Chapter III (2)

Four miles beyond this “Waterless Lake”--Bahr bila Ma as the Bedouin would call it--we arrived at Rock Independence, and felt ourselves in a new region, totally distinct from the clay formation of the mauvaises terres over which we have traveled for the last five days. Again I was startled by its surprising likeness to the scenery of Eastern Africa: a sketch of Jiwe la Mkoa, the Round Rock in eastern Unyamwezi,[88] would be mistaken, even by those who had seen both, for this grand _échantillon_ of the Rocky Mountains. It crops out of an open plain, not far from the river bed, in dome shape wholly isolated, about 1000 feet in length by 400-500 in breadth; it is 60 to 100 feet in height,[89] and in circumference 1¹⁄₂ to 2 miles. Except upon the summit, where it has been weathered into a feldspathic soil, it is bare and bald; a scanty growth of shrubs protrudes, however, from its poll. The material of the stern-looking dome is granite, in enormous slabs and boulders, cracked, flaked, seared, and cloven, as if by igneous pressure from below. The prevailing tradition in the West is, that the mass derived its name from the fact that Colonel Frémont there delivered an Independence-day oration; but read a little farther. It is easily ascended at the northern side and the southeastern corner, and many climb its rugged flanks for a peculiarly Anglo-American purpose--Smith and Brown have held high jinks here. In Colonel Frémont’s time (1842), every where within six or eight feet of the ground, where the surface is sufficiently smooth, and in some places sixty or eighty feet above, the rock was inscribed with the names of travelers. Hence the Indians have named it Timpe Nabor, or the Painted Rock, corresponding with the Sinaitic “Wady Mukattab.” In the present day, though much of the writing has been washed away by rain, 40,000-50,000 souls are calculated to have left their dates and marks from the coping of the wall to the loose stones below this huge sign-post. There is, however, some reason in the proceeding; it does not in these lands begin and end with the silly purpose, as among climbers of the Pyramids, and _fouilleurs_ of the sarcophagi of Apis, to bequeath one’s few poor letters to a little athanasia. Prairie travelers and emigrants expect to be followed by their friends, and leave, in their vermilion outfit, or their white house-paint, or their brownish-black tar--a useful article for wagons--a homely but hearty word of love or direction upon any conspicuous object. Even a bull or a buffalo’s skull, which, lying upon the road, will attract attention, is made to do duty at this _Poste Restante_.

[88] I crave the reader’s pardon for referring him to my own
publications; but the only account of this Round Rock which has
hitherto been published is to be found in the “Lake Regions of
Central Africa,” chap. viii.

[89] Colonel Frémont gives its dimensions as 650 yards long and 40
feet high.

I will here take the liberty of digressing a little, with the charitable purpose of admiring the serious turn with which the United States explorers perform their explorations.

Colonel Frémont[90] thus calls to mind the earnest deeds of a bygone day. “One George Weymouth was sent out to Maine by the Earl of Southampton, Lord Arundel, and others, and in the narrative of their discoveries he says, ‘The next day we ascended in our pinnace that part of the river which lies more to the westward, carrying with us a cross--a thing never omitted by any Christian traveler--which we erected at the ultimate end of our route.’ This was in the year 1605, and in 1842 I obeyed the feeling of early travelers, and left the impressions of the cross deeply engraved on the vast rock, one thousand miles beyond the Mississippi, to which discoverers have given the national name of Rock Independence.”

[90] Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, p. 72.

Captain Stansbury[91] is not less scrupulous upon the subject of traveling proprieties. One of his entries is couched as follows: “Sunday, June 10, barometer 28·82, thermometer 70°. The camp rested: it had been determined, from the commencement of the expedition, to devote this day, whenever practicable, to its legitimate purpose, as an interval of rest for man and beast. I here beg to record, as the result of my experience, derived not only from the present journey, but from the observations of many years spent in the performance of similar duties, that, as a mere matter of pecuniary consideration, apart from all higher obligations, it is wise to keep the Sabbath.”

[91] Stansbury’s Expedition, ch. i., p. 22.

Lieutenant W. F. Lynch, United States Navy, who in 1857 commanded the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea,[92] and published a narrative not deficient in interest, thus describes his proceedings at El Meshra, the bathing-place of the Christian pilgrims:

[92] Chap. iii. Authorized Edition. Sampson Low, Son, and Co., 47
Ludgate Hill, 1859.

“This ground is consecrated by tradition as the place where the Israelites passed over with the ark of the covenant, and where the blessed Savior was baptized by John. Feeling that it would be desecration to moor the boats at a place so sacred, we passed it, and with some difficulty found a landing below.

“My first act was to bathe in the consecrated stream, thanking God, first, for the precious favor of being permitted to visit such a spot; and, secondly, for his protecting care throughout our perilous passage. For a long time after I sat upon the bank, my mind oppressed with awe, as I mused upon the great and wondrous events which had here occurred.” In strange contrast with these passages stands the characteristic prophecy, “The time is coming--the beginning is come now--when the whole worthless list of kings, with all their myrmidons, will be swept from their places, and made to bear a part in the toils and sufferings of the great human family,” etc., etc.

I would not willingly make light in others of certain finer sentiments--veneration, for instance, and conscientiousness--which Nature has perhaps debarred me from overenjoying; nor is it in my mind to console myself for the privation by debasing the gift in those gifted with it. But--the but, I fear, will, unlike “if,” be any thing rather than a great peacemaker in this case--there are feelings which, when strongly felt, when they well from the bottom of the heart, man conceals in the privacy of his own bosom; and which, if published to the world, are apt to remind the world that it has heard of a form of speech, as well as of argument, ranking under the category of _ad captandum vulgus_.

About a mile beyond Independence Rock we forded the Sweetwater. We had crossed the divide between this stream and the Platte, and were now to ascend our fourth river valley, the three others being the Missouri, the Big Blue, and the Nebraska. The Canadian voyageurs have translated the name Sweetwater from the Indian Pina Pa; but the term is here more applicable in a metaphorical than in a literal point of view. The water of the lower bed is rather hard than otherwise, and some travelers have detected brackishness in it, yet the banks are free from the saline hoar, which deters the thirstiest from touching many streams on this line. The Sweetwater, in its calmer course, is a perfect Naiad of the mountains; presently it will be an Undine hurried by that terrible Anagké, to which Jove himself must bend his omniscient head, into the grisly marital embrace of the gloomy old Platte. Passing pleasant, after the surly ungenial silence of the Shallow River, is the merry prattle with which she answers the whisperings of those fickle flatterers, the winds, before that wedding-day when silence shall become her doom. There is a something in the Sweetwater which appeals to the feelings of rugged men: even the drivers and the station-keepers speak of “her” with a bearish affection.

[THE DEVIL’S GATE.--RATTLESNAKE HILLS.]

After fording the swift Pina Pa, at that point about seventy feet wide and deep to the axles, we ran along its valley about six miles, and reached at 9 15 P.M. the muddy station kept by M. Planté, the usual Canadian. En route we had passed by the Devil’s Gate, one of the great curiosities of this line of travel. It is the beau ideal of a kanyon, our portal opening upon the threshold of the Rocky Mountains: I can compare its form from afar only with the Brêche de Roland in the Pyrenees. The main pass of Aden magnified twenty fold is something of the same kind, but the simile is too unsavory. The height of the gorge is from 300 to 400 feet perpendicular, and on the south side threatening to fall: it has already done so in parts, as the masses which cumber the stream-bed show. The breadth varies from a minimum of 40 to a maximum of 105 feet, where the fissure yawns out, and the total length of the cleft is about 250 yards. The material of the walls is a gray granite, traversed by dikes of trap; and the rock in which the deep narrow crevasse has been made runs right through the extreme southern shoulder of a ridge, which bears appropriately enough the name of “Rattlesnake Hills.” Through this wild gorge the bright stream frets and forces her way, singing, unlike Liris, with a feminine untaciturnity, that awakes the echoes of the pent-up channel--tumbling and gurgling, dashing and foaming over the snags, blocks, and boulders, which, fallen from the cliffs above, obstruct the way, and bedewing the cedars and bright shrubs which fringe the ragged staples of the gate. Why she should not have promenaded gently and quietly round, instead of through, this grisly barrier of rock, goodness only knows: however, willful and womanlike, she has set her heart upon an apparent impossibility, and, as usual with her sex under the circumstances, she has had her way. Sermons in stones--I would humbly suggest to my gender.

Procrastination once more stole my chance; I had reserved myself for sketching the Devil’s Gate from the southwest, but the station proved too distant to convey a just idea of it. For the truest representation of the gate, the curious reader will refer to the artistic work of Mr. Frederick Piercy;[93] that published in Captain Marcy’s “List of Itineraries” is like any thing but the Devil’s Gate; even the rough lithograph in Colonel Frémont’s report is more truthful.

[93] Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake City.

We supped badly as mankind well could at the _cabaret_, where a very plain young person, and no neat-handed Phyllis withal, supplied us with a cock whose toughness claimed for it the honors of grandpaternity. Chickens and eggs there were none; butcher’s meat, of course, was unknown, and our hosts ignored the name of tea; their salt was a kind of saleratus, and their sugar at least half Indian-meal. When asked about fish, they said that the Sweetwater contained nothing but suckers,[94] and that these, though good eating, can not be caught with a hook. They are a queer lot, these French Canadians, who have “located” themselves in the Far West. Travelers who have hunted with them speak highly of them as a patient, submissive, and obedient race, inured to privations, and gifted with the reckless _abandon_--no despicable quality in prairie traveling--of the old Gascon adventurer; armed and ever vigilant, hardy, handy, and hearty children of Nature, combining with the sagacity and the instinctive qualities all the superstitions of the Indians; enduring as mountain goats; satisfied with a diet of wild meat, happiest when it could be followed by a cup of strong milkless coffee, a “chasse café” and a “brule-gueule;” invariably and contagiously merry; generous as courageous; handsome, active, and athletic; sashed, knived, and dressed in buckskin, to the envy of every Indian “brave,” and the admiration of every Indian belle, upon whom, if the adventurer’s heart had not fallen into the snares of the more attractive half-breed, he would spend what remained of his $10 a month, after coffee, alcohol, and tobacco had been extravagantly paid for, in presents of the gaudiest trash. Such is the voyageur of books: I can only speak of him as I found him, a lazy dog, somewhat shy and proud, much addicted to loafing and to keeping cabarets, because, as the old phrase is, the cabarets keep him--in idleness too. Probably his good qualities lie below the surface: those who hide a farthing rush-light under a bushel can hardly expect us, in this railway age, to take the trouble of finding it. I will answer, however, for the fact, that the bad points are painfully prominent. By virtue of speaking French and knowing something of Canada, I obtained some buffalo robes, and after a look at the supper, which had all the effect of a copious feed, I found a kind of out-house, and smoked till sleep weighed down my eyelids.

[94] A common fish of the genus Labio, of which there are many
species--chub, mullet, barbel, horned dace, etc.: they are found in
almost all the lakes and rivers of North America.

_Up the Sweetwater. 19th August._

We arose at 6 A.M., before the rest of the household, who, when aroused, “hifered” and sauntered about all _desœuvrés_ till their wool-gathering wits had returned. The breakfast was a little picture of the supper; for watered milk, half-baked bread, and unrecognizable butter, we paid the somewhat “steep” sum of 75 cents; we privily had our grumble, and set out at 7 A.M. to ascend the Valley of the Sweetwater. The river-plain is bounded by two parallel lines of hills, or rather rocks, running nearly due east and west. Those to the north are about a hundred miles in extreme length, and, rising from a great plateau, lie perpendicular to the direction of the real Rocky Mountains toward which they lead: half the course of the Pina Pa subtends their southern base. The Western men know them as the Rattlesnake Hills, while the southern are called after the river. The former--a continuation of the ridge in which the Sweetwater has burst a gap--is one of those long lines of lumpy, misshapen, barren rock, that suggested to the Canadians for the whole region the name of Les Montagnes Rocheuses. In parts they are primary, principally syenite and granite, with a little gneiss, but they have often so regular a line of cleavage, perpendicular as well as horizontal, that they may readily be mistaken for stratifications. The stratified are slaty micaceous shale and red sandstone, dipping northward, and cut by quartz veins and trap dikes. The remarkable feature in both formations is the rounding of the ridges or blocks of smooth naked granite: hardly any angles appeared; the general effect was, that they had been water-washed immediately after birth. The upper portions of this range shelter the bighorn, or American moufflon, and the cougar,[95] the grizzly bear, and the wolf. The southern or Sweetwater range is vulgarly known as the Green-River Mountains: seen from the road, their naked, barren, and sandy flanks appear within cannon shot, but they are distant seven miles.

[95] Locally called the mountain lion. This animal (_F. unicolor_)
is the largest and fiercest feline of the New World: it is a beast
of many names--puma, cougar, American lion, panther or painter, etc.
Its habit of springing upon its prey from trees makes it feared by
hunters. It was once in the Kaatskills.

[“ALKALI LAKE.”]

After a four-miles’ drive up the pleasant valley of the little river-nymph, to whom the grisly hills formed an effective foil, we saw on the south of the road “Alkali Lake,” another of the Trona formations with which we were about to become familiar; in the full glare of burning day it was undistinguishable as to the surface from the round pond in Hyde Park. Presently ascending a little rise, we were shown for the first time a real bit of the far-famed Rocky Mountains, which was hardly to be distinguished from, except by a shade of solidity, the fleecy sunlit clouds resting upon the horizon: it was Frémont’s Peak, the sharp, snow-clad apex of the Wind River range. Behind us and afar rose the distant heads of black hills. The valley was charming with its bright glad green, a tapestry of flowery grass, willow copses where the grouse ran in and out, and long lines of aspen, beech, and cotton-wood, while pine and cedar, cypress and scattered evergreens, crept up the cranks and crannies of the rocks. In the midst of this Firdaus--so it appeared to us after the horrid unwithering artemisia Jehennum of last week--flowed the lovely little stream, transparent as crystal, and coquettishly changing from side to side in her bed of golden sand. To see her tamely submit to being confined within those dwarf earthen cliffs, you would not have known her to be the same that had made that terrible breach in the rock-wall below. “Varium et mutabile semper,” etc.: I will not conclude the quotation, but simply remark that the voyageurs have called her “She.” And every where, in contrast with the deep verdure and the bright flowers of the valley, rose the stern forms of the frowning rocks, some apparently hanging as though threatening a fall, others balanced upon the slenderest foundations, all split and broken as though earthquake-riven, loosely piled into strange figures, the lion couchant, sugar-loaf, tortoise, and armadillo--not a mile, in fact, was without its totem.

The road was good, especially when hardened by frost. We are now in altitudes where, as in Tibet, parts of the country for long centuries never thaw. After passing a singular stone bluff on the left of the road, we met a party of discharged soldiers, who were traveling eastward comfortably enough in government wagons drawn by six mules. Not a man saluted Lieutenant Dana, though he was in uniform, and all looked surly as Indians after a scalpless raid. Speeding merrily along, we were shown on the right of the road a ranch belonging to a Canadian, a “mighty mean man,” said the driver, “who onst gin me ole mare’s meat for b’ar.” We were much shocked by this instance of the awful depravity of the unregenerate human heart, but our melancholy musings were presently interrupted by the same youth, who pointed out on the other side of the path a mass of clay (conglomerate, I presume), called the Devil’s Post-office. It has been lately washed with rains so copious that half the edifice lies at the base of that which is standing. The structure is not large: it is highly satisfactory--especially to a man who in this life has suffered severely, as the Anglo-Indian ever must from endless official and semi-official correspondence--to remark that the London Post-office is about double its size.

[MISS MOORE AND HER HUSBAND.]

Beyond the Post-office was another ranch belonging to a Portuguese named Luis Silva, married to an Englishwoman who had deserted the Salt Lake Saints. We “staid a piece” there, but found few inducements to waste our time. Moreover, we had heard from afar of an “ole ’ooman,” an Englishwoman, a Miss Moore--Miss is still used for Mrs. by Western men and negroes--celebrated for cleanliness, tidiness, civility, and housewifery in general, and we were anxious to get rid of the evil flavor of Canadians, squaws, and “ladies.”

At 11 A.M. we reached “Three Crossings,” when we found the “miss” a stout, active, middle-aged matron, deserving of all the praises that had so liberally been bestowed upon her. The little ranch was neatly swept and garnished, papered and ornamented. The skull of a full-grown bighorn hanging over the doorway represented the spoils of a stag of twelve. The table-cloth was clean, so was the cooking, so were the children; and I was reminded of Europe by the way in which she insisted upon washing my shirt, an operation which, after leaving the Missouri, _ça va sans dire_, had fallen to my own lot. In fact, this day introduced me to the third novel sensation experienced on the western side of the Atlantic. The first is to feel (practically) that all men are equal; that you are no man’s superior, and that no man is yours. The second--this is spoken as an African wanderer--to see one’s quondam acquaintance, the Kaffir, laying by his grass kilt and coat of grease, invest himself in broadcloth, part his wool on one side, shave what pile nature has scattered upon his upper lip, chin, and cheeks below a line drawn from the ear to the mouth-corner after the fashion of the times when George the Third was king, and call himself, not Sambo, but Mr. Scott. The third was my meeting in the Rocky Mountains with this refreshing specimen of that far Old World, where, on the whole, society still lies in strata, as originally deposited, distinct, sharply defined, and rarely displaced, except by some violent upheaval from below, which, however, never succeeds long in producing total inversion. Miss Moore’s husband, a decent appendage, had transferred his belief from the Church of England to the Church of Utah, and the good wife, as in duty bound, had followed in his wake whom she was bound to love, honor, and obey. But when the serpent came and whispered in Miss Moore’s modest, respectable, one-idea’d ear that the Abrahams of Great Salt Lake City are mere “sham Abrams”--that, not content with Sarahs, they add to them an unlimited supply of Hagars, then did our stout Englishwoman’s power of endurance break down never to rise again. “Not an inch would she budge;” not a step toward Utah Territory would she take. She fought pluckily against the impending misfortune, and--_à quelque chose malheur est bon!_--she succeeded in reducing her husband to that state which is typified by the wife using certain portions of the opposite sex’s wardrobe, and in making him make a good livelihood as station-master on the wagon-line.

After a copious breakfast, which broke the fast of the four days that had dragged on since our civilized refection at Fort Laramie, we spread our buffalos and water-proofs under the ample eaves of the ranch, and spent the day in taking time with the sextant--every watch being wrong--in snoozing, dozing, chatting, smoking, and contemplating the novel view. Straight before us rose the Rattlesnake Hills, a nude and grim horizon, frowning over the soft and placid scene below, while at their feet flowed the little river--_splendidior vitro_--purling over its pebbly bed with graceful meanderings through clover prairillons and garden-spots full of wild currants, strawberries, gooseberries, and rattlesnakes; while, contrasting with the green River Valley and the scorched and tawny rock-wall, patches of sand-hill, raised by the winds, here and there cumbered the ground. The variety of the scene was much enhanced by the changeful skies. The fine breeze which had set in at 8 A.M. had died in the attempt to thread these heat-refracting ridges, and vapory clouds, sublimated by the burning sun, floated lazily in the empyrean, casting fitful shadows that now intercepted, then admitted, a blinding glare upon the mazy stream and its rough cradle.

In the evening we bathed in the shallow bed of the Sweetwater. It is vain to caution travelers against this imprudence. _Video meliora proboque_--it is doubtless unwise--but it is also _mera stultitia_ to say to men who have not enjoyed ablutions for a week or ten days, “If you do take that delicious dip you may possibly catch fever.” _Deteriora sequor_--bathed. Miss Moore warned us strongly against the rattlesnakes, and during our walk we carefully observed the Indian rule, to tread upon the log and not to overstep it. The crotalus, I need hardly say, like other snakes, is fond of lurking under the shade of fallen or felled trunks, and when a heel or a leg is temptingly set before it, it is not the beast to refuse a bite. Accidents are very common, despite all precautions, upon this line, but they seldom, I believe, prove fatal. The remedies are almost endless: _e. g._, hartshorn, used externally and drunk in dilution; scarification and irrumation of the part, preceded, of course, by a ligature between the limb and the heart; application of the incised breast of a live fowl or frog to the wound; the dried and powdered blood of turtle, of this two pinches to be swallowed and a little dropped upon the place bitten; a plaster of chewed or washed plantain-leaves--it is cooling enough, but can do little more--bound upon the puncture, peppered with a little finely-powdered tobacco; pulverized indigo made into a poultice with water; cauterization by gunpowder, hot iron, or lunar caustic; cedron, a nut growing on the Isthmus of Panama--of this remedy I heard, _in loco_, the most wonderful accounts, dying men being restored, as if by magic, after a bit about the size of a bean had been placed in their mouths. As will be seen below, the land is rich in snakeroots, but the superstitious snakestone of Hindostan--which acts, if it does act, as an absorbent of the virus by capillary attraction--is apparently unknown. The favorite remedy now in the United States is the “whisky cure,” which, under the form of arrack, combined in the case of a scorpion-sting with a poultice of chewed tobacco, was known for the last fifty years to the British soldier in India. It has the advantage of being a palatable medicine; it must also be taken in large quantities, a couple of bottles sometimes producing little effect. With the lighted end of a cigar applied as moxa to the wound, a _quantum sufficit_ of ardent spirits, a couple of men to make me walk about when drowsy by the application of a stick, and, above all, with the serious resolution not to do any thing so mean as to “leap the twig,” I should not be afraid of any snake yet created. The only proviso is that our old enemy must not touch an artery, and that the remedies must be at hand. Fifteen minutes lost, you are “down among the dead men.” The history of fatal cases always shows some delay.[96]

[96] The author of “The Quadroon” (chap. xxxii., etc.) adduces a
happy instance of a “hero” who, after a delay and an amount of
exertion which certainly would have cost him his life, was relieved
by tobacco and cured by the snakeroot (_Polygala Senega_). The
popular snakeroots quoted by Mr. Bartlett are the Seneca snakeroot
above alluded to, the black snakeroot (_Cimicifuga racemosa_), and
the Virginia snakeroot (_Aristolochia serpentaria_).

[A HUBBUB.--“YES, SURR!”]

We supped in the evening merrily. It was the best coffee we had tasted since leaving New Orleans; the cream was excellent, so was the cheese. But an antelope had unfortunately been brought in; we had insisted upon a fry of newly-killed flesh, which was repeated in the morning, and we had bitterly to regret it. While I was amusing myself by attempting to observe an immersion of Jupiter’s satellites with a notable failure in the shape of that snare and delusion, a portable telescope, suddenly there arose a terrible hubbub. For a moment it was believed that the crotalus horridus had been taking liberties with one of Miss Moore’s progeny. The seat of pain, however, soon removed the alarming suspicion, and--the rattlesnake seldom does damage at night--we soon came to the conclusion that the dear little fellow who boo-hoo’d for forty had been bitten by a musqueto somewhat bigger than its fellows. The poor mother soon was restored to her habits of happiness and hard labor. Not contented with supporting her own family, she was doing supererogation by feeding a little rat-eyed, snub-nosed, shark-mouthed half-breed girl, who was, I believe, in the market as a “chattel.” Mrs. Dana pointed out to me one sign of demoralization on the part of Miss Moore. It was so microscopic that only a woman’s acute eye could detect it. Miss Moore was teaching her children to say “Yes, surr!” to every driver.

_To the Foot of South Pass. 19th August._

With renewed spirit, despite a somewhat hard struggle with the musquetoes, we set out at the respectable hour of 5 45 A.M. We had breakfasted comfortably, and an interesting country lay before us. The mules seemed to share in our gayety. Despite a long ringing, the amiable animals kicked and bit, bucked and backed, till their recalcitrances had almost deposited us in the first ford of the Sweetwater. For this, however, we were amply consoled by the greater misfortunes of our consort, the official wagon. After long luxuriating in the pick of the teams, they were to-day so thoroughly badly “muled” that they were compelled to apply for our assistance.

We forded the river twice within fifty yards, and we recognized with sensible pleasure a homely-looking magpie (_Pica Hudsonica_), and a rattlesnake, not inappropriately, considering where we were, crossed the road. Our path lay between two rocky ridges, which gradually closed inward, forming a regular kanyon, quite shutting out the view. On both sides white and micaceous granite towered to the height of 300 or 400 feet, terminating in jagged and pointed peaks, whose partial disruption covered the angle at their base. Arrived at Ford No. 5, we began an ascent, and reaching the summit, halted to enjoy the fine back view of the split and crevassed mountains.

A waterless and grassless track of fifteen to sixteen miles led us to a well-known place--the Ice Springs--of which, somewhat unnecessarily, a marvel is made. The ground, which lies on the right of the road, is a long and swampy trough between two waves of land which permit the humidity to drain down, and the grass is discolored, suggesting the presence of alkali. After digging about two feet, ice is found in small fragments. Its presence, even in the hottest seasons, may be readily accounted for by the fact that hereabouts water will freeze in a tent during July, and by the depth to which the wintry frost extends. Upon the same principle, snow gathering in mountain ravines and hollows long outlasts the shallower deposits. A little beyond Ice Springs, on the opposite side of, and about a quarter of a mile distant from the road, lie the Warm Springs, one of the many alkaline pans which lie scattered over the face of the country. From the road nothing is to be seen but a deep cunette full of percolated water.

Beyond the Warm Springs lay a hopeless-looking land, a vast slope, barren and desolate as Nature could well make it. The loose sands and the granite masses of the valley had disappeared; the surface was a thin coat of hard gravelly soil. Some mosses, a scanty yellow grass, and the dark gray artemisia, now stunted and shrunk, were sparsely scattered about. It had already begun to give way before an even hardier creation, the rabbit-bush and the greasewood. The former, which seems to thrive under the wintry snow, is a favorite food with hares, which abound in this region; the latter (_Obione_, or _Atriplex canescens_, the chamizo of the Mexicans) derives its name from the oleaginous matter abundant in its wood, and is always a sign of a poor and sterile soil. Avoiding a steep descent by a shorter road, called “Landers’ Cut-off,” we again came upon the Sweetwater, which was here somewhat broader than below, and lighted upon good grass and underbrush, willow copses, and a fair halting-place. At Ford No. 6--three followed one another in rapid succession--we found the cattle of a traveling trader scattered over the pasture-grounds, He proved to be an Italian driven from the low country by a band of Sioux, who had slain his Shoshonee wife, and at one time had thought of adding his scalp to his squaw’s. After Ford No. 8, we came upon a camping-ground, usually called in guide-books “River Bank and Stream.” The Sweetwater is here twenty-five feet wide. About three miles beyond it lay the “Foot of Ridge Station,” near a willowy creek, called from its principal inhabitants the Muskrat.[97] The ridge from which it derives its name is a band of stone that will cross the road during to-morrow’s ascent. Being a frontier place, it is a favorite camping-ground with Indians. To-day a war party of Sioux rode in, _en route_ to provide themselves with a few Shoshonee scalps.

[97] _Fiber zibeticus_, a beaver-like animal that inhabits the banks
of ponds and streams: it has a strong musky odor in summer only, and
is greedily eaten by the Indians.

[TEMPERATURE.]

We made a decided rise to-day, and stood at least 6000 feet above the level of the sea. The altitude of St. Louis being in round numbers 500 feet, and reckoning the diminution of temperature at 1° F. = 100 yards, we are already 19° to 20° F. colder than before. The severity of the atmosphere and the rapid evaporation from the earth cause an increase of frigidity, to which the salts and nitrates upon the surface of the soil, by absorbing the hydrogen of the atmosphere--as is shown by the dampness of the ground and the absence of dust around the Saleratus Lakes--greatly add. Another remark made by every traveler in these regions is the marked influence upon the temperature caused by the presence and the absence of the sun. The day will be sultry and oppressive, and a fire will be required at night. In the morning, about 11 A.M., the thermometer showed 80° Fahrenheit; at 4 P.M., the sky being clouded over, it fell 25°; before dawn, affected by the cold north wind from the snows about the Pass, it stood at 40°.

[FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED.]

The lowering firmament threatened rain, of which, however, the thirsty land was disappointed. Moreover, all were agreed that snow was to be expected in another fortnight, if not sooner. Glacial storms occasionally occur in July and August, so that in some years the land may be said to have no summer. In winter the sharpness of the cold is such that it can be kept out only by clothes of the closest texture; the mountain-men, like the Esquimaux, prefer to clothe themselves cap-a-piè in the prepared skins of animals. We were all animated with a nervous desire for travel, but there was the rub. The station-master declared that he had no driver, no authority to forward two wagonsful, and no cattle; consequently, that the last comers must be last served, and wait patiently at Rocky Ridge till they could be sent on. They would find antelopes in plenty, perhaps a grizzly, and plenty of plover, crows, and delicate little ground-squirrels[98] by the burrowful, to “keep their hands in.” We being the first comers, a title to preference rarely disputed in this law-and-rule-abiding land, prudently held ourselves aloof. The Judiciary, however, was sorely “exercised.” Being a “professor,” that is, a serious person, he could not relieve his mind by certain little _moyens_ which naturally occurred to the rest of the party. Many and protracted were the powwows that took place on this momentous occasion. Sometimes our quondam companions--we now looked upon them as friends lost to us--would mysteriously disappear as though the earth had opened and swallowed them, and presently they would return with woe-begone step and the wrinkled brow of care, simulating an ease which they were far from feeling.

[98] I had no opportunity of observing this clean, pretty, and
vivacious little animal, whose chirruping resembles that of
a bird; but it appeared to be quite a different species from
the common striped and spotted prairie-squirrel (_Spermophilus
tredecimlineatus_), or the chipmonk or chipmuk (_S. striatus_).

The station rather added to than took from our discomfort: it was a terrible unclean hole; milk was not procurable within thirty-five miles; one of the officials was suffering sorely from a stomach-ache; there was no sugar, and the cooking was atrocious. With a stray title-pageless volume of some natural history of America, and another of agricultural reports--in those days, before reform came, these scientific and highly elaborate compositions, neatly printed and expensively got up at the public expense, were apparently distributed to every ranch and station in the line of road--I worked through the long and tedious afternoon. We were not sorry when the night came, but then the floor was knobby, the musquetoes seemed rather to enjoy the cold, and the banks swarmed with “chinches.”[99] The coyotes and wolves made night vocal with their choruses, and had nearly caused an accident. One of the station-men arose, and, having a bone to pick with the animals for having robbed his beef-barrel, cocked his revolver, and was upon the point of firing, when the object aimed at started up and cried out in the nick of time that he was a federal marshal, not a wolf.

[99] The chinch or chints is the Spanish _chinche_--the popular word
for the _Cimex lectularius_ in the Southern States. In other parts of
the United States the English bug is called a bed-bug: without the
prefix it is applied to beetles and a variety of Coleopters, as the
May-bug, June-bug, golden-bug, etc.

_To the South Pass. August 20th._

We rose with the daybreak; we did not start till nearly 8 A.M., the interim having been consumed by the tenants of our late consort in a vain palaver. We bade adieu to them and mounted at last, loudly pitying their miseries as they disappeared from our ken. But the driver bade us reserve our sympathy and humane expressions for a more fitting occasion, and declared--it was probably a little effort of his own imagination--that those faithless friends had spent all their spare time in persuading him to take them on and to leave us behind. I, for one, will never believe that any thing of the kind had been attempted; a man must be created with a total absence of the bowels of compassion who would leave a woman and a young child for days together at the foot of Ridge Station.

[WILLOW CREEK.--SOUTH-PASS CITY.]

The road at once struck away from the Sweetwater, winding up and down rugged hills and broken hollows. From Fort Laramie the land is all a sandy and hilly desert where one can easily starve, but here it shows its worst features. During a steep descent a mule fell, and was not made to regain its footing without difficulty. Signs of wolves, coyotes, and badgers were abundant, and the _coqs de prairie_ (sage-chickens), still young and toothsome at this season, were at no pains to get out of shot. After about five miles we passed by “Three Lakes,” dirty little ponds north of the road, two near it and one distant, all about a quarter of a mile apart, and said by those fond of tasting strange things to have somewhat the flavor, as they certainly have the semblance, of soapsuds. Beyond this point we crossed a number of influents of the pretty Sweetwater, some dry, others full: the most interesting was Strawberry Creek: it supplies plenty of the fragrant wild fruit, and white and red willows fringe the bed as long as it retains its individuality. To the north a mass of purple nimbus obscured the mountains--on Frémont’s Peak it is said always to rain or snow--and left no visible line between earth and sky. Quaking-Asp Creek was bone dry. At MacAchran’s Branch of the Sweetwater we found, pitched upon a sward near a willow copse, a Provençal Frenchman--by what “hasard que les sceptiques appellent l’homme d’affaires du bon Dieu” did he come here?--who begged us to stop and give him the news, especially about the Indians: we could say little that was reassuring. Another spell of rough, steep ground placed us at Willow Creek, a pretty little prairillon, with verdure, water, and an abundance of the larger vegetation, upon which our eyes, long accustomed to artemisia and rabbit-bush, dwelt with a compound sense of surprise and pleasure. In a well-built ranch at this place of plenty were two Canadian traders, apparently settled for life; they supplied us, as we found it necessary to “liquor up,” with a whisky which did not poison us, and that is about all that I can say for it. At Ford No. 9, we bade adieu to the Sweetwater with that natural regret which one feels when losing sight of the only pretty face and pleasant person in the neighborhood; and we heard with a melancholy satisfaction the driver’s tribute to departing worth, viz., that its upper course is the “healthiest water in the world.” Near this spot, since my departure, has been founded “South-Pass City,” one of the many mushroom growths which the presence of gold in the Rocky Mountains has caused to spring up.

Ten miles beyond Ford No. 9, hilly miles, ending in a long champaign having some of the characteristics of a rolling prairie, with scatters of white, rose, and smoky quartz, granite, hornblende, porphyry, marble-like lime, sandstone, and mica slate--the two latter cropping out of the ground and forming rocky ridges--led us to the South Pass, the great _Wassersheide_ between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the frontier points between the territory of Nebraska and the State of Oregon. From the mouth of the Sweetwater, about 120 miles, we have been rising so gradually, almost imperceptibly, that now we unexpectedly find ourselves upon the summit. The distance from Fort Laramie is 320 miles, from St. Louis 1580, and from the mouth of the Oregon about 1400: it is therefore nearly midway between the Mississippi and the Pacific. The dimensions of this memorial spot are 7490 feet above sea-level, and 20 miles in breadth. The last part of the ascent is so gentle that it is difficult to distinguish the exact point where the versant lies: a stony band crossing the road on the ridge of the table-land is pointed out as the place, and the position has been fixed at N. lat. 48° 19′, and W. long. 108° 40′.[100] The northern limit is the noble chain of Les Montagnes Rocheuses, which goes by the name of the Wind River; the southern is called Table Mountain, an insignificant mass of low hills.

[100] Some guide-books place the water-shed between two small hills,
the “Twin Peaks,” about fifty or sixty feet high; the road, however,
no longer passes between them.

A pass it is not: it has some of the features of Thermopylæ or the Gorge of Killiecrankie; of the European St. Bernard or Simplon; of the Alleghany Passes or of the Mexican _Barrancas_. It is not, as it sounds, a ghaut between lofty mountains, or, as the traveler may expect, a giant gateway, opening through Cyclopean walls of beetling rocks that rise in forbidding grandeur as he passes onward to the Western continent. And yet the word “Pass” has its significancy. In that New World where Nature has worked upon the largest scale, where every feature of scenery, river and lake, swamp and forest, prairie and mountain, dwarf their congeners in the old hemisphere, this majestic level-topped bluff, the highest steppe of the continent, upon whose iron surface there is space enough for the armies of the globe to march over, is the grandest and the most appropriate of avenues.

A water-shed is always exciting to the traveler. What shall I say of this, where, on the topmost point of American travel, you drink within a hundred yards of the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans--that divides the “doorways of the west wind” from the “portals of the sunrise?” On the other side of yon throne of storms, within sight, did not the Sierra interpose, lie separated by a trivial space the fountain-heads that give birth to the noblest rivers of the continent, the Columbia, the Colorado, and the Yellow Stone, which is to the Missouri what the Missouri is to the Mississippi, whence the waters trend to four opposite directions: the Wind River to the northeast; to the southeast the Sweetwater and the Platte; the various branches of the Snake River to the northeast; and to the southwest the Green River, that finds its way into the Californian Gulf.[101] It is a suggestive spot, this “divortia aquarum:” it compels Memory to revive past scenes before plunging into the mysterious “Lands of the Hereafter,” which lie before and beneath the feet. The Great Ferry, which steam has now bridged, the palisaded banks of the Hudson, the soft and sunny scenery of the Ohio, and the kingly course of the Upper Mississippi, the terrible beauty of Niagara, and the marvels of that chain of inland seas which winds its watery way from Ontario to Superior; the rich pasture-lands of the North, the plantations of the semi-tropical South, and the broad corn-fields of the West; finally, the vast meadow-land and the gloomy desert-waste of sage and saleratus, of clay and _mauvaise terre_, of red _butte_ and tawny rock, all pass before the mind in rapid array ere they are thrust into oblivion by the excitement of a new departure.

[101] As early as A.D. 1772 (Description of the Province of Carolana,
etc., etc., by Daniel Cox) it was suggested that there was a line of
water communication by means of the “northern branch of the Great
Yellow River, by the natives called the River of the Massorites”
(Missouri River), and a branch of the Columbia River, which, however,
was erroneously supposed to disembogue through the Great Salt Lake
into the Pacific. The idea has been revived in the present day. Some
assert that the upper waters of the Yellow Stone, which approach
within three hundred miles of Great Salt Lake City, are three
feet deep, and therefore navigable for flat-bottomed boats during
the annual inundation. Others believe that, as in the case of the
Platte, shallowness would be an insuperable obstacle, except for
one or two months. This point will doubtless be settled by Captain
W. F. Raynolds, of the United States Topographical Engineers, who,
accompanied by Colonel J. Bridger, was, at the time of my visit to
Great Salt Lake City, exploring the Valley of the Yellow Stone.

[THE SOUTH PASS.]

But we have not yet reached our destination, which is two miles below the South Pass. Pacific Springs is our station; it lies a little down the hill, and we can sight it from the road. The springs are a pond of pure, hard, and very cold water, surrounded by a strip of shaking bog, which must be boarded over before it will bear a man. The hut would be a right melancholy abode were it not for the wooded ground on one hand, and the glorious snow-peaks on the other side of the “Pass.” We reached Pacific Springs at 3 P.M., and dined without delay, the material being bouilli and potatoes--unusual luxuries. About an hour afterward the west wind, here almost invariable, brought up a shower of rain, and swept a vast veil over the forms of the Wind-River Mountains. Toward sunset it cleared away, and the departing luminary poured a flood of gold upon the majestic pile--I have seldom seen a view more beautiful.

From the south, the barren rolling table-land that forms the Pass trends northward till it sinks apparently below a ridge of offsets from the main body, black with timber--cedar, cypress, fir, and balsam pine. The hand of Nature has marked, as though by line and level, the place where vegetation shall go and no farther. Below the waist the mountains are robed in evergreens; above it, to the shoulders, they would be entirely bare but for the atmosphere, which has thrown a thin veil of light blue over their tawny gray, while their majestic heads are covered with ice and snow, or are hidden from sight by thunder-cloud or the morning mist. From the south, on clear days, the cold and glittering radiance may be seen at a distance of a hundred miles. The monarch of these mountains is “Frémont’s Peak;” its height is laid down at 13,570 feet above sea level; and second to it is a hoary cone called by the station-people Snowy Peak.

That evening the Wind-River Mountains appeared in marvelous majesty. The huge purple hangings of rain-cloud in the northern sky set off their huge proportions, and gave prominence, as in a stereoscope, to their gigantic forms, and their upper heights, hoar with the frosts of ages. The mellow radiance of the setting sun diffused a charming softness over their more rugged features, defining the folds and ravines with a distinctness which deceived every idea of distance. And as the light sank behind the far western horizon, it traveled slowly up the mountain side, till, reaching the summit, it mingled its splendors with the snow--flashing and flickering for a few brief moments, then wasting them in the dark depths of the upper air. Nor was the scene less lovely in the morning hour, as the first effulgence of day fell upon the masses of dew-cloud--at this time mist always settles upon their brows--lit up the peaks, which gleamed like silver, and poured its streams of light and warmth over the broad skirts reposing upon the plain.

This unknown region was explored in August, 1842, by Colonel, then Brevet Captain, J. C. Frémont, of the United States Topographical Engineers; and his eloquent descriptions of the magnificent scenery that rewarded his energy and enterprise prove how easily men write well when they have a great subject to write upon. The concourse of small green tarns, rushing waters, and lofty cascades, with the gigantic disorder of enormous masses, the savage sublimity of the naked rock, broken, jagged cones, slender minarets, needles, and columns, and serrated walls, 2000 to 3000 feet high, all naked and destitute of vegetable earth; the vertical precipices, chasms, and fissures, insecure icy passages, long moraines, and sloping glaciers--which had nearly proved fatal to some of the party; the stern recesses, shutting out from the world dells and ravines of exquisite beauty, smoothly carpeted with soft grass, kept green and fresh by the moisture of the atmosphere, and sown with gay groups of brilliant flowers, of which yellow was the predominant color: all this glory and grandeur seems to be placed like a picture before our eyes. The reader enjoys, like the explorer, the fragrant odor of the pines, and the pleasure of breathing, in the bright, clear morning, that “mountain air which makes a constant theme of the hunter’s praise,” and which causes man to feel as if he had been inhaling some exhilarating gas. We sympathize with his joy in having hit upon “such a beautiful entrance to the mountains,” in his sorrow, caused by accidents to barometer and thermometer, and in the honest pride with which, fixing a ramrod in the crevice of “an unstable and precarious slab, which it seemed a breath would hurl into the abyss below,” he unfurled the Stars and the Stripes, to wave in the breeze where flag never waved before--over the topmost crest of the Rocky Mountains. And every driver upon the road now can tell how, in the profound silence and terrible stillness and solitude that affect the mind as the great features of the scene, while sitting on a rock at the very summit, where the silence was absolute, unbroken by any sound, and the stillness and solitude were completest, a solitary “humble-bee”[102] winging through the black-blue air his flight from the eastern valley, alit upon the knee of one of the men, and, helas! “found a grave in the leaves of the large book, among the flowers collected on the way.”

[102] A species of _bromus_ or _bombus_. In the United States, as
in England, the word is often pronounced bumble-bee. Johnson says
we call a bee an humble bee that wants a sting; so the States call
black cattle without horns “humble cows.” It is the general belief of
the mountaineers that the bee, the partridge, the plantain, and the
“Jamestown weed” follow the footsteps of the white pioneers westward.

[GOLD.--GAME.--MUSQUETOES.--A “SMUDGE.”]