had been prospected by three parties who all denounced it as a humbug, when a fourth company found in it a rich lode; and it was known thereafter as 'Humbug Gulch.'

I met an old Boston merchant running a quartz mill success

308

PUNISHING A PRECOCIOUS YOUTH.

[1860.

fully, and an ex-banker, a Presbyterian deacon from eastern Kansas, selling pies and retailing whisky on Sunday.

For stealing a pair of blankets, a lad was sentenced by the local vigilance committe to a hundred lashes. The sympathetic castigator laid them on very lightly, and at the close, the boy asked:

'Is that all? Why I have been whipped worse at school.' An indignant bystander immediately proposed to give him twenty-five more. The precocious youth replied:

"No, gentlemen, you can't do that. It's against the law to punish a man twice for the same offense.

With the Hinckley express messenger crossing the Platte river at Denver, I turned to the southwest toward Tarryall and Breckinridge. In that clear atmosphere men upon the road five miles away could be seen with great distinctness. Before us were the eternal mountains, pearly, ashen, or snow-white; shrouded in dark masses of pine, brightened with yellowing cottonwoods.

At the foot of the range we passed Bradford, a city of one local habitation and a name. Near it, huge granite rocks resemble an enormous quadruped, and an immense human head.

Passing the unfailing toll-gate, we zigzagged for two miles up a sharp hill. Then we were in the heart of hills, rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; among tumbling brooks, yellowing aspens and forests of somber pines and bluish green firs, straight as arrows, their tops smooth and symmetric as grain in a wheat field.

Passing saw-mills, shingle factories and log houses, we met hundreds of shaggy miners trudging down, to winter in the valley. Spending the night at the ranch of a gigantic Kentuckian, early morning found us riding again in the crisp air among Titanic rocks, tall pines and white-stemmed aspens. Six times during the day we crossed the Platte, here less than twenty feet wide. Overworked oxen lay dying among road-side stumps. Toward evening among the tall peaks, we found pleasant grassy valleys where ice had formed nightly since the first of July.

We supped upon savory mountain sheep at a lonely ranch, where the host instructed my companion to bring from Denver a can of Goshen butter for his table, and a hoop-skirt for his young wife. We left him banking his log house up to the eaves to keep out the cold, already biting, although it was early in October.

1860.]

IN THE GREAT SOUTH PARK.

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From the summit of a hill we looked into the great South Park spreading out at our feet. The three parks, North, Middle and South, in the very heart of the Rocky Mountains are impressive natural features. This one is a smooth prairie of crescent shape, forty miles by fifteen, which has been dropped down among these mountain fastnesses to be imprisoned forever by their barriers of rock. Two little lakes gleamed in the green expanse of velvet, which alternated with pale ashen herbage, spotted with clusters of dead brown weeds. On every side the prairie sloped up gently toward the deepening pines of the foot-hills.

A faint line of road wound across the smooth floor. Scattered log ranches with hay-stacks, grazing cattle, snowy tents, and columns of smoke from the camp-fires of travelers, formed quiet pastoral scenes among long vistas of pine-fringed verdure. The waning sun flooded the delicious picture with yellow light.

Descending into the park we found white bleaching buffalo bones along the level road. The thick matted grass is nutritious during the entire winter, and the soil rich though whitened with alkali. One enterprising settler had planted a little tract; but as the park is almost eight thousand feet above the sea with frosts every month in the year, its chief value is for grazing. It abounds in delicate petrifactions of pine-splinters and branches.

Crossing several little affluents of the Platte through an icy atmosphere streaked with warm currents like the breath of a furnace, we reached Tarryall, eighty miles from Denver.

The next morning we breakfasted sumptuously upon mountain trout, larger, whiter and more bony than the trout of the East. Their color is dull brown with specks of red; but just over the dividing ridge in waters running westward, the spots become black. Old trappers when lost among the mountains drop a line in the first stream, and learn from the specks of these Alpine trout whether the waters run to the Atlantic or to the Pacific.

Tarryall contained two or three hundred log houses, now mainly deserted for the winter. The diggings revealed tunnels extending far into the hills and the surface everywhere gashed and trenched. They yielded gold of peculiarly fine quality.

To the east, immediately across the park, towered Pike's Peak. Though grand from every point, the view here is less impressive

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A MEMORABLE SUMMER EXCURSION.

[1860,

than that obtained from the opposite side, on the road from Denver to Colorado City. There, forty miles from the foot of the moun. tain, the best distant picture is gained.

Tarryall is upon the tributaries of the Platte. Breckinridge lies fifteen miles to the west over the water-shed. For half the distance I found the ascent steady and gentle. Beyond, galloping up a short hill I stood upon the ridge. pole of the American continent, then the dividing line between Kansas and Utah. Just before me gushed a spring whose waters feed the Colorado of the Pacific. Just behind, were ice-fringed rivulets flowing to the Atlantic.

PIKE'S PEAK, FROM FORTY MILES NORTHEAST.

My road crossed the summit through a gap between snow-topped mountains two thousand feet high. Below me both on the east and on the west were spread vast troughs and trenches of sprucepine forest. Descending the westward slope I found the pines of deeper green, perhaps from their northern exposure.

Breckinridge, with sixty or seventy log houses, rested in the eternal shadow of tall peaks containing snow-drifts fifty feet deep, which the oldest trappers and Indians had never known to melt entirely away. Still, turnips, beets, and lettuce were produced in the little valley during the short summers. I found hay selling at from five to ten cents per pound. Breckinridge, French's, Georgia, and neighboring gulches had yielded gold abundantly. My most memorable summer excursion was made with three friends, from Denver to the summit of Pike's Peak. Before starting we heard appalling reports about the difficulties of the ascent. Many attempting it had failed to reach the crest. One robust gentleman became delirious from the light atmosphere and fatigue. Another who had climbed Orizaba, when five hundred feet below the top of Pike's Peak was so utterly exhausted that he returned. without going further. But these failures together with some

1860.] THE INTERESTING MONUMENT REGION.

311

ridicule and many gloomy prophecies only made the ladies of our party the more anxious to undertake the journey.

As we rode out from Denver, eighty miles southward the Peak, dim and grand, lifted its wrinkled brow from the horizon. The first evening found us in the curious Monument Region. Here among pleasant groves of little pines are scattered upright shafts and masses of crumbling granite and limestone, curiously worn. and sculptured by wind and water. They extend for thirty miles; some crowning hills like great temples built by human hands. One is called Table Rock, another Castle Rock, a third Signal Hill, from signal fires which Indians used to kindle upon it. Capitol Rock, upon a little eminence, assumes the form of a strong fortress, with frowning walls and arched gateway. Further south, on Monument creek, the pillars and statues rise to the hight of fifteen or twenty feet, in differing colors and fantastic shapes. Pagan idols, cardinals and friars, picturesque little cottages, Siamese twins, and almost numberless images of the palpable and familiar may be detected among them. But most have the form of monumental stones. Standing thickly over hundreds of acres, in the midst of the pines, they make the spectator fancy himself in Greenwood, Mount Auburn, Spring Grove, or some other great American cemetery.