Chapter XIX: The Royal Gorge

High overarched, and echoing walls between.
--MILTON.

The Grand Cañon of the Arkansas, and its culminating chasm, the Royal Gorge, lie between Salida and Cañon City, and form a sufficient theme for a chapter by themselves. It was on our return from Silver Cliff that we went there.

Situated only half a dozen miles west of Cañon City, the traveler going either to Leadville or Gunnison, begins to watch for the cañon as soon as he has passed the city limits, the penitentiary and the mineral springs. If he looks ahead he sees the vertically tilted, whitish strata of sandstone and limestone, which the upthrust of the interior mountains has set on edge, broken at a narrow portal through which the graceful river finds the first freedom of the plains,--becomes of age, so to speak, and commences, however awkwardly, that manly progress that by and by will enable it to take its important place in the commerce of the world,--

"----The river,
Which through continents pushes its pathway forever,
To fling its fond heart in the sea."

Running the gauntlet of these scraggy warders of the castle of the mountain gods within, the train boldly assaults the gates of the castle itself. From the smoothness of the outer world, where the eye can range in wide vision, taking in the profiles of countless noble chains and lowlier but serviceable ridges; where the sun shines broadly, and its light and heat are reflected in shimmering volumes from expanses of whitened soil, the eager traveler now finds himself locked between precipitous hillsides, strewn with jagged fragments, as though the Titans had tossed in here the chips from their workshop of the world. He strives for language large enough to picture the heights that with ceaselessly growing altitude hasten to meet him. He searches his fancy after images and similitudes that shall help him comprehend and recall the swiftly crowding forms of Nature's massive architecture. He taxes his eyes and mind and memory to see and preserve, until he can have leisure to study this exhibition of the depth and breadth of the barrier that so long has loomed before him in silent majesty, yet for which the world has found no better name than the Rocky mountains. He has gone past it,--gone over it, it may be; now he is going _through_ it. The track, as he rushes ahead, seems bodily to sink deeper and deeper into the earth, as though the apparent progress forward only resulted in impotent struggles to keep from sinking deeper, like an exhausted swimmer in swift waters. The roar of the yeasty, nebulous-green river at his side, mingles with the crashing echoes of the train, reverberating heavenward through rocks that rise perpendicularly to unmeasured heights. The ear is stunned, and the mind refuses to sanction what the senses report to it.

Then a new surprise and almost terror comes. The train rolls round a long curve, close under a wall of black and banded granite, beside which the ponderous locomotive shrinks to a mere dot, as if swinging on some pivot in the heart of the mountain, or captured by a centripetal force that would never resign its grasp. Almost a whole circle is accomplished, and the grand amphitheatrical sweep of the wall shows no break in its smooth and zenith-cutting façade. Will the journey end here? Is it a mistake that this crevice goes _through_ the range? Does not all this mad water gush from some powerful spring, or boil out of a subterranean channel impenetrable to us?

No, it opens. Resisting centripetal, centrifugal force claims the train, and it breaks away at a tangent past the edge or round the corner of the great black wall which compelled its detour, and that of the river before it. Now what glories of rock-piling confront the wide-distended eye. How those sharp-edged cliffs, standing with upright heads that play at hand-ball with the clouds, alternate with one another, so that first the right, then the left, then the right one beyond strike on our view, each one half obscured by its fellow in front, each showing itself level-browed with its comrades as we come even with it, each a score of hundreds of dizzy feet in height, rising perpendicular from the water and the track, splintered atop into airy pinnacles, braced behind against the almost continental mass through which the chasm has been cleft.

This is the Royal Gorge!

But how faintly I tell it--how inexpressible are the wonders of plutonic force it commemorates, how magnificent the pose and self-sustained majesty of its walls, how stupendous the height as we look up, the depth if we were to gaze timidly down, how splendid the massive shadows at the base of the interlocking headlands,--the glint of sunlight on the upper rim and the high polish of the crowning points! One must catch it all as an impression on the retina of his mind's eye,--must memorize it instantly and ponder it afterward. It is ineffable, but the thought of it remains through years and years a legacy of vivid recollection and delight, and you never cease to be proud that you have seen it.

There is more cañon after that--miles and miles of it--the Grand Cañon of the Arkansas. In and out of all the bends and elbows, gingerly round the promontories whose very feet the river laves, rapidly across the small, sheltered nooks, where soil has been drifted and a few adventurous trees have grown, noisily through the echoing cuttings, the train rushes westward, letting you down gradually from the tense excitement of the great chasm, to the cedar-strewn ledges that fade out into the the gravel bars and the park-like spaces of the open valley beyond Cotopaxi.

Thomas Paine tells us in his _Age of Reason_: "The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately." It is good philosophy also, that the higher the strain the longer the rebound; so no excuse is needed for asking you to enjoy as heartily as we did, the story an old fellow told us at the supper station, who dropped the hint that he had been one of the "boys" who had helped push the railway through this cañon. Moreover, he helped us to a new phase of human nature as exemplified in the mind of an "old timer."

The influence of the cañon on the ordinary tourist, perhaps, will be comparatively transient, fading into a dream-like memory of amazing mental impressions. Not so with the man who has dwelt, untutored, for many years, amid these stupendous hills and abysmal gorges. His imagination, once aroused and enlarged, continues to expand; his fiction, once created, hardens into fact; his veracity, once elongated, stretches on and on forever. Of all natural curiosities he is the most curious,--more marvelous than even the Grand Cañon itself.

Strictly sane and truthful in the day-time, he speaks only of commonplace things; but when the night comes, and the huge mountains group themselves around his camp-fire like a circle of black Cyclopean tents, he shades his face from the blaze and bids his imagination stalk forth with Titanic strides. Then, if his hearers are in sympathy, with self-repressed and nonchalant gravity, he pours forth in copious detail his strange experiences with bears and bronchos, Indians and serpents, footpads and gamblers, mines and mules, tornadoes and forest-fires. He never for a moment weakens the effect of his story by giving way to gush and enthusiasm; he makes his facts eloquent, and then relates them in the careless monotone of one who is superior to emotion under any circumstances.

We could not find our old-timer in these most favorable circumstances, but ensconced behind

"Sublime tobacco! which from east to west,
Cheers the tar's labors, or the Turkman's rest,"

he seized his opportunity in our discussion of the heroic engineering by which the _penetralia_ of the Royal Gorge was opened to the locomotive, and began:

"Talk about blastin'! [B]The boy's yarn about blowin' up a mountain's nothin' but a squib to what we did when we blasted the Ryo Grand railroad through the Royal Gorge.

[B] If anybody doubts the full veracity of this tale, he is referred
to Colonel Nat. Babcock, of Gunnison City.

"One day the boss sez to me, sez he, 'Hyar, you, do you know how to handle gunpowder?'

"Sez I, 'You bet!'

"Sez he, 'Do you see that ere ledge a thousand feet above us, stickin' out like a hat-brim?' Sez I, 'You bet I do.'

"'Wall,' sez he, 'that'll smash a train into a grease-spot some day, ef we don't blast it off.'

"'Jess so,' sez I.

"Wall, we went up a gulch, and clum the mountain an' come to the prissipass, and got down on all fours, an' looked down straight three thousand feet. The river down there looked like a lariat a' runnin' after a broncho. I began to feel like a kite a' sailin' in the air like. Forty church steeples in one war'n't nowhar to that ere pinnacle in the clouds. An' after a while it begun rainin' an' snowin' an' hailin' an' thundrin' an' doin' a reglar tornado biznis down thar, an' a reglar summer day whar we wuz on top. Wall, there wuz a crevice from where we wuz, an' we sorter slid down into it, to within fifty feet o' the ledge, an' then they let me down on the ledge with a rope an' drill. When I got down thar, I looked up an' sez to the boss, 'Boss, how are ye goin' to get that 'cussion powder down?' Yer see, we used this ere powder as'll burn like a pine-knot 'thout explodin', but if yer happen to drop it, it'll blow yer into next week 'fore ye kin wink yer eye.

"'Wall,' sez the boss, sez he, 'hyar's fifty pound, an' yer must ketch it.'

"'Ketch it,' sez I. 'Hain't ye gettin' a little keerless--s'pose I miss it?' I sez.

"'But ye mustn't miss it,' sez he. ''T seems to me yer gettin' mighty keerful of yourself all to wunst.'

"Sez I, 'Boss, haul me up. I'm a fool, but not an idgit. Haul me up. I'm not so much afeared of the blowin' up ez of the comin' down. If I should miss comin' onto this ledge, thar's nobody a thousan' feet below thar to ketch me, an' I might get drownded in the Arkansaw, for I kain't swim.'

"So they hauled me up, an' let three other fellers down, an' the boss discharged me, an' I sot down sorter behind a rock, an' tole 'em they'd soon have a fust-class funeral, and might need me for pall-bearer.

"Wall, them fellers ketched the dynamite all right, and put 'er in, an' lit their fuse, but afore they could haul 'em up she went off. Great guns! 'T was wuss 'n forty thousan' Fourth o' Julys. A million coyotes an' tin pans an' horns an' gongs ain't a sarcumstance. Th' hull gorge fur ten mile bellered, an' bellered, an' kep' on bellerin' wuss 'n a corral o' Texas bulls. I foun' myself on my back a lookin' up, an' th' las' thing I seed wuz two o' them fellers a' whirlin' clean over the mountain, two thousan' feet above. One of 'em had my jack-knife an' tobacker, but 't was no use cryin'. 'T was a good jack-knife, though; I do n't keer so much fur the tobacker. He slung suthin' at me as he went over, but it didn't come nowhar near, 'n' I don't know yet what it was. When we all kinder come to, the boss looked at his watch, 'n' tole us all to witness that the fellers was blown up just at noon, an' was only entitled to half a day's wages, an' quit 'thout notice. When we got courage to peep over an' look down, we found that the hat-brim was n't busted off at all; the hull thing was only a squib. But we noticed that a rock ez big ez a good-sized cabin, hed loosened, an' hed rolled down on top of it. While we sat lookin' at it, boss sez, sez he,

"'Did you fellers see mor'n two go up?'

"'No,' sez we, an' pretty soon we heern t' other feller a' hollerin', 'Come down 'n get me out!'

"Gents, you may have what's left of my old shoe, if the ledge had n't split open a leetle, 'n' that chap fell into the crack, 'n' the big rock rolled onto the ledge an' sorter gently held him thar. He war n't hurt a har. We wer n't slow about gettin' down. We jist tied a rope to a pint o' rock an' slid. But you may hang me for a chipmuck ef we could git any whar near him, an' it was skeery business a foolin' roun' on that ere verandy. 'T war n't much bigger 'n a hay-rack, an' a thousan' foot up. We hed some crowbars, but boss got a leetle excited, an' perty soon bent every one on 'em tryin' to prize off that bowlder that'd weigh a hundred ton like. Then agin we wuz all on it, fer it kivered th' hull ledge, 'n' whar'd we ben ef he'd prized it off? All the while the chap kep' a hollerin', 'Hurry up; pass me some tobacker!' Oh, it was the pitterfulest cry you ever heern, an' we didn't know what to do till he yelled, 'I'm a losin' time; hain't you goin' to git me out?' Sez boss, 'I've bent all the crowbars, an' we can't git you out.'

"'Got any dynamite powder?' sez the feller.

"'Yes.'

"'Well, then, why 'n the name of the Denver 'n' Ryo Grand don't you blast me out,' sez he.

"'We can't blast you out,' sez boss, 'fer dynamite busts down, an' it'll blow you down the canyon.'

"'Well, then,' sez he, 'one o' ye swing down under the ledge, an' put a shot in whar it's cracked below.'

"'You're wiser 'n a woman,' sez boss. 'I'd never thought o' that.'

"So the boss took a rope, 'n' we swung him down, 'n' he put in a shot, 'n' was goin' to light the fuse, when the feller inside smelt the match.

"'Heve ye tumbled to my racket?' sez he.

"'You bet we have, feller priz'ner!' sez the boss.

"'Touch 'er off!' sez the feller.

"'All right,' sez boss.

"'Hold on!' yells the feller as wuz inside.

"'What's the racket now?' sez the boss.

"'You hain't got the sense of a blind mule,' sez he. 'Do you s'pose I want to drop down the canyon when the shot busts? Pass in a rope through the crack, 'n' I'll tie it 'roun' me, 'n' then you can touch 'er off kind o' easy like.'

"Wall, that struck us all as a pious idea. That feller knowed more 'n a dozen blind mules--sed mules weren't fer off, neither. Wall, we passed in the rope, 'n' when we pulled boss up, he guv me 'tother end 'n' tole me to hole on tighter 'n' a puppy to a root. I tuck the rope, wrapped it 'round me 'n' climb up fifty feet to a pint o' rock right under 'nuther pint 'bout a hundred feet higher, that kinder hung over the pint whar I wuz. Boss 'n' t'other fellers skedaddled up the crevice 'n' hid.

"Purty soon suthin' happened. I can't describe it, gents. The hull canyon wuz full o' blue blazes, flyin' rocks 'n' loose volcanoes. Both sides o' the gorge, two thousan' feet straight up, seemed to touch tops 'n' then swing open. I wuz sort o' dazed 'n' blinded, 'n' felt ez if the prisipasses 'n' the mountains wuz all on a tangle-foot drunk, staggerin' like. The rope tightened 'round my stummick, 'n' I seized onto it tight, 'n' yelled:

"'Hole on, pard, I'll draw you up! Cheer up, my hearty,' sez I, 'cheer up! Jes az soon'z I git my footin', I'll bring ye to terry firmy!'

"Ye see, I wuz sort of confused 'n' blinded by the smoke 'n' dust, 'n' hed a queer feelin', like a spider a swingin' an' a whirlin' on a har. At last I got so'z I could see, 'n' looked down to see if the feller wuz a swingin' clar of the rocks, but I could n't see him. The ledge wuz blown clean off, 'n' the canyon seemed 'bout three thousan' feet deep. My stummick began to hurt me dreadful, 'n' I squirmed 'round 'n' looked up, 'n' durn my breeches, gents, ef I was n't within ten foot of the top of the gorge, 'n' the feller ez wuz blasted out wuz a haulin' on me up.

"Sez I when he got me to the top, sez I, 'Which eend of this rope wuz _you_ on, my friend?'

"'I dunno,' sez he. 'Which eend wuz _you_ on?'

"'I dunno,' sez I.

"An', gents, to this day we can't tell ef it was which or 'tother ez wuz blasted out."

* * * * *

It was afternoon and we were weary--sated--with sublimity; so we ran straight away to Leadville, and left until our return an examination of the Arkansas Valley.