Chapter III: Part 3

But I must not forget the mules. Gaskill has a couple of cinnamon bears, in a room at the end of the barn. I can’t say that the Devil got into the mules, because the Devil is now ruled out; without a hell to put him in, he is no longer of any earthly use. I am sorry to lose him, because under certain circumstances I am a believer in intimidation; it is wholesome. I have known a single quiet and orderly hanging in a summary way, to make a neighborhood that would have terrorized Satan himself, as nice and well behaved as a community of Quakers. I heard one of our Denver preachers once say—and we all loved him—that there was “a certain class of mortals whom it was necessary to take by the neck and choke before they could be made ready for conviction.” The Devil has always been useful for that purpose, and I think he could be made available yet.

But I started to say something concerning those mules. The Devil, as I have said, did not get into the mules, but they got scent of those bears, and I venture the assertion that the bears discounted the Devil in his palmiest efforts, as heretofore reported. To speak without exaggeration, those mules were frightened; the bears were in their heads, heels, hair and eyes; inside and out, above and below, and all around, were bears. To those mules, it rained bears, and the atmosphere was pregnant with bears about to be delivered. If those mules had been human I would have thought it the worst case of delirium tremens that ever racked a diseased imagination. As the driver expressed it: “they was plumb crazy.” There was no crookedness about it; they were frightened horizontally as well as straight up and down, as I suppose the driver meant to be understood. It is impossible for me to tell what they did or attempted. They seemed capable of any extravagance except dying. I like to ride after mules in that condition; there is something exhilarating in dashing down a mountain road with one’s hair straightening out behind as though it would disappear by the roots; careening around short curves and making lightning-like estimates of the thousands of feet to the bottom of the gulch; picking out the softest rocks upon which to fall; flying over boulders and becoming entangled in tree tops fifty feet in the air, there to remain a torn and wretched monument of indiscretion. It wouldn’t be much of a monument, but enough to tell the tale. I thought how grand it would be, and told the driver that I preferred to have him pick me up whole some distance down the road; I felt confidence in my ability to control my own legs; the air was just right for a brisk morning walk; besides, much of the pleasure of the ride would be denied me by reason of my not having any hair to speak of that might stream in the wind. I made these suggestions and started. I believe the driver thought I was afraid to ride after those mules; but that was a mistake. I intended to ride after them provided there was anything to ride in when he should catch up to me, if he ever did. About two miles down the range I sat on a log and waited for the wreck. Presently I heard the rumbling of the wagon; soon it came in sight, the driver sitting at his post singing, as well as the roughness of the road would permit: “I want to be an angel.” I certainly thought he did, and asked him if the mules had not tried, at least, to run away, when they were being harnessed.

“Oh, no; they was too bad scared. You see, when they get that way they want to stay right with me; a mule is an obstinate cuss, you know, and only runs away for fun.”

Just then the ears of the off mule stuck out straight as the prongs of a magnified clothes pin, and she began to dance. This time it was a ground squirrel, not much larger than a lead-pencil. But the brake had to come down before the mule did. Shortly after, the nigh mule went through a like performance for a similar cause, and then they both waltzed to the music of the Frazier. I was sorry when we got as far as Cozzens’, because there it was plain sailing, with plenty of room to turn round and run away in, and yet those delightful mules trotted right along twenty-two miles to the Springs, regardless of gophers, old clothes, tin cans and two badgers. If Gaskill’s bears had got in the way, I firmly believe those mules would have trotted over them, or kicked them out of the road. Kick! They could kick in pure cussedness. “I should say so.”

A mule is a natural kicker, as a rule, but this pair had so improved upon nature’s gift, by constant practice, that they had reduced the accomplishment to an exact science. “They can fetch anything they go for, from a gnat on a stall post to a self-confident hostler.” “The nigh mule can take a fly off her right ear with her nigh hind foot.” I can’t describe how she does it, not having seen the feat performed, but the driver explained it to me so that I understood it. From my confidence in the veracity of the driver, but especially from my knowledge of the mule, I am ready to be sworn. But it is about time these mules were lost.

We have the usual complement of campers and tourists in the Park this season. The former are mostly of our own mossbacks; but it will not do to call the tenderfoot by any less dignified title than a tourist. I saw one of the latter start out the other morning for a day’s sport. He had a rifle and a shot-gun, a game-bag, a fishing rod and creel; he remarked to me, as he climbed up on the off side of his horse, that he was pretty well fixed for a day’s campaign. I told him I thought he was, but suggested that he ought to take along a bass drum to beat up the game, and, do you know, the fellow got mad and made me apologize. If he had only kept me in front of his infernal arsenal, I never would have modified my suggestion, but he threatened me over his shoulder, and that looked dangerous. He came back at night, to my surprise, but brought neither fish, flesh nor fowl; it is perhaps needless to say he was the only disappointed party in the Park.

A strict enforcement of the game and fish law would be an advantage to this vicinity. The Park is easy of access, and when the railroads, or either of them now under construction, shall be completed, the Park and its surroundings, a very paradise for sportsmen, can be made the most attractive resort in the state. Why, it is worth a day’s journey to sit where I do now, under the shadow of a pine whose every sigh in the cool breeze is freighted with fragrance, and feast on the massively beautiful scenery. A foreground of a mile or two of meadow rich in green and gold; the beetling lava cliffs on the left, and the brown hills, studded with great piles of granite, sloping gently down to the margins of the Grand. The noble stream flecked with silver, rolling majestically along and keeping time to its own melody, while away beyond lies the range for a background, with Long’s Peak, o’ertopped with fleecy clouds to serve him as a diadem, to be changed to a turban of rainbow tints for evening dress. And the sunsets that gather about the head of the rugged giant! You who view them from the other side should sit under the shadow of Mount Bross and see the cloud tints that crown His Majesty. Your view from the eastern side shows but the work of a tyro; from this the accomplished task of the master. If I had the gift I spoke of, you should see it as I do; as it is, there is nothing left but to come over and take it in for yourself. You can have a change of programme every day, and when you tire of the pictures, if you can, it is easy climbing a few hundred feet to find a dozen others just as grand and no twins. I suppose many a fellow has glanced over his shoulder up the Grand and seen a mountain with a notch in it, no more, not even a patch of color. But ten to one of these have seen something more and yet made a hearty meal of flitch and potatoes.

MUSIC AND METEOROLOGY.

Without fair success with rod and line, a camping trip, to some at least, would be a failure. The weather giving fair promise, I started over the divide below the Springs to revisit several familiar pools and riffles down the Grand, in anticipation of a good morning’s sport. The forenoon was expended with half a dozen trout and as many miles’ tramp as the result. Life is not worth living without a disappointment now and then. I met with a decided failure where I had rarely had anything but success, and it sharpened my appetite—for dinner.

A day or two after I was joined by my familiar and guide, the Doctor, who is an animated encyclopedia not only of the Park, but of the state, and we forthwith put up a job, as it were, upon the denizens of Williams’ Fork. Nine o’clock found us on the banks of that beautiful stream, our horses picketed and we ready to meet any emergency that might arise—that’s a new name for ’em. The Doctor started up stream and I took to the bed of the creek about half a mile from its mouth. Twenty minutes and not the sight of a fin. I also began to think that Williams’ Fork was depleted. Brown hackles and gray, and a half dozen other newfangled varieties not named to me, had no more effect than the wiles of a three-card-monte dealer have upon one who “has been there.” I thought of lying down upon the bank and seriously playing with the garter snakes, but changed my mind and put on a gray hackle with a peacock-body. Result, a trout. I had found the color to tickle their fancy for the day.

Trout and—and—women are very much alike; few men know much about either, unless you take their own words for it. Both are handsome, of course, delicate in taste, fickle as to ornament, not otherwise, and always too confiding in that which is least to be relied on. I felt sorry for that trout as I slipped her into my creel; they are such short-sighted fish—I’ll not say why—but they exact the angler’s care, and carry out the simile admirably. Had I offered that trout a worm for breakfast, the chances are ten to one she would have inquired whether I took her for a sucker. But it occurs to me all at once that I am on delicate ground—the current runs five miles an hour, the water is above my knees and the rocks are slippery; to fall is easy as—lying; the fate of our common ancestor is a warning.

By the time I had reached the Grand I had about seven pounds of fair-sized trout, besides having returned with all possible gentleness to the water a number of small-fry. I did not consider it much of a catch, as upon more than one occasion over the same ground I had filled my fourteen-pound creel in the same time. The Grand looked tempting as I waded out into the deep, clear current at the confluence of the streams, and dropped the peacock as far out in the deep pool as I could. I took that fly out in a hurry as I saw the gaping mouth of a leviathan, to my imagination, about to take it off. I speedily had the fly changed to one upon which I could rely, and commissioned it to that pool on business of moment. It had no sooner touched the surface than the glistening sides of my much-coveted triumph shone in the brilliant sunlight, clear of the water, as he darted for the fly and—missed. I thought the fish a little nervous, and I sent the falsehood over into the pool again; as soon as it touched the tiny wavelets that roofed the haunt of his excellency he was again visible, shooting from out the depths straight to his destiny. He reached it, and for a second lay poised as if in inquiry, and then, realizing that he had “struck it,” disappeared as suddenly as he had come. I realized, too, that I had struck it. There was music in the air—the music of the reel—and that trout danced to the measure with fifty feet of line before he allowed an inch of slack. He was nervous; there was plenty of water, a hundred feet at least, to the opposite bank, and miles up or down stream; there was no reason whatever for uneasiness—on the part of the fish I mean. But he seemed as much disturbed as ever when the slack was all in, and I, quietly and in as dignified but determined a manner as smooth stones and rubber boots would permit, backed up to the dry beach. Exhibiting the utmost reluctance to being thus led by the nose, he suddenly took it into his head to come voluntarily, started my way, but as suddenly changed his mind; the reel accommodated his whim and played a waltz; the old fellow, however, soon got giddy and asked for a rest; there could be no bar to so reasonable a request, paradoxical as it may seem; I immediately relieved him of the weight of the loose silk and gave him the privilege of a closer inspection of the gentleman at my end of the line. Had any other man been in my place, I should have concluded that the fellow on the fly was not favorably impressed, as he started with celerity on another trip across the Grand. Being myself a man of benignant appearance, I concluded, of course, that he had become enamored of the sound of the reel and was delighted that I had taken a hand in the revelry. Humanity, however, has not the monopoly on making mistakes, and as the reel was evidently taking a turn—this time at a dead march—I towed the gentleman round and gently drew him out on the clean gravel. He measured just nineteen inches; when I first saw him I thought he was “a yard long,” but even with his nineteen inches his capacity for conferring happiness was immeasurable. As I relieved his mouth of the hook, the Doctor, who had come down to me unawares, startled me with the remark, “You seem to take a heap of delight in catching a sucker.” There was a maliciousness in his tone that led me at once to inquire what success he had met with; his open creel disclosed three only, that would not weigh half as much as my capture; they were the result of his morning’s work. My own dignity will sometimes get the better of my reverence, and I read him a homily on envy.

The next day the Doctor proposed a visit to Grand Lake. I suggested that it threatened rain, and he replied that he who went fishing must expect to get wet. The retort, I told him, was dry with age; but the mules were hitched,—they have not been lost,—and we started up the Grand Valley in the sunshine, but had not been long on the road before it began to rain. Rain is a good thing in the mountains; it freshens up the earth, brightens the wild flowers, fills the air with a new fragrance, makes the grass grow, and I like it. I told the Doctor how much I enjoyed it coming down in vast sheets, but he did not say anything, only smiled. I’ve seen that smile before; in a fighting man it is dangerous. I didn’t say anything more about the rain, but tried to impress him with my knowledge of locations for dairy farms, and the excellence of the neighborhood for the growth of turnips and potatoes for winter food, without irrigation. Toward noon we came to a stream, and he told me it was North Fork; it rained at North Fork. I asked him where the other prongs were. He said there was but one other, “up yonder.” I told him the style of fork was long out of date. He stopped the mules. I noticed that smile again, and immediately changed the subject by asking him how far it was to the lake. He said it was about a mile in a direct line, but we did not go that route. About an hour afterwards I asked again how far it was, and he said it was half a mile in a direct line. I was about to inquire why he didn’t take the “direct line,” but changed my mind, and reflected upon the uncertainty of distances in this light air, and the gratifying exactness of the information one derives from being told something is “up yonder.” It rained. Sometime during the afternoon we came to what appeared to me a long line of embankment of gravel and boulders that might have been thrown up by the Titans for a railroad bed in the long ago. We had passed a number of railroad grade stakes, and I inquired if the embankment was the road-bed of the Denver, Utah and Pacific. He said it was a moraine. I thought he was joking, but he always laughs when he gets off a good thing, and he looked as sober as a hired mute at a pauper funeral. I meekly suggested that we had already had more rain than—. He stopped me and the mules right there; said the lake was just over that bank, and had no bottom; that I deserved to be drowned, and wanted to know my weight. I told him that under ordinary circumstances not very heavy, too light to sink, at least, but when wet I swelled. He concluded to go on. It rained, and after awhile we reached the town of Grand Lake. It is hid from the lake, and I was thankful; for I could climb over the moraine—what a handy word for such weather—and look out upon a beautiful sheet of water nearly three miles long by half that in width, guarded at the east and south by mighty hills, while to the southwest I could have recognized Powell Mountain, the grand, with lower hills for distant foreground, and forget the two saloons, the saw mill, tavern and a few slab shanties that were hidden from view—by the moraine—while the clouds hid everything else; and it rained.

We crossed the north inlet and pitched our tent, at the recommendation of a friend, in the midst of a grove of young pines, where the ground was soft with the dead needles from the protecting branches. The couch was delightfully tempting, on the very margin of the lake, with the gentle murmur of the miniature breakers to lull us to sleep. But it rained; I think, however, I have mentioned that fact; there was another drawback, or rather a number of them—ticks. The next morning another friend exhibited to our wondering gaze about two quarts of fish, something less than a hundred to the quart, and said he caught ’em with grasshoppers. I asked him if the grasshoppers were small. He said they were ordinary grasshoppers. Then I asked him if he had to rip any of them open, and he wanted to know for what, and I said to take the fish out of them, of course. He was a polite friend, and he laughed, but I know him for a mimic. He said the fishing was splendid, and I did not tell him of my nineteen-inch prize, lest he might for the first-time doubt my veracity.

After breakfast, it looked as though we might have some “falling weather,” and, while I am partial to a little rain after a very long dry spell, I suggested to the Doctor that, considering we had to do some fording, we had better get to the Springs while we might. He went right off and hitched up those mules; never said a word; didn’t even ask me to help him. He wanted me to carry away a pleasant remembrance of the lake, so he drove round to the south side. Then it began to rain. It is raining yet, and, to all appearances, is settled weather.

I have been sitting under my canvas roof this blessed day, looking at the rain and watching the meanderings of the tiny rivulets outside, and the midges that congregate about their margins. They stand on the current and ride off, and I sometimes think they come back again to “keep the mill going,” as you and I did on the ice when we were younger boys than now. The ground squirrels and chipmunks come out of their holes to pay me brief visits and then scud back. The little chips are cunning chaps, their motions are agile, their eyes are bright, and the glistening rain drops that soak all else, leave no impression upon their glossy fur. They run up the stalks of the wild rye, nibble off a head and drop to the ground as quickly as falls the severed top, and then to shelter under the lee of a log or a projecting rock, to feast. One other visitor I have had to-day—a solitary blackbird with feathers awry and tail bedraggled. He had a melancholy look in his white eyes as he cocked his head despondingly, and his forlorn condition made me think he might be, in miniature, the larcenous and unfortunate jackdaw of Rheims, suffering under the Cardinal’s curse. His wretched condition was contagious, and I myself was about to request him to “move on,” when one of his brethren, dressed in blue and sable, a policeman, evidently, in their community, ran him in, or off. For aught I know he may be now before His Honor on the general charge of vagrancy, with a prospect of a fine and costs, or in default of means, with a term in the blackbird jail staring him in the face.

I want to go home. The Grand is brown, Williams’ Fork is gold color; the Troublesome is so thick that you can stick a knife into it, turn it round and see the hole. Trout fishing this side Egeria Park is not to be thought of, for it seems to have been raining as it never rained before. As if ’twould keep on raining, evermore.

PHILOSOPHY.

Upon the contingency of a rainy day it is always pleasant to have something to read in the mountains. A friend of mine gave me a pamphlet written by one Herbert Spencer, entitled “Education.” A level-headed appreciative friend who understands one’s needs, is a good thing to have. Education was my necessity. After being educated I became hungry for more. My friend had said there were “some good things in Herbert; that he was a philosopher, but given to infidelity.” I discovered that Herbert had written a library; I had, then, so to speak, the wide world from which to choose. I am a seeker after happiness, so I selected “Social Statics, or the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness.” If there is any one thing that I enjoy more than another, it is happiness. Having secured the key to the “Essential Conditions,” I felt as I imagine a hungry and ragged prospector feels when the assayer tells him he has “struck it,” and drew heavy drafts on the future, just as any prospector does. The “Essential Conditions” being philosophy, is not dry reading as you may imagine, that is on a rainy day in camp. It is good as a comedy.

Dickens tells us that the editor of the Etanswill _Gazette_ employed a savan to write an article on Chinese Metaphysics, and that the learned gentleman did it after this fashion: He consulted the Encyclopedia Britannica, first under the title “Chinese,” and second under the title “Metaphysics,” and combined his information. The editor gravely informed Mr. Pickwick that the essay caused a sensation, as no doubt it did, and Her Majesty’s minions were put on the lookout for an escaped lunatic. Sometimes, while studying the “Conditions”—you study and do not read philosophy—I thought Herbert, when he labored on the “Conditions,” must have been a very old man, in his second childhood, for instance, and troubled with dyspepsia. Sometimes that he must have been young, very young, staggering under a heterogeneous load of information that had got the better of his mental calibre; that his mind, so to speak, was in the condition of a few acres of undergrowth just after a hurricane—demoralized, as it were. Sometimes—when his arguments reminded me of a horde of inebriated aborigines, each ready to kill his neighbor—that he must have been in good condition, with a view to sensation and ducats, and that if his theories, conceding he had any, could, by any conceivable method be put into practice, it would be when “chaos was come again,” but that his Christian readers wouldn’t see the joke, would take him to be serious, and advertise him with abuse.

“There are some good things in Herbert,” of course; I enjoyed them; unless a thing is good you cannot enjoy it; the only one to doubt this would be Herbert. He himself is an argument against total depravity, yet if you can find that he admits the contrary as to all humanity, except Herbert, call me Ananias, and his wife too.

What has Herbert Spencer got to do with Middle Park and trout fishing? you inquire. Not anything, except that he says no fellow has a right to own a mine; that if he—the fellow, I mean—finds a good mine, it belongs to everybody, and he must ask everybody’s permission to work it and convert the proceeds to his own use. I wish I were everybody, or “Society,” as Herbert calls it, I’d go right over to Leadville or Rabbit Ear Range and assert my rights. Being everybody, nobody else would be around to say anything, except the fellow who had the mine. If he undertook to draw his gun, I’d stand up in front of him and argue the point, while I went round behind him and took away his six-shooter. Being everybody, this would be easy to do. Then I’d let the fellow go find another mine, and everybody would go and tell him he was a claim-jumper and “must light out;” and I’d keep on until I had corraled all the good mines in the state. Then I’d go down to New York and interview Mr. Vanderbilt and other millionaires, and convince them that they entertained a mistaken notion as to the ownership of the many odd millions of government securities and sundry moneys and valuables, real and personal, said to be in their names. When I’d got all that, I’d buy—no, I wouldn’t—I’d take possession of New York; after that I should be capable of anything—except managing Mr. Conkling.

But I hear you inquire again: What has all this to do with Middle Park and trout fishing? Not anything. But that I am puzzled to know, under the circumstances, what I am to do with the gentleman last above named. If Herbert were only here he could, perhaps, help me out of my dilemma; he can set up a dilemma and help himself out of it as easy as—falling off a precipice, and there is nothing hard about that till you get to the bottom. It must be because his dilemmas are all imaginary, or that mine is not a dilemma. Let us see what he says of one of his: “Of this (dilemma) nothing can be said, save that it seems in part due to the impossibility of making the perfect law recognize an imperfect state, and in part to that defect in our powers of expression. As matters stand, however, we must deal with it as best we may.” See how he has helped himself out of that! There is a world of wisdom in it all, especially the last sentence, I know, if I could only find it. But that’s the trouble with Herbert—You ask him for bread and he gives you a stone. I know I can do as best I may, but I want to know what to do with Conkling; I cannot go on and perfect my monopoly according to Herbert’s philosophy without disposing of Roscoe. This planet is not big enough for both. I am in possession of all worth having. It is well demonstrated that two bodies cannot occupy the same space. He is too old to educate. I am, as Herbert’s disciple, opposed to coercion. Everybody, that’s me, is entitled to his own free will, but here I can’t have mine. He says that nothing can be said, and yet all the newspapers of the country, for three or four months, have been saying a great deal. Then he tells me of the difficulty of making the perfect law—that’s me, again—recognize the imperfect state—that’s Roscoe. But the latter makes me recognize him. What use is there in telling me I may deal with him as best I may? I didn’t need a philosopher to tell me that. I want that impossible possibility of Herbert’s—a perfect law. I am in some degree mercenary; everybody is. If I had that law it would be a curiosity, valuable as some of the mines voluntarily surrendered, as already stated, and particularly valuable at this crisis. I want to know how to dispose of Conkling.

You ask me again: What has this to do with trout fishing and Middle Park? and what good is it? Nothing, except it is some of Herbert’s philosophy considered in a light atmosphere; where the air is thin, and you can see a great way, it is easier discovering obscure objects in the distance. Herbert could not have expressed himself more clearly.

Well, all right; I’ll stop right here. But I would like to say just a word about Herbert’s style. I like his style—when I can understand what it is. His arguments are something between black-letter Norman-French and a fashionable bonnet. The one is incomprehensible to the ordinary mind, and the other is a delightful combination of vagaries. Good-bye, Herbert. I hope you will have a good time. But if you don’t find it harder work traveling over your own turnpike with the load you have on than driving a jack train over a blind trail, you can set me down for a fool or a philosopher—the difference is so slight that one may be happy as either.

The conditions essential to happiness are three, and may be described thus: Two primary, and one primary and secondary, or primary or secondary, depending altogether upon the existence of the two primary. Thus: the first condition essential to happiness is—that is human happiness; “I do not wish to be misunderstood,” nor have the happiness of which I am now writing “confounded (nonsense! No, sir) with some other” happiness—an appetite; this is the first primary. (No, sir! I am not a ward politician.) Let me repeat: the first condition essential to happiness is an appetite. The second primary condition essential is a good digestion. Dependent upon these two is the third condition essential, which may be called something to eat. Thus, if the appetite and digestion are good, the third—something to eat—becomes an essential condition and primary. If the appetite and digestion, or either, is impaired, the third essential condition becomes secondary or useless, so to speak. These, the essential conditions, concurring in one man, he is capable of happiness, mental and physical, otherwise not. Observe, I do not affirm he will be or is happy, but that he is capable, merely, of happiness. The conditions essential must concur, however, and in one man. This is a necessity more than a condition, and may be called properly a concurrent necessity, rather than a condition essential. But the appetite requires food. I mean by this that the appetite of the man—and the term is used in a generic sense and includes women—the most superficial thinker will concede without argument that there must be a man to have the appetite; the man, therefore, will be understood, thus: The appetite of the man requires food. If he have the appetite and not the food, the conditions are non-concurrent. If he have the food and not the appetite, there is a similar, but not exactly parallel, non-concurrence. If he have the appetite and the food and the dyspepsia, which is the corollary of indigestion, and the opposite of good digestion, or equivalent to no digestion at all, there is a lack of the conditions essential. It would seem, therefore, that there are only three conditions essential, but those three must necessarily concur in one man before he can be happy.

I like positive people with positive opinions, not people who are perpetually preferring exceptions. Now I have one of those non-committal mortals, who is willing to admit that my conclusion is correct, indisputable in fact, _except_ that I have not taken into consideration the possible non-concurrence of the conditions essential in the event that the food, admitted, has not been properly prepared. While I am free to admit that I have not as yet discovered anything esthetic about the mere operation of eating, and, farther, that it is purely an animal necessity, yet I must contend that the preparation of the food is so far secondary as to be a condition non-essential, as I will now proceed to——.

Well, just as you say; I’m never disposed to bore one if I can help it, though you might have so augured in the premises, after reading the title. Do not swear. I give Herbert up with regret; the sun has come out after the rain, and it is delightful outside this canvas house of mine. The air is fresh with the new dampness, and the rain-drops will not linger long in the shirt fronts of the mountain daisies. What could I have done this afternoon if not for Herbert?

AN IDLE MORNING AT GRAND LAKE.

From under the shelter of a friendly pine I look out upon a long stretch of water, two miles and more, to a sloping beach of a few yards in width, and then a belt of young trees growing back to a rugged mountain gorge. The bright green of the growth contrasts with the time-stained hues of the great piles of rock, and these grow more wild as the eye follows up the defile. Then a white patch, the length of a man’s arm and the breadth of a hand, glistens in the rays of the morning sun, here inaudible, but there a roaring waterfall a hundred feet high.

The gorge widens and drifts away to the right and left, but reaching high, with irregular outlines traced against the blue sky; the tints of brown and gray and green intermingle in bountiful confusion, but never wearisome; then, seemingly, blocking up the gorge in huge and awe-inspiring massiveness, a dome-shaped mountain, with miles of base and height far reaching above the growth of vegetation; just below its summit a bed of snow, shaped like a dove, defying the hot rays of an August sun, sparkles like a jewel on the mountain’s brow. Silent and grand, it o’ertops the beautiful lake, mirrors its rugged outlines upon the calm surface, and faintly tints the clear waters with the colors of its robes. To the right and left the nearer and lower-lying pine-covered hills reach round and down to the water’s edge.

And the lake, a gem in the mountain fastness, how calm it is! There is no melody in the pines this morning, their sighing is hushed, and the lake is still, its smooth surface only dotted here and there with the widening rings made by the leaping trout. How deep it is no man knows; how cruel it has been is the subject of many a story within the experience of the whites about its shores, and legends not a few among the red men. Seductive it is in its silent beauty, and treacherous as grand. Cold and relentless as fate, “it never surrenders its dead.” The Ute cannot be induced to approach it, and mentions its name with a shudder, while ye gentle angler commits his frail bark to its bosom with commendable prudence. There is no telling when a storm may come; the clouds are not always the harbingers of a gale; it may come when the sky is clearest, and the awkward skiffs that prevail hereabout are not the safest, even under skilful hands.

But, as the sun puts behind him the early morning hours, the dark tints of the smooth waters change, and a mile or more away a ray of silver flashes across the lake; its outer line moves my way, and as the tiny waves reach my shore, the breeze that moved them brings the sound of the waterfall. I listen to the melody it sings, always mellowed in its highest notes by the distance, and then dying gradually away as if sighing the requiem of the lost lying buried here, or as fade the last moments of a weird dream.

And, while I am dreaming, a friend of mine, to whom this ripple is a never-failing sign, pulls out into the lake. I mark the long, steady stroke, and wonder how it is that one so long out of practice can feather his oars so well, when he catches sight of me, idling away the time, and stops. But I wave him on, and watch him as he makes for a point on the western shore that we both know; where the light tint of the water changes suddenly to a hue almost black; where the depth on one side the boat is six feet and on the other may be six hundred; where the trout are large, and where we have had many a good fight. In a few minutes he has business on his hands. I can see his rod, against the dark background of the adjacent pines, bend and spring back, and bend again, and then the flash of silvery spray as the stricken trout breaks the surface in his vain effort to free his mouth from the cruel barb. But a few moments, and the mastery is awarded to human skill, and I see my friend hold up his capture for my delectation. In his enthusiasm he does not stop to consider that I have to take a great deal for granted, that I can at best see only a minute something glisten in his grasp; but he takes off his hat, waves it over his head, and I conclude he has a pounder at least. It turned out to be a little short of double that.

As I lazily wave a response of appreciation my boot-heel comes in contact with a small stone. Something in its shape leads me to pick it up; I find it scarred, and know enough to understand that it is a scratched stone from the till. And so my eyes wander from this product of nature’s great lapidary over to the waterfall and the mountain gorge, which had been his workshop, how many thousand years ago, who can tell? The beautiful waterfall is all that remains of him, but his handiwork is abundant.

Stretching along the east shore lies a great lateral moraine, even now twenty, and, in places, thirty feet high, made of great rocks, thousands of tons in weight, down to mere grains of sand. How many generations of pines have found precarious foothold there and died, may be conjectured only. But a new growth is springing up, as if it were the pleasure of the present to keep green the grand monument of the dead glacier.

On the narrow beach, with its background of new growth, smolder the dying embers of a camp-fire. My eyes follow the thin column of blue smoke that rises and wreathes itself among the tree-tops, and floats away to where desecration has stepped in. The suggestion of primitive life is dispelled by the ridge pole of a mean house obtruding itself above a depression in the moraine, and I know that this is but the best of a number of slab shanties. They are hidden from my sight, but I recognize them as one does a boil.

The first step into the wilderness of life is filled with bright anticipations, and lack of restraint makes one’s happiness as limitless as the great unknown into which one is traveling; the second step is monotonous, and one sighs for the promises of the end. The camp-fire, emblematical of the first step, is passing away; the slab shanty, the sordid, hard existence that makes life a burden, is the second step, and one longs for the third, that may, if nature must feel the weight of our sacrilegious hands, give us the ashler, graceful roofs, broad porches, and the comforts of a new life. Pioneers are lauded for “subduing the wilderness,” but deliver me from witnessing the progress of subjugation. I want to be the first, or, that being impossible, the next best thing to do is to wait till the ruin is complete. One can then imagine what the surroundings were; but in the middle period no room is left for imagination,—one can neither wonder what it was or will be, and the only thing left is to “unpack my heart with words, and fall a cursing like a very drab.”

While my mental anathemas and I are holding high carnival, I am conscious of the presence of something besides the figures of my imagination. Looking around, I discover a dark-complexioned woman, with hair black as night, when cats most do congregate; eyes like jet, square face, all one color—parchment; a mouth that shuts like a steel-trap. Her hair brushed smoothly back, and gathered behind in a great coil, is beautiful; that is all the beauty I see, except, perhaps, a dainty buttoned boot with a high instep. In one hand she holds the end of a small chain, at the other end of which is—yes, a monkey! This predecessor of the missing link looked at me in a sort of dreamily sympathetic way, and I at him. Our commiseration was mutual, and I felt inclined to shake hands with him. His owner was a French woman, of course; I do not think a woman of any other nation, except as a matter of business, would go wandering round among the Rocky Mountains with a monkey. If she had had a hand-organ strapped to her back, I could have forgiven her, even if grinding out “Days of Absence.” About the time I had “doffed my old felt,” we were joined by the other member of the family; he looked like an Egyptian three thousand or more years old. Not understanding French, I stepped into my boat and joined my friend.

I have been making an effort to secure for you a picture of the lake, and though the photographer has been about here frequently, my success has been indifferent. Every view worth having is sure to have a foreground of one or more of the lords of creation, “bearded like the pard,” with an arsenal strapped around their bodies, and an expression beaming out from under their broad-brimmed hats that would drive an ordinary man clear into the ground in sheer humiliation. Think of these addle-pated asses posing for exhibition amid scenes that should awaken naught but wonder and admiration, blended with that reverence one must feel in the presence of the Father’s works, and have charity if you can. The very boulders against which they lean are satires that will endure the tread of the centuries long after this world shall have forgotten that such fellows or their seed had ever incumbered the earth.

“CAMPING WITH LADIES” AND—THE BABY.

Before the little narrow gauge engines of the Denver, South Park and Pacific with their trains of baby cars went thundering up through the cañons, reaching out for Leadville, the trouting in the Platte was prime. Following the sinuous track, first on one side of the river, then on the other, you can look out to the right and see your engine going west while your car is going east, then your engine starts east or north and you go south or west. Now you crane your neck to catch the top of some overhanging cliffs a thousand feet high, and are suddenly jerked around a curve into a little glade of a dozen acres with a little brook running through it; then you are as quickly yanked into another cañon. If one were drunk no doubt, the road would be straight. But thirty-five or forty miles from Denver the cañon grows familiar. Buffalo Creek comes tumbling out from the south, and presently the brakeman puts his head in at the door and shouts: “Pine Grove!” This is the Pine Grove known to travelers who go by rail, but the Pine Grove of twenty odd years ago was six miles away from the river, and the railroad Pine Grove was Brown and Stuart’s ranche, the owners of which drove a thrifty traffic in hay.

In August, 1868, I made acquaintance first with the pools and riffles in the vicinity of the old Brown and Stuart’s ranche. I clambered up and down the cañon for five or six miles east and west. The rush and the roar of the crystal waters made glorious music, and an hour’s fishing would send me laden back to camp. But for all the grand surroundings, the fresh air, the wild flowers and the trout, there was weariness of heart for her and me who made our camp on the margin of the then beautiful stream. There had a little while before crept over our threshold a shadow we all dread, and which had gone out again leaving a wound that would not heal.

But later on, when the cloud with the silver lining had turned a little of its brighter side our way, there came out to us one of your down-east girls, to whom the “Great American Desert” was a revelation, and these grand old mountains an epic. It was the season for camping, and she was stricken with the mania at once. She approached the subject tenderfootedly, but being assured that nothing was easier, nothing better for city folks, ecstacy was the consequence. Then there suddenly arose an insurmountable barrier.

“What will you do with the Governor?”

“Take him along, of course.”

“What! baby sleep in a tent? Be eaten by mosquitoes, rained on and bitten by snakes?”

The prospect was appalling; but then I assured her that fresh air never hurt babies; that mosquitoes were unknown, in August, at least; that rain was such a rarity that I was compelled to go to the creek for moisture, and as for snakes, the rattlers, at least, they never got beyond the foot hills; the little gart—a-hem—striped snakes were pleasant to have around, and were cleaner than flies. Besides it was confidently anticipated that baby was about to distinguish himself, and there was no panacea so efficacious for teething babies as the mountain air. That settled it.

The first thing to be looked after was the mess kit—known among the cow-boys as the “chuck box.” Mine would fit neatly into the tail end of a wagon; was about two feet and a half from top to bottom, and about twelve inches deep; had racks for cups, saucers, plates, knives and forks, and plenty of room for two weeks’ supplies of flour and other necessaries. When we wanted to lunch it was an easy matter to drop the tail gate of the wagon, let down the side of the mess kit, and we had a good table; the whole thing was as handy as a pocket in a shirt, and its capacity marvelous. An ordinary lumber wagon with spring seats, an A tent, 7 × 7, for the women folks, plenty of rubber ponchos, a change of clothing, wool, of course, all round. All together making an abundance for comfort, and a light load with which the horses could trot along and not half try.

About the hour that Hamlet’s father was wont to render himself up to “sulphurous and tormenting flames,” we were astir, and before the sun was up we were away. Fifteen miles to the foot hills and Turkey Creek cañon. Towards noon the sun beats down hotly on the plains, and I always make it a point to get to the cañon by ten o’clock at the outside. And this morning we passed Harriman’s before ten, and from our shelf on the mountain side we could look out east till plains and sky came together.

Down below us, on the left, six or eight hundred feet, the little creek looked about as wide as one’s finger. The road is fairly wide enough for the wagon, with here and there a “turn out,” to accommodate passing teams. To the right a perpendicular wall running up a hundred feet; to the left—well, our visitor said she was tired of riding and would like to walk a little; the road was smooth as a floor, and the grade easy. I suggested that horses rarely cut up capers in such places, but the effect of a wrecked wagon and the remains of a mule lodged against a granite boulder half way down the mountain was not to be overcome by any assurance of mine; and walk she did; so did the baby’s mother and maid, taking turns in carrying his majesty for a couple of miles. Not having any hills to climb the inconvenience is not so great; but, take a twenty-five pound youngster in your arms, at an elevation of, say nine thousand feet, and undertake to walk up hill; a half mile seems twenty, and at the end of three-quarters you want to lie down, wondering if your lungs are larger than the universe. But like everything else in this life, it becomes easy when you get used to it.

Our first objective point on this trip was Reed’s Mill, about thirty miles from home. No trout, but wild raspberries, now in their prime. Did you ever eat any? If not, the first one you put on your tongue will make you “wish your throat a mile long and every inch a palate,” with accessible untold acres of berries. There is about them a tenderness and luscious delicacy, a fragrance and even beauty, that makes a cultivated brother look and taste in comparison like a combination of mucilage and sawdust. The “Shepherd” thought when Tom Moore was penning his Loves of the Angels, that he “fed upon calf foot jeelies, stewed prunes, the dish they ca’ curry, and oysters.” But I don’t believe it. Tom was in America once, and I believe he strayed this way, and was inspired by mountain raspberries, with cream so thick “a spider might crawl on’t.” I do not believe Tom was so much of an animal as Hogg, by his wit, would make him.

But the fruit season is brief, and three or four days in the berry patch set me yearning for running waters, and the delicate salmon-colored fins. So we broke camp and turned into the road for Pine Grove and the Platte. By five o’clock we were fixed to stay, with plenty of pine knots for the camp fire and quaking asp to cook with, our only neighbors a couple of “English cousins,” owners of the ranche, from whom we could get cream, and butter and milk, and who helped make our evenings “jolly.”

Everything being in trim for the proper conducting of household matters, I received orders to “catch a mess for supper.” Right in front of our tent, two rods away, a gravelly bar reached from the bank to the water, and the opposite side, fifty feet about, the river ran deep and rapidly. I had never failed securing a trophy from that swirl, and I sent a gray hackle on its mission as near the opposite willows, and as deftly as my skill would permit. I “struck it rich” the first cast; the fraud had barely touched the water before I saw the jaws of a beautiful trout close upon it, and felt his strength at the same instant. Since last summer’s experience I have wished more than once that I had been on that occasion the owner of a split bamboo. As it was, the sport resolved itself into a mere trial of strength between tackle and fish. In three seconds he was ignominiously snaked out on the beach, a three-pound trout, the largest I have ever caught, and enough for supper.