Chapter XIX

Glenwood Springs.--The Pool.--The Vapor Baths.--Through the Canons.-- Leadville.--Colorado Products.--Canons in New York.

When we reached Glenwood Springs, it was in the early morning. The place from the railroad station does not look inviting, and so it was decided to push on to Denver.

This was a loss, for Glenwood Springs has many advantages, worth seeing, and a hotel of real comfort and elegance. The hot springs there are quite extensive, and the medicinal baths are delightful. The bathing places are in the highest style of art, elegantly fitted up with all that modern appliances, following ancient models, can accomplish. There is also a huge, open-air swimming-pool, filled with water, from the hot springs, giving most luxurious enjoyment.

It was my good fortune, on a former visit, to enjoy both it, and the further pleasure of a natural vapor bath within the rock recesses of one of the mountains. It was a weird experience. It was late one evening, and I happened to be the only bather there. The negro attendant, a most obliging fellow, took me in charge. Under his directions, after disrobing, he gave me a shower bath of cold water, and then, with a wet towel on my head, he ushered me into a rocky cavern. Some boards extended over fissures in the ground, from whence one could hear the gurgling of the boiling springs far beneath. The rocks overhead leaned against one another, and their great crevices were dark with shadows. There were a few plain wooden benches, blackened with the sulphur fumes; but, as if to assure one that the savage-looking place was really tame, after all, an electric light, in full glare, hung down from above, making the strange surroundings visible in all their mystery of heat beneath, and blackness below and beyond. I watched the experiment of the vapor upon myself, and soon was in a profuse perspiration. My faithful negro cautioned me not to be too long in my first attempt, so I was soon out again to get the protection of another wet towel on my head. After that, all was enjoyment. The whole experience was unique, and in due time I had the further luxury of a good rub down, and a lounge for some time on a couch, helped on also, by a cup of good, black coffee. I could scarcely tell which was best; to float in sulphur water in the open air, with others, under the bright light of day, in the big pool; or, to be utterly alone in the clefts of the everlasting mountains, surrounded by their mysterious warmth, and melted by their embrace. It seemed to me the last ought to have the preference.

As I have said, our party decided to press on from Glenwood. Hours were precious on the homeward run, and to have a whole day for the wonders of the Colorado mountains was something.

We first passed through the canyon of the Grand River, a fitting prelude to all that was to come. Then we travelled along the Eagle River Canon, and, last of all, experienced the wild wonders of the Royal Gorge. It was a day of continued excitement and exalted pleasure. It is hard to put in words the impressions of these immense rocky passes.

One may think of the giant forces which cleft asunder their rugged sides in times so far removed as to be scarcely conceivable.

Then, as one sees the detached rocks, and the great moraines at the mountain bases, and notes the clinging trees, and wild shrubs, and many flowers, one must think of the rolling seasons, the heat, the frost, the forces of the wind, and the storm, and the constant changes which come with rain and sunshine, with growth, and with decay.

And then, wherever one looks, there, at right hand, or at left of the railway track, is the rushing river, roaring on without stop or stay--day and night--forever. It was these streams which gave a hint of the pathway; first, to the red man, and then to the frontier trapper, and gold-hunter, and last of all, to the engineers who built the iron track over which we were speeding, swiftly, and in peace.

The picturesque effect of all is as varied as the thoughts which must come in such a place. The rapid motion of the train, the ever-changing point of view, as the track winds its sinuous way by the tortuous river-bed--all gives a sort of motion to the vast, overhanging cliffs, which seem to dance past one, like giants on a frolic.

I remember once making the journey through these passes, going west from Denver. The view from the car windows was not enough for me. I planted myself on one of the car platforms, linked my arm round the railing, and with my feet on the steps, sat on the floor, swinging out, as far as I safely could, to take it all in. Thus, oblivious of the dust, I sat for an hour, and at last, satiated by the views on views, returned contented to my seat. Just then a brakeman said to me, "We are now entering the Royal Gorge." I had almost surfeited myself with the mere prelude to the repast. The best was brought on, when my appetite was, so to speak, appeased. But, what did appear, was too good to neglect, so I was soon at it again as before, and did not leave my perch until we had passed through all the glories which the Royal Gorge contained.

The climax was reached in a spot too narrow for a track by the side of the raging torrent. Our railroad was suspended from the sides of the towering mountains by a huge iron construction, over which we passed, until wider space beyond, gave us again a hold on _terra firma_.

Through all this region there is also the evidence of energy and force of another kind. One sees the deserted huts of the gold-hunters, who prospected, it may be in vain, or made their "pile and cleared out."

There is a terrible fascination in this eager hunt for wealth, and those who hunt all their lives, often get least, and die in misery.

I was once in Victor, the next town to Cripple Creek, and while there, heard, in the most casual way, that Tom Brennan, I think that was his name, had been found in the mountains, dead, by his own hand. His luck was gone, starvation stared him in the face, and, old, and hopeless, in his lone misery, he sought death, alone.

When one sees, away up on some apparently inaccessible height, an indication of fresh earth, and a black aperture at the top of it, and realizes that in that spot, some one, or it may be more, are digging and delving for a wealth that may never come, the thought is inevitable of possible ruined hopes, or of sudden wealth, as Fortune may frown or smile. But here, as well as everywhere, and in all relations of life, the poet's words come true,

"The many fail, the one succeeds."

It is well for us, however, that failures, which may be possible, never daunt us from effort, and the search, for that which the soul longs for. We picture to ourselves success ever. Failure, like death, too often comes, unannounced.

It is the spirit of daring and adventure which still peoples the lonely mines on the mountain-sides; which fills the mining towns on their highest crests, and which keeps the miners busy, whether on their highest heights, or in the closeness of their deepest depths.

While on my way, a gentleman met me on the train, and pressed me to stop over at Leadville, promising that he would take me down the deepest gold mine in the place. I could not stay, even for that approach to the presence of all-powerful gold.

I am sure that the underground view of Leadville would be better than that which the sun looks upon. It is not an inviting-looking place. It lies on the great top surges of the mountains, having all the bleakness of a plain, and the rarefied atmosphere of the mountain summit, which it really is.

It is always a weird thing to look at the scenes of early mining days in Leadville, when the fame of the fabulous wealth therein, entered into men's brains, with an intoxication, like that of some Oriental drug. California Gulch looks like the dried bed of a mountain torrent. What must it have been when every inch of it was staked out in claims, and men, by men, close together, but widely separate in their interests, shovelled up the dirt, and peered with eager gaze therein for the yellow gold.

It is well to realize that even in Colorado, which is considered more a mining than an agricultural State, the farm products, at the present time, far outweigh in value the entire annual output of the mines. The prosaic toil, as some may deem it, of the spade, and the plough; and the pastoral occupation of stock-raising and dairy farming, are better wealth-makers than the pick of the miner, or the labors of the mining engineer.

The great day of our run through the giant attractions of the mountains comes to a close at Pueblo, a busy railroad centre, where our track bends to the north, and brings us at nightfall to Colorado Springs.

When we remembered all the glories of the day, the great mountain clefts through which we passed, the roaring torrents which accompanied us, the fantastic coloring of the rocks, and the evidences of labor and energy which we had seen on every hand; and remembered also the untold wealth which lay concealed, whether gold and silver, or rock oil, or the produce of ranch and cattle range, our thoughts gathered up a splendid impression of opulence, actual, and future.

Yet, wild and vast as it all was, we could not help thinking also, that the nearest approach we had anywhere seen, to the glories through which we had passed, had been already presented to us by the streets of New York. Yes, it is like seeing a Grand Canon, to look from Murray Hill on some October afternoon, down Fifth Avenue. There it all is,--the towering edifices at each side are the mountains, the crowd rushes on like the river,--all is color, life, and motion; and the blue haze of the autumn day gives vagueness and mystery to the descending perspective, as it comes to a point in Washington Square.

One sees the same effect also on lower Broadway, where the huge buildings, and the wealth and energy which they express, suggest ever to my mind the splendors of the great canyons of the West.