Chapter XXVIII: The Uncompahgre Valley

The hills grow dark,
On purple peaks a deeper shade descending;
In twilight copse the glow-worm lights her spark,
The deer, half-seen, are to the covert wending.
--WALTER SCOTT.

The station at the western end of the cañon of the Gunnison is called Cimmaron after the river upon whose banks it stands. In the prehistoric days before the railway, this was Cline's ranch, where all the stages from the Gunnison to the San Miguel region stopped. He was one of the few pioneers who got on well with the Indians, and his monument stands in the name of a peak down by Ouray.

From Cimmaron upward stretches one of the steepest grades between Denver and Salt Lake, in order to surmount Squaw Hill in the Cedar range,--the water-shed between the Cimmaron and the lower drainage of the Gunnison. Two locomotives drag us at a snail's pace, struggling, puffing rapidly and spasmodically just as though their lungs were tortured by the rarity of the air. Their efforts suggest Pope's line, and seem to beat time to it,--

"When Ajax strives, some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line, too, labors, and the words move slow."

There is nothing to be seen but great knolls of grass and sage brush, sometimes showing their rocky anatomy; and this nakedness is a relief after the strain upon our attention in the cañon. Finally we get high enough to look far away to a horizon full of hazy mesas and peaked mountains, with a touch of valley land down in the center of the picture. A cool breeze blows, and comes with refreshing.

The valley we see is our first view of the Uncompahgre; and in the middle of the afternoon we reach the town of Montrose,--a settlement of wooden houses.

Here we stopped. There were two reason: first, this was the point of departure for the upper valley of the Uncompahgre, and the mining region on the northern front of the San Juan mountains; second, we wanted to know the arguments that had induced some hundreds of people to make their homes in the midst of this white sahara.

The first of these objects required instant attention, for between our arrival at Montrose and the departure of the stage up the valley to the Uncompahgre Cantonment, and the town of Ouray, there was time only to get a hearty luncheon. Chum had said from the start that he was quite willing to concede all the attractions of Ouray, and declined positively to leave the comfort of home. I told him he was missing a good deal, but he said that he had lost all faith in good deals--didn't "gamble any more on that chance,"--and persisted in his "No, thank you."

The Madame felt both inclined and disinclined. She knew the horrors of staging, she said it was a fit punishment for malefactors, and she dreaded even forty miles of it, on a level road, worse than a fit of sickness. Then she looked unutterable sympathy at me, and began to reflect that possibly her duty as a wife required her to go (seeing that I couldn't escape it,) in order to share the discomforts her husband was obliged to undergo, and do what she could to alleviate his tortures.

Just at this juncture, for doubt had swayed her usually well-decided mind up to the last minute, she caught a glimpse of the big red coach coming from the hotel toward us. Its noise was as the thundering of "the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof." It swung from side to side like a fire steamer tearing over Baltimore cobble stones. It lunged into irrigating ditches and came pitching up out of them, while the hind boot dived in to be brought up with a frame-cracking jolt, and it rocked fore and aft like a Dutch lugger in a chop sea. Its great concavity was packed full of unfortunate Jonahs, swallowed "bag and breeches." Its capacious baggage receptacles before and behind were distended with trunks and valises, rolls of blankets, packages of newspapers, boxes of fruit and dozens of mail-sacks. Its roof was piled with a confused mass of luggage and sweltering humanity. There wasn't a lady to be seen. Chum looked at me as I buttoned my duster, and lifting a corner of the Madame's apron to his eye, choked back a sympathetic sob.

"Come on!" I called to the person who was anxious to alleviate my tortures, but she held back.

"I'm--thinking--whether--after all"--

"Oh, are you? Good--give us a kiss--good bye! Better do your thinking now than after you're tired out up the valley. I'll be back shortly, and expect you to know all about Montrose."

The big red coach came to a lurching anchorage close by the door and I climbed to the vacant seat beside the driver, for which, with the wisdom of experience, I had telegraphed a request the day before.

"Been a-keepin' this seat for you with a club," said Jehu, curtly, as he gathered up the reins of four grey horses and removed his foot from the brake.

There was the sensation of a geological upheaval, forward. I dug my heels hard into the mail-sacks heaped upon the foot-board, clutched the hand-rail of the seat, set my back against the knees of the man on the dicky seat, stiffened my neck to save my head from being snapped off,--and we were under way.

A whole chapter could be written about that stage ride and my fellow travelers, but it will keep. The road crossed the yellow Uncompahgre, and stretched like a chalk-mark athwart the sage green expanse of gravelly valley. One of the outside passengers was an Englishman who had spent seven years in the diamond fields of South Africa. He told us this region reminded him of that land, and entertained us by his accounts of it, and of the Caffres--especially the English habit of knocking one down (a Caffre-boy was always handy) whenever the aggrieved temper of a white man required any little relief. So, with umbrella overhead and green goggles to break the glare,--despite the purple-blue storms we could see stalking about the mountain-ranges ahead--the first seven miles passed speedily, and we drew up at the sutler's store of the pretty military cantonment, whose buildings had loomed mirage-like for more than half the way.

When the Utes were ready to be moved from this valley over to the new Uintah agency, a military post was established here. As its permanence was not decided upon, only a cantonment was founded, providing temporary quarters in log houses for six companies. It was called simply the Cantonment on the Uncompahgre, and was at first garrisoned by the Twenty-third Infantry. In 1882, however, this regiment was relieved by four companies of the Fourteenth Infantry. Its commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Douglass is here, although the headquarters of the regiment are at Sidney, Nebraska.

The post, as I said, is not intended to be a permanent one. The visitor must not expect, therefore, the handsome buildings and grounds to be seen at Camp Douglass, Salt Lake City, where this regiment was domiciled for seven years, enduring meanwhile some hard service in Indian fighting.

We had already passed Ouray Farms, where Ouray, the fine old head-chief of all the Ute confederation, lived toward the end of his life in a good house built of adobe after the Mexican fashion, and cultivated the neighboring bottom-lands. His farm made the grand center of Ute interest, and from the pleasant groves near it radiated all the trails across mountain and plain. Many out-houses, of log and frame, surrounded the main building and testify that order was one of the great chief's good qualities. Here, after his death Chippeta, widow of Ouray, continued to live, raising farm products and pasturing sheep, and so attached had she become to the spot that she importuned the government to be granted the privilege of abandoning her race and returning to her farm home. The government refused this request, but decided to sell the farm for the personal benefit of Chippeta.

All along the river, which ran between thick belts of trees some distance at our left, we had seen spaces of meadow and a few ranches. At the old Agency--four miles above the post--we came to its lofty bank at a point where the river bent in so close to the foot of the bluff, that water for the station-stables was drawn up by means of a pulley mounted in a tall scaffolding of poles standing in front of the cliff, and reached by a bridge. It was a well, built some sixty feet out of ground, like that Nevada tunnel Mark Twain describes, which, having gone quite through the hill, was continued out upon a staging.

The road thence ran along the edge of the bluff and through the woods--a road upon which we rattled at a steady trot, although on the left there was nothing to break our fall for a hundred feet or so, should an accident tip us over. The river valley, thus sunken, was sometimes narrow and the stream turbulent among rocks; sometimes a mile or two wide with willow-covered bottoms; sometimes showing islands crowded with trees and thickets, or of great bends where lay spaces of rank meadow. Two or three little houses were pointed out where head men among the Indians had lived on small farms, and the driver, who had run a stage before the red men left, told us many interesting stories of their life in this favorite valley.

Leaving the river and the verdant gorge, its cottonwoods illumined with flaming light of the sunset, the road took to the higher ground and gave us many a good jolt in crossing the small acequias which watered the upper ranches on the edge of the mesa, and then came into view of Uncompahgre park, stretching away to the westward like a prairie, and the scene of some of the finest farming in Colorado. There are about thirty ranches where, half a dozen years ago was nothing but wild pasture. The ranchmen were all poor men when they came here; now they have pleasant houses, well fenced and irrigated farms and equipments in abundance. I heard of one ranch sold lately for ten thousand dollars, and was told of another where the owner cleared six thousand dollars for his last season's profits. Everything is raised except Indian corn, but wheat is not cultivated so extensively as it will be when milling facilities are better. Barley, oats, hay and vegetables are the principal crops, and potatoes probably offer the highest return of all. Prices have decreased to one-fifth the figures of five years ago, yet the ranchmen prosper and increase their acreage, putting surplus money into cattle which roam upon the adjacent uplands. The land is by no means all taken up, however, and improved property can be bought at reasonable prices. There is plenty of water, too, an important consideration.

In the center of the park we passed a copious spring of hot mineral water, carrying much iron, as we could tell by the circular tank of ferric oxide it had built around it, forming a bath large enough for a hundred persons at once. As yet there are few arrangements for making use of this fountain,--a fact due to the plentiful hot springs of iron and of sulphur (sulphate of lime, etc.), water close to Ouray, where a sanitarium and bath houses have been fitted up, and where persons suffering from rheumatism and kindred ailments find great benefit. So much warm water is poured into the Uncompahgre, in fact, that nothing more than a film of ice forms upon it in the coldest weather. Remembering all these varied advantages, it is no wonder the Utes loved the place and protested against its loss.

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?