Chapter III: Across the Waters (5)

Let us now consider the consequences of the discovery. First, as to the men at Coloma in January, 1848, Marshall was not enriched. His lumber was soon in demand at $500 a thousand feet of board measure, or twenty-fold more than he had expected when he commenced his work; but not many months elapsed before all the good timber trees near Coloma had been cut down by the miners, and then the mill had to stop. He turned his attention to mining, but was not successful. When he had money he did not know how to keep it. When he had a good claim he did not stick to it.

Sutter's popularity with the pioneers was so great that when he had lost all his property the legislature came to his aid with a pension of $3,000 a year, which sum was paid for six years; and it would perhaps have been continued till his death if he had not left the State in order to demand justice from Congress for the spoliation of his property. But he did not possess the same popularity and influence in the Eastern States as in California. He spent winters of vain solicitation at Washington, and there he died on the 18th of June, 1880, at the age of seventy-seven years. His grave is at Litiz, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he had made his home.

For California the main results of the discovery have been the sudden changes from a Spanish-speaking to an English-speaking community; from popular ignorance to high intelligence; from pasturage, first to mining, and then to tillage, as the occupation of most of the people; from a population of less than 10,000 to more than 1,200,000; and from isolation to frequent, cheap, and convenient communication with all civilized countries. The State has become one of the most noted gardens, pleasure grounds, and sanitariums of the world; and San Francisco is one of the most intellectual and brilliant, and in many respects one of the most interesting, of cities. To the United States the Californian gold discovery gave a vast increase of the national wealth; great attractiveness for immigration from Europe; a strong stimulus to shipping; the development of the mineral wealth of Nevada, Idaho, and Utah; and the vast railroad system west of the Mississippi.

But Marshall's find did not limit its great influences to our continent. It aroused and stimulated industrial activity in all the leading nations. It profoundly agitated all the countries of South America. It shook Europe and Asia. It caused the first large migration of the Chinese across the Pacific. It opened Japan to the traffic of Christendom. It threw a belt of steam around the globe. It educated Hargraves, and taught him where to find and how to open up the gold deposits of Australia. It built the Panama railroad. It brought the Pacific Ocean within the domain of active commerce. Directly and indirectly it added $3,500,000,000 to the stock of the precious metals, and by giving the distribution of this vast sum to the English-speaking nations added much to their great industrial and intellectual influence.

MARSHALL'S OWN NARRATIVE.

"In May, 1847, with my rifle, blanket, and a few crackers to eat with the venison (for the deer then were awful plenty), I ascended the American River, according to Mr. Sutter's wish, as he wanted to find a good site for a saw-mill, where we could have plenty of timber, and where wagons would be able to ascend and descend the river hills. Many fellows had been out before me, but they could not find any place to suit; so when I left I told Mr. Sutter I would go along the river to its very head and find the place, if such a place existed anywhere upon the river or any of its forks. I traveled along the river the whole way. Many places would suit very well for the erection of the mill, with plenty of timber everywhere, but then nothing but a mule could climb the hills; and when I would find a spot where the hills were not steep, there was no timber to be had; and so it was until I had been out several days and reached this place, which, after first sight, looked like the exact spot we were hunting.

"I passed a couple of days examining the hills, and found a place where wagons could ascend and descend with all ease. On my return to the fort I went out through the country examining the cañons and gulches, and picking out the easiest places for crossing them with loaded wagons.

"You may be sure Mr. Sutter was pleased when I reported my success. We entered into partnership; I was to build the mill, and he was to find provisions, teams, tools, and to pay a portion of the men's wages. I believe I was at that time the only millwright in the whole country. In August, everything being ready, we freighted two wagons with tools and provisions, and accompanied by six men I left the fort, and after a good deal of difficulty reached this place one beautiful afternoon and formed our camp on yon little rise of ground right above the town.

"Our first business was to put up log houses, as we intended remaining here all winter. This was done in less than no time, for my men were great with the ax. We then cut timber, and fell to work hewing it for the framework of the mill. The Indians gathered about us in great numbers. I employed about forty of them to assist us with the dam, which we put up in a kind of way in about four weeks. In digging the foundation of the mill we cut some distance into the soft granite; we opened the forebay and then I left for the fort, giving orders to Mr. Weimar to have a ditch cut through the bar in the rear of the mill, and after quitting work in the evening to raise the gate and let the water run all night, as it would assist us very much in deepening and widening the tail-race.

"I returned in a few days, and found everything favorable, all the men being at work in the ditch. When the channel was opened it was my custom every evening to raise the gate and let the water wash out as much sand and gravel through the night as possible; and in the morning, while the men were getting breakfast, I would walk down, and, shutting off the water, look along the race and see what was to be done, so that I might tell Mr. Weimar, who had charge of the Indians, at what particular point to set them to work for the day. As I was the only millwright present, all of my time was employed upon the framework and machinery.

"One morning in January,--it was a clear, cold morning; I shall never forget that morning,--as I was taking my usual walk along the race after shutting off the water, my eye was caught with the glimpse of something shining in the bottom of the ditch. There was about a foot of water running then. I reached my hand down and picked it up; it made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold. The piece was about half the size and of the shape of a pea. Then I saw another piece in the water. After taking it out I sat down and began to think right hard. I thought it was gold, and yet it did not seem to be of the right color: all the gold coin I had seen was of a reddish tinge; this looked more like brass. I recalled to mind all the metals I had ever seen or heard of, but I could find none that resembled this. Suddenly the idea flashed across my mind that it might be iron pyrites. I trembled to think of it! This question could soon be determined. Putting one of the pieces on a hard river stone, I took another and commenced hammering it. It was soft, and didn't break: it therefore must be gold, but largely mixed with some other metal, very likely silver; for pure gold, I thought, would certainly have a brighter color.

"When I returned to our cabin for breakfast I showed the two pieces to my men. They were all a good deal excited, and had they not thought that the gold only existed in small quantities they would have abandoned everything and left me to finish my job alone. However, to satisfy them, I told them that as soon as we had the mill finished we would devote a week or two to gold hunting and see what we could make out of it."

PIONEER MINING

BY E. G. WAITE

Pioneer mining life--what was it? The miner must have an outfit of a pick, pan, shovel, rocker, dipper and bucket of wood, or of rawhide. A tent was good to have, but he could make shift during the dry season with a substitute of boughs, for there was no fear of rain from May to October. A blanket of rubber spread on a stratum of leaves, on which his woolen blankets were laid, sufficed for a bed. His culinary utensils were confined to a frying-pan, a small iron pot, tin cups and plates, knife, fork, and spoon. His wardrobe consisted generally of a pair of serviceable shirts, a change of trousers, strong boots and a slouch-hat. With these, and a supply of bacon, flour, salt, saleratus, beans, a few candles and occasionally fresh beef, the miner was ready for work. His luxuries were tea and raw sugar, with occasionally the addition of dried peaches from Chili. His bread was made by mixing flour, water, and saleratus in the tin or iron pan which did double duty in the kitchen and in gathering gold, and baking it about two inches thick, like a shortcake. But slapjacks, the legitimate successors of the Mexican tortillas, were also a standard article of diet. Tin teapots were sometimes affected, but the small iron pot with a hollow handle did duty for both tea and beans or frijoles. The latter were of a brown variety grown in Chili, and were prepared after the Mexican style with a piece of bacon or fresh beef and plenty of chili colorado, or red pepper. They were allowed to cook a long time, often standing in the hot embers over night to be ready for breakfast in the morning. The bill-of-fare did not vary much for breakfast, dinner and supper.

The most expensive instrument of the early miner was the rocker, which, though simple in construction, cost in the mines from fifty to a hundred dollars. In general appearance it was not unlike a baby's cradle as used by our grandmothers and as still seen on the frontier. It consisted of a flat bottom with two sides that flared outward, and an end board at the head, while the foot was open save a riffle about an inch and a half high at the bottom to catch the gold that might pass another riffle across the bottom near the middle. At the head of the cradle was a hopper about eighteen inches square, with a perforated sheet-iron bottom or wire screen. Under this was an apron, or board, sloping downward towards the head. Two substantial rockers under the whole completed the simple machine which gave to the world millions of dollars. The _modus operandi_ may be described as follows: Two sticks of wood hewn on the upper side were imbedded at the river's brink, one four inches lower than the other, on which the rockers were to rest, thus securing a grade in the machine to facilitate the outward flow of the water and sand. Two miners usually worked together as partners. One shoveled the earth into the rocker, while the other, seated on a boulder or block of wood, dipped the water from the river, and poured it upon the earth in the hopper with one hand, all the time rocking with the other. When the earth was thoroughly washed, he rose, lifted the hopper from its place, threw out the stones and gravel, replaced it, and thus the work went on. As the ground about the rocker became exhausted to the bed-rock, recourse was had to the bucket, and the earth was carried sometimes a few rods, making laborious work for the miner. To keep the rocker going another hand would be employed to carry earth, and each would carry two buckets at a time. I was in many camps down to 1854, and in none did I ever know of a theft of gold, and I heard of but one, and that was punished by a cat-o'-nine-tails, which was afterward nailed to the center-post of a trader's tent, as a warning to evil-doers.

The gold taken from the river bars was mostly in the form of scales resembling cucumber seeds, and of varying size. It was most plentiful on the bed-rock and in a few inches of soil above it, though sometimes three or four feet of earth would pay to wash. Where the bed-rock was hard the miner cleaned it, for a shovelful of dirt might contain a few dollars in small particles. Where the bed-rock was soft shale or slate on edge the miner picked away an inch or so and washed it, as frequently the scales were found to be driven quite thickly into the crevices. When the ground was very rich the rocker was cleaned of gold every hour or two. When work was over, around the supper fire the events of the day were discussed, earnings compared, reports made of grizzly bears or deer being seen or killed, of better diggings of "coarse gold" discovered. This was the hour for speculations as to the origin of the gold in the rivers, and a strong opinion was entertained by many who were not well-read that immense masses of the precious metal would some day be brought to light in the snow-capped peaks towering to the east. "Coarse gold" was a charm to the ear of the ordinary miner. His claim might be paying him an ounce a day in fine gold, but he was always interested in some reported diggings far away where the product was in lumps, and not infrequently he left a good mine to seek some richer El Dorado. The characteristic and besetting fault of the early miner was unrest. He was forever seeking better fortune. Yet it was this passion for prospecting that resulted in the discovery of gold in an incredibly short time from the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley to the northern limit of the State. To "prospect" was to find a spot that looked favorable and make an examination of it. The miner would take a pan of earth, shake and gyrate it under water, raising and tipping it frequently to run the dirt and water off, then plunge it again, and so continue until a small residuum of black sand and gold remained. A speck of gold was the "color," several specks were "several colors," and the number and size determined the judgment of the miner whether he should go to work or move on. I have seen ounces taken in this way in a single pan, but in the earlier days we counted a "bit" to the pan, twelve and a half cents, a fair prospect.

The average gain of the miner in those days can never be known. Though he was extraordinarily frank and confiding in the offhand conversations about the camp-fire, yet there is reason to believe that his largest receipts were sometimes not reported. My observation was that the industrious worker rarely brought to his supper less than ten dollars, often an ounce (reckoned at sixteen dollars), and sometimes six ounces, or even more. I myself took from the earth nearly one hundred and fifty ounces in seventeen successive working days. My largest clean-up was $224. One day, in less than half an hour, I took with my knife from a crevice in the rocks six and a half ounces of gold. When the river went down after it had been swollen by the first rains and had swept over the bed-rock of bars supposed to be worked out, hundreds of glittering scales were left exposed, affording pleasant picking for a day or two.

Mining is one of the most fascinating and exciting of employments. But in the earlier days, when we knew less about genuine indications, mining was, more than now, a species of gambling. The effects are yet to be seen in hundreds of men still living near their old haunts, who, in common phrase, have "lost their grip"; others live in our memories who, after repeated disappointment, sleep on the mountain sides in nameless graves. Yet these same unfortunates did their part in giving to the world thousands of millions of dollars, thus stimulating progress probably more than was ever known in any other epoch of similar length in the history of mankind.

The early miner has never been truly painted. I protest against the flippant style and eccentric rhetoric of those writers who have made him a terror, or who, seizing upon a sporadic case of extreme oddity, some drunken, brawling wretch, have given a caricature to the world as the typical miner. The so-called literature that treats of the golden era is too extravagant in this direction. In all my personal experience in mining-camps from 1849 to 1854 there was not a case of bloodshed, robbery, theft or actual violence. I doubt if a more orderly society was ever known. How could it be otherwise? The pioneers were young, ardent, uncorrupted, most of them well educated and from the best families in the East. The early miner was ambitious, energetic, and enterprising. No undertaking was too great to daunt him. The pluck and resources exhibited by him in attempting mighty projects with nothing but his courage and his brawny arms to carry them out was phenomenal. His generosity was profuse and his sympathy active, knowing no distinction of race. His sentiment that justice is sacred was never dulled. His services were at command to settle differences peaceably, or with pistol in hand to right a grievous wrong to a stranger. His capacity for self-government never has been surpassed. Of a glorious epoch, he was of a glorious race.

THE GREAT NORTHWEST IN THE EARLY EIGHTIES

BY E. V. SMALLEY

FURTHER WEST.

The old order of developing new regions in the West was reversed when the railroad era began. Formerly the country was settled first, and the towns grew up to supply the needs of the rural population. Afterwards the towns were created by speculators far in advance of the farming settlement; and by the conveniences they afforded for selling crops, and buying implements, lumber and household supplies, they attracted farmers to their vicinity. Each new frontier town is an advertisement of the surrounding country, upon the settlement of which it must depend for its existence. The towns-folk are untiring in their praises of the soil and climate, and if you believe them the next grade of human felicity to living in their raw little village is to live upon a farm in the neighborhood. Whatever happens in the way of disagreeable weather, they assure you it is good for the crops. If it snows in May or hails in June, they come up smiling, and remark blandly that it is just what the crops need. The creation of a new town on a line of railroad pushing its track out into the vacant, treeless spaces of the far West, is an interesting process to observe. A speculator, or a company of speculators, look over the ground carefully fifty or a hundred miles in advance of the temporary terminus of the railroad, and hit upon a site which they think has special advantages, and is far enough away from the last town. They make a treaty with the railroad company for a section of land, agreeing, perhaps, to share the prospective profits on the sale of lots. Then they "scrip" the adjoining sections of Government land, or take it up with desert land claims. A large amount of land scrip is afloat on the market issued in pursuance of Indian treaties, Agricultural College grants, old Military Bounty Land acts and other peculiar features of our complicated Public Land System. The speculator with his pocket stocked with scrip is able to pick out any choice sections not occupied by homestead or preëmption claimants. Having thus obtained a sufficient body of land to operate with, the founding of the new town is trumpeted in the newspapers, and in all the frontier region for hundreds of miles there is a stir of excitement about the coming city. Billings, on the Yellowstone, is a good example of a town made by this process. In the beginning it had no existence save in the brains of its inventors. The bare prairie was staked out in streets, avenues and parks, on a scale for a city of twenty thousand inhabitants. A map was engraved, and within a few weeks after the place got its name, the "Billings boom" began to be talked of as far east as St. Paul. Billings lots were advertised in every town from St. Paul to Miles City, and whole blocks were sold in Chicago and New York. The purchasers, as a rule, knew no more about the valley of the Yellowstone than about that of the Congo, and few of them could have put their finger on a spot upon a map within a hundred miles of Billings. They heard there was a boom, and were eager to take their chances for profit or loss. It was enough for them to hear the place spoken of as the future metropolis of the Yellowstone Valley. Within sixty days from the time when Billings got a local habitation and a name, lots to the value of $220,000 were sold within its limits, and before thirty days more had elapsed the purchasers had advanced the imaginary value of their holdings from one hundred to three hundred per cent.

Charles Dickens once said that the typical American would hesitate about entering heaven, unless assured that he could go further West. The men who lead the advance of the army of civilization on the frontier skirmish line do not come from the rear. They are always the scouts and pickets. The people of the six-weeks-old town do not come from the East. As a rule they are from the one-year-old and two-year-old towns a little further back. Most of the men I met in the Yellowstone country were from Eastern Dakota, or the Black Hills region, or from Western Minnesota. When asked why they left homes so recently made in a new country, their reply was invariably that they wanted to get further West.

BILLINGS AND COULSON.

We came upon Billings one sunny day in May [about 1882], dropped upon it, I might say; for after a ten miles' drive across a high and windy plateau, the immense dazzling range of the Big Snowy Mountains looming up in front, the ground fell away abruptly and the town lay at our feet in a broad, green valley. The yellow-pine houses, untouched by paint, glistened in the sunlight like gold. The valley, hemmed in by precipitous cliffs on the north, and by black, bare hills beyond the muddy river on the south, stretched away to the west to distant mountain slopes. Under the shadow of a huge sandstone butte lay the little hamlet of Coulson, now quite out of spirits because of the new town a mile further on. Old Coulson, it was called, though its age was only three years. It had made some money buying buffalo robes of the Crow Indians across the river, and selling shirting, groceries, and whisky to a few herdsmen whose cattle graze in the Musselshell Ranges. Now it must abandon its score of "shacks" and shanties or move them up to Billings. The new town, when I visited it, consisted of perhaps fifty cheap structures scattered over a square mile of bottom-land. Many people were living in little A tents or in their canvas-covered wagons, waiting for lumber to arrive with which to build houses. Sixty dollars a thousand was the price of a poor quality of green stuff brought from a mill twenty miles up the Yellowstone. All articles of food, except beef, were frightfully dear. Potatoes were eight cents a pound, flour six dollars a sack. I doubt if one in ten of the inhabitants could tell why he had come. The migrating impulse is the only way to account for the movement of merchants, mechanics, farmers, speculators, gamblers, liquor-sellers, preachers and doctors to a point nearly one hundred and fifty miles from anything that can be called a town--a point, too, in a region inhabited only by Crow Indians and a few scattered herdsmen. At the signal that a town was to be created, all these people, of diverse possessions and ambitions, moved forward and occupied the site as though they were soldiers marching at the word of command. What a wonderful self-organizing thing is society! How did the German baker from St. Paul, the milliner from Minneapolis, the Chinese laundryman from the Pacific slope, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the butcher, the beer-seller, the grocer and all the other constituent parts of a complete community happen to feel the desire, at the same time, to go with their trades and wares to a remote spot in an unknown land?

Large herds of cattle graze in the valleys of the Yellowstone and its tributaries, and in the hill country as far north as the Upper Missouri, wherever there are small streams or water holes. Now that the buffalo is fast disappearing, the region would afford pasturage to at least ten times as many cattle as it supports at present. The stockmen who occupy it are generally careful, however, not to let this fact be known, as they naturally would like to keep the whole section for the future increase of their own herds. Cattle-raising in Montana is an exceedingly profitable business. One hears a great deal said in the Territory of the wealth of the "cattle-kings," and how they began their careers a few years ago with only a few hundred dollars. The local estimate of the annual return from money invested in a herd of cattle is from thirty to fifty per cent. The life of a stockman is not, however, an idle and comfortable one, as often pictured in the newspaper accounts of the business. Unless he is rich enough to hire herdsmen he must look after his herd constantly. He lives, as a rule, in a wretched dirt-roof "shack," and passes most of the time in the saddle, seeing that his animals do not stray too far off the range. In the fierce winter storms he must be out driving the herd into ravines and deep valleys, where they will be protected from the wind. No shelter is built for stock in Montana. The dried bunch-grass furnishes abundant winter grazing, and the animals get through the severe weather with a loss rarely exceeding four per cent. In the spring each owner "rounds up" his herd, and brands the calves. Every ranchman has his own brand, which he registers in the office of the county clerk, and advertises in the nearest local paper, printed, it may be, one or two hundred miles from his range. The annual drive of bullocks across the plains southward to the Union Pacific Railroad, or eastward to the temporary terminus of the Northern Pacific, takes place in the summer months.

BITTER ROOT VALLEY.

South of Missoula within rifle-shot, is the entrance to the great Hell Gate Cañon; westward across the angle formed by the two rivers rises the huge, dark wall of the Bitter Root Mountains, higher here, and more picturesque, than the main range of the Rockies, which are half concealed by the grassy swells of the foot-hills on the east. Lo-Lo Peak, the loftiest and most individual mountain of the Bitter Root chain, is covered with snow all summer; its altitude must be about ten thousand feet. Northwest of the town the valley is broad enough for cultivation for a distance of twenty miles, when it closes in at the cañon of the Missoula River. A range for which there is not even a local name rims the valley on the north. One summit, called Skotah Peak, is a perfect pyramid in form. This cloud-compassed landmark we shall not lose sight of in three days' travel.

Up the Bitter Root Valley there are farms scattered for sixty miles. The valley is warmer than any other in Western Montana, and the small fruits and some hardy varieties of apples are grown. Herds of horses and cattle feed on the slopes of the mountains. Grain and potatoes are grown by irrigation, and the valley is a source of food-supply for military posts and mining-camps. Hogs are fattened upon peas and wheat, and the flavor of a Bitter Root ham is something altogether unique and appetizing. In June the bitter-root plant, from which the valley gets its name, covers all the uncultivated ground with its delicate rose-colored stars. The blossom, about as large as a wild rose, lies close upon the earth. The long, pipestem-like root is greatly relished by the Indians for food. When dried it looks like macaroni, and it is by no means unpalatable when cooked with a little salt or butter, or eaten raw. The squaws dig it with long sticks, and dry it for winter food. Another root, also a staple in the aboriginal larder, is the camas, which loves moist prairies, where it flaunts its blue flowers in the early summer. In June, when the camas is ready to gather, even the most civilized Indian on the Flathead reservation feels the nomadic impulse too strong to resist. He packs his lodge upon ponies, and starts with his family for some camas prairie, where he is sure to meet a numerous company bent on having a good time.

A MONTANA TOWN.

The picturesque features of life in a Western Montana town like Missoula are best seen as evening approaches. Crowds of roughly clad men gather around the doors of the drinking-saloons. A group of Indians, who have been squatting on the sidewalk for two hours playing some mysterious game of cards of their own invention, breaks up. One of the squaws throws the cards into the street, which is already decorated from end to end with similar relics of other games. Another swings a baby upon her back, ties a shawl around it and herself, secures the child with a strap buckled across her chest, and strides off, her moccasined feet toeing inward in the traditional Indian fashion. She wears a gown made of a scarlet calico bed-quilt, with leggings of some blue stuff; but she has somehow managed to get a civilized dress for the child. They all go off to their camp on the hill near by. Some blue-coated soldiers from the neighboring military post, remembering the roll-call at sunset, swing themselves upon their horses and go galloping off, a little the worse for the bad whisky they have been drinking in the saloons. A miner in blue woolen shirt and brown canvas trousers, with a hat of astonishing dimensions and a beard of a year's growth, trots up the street on a mule, and, with droll oaths and shuffling talk, offers the animal for sale to the crowd of loungers on the hotel piazza. No one wants to buy, and, after provoking a deal of laughter, the miner gives his ultimatum: "I'll hitch the critter to one of them piazzer posts, and if he don't pull it down you may have him." This generous offer is declined by the landlord; and the miner rides off, declaring that he has not a solitary four-bit piece to pay for his supper, and is bound to sell the mule to somebody.

Toward nightfall the whole male population seems to be in the street, save the busy Chinamen in the laundries, who keep on sprinkling clothes by blowing water out of their mouths. Early or late, you will find these industrious little yellow men at work. One shuffles back and forth from the hydrant, carrying water for the morning wash in old coal-oil cans hung to a stick balanced across his shoulders. More Indians now--a "buck" and two squaws, leading ponies heavily laden with tent, clothes and buffalo robes. A rope tied around a pony's lower jaw is the ordinary halter and bridle of the Indians. These people want to buy some article at the saddler's shop. They do not go in, but stare through the windows for five minutes. The saddler, knowing the Indian way of dealing, pays no attention to them. After a while they all sit down on the ground in front of the shop. Perhaps a quarter of an hour passes before the saddler asks what they want. If he had noticed them at first, they would have gone away without buying.

THE STAGE-COACH.

Now the great event of the day is at hand. The cracking of a whip and a rattle of wheels are heard up the street: the stage is coming. Thirty-six hours ago it left the terminus of the railroad one hundred and fifty miles away. It is the connecting link between the little isolated mountain community and the outside world. No handsome Concord coach appears, but only a clumsy "jerky" covered with dust. The "jerky" is a sort of cross between a coach proper and a common wagon. As an instrument of torture this hideous vehicle has no equal in modern times. The passengers emerge from its cavernous interior looking more dead than alive. A hundred able-bodied men, not one of them with a respectable coat or a tolerable hat, save two flashy gamblers, look on at the unloading of the luggage. The stage goes off to a stable, and the crowd disperses, to rally again, largely reinforced, at the word that there is to be a horse-race.

Now the drinking saloons--each one of which runs a faro bank and a table for "stud poker"--are lighted up, and the gaming and guzzling begin. Every third building on the principal business street is a saloon. The gambling goes on until daylight without any effort at concealment. In all the Montana towns keeping gaming-tables is treated as a perfectly legitimate business. Indeed, it is licensed by the Territorial laws. Some of the saloons have music, but this is a rather superfluous attraction. In one a woman sings popular ballads in a cracked voice, to the accompaniment of a banjo. Women of a certain sort mingle with the men and try their luck at the tables. Good order usually prevails, less probably from respect for law than from a prudent recognition of the fact that every man carries a pistol in his hip-pocket, and a quarrel means shooting. The games played are faro and "stud poker," the latter being the favorite. It is a game in which "bluff" goes farther than luck or skill. Few whisky saloons in Montana are without a rude pine table covered with an old blanket, which, with a pack of cards, is all the outfit required for this diversion.

The main street of the frontier town, given up at night to drinking and gambling, by no means typifies the whole life of the place. The current of business and society, on the surface of which surges a deal of mud and driftwood, is steady and decent. There are churches and schools and a wholesome family life.

A ROCKY MOUNTAIN VALLEY.

The Jocko Valley is one of the prettiest of the minor valleys of the Rocky Mountain system. It was all a green, flowery meadow when I traversed it in the month of June. Its width is about ten miles and its length perhaps thirty. Low, wooded mountain ranges surround it. That on the east is broken by the main branch of the stream, and through the rift can be seen the main chain of the Rockies--a mighty mass of crags and cliffs and snow-fields thrust up among the clouds. For thirty miles after the Jocko joins the Clark's Fork of the Columbia, called by most people in this region the Pend d'Oreille River, the main river is bordered by narrow green bottoms and broad stretches of grassy uplands rising to the steeper inclines of fir-clad mountains. Herds of horses are occasionally seen, and now and then the log hut of some thrifty Indian or half-breed, or the canvas lodge of a family that prefers the discomforts and freedom of savage life to the comforts and restraints of a local habitation. The first night out from the agency was spent at the hut of one of the queer characters that hang about Indian reservations,--a shiftless white man, who pays for the privilege of ferrying travelers across the river by taking the Indians over free. He lives in a dirty one-room hut. In response to a suggestion about supper, he declared that he would not cook for the Apostle Paul himself, but added that we were welcome to use his stove, and could take anything eatable to be found on the premises. His bill next morning was seven dollars--one dollar, he explained, for victuals for the party, and six for ferriage. A wagon-box offered a more inviting place for a bed that night than the floor of the ferryman's cabin.

A day's travel brought us out of the Flathead Reservation, and at the same time to the end of the wagon road and of the open country. The road did not, like one of those western highways described by Longfellow, end in a squirrel track and run up a tree, but it stopped short at a saw-mill on the river's edge, where a hundred men were at work cutting logs and sawing bridge timber for the railroad advancing up the gorge eighty miles below.

There are many camas prairies, big and little, in Montana and Idaho, and they all resemble each other in being fertile green basins among the mountains, in whose moist soil the camas plant flourishes. This was, perhaps, fifteen miles broad by twenty-five long--all magnificent grazing land. We passed an Indian village of a dozen lodges, the doors of the tents shaded by arbors of green boughs, under which sat the squaws in their red, green and white blankets. On the plain fed herds of horses, and among them Indian riders galloped about seeking the animals they wanted to lariat for the next day's hunting expedition.

FOREST TRACKS.

Nor is the forest altogether lonely. Occasionally a pack-train is met, or a party of pedestrians, tramping with blankets, provisions and frying-pans from the settlements or railroad camps west of the mountains to those in the mountain valleys, and sleeping _al fresco_ wherever night overtakes them. Rough fellows these, but good-humored, and in no way dangerous. Indeed, there is no danger in any of the country I traversed on my northwestern pilgrimage, to a traveler who minds his own business and keeps out of drinking dens. Almost everybody I met had a big pistol strapped to him; but I carried no weapon of any kind, and never once felt the need of one.

In Montana every traveler carries his bed, whether he depends upon hoofs or wheels for locomotion, or on his own legs. Even the tramp who foots it over the prairies and through the mountains, pretending to look for work, but really on a summer pleasure tour, subsisting upon the country, has a pair of dirty blankets or an old quilt slung by a rope across his shoulders. The sleeping equipment of a traveler who can afford to pay some attention to comfort, consists of a buffalo robe and two pairs of blankets. With these, and perhaps a rubber poncho, he is prepared to stop wherever night overtakes him, fortunate if he has a roof over his head, and a pine floor to spread his buffalo upon, but ready to camp out under the stars. Along the stage roads one is rarely more than twenty miles from a house of some kind, but no one expects beds. The ranchman does not ask his guests if they would like to go to bed; he says: "Well, gents, are you ready to spread your blankets?"

A FAR WESTERN TOWN.

My journey next took me to Walla-Walla, largest and handsomest of all the East Washington towns. Doubtless the name of Walla-Walla brings no suggestion to the minds of most readers in the far-away East, save of a rude frontier settlement. Yet the place luxuriates in verdure and bloom, and many of its shady streets, bordered by pretty houses, with their lawns, orchards and gardens, would be admired in a New England village, while the business streets would do no discredit to an Ohio town of half a century's growth. In the homes of well-to-do citizens one finds the magazines and new books and newspapers from New York, Boston and Philadelphia, and discovers that they manage to keep abreast of the ideas of the time quite as well as intelligent people on the Atlantic slope. The town has five thousand inhabitants, but in its importance as a center of trade and social influences it represents an Eastern town of many times its size. There is barely a trace of the frontier in the manners of the people, and none at all in their comfortable way of living; yet they are thousands of miles from New York by the only route of steam travel. A fairer or more fertile country than that which stretches south and east of Walla-Walla to the base of the Blue Mountains one might travel more than five thousand miles to find. In June it is all one immense rolling field of wheat and barley dotted at long intervals--for the farms are large--with neat houses, each in its orchard of apple and peach trees. The mountains rise in gentle slopes to snow-flecked summits. Over the wide plain move tall, tawny cloud-like columns of dust, in size and shape like water-spouts at sea. From the foot-hills scores of these singular formations may be seen on any warm day, though the air seems still.

THE GREAT SOUTHWEST

BY RAY STANNARD BAKER

No part of the United States is less generally known than the Southwest, and none is better worth knowing. Of no other part of the United States is so large a proportion of the unpleasant and unattractive features known so well, and so small a proportion of the beauties, wonders and utilities known so little. To the Eastern and Northern mind the Southwest raises a dim picture of hot desert, bare mountain, and monotonous plain sparsely grown up to cactus, sage, greasewood, or bunch-grass, and sown with the white bones of animals which have perished from hunger and thirst; a land of wild Indians, of lazy Mexicans, of rough cow-boys, of roving, half-wild cattle, of desperate mining ventures, of frequent train-robberies. This impression is based in part on the stray paragraphs from this unknown land that occasionally creep into the metropolitan newspapers, but it is chiefly founded upon the hasty observations and reports of dusty transcontinental travelers, car-weary for three or four days, the edge of their interest quite blunted with longing for the green wonders and soft sunshine of California.

What is generally known as the Southwest may be said to comprise all of Arizona and New Mexico, the greater portion of Texas, perhaps best described as arid Texas, southern California east of the Coast Range, and the western half of Oklahoma, including the "Strip." Eastern Texas, with its plentiful rainfall, its forests, and its fine plantations of cotton and corn, is quite a different country from western Texas, and must be classed with the South. In extent of territory the Southwest is an empire more than twice as large as Germany, and greater in area than the thirteen original States of the American Union. Its population is sparse and occupied almost exclusively in cattle-and sheep-raising, mining, and irrigation-farming, with a limited amount of lumbering. All its vast territory contains only a little more than half as many inhabitants as the city of Chicago. Its largest city, on the extreme eastern edge of the arid land, is San Antonio, Texas. All of its other cities are much smaller. It is traversed east and west by two, in Texas three, great railroads, running generally parallel, having many branches, and connected by several cross-cuts running north and south.

It is a land of amazing contrasts. It is both the oldest and the newest part of the United States--oldest in history and newest in Anglo-Saxon enterprise. Long before the Cavaliers set foot in Virginia or the first Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, even before St. Augustine in Florida was founded, the Spaniards had explored a considerable proportion of New Mexico and Arizona, and the settlements made soon afterward at Santa Fé and near Tucson were among the earliest on the American continent. Indeed, for many years the region was better known to white men than New England. Yet to-day there is no part of the United States so little explored, many places, especially in New Mexico and Arizona, being wholly unsurveyed. Probably the least-known spot in the country is the mysterious wilderness, nearly as large as Switzerland, which lies in the northwestern corner of Arizona beyond the Colorado River. It is bounded on the south and east by the stupendous and almost impassable chasm of the Grand Cañon, and on its other sides by difficult mountains and little-explored deserts. Here, in this long-known land, if anywhere on the continent, can be found the primeval wilderness of nature.

Though the Great Southwest is now the most sparsely inhabited region of its size in the United States, it was once the most populous and wealthy, probably more populous than it is to-day, with all its present American enterprise. Hundreds of years before the Spaniards first appeared in the New World, the valleys of Arizona and New Mexico contained a numerous population, supporting considerable cities, and irrigating extensive tracts of land with wonderful engineering skill. Frank H. Cushing, the anthropologist, who in 1882-83 wrote of the ruins of the Southwest, estimated that the irrigated valleys of Arizona were once the dwelling-place of two hundred and fifty thousand people, about twice the population of the entire Territory then. The remains of these ancient civilizations--the pueblo-dwellers, the cliff-and cave-dwellers--are found scattered everywhere throughout Arizona and New Mexico, and in such numbers that archæologists have only begun to explore them.

No part of the United States, indeed, has had a more thrilling and eventful history. While denominated a desert "not worth good blood,"--in the words of the historian,--it has been a center of contention for centuries, overwhelmed by one tide of conquest after another. From the time that the Spaniards first invaded the country, hunting for gold, down to the capture of Geronimo by American soldiers in the eighties, it has been the scene of many bloody Indian wars. It was the source of contention between the United States and Mexico in the war of 1846-48. Once a possession of Spain, and later of Mexico, the story of the struggle for independence by the Texans and for annexation by the Californians is full of fascinating interest. Its soil has developed some of the boldest and most picturesque characters in American history--Boone, Crockett, Kit Carson, Sam Houston, and many a pioneer cattleman and settler, to say nothing of the Crooks and the Lawtons of the Indian wars. The main trail of the El Dorado hunters of '49 on their way to California let through it, garnishing its history with many a story of bloodshed and hardship. No American fiction is more vital and characteristic than that which deals with the early lawless days of the miner, the buffalo-hunter, and the cow-boy; none is more richly colored, picturesque, or rudely powerful.

In its material aspects it is equally full of contrasts. Here are the greatest deserts and waste places in America, and side by side with them, often with no more than a few strands of barbed wire to mark the division-line, are the richest farming-lands in America, lands more fertile, even, than the famed corn-fields of Illinois or the fruit-orchards of Michigan. The Southwest has been denominated, with reason, the treeless land, and yet it contains to-day the largest unbroken stretches of forest in the country, there being nothing to equal the timber-lands of the Colorado plateau in northern and central Arizona. No part of the United States possesses such an extent of grass-plain, Texas being the greatest of the plain States, and yet none has grander mountains. Only three States have higher peaks than the noble Sierra Blanca of New Mexico, fourteen thousand two hundred and sixty-nine feet in altitude, and there are few more magnificent elevations than San Francisco Mountain in Arizona.

Though the region, to the hurried railroad traveler, seems barren and desolate almost beyond comparison, it is yet richer in variety, if not in luxury, of vegetation than any other part of the country. Professor Merriam found many arctic types in the flora of the upper regions of the San Francisco Mountain. Within a radius of a few hundred miles grow the pines and firs found in northern Canada, and the figs and dates of the African semi-tropics; Southern oranges and olives grow side by side with Northern wheat; the cactus and the fir are often found within sight of each other. Nowhere are there so many strange and marvelous forms of life as here--of flowers, multitudinous cacti and the palms; of animals, the Gila monster, the horned toad, the hydrophobia skunk, and many other unique species. Besides the monotonous desert, with its apparent lack of interest to the traveler, the region contains the greatest natural wonder on the continent--the Grand Cañon of the Colorado River. It also possesses unnumbered other natural phenomena and some of the grandest mountain and forest scenery. With all its lack of rain, it is watered by two of the great rivers of the continent--the Colorado and the Rio Grande.

In its human life it is equally prolific in diversities. In few other places in the world is there such a commingling of dissimilar human elements. I doubt if even the cities of the Orient can present such contrasts of wholly unrelated races of people, as well as so great a variety of the white race. Here, in one small town, one may find representatives of several different tribes of the aboriginal Indians, in every state of civilization and savagery, picturesquely attired in bright-colored costumes, bearing their peculiar baskets and pottery. Here, also, is the next higher stratum, the Mexicans, in great numbers, and in all mixtures of blood from the nearly pure Indian peon upward. Here are African Negroes in considerable numbers, emigrants from the Southern States, and every town has its Chinese and usually its Japanese contingent, the overflow from California. Above all these, and in greatly superior numbers, rises the white man, usually American by birth, and yet generously intermixed with many of European nationalities. In most of the older towns, such as San Antonio in Texas and Tucson in Arizona, whole neighborhoods appear more foreign than American, presenting strange contrasts between modern store-buildings, banks, and churches, and ancient weather-worn adobe houses where the Mexicans live almost as primitively as did their forefathers a century ago.

The peopling of the country makes one of the most interesting and significant stories in the history of the nation. For many years it was the unknown land, the land of possibilities and wonders, as well as of danger and death. Therefore it attracted the hardy pioneer, and here, for lack of any other frontier on the continent, the pioneer, though with the germ of westward ho! still lingering in his blood, has been compelled at last to settle down. I shall not soon forget the sorrowful desert-dweller whom I met in what seemed the ends of the earth in Arizona. His nearest neighbor was fifteen miles away, his post-office twenty-five miles, and yet he was bemoaning the fact that the country was becoming crowded. "If there were any more frontier," he said, "I'd go to it."