312

MUSIC IN UNDERGROUND CHAMBERS.

[1860. Two miles from Colorado City they culminate in huge walls known as the Gateway to the Garden of the Gods. Enormous portals of red rock rise almost perpendicularly for three hundred feet with tenacious cedars clinging to their sides. On the summit, where no human foot has trodden, eagles build their nests.

Through this natural gateway we passed into a large inclosure walled in by mountains on every side-indeed a garden for the gods. One vast rock has a cave eight feet by sixty and about seventy in hight. Its walls are smooth and seamless.

We entered by the only aperture, barely large enough for an adult to crawl through. Within we struck a light to view the weird picture. For an hour the singers of our party made the walls echo with the strains of sacred music, always most impressive in underground chambers.

After we emerged, Pike's Peak rose clear and distinct, with two little spots of snow near the summit, and a faint line like a trail or foot-path down the side from the crest to the base.

The picturesque

hills around us abounded in game. A few days before an enthusiastic sportsman wounded a juvenile grizzly, when the mother bear appeared uninvited, compelling him to climb a tree so suddenly that he dropped his gun, and was imprisoned in the branch

es for several hours. At last friends came to his rescue and drove bruin away.

We spent the night at Colorado City then containing a hundred log houses.

1860.]

STARTING UP THE MOUNTAINS.

313

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE distance from Colorado to the summit of Pike's Peak, as the bird flies, is five miles; by the nearest practicable route about fifteen. A Colorado gentleman who had once made the trip became our guide, philosopher, and comrade.

Early in the morning escorted by a party of friends we rode to the Fontaine qui Bouille, stopping for copious draughts of that invigorating water. A mile further the canyon became impracticable for vehicles; so the carriage turned back and we began our pedestrian journey,

On and up, where Nature's heart
Beats strong amid the hills.'

Like Denver and Golden City our starting-point was higher above sea-level than the summit of Mount Washington.

Six athletic miners, ranch-men and carpenters who chanced to be going up that morning, led the caravan. Our own party of five, in single file, brought up the rear. We were each provided with a stout cane and a drinking cup. The ladies were in bloomer costume, with broad-rimmed hats, and light satchels suspended from their belts. The unhappy trio of men, in thick boots and heavy woolen shirts, without coats or waistcoats, carried revolvers, knives and hatchets, and bent under their heavy packs of provisions and blankets. My own weighed twenty-seven pounds; and I thought it fully twenty-seven hundred before the wearying journey was ended.

The steep narrow canyon, un-marked by any trail, abounded in smooth precipitous rocks, impassable for any quadruped less agile than a mountain goat. Along the bottom of the gorge, a

314

SCENES OF PICTURESQUE BEAUTY.

[1860.

brook leaped and plashed over the rocks in a stream of silver. The overlooking hills were thickly studded with shrubs of oak and

of beauty-'pocket editions of poetry in

Wild cherries, hops and cluster

ing purple berries grew in profusion. The valley

abounds in gems velvet and gold.'

We made our noon camp at one of these which would cause the heart of an artist to sing for joy. The brook, first appearing in view under a natural stone bridge above us, comes tumbling

1860.]

NATURE'S TERRIBLE CONVULSIONS.

315

down in a cascade of snow-white foam, torn into sparkling fringes by the jutting rocks, and is lost among the huge bowlders at our feet. An irregular mass of granite rises upon one side more than a hundred feet; and on either bank, the singing waters are shaded by tall pines and blue-tipped firs. Between and beyond their dark branches, a gray, cone-shaped hill, bare of tree or shrub, stands in the background against a wonderfully blue and pellucid sky. I never felt the utter poverty of descriptive language until I gazed upon that matchless picture.

A lively shower soon recalled us to the practical, when it was discovered that our whisky through defective corking had escaped from the bottles. It might prove a serious loss in case of great exhaustion; but after boiling our tin cups of tea by a fire of branches, we started on.

The afternoon climb was still along the canyon, sinking kneedeep into the gravelly hill, clutching desperately at friendly bushes to keep from falling backward, and toiling upon hands and knees over wet slippery rocks.

At four o'clock, cold, foot-sore and weary, we encamped where our advance party had already halted. Supper was prepared and eaten before a glorious fire of tree trunks. Then, for two hours, the deep woods resounded with laughter and song. But long before midnight we all slept, watched by the sentinel stars 'which haste not, nor rest not, but shine on forever.'

On the second morning we made hasty toilets with the brook for a mirror, and consumed our fried pork, biscuit and cups of tea while sitting upon logs. We continued through two rugged canyons, with a smooth, grassy valley between.

Many of the mountains are streaked with broad bare tracks, left by land-slides. Vast masses of disintegrating granite are piled upon each other in dreary wastes. One huge stone chair overlooks a little kingdom of mountain and valley; but the Titan who sat upon it was long ago dethroned in one of Nature's terrible convulsions, which uprooted hills and scattered gigantic bowlders like pebbles.

The burdens already hung like millstones about our necks. I began to comprehend the emotions of a pack mule; and to wonder whether a man who would carry twenty-seven pounds of

316

DISMAL AND DREARY SITUATION. [1860.

blankets up Pike's Peak, did not belong to the long-eared species himself.

A cold rain set in; and at noon, drenched and shivering, we encamped under a. shelving rock. We kindled a fire and dined upon a rabbit, which had surrendered unconditionally to a revolver.

The only true philosophy of getting wet is to get soaked. Moist clothing brings a hesitating discomfort; but in feeling that every thread is drenched, there is a desperate satisfaction. So we went into the driving rain and feasted for an hour upon ripe raspberries, which grew so abundantly that one could satisfy his appetite without moving. Then we returned to camp thoroughly saturated, and throughout the afternoon made sorry essays at reading and whist playing.

Early in the evening our robust Colorado friends, who had gone a mile beyond us, passed by on their return, having given up the trip as too severe.

We gathered an ample supply of wood. The dead pines, often six inches in diameter and thirty feet high, were easily overturned, their brittle roots snapping like pipe-stems. As the fire was our only solace, we piled on logs until the red flames leaped high and chased the thick darkness away.

Four of us huddled under the rock, while the fifth, as the least of two evils, sat grimly in the open air, wrapped in his blanket and brooding upon destiny. The rain became very violent, and the natural roof, sloping unfortunately in the wrong direction, showered the water upon us in melancholy profusion.

After many dismal jests about our dreary situation, one by one my co-tenants dropped asleep. My own latest recollection of that Procrustean bed was at eleven o'clock, when I was wooing the drowsy god, with my legs in a mud puddle, a sharp rock piercing my ribs, and a stream of water pouring down my back.

At midnight my friends arose-for the air had grown very chill-and sought our great log fire. After enjoying for a few minutes the comfort of its red flames-a comfort mitigated by the pelting rain-wrapping myself again in a wet blanket, and creeping as far as possible under the rock, I soon slept soundly. At daylight, when I awoke, they were still out in the driving rain, sit