Chapter XX: Along Iowa and Into Missouri to St. Louis 314 (5)

We did not tarry to see the celebrated ostrich farm, which is one of the famous sights of Pasadena, but went on toward the mountain chain beyond and north of Pasadena to the base of towering Mount Low, and climbed right up its face a thousand feet on an inclined plane steeper than any of Kanawha's, and then another thousand feet by five miles of winding electric railway. A wonderful ride into the blue sky, with a yet more wonderful panorama stretching for many miles beneath our feet. All the valley of the Los Angeles, the innumerable towns and villages and farms and groves and orchards and vineyards stretching far as the eye could see until bounded by the mountains of Mexico to the south, and the shimmering waters of the Pacific to the west, and to the north and east a limitless expanse of scarred and serrated volcanic mountain ranges, like the gigantic petrified waves of a mighty sea. Below us the perfect verdure of irrigated land, the patches and masses of greenness everywhere threaded and interspersed by the irrigating ditches and pools and ponds whereby the precious water is impounded and distributed when used.

Los Angeles lies very near the center of an immense cove, whose sea line marks the great indenture on the southwest of the United States, where the coast bends in from Cape Conception and curves southeastward to the borders of Mexico, a total coastal frontage on the Pacific Ocean of near three hundred miles.

On the north, the mountains of the Coast Range, and the westward jutting spurs of the Sierra Nevada come together and form a barrier against the cold northern airs. Eastward their extension forms a high barrier against the colder airs of the Rocky Mountain region. Los Angeles lies at about the point where these protecting mountain ranges recede to near sixty miles from the sea, itself some twenty and thirty miles from the twin ports of Santa Monica and San Pedro, and is the commercial center of this rich alluvial and sheltered region, of which Santa Barbara, on a lovely bay, is the chief northern center, and San Diego, one hundred and fifty miles to the south, upon the second finest harbor in California, is the most southern port and trade outlet. A vast "ventura," as the Spaniards called it, upon this fertile plain and rolling upland anything will grow if only it has water. For three or four months in the year, from early November to March, the skies pour down an ample rainfall, and the world is a garden. During the other eight months, man--the active American--now irrigates the land with water stored during the rainy season, and thus a perpetual and prolific yield is won from the fecund soil. Here the famous seedless orange was discovered, perpetuated, and has become the most coveted citrous fruit. Fortunes have been made from the raising of these oranges alone. The immense and fragrant strawberries ripen every month the year round. Figs and pomegranates abound. Apples, pears, olives and grapes yield enormous and profitable crops. No frosts, no drouths. Last year Los Angeles and its contributing orchards shipped twenty-five thousand carloads of citrous fruit. This year they reckon to do yet more. Their capacity is only limited by the markets' demand, and both seem boundless.

The air is dry like that of the Yukon Valley, and similarly, extremes of temperature are easily borne. It is never unpleasantly hot in Southern California, they say, just as the Yukoner vows he never suffers from the cold. "Only give us water to wash our gold;" "water to irrigate our crops," cries each, "and we will become richer than the mind of man can think." But the types of men and women are somewhat different in the two extremes. A sturdier race wins fortune from the soil in the Klondike land; there the children have rosier faces and are more alert. On the crowded streets of the southern city the pale presence of the "one lungers" is at once remarked. But for this, the people might be the same.

We left this gracious garden land, with its gentle climate, by the midday train, this time leaving the coast and following the interior San Joaquin Valley route. Just at the outskirts of the city our train halted a moment, and, looking from the window, I saw a most astonishing spectacle--an extensive enclosure with a large, wide-roofed building in its midst, and enclosure, roof and air all thick with myriads of pigeons. Here is the greatest pigeon roost of the world, where an enterprising bird lover raises squabs by the thousands, cans them in his own factory, and sends them all over the earth to the delight of the epicure. Just why such myriads of birds should not fly away, I do not know, but there they were covering the ground, the roof, and filling the air in circular flights, and seemed rarely or never to leave the borders of the enclosure.

For a few hours we retraced our way and then turned eastward across the edge of the great Mojave Desert. Crossing the barrier of the San Fernando Mountains on the north, through a mile-and-a-half-long tunnel, we left the greenness of olive grove and orange orchard behind, and came out into a continually more and more arid country. Cactus and yucca began to appear and to multiply, the dwarf shrunken palmetto of the Mexican plains grew more and more plentiful, and then we came through dry, parched gulches and cañons, out onto a dead flat plain stretching away toward the eastern horizon as far as the eye could see--sand and sage brush and stunted cactus; a hundred miles or more away a faint blue mountain range showing in the slanting sunlight against the eastern sky. Dry and arid and hopeless to man and beast. A terrible waste to cross, or even to enter, and lifeless and desolate beyond concept.

During the night we crossed over the high, arid Tehachapi Mountains and descended into the San Joaquin Valley, traversing that wonderfully fertile garden land until in the morning we were at Oakland. We then crossed the five miles of wide harbor and took our last breakfast in the city of the Golden Gate.

After night had fallen and I sat with my cigar, I chanced to fall in with an interesting young Jap, "R. Onishi," on his first visit to America, correspondent of the "Jije Shimpo," Tokio's greatest daily newspaper. He had come over to investigate the growing rice plantations of Texas, with a view to Japanese capital becoming interested in development there. He had been much impressed with the opportunity there offered, and should report favorably on the proposed enterprise. Not to use Japanese labor, but for Japanese capital under Japanese management to use American labor. So does the opportunity and natural wealth of our country begin to attract the investment of the stored wealth of Asia as well as of Europe. Like the rice dealer I met on the "Kaiser Frederich," crossing the Atlantic two years ago, Mr. Onishi said that American rice brings the highest price of any in the markets of the world, and he looks for a large export trade to Asia of American rice, as well as wheat. And America, how vast and rich and hopeful a land it seemed to him!

I have now seen almost the entire Pacific Coast of our Northern American Continent. From Skagway, from Dawson to the sight of Mexico. Its old and its new towns and cities, its ports and trade centers have I visited, and greatly has the journey pleased and profited me. The dim perception of our future Pacific power that first dawned upon me at Vancouver has now become a settled conviction. We are just beginning to comprehend the future dominance and potency of our nation in Oriental trade, in commerce, in wealth, in enlightened supremacy. And it fills the imagination with boundless sweep to contemplate what are the possibilities of these great Pacific States.

Among the cities of the future upon the Pacific Coast, Seattle and Los Angeles are the two that impress me as affording the wider opportunity and certainty of growth, wealth and controlling influence in trade, in commerce, in politics. If I were a young man just starting out, I should choose one of them, and in and through Seattle I believe there is the larger chance. Or if I were on life's threshold and, say, twenty-five and vigorous, I would pitch my tent within the confines of the continent of Alaska, and by energy, thrift and foresight, become one of its innumerable future millionaires.

SIXTEENTH LETTER.

SAN FRANCISCO AND SALT LAKE CITY.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, October 14, 1903.

We left San Francisco on the "Overland Limited" train, taking the ten o'clock boat across the bay to Oakland and there entering our car. It was a lovely morning; the sky, blue, without a cloud; the sun, brilliant, and not so hot as at Los Angeles. The city, as we receded from it, lay spread before us, stretching several miles along the water and quite covering the range of hills upon which it is built. Many great ships were at the quays, many were anchored out in the blue waters awaiting their turn to take on cargo, and among these several battleships and cruisers of our navy and one big monitor. Above the city hung a huge black pall of smoke, for soft coal--very soft--and thick asphaltic oil are the only fuels on this coast. We had come to San Francisco by night, and marveled at the myriad of electric lights that illumined it; we now left it by day, and yet more fully realized its metropolitan and commercial greatness.

The ride, this time, was not along the northern breadth of the Sacramento Valley, but by the older route through the longer settled country to the south of it. Still many immense wheatfields, hundreds of sheep browsing among the stubble, and yet more of the orchards of almonds, prunes, apricots, figs and peaches. A monstrous fruit garden, for more than one hundred miles; and everywhere fruit was drying in the sun, spread out in acres of small trays.

At Sacramento, we crossed the river on a long iron bridge, and noted the many steamboats along the wharves--the river is navigable thus far for steamboats--boats about the size of our Kanawha packets, and flows with a swift current.

After leaving San Francisco, we began that long ascent, which at last should carry us over the passes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains some 6,000 feet above the sea. The grades are easy, though persistent, the track sweeping around mountain bases and along deep valleys in wide ascending curves. All the day, till evening, we were creeping up, up, up, following one long ridge and then another, the distant snow summits always before us and seemingly never much nearer than at first. The lower slopes were, like the Sacramento Valley, everywhere covered with well-kept orchards, and everywhere we noted the universal irrigation ditches of running water, constantly present beside us or traversing our way.

As we climbed higher we began to see evidences of present and past placer mining, many of the mountain-sides being scarred and riven by the monitor-thrown jets of water.

Just as the shadows began to fall aslant the higher valleys, we commenced that long and irksome journeying through the snowsheds that, for so many miles, are necessary on this road. Coming over the Canadian Pacific, we met few snowsheds through the Rockies, and not more than two or three of them in the Selkirks, but here they buried us early and held on until long after the fall of night.

This road, you know, was originally the Central Pacific, remaining so until swallowed by its stronger rival of the south, the Southern Pacific, which now owns and operates it.

As we rode along, I could not help recalling its early history, the daring of its projectors, Huntington, Crocker, Stanford and Hopkins, and how it never could or would have been built at all but for the aid of the thousands of Chinese who, under their Irish bosses, finally constructed it.

This morning, when we awoke, we had long passed Reno in Nevada, and were flying down the Sierras' eastern slopes through the alkali deserts of the interior basin, and all day long we have been crossing these plains of sand and sage brush and eternal alkali. We read of things, and think we are informed, but only when we see the world face to face do we begin to comprehend it. Only to-day have I learned to comprehend that Desert and Death are one.

On the Canadian Pacific Railway we had beheld the great Columbia River plunge between the facing cañon cliffs of the Rocky Mountains and the Selkirks where they almost touch, the very apex of that vast interior arid basin that stretches thence all across the United States and on into Mexico. At Yakima, in Washington State, we had crossed the Cascade range and found the arid valley made to bloom and blossom into a perpetual garden by means of the melting snows that there fed the Yakima River and adjacent streams. Now we were again descending from the crests of the Sierra Nevadas, down into this same vast basin where no Columbia cuts it through and no Yakima irrigates its limitless and solitary aridness. For more than three hundred miles have we now been traversing this expanse of parched and naked waste. No water, no life, no bird, no beast, no man. Two thousand miles and more it stretches north and south, from Canada into Mexico. Five hundred and forty miles is its narrowest width. We beheld a spur of it the other evening when we crossed the edge of the Mojave desert in Southern California; we should have traversed it two days or more if we had taken the Southern Pacific route through Arizona. As wide in its narrowest part as from Charleston to New York, or to Chicago! What courage and what temerity did those early pioneers possess who first ventured to cross it with their lumbering prairie-schooners or on their grass-fed bronchos from the Eastern plains! And how many there were who perished in the attempt! Yet water will change even these blasted wastes, and, at the one or two stations where artesian wells have been successfully sunk, we saw high-grown trees and verdant gardens.

Late in the afternoon we began to approach high, barren hills and mountain spurs, all brown and sere, save the sage brush. No cactus or even yucca here, and after climbing and crossing a long, dry ridge, we found ourselves descending into flat, sandy reaches, that bore even no shrubs or plants whatsoever, save a dead and somber sedgy grass in sparse, feeble bunches, and while the land looked wet we saw no water. Then far to the southeast glimmered a silver streak, so faint that it seemed no more than mist, and the streak grew and broadened and gleamed until we knew it to be, in fact, Utah's Great Salt Lake. Later, we came yet nearer to it for a few miles, and then lost sight of it again. But the face of the land had changed. We saw cattle among the sage brush; cattle browsing on the sweet, dry grass that grows close under the sage-brush shadow on the better soils. Then we came to an occasional mud dugout hut and sometimes a wooden shack, and the country grew greener, grass--buffalo bunch grass--became triumphant over the sage brush, and then, right in the midst of a waste of sere yellowness, was an emerald meadow of alfalfa and a man driving two stout horses hitched to a mowing-machine cutting it, two women raking it and tossing it. We were in the land of Mormondom, and beheld their works. Now, the whole country became green, irrigating ditches everywhere, substantial farmhouses, large, well-built barns and outhouses, and miles of thrifty Lombardy poplars, marking the roadways and the boundaries of the fields.

At Ogden, where we were three hours late, our sleeper was taken off the through train to Cheyenne and attached to the express for Salt Lake City. We made no further stops, but, for an hour, whirled through a green, fruitful, patiently-tilled landscape, whose fertility and productiveness delighted eye and brain. Many orchards, large, comfortable farmsteads; wide meadows, green and abundant, as in Holland, with cattle and horses feeding upon them; stubble wheatfields, with flocks of sheep; great beet fields and kitchen gardens in full crops; and water--water in a thousand ditches everywhere! Big farm wagons, drawn by large, strong horses, we saw upon the highways; and farmers, in well-found vehicles, returning from the city to their homes.

Then, far away, towering above all else, loomed a group of gray spires, like the distant view of the dominating pinnacles of the minsters and cathedrals of England and of France, and of Cologne. They were the spires of the great towers of the Mormon temple, that strange, imposing and splendid creation of the brain of Brigham Young.

It was dusk when we reached the city. Electric lights were twinkling along the wide streets as we drove to our hotel. We have not yet seen the city, except for a short stroll under the glaring lights. But already it has made an indelible impression on our minds. Only two cities upon this continent--cities of magnitude--have ever been created and laid out, by systematic forethought, before being entered and occupied by men. One, Washington, laid out according to a comprehensive and well-digested plan; the other, Salt Lake City, the creation--as all else here--of Brigham Young.

The streets of Salt Lake City are all as wide as Pennsylvania Avenue. The blocks, of ten acres each, immense. But these streets--the chief ones are perfectly asphalted; running water flows in every side gutter; great trees, long ago planted, shade every wide sidewalk; the electric tram-cars run on tracks along the middle of the thoroughfare; and the two wide roadways, on either side, are quite free from interfering wires and poles. Many great blocks of fine buildings now rise along the business sections, and the stores present as sumptuous displays of goods and fabrics as anything we have seen in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York. The town bears the marks of a great city. Great in its plan, great in its development, great in its destiny. Truly, a capital fit for the seat of power of the potent and comprehending Mormon church.

All the morning we have been viewing concrete, practical Mormondom, and the sight has been most instructive. High above the buildings of the city tower the imposing spires and pinnacles of the Temple, the most immense ecclesiastical structure on the North American continent. Thirty years was it in building, all of native granite, and costing more than four millions of dollars. It stands in the central square of the city, surrounded by a high adobe wall, and a Gentile may view only the exterior.

Then we visited the famous Tabernacle beneath whose turtle-shaped roof 10,000 worshipers may sit, and whose acoustic properties are unrivaled in the world. You can hear a whisper and a pin drop two hundred feet away. In it is the immense organ possessing five hundred and twenty stops, which, like the two great structures, was conceived and constructed by the genius and patience of the Mormon architects. We were shown about the grounds of the ecclesiastical enclosure--though not permitted to enter the Temple--by a courteous-mannered lady whose black eyes fired with religious enthusiasm as she explained the great buildings. "My son is a missionary in Japan, giving his life to the Lord. He preaches in Japanese, and is translating our holy books into the Japanese tongue," she said, turning to an intelligent Japanese tourist who was of our party.

We also bought some Mormon literature in the fine, modern sky-scraper buildings of the _Deseret News_, and the bright young man, selling us the books, showed us with evident pride the stores of elegantly printed and bound volumes, all done here in Salt Lake City. They print their books in every modern tongue, and their missionaries distribute them all over the world.

Later, we viewed the fine college buildings where higher education is given to the Mormon youth. We also saw the famous "Lion House," over whose portal lies a sleeping lion, once the offices of Brigham Young, now occupied by the ecclesiastical managers of the church. And also we viewed the "Beehive House," where once Brigham dwelt; the Tithing House, where is received and stored the ecclesiastical tithe tax of ten per cent. of all crops raised and moneys earned by the devoted Mormon believers; and the great bank run in connection with it.

All these evidences of practical, organized, devoted religious world zeal have we beheld gathered and centrally grouped in the great city founded and raised by these curious yet capable religious delusionists.

I asked about Mormonism of a Gentile stranger from another State, and he replied in deferential tones: "No man in his senses now throws stones at the Mormons; they are among the most industrious, most thrifty and most respected people of the West."

To wander along and through the residence section of the city is also a thing to surprise. Street after street of fine private dwellings, each mansion standing in its own garden, upon its own lawn. Many of them very modern, and many of them far exceeding in cost and imposing elegance any residence Charleston, West Virginia, can yet boast--equal to the most sumptuous homes of Pittsburg and St. Louis--and most of them owned and lived in by cultivated families of the Mormon cult. And how the zeal and faith and religious ardor of this strange sect even now to-day burns in the atmosphere of this their Holy City! It is the same spirit that we met in Holy Moscow, Russia's sacred capital--but more enlightened, more practical.

And Mormonism is already a political as well as religious power in the West. In Idaho, in Colorado, in Nevada, in Arizona, the Mormon vote is to be considered and even catered to. In Alberta, the Mormon settlement is said to be the most prosperous in the province. In Mexico, the Mormon settlements, their astonishing productivity and fertility, are already teaching the wonder-struck Mexican what irrigated agriculture may do. And as I beheld this and the evident success of a religious sect which mixes fanatical zeal with astute practical management, I asked myself what is the real secret of their accomplishment and their power! Is it the theory and practice of polygamy. Did or does polygamy have anything to do with the unquestioned success and prosperity of the Mormon people? I think not. Polygamy has been merely an incident, and the disappearance of polygamy has in nowise lessened the formidable growth of Mormon power. The secret, I think, is the secret of the amazing growth and spread of early Christianity, the putting into actual practice the Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of man--with them the brotherhood of the Mormon man in particular. Once a Latter-day Saint, and all other Saints are ready to lend you a hand, and the organized and ably administered mechanism of the church lends the new Saint a hand as well, and those hands once extended are never withdrawn except for powerful and well-merited cause. The Mormon farmer feels that back of his success is the ever helpful and protecting eye of his church in material as well as spiritual things. The Gentile farmer may succeed or may fail, and who cares; but the Mormon must succeed. If he do not himself possess the innate power and force of character and judgment to get on, then men will guide and aid him who do possess that power, and so he gets on even in spite of himself. In a certain sense, the Mormons practice the doctrine of collective socialism, and that collective unity is the secret, I think, of their wonderful accomplishment.

The creed of the brotherhood of man, and of man within the Christian pale, has been the secret of Christianity wherever it has won success. The failure to heed it and obey it is the cause of failure to every religious movement that has come to naught. And so long as the Mormon Church adheres to this fundamental principle, just so long will it continue to be a power, and a power of increasing weight.

And this cardinal principle is also the secret of their missionaries' success. All over the world they are, in every State of the Union, in nigh every land, and they serve without recompense, without pay even, as did the early missionaries of the Christian Church.

There is and always has been a good deal of cleverness in the leadership of the Mormon Church. It is an old adage that "The blood of her martyrs is the seed of the church," and the Mormon leaders have comprehended this from the start. Not only have they cultivated the Christian socialism of the early church, but they have also never fled from, but they rather have greatly profited by, a real good case of martyrdom. The buffets and kicks of the Gentile world have helped, have been essential in welding the Mormon believers into that political, religious and social solidarity so much sought by the leaders. They were driven from New York, from Ohio, from Missouri, then from Nauvoo. They have been shot, stoned, murdered by scores. They have been imprisoned and harried by the federal laws (very justly, perhaps). But the effect of all this has been only to make them stand together all the closer.

Just now the attack upon Senator Smoot is profiting them immensely. He sits by and smiles. He has only one wife. He is no more oath-bound to his own church than is every Roman or Greek Archbishop vowed to his. A matter of conscience only. The effort to oust him will probably fail, but it's a good thing for the church to have him hammered. The more martyrs, the fewer backsliders. The faithful line up, stand pat, the church grows.

On the streets of Salt Lake City we have noted the very few vehicles of fashion anywhere to be seen, and, on the other hand, the many substantial farm wagons which generally seem to be driven by a woman accompanied by one or more children, more usually a half-grown boy. The men would seem to be working on the farms, while the women come into town with the loads of produce. The faces, too, of these women were generally intelligent and contented.

In our own country we frequently hear the Mormons denounced as polygamists. In Utah and the neighboring States you hear nothing about polygamy, and, upon inquiry, I was told that while once this tenet of the church had been urged and practiced, yet that under modern social conditions, which have come in with the railways, the younger Mormon of to-day finds that one woman is all that he can take care of, and shows no disposition to load himself up with the burden of half a dozen. To my observation, the strength and danger of Mormonism is not in polygamy, but rather in their social and political solidarity, the Mormon president of the church wielding political influence over his followers similar to, although in nowise so vast as, that of the Roman Pope.

Be these things as they may, it is at any rate worth while for a modern Gentile to visit this center of the Mormon power, and gather from ocular evidence of its vital, living, forceful presence such lessons as he may.

This afternoon we took a little railway and journeyed twelve miles to Saltair, the Atlantic City or Virginia Beach of this metropolis, and there we bathed in the supersaturated brine. I could swim on it, not in it, so buoyant was the water, and my chief difficulty was to keep my head out and my feet in. The lake is sixty miles wide by ninety miles long, with several islands of high, barren hills. A few boats ply on it. No fish can live in it, and the chief use of it is to evaporate its waters for supply of salt. After dipping in it we came out quite encrusted with a white film of intense salt.

To-night we go on to Denver, through the cañon of the Grand River.

SEVENTEENTH LETTER.

A BRONCHO-BUSTING MATCH.

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, October 16, 1903.

We left Salt Lake City by the express last night over the Denver & Rio Grande Railway, starting three hours late. When we awoke, we were coming up the canyon of the Green River, one of the head streams of the Colorado, and had passed through the barren volcanic lava wastes of the Colorado Desert during the night. The Green River flows between sheer, naked volcanic rock masses, not very high, but jagged, no green thing growing upon them. But the scanty bottom lands were often green with alfalfa meadows and well-kept peach and apple orchards, the result of irrigation.

From the valley of the Green River we crossed, passing through many deep cuts and tunnels, to the Grand River, the eastern fork of the Colorado, and followed up this stream all day. Very much the same sort of country as before. The bare, ragged, verdureless cliffs and rock masses, dry and plantless, only the red and yellow coloring of sandstone relieving the monotony, and everywhere upon the scant bottom lands the greenness and agriculture of irrigation. The aspen and maples, all a bright yellow, but not so splendid a golden hue as the forests of the valley of the Yukon.

Just before coming to Glenwood Springs, about noon, I had wandered beyond my sleeper into the smoking-car, thinking to have a view of the sort of men who got in and out at the way stations, and, seating myself in a vacant place, picked up a conversation with my neighbor. Imagine my surprise when I found him to be a fellow West Virginian, from Clarksburg, taking a little summer trip in the West, himself a Mr. Bassel, nephew of the well-known lawyer, John Bassel, of upper State fame. He was going to stop off at Glenwood Springs to see one of Colorado's most popular sports, a "broncho-busting" match, where were to be gathered some of the most eminent masters of the art in the State. I consulted my time-tables, ascertained that we might spend the afternoon there and yet reach Denver the next morning, and when the train pulled into the station, we were among the expectant throng who there detrained.

The little town was all astir. A pile of Mexican saddles lay on the platform, and a crowd of big, brawny men in wide felt hats, leathern cowboy leggings and clanking spurs, were shouldering these, their belongings, and moving up into the town.

The streets were full of people come in from the surrounding highlands, where, high up on the "mesas" or plateaus above the valleys, lie some of the finest cattle ranges in the State. Big, raw-boned, strong-chinned men they were, bronzed with the sun and marked with a vigor bespeaking life in the open air. The ladies, too, were out in force, well dressed, not much color in their cheeks, but, like the men, possessing clean-cut, clear-eyed faces. And up and down the wide streets were continually galloping brawny riders, evidently arriving from their distant ranches.

The crowd stuck to the sidewalk and seemed expectant. We did not know just what was going to happen, but stuck to the sidewalk, too, and well for us it was that we did so. There were rumors of a parade. A number of ranch maidens, riding restive bronchos, some sitting gracefully astride, drew their horses to one side. The crowd was silent. We were silent, too. Just then a cloud of dust and a clatter of hoofs came swirling and echoing down the street. A troop of horses! They were running like mad. They were bridleless, riderless; they were wild horses escaped. They ran like things possessed. No, not all were riderless, for behind them, urged by silent riders, each man with swinging lasso, came as many cowboys hot on the chase. Had the wild horses broken loose? Could they ever be headed off? We wondered. Was the fun for the day all vanished by the accident? Not so, we found. This was part of the game. Every broncho buster, if he would take part in the tests of ridership, must first catch a wild horse, that later an opponent should master. And the way those lassos swung and reached and dropped over the fleeing bronchos was in itself a sight worth stopping to see. Then, as each rider came out of the dust and distance leading the wild-eyed, terrified beast by his unerring lasso, great was the acclaim given him by the hitherto silent multitude. Every loose horse was caught before he had run half a mile, and thus haltered--the lariat around the neck--was led to the corral near the big meadow, where the man who should ride most perfectly would win the longed-for prize--a champion's belt and a purse of gold.

Many famous men were met there to win the trophy--the most coveted honor a Coloradan or any ranchman may possess.

There was Marshall Nuckolds, of Rifle City, swarthy and black as an Indian, who had won more than one trophy in hard-fought contests--his square jaw meaning mastery of any four-footed thing that bucks. There was Red Grimsby, long, and lank and lithe as a Comanche, with a blue eye that tames a horse and man alike. There was big, loose-limbed Arizona Moore, a new man in Glenwood, but preceded by his fame. He it was who won that cowboy race in Cheyenne, not long since, when his horse fell, and he underneath--dead, the shuddering audience thought him--and who shook himself loose, re-mounted his horse and won the race amidst the mad cheers of every mortal being on the course. He rode a fiery black mustang, and was dressed in gorgeous white Angora goat's hair leggins, a blue shirt, a handkerchief about his neck. Handy Harry Bunn, of Divide Creek, was there too, a dapper little pile of bone and sinew, whom broncho, buck as he might, never yet had thrown. And Freddy Conners, solid and silent, and renowned among the boys on the ranches all 'round about. And the two Thompson brothers, of Aspen, home boys, the youngest, Dick, the pride of Grand River, for hadn't he won the $100 saddle in the big match at Aspen last year, and then carried off the purse of gold at Rifle City on the Fourth of last July! Slim and clean-muscled, and quick as a flash he was, with a piercing black eye. The crowd on the streets were all betting on Dick, and Dick was watching Arizona Moore like a hawk. The honors probably lay between the two.

The big meadow in the midst of the mile track was the place. H---- sat in the grandstand, my field-glasses in hand. I was invited to the judges' stand, and even allowed with my kodak out in the field among the judges who sat on their horses and followed the riders, taking points.

Swarthy Nuckolds was the first man. He came out into the meadow carrying his own saddle and rope and bridle. To him had fallen a wiry bay, four-year old, never yet touched by man. First the horse was led out with a lasso halter around its neck, then, when it came to a standstill, Nuckolds, with the softness of a cat, slipped up and passed a rope halter over its head, which he made cleverly into a bitless bridle, then he stealthily, and before the horse knew it, hoodwinked it with a leather band, and then when the horse could not see his motions, he gently, oh, so gently, laid the big Mexican saddle on its back, and had it double girt fast before the horse knew what had happened. Then he waved his hand, the hoodwink was pulled off by two assistants, and instantly he was in the saddle astride the astonished beast. For a moment the horse stood wild-eyed, sweating with terror--and then, and then--up it went like a bent hook, its head between its legs, its tail down, its legs all in a bunch, and down it came, stiff-kneed, taut as iron, and then up again, and so by leaps and bounds across the wide field and back again right through the scrambling crowd. All the while Nuckolds rising and falling in perfect unison with the mad motions of the terrified horse--his hat gone, his black hair flying, his great whip and heavy spurs goading the animal into subjection. At last he rode it on a trot, mastered, subjugated, cowed, up to the judges' stand. The horse stood quietly, trembling, sweating, wet as though having swum Grand River. Wild were the yells that greeted Nuckolds. He had but added to a reputation already made.

"Grimsby next," was the command. His horse was a short-backed, spindle-tailed sorrel, with a sort of a vicious gait that boded a bad temper and stubborn mind. Again the halter was deftly put on and made into a bitless bridle, the hoodwink slipped on, the saddle gently placed, and man and horse were furiously rushing, bucking, leaping, rearing across the meadow, and right straight at the high board and wire fence. The horse, if it couldn't throw him, would jam and scrape him off if it ever reached that merciless mass of pine and barbed wire. Could Grimsby turn him, and without a bit? Great riding that was, and greater steering, for just before the seeming inevitable crash, the horse swerved, turned and was bucking across and then around the field again. Grimsby never failed to meet every wild movement, and sat in the saddle as though in a rocking-chair. The horse, at last conquered, stood quiet as a lamb, and the cheers for the sturdy rider quite equaled the plaudits given his raven-maned predecessor.

Now the crowd had its blood up. Two native champions had proved their grit, what could the Arizonian do against such as these? "He's too big and awkward," said one onlooker. "He's not the cut for a King buster," grunted another. "The h--l he ain't. Ain't he the man who won that Cheyenne race after his horse fell on him?" exclaimed one who knew, and the scoffers became silent.

Arizona Moore strode clumsily under the weight of his big saddle, but his black eye shone clear and masterful, and I felt he was sure enough a man. His horse was a dark blood bay, well knit, clean limbed, short-barreled, full mane and tail, a fighter with the grit of a horse that dies before it yields. I stood quite near with my camera. It was difficult to get the rope bridle on, it was more difficult to put on the hoodwink, it was nigh impossible to set and cinch the saddle. But Moore did it all, easily, deftly, quietly. The hoodwink dropped, and instantly the slouchy, awkward stranger was riding that furious, leaping, cavorting, bucking, lunging creature as though horse and man were one. I have never beheld such riding. He sat to his saddle and every muscle and sinew kept perfect time to the fiery, furious movements of the horse. And he plied his whip and used his spurs and laughed with glee, as though he were on the velvet cushions of a Pullman car. The horse was stronger, more active, more violent than the two before. It whirled 'round and 'round until you were dizzy looking. It went up all in a bunch, it came down spread out, it came down with stiff legs, it reared, it plunged, it ran for the fence. Nothing could mar the joy of the rider nor stir that even, easy, tenacious seat. "You've beat 'em all." "Nor can the others beat you," roared the crowd, as he rode the conquered animal on a gentle trot up to the judges' stand and leisurely dismounted. It was the greatest horsemanship I have ever seen, nor shall I again see the like for many a day.

Bunn rode next. His horse was in full and fine condition. It leaped, it bucked, it raced for the fence, it reared, it even sat down and started to roll backwards, a terrible thing to happen, and often bringing death to an incautious rider. But Bunn never lost his seat, nor did the horse stay long upon its haunches, for, stung by rawhide and spur, it sprang to its feet and tore across the meadow, actually leaping clean and sheer the impounding fence. And Bunn, vanquishing at last, walked his quiet horse peacefully up and dismounted.

The Thompson boys each covered themselves with glory. Dick's first horse was tamed so quickly--a big, bright bay--that they brought him a second one to ride again--a long, lean, dun-colored, Roman-nosed cayuse, with scant mane and tail. A mean beast, the sort of a horse that other horses in the bunch scorn to keep company with and hate with natural good horse sense. He stood very quiet through bridling, hoodwinking and saddling. He had seen the others in the game. His mind was quite made up. And when Dick vaulted into the saddle, he at first stood stock still, and then, as I set my kodak, I could see nothing but one great cloud of dun-colored dust and Thompson's head floating in the upper levels of the haze. The horse was whirling and bucking all at the same instant, a hump-buck, a flat buck, an iron-legged buck, a touch-ground-with-belly buck, and a swirling-whirl and tail-and-neck twist at one and the same moment. Enough to throw a tender seat a hundred feet and crack his bones like pipe stems. And then, like the flight of an arrow from a bow, that dun-colored devil bolted straight for the wickedest edge of the fence. I thought Dick would be killed certain, but there he sat and drew that horse down on its hams three feet from sure death. It was a long battle, vicious, mean, fierce, merciless--the beast was bleeding, welts stood out on flanks and shoulders, its dry, spare muscles trembled like leaves shaken by wind.

The boy hero of Aspen was hero still, and the dun horse walked quietly up to the judges' horses and allowed himself to be unsaddled without as much as a flinch, and he, too, was drenching wet, as well as bloody.

I did not see the last rider, for my train was soon to leave, and I barely had time to get aboard. But I got some fine kodak photographs, and have promised to send a set to the old, gray-headed rancher who stood near me and who almost cried for joy to see how these men rode. "I've seven boys," he said, "and every one of 'em's a broncho buster; even the gals can bust a broncho, that they can."

I have not learned who got the coveted prize belt, but I should divide it between Arizona Moore and Dandy Dick.

EIGHTEENTH LETTER.

COLORADO AND DENVER.

DENVER, October 19th.

After leaving Glenwood Springs we wound up the gorge of the Grand River, the castellated, crenelated, serrated, scarped and wind-worn cliffs towering many thousand feet into the blue sky. The valley narrowed sensibly and the sheer heights imposed themselves more and more upon us as we approached the tunnel at the height of land 10,200 feet above the sea, and where part the waters of the Gulf of Mexico from those of the Pacific. On the Canadian Pacific Railway, the interoceanic divide between the waters of Hudson Bay and the Pacific is only some 5,300 feet above tide level, so now we were nearly a mile higher in the air. Yet the long journey of 2,000 miles from San Francisco, the crossing of the Sierra Nevada and Wasatch ranges, had brought us to this final ascent almost unperceived.

Traversing the divide and coming out from the long tunnel which bows above the continental height of land, we diverged from the main line and crept yet higher right up into Leadville, where the air was thin and keen and as chill as in December. Thence we descended through the wonderful cañon of the Platte River that has made this journey on the Denver and Rio Grande Railway famous the world round.

We came to Denver early in the morning; the metropolis of the middle West, the chief railroad center west of the Missouri, the mining center of all the Rocky Mountain mineral belt, and now claiming to be equally the center of the great and rapidly growing irrigated agricultural region of the inter and juxta mountain region of the continent. Essentially a business place is Denver. Its buildings are as elegant as those of New York City, many of them almost as pretentious as those of Chicago, as solid as those of Pittsburg, and as new as the fine blocks of Los Angeles. She is altogether a more modern city than San Francisco, is Denver. Her residences are also up to date, handsome, substantial. The homes of men who are making money. Her one hundred and eighty miles of electric tramways are good, though not quite as good as the two hundred miles of Los Angeles. Her schools are probably unexcelled in the Union. Denver is new, and in the clear, translucent atmosphere looks yet newer; she is neat, she is ambitious, and she is gathering to herself the commerce, the trade, the manufacturing pre-eminence, the mining supervision of all that vast section of our continent from Canada to Mexico, from the great plains to the snowy summits of the Cascades and Sierra Nevadas. All this is Denver, while at the same time she is the capital of Colorado, a State four times as big as West Virginia, though with only half the population. And Denver is so fast seated in the saddle of state prosperity that no section of Colorado can prosper, no interest can grow nor develop, neither the gold and silver mining with its yield of forty millions a year, nor the iron and coal fields--30,000 square miles of coal fields--nor the agriculture and grazing interests, worth eighty millions a year (now exceeding the value of the gold and silver produced twice over), none of these can grow and gain, but they immediately and permanently pay tribute to Denver.

Yet this very up-to-dateness of Denver robs it of a certain charm. You might just as well be at home as be in Denver. The people look the same, they dress the same, they walk the same, they talk the same. Just a few more of them, that's all.

There are none of the lovely lawns and gardens of Los Angeles and Tacoma in Denver, nor can there ever be. Roses do not bloom all the winter through, nor in Denver does the turf grow thick and velvety green as in Seattle, nor can they ever do so--only a few weakly roses in the summer-time and grass--only grass when you water each blade with a hose three times a day. And then, too, men do not go to Denver to make homes; they go there the rather to make fortunes, and, if successful, then to hurry away and live in a more congenial clime.

Denver is not laid out with the imposing regalness of Salt Lake City, nor can it ever possess the dignity of that place. It is just a big, hustling, commercial, manufacturing, mine-developing center, where the well man comes to work and toil with feverish energy in the thin air; and the sick man--the consumptive--comes to live a little while and die--"One Lungers" do not here hold fast to life as in the more tender climate of southern California--nor can they survive long in Denver's harsh, keen air.

The loveliest, grandest part of Denver is that which it does not possess. It is the splendid panorama of the Rocky Mountain chain that stretches, a monstrous mass of snow-clad summits, along the western horizon, eighteen to thirty miles away. Across a flat and treeless plain you behold the long line of lesser summits, and then lifting behind them, towering skyward, the splendid procession of snow-clad giants, glittering and flashing in the translucent light of the full shining sun. The panorama is sublime, as fine as anything in Switzerland, and of a beauty worthy of a journey--a long journey--to behold. In Canada, the Rockies come so slowly upon you that they seem almost insignificant compared with their repute. But here, one realizes in fullest sense the dignity of this stupendous backbone of the continent. And the pellucid atmosphere of the mile-high altitude, gives renewed and re-enforced vision to the eye. The gigantic mountains stand forth with such distinctness that the old tale of the Englishman who set out to walk to them before breakfast--thinking them three instead of thirty miles away--is likely enough to have more than once occurred.

The great "Mountain Empire State" of Colorado is vastly rich in deposits of gold and silver and lead and antimony and copper and coal and iron, yet very few there are, or ever can be, who do or may amass fortunes therefrom. Her coal beds exceed in area the entire State of West Virginia nearly twice over, yet thousands of acres lie unworked and are now practically unworkable. Her oil fields are promising, a paraffine oil of high grade, yet no oil producer has made or can make any great stake out of them. Her agriculture and grazing interests already exceed the enormous values of her gold and silver, yet few farmers or cattle men make more than a living. Colorado is rich, fabulously rich, yet the wealth that is wrung from her rocks and her pastures and her tilled fields passes most of it into hands other than those who produce it.

The great railroad corporations get the first whack. It has cost enormously to build them; they are expensive to maintain; they are safe from competition by reason of the initial cost of their construction. They are entitled to consideration, and they demand it and enforce it to the limit. The freight rates are appalling, and so adjusted as to squeeze out of every natural product the cream of profit it may yield--sometimes only very thin skim milk is left. The passenger fares are high, usually four cents to ten cents per mile. The cost of living is onerous in Colorado; all freights brought there pay excessive tribute to the railways. So much for the general conditions. With mining it is yet more serious. The Rockefeller-Gugenheim Smelter combine now controls mercilessly all the smelting business of the State, and, as for that, of the mining country. And unless you have an ore that "will yield more than $20 per ton, you might as well not go into the mining business," experienced mining men repeatedly observed to me.

Colorado boasts enormous agricultural and grazing wealth. She claims that the present values of her herds of cattle and horses, and flocks of sheep, of her orchards and irrigated crops already exceed that of her gold and silver and mineral production. This may be so, and yet after the cattle and sheep and horses are transported to distant markets and converted into cash, after her farmers have paid the enormous irrigation charges to the private corporations that control the water springs, the man on the soil makes little more than a bare living, the fat profits, if any there be, having passed into the capacious pockets of the water companies, of the transportation companies, of the great meat-packing and horse-buying companies. The farmers and grazers with whom I have talked tell me that if they come out even at the end of the year, with a small and moderate profit, they count themselves fortunate. Here and there, of course, a fortune may be amassed by an unusual piece of good luck by the man who raises cattle or fruit, or crops, but as a rule the undoubted profits of these industries are absorbed by the great corporate interests at whose mercy they lie.

Just what will be the outcome of these crushing industrial conditions it is difficult to forecast, but we already see the first expressions of popular dissatisfaction in the extensive labor strikes now prevailing in the Cripple Creek region, and threatening to spread to and include all of the mining camps and operations of the State and adjoining States. Corporate greed and unscrupulous selfishness arouse opposition, and then ensues corresponding combination, and too often counter aggression quite as unreasonable and quite as inconsiderate in scope and action. Men are but mortal, and "an eye for an eye" is too ancient an adage to have lost its force in this twentieth century.

Just how these transportation, mining, agricultural and industrial problems will be finally solved I dare not predict, but we will trust that the ultimate good sense of American manhood will work out a reasonable solution.

NINETEENTH LETTER.

ACROSS NEBRASKA.

ON BURLINGTON ROUTE EXPRESS, }
October 20, 1903. }

We left Denver upon the night express over the Burlington Railway system, and all day to-day are flying eastward across flat, flat Nebraska.