572

'PANDEMONIUM ON WHEELS.' [1869.

CHAPTER XLVII.

AUTHORS and census-takers must be swift of foot to keep pace with progress beyond the Mississippi. Every twelvemonth it needs a new gazetteer and a revised map. The two years since this book went to press have witnessed so many changes that a few chapters are now added to bring it forward to the early summer of 1869.

Wyoming, twice as large as Pennsylvania, was formed in 1868 from portions of Dacotah, Montana, Utah, and Colorado. It probably averages six thousand feet above sea-level. It has enormous beds of rich coal, and promising veins of gold-bearing quartz. The barren-looking soil affords boundless pasturage, and may yet surprise the farmer by yielding bountifully of the root vegetables, the hardy fruits, and the small grains.

All the slender population thus far is along the Union Pacific Railway, an enterprise to which Wyoming owes its birth. The chief town is Cheyenne, where the Denver branch diverges. For several months it was the terminal station of the main line, and was infested by the thieves, gamblers, desperadoes, and prostitutes, who swarmed to each successive 'end town,' and gave it the name of 'Hell on Wheels.' Now and then a vigilance committee purified the atmosphere. It is related that when one notorious character was tried for stealing, and the evidence proved insufficient, the jurors returned this verdict: 'We find the prisoner not guilty, but if he is smart he will leave this town within twenty-four hours.' He glanced at the gallows from which two of his associates had been found dangling a few mornings before; and he did leave by the first train.

Though more than a mile above tide-water, Cheyenne is on the

1869.] HIGHEST RAILWAY POINT IN AMERICA. 573

open, treeless prairie, with mountains only far away and dimdiscovered. Thirty miles to the west, however, the track crosses Sherman's or Evans's Pass, eight thousand three hundred feet above the sea-the highest railway point in America, if not in the world. Even this is not the backbone of the Rocky Mountains, but only of the Black Hills, an eastern offshoot, whose summits do look almost black in the distance.

Colorado is growing steadily and healthily. It has seventyfive thousand head of cattle, and one hundred and fifty thousand of sheep; and the crops for 1868 were valued at six millions of dollars. Eighteen flouring mills are in operation. Thirty bushels of corn or wheat to the acre, forty of barley, and fifty of oats are average products. Exceptional yields are reported, of seventyfive bushels of wheat, two hundred and fifty of potatoes, and seventy of oats and barley; and one acre yielded three hundred and sixteen bushels of corn. Cabbages have been raised weighing sixty pounds, beets ten pounds, and onions two pounds. All this is very wonderful in a region which so lately had no white inhabitants, and was believed to be utterly sterile.

Female 'help' is scarce and correspondingly precious. In some mining districts, kitchen girls still attend the same balls with their mistresses, on terms of perfect equality. Even in Denver their services command from fifty to seventy-five dollars a month. But the scepter is departing from Hibernia; John Chinaman, with his willing hands, and his yellow, impassive face, will supersede Biddy the loud and intractable.

Summer travelers already throng to Colorado, to enjoy its delicious atmosphere and rare scenery. The four mountain parks, each more than a mile above the sea, and as large as Rhode Island or Massachusetts, are unmatched in the world. In the North Park, deer, antelopes, wolves, and bears are still plentiful. At the Middle Park Hot Springs, a stream five inches in diameter and with a temperature of one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheitas hot as the body can bear-tumbles over a bank a dozen feet high. It affords a delicious hot shower-bath, and a hot plunge in the pool below; and wonderful cures are attributed to its waters. The South Park is described on page 309. San Luis Park, the largest of all-partly in Colorado and partly in New

574

GROWTH OF MANUFACTURES.

[1867.

Mexico-holds a shining lake, framed in deep green sward, and fringed with graceful pines.

In the mountains and foot-hills, factories begin to spring up.

HANGING ROCK, ECHO CITY, UTAH-UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD.

How could it be otherwise where water-power, fuel, wool, and lumber abound, and the earth teems with gold, silver, copper, iron, and coal? Manufacturing, everywhere from Minnesota to California, is growing wonderfully. At a recent meeting of Northwestern woolen manufacturers in Chicago, almost three hundred factories were represented. The National Watch Company of Elgin, Illinois, is making a hundred and twenty-five watches a day, and not only selling more than half of them in the Eastern States, but actually filling large orders for India by the way of London. If the West can compete with the East in a manufacture so delicate, so complex, and so costly as that of watches, what possible branch is there in which it can not? And a few years hence, will the prairies and the mountains-dotted

1867.] A VOYAGE WITHOUT PARALLEL.

575

all over with factories-demand Protection as earnestly as they now demand Free Trade?

Utah, more remote than Colorado, is less known for its scenery. Like railways in general, the Pacific crosses the most uninteresting spots; but it could not dodge all the natural wonders. At Echo City it passes beside 'Hanging Rock,' a projecting mass of conglomerate a thousand feet high. Hard by, to the left, is 'Pulpit Rock,' or 'Brigham's Pulpit,' eighty feet high. Below winds a shining stream, and the whole forms a unique picture.

A Gentile, it is said, repeated to Brigham Young the common prediction, that the great thoroughfare would bring his people into close contact with the rest of the world, and thus destroy Mormonism. Brigham replied:

Mine must be a dd poor religion if it won't stand one railroad?'

Nevertheless all the leading railway towns are Gentile towns. They utterly defy Mormon authority and drive away Mormon officials, treating the Saints exactly as the Saints have always treated our Government, so far as they dared. they dared. As yet, therefore, it continues a very serious problem, whether Brigham's system will stand one railroad.'

The Big Canyon of the Colorado, illustrated on page 473, was lately the scene of a voyage, perhaps without parallel in authentic human history. Indians and trappers have always believed that no man could thread this stupendous gorge, hundreds of miles long, with its unknown cataracts and its frowning rock walls a mile high, and come out alive. But one has done it, and lives to tell the tale. In August, 1867, three Colorado gold-hunters were prospecting on Grand River, just above where it unites with Green River to form the Colorado. One morning while they were breakfasting, an Indian yell, accompanied by whistling bullets and singing arrows, suddenly saluted them. The Utes were upon them!

Baker, the captain of the party, fell, shot through the head. The two others, James White and George Strole, rushed down to the river. While the savages lingered, plundering their camp, securing their mules and scalping their dead comrade, White and Strole tied three or four cottonwood logs together with their

576

INTO THE VAST CANYON.

[1867.

lariat ropes, threw a little sack of flour on board, instantly pushed off upon the frail raft and floated down the river.

They knew dimly of the great canyon, but fancied it so short that they could pass through it in two days. The first night, they tied their raft to a tree, supped on raw flour and water, as they had no matches, and slept upon the bank. All the second day they glided on, between low grassy shores. The current increased, and they

passed over some rapids which swept their flour from the raft, and soaked and ruined the gunpowder in their revolvers. But they supped cheerily on wild mesquite beans, and again slept soundly upon the ground.

Before noon on
Black towering

the third day they had entered the vast gorge. walls shut out the sun, and compressed the river into narrow limits. The current grew swift, and ahead the roar of rapids was heard. White lashed himself to the logs, but Strole said:

'We can run this little fall without doing that. If we are tied we may get entangled with the logs and drown before we can free ourselves.'