the recent discoveries on Clear Creek had given matters a new
and more cheerful aspect ; so that, while two thirds of those
who started for "the diggings" that Spring never went with-
in sight of the Eocky Mountains, ā many of them not half-
way to them, ā while some barely reached Denver, and then
took the back track, the rival cities were gaining population
quite rapidly during the ten days that I spent in or near
them, and some good families were among the acquisitions.
Cabins that would gladly have been sold for $25 two months
earlier now ran rapidly up to $100; and the market could
fairly be quoted as active and advancing. There were as yet
few or no servants to be hired at any price ; but a consider-
able band of Arapahoes Avere camped in Denver ; and, while
the braves Avere thoroughly worthless, their squaws Avere Avill-
ing to do anything for food. True, they could do very little ;
but lufrrinfr water from the South Platte Avas the first requi-
site in housekeeping, and this they did faithfully; We lived
mainly on bread, bacon, beans, coffee, and nettles, the last
being boiled for greens ; but those who AA^ere not particular as
to dirt could often hwj a quarter of antelope just brought in
by an Arapahoe ; or, more probably, Idlled by the hunter and
backed in by his squaAv. AVliiskey was in good supply (I
knoAv nothing as to the quality) at a quarter (silver) per
drink. There Avere several rude bedsteads just constructed in
the Denver House, ā the grand hotel of the city, ā on Avhich
you AA^ere allowed to spread your blankets and repose for a
dollar a night ; but mine, being bottomed with rough slats
nearly a foot apart, almost broke my back, proving far less
luxurious than the bosom of mother Earth. Two blacklegs
rented opposite corners of the public room, and AVere steadily
SAvindling greenhorns at three-card monte, from morning till
bedtime: one stage-driver, Avho Avas paid off Avith 8207 at
noon, having lost the last cent of it to one of these harpies
A RIDE ACROSS THE PLAINS. 367
by 2 P. ]\i. The gamblers and other rough subjects had au
unpleasant habit of quarrelling and firing revolvers at each
other in this bar-room when it was crowded, and sometimes
hitting the wrong man, ā by which phrase I certainly do not
indicate any of their own number. On the whole, therefore,
I soon tired of hotel-life in Denver. It was not dull, ā quite
otherwise, ā but I am shy by nature and meditative by habit,
and some of the ways of the Denver House did not suit me.
They were unmistakably Western, and I was journeying to
study Western character; but, even though distance might
not lend enchantment to the view of these mining-region
blacklegs and ruffians, I am sure that they can be studied to
better satisfaction out of j)istol-shot than at close quarters.
" Suppose you jump a cabin ? " suggested the friend to
%vhom I intimated my preference for a less popular lodging.
I did not understand ; but he explained, and I saw the point.
Several cabins were still standing vacant, as many had been ;
and no one knew whither their owners had gone, so whoever
wanted one of these empty tenements just helped himseK.
I at once followed the fashion, and was happy in my choice.
I was thenceforth lodged very eligibly till the owner of my
cabin, returning from a prospecting tour, put in an appear-
ance. "He was e^^.dently embarrassed at the thought that his
advent must seem abrupt and unceremonious ; but I cut short
his apologies by insisting that the cabin afforded ample ac-
commodation for two ; and we thenceforth shared it very
comfortably for the few days that I tarried in Denver.
While thus snugly and cheaply lodged, I boarded with a
widow lady from Leavenworth, who had been keeping a mail-
station on the plains, but, tiring of that, had just migrated to
Denver, and jumped a cabin. She, with her little son, slept
on a sort of sheK nearer the roof than the floor of her single
room ; while two male boarders, waiting outside while she
made her toilet, spread their blankets on the earth-floor of
her tenement. At daylight, they turned out, giving her a
chance to dress, clear up, and get breakfast, which they duly
returned to eat. Such was life in Denver in June, 1859.
XLIV.
THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. ā THE GREAT BASIN.
I MADE a flying visit, directly after reaching Denver, to
the then new " Gregory Diggings," on Clear Creek, where
is now Central City. A good road, I hear, now winds thither
through the mountains, mainly keeping close to Clear Creek ;
but that was impossible in 1859 ; as even an empty wagon
would have been capsized into or toward the creek at least
a hundred times before making the distance. Our route lay
across the South Platte, the pmirie and Clear Creek (where
Golden City has since sprung up), and then right up the face
of the first ridge, rising 1,600 feet in a mile and a half, ā an
ascent so steep as to appear impossible to teams, however
lightly loaded ; and even saddle-horses seemed in great peril
of falling off and rolling to the bottom. After two miles of
level path through an open pine forest on the summit, we had
to descend a declivity nearly as steep ; then ascend a second
mountain ; and so on, till we camped at sunset, weary enough,
seven miles short of the diggings, which we reached about
nine next morning ; spending the day and night with the
pioneers, and returning to the Platte Valley the day after. I
saw enough on that trip to. convince me that the Eocky
Mountains abound in Gold and nearly all other metals, but
that these must be earned before they can be enjoyed.
I bade adieu to Denver about the 18th of June ; having
hired an " ambulance," or wagon and four mules, to convey
me to the Overland JSIail-route at Fort Laramie, on the North
Platte, 200 miles northward. I judge that there were twenty
considerable streams to cross in that distance, ā all then in
THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. ā THE GREAT BASIN. 369
flood, from the melting snows of the inner and higher moun-
tains. Several of these streams were forded with difficulty
by our team, ā one of them (the Cache le Poudre) being as
large as the Charles at Cambridge. I think we saw four huts
on the way, but only three of them were occupied. There
was no White person then living within fifty miles of Che-
yenne, where the Pacific Eailroad now enters the Rocky
Moimtains ; and only a deserted fort or military camp spoke
of civilization. Yet most of the region between the two
Plattes and the base of the Eocky Mountains ā a district
equal in area to Connecticut, if not to Vermont ā has good
soil, is tolerably timbered, grows fine grass luxuriantly, and
will yet subsist a large farming population. It is subject to
drouth, but may easily be irrigated ; and then its product of
Wheat, Oats, Barley, and Eoots will be immense. I judge
that nearly all the larger tributaries of the Missouri traverse
a good farming region directly under the Eocky Mountains
wherein they take rise. This region lies from 4,500 to 6,000
feet above tide, and hence is suliject to frost, hail, and late
snow, as well as to drouth ; yet I predict its rapid settlement
and growth. I wish I could see how to save its Aboriginal
inhabitants from sure and speedy extinction.
After waiting five days at Fort Laramie, I took the mail
stage (then weekly) which traversed the old Oregon as well
as California emigrant trail up the Platte and its northern
tributary, the Sweetwater, to that wide gap in the Eocky
Mountains kno^\^l as the South Pass, ā the SAveetwater
heading on the west side of the mountains, and sending (in
Summer) a scanty mill-stream through the Pass. INIuch of
this region is quite sterile ; snow lay deep in a ravine of the
Ptiss on the 5th of July ; while tliere is one large swamp,
thirty or forty miles this side, which remains frozen a foot or
two below the surface perpetually. There are small lakes on
this route that look most inviting, yet so surcharged Tvdth
alkaline minerals that to drink freely of their water is death
24
370 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
to man or beast. There is some Yellow Pine on the hills, with
less Cottonwood and Quaking Asp, mainly skirting, at long
intervals, the streams ; but this region is, for the most part,
unless rich in minerals, good for nothing. I learn that boun-
teous mines of Gold have lately been found here ; and I know
that the indications of Gold were quite j^alpable on the hills
in the Pass, where we camped and spent a day beside a run-
nel which brings its scanty tribute to the Sweetwater. But,
a few miles beyond the South Pass, where the mountains dis-
appear, and the road to Utah and California diverges from
the old trail to Oregon, and where each begins to descend
toward the Pacific, the country is utterly wortliless for at
least two hundred miles ; in the midst of which we crossed
Green River, running swiftly southward, in a very deep, nar-
row valley, which yields a little grass and less Cottonwood.
On either side of this valley stretch dreary wastes of thirsty
sand, shaded only by the two low shrubs, known locally as
Greasewood and Sagebrush, which, together, enclose a thou-
sand miles of the Overland Wagon-route, and probably cover
half a million square miles of the interior of our continent.
Greasewood is a species of Artemisia, and derives its vulgar
name from a waxy or resinous property, which causes it to
burn freely, even while green ; but it grows in bunches or
stools six or seven feet apart, with naked, glittering sand be-
tween them ; and so defies destruction by fire. Sagebrush
exhibits a number of shoots, twelve to twenty inches long,
from a common stalk or stump of about equal height ; each
shoot somewhat resembling a stalk of Sage in appearance and
color. There is a Sage-Hen that eats tliis j)lant ; but who,
unless famishing, would thereafter choose to eat the Sage-
Hen ? .
Fort Bridger was the first village we had seen since we left
Laramie ; like which, it owes its existence to a military post.
It is traversed by a brawling mill-stream (Ham's Fork) which
is rushing to be lost in Green River, and is said to have some
arable land in its vicinity. We were still considerably north
of the present route of the Pacific Railroad, which we had
THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. ā THE GREAT BASIN. 371
crossed and left near Cheyenne ; but soon, crossing a high
di^dde, we bore southward, and, descending rapidly, forded
Bear Eiver,. here a swift stream one or two hundred yards
wide, but scarcely more than two feet deep. It is unfortunate
that the Pacific Eailroad cannot follow this river hence to
Salt Lake ; but the course of the stream is so tortuous and so
shut in by mountains and difficult precipices that this may
not be. I judge that, next to the Sierra Nevada, already
nearly vanquished, the stretch from Green Eiver to Salt
Lake ā some three hundred miles ā is the most difficult
section of the entu'e work. But the route we traversed,
leaving that of the railroad far on our right (north), rises
easily out of the valley of Bear liiver, and thence follows
do^m a long, narrow, grassy valley or glen known as Echo
Canon, with steep cliffs on either side, emerges from it to
cross Weber Elver (also a tributary of Salt Lake), and thence
crosses two difficult ridges of the Wahsatch and Uintah
mountains, whence it winds dowm a ravine known as Emigra-
tion Canon till that opens into the valley of the Eiver Jordan
and of Salt Lake ; and soon we roll into the city of the many-
wived prophet, the capital of his sacerdotal and political
empire, and the most conspicuous trophy of his genius and
his power.
That city has so changed since I saw it, ā being now prob-
ably at least thrice its size nine years ago, ā that I ^\dll
speak of it briefly, and only as to certain permanent phases of
its character. My present belief is that, like most strangers,
I was more favorably impressed by it than I should have
been. Not that its more intelligent people received me kindly
and treated me with emphatic hospitality, ā I have been thus
welcomed to other cities, wliich nevertheless did not specially
impress me. Biit a thousand miles of parched, mountainous
desert (counting from Denver only) on which I had seen no
single productive farm, and nothing that could be fairly termed
a house but a few cheap structures for officers' lodgings at
Eorts Laramie and Bridger ā no vegetables, no furniture, no
beds, ā had predisposed me to greet even the ruder appliances
372 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
of urban life with uncritical satisfaction. Our civilization, re-
garded as an end, is faulty enough, and open to objections
from every side ; but, considered as a stage in our progress
from the status of the Esquimaux, the Digger, the Hottentot,
I submit that it may be contemplated with a complacency by
no means unreasonable. Soon after leaving the last Kansas
settlement, I noted the rounds of the ladder I had descended
during the preceding fortnight, and photographed them as
follows : ā
" May \2th, Chicago. ā Chocolate and morning journals last seen
on the hotel breakfast-table.
23cZ, Leavenworth. ā Room-bells and bath-tubs make their final
appearance.
24^/i, Topeha. ā Beef-steaks and wash-bowls (other than tin) last
visible. Barber ditto.
2^th, Manhattan. ā Potatoes and eggs last recognized among the
blessings that " brighten as they take their flight." Chairs ditto.
21th, Junction City. ā Last visitation of a boot-black, with dis-
solving views of a board bedroom. Beds bid us good by.
28!"^, Pipe Creek. ā Benches for seats at meals disappeared, giv-
ing place to bags and boxes. We (two passengers of a scribbling
turn) AATite letters to our journals at nightfall in the express-wagon
tliat has borne us by day, and must serve us as bedchamber for
the night. Thunder and lightning, from both south and west,
give strong promise of a shower before morning. Our trust, under
Providence, is in buoyant hearts and a rubber blanket. Good
night ! "
I descended somewhat farther afterward, and I did not
think of hardship, though the water was often scanty, as well
as bad, and the pilot-bread had been so long exposed to the
drying air of the Plains that human teeth could hardly pene-
trate it. Those who fancy army "hard-tack" dry eating
would devour it thankfully, after being rationed a single week
on that which I confronted on the Sweetwater and the Colo-
rado. But hard-tack is wholesome, if not toothsome ; while
the bread made on the Plains, of nearly equal parts of flour
and saleratus, baked in a frying-pan or spider, and eaten hot,
THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. ā THE GREAT BASIN. 373
tlioiigli I ate it with facility, destroyed my digestion, and
made me sick, ā there being notliing to relish it but poorly
smoked pork, except tea and coffee, which I declined. With
good water, I could stand almost anything ; but this was often
unattainable, and I suffered for want of it.
Salt Lake City suddenly restored us to abundance and com-
fort, ā rooms, ' beds, sheets, towels, vegetables, dried fruits,
shade, &c. ; while the water was beautiful and good. The
Mormons have faults ; but they are more uniformly indus-
trious and (after their fashion) pious than any other people I
ever visited. I doubt whether there is another city on the
continent wherein family worship is so general, and profanity
so rare, as in Salt Lake City, so far as its Mormon inhabitants
are considered. I must believe the authors of their revela-
tions either knavish or self-deluded ; but I have such a liking
for solid, steady, hona fide work, that the rank and fde have
my most hearty good wishes. Nowhere else are there so few
idlers (Brigham Young assured me that there was none but
himself; and he is kept busy in his vocation of prophet and
ruler), and nowhere else have so few poor and ignorant people
achieved so much that remains to benefit future generations,
as in Utah. I cherish the hope that their spiritual vision
will soon be cleared, and that they will yet, ceasing to be
polygamists, become better Christians, ā retaining the habits
of industry, frugality, and thrift, wdiich command my hearty
admiration. " He builded better than he knew " is a truth of
very wide application ; and I am confident that the Pacific
Eailroad, of which Brigham Young is grading the thirty
miles next northeast of his metropolis, is destined to work
changes which it is well that he does not foresee, and which
will render his dominions more populous and his people far
less docile to his guidance than they now are. I judge our
age inauspicious to prophets and new revelations from on
high ; and, though the past history of Utah seems to refute
my theory, I confidently expect that of the next twenty years
to confirm it.
XLV.
UTAH. ā NEVADA.
A PORTION of our little army, despatched from Kansas
late in 1857 to put down a threatened (or apprehended) ,
revolt of the Mormons, had stopped for the Winter at Fort
Bridger, after its trains,, following carelessly in its rear, had, not
far from the Colorado, been surprised and burned by a Mormon
force, rendering its Winter sojourn in that desolate region
one of great hardship, especially for its animals ; but it finally
marched into the Mormon settlements unopposed, ā the chief
Saints protesting 'that they had never purposed rebellion
against the National authority. The expedition, which had
threatened a bloody tragedy, was thus transformed into a most
expensive farce ; for, though the regulars were hardly more
out of place in Utah than they had been in Kansas, they were
a far more costly nuisance. Every pound of their sustenance
had been hauled across twelve hundred miles of desert and
mountain at a cost of $400 or $500 per ton, ā or, at any
rate, was charged for as if it had been. And, when I visited
Camp Floyd, where it was stationed, forty-five miles south-
west of Salt Lake City, officers were engaged, tmder orders
from Washington, in selling its heavy trains at auction, at
prices possibly averaging one half the actual value of the
mules and one tenth that of the wagons, ā the bidders being
few, and evidently comV)ined to give Uncle Sam the worst
bargains possible. Governments are made to be plundered, ā
at all events, are regularly used to that end. I presume that,
when the army was ordered from Camp Floyd to Texas the
next year, part of these same wagons were bought back from
UTAH. ā NEVADA. 375
their purcliasers at generous prices, ā which by no means
implies any generosity on the part of those who bought them
of the government and sold them back again.
I spent a day at Camp Floyd as the guest of my oldest
army acquaintance, Lieutenant-Colonel D. C. Euggies, 5th
Infantry, whom I had first known in 1835 as a Massachusetts
cadet, just appointed to a lieutenancy ; and who, having mar-
ried in Virginia, afterward became a General of the Southern
Confederacy. We dined with the commander of the post.
Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, ā a grave, deep, able man,
mth a head scarcely inferior to Daniel Webster's, ā who, less
than two years afterward, left Texas overland to take part ia
the Eebellion, and finally found death on the bloody field of
Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, where he led the Eebel host
with a gallantry and soldiership worthy of a better cause. If
some wizard had foreshadowed to us the future, as we sat
around his hospitable board not three years before, who would
have believed him ?
Camp Floyd had been located beside a small but constant
stream, with considerable stunted, bushy Cedar covering the
low mountains adjacent, whence it issued ; but the stage-route
thence to California rose gradually from its valley into a hilly,
burnt-up region southwestward ; and thenceforth, till we bore
up to strike the Humboldt at Gravelly Ford, some three hun-
dred miles westward, I can remember seeing but three Ijrooks
of any account, ā neither of those carr}dng water enough to
render it a decent mill-stream ; and neither, I judge, running
more than five miles from the clustered mountains between
which it was cradled, tiU the arid, thirsty plain had drank
the last drop, and left its shallow bed thenceforth in Summer
a stretch of dry, hot gravel and sand. We may have passed
a dozen springs in this distance, though I bebeve we did not.
In one place, there was a stretch of fifty miles from water to
water, save that some had been carted in barrels to quench
the thirst of our jaded mules at a point half-way from one
376 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
station to another. Twice, as I recollect, we sat down to our
noonday meal of pork and bread beside springs by courtesy,
where water liad been found by shallow digging in depressions
or " sinks " below the usual surface of the plains ; but the
warm, sulphurous fluid thence obtained required intense thirst
to render it potable. In one place, I recollect several miles
of the all-pervading Grease-wood and Sage-brush which had
been killed stone-dead, ā dried up, apparently, though their
power of resisting drouth is unparalleled ; yet stunted Bunch
Cedar and some Indian Pine thinly covered the brows or the
crests of many hills and low mountains; seeming able to resist
a drouth even of successive years. The country is so broken
and mountainous that I presume Artesian wells have since
been, or will easily be, dug in the reckless clay of the valleys,
which will supply water, not only for drinking, but for irriga-
tion ; and the valleys need but this to render their alkaline
clay -bounteously productive. I judge that the surface of
most of them has been raised twenty to fifty feet by earth
washed down, in the course of ages, from the circumjacent
mountains, and that, when irrigated, they wiU be cultivated
with facility, and with ample success. The Mormons raise
bounteous crops, especially of Wheat, wherever they can coax
a stream to meander across and percolate through a portion
of one of their valleys ; and I presume most of those between
the Wahsatch and the Sierra Nevada need but water to prove
them equally fertile. Many of the mountains, I doubt not,
wiU prove rich in minerals ; but they are rarely or never
arable, produce a very Httle grass in Spring only ; and their
scanty, fitful covering of wood, once cut off, would not be re-
produced in a century.
Bear in mind that the route I travelled rather skirts than
pierces the desert of deserts which spreads southwestward of
Salt Lake, nearly or quite to the Colorado ; covering many
thousands of square miles. A friend, now deceased, once
found himself " at sea " on this desert, and likely to perish of
thirst ; but he had a noble horse, to which he gave a free rein ;
and that horse brought him off alive, ā that was all. He
UTAH. ā NEVADA. . 377
crossed miles on miles of piire rock salt, ā how deep, he could
not say; but he brought away a fragment which had been
washed and worn into a nearly round log. as large as a man's
thigh, and three or four feet long, which I saw. Another
friend, who explored a route from Austin, Nevada, to the
Colorado (on the western verge of this desert), rode, for days,
down tlie bed of what had once been a considerable river, but
which seemed to have been absolutely dry for years.
There is ample corroborating proof that the Great Basin
has been far less parched than it is ; and I trust that a more
generous rain-fall will again be accorded it. Probably, re-
clothing it with timber would renew its rains ; but then the
rains seem to be needed to start and sustain the timber.
Two or three hundred miles north, several streams take rise
that make their way northward to the Columbia ; as the
Humboldt, issuing from the west side of the same mountainous
region, runs over three hundred miles W.S.W., to be lost in
a sandy, reedy marsh, not a hundred miles from the Sierra
Nevada ; but, southward of this strange river of desolation,
there is rarely a stream large enough to turn a grindstone,
till you are very near the banks of the ahnost equally lone-
some Colorado.
I rode fliore than two hundred miles down the south or
left bank of the Humboldt. In that distance, I judge that
all the water it receives from tributaries might be passed
through a nine-inch ring ; and the stream, of course, grew
smaller and smaller as it flowed. Possibly, three sjorings were
passed in all that distance, though I cannot remember so
many ; while I do right well remember my scarcely modi-
fied thu'st. The alkaline water of the Humboldt I coidd not
drink, though others did ; in Spring, when its A'olume is
greater, its quality is probably better. Once, we stopped by a