Chapter XXIV: Through Marshall Pass

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortes, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent upon a peak in Darien.
--KEATS.

One of the wonders of Colorado progress is the Gunnison valley. The "Gunnison," as it is usually termed, embraces a wide area, being, in popular parlance, everything in Colorado west of the Continental Divide, north of the San Juan mountains and south of the Eagle River district. In fact, this is correct enough, for nearly all this great region is tributary in its drainage to the Gunnison river,--the third great stream which unites with the Grand and the Green to form the Rio Colorado. The water-shed between it and the Rio San Juan, the only other feeder of the Rio Colorado worthy of mention, is the very high and wintry ridge of the San Juan mountains, crossing which you find yourself in Baker's Park and the region we had just come from. Betwixt the head of its northern branches and the springs that feed the Grand River basin, stand the Elk mountains and the high table lands of the Grand Mesa. From the one water-shed to the other it is about fifty miles.

Ten years ago this region had hardly a wanderer in it from one season's end to the other, and was full of Ute Indians. There were two or three agencies, and roads leading thereto, but it was all a reservation. Everything civilized that entered the district came up from Saguache through Cochetopa Pass and along Cochetopa creek into the Uncompahgre valley, where the Utes spent their winters. There was also a trail, occasionally traveled by sportsmen and explorers, leading southward from the Los Pinos agency to the headwaters of the Rio Grande and on over Cunningham Pass into Baker's Park. I marched over it in 1874, and a cruel march it was, though full of picturesque interest. An Indian trail northward to White river was about the only other internal pathway. The region, therefore, was a _terra incognita_ to Coloradoans, as well as to the rest of the civilized world.

But this mystery was soon to be cleared away. The search for gold and silver, which has led to more exploration of unknown regions than all the geographical societies of the world put together, did not hesitate to encounter the darkness that overspread the Pacific slope of the State, and to go prospecting thither as soon as ever a hope of finding "mineral" entered into the miner's heart. Close following upon the rush to Leadville, was repeated the history of the Pike's Peak sequel. Now, as then, men disappointed in not finding mines of fabulous wealth, during the first week of their stay, or shrewdly thinking to anticipate the crowd, began to walk further and further afield in search of new argentiferous rocks, so that by the summer of 1879 we began to hear not only of Ten Mile and Red Cliff, but of the Gunnison, as a district where success had met the prospector. That was only a little over four years ago. Now how well are we acquainted with this erst mysterious and Indian-haunted valley! Four years ago a mule was the best mode of conveyance hither, and an Indian trail almost the only pathway. Yesterday I rode into the heart of it in a parlor car, and found, ready for my perusal, the morning newspaper, with a day's history of all the world, from Chicago to Cathay.

The Gunnison country boasts several towns of considerable size, some of them the center of a circle of mines which radiates from them, and from which they absorb cash and conviviality. First in size is Gunnison City; and after it in importance are Crested Butte, Lake City, Ouray, Montrose, Delta and Grand Junction,--the last three being situated in the old Ute reservation in western Gunnison. Of less size, but yet centers of population, are a large number of small mining towns or "camps," such as Ruby, Crooksville, White Pine, Pitkin, Irwin, Barnum and Ohio. Each of these would require some attention from a faithful chronicler of the county, for they are all in Gunnison, where the territory is large enough to enable one to set in it the whole State of Massachusetts without crowding--that is if you lopped off Cape Cod or curled it up into Marshall Pass.

It is by the way of Marshall Pass that the railway enters the Gunnison. Leaving the main line and the Arkansas valley at Salida, only five miles are traversed before the train begins to enter Poncho Pass and climb the mountains, which it requires four hours, express speed, to cross,--four hours of uninterrupted pleasure.

Of Poncho's prettiness I have already spoken. Its summit is found at Mears' Station, and then begins the real ascent of the Continental Divide. In a few moments the circling rim of the pit-like valley is surmounted, and Hunt's peak, by its cap of snow signifying its superiority to the giants of the Sangre de Cristo about it, rises like a planet over the hills we are leaving behind. We seat ourselves on the rear platform and watch it until the whole range, of which it is the northernmost officer, stands drawn up in purple line before us, and we can trace the summits, pressed back into straight line, for perhaps sixty miles to the southward--

"----Sierras long,
In archipelagoes of mountain sky."

What can that goodly rank, each peak sharp and pyramidal just along side of the other, every curve of the foothills parallel with the one before, sweeping down into the trough-like park at their hither base,--what can all this uniformity be but the splendid chain of the Sangre de Cristo? Have we not seen it time and time again, beheld it from east and west and south, and now here from the north; and has it ever been out of line, or anything but a soldierly array of uniform heights bearing the same relation to the ill-assorted army of the rest of the Rockies, that the famous grenadiers of Frederick the Great did to his peasant conscripts?

This sight explains to us also, that the great width of lofty hills we are picking our way through now is the junction mass of two ranges. It is here that the Sangre de Cristo starts off on its own line to the southeastward, while the main chain, forming the backbone of the continent, trends somewhat westward and continues to do so more and more till it loses itself in the jumble of San Juan, San Miguel, Uncompahgre, Bear and other ranges that fill the southwestern corner of the State. The summits north and southwest of us divide the Atlantic from the Pacific; but that magnificent corps that will not be left behind, but seems to march steadily after us, in battle array, separates only the Arkansas from the Rio Grande. The glimpses of valley we get now and then just this side its base are of Homan's Park, which is only the upper end of the wide San Luis, and places can be seen that we could not reach by long traveling.

Marshall Pass itself, which we enter imperceptibly out of Poncho, is a depression in the main range and lies between Ouray and Exchequer mountains. It was a daring scheme to run the road over here--for _through_ wouldn't express it properly. The summit is almost eleven thousand feet above the sea, and timber-line is so close that you can think sometimes you are actually there. The trees are stunted and all stand bent at an angle, showing the direction of the fierce and prevalent winds that have pressed upon them since their seedling days. The cones they bear start bravely, but after perfecting three or four broad circles of scales and seeds the nipping frosts of August and September admonish them to make haste; so the remainder of the cone is put forth so hastily, in Nature's attempt to complete her work, that the whole remaining length of fifteen or twenty circlets will not exceed the length of the first two or three full-grown scales, and the cone ends ridiculously in a little useless acuminate tip.

To attain this height, the road has to twist and wriggle in the most confusing way, going three or four miles, sometimes, to make fifty rods; but all the time it gains ground upward, over some startling bridges, along the crest of huge fillings, through miniature cañons blasted out of rock or shoveled through gravel, and always up slopes whose steepness it needs no practiced eye to appreciate. To say that the road crosses a pass in the Rocky mountains 10,820 feet in height is enough to astonish the conservative engineers who have never seen this audacious line; but you can magnify their amazement when you tell them that some of the grades are 220 feet to the mile.

The mountains and hills in the neighborhood of Marshall Pass are clothed for the most part with grass, or else sage-brush and weeds, and with timber, scant in some places, dense in others. The tourist will not see there the startling cliffs and chasms that break up the mountains on the road to Durango, but, on the other hand, he will not feel any terror at dizzy precipices, nor tremble lest some toppling pinnacle should fall upon his fragile car. No better exhibition of the greatness and breadth of these mountains could be found, however, than here. There stretches away beneath and around you an endless series of hills, some rounded and entirely over-grown with dark woods, others rising into a comb-like crest, or rearing a dome-shaped head above the possibilities of timber-growth and covered with a smooth cap of yellowish verdure. They crowd one another on every side, and brace themselves, each by each, as though their broad and solid foundations were not enough for safety. They stand cheek by jowl in sturdy companionship, taking rain and sunny weather, hurtling storms and serene days with impartial equality. Your vision will not find the limit of these huge hills until it is cut off by the serrated horizon of the crest of the Sangre de Cristo, or by some frowning monarch near at hand, holding his head high and venerably gray, as becomes a chieftain, where he can get the first messages of the gods and be looked up to by a thousand of his more humble kin.

"It is like a huge green sea," murmurs the Madame, hitherto silent with gazing. "I know a great many people have made the same comparison before--have often said that these commingled ranges were as a sea, tossing its white crests here and there and all at once congealed; but that is the very impression which fixes itself upon you. These rounded, or sharp-edged, tumultuous mountains _are_ like a wide, green ocean." The great cone on the northern side of the track, close to which the roadway skirts nearly the whole distance through the pass, is Ouray peak. Ouray, as nearly everybody must know, was the head chief of the Utes. This tribe only very lately abandoned all this portion of Colorado, leaving last that reservation which lies beyond Gunnison City, and which we are soon to visit. The peak we have hugged so closely does honor to the dead chief. The farther you get around it the more nobly do its proportions rise into the blue ether. Like Veta mountain, which it closely resembles, this peak is of white volcanic rock that has decomposed into small blocks. The sides then are loose "slides," as steep as the fragmentary stuff will lie, and the top is a narrow summit with smooth, rounded outlines. We are only a few hundred feet from the topmost timber, yet the bald white summit rears its head to almost unmeasured heights above, and claims our admiration by its simple majesty, far more than does the broken, cliff-furnished upthrust of Exchequer peak opposite, though its black head is held quite as high. Perhaps this is only because we have become somewhat tired of the closely-shutting high mountains; weary of being

"----under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,"

as Milton puts it. Certes, it _is_ good once more to be able to look abroad!

On our way to the summit we had crawled through long snow-sheds, built to protect the road from the snows of winter, and which are hung late in spring with brilliant icicles formed by the sun without and the cold within. Passing through the last shed, which has a length of fully half a mile, we reached the highest point of the divide, and while the extra engine which had helped pull us up the steep grades went cautiously down the valley toward Gunnison before us, we climbed the rocks about the little station house, to enjoy at its best the magnificent view presented. To the northeast, white with snow, towered the serrated range of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, rising abruptly from the valley which stretched away to the southeast and standing out in bold relief against the deep blue sky. Between the range and us were lower hills and isolated peaks tumbled into a confused mass, and only prevented from pressing too closely together by the little valleys that ran between them. Immediately around us grew stunted pines, bent, barren, blackened and lifeless. Down the mountain side the forests became denser, greener and fresher, while from the distant valleys, at the bottom of which we could see tiny streams working their way to worlds beyond, came low murmurs and sweet odors. Toward the west, and losing itself in a hazy distance, ran the Tomichi valley, narrow, heavily wooded, and free from all that rocky harshness so prevalent in Colorado. Far below we could look down upon four lines of our road, terrace below terrace, the last so far down the mountain as to be quite indistinct to the view. The iron loops were lost to sight at times as the road wound about some interfering hill; and often the forest was so dense that the track seemed to have disappeared for ever. Five hundred feet down the mountain side we could see a water-tank, and knew that it marked the spot where we would be, after an hour of twisting down the incline. As we gazed upon the mountains, the valley, and the far and farther heights, we could imagine ourselves returned to the beginning of things, and shown the globe only that moment finished. There was a wealth of coloring, a sublimity unsurpassed, and withal an attention given to detail by which the picture was made perfect. I remember to have stood on Marshall Pass once when the sun was just dropping out of sight beyond the rolling hills to the westward. As it sunk lower and lower behind its curtain of snowy peaks, prismatic hues came flashing along the pathway of its fading light, which touched the rugged sides of Ouray peak and the white-capped range beyond until every treeless spot and gabled peak shone with a mellow hue. All objects--those near by and those far away--flashed bright colors, beautiful, brilliant, and as varied as those of the rainbow. From the mountains long shadows were cast, and in the forest crept dark shades. All nature prepared to sleep, and no sounds came from around the lonely pass but the sighing of the wind as it swept through the tangled trees. "All outward things and inward thoughts teemed with assurances of immortality."

Our descent from the pass was continuous but slow. At least it was slow at first. All steam was shut off in the engine and the air-brakes were used to preserve a uniform speed. Winding in and out among the trees, and catching at different times extended views of the Tomichi, we worked our way to more level country and were soon skirting the meadows and whirling across the ranch properties of the fertile valley. Close beside us ran a sparkling stream, tapped here and there by the farmers, who used its water for their lands, and again winding its way through the willows that grew on its banks. Looking back over the way we had come, there appeared dark-green forests, backed by high mountains with bared summits; but before us lay the Tomichi, shut in on either side by low hills and extending westward so far that its end was lost in haze. Everything was green, fertile, luxuriant. Cattle grazed in the meadows, ricks of hay stood by the side of low-roofed cabins, and narrow valleys came down from the northern mountains to join the one along which we kept the swift and even tenor of our way.