Just beyond the breakfast-station we overtook a Mormon
emigrant train of thirty-three wagons; and tramping wearily along
and driving their herd of loose cows, were dozens of coarse-clad
and sad-looking men, women and children, who had walked as they
were walking now, day after day for eight lingering weeks, and in
that time had compassed the distance our stage had come in eight
days and three hours—seven hundred and ninety-eight miles! They
were dusty and uncombed, hatless, bonnetless and ragged, and they
did look so tired!
After breakfast, we bathed in Horse Creek, a (previously)
limpid, sparkling stream—an appreciated luxury, for it was very
seldom that our furious coach halted long enough for an
indulgence of that kind. We changed horses ten or twelve times in
every twenty-four hours—changed mules, rather—six mules—and
did it nearly every time in four minutes. It was lively work. As
our coach rattled up to each station six harnessed mules stepped
gayly from the stable; and in the twinkling of an eye, almost,
the old team was out, and the new one in and we off and away
again.
During the afternoon we passed Sweetwater Creek, Independence
Rock, Devil’s Gate and the Devil’s Gap. The latter were wild
specimens of rugged scenery, and full of interest—we were in the
heart of the Rocky Mountains, now. And we also passed by “Alkali”
or “Soda Lake,” and we woke up to the fact that our journey had
stretched a long way across the world when the driver said that
the Mormons often came there from Great Salt Lake City to haul
away saleratus. He said that a few days gone by they had shoveled
up enough pure saleratus from the ground (it was a dry lake) to
load two wagons, and that when they got these two wagons-loads of
a drug that cost them nothing, to Salt Lake, they could sell it
for twenty-five cents a pound.
In the night we sailed by a most notable curiosity, and one we
had been hearing a good deal about for a day or two, and were
suffering to see. This was what might be called a natural
ice-house. It was August, now, and sweltering weather in the
daytime, yet at one of the stations the men could scape the soil
on the hill-side under the lee of a range of boulders, and at a
depth of six inches cut out pure blocks of ice—hard, compactly
frozen, and clear as crystal!
Toward dawn we got under way again, and presently as we sat
with raised curtains enjoying our early-morning smoke and
contemplating the first splendor of the rising sun as it swept
down the long array of mountain peaks, flushing and gilding crag
after crag and summit after summit, as if the invisible Creator
reviewed his gray veterans and they saluted with a smile, we hove
in sight of South Pass City. The hotel-keeper, the postmaster,
the blacksmith, the mayor, the constable, the city marshal and
the principal citizen and property holder, all came out and
greeted us cheerily, and we gave him good day. He gave us a
little Indian news, and a little Rocky Mountain news, and we gave
him some Plains information in return. He then retired to his
lonely grandeur and we climbed on up among the bristling peaks
and the ragged clouds. South Pass City consisted of four log
cabins, one if which was unfinished, and the gentleman with all
those offices and titles was the chiefest of the ten citizens of
the place. Think of hotel-keeper, postmaster, blacksmith, mayor,
constable, city marshal and principal citizen all condensed into
one person and crammed into one skin. Bemis said he was “a
perfect Allen’s revolver of dignities.” And he said that if he
were to die as postmaster, or as blacksmith, or as postmaster and
blacksmith both, the people might stand it; but if he were to die
all over, it would be a frightful loss to the community.
Two miles beyond South Pass City we saw for the first time
that mysterious marvel which all Western untraveled boys have
heard of and fully believe in, but are sure to be astounded at
when they see it with their own eyes, nevertheless—banks of snow
in dead summer time. We were now far up toward the sky, and knew
all the time that we must presently encounter lofty summits clad
in the “eternal snow” which was so common place a matter of
mention in books, and yet when I did see it glittering in the sun
on stately domes in the distance and knew the month was August
and that my coat was hanging up because it was too warm to wear
it, I was full as much amazed as if I never had heard of snow in
August before. Truly, “seeing is believing”—and many a man lives
a long life through, thinking he believes certain universally
received and well established things, and yet never suspects that
if he were confronted by those things once, he would discover
that he did not really believe them before, but only thought he
believed them.
In a little while quite a number of peaks swung into view with
long claws of glittering snow clasping them; and with here and
there, in the shade, down the mountain side, a little solitary
patch of snow looking no larger than a lady’s pocket-handkerchief
but being in reality as large as a “public square.”
And now, at last, we were fairly in the renowned SOUTH PASS,
and whirling gayly along high above the common world. We were
perched upon the extreme summit of the great range of the Rocky
Mountains, toward which we had been climbing, patiently climbing,
ceaselessly climbing, for days and nights together—and about us
was gathered a convention of Nature’s kings that stood ten,
twelve, and even thirteen thousand feet high—grand old fellows
who would have to stoop to see Mount Washington, in the twilight.
We were in such an airy elevation above the creeping populations
of the earth, that now and then when the obstructing crags stood
out of the way it seemed that we could look around and abroad and
contemplate the whole great globe, with its dissolving views of
mountains, seas and continents stretching away through the
mystery of the summer haze.
As a general thing the Pass was more suggestive of a valley
than a suspension bridge in the clouds—but it strongly suggested
the latter at one spot. At that place the upper third of one or
two majestic purple domes projected above our level on either
hand and gave us a sense of a hidden great deep of mountains and
plains and valleys down about their bases which we fancied we
might see if we could step to the edge and look over. These
Sultans of the fastnesses were turbaned with tumbled volumes of
cloud, which shredded away from time to time and drifted off
fringed and torn, trailing their continents of shadow after them;
and catching presently on an intercepting peak, wrapped it about
and brooded there—then shredded away again and left the purple
peak, as they had left the purple domes, downy and white with
new-laid snow. In passing, these monstrous rags of cloud hung low
and swept along right over the spectator’s head, swinging their
tatters so nearly in his face that his impulse was to shrink when
they came closet. In the one place I speak of, one could look
below him upon a world of diminishing crags and canyons leading
down, down, and away to a vague plain with a thread in it which
was a road, and bunches of feathers in it which were trees,—a
pretty picture sleeping in the sunlight—but with a darkness
stealing over it and glooming its features deeper and deeper
under the frown of a coming storm; and then, while no film or
shadow marred the noon brightness of his high perch, he could
watch the tempest break forth down there and see the lightnings
leap from crag to crag and the sheeted rain drive along the
canyon-sides, and hear the thunders peal and crash and roar. We
had this spectacle; a familiar one to many, but to us a
novelty.
We bowled along cheerily, and presently, at the very summit
(though it had been all summit to us, and all equally level, for
half an hour or more), we came to a spring which spent its water
through two outlets and sent it in opposite directions. The
conductor said that one of those streams which we were looking
at, was just starting on a journey westward to the Gulf of
California and the Pacific Ocean, through hundreds and even
thousands of miles of desert solitudes. He said that the other
was just leaving its home among the snow-peaks on a similar
journey eastward—and we knew that long after we should have
forgotten the simple rivulet it would still be plodding its
patient way down the mountain sides, and canyon-beds, and between
the banks of the Yellowstone; and by and by would join the broad
Missouri and flow through unknown plains and deserts and
unvisited wildernesses; and add a long and troubled pilgrimage
among snags and wrecks and sandbars; and enter the Mississippi,
touch the wharves of St. Louis and still drift on, traversing
shoals and rocky channels, then endless chains of bottomless and
ample bends, walled with unbroken forests, then mysterious byways
and secret passages among woody islands, then the chained bends
again, bordered with wide levels of shining sugar-cane in place
of the sombre forests; then by New Orleans and still other chains
of bends—and finally, after two long months of daily and nightly
harassment, excitement, enjoyment, adventure, and awful peril of
parched throats, pumps and evaporation, pass the Gulf and enter
into its rest upon the bosom of the tropic sea, never to look
upon its snow-peaks again or regret them.
I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at
home, and dropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and
it was held for postage somewhere.
On the summit we overtook an emigrant train of many wagons,
many tired men and women, and many a disgusted sheep and cow.
In the wofully dusty horseman in charge of the expedition I
recognized John ——. Of all persons in the world to meet on top
of the Rocky Mountains thousands of miles from home, he was the
last one I should have looked for. We were school-boys together
and warm friends for years. But a boyish prank of mine had
disruptured this friendship and it had never been renewed. The
act of which I speak was this. I had been accustomed to visit
occasionally an editor whose room was in the third story of a
building and overlooked the street. One day this editor gave me a
watermelon which I made preparations to devour on the spot, but
chancing to look out of the window, I saw John standing directly
under it and an irresistible desire came upon me to drop the
melon on his head, which I immediately did. I was the loser, for
it spoiled the melon, and John never forgave me and we dropped
all intercourse and parted, but now met again under these
circumstances.
We recognized each other simultaneously, and hands were
grasped as warmly as if no coldness had ever existed between us,
and no allusion was made to any. All animosities were buried and
the simple fact of meeting a familiar face in that isolated spot
so far from home, was sufficient to make us forget all things but
pleasant ones, and we parted again with sincere “good-bye” and
“God bless you” from both.
We had been climbing up the long shoulders of the Rocky
Mountains for many tedious hours—we started down them, now. And
we went spinning away at a round rate too.
We left the snowy Wind River Mountains and Uinta Mountains
behind, and sped away, always through splendid scenery but
occasionally through long ranks of white skeletons of mules and
oxen—monuments of the huge emigration of other days—and here
and there were up-ended boards or small piles of stones which the
driver said marked the resting-place of more precious
remains.
It was the loneliest land for a grave! A land given over to
the cayote and the raven—which is but another name for
desolation and utter solitude. On damp, murky nights, these
scattered skeletons gave forth a soft, hideous glow, like very
faint spots of moonlight starring the vague desert. It was
because of the phosphorus in the bones. But no scientific
explanation could keep a body from shivering when he drifted by
one of those ghostly lights and knew that a skull held it.
At midnight it began to rain, and I never saw anything like
it—indeed, I did not even see this, for it was too dark. We
fastened down the curtains and even caulked them with clothing,
but the rain streamed in in twenty places, nothwithstanding.
There was no escape. If one moved his feet out of a stream, he
brought his body under one; and if he moved his body he caught
one somewhere else. If he struggled out of the drenched blankets
and sat up, he was bound to get one down the back of his neck.
Meantime the stage was wandering about a plain with gaping
gullies in it, for the driver could not see an inch before his
face nor keep the road, and the storm pelted so pitilessly that
there was no keeping the horses still. With the first abatement
the conductor turned out with lanterns to look for the road, and
the first dash he made was into a chasm about fourteen feet deep,
his lantern following like a meteor. As soon as he touched bottom
he sang out frantically:
“Don’t come here!”
To which the driver, who was looking over the precipice where
he had disappeared, replied, with an injured air: “Think I’m a
dam fool?”
The conductor was more than an hour finding the road—a matter
which showed us how far we had wandered and what chances we had
been taking. He traced our wheel-tracks to the imminent verge of
danger, in two places. I have always been glad that we were not
killed that night. I do not know any particular reason, but I
have always been glad. In the morning, the tenth day out, we
crossed Green River, a fine, large, limpid stream—stuck in it
with the water just up to the top of our mail-bed, and waited
till extra teams were put on to haul us up the steep bank. But it
was nice cool water, and besides it could not find any fresh
place on us to wet.
At the Green River station we had breakfast—hot biscuits,
fresh antelope steaks, and coffee—the only decent meal we tasted
between the United States and Great Salt Lake City, and the only
one we were ever really thankful for.
Think of the monotonous execrableness of the thirty that went
before it, to leave this one simple breakfast looming up in my
memory like a shot-tower after all these years have gone by!
At five P.M. we reached Fort Bridger, one hundred and
seventeen miles from the South Pass, and one thousand and
twenty-five miles from St. Joseph. Fifty-two miles further on,
near the head of Echo Canyon, we met sixty United States soldiers
from Camp Floyd. The day before, they had fired upon three
hundred or four hundred Indians, whom they supposed gathered
together for no good purpose. In the fight that had ensued, four
Indians were captured, and the main body chased four miles, but
nobody killed. This looked like business. We had a notion to get
out and join the sixty soldiers, but upon reflecting that there
were four hundred of the Indians, we concluded to go on and join
the Indians.
Echo Canyon is twenty miles long. It was like a long, smooth,
narrow street, with a gradual descending grade, and shut in by
enormous perpendicular walls of coarse conglomerate, four hundred
feet high in many places, and turreted like mediaeval castles.
This was the most faultless piece of road in the mountains, and
the driver said he would “let his team out.” He did, and if the
Pacific express trains whiz through there now any faster than we
did then in the stage-coach, I envy the passengers the
exhilaration of it. We fairly seemed to pick up our wheels and
fly—and the mail matter was lifted up free from everything and
held in solution! I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say
a thing I mean it.
However, time presses. At four in the afternoon we arrived on
the summit of Big Mountain, fifteen miles from Salt Lake City,
when all the world was glorified with the setting sun, and the
most stupendous panorama of mountain peaks yet encountered burst
on our sight. We looked out upon this sublime spectacle from
under the arch of a brilliant rainbow! Even the overland
stage-driver stopped his horses and gazed!
Half an hour or an hour later, we changed horses, and took
supper with a Mormon “Destroying Angel.”
“Destroying Angels,” as I understand it, are Latter-Day Saints
who are set apart by the Church to conduct permanent
disappearances of obnoxious citizens. I had heard a deal about
these Mormon Destroying Angels and the dark and bloody deeds they
had done, and when I entered this one’s house I had my shudder
all ready. But alas for all our romances, he was nothing but a
loud, profane, offensive, old blackguard! He was murderous
enough, possibly, to fill the bill of a Destroyer, but would you
have any kind of an Angel devoid of dignity? Could you abide an
Angel in an unclean shirt and no suspenders? Could you respect an
Angel with a horse-laugh and a swagger like a buccaneer?
There were other blackguards present—comrades of this one.
And there was one person that looked like a gentleman—Heber C.
Kimball’s son, tall and well made, and thirty years old, perhaps.
A lot of slatternly women flitted hither and thither in a hurry,
with coffee-pots, plates of bread, and other appurtenances to
supper, and these were said to be the wives of the Angel—or some
of them, at least. And of course they were; for if they had been
hired “help” they would not have let an angel from above storm
and swear at them as he did, let alone one from the place this
one hailed from.
This was our first experience of the western “peculiar
institution,” and it was not very prepossessing. We did not tarry
long to observe it, but hurried on to the home of the Latter-Day
Saints, the stronghold of the prophets, the capital of the only
absolute monarch in America—Great Salt Lake City. As the night
closed in we took sanctuary in the Salt Lake House and unpacked
our baggage.
