ï~~k C ï~~THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY ï~~ ï~~ ï~~ ï~~ ï~~ ï~~t j, ï~~1.,, r a:.,..;... _,. a,. "~ ~ _,:>t,.; -.;. ^.;., Â~;.:, _., b s,,,..,,., 3"fir, it k ï~~i ï~~Gm UNDEVELOPED WEST; OR, FIVE YEARS IN THE TERRITORIES::B "m X 1- lT GiA COMPLETE HISTORY OF THAT VAST REGION BETWEEN THE MISSISSIPPI AND THE PACIFIC, ITS RESOURCES, CLIMATE, INHABITANTS, NATURAL CURIOSITIES, ETC., ETC. LIFE AND ADVENTURE ON PRAIRIES, MOUNTAINS, AND THE PACIFIC COAST. WITH TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY ILLUSTRATIONS, FROM ORIGINAL SKETCHES AND PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEWS OF THE SCENERY, CITIES, LANDS, MINES, PEOPLE, AND CURIOSITIES OF THE GREAT WEST. BYJtiIB EADLE, WESTERN CORRESPONDENT OF THE CINCINNATI COMMERCIAL, AND AUTHOR OF "LIFE IN UTAH," ETC., ETC. Issued by subscription only, and not for sale in the book stores. Resieldents of any State desiring a copy should address the Publishers, and an Agent will call upon them. See page,.82, NATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, PA.; CHICAGO, ILL.; CINCINNATI, OHIo; ST. LOUIS, Mo. ï~~U-wo V^ V Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by J. it. JONES, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. ï~~726458 PREFACE. ANOTHER book on the West! Yes, and why not? The West is the fiuture home of millions now living in the East, and there is more that ought to be known of its wonders and capabilities than is likely to be published by the few who have devoted themselves to the work. There ought to be a new book on the West, by some careful observer and thorough explorer, at least once a year; for so many and so various are the changes, so important the new discoveries, that a volume is but thoroughly read before the. facts it narrates are old. The undeveloped portions of the West make up an immense area, and no one can flatter himself that he has thoroughly explored it. The most that can be expected is, that each traveler shall seize upon the salient features of certain sections and portray them to the popular mind. No man can hope in the short space of five years to see all of the undeveloped West. Arizona alone deserves years of carefill study, and New Mexico is still almost an unknown region to Americans, containing material for a vast deal of investigation. This work is simply a personal record of my five years' 15 ï~~16 PREFACE. travel and residence in the new States and Territories -where I went, what I did, what I saw and what I thought about it. Two points, however, of practical interest I have kept steadily in view: to give carefully arranged facts in regard to the lands still open to settlement; and to correct a number of popular errors in regard to soil and climate. The chapters treating specifically on lands in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Dakota, California, Oregon and Texas, it is hoped, will aid in the first object; in regard to the second object, I have pointed out most of the prevailing errors-to call them by no harsher name-found in numerous land circulars and railroad reports, and refuted them by a general statement of facts. It was my prime object to make this work a startling novelty in one respect: by telling the exact truth about the particular points to which settlers are most urgently invited. If my views and conclusions on the Northern Pacific Railroad lands, and some other sections, differ very greatly from the reports of officials and their guests heretofore published, the reader must judge whether the difference is my misfortune or their fault. Having stated the objects of the work, the difficulties in the way of its execution, and the points where most criticism may be expected, I submit it to the public Without further apology. J. H. B. EVANSVILLE, INDIANA, May 15, 1873. ï~~Y i, u 11 ', V ",: 't i. u ',..tr.:. i; _,.,-.i ': -,., 7 -;..:, z -~,y;:;..;,:,, an. {.... ' ': _...;,....,. -. a rn r: yr _,,,., d",.:' Cf N -,ir,.'a1' i a, t',r ï~~ ï~~LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 1. General View of the Yosemite Valley.............................F.. rontispiece. 2. The Great Canon and Lower Falls of the Yellowstone..............PAGE 3 3. Rock Pinnacles above Tower Falls, Yellowstone River.................... 5 4. In Camp with the Outlaw Navajoes..................................17 5. Lake-and Mt. Tamalpais in the Distance.................................... 23 6. Mormon Tabernacle-Endowment House in the Distance................ 27 7. A Basin on the Columbia River-and Mountain Peak in the Distance. 29 8. Down the Callon.................................................................... 31 9. "Go West, Young Man; Go West! "...................................... 34 10. Autograph Letter.............................................................. 36 11. Afoot through Iowa............................................................... 39 12. Outlet of" Wall Lake."............................................................ 44 13. Doubling Teams in "Hell Slough."....................................... 47 14. Crossing the Plains................................................................. 54 15. Stage Crossing the Desert...............................................56 16. Needs a Haversack.................................................................. 57 17. "Wanted: Light and Genteel Employment."............................... 64 18. Om aha City........................................................................... 66 19. Scene Near Fontanelle............................................................ 68 20. Scene Near Papillion, Nebraska........................................... 76 21. River-Depot, Union Pacific R. R., Omaha................................... 80" 22. "Dog-Town "-Union Pacific R. R...................................... 83 23. Indians Attacking U. S. Mail Coach........................................ 84 24. Pastimes of the Noble Red Man................................................. 86 25. In the Hands of the Vigilantes................................................... 89' 26. In the "Big Tent," Benton, Wyoming Territory........................... 91 27. The Author as a "Mnlewhacker."............................................... 97 S28. Night-School of Theology....................................................... 101 29. Scene in Echo Caion............................................................... 105 30. "Rather Open at the Sides."................................................. 107 31. Salt Lake City (From the North).................................1......... 109 32. Orson Pratt, One of the Twelve Apostles.................... 110 33. George A. Smith..................................................................... 111 34. Brigham Young....................................... 118 2 17 ï~~18 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 35. First Settler at Corinne....................................................PAGE 120 36. "Sunday-Night Amusements.".................................................. 121 37. For the Benefit of Corinne......................................................... 123 38. "Opening a Farm "-Platte Valley............................................ 129 39. Cheyennes Reconnoitering the First Train................................. 133 40. Chief Justice of Wyoming.......................................................... 135 41. Pyramid Rocks......................................... 137 42. Pulpit Rock, Echo Caflon........................................................ 139 43. Off for the Sevier Mines........................................................ 143 44. On a Family Ticket................................................................ 145 45. "You Go Hunt 'Em! "........................................................... 147 46. Lake Tahoe..................................................................155 47. Humboldt Palisades................................................................. 159 48. On the Truckee-C. P. R. R...................................................... 161 49. Placer Mining......................................................................... 162 50. Cape Horn-C. P. R. R............................................................ 163 51. Central Pacific Railroad in the Sierra Nevadas............................. 164 52. Interior of Palace-Car on Central Pacific...................................... 166 53. Sacram ento........................................................................... 168 54. Shoshonee Falls--Idaho................................................... 170 55. Geysers, Pluton River, California................................................ 172 56. "No Sahvey."........................................................... 173 57. In the Josh House.............................................................. 179 58. Al Ching's Theology............................................................ 181 59. Entrance to the Quicksilver Mine of New Almaden, California......... 182 60. The Author receives Mormon Hospitality................................... 185 61. Orson Hyde, President of the Twelve Apostles.............................. 187 62. Domesticated Piute............................................................... 188 63. Bear River Valley-North of Corinne........................................ 189 64. "The Senator is Engaged, Sah.".................................................. 192 65. Brigham Young's Residences, Salt Lake City....................... 195 66. First Hotel in Lawrence..................................................,........ 200 67. "Don't Mention it, Deacon."...................................................... 205 68. On Rock Creek-Allen Co., Kansas............................................ 208 69. Mounds on the Verdigris........................................................ 212 70. Spouting Geyser.................................................................. 215 71. The Emigrant's Dream of Kansas............................................... 217 72. Kioways Killing Buffalo............................................................ 219 73. Buffalo Hunters in Camp........................................................ 221 74. Castle Garden-the Emigrant's First View of America................... 232 75. A Bad Case of Trichina....................................................... 234 76. Woman's Rights in Dakota...................................................... 240 77. Any Port in a Storm................................................................ 241 78. Approach to Black Hills-Dakota.............................................. 242 79. Winter Camp of the Friendly Dakotahs...................................... 244 80. Suriveyor's Camp-Central Dakota.............................................. 246 ï~~LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 19 81. Outline of Yosemite.........................................................PAGE 252 82. A Monster................................ 253 83. Hydraulic Mining................................................................ 254 84. The Two Guardsmen.............................................................. 255 85. A Cotillon Party Dancing on the Mammoth Tree........................ 256 86. Auger-Holes through the Big Tree (Showing how it was Felled)...... 258 87. The Fallen Monarch............................................................. 259 88. The Pioneer's Cabin: "Room for Twelve Inside"....................... 260 89. Something of a Stump............................................ 261 90. First Log Hut in Mariposa Grove............................................ 262 91. Bridal Veil Fall.................................................................... 264 92. Cathedral Rocks................................................................ 268 93. A Native of the Valley.......................................................... 270 94. El Capitan, 3300 Feet High................................................... 271 95. Sentinel Rock..................................................................... 275 96. The Yosemite Falls.............................................................. 276 97. North Dome and Royal Arches............................................... 278 98. South or Half Dome...................................... 279 99. Mirror Lake; Watkins' and Clouds' Rest................................... 281 100. Vernal Falls; 350 Feet High................................................. 283 101. Nevada Falls; 700 Feet High.................................................. 285 102. Down by Vernal Falls........................................................... 286 103. Liberty Cap (Mt. Broderick).................................................. 288 104. Bird's-Eye View of San Francisco........................................... 291 105. The Miner who "Struck it Rich."........................................... 294 106. "'49-Ers in Luck."................................................................ 296 107. A Sunday Festival of the Foreign Classes................................. 299 108. Sunday Evening on Dupont Street........................... 301 109. Underground in the Barbary Coast........................................... 303 110. At the Bella Union............................................................... 306 111. The First San Francisco Destroyed......................................... 307 112. An Anti-Goat-Island Meeting................................................ 308 113. The Days when California had no Families................................ 310 114. Woodward's Gardens-a Fashionable Resort of San Francisco......... 312 115. Chinese Theatre-on Jackson Street........................................ 315 116. Chinese Merchant on Post Street............................................ 317 117. Chan Laisun...................................................................... 320 118. Mrs. Laisun and Daughters................................................... 322 119. Chinese Students-now at Springfield, Mass................................ 324 120. A High Caste Mandarin........................................................ 325 121. At "Brown and Sloper's."................................................... 327 122. Little Pleasantries of a Mining Camp....................................... 330 123. Prospecting Party-in Utah.................................................... 332 124. Over to Big Cottonwood......................................................... 337 125. In the West Jordan Mine....................................................... 343 126. On Lion Hill-Ophir District................................................ 345 ï~~20 LiST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 127. Vertical Section of a Quartz Mine...................................pa...AEz 347 128. One Language-two "Smiles."............................................... 350 129. My Cherokee Friends............................................................ 356 130. "Moss Agates."..................................................................... 365 131. Amusements at Muscogee....................................................... 370 132. Raising a Native.................................................................. 373 133. At the Creek Agency........................................................... 375 134. A Creek Charon.................................................................... 379 135. At the Mission..................................................................... 382 136. "Shorthandle.".................................................................. 385 137. Curing Snake-Bite................................................................ 389 138. Ok-ta-ha-sars-ha-go............................................................... 391 139. "On a Permit."................................................................. 394 140. Pre-emptor's Cabin.............................................................. 395 141. Lively Times on the Canadian............................................ 398 142. At Tandy Walker's.............................................................. 400 143. Forest Scene...................................................................... 405 144. At Widow'Skrimshee's.......................................................... 407 145. Fight at Going Snake Court House............................................ 410 146 Gen. Marion in the Cherokee Country....................................... 413 147. The Last Cry of the Cherokee................................................... 416 148. Cherokee Legislature...................................................... 422 149. An Osage Chief..................................................................... 425 150. "Man for Breakfast."........................................................... 435 151. In the Buffalo Country......................................................... 437 152. Denver................................................................................439 153. Gray's Peak-Colorado..................................... 440 154. Georgetown-Colorado........................................................... 442 155. First Lesson in Spanish......................................................... 445 156. "Caraja I Los Nervios I".............................. 450 157. East Side of Plaza-Santa Fe................................................... 452 158. At the Baile..................................................................... 456 159. Pueblo at Prayer.................................................................. 468 160. A Mexican Dray.................................... 474 161. "Caramba! Va Maladitto.".................................................... 476 162. Southwest from Santa Fe........................................................... 481 163. Pueblo Cacique..................................................................... 483 164. "My Relations, Sir.".............................................................. 485 165. Algodonas........................................................................... 487 166. Albuquerque Cathedral.......................................................... 489 167. "About so High................................................................... 492 168. Mexican Farm House............................................................ 497 169. Pueblo Maiden............................................. 501 170. Agua Azul and Red Butte....................... 509 171. Officer's Quarters-Fort Wingate..................................... 512 172. Distant View of Zuni.............................................................. 514 ï~~-LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 21 173. Upper Story of Zuni..........................................6............... A(, 516 174. Navajo Loom................................6 518 175. Navajo Boy.....................................................................525 176. Navajo Matron................................................................. 531 177. Navajo "Gristmill.".............................................533 178. Navajo Belle....................................................................... 534 179. Arizona Landscape......................................................... 537 180. Through the Navajo Forest.................................................... 548 181. W ind Carvings................................................................. 550 182. Leaning Tower................................................................... 551 183. "Ah-Yee! Melicano, Ettah Hoganday I"................................... 554 184. Entering the Desert............................................................... 562 185. "Vah! Melicano, Malo, Malo I!".......................................... 564 186. "The Shadow of a Great Rock in a Weary Land."....................... 567 187. Sheep-Pens at Moqui.............................................................. 569 188. Entering Moqul-" Jokow, Jokow, Melicano, Jokow! "................. 572 189. Northwest Front of Moqui....................................................... 575 190. Distant View of Oraybe......................................................... 577 191. Group of Moquis................................................................. 580 192. Street in the "Dead Town."..................................................... 583 193. Tuba and Telashnimki......................................................... 584 194. One of Six Bronze Plates dug up near Kinderhook, Ill., in 1843....... 598 195. "Break in the Formation."..................................................... 604 196. A Friendly Apache............................................................... 607 197. Skull of Mangus Colorado, or "Red Sleeve."-a "Good Indian."..... 608 198. Formation on the Streams...................................................... 610 199. Scene on the Colorado............................................................ 612 200. Peak of Conglomerate............................................................ 616 201. Espafiol............................................................................... 621 202. "Todos Muertos, Pero mas Apaches."....................................... 631 203. Getting Down to the Colorado................................................ 632 204. Mountain Meadow Massacre-132 Emigrant's killed by Mormons, etc.. 647 205. At Jacob's Pool..................................................................... 655 206. "Happy Family "-Utes....................................................... 657 207. Kanarra-Southern Utah......................................................... 660 208. Salt Lake Theatre................................................................. 668 209. Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, Wyoming, (350 Feet in Hight.)...... 670 210. On Guard......................................................................... 673 211. Tower Falls-Wyoming............................................. 676 212. Bird's-Eye View of the Geyser Basin......................................... 679 213. Upper Falls of the Yellowstone............................................... 680 214. Yellowstone Lake................................................................. 681 215. The Giantess-Yellowstone..........................................688 216. The Old Way Across the Plains................................................ 692 217. Monument Rock-Echo Cason................................................ 693 218. Mormon Temple at Nauvoo, Illinois......................................... 696 ï~~22 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 219. Nauvoo Militia and "General" Joseph Smith.......................PAGE 697 220. Trappers in Northern Dakota.................................................. 699 221. People of Pembina, and their Ox-Carts...................................... 700 222. Old Fort Benton-Montana..................................................... 702 223. The Author, being in Feeble Health, Goes to Minnesota................. 707 224. The Author, being Feeble in Pocket, Returns from Minnesota.......... 708 225. Scene on a Minnesota Lake.................................................... 712 226. St. Paul........................................................................... 715 227. Falls of St. Anthony..................................................... 717 228. Missionary among the Minnesota Indians................................. 723 229. N. P. R. R. Bridge over Mississippi, near Brainerd, Minn.............. 728 230. Dalles of the St. Louis............................................................ 733 231. Duluth.............................................................................. 735 232. In the Tunnel-Sierra Nevada.............................................. 742 233. Donner Lake-Sierra Nevada................................................. 743 234. Snow Sheds on the Central Pacific............................................ 744 235. Acorn Caches of the California Indians...................................... 748 236. "Venus and Adonis "-Digger Indians................................. 752 237. Rough on the Old Man........................................................... 755 238. Falls of the Willamette......................................................... 760 239. Portland--Oregon-From East Side of Willamette....................... 764 240. Street in Olympia-Washington Territory.................................. 766 241. Puget Sound and Mt. Rainier.................................................. 768 242. "A Little Qualmish."............................................................. 774 243. Point Arena Lighthouse-Coast of California.............................. 776 244. Bancroft's great Publishing House-San Francisco....................... 777 ï~~/ ï~~ ï~~ ï~~..? * t,~~.PCNROREILLS T r ARV O T'Oe a+ - REAT I i LLS * CL "ll TxDALLES 0EF~ T /1 (1 C O ym P A in 4W G SILV CI1Y v RERMO *~~- ~ *.OWY4EE -CITY- - / G~ LAKE SA R CRCN 14UMBOT. L. c iRV f rIT V, VRII IY. r A INTO LAK ('P SIR STTLT BEND LA ' TO T r D4e R 4 R I ST. I S " R i r! f j l r M O TI N F T M O W E L ASILVARE GII fl ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ *RZj CM Â~ +rr f IT l.; ANJA K G 1 ar' l al - 4", W T N T *H R ~ t IICTQ l 1 Â~ A L4ERL, y'of "I1 74N1T. C y%~N4OPN BEIOF ï~~FIR aw -9.~?b.FCN n tf Rmi Cnna M lIAA LT.UNION ' of RED L. 9..0 U Un c. 1INE *scssawwN RWERN!PACIFIC R.R[, RAIN D.. CI"'EDWINTSN SIENYlAL NUXDW % 0t A XADE8-- ~tJLYRAVERS VA A BIlfFA L. 9/ ter, 0gYIpEAU-~O 'I'-F~ IT 0'4v'a o k O lIGPA tv *I:: __ 'Oq ' 4 ~oI x.O 0 '4 + so I OU CILY arraoo 9k CHEYENNE flV PACInG D & S4 R R.R - 00 tr SAVNNA 40 DENVERIGO. ATCHISON - CP iN 4 s4LANASLObA04 PA i e y LEAVE;:;:.;PyiC ECOLORADO TV SMOK PACFI r P S O~AK, t0Ra -~ P'A * AI~i OP>ER tE VPISANSAS RI *NA o AI\ / A R KS A RN HUMEOLUT $ SPANISHSPAST + ~~ ~ ~.{A*oj a~. o. F" innii Oft r1 U SAN JUAN *r.3 U~A{.a.PE Â~"0pJI -'v -CpNSUREN S tIE pN A AI r 4~y %I2"i *''O REDw~w RtoprM~A" r" ALUQUER aw~aw RIA.0_ *~c t:: a x /,,, 1' / RE flt. 11 orrr fA~EF a~~ ï~~All ï~~CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. I MAKE A START. Why I went West-Poor health-" Infallible cures "-Impecuniosity-Try the newspapers-Doubtful prospects-Leave Evansville-Stop in Wisconsin-The Mound Region-Boscobel-Into Iowa-Swedes and Norwegians -Westward afoot -A model farmer -Wire-fence - Planting timber-Resources of Iowa-Iowa Falls-" Wall-Lake "-Fanciful theories-Scientific fact-Fort Dodge-Grasshoppers-A pleasant excursion"Purgatory" and "Hell" Sloughs-" Bad for women and oxen "-Twin Lakes-Ida City-Over the "Divide "-Denison-Down the C. a N. W. R. R.-Council Bluffs and Omaha-On the border at last....................... 33 CHAPTER II. A COMMON MISTAKE. Our land of promise-Pleasing errors-Painful but wholesome truths"The Great American Desert" not a myth-Causes of sterility-Drought -Elevation and cold-Alkali-Minerals-Bitter Creek-" Journey of Death "-Travel on the Deserts-Bunch grass-Grand divisions of the West-View of the Plains-Routes across the Continent-Freighting under difficulties-Railroad and emigration circulars--Caveat emptor: "Let the buyer look out "................................................................... 50 CHAPTER III. FIVE WEEKS IN NEBRASKA. Omaha-Glorious anticipitations-Prosaic facts-A bit of history-Florence -An invasion of place hunters-Disappointment-On the road to Fontanelle-Elkhorn Valley-Lost on the prairie-"Any port in a storm "Down to the Platte-Fremont-Down Platte Valley-Intense heat-Want 23 ï~~24 CONTENTS. of domestic economy-Romantic hash-Victuals and poetry-Bovine apotheosis-Farming in Nebraska-Room for three hundred thousand farmers-Climate-Society-" Professional starvation "-Through Sarpy County-Youthful connubiality-Artificial groves-Increase of rain-fallOmaha politics-" Bilks "-" Hunting for work,-hoping to not find it "... 63 CHAPTER IV. ON THE UNION PACIFIO. Up the Platte Valley-Beauty by moonlight; barrenness by day-Getting on to the desert-North Platte-" The gentle gazelle "-" Dog-town"Not dogs, but rodents-" Indians ahead "-The dangerous district-Crossing the Plains in 1866-" The noble Red Man "-Cheyenne-Vigorous reduction of the population-Black Hill-Sherman-Down to LaramieSThe Alkali Desert-Benton-A beaptiful summer resort!-Manners and morals (?)-Bravery of the impecunious-Murder and mob-VigilantesMurderer rescued by the military and escapes-*Amusements-" Big Tent" -" Now, then, gentlemen, the ace is your winning card"-" Cappers" and Victims-No fairness in gambling.................................................. 79 CHAPTER V. ON A MULE. A new profession-Off for Salt Lake City-A Mormon outfit-Nature of the overland freight-Its extent-Great expenses and enormous profitsLuxury of miners and mountaineers-Changed to the railroad-" Kiting towns "-Jonah's gourd-Benton a year afterwards-Platte City-Our company-Mulewhacker's Theology-Pleasant gossip on polygamyJournal of the route-Horrors of Bitter Creek-Heat, cold, thirst, dust, fatigue-Green River-Bridger Plains-Echo Cafion-Weber Caoa-- Parley's Park-Down Parley's Caton-Salt Lake Valley and City.......... 96 CHAPTER Vi. A YEAR IN UTAH. Discharging freight-" Beautiful Zion "-First impressions-" Our Bishop" -Arguments (?) for polygamy-Rough on Rome-Mormon WorthiesJews, Gentiles, and Apostates-Queer condition of American citizens"Millennial Star" and " Book of Mormon "-The original carpet-baggers -" Jaredites "-Mormon sermons-Into the country-A polemic raceMormon conference-" No trade with Gentiles "-A hard winter-I be. come a Gentile editor-Founding of Corinne-Glowing anticipationa"The Chicago of the Rocky Mountains "-Ups and downs of real estateThe Author comes to grief................................................................... 108 ï~~CONTENTS. 35 CHAPTER VII. THE UNION PACIFIC COMPLETED. The last rail and spike-rA visit home-An unofficial tour-Whitney, Benton, Burton, Fremont, Stansbury, Saxton, and Gunnison-Difficulties of constructure-Where is the real starting point?-Missouri River Bridge -Out the Platte-Fremont-Columbus--On the plains again-Julesburg-Smoothness of the route-Delightful traveling-Cheyenne-A Western Jeffreys!-Laramie again-A tragedy-A miracle, perhaps" Big Ed's" guardian angel-Pyramid rocks-Beauties of Laramie Plains -Desert west of them-Wasatch-Echo and Weber-Promontory-Moral gamblers- Reflections....................................................................... 126 CHAPTER VIII. THE GREAT BASIN. Hunting new fields-Gentile needs-Mines or nothing-SouthwardSevier Mines-Gilmer and Saulsbury-Rockwell's Ranche-The Utah Basin-Will it be sacred ground?-A family ticket-Social robberyChicken Creek-" Them mules is in the sagebrush; you go hunt 'em I "Gunnison-Sevier Valley-Abandoned towns-Marysvale--Up the Gulch -Drawbacks to the district-Mr. Jacob Hess-My later experience-The habitable lands of Utah and Nevada-Productions-Fruits-True policy with the State and Territory-" Mormon enterprise "-A silver State - Sunken deserts-Death Valley-Mournful reminiscence......................... 142 CHAPTER IX. THROUGH NEVADA. Out of a place-A wanderer again-Tired of Utah-Westward-Promontory -Salty district-Queer calculations-Down the Humboldt-Elko-White Pine-" John Chinamen "-Humboldt Caflon-Desert-Reese River"Sinks "-Morning at Truckee-Beauty of the Sierras-Eureka t-Donner and Bigler Lakes-Western Slope-" Forty miles of snow sheds "Mining towns-Cape Horn-Sublime scenery-Scientific eigineeringSwiftly downward-Scenery of the Pacific slope-Out upon the plainThe California autumn-Suburbs of Sacramento.................................... 153 CHAPTER X. AFOOT IN CALIFORNIA. New Spain-Poetry and fact-Saxon and Spaniard-Cavalier and Pioneer-- Our Heroic Age-The American Iliad-Sacramento-Yolo county" Tules "-Chinese-California Central R. R.-Ague-High and Low ï~~26 CONTENTS. Water-marks-Chinese and Chinese labor-Acclimating sickness-Davisville-Sericulture-Warner's Vineyard-The land of grapes-Pears, apples, and figs-Up Putah Creek-Drouth and dust-The rainy season at hand-Fruit farms near the coast range-Ranches only, not homesPopular reasons therefor-Agricultural items-Shall we settle in rural California-Chinese " Devil-drive "-Mongolian Theology-" Josh"Blowing up the Devil-Ah Ching's opinion-" China like Melica man! " - Off for "Frisco".............................................................................167 CHAPTER XI. UTAH AGAIN. Elected defendant-Utah law-Polygamous judges-Trial at Brigham City -Assault on the author-Skilful surgery-Rapid recovery-" Write a history of the Mormons! "-Visit the East-Return to Utah-PoliticalBear River canal scheme-Author goes to Washington-Miseries of a lobbyist-Election of 1870-Gen. Geo. R. Maxwell-Debate on polygamy --Cui bono f--Mormon morals and Gentile associations.......................... 183 CHAPTER Xll. I START AGAIN. Another misfortune and change of scene-Kansas City-Lawrence-Early tragedies-Later horrors-Last great success-Southward-Ottawa"Don't mention it, Deacon "-Franklin County-Anderson-Ozark Ridge-Allen County-lola-Western enterprise-Montgomery CountyBeautiful Mounds-Cherryvale-Northward-A modern MethuselahTroy- Ready to report........................................................................197 CHAPTER XIIIl. STATISTICAL KANSAS. Emigrants, attention 1-Topography of Kansas-Climate-Three divisionsAmount of good land-Productiveness-Figures-Fruit-Beautiful Homes -Southern border-Snakes-Local flavoring-Bad case of Trichina-The Kansas farmer.................................................................................. 216 CHAPTER XIV. A FLYING TRIP. Down to St. Joseph-Up the Missouri Valley-Omaha again-Dull times on the Missouri-Reasons given-Off for Sioux City-Up-country people -Yankton-Caught in a storm-Dakota-Black Hills-Gold! perhapsSioux---IAPE OAHYE-Called westward-Union Pacific-Mormondom again- Over to " Frisco " -................................................................. 235 ï~~cONTENTs. 27 CHAPTER XV. WONDERS OF THE SIERRAS. Off for Calaveras-The route-Copperopolis-Up the Sierras-First view of the Grove-Particular trees-Emotions excited-Route thence to Yosemite -Table Mountain-Bret Harte-Terrible descent-Into the Valley-A world of wonders-Fatigue and reflection-Description impossible.......... 251 CHAPTER XVI. SKETCHES IN SAN FRANCISCO. Return from Yosemite--Summary of trip-Does it pay?-Climate of San Francisco-Of the State-Variety in " Frisco "-The Barbary Coast -Chinese Theatre-The Cliff House and Seal Rocks-Literature of the Pacific-Joaquin Miller-Frances Rose Mackinley-Morals and manners -Excitement and wearing out-An inventive Race-The Chinese again... 290 CHAPTER XVII. "JOHN." Popular nonsense about the Chinese-The bugbear Chinaman-The romantic Chinaman-The real article-His history, art, music and dramaObjections to them considered-Do they cheapen labor?-Will they overrun the country?-Do they degrade labor?-Their condition-Missionary work-Sacramento system-Rev. O. Gibson-Better specimens-Yellow Chinese-Mrs. Laisun and daughters-Chinese students-Hope for the race................................................................................................ 313 CHAPTER XVIII. MINES AND MINING. A prospect-Outline of mining region-The Cottonwoods-How I came there-Mormon anti-mining sermons-The dry summer-Unhealthfulness of Salt Lake City-I go to the mountains-" Prospectors "-We hunt a mine-Mode of silver mining-Different in gold mining-One chance in twenty-five thousand for an "Emma" or "Comstock "-" Struck a horse" -Over to Big Cottonwood-Fire in the mountains-Promise of war in Utah-False alarm-Off for Bingham-Chicago fire-Thence to East CaIlon-I invest-And come out minus................................................ 326 ï~~28 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIX. A CHANGE OF BASE. A hard winter-The last rain-Eastward-A merry party-The great Blockade-On the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad-Southwestern MissouriAmong the Cherokees-Spring roads-Up into Kansas-Meet C. G. Du Bruler, Esq., and return-Down to Muscogee....................................... 3.18 CHAPTER XX, MUSCOKEE. Desperadoes-Laxity of Government-Out to the Agency-Stirring up a rattler-"A free nigger settlement "-Creek History-Tallahassee Mission -Delightful experiences-Creek education-System of government-Back to Muscogee-Reckless shooting-State of the region............................. 369 CHAPTER XXI. OKLAHOMA. Railroads-The Thirty-fifth parallel route-Down to the Canadian-In the Chdctaw Nation-Tandy Walker, Esq.-Secretary Delano visits the Territory-Tramp to Fort Gibson-" White Cherokees" again-An Indian feud-At Widow Skrimshee's-" Pikes," on the animal migration-Tahlequah-Cherokee documents-Curious records-History of the NationSummary of the Indian Territory........................................................ 396 CHAPTER XXII. AROUND AND ABOUT TO SANTA FE. No thoroughfare from Indian Territory-Northward through Kansas-On the Plains at Last-The Ride over the Kansas Pacific-Ellsworth, and its Former Felicities-In the Buffalo Country-The "Big Pasture" of America-Arrival at Denver-" Them's my Sentiments "-The Country from Denver to Santa Fe-A case of Delirium Tremens................................. 431 CHAPTER XXIII. SANTA FE DE SAN FRANCISCO. First impressions-Location of the city-U. S. officials-Learning SpanishThe Baile-Valse da Spachio-Mexican Law-Religion-Children ï~~CONTENTS. 29 Dark vs. white races-Mexican transportation-Historical-Remarkable journey of De Vaca and his companions-Expedition of Coronado-" The seven cities of Cibola I "-" The American occupation "-Query.............. 451 CHAPTER XXIV. " GREASERDOM." Off from Santa Fe-La Bajada-Rio Grande Valley-The Pueblo de San Domingo-Mexican farms-Albuquerque-Crossing the Rio GrandeOn the Desert-Rio Puerco-El Rito-" Town of the Lake "--Cubero -McCarty's Ranche-Murder by the Navajoes-Agua Azul-The extinct volcano-Summit of the Sierra Madre-At Wingate-My soldier comes to grief................................................................................................. 479 CHAPTER XXV. AMONG THE NAVAJOES. At Fort Wingate-Natural beauty-Wealth of nature-A region of curiosities-The Zunis-Their wonderful civilization-Cation de Chaco-San Juan ruins-On to Defiance-Navajo history-Their semi-civilizationTheir wars with the Spaniards-American relations-Major Brooks' negro -Navajo War-Subjugation and decline-Their return and progressEnd of stay at Defiance-Sounds of wrath from Santa Fe-Apology-An original "pome"................................................................................. 511 CHAPTER XXVI. A RIDE THROUGH WONDERLAND. Diambnds l perhaps-Curious stones in the Navajo country--Ready-Kindness of Agent Keams-Navajo Forest--Entering De Chelley-The "Cliff Cities "-An evening of beauty-Out upon the Desert-Water! Water!Sickness and exhaustion-Navajo doctoring-Climbing for water-Down again, and night-ride-Camp at last-" Iah-koh Melicano! "-Reach Moqul-Curious people-Chino and Misiamtenah-" Moquis steal nothing"..................................................................................... 541 CHAPTER XXVII. THE LAST OF THE AZTECS. Theory and fact-What I know about the Moquis-Location-Numbers -Dwellings--Dress-A dinner of State-Dog-meat and a Catholic stomach-Strange dialogue on religion-Tuba and Telashnimki-Oraybe ï~~30 CONTENTS. Radicals-Further enquiries-Division of the subjects-Mounds in Ohio -In Mississippi Valley-Mexico-Central America-Peru-TheoriesJews, Chinese, Malays, Phoenieians, Romans, or Atlanteans-Modest conelusion............................................................................................. 574 CHAPTER XXVIII. ARIZONA. A big country-A strange parallelogram-A region of mountain, caion and plateau-Antiquities-Wild Indians-Maricopas and other village Ildians-We leave Moqui-Nature of the country-Camp of the "Outlaw Navajoes "-Romantic narrations-Navajo beauty-Their theologyFish, turkeys, and human beings-Who are they?-Their treatment of w om en................................................................................... 603 CHAPTER XXIX. DOWN TO THE COLORADO. Diversion from intended route-Summary of the Thirty-fifth parallel route -Leave the outlaw Navajoes-Addition to our party-Our interpreterLost on the desert-An aboriginal joke-A wonderful grazing groundBattle-field of Apaches and Navajoes-Comparison of skulls-Reach the Colorado Caion--Sublime sight-A fearful descent-Nine hours going down hill-No passage-Find one of Major Powell's boats-Dexterity of the Indians-I risk the passage-" Major Doyle "-Indian romanceCastilian and Navajo tongues-Good-bye to my dark friends-Safely over at last............................................................................................... 624 CHAPTER XXX. FIVE HUNDRED MILES OF MORMONS. An astonishing revelation-" Major Doyle" becomes John D. Lee, of Mountain Meadow notoriety-He relates his version of that affair--CommentsWhy verdict "Guilty "-Off for the settlements-Jacob's Pool-Long, dry ride-The Pi-Utes-Into Kanab-Jacob Hamlin-Major Powell's party-Pipe Springs-Gould's Ranche-Virgen City-ToquervilleKanawa-Into the Great Basin-Beaver-The "Jerky "-An old comrade-Fillmore--" Cutting off"-Staging-An unconscious joke-Arrival at Salt Lake City-Surprise of my friends............................................. 645 CHAPTER XXXI. MY SUMMER VACATION. Diamonds by the bushel l--My conclusion--The sad fact-Off for Soda Springs-Cache Valley-Gen. Connor and the Battle of Bear River ï~~CONTErTS. 31 Soda Mounds-Health-restoring waters-"Anti-polygamy" SpringWonders of the Yellowstone--Report of Hon. U. P. Langford-Return to Salt Like City--Politics and Religion-Popular absurdities about UtahA blast at Brigham and his allies........................................................ 669 CHAPTER XXXII. SHORT NOTES ON A LONG EXCURSION. Another ride on the Union Pacific-Down to St. Louis-Up to NauvooHistoric interest-A strange old place-German vintners-Beauty of the site-Through Iowa-Southern Dakota-Yankton politicians-Territorial Officials-" The Government cannot afford good men "-Down the Missouri-An uncertain channel-On the Sioux City and St. Paul Road....................................................................................... 691 CHAPTER XXXIII. MINNESOTA. My stepmother-An impecunious youth-Trials of poverty-I drive for excursion parties-Not a success-My Canadian friends-Return homeMankato-Crystal Lake-Garden City-The cabin of my friends-My old employer-Down to St. Paul-The State Fair-Northward by rail -Lumbermen-Big Lake-St. Cloud-Sauk Rapids-Great water-power -Northward stage-The Lady Superior-Belle Prairie-Converting Indians-W e reach Brainerd..................................................................... 706 CHAPTER XXXIV. ON THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. Brainerd-The Pine forests of Minnesota-Sioux and Chippewas-Pahya Goonsey-Detroit Lakes-Down to Red River -Moorehead--Out to Jimtown-Red River Valley-" The equinoctial storm"-Eastward again -Russian Quakers-Scandinavian settlers-Scenery on the St. LouisDuluth-Emigration Companies-" POST OFF "-Humbug of land circulars-Climate on the Northern Pacific-" Be not deceived "-The testimony experience of A. Toponce, Esq.-Comments............................ 724 CHAPTER XXXV. THE WAY TO OREGON. Westward again-Iowa-Union Pacific-Utah-Central Pacific-Sacramento-California and Oregon Railroad-Chico-General Bidwell's ï~~32 CONTENTS. Ranche-Semi-Tropical Fruits and Flowers-Reading-Shasta-Joaquia Miller--Shasta Indians-" Venus and Adonis "-Staging on the Sierras -Mount Shasta-Yreka-Frontier justice-Immense korests--OregoiRogue River-ULTmpqua-Willamette-Portland.....................................74t CHAPTER XXXVI. IN CONCLUSION. Season too late-Washington Territory-" Good-bye, Jonah "-Down the Willamette-In the Columbia--A fog-Salmon fisheries-Strange instincts of the salmon-On the heaving ocean-" The first to fall "-Down below -" Just a little qualmish "-Philosophy on the subject-Smoother water -" On an even keel "-Arrival at FriscoA-Bancroft & Co.-Homeward bound............................................................................................. 767 A MONTH IN TEXAS. THE WAY TO TEXAS........................................................................773 NORTHERN TEXAS........................................................................787 CENTRAL TEXAS...........................................................................792 SOUTHERN TEXAS............................................................................796 TRIP TO AUSTIN................................................................................801 GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY.........................................................806 MINERALS OF TEXAS.....................................................................813 W ESTERN TEXAS..............................................................................814 HISTORICAL......................................................................................816 GENERAL VIEW S...............................................................................822 ï~~,.. >>...,,.,,_.,;, ~, > r:,:,,,. Y -.. 1 'rr:.. 1.. f y,,; ti t% _..., ï~~'. ï~~THE UNDEVELOPED WEST; on, FIVE YEARS IN THE TERRITORIES. CHAPTER I. I MAKE A START. Why I went West-Poor health-" Infallible cures "-Impecuniosity-Try the newspapers-Doubtful prospects-Leave Evansville-Stop in WisconsinThe Mound Region-Boscobel-Into lowa-Swedes and Norwegians-Westward afoot-A model farmer-Wire-fence-Planting timber-Resources of Iowa--Iowa Falls-" Wall-Lake "-Fanciful theories-Scientific fact-Fort Dodge-Grasshoppers--A pleasant excursion-" Purgatory" and "Hell" Sloughs--" Bad for women and oxen"-Twin Lakes-Ida City-Over the "Divide "-Denison-Down the C. & N. W. R. R.--Counacil Bluffs and OmahaOn the border at last. SANUARY, 1868, found me an invalid in the goodly city of Evansville. A bronchical difficulty, produced ten years before by severe application to study, had in a year of army life developed to a confirmed asthma; and now, in the moist and enervating climate of Southern Indiana, I was shaken by an ominous graveyard cough, the heaviness of a mother and the despair of friends and creditors. I tried fifty remedies: cubebs, troches, caramels, hoarhbund confections were my hourly refreshment; a score of nasty syrups in villainous green bottles adorned my mantel; pastilles smoked upon my stove, and my chamber was redolent with the fumes of burning nitre. My friends sympathized and suggested: one had heard his grandmother say she never knew a tea made of chestnut leaves to fail in such cases, if taken in time; another quoted an equally venerable source in favor of bloodroot and whiskey, with snuff of powdered galingale; a third had all confidence in the regular 8 33 ï~~,.. r #,,; r, i. N.. r., 9 J nt 5 F e::. i. i. ti" gx ~'. l 4H r(,. -x... is n..... 'W'; ' A t9 j' r n tip /.5 ï~~THE WAYS AND MEANS. 35 There was one little difficulty in the way of all these fine schemes advanced for my rejuvenation: I was impecunious. Young lawyers are not generally troubled with filthy lucre, and I had been in l)ractice but one year, and out of health most of the time. After selling books and paying debts I had remaining a hundred and fifteen dollars on which to reach the Pacific Coast-fir there my physician thought was the Ilesperian fountain which was to make me a new man. Manifestly if I ever reached it, economy was to be, not exactly a virtue, but something not nearly so heroic-a necessity. Newspaper correspondence suggested itself to my mind as a last resort. What wandering scholar, poor teacher, or feeble professional has not thought of it as the way to health-restoring travel, or the glories of a foreign tour? I wrote a carefiully worded proposition to six leading journals. - Two replied. The Head Quill of the Indianapolis Journal briefly declined, adding, somewhat superfluously, that there were at least a dozen applicants to each vacancy, and Western correspondence was just now of no particular value. Murat Halstead, Esq., of the Cincinnati Commercial, (May his shadow never grow less!) answered thus, literatim et punctuatim: (Fac simile on next page.) I trust the reader may decipher these hieroglyphics with more ease and less of doubt and trepidation than I did. Through their jagged lines gleamed a ray of hope;: and on this hint I wrote. I also made arrangements with the Evansville Journal, to practise a few weeks through their columns until I became more proficient with the pen, thinking that it was best my first effusions should be read only by friends and acquaintances a common error with beginners. For criticism, to be of any value, must come from strangers. One's friends will always praise his writings, though never so flat;; and one's enemies say something spiteful though he speak with the tongue of men and angels. My plan was to work through to California during the good weather, remain there one winter, and work back home the next summer, after an absence of about eighteen months; and by no means to settle in the Far West. I came about as near to ï~~OFFICE OF THE Giatnati Grnmerdeta, F OURTH AND RACE STREETS. -- c_. e " rclp4aA04 9AfWrS4 OPAp 86 ï~~LEAVING HOME. 37 filling this schedule as young men generally do to working out their plans. It is necessary to have plans, but it is morally certain no man will ever realize them exactly. The precise thing one intends is about the only thing which never occurs, and of the great expectations of glowing youth we may philosophize as did the Hibernian over his dressed pig: " It didn't weigh half as much as I expected, an', be japers, I always knowed it wouldn't." All sad farewells over, I was off from Evansville on the 8th of May. It is seldom pleasant to start, no matter what enjoyment one looks forward to; and the oldest travelers generally leave "winter quarters" with a feeling of despondency. De Quincy says: " We never do a thing consciously for the last time without a feeling of sadness; we never take final leave of a place-even where we have not been happy-without a sigh." And the experience of all Bohemians confirms this truth. Perhaps the inner sense sees by a divine instinct that all these occasional partings are but faint types of the last great parting, and sighs its regret by anticipation. Perhaps the soul feels in these minor departures that a great departure is not far distant, and intuitively warns man of his destiny. I had uncommon cause for despondency. Hitherto my journeys, though long, had been no farther from civilization than western Kansas and Minnesota; post offices, stage roads, and even railroads were not far distant, and though I "dragged at each remove a lengthening chain," it was still a chain connecting me by successive links with home. But now, with feeble health and feebler 1pocket, I was to pass beyond the border, and across the central wild to where civilization "Shifting, turns the other way." It is not surprising then that a suspicious moisture gathered in my eye, as from the rear of the train I waved my adieus to the receding city. After a week in Northern Indiana, and three days at the National Republican Convention in Chicago, I left that city for Wisconsin by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway. I had gained on the season; the coolness of early spring still prevailed ï~~38 3WISCONSIN. in this higher latitude, and I took a delightful rest of a week at Boscobel, in the valley of the lower Wisconsin. This is the centre of the "Mound Region" of Wisconsin-so called from the many Indian mounds scattered about the valley. Some are circular, some oval, and one in the edge of the town is in the exact form of a Greek cross, the longer piece a hundred feet in length. None of these are more than four or five feet high, and the earth of which they are composed is different from the adjacent soil. Most of the original mounds have been removed in the process of settlement: some contained human remains, some implements of war and husbandry; but the most consisted entirely of earth and decayed grass or straw. Of some the earth was so fertile that the people of Boscobel used it for enriching their gardens. North of the river are larger and more extensive quadrangular mounds, evidently intended as a fortification, and commanding a bend in the stream. Twenty-five miles south are the "Great Mounds of the Platte," two moles of earth and rock, about halfa mile in length, rising abruptly to a height of sixty feet from a level plain. But these are evidently of geologic origin. Boscobel is far enough north to be a pleasant summer resort; the climate is healthful, and just north of the Wisconsin game of many kinds is abundant. The prairie, spangled with the myriad flowers of advancing spring, allured me to numerous excursions; the bracing air from the Minnesota hills brought healing to my lungs, and I soom felt the exquisite joys of convalescence. Tourists who cannot afford to go to the "Far West" may find here, and in the neighboring parts of Iowa and Minnesota, a pleasant and healthful summer residence. On the first of June I crossed the Mississippi from Prairie Du Chien* to McGregor, and started afoot across Northern Iowa, judging that the walk of three hundred miles would toughen me a little before encountering the real hardships of the plains. Of the next four days my recollections are of slow * " Prairie of Thw Dog.' -An Indian chief who dominated this region twe centuries ago. ï~~_ -,; 4.. as -n p "a e, _... i..: a:...... a 4 '., tiy' r r.a..w...... - y^:.v -,. " Â~... -,.i: '.-...: Y r 3 _.: at,.. v.. _,:...,.._...,,s ~a _,, a __. r b...,v, s ~_ _,....,,...,..... - _. ï~~40 ON THE PRAIRIE. change rapidly. There were immense tracts of unsettled prairie; timber was found only along the streams, and I soon learned to dread it on account of the heat. On the "bottoms" of Big Wapsie Creek, in Bremer County, was dense timber for ten miles-the last complete forest I was to see for a year; and I almost melted in passing through it. On the prairie there is nearly always a gentle and refreshing wind; in the timber a sultry and oppressive calm. To leave the first for the second was like going from balmy May into sultry July. In my prairie travelsI never saw a farmer's wife who had tried both, who did notprefer the prairie to the timber, despite the intense cold of winter. Sometimes, they admitted, when the thermometer was below zero, and the wind humming from the northwest at twenty miles per hour, they sighed for the leeward side of tall timber; but for ten. months in the year, give them the prairie. "We can house up, you know, and keep warm on the prairie in winter; but we can't house up and keep cool in the timber in summer." Westward I began to toughen to my work, and on the 8th and 9th of June easily made my twenty miles a day.- Overtaken on the open prairie by a storm, late in the afternoon of the 9th, I traveled nine miles in the rain to the first house, finding the settler like myself a retired professional, "out West for his health." Three years before he had paid seven dollars an acre for a quarter section of land, put a wire fence around forty acres of it, broke the sod and sowed it in wheat, which yielded twenty-two bushels per acre, and sold at a dollar and a quarter per bushel. He produced his "farm-books," which showed that, estimating his wire-fence and breaking sod at the highest rate, his first crop had paid for land, fence, and breaking, and a slight percentage of profit. Vacant lands in that and the adjoining counties were selling everywhere from three to fifteen dollars per acre, according to locality. Wire fences were the only kind in use in this vicinity. Many farmers used but three strands, but a "lawful fence" required five, which, the local courts consider, will make it "horse-high, bull-strong, and pig-tight." Many plant trees ï~~m: w - An_ u v o v s ï~~I ï~~UNOCCUPIED LANDS. 41 for posts, using "slip cleats," that the wires may be moved every year or two on the growing tree. An artificial grove is found on nearly every farm, mostly of the soft maple and cottonwood; but a few have planted harder varieties of timber. The State exempts from taxation all land so planted; the trees grow rapidly, and in twenty years Northern Iowa will be a timbered country. Iowa has less waste land than any other State in the Union. The sloughs, though rated as non-cultivable land, are susceptible of drainage; and with the exception of a little rocky and sandy land along the streams, every foot of the State is available for the support of man. Despite the national spirit of self-glorification, and the brilliant apostrophes of "Western members," how few Americans realize the comparative greatness of that tier of States just west of the Mississippi. Minnesota has thirty thousand square miles of wheat-producing land; Iowa has more arable land than England proper, and not quite one acre in a hundred non-productive; Missouri has more iron, coal, timber and water-power than the Kingdom of Prussia, and Arkansas will nearly equal the Kingdom of Italy. Taking St. Louis as a centre, with a radius of three hundred miles, and describing a semicircle on the west, from the Mississippi above to the same stream below, and the area thus bounded, if cultivated like rural England, would supply food for fifty million people. Really America is not yet "settled," except, perhaps, a narrow strip along the Atlantic. St. Louis, with her western rail connections, is the natural entrepot of a section that will comfortably support a population equal to that of the Russian Empire. We are lost in a maze of conjecture when we attempt to figure to ourselves the future American, as he will be when all that region is thickly settled, dotted with towns and villages, with perhaps a score of great cities. I journeyed on west-southwest to Iowa Falls, a city of romantic location, with a foundation partly of rock, at a point where the Iowa River leaves the "summit-divide" prairies, and plunges down by a series of cascades to the level of the lower valley. There ï~~42 AN IOWA WONDER. is unlimited water-power in the vicinity, and an important city is springing up rapidly. It was then the terminus of the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad, and indulged in bright dreams of future greatness. The inhabitants I found to be of the genus Western Yankee, willing to take a stranger in and do him. Accordingly I did not tarry long, and on the morning of June 18th, took passage in a settler's wagon, to visit the celebrated "Wall Lake," which was reported afar off as the great wonder of Iowa. For many years fanciful writers had given us glowing accounts of a wonderful lake, surrounded by a compact wall of boulders and earth, with a beautiful drive on top, along which the Jehus of a "departed race" exercised their elk and buffalo teams in driving tandem. I reached the lake at dusk, having walked ten miles from the main stage road. The only inhabitant of the township lived on the border of the lake, monarch of all hlie surveyed, and evidently willing to have nobody live any nearer. The land was his, and the water and the cattle on a thousand sloughs; but hlie cared nothing for the natural beauty at his door, had no boat on the lake, and only granted me lodging because it was evident there was no other chance. North, west, and south of the lake the country is marshy for several miles, but on the east rises a beautiful wooded ridge, in the edge of which the settler lives. Only the western and southern borders of the lake have a regular wall; the bank on the east is bold and abrupt, and on the north the lake yields gradually to an extended marsh. At the extreme southern point, a clearly defined rocky wall breaks down by almost regular steps to a " wasteway," through which runs a considerable stream continuing eastward to the Iowa River. From this outlet for half a mile northwest is the only part of the wall which has any appearance of human handiwork: it is six feet high, three feet wide on top, and very compactly built of rock and earth. The outer side is quite steep, but within it slopes away gradually to the water's edge, for several rods, beautifully adorned with grass and flowers. But even there a careful examination shows no regular masonry; all is in elemental, not mechanical order. ï~~ICE-BUILT WALLS. 43 Science has clearly demonstrated that these walls are not the work of the Red Man, nor yet of his possible predecessor, the Mound Builder; they are due merely to the expansive force of ice. Geologists are agreed that the lakes of this region date back to the close of the "Glacial Epoch," remaining as then mere depressions in the "drift" which formed the soil. The "Lake Region "-whether in New York, Minnesota or Iowa-is always found on the "summit-level." Farther down there were lakes once, but the drainage from higher ground. running down the slope has cut channels far below their old beds and drained them. In Southern Iowa the careful eye can still see traces of ancient lake shores; but away up the bluffs, often fifty feet above the present surface of the river. On the "summit level," there was no such accumulation of water on higher ground to force a way through the lakes and drain them, and they remain as at first. In this climate ice often forms on them many feet in thickness. In 1863 this lake froze almost solid, killing most of the fish. Freezing to everything with which it comes in contact, boulders, earth, and rushes, the ice continually cleans the bottom of the lake and piles the materials at the edge. The expansive force of miles of miles of ice is exerted upon the rocks in a direction from the centre towards the shore; and so powerfully that on the eastern side, where the bank is abrupt, the flat stones are in many places driven in upon the boulders with such an impetus as to splinter the former like glass. Each year this process is repeated, the lake rising to the height of the wall formed the previous year, and adding new materials thereto; and this process continues till the loose material is exhausted, or the lake waters force an outlet, as this has done at the south end. That this theory is correct, is clearly proved by the existence of fifteen other lakes in this and adjoining counties with a similar formation, of which Lake Gertrude, Lake Cornelia, Twin Lake, and Little Wall Lake have even more perfect walls than this. In some, the water has gradually cut down the outlet, and drained the lake until a new wall has begun to form inside the old ones. Swans and wild geese abound on all ï~~yr Pr t x. r ï~~GRASSHOPPERS. 45 on the qui vive about the grasshoppers, which were reported to be coming from the west. Next day, in the twenty-five miles to Fort Dodge, I passed through three swarms of them, each about half a mile wide. Where I stopped for dinner the farmer sat the picture of dejection, while his wife and daughter were weeping and wringing their hands. Their farm lay directly in the path of the destroyers, and going with them to the field of wheat, now turning yellow for the harvest, I saw the insects pouring into it from the north by millions, with an ominous roar. Before them were green prairies and yellow fields of grain; behind them blaekness, desolation and death. At Fort Dodge, and for a day's travel west of there, I saw them in new swarms, now grown larger and flying high in the air, glistening in the sun like bits of white and yellow paper. Thence I saw them no more, and afterwards learned that their "visitation" was but partial, destroying about half the crop in three counties. Whence come they? Where do they breed? Whither do they go? Nobody knows certainly. In Iowa and Minnesota they are generally supposed to originate in the wastes of Northern Dakota, but the only reason I know of for this opinion is that they come generally from the northwest. In the last named State they came in August and September in 1856, and destroyed about half the crop; the next year, as soon as the weather grew warm, they seemed to spring suddenly from the ground in myriads, and chew away on the first thing they reached. Not a spear of grass or wheat, or a blade of corn escaped; and when I was there, in 1859, Minnesota had her celebrated "hard times." Every Western State and Territory has had them at first. But settlement certainly has some effect on them, as their visits grow gradually less frequent, and are less destructive when they do occur. West of Fort Dodge I fell in with a party of five, journeying with wagon and tent to Sioux City, and on invitation cast in my lot with them. We traveled but fifteen miles or so a day, hunted and fished and lived on the proceeds, slept in the wagon and tent, and had all outdoors to cook, eat and breathe in. For a hundred miles on our way, we passed perhaps ten ï~~46 STUCK IN "PURGATORY." houses; the general characteristics everywhere the same. Down a long slope for seven or eight miles, the road would bring us to a creek or slough, along which would be a scattering growth of timber; and about "one farm deep" on each side fenced in. From this valley we would rise by gentle inclines to the next "divide," five or ten miles of gently rolling prairie; then down another slope to the next slough, or creek, and consequent settlement, fifteen or twenty miles from the last. At one place we traversed twenty-five miles without sight of a house. Far as the eye could pierce the green and waving grass, now full grown, made the country appear a very paradise of herders; and daily my ideas of vastness enlarged till I wondered where the people were to come from to cultivate these fertile fields. Then there was but one railroad across Iowa; now there are four, all stimulated by the completion of the Union Pacific. It had just been made public that the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad was to be completed soon, and the wave of immigration was rolling in. Two years after, the road was completed, and already the line I traveled presents a succession of cultivated fields and tasty homes, a region diversified with orchards, white and red with clover tops, or yellow with heavy-headed grain. Then Iowa had one acre in seventeen under cultivation; now she has one in twelve, and a population of nearly a million and three quarters. The State will easily support fifteen million people by agriculture alone. The sloughs grew steadily worse as we proceeded westward, and were bridged but slightly or not at all. We passed "Purgatory" safely, but mired and stuck in "Hell "-two very bad sloughs near Sac City. We stripped in the wagon, got out into mud and water waist-deep, and by an hour's hard work got over safely. Not so fortunate were a party of Norwegians just behind us, bound for Dakota, who stuck in the worst place. We "doubled teams " and worked with them two hours, but having horses while they had oxen, could do them little good. Our stoutest man went in and carried their women and children to dry land, and we left them in statu quo-women and children crying, men shouting, swearing, and beating their oxen, all in choice ï~~r 'Vol h r - - ~.+ ï~~48 A THIRTY-FIVE-MILE WALK. Norwegian. Doubtless they had to carry out their entire load, bundle at a time, and take the wagon to pieces. Well saith the border proverb, "Western travel is rough on women and oxen." At Ida City, still fifty sniles east of Sioux City, I parted company with the excursionists, determined to travel southward to Omaha. Ida City consisted of one house, blacksmith's shop, and acompanying stables and outhouses. Thence it was thirtyfive miles over the "divide" to Denison, on the Chicago & Northwestern Road; and, as there were no houses on the way, I must make the distance in one day. After a day's rest, with i" cold bite" in valise, and canteen of water, I bore southward over the hills; for the ridges gradually rise higher as one goes towards the Missouri.. It was the 27th of June, and the heat was intense. Water I found but once on the road, and suffered considerably from thirst. It is cold enough in winter. The preceding one five persons had frozen to death on this route, having lost their way in sudden snow storms. Twenty-eight miles on my way I found two new dwellings erected in a beautiful valley, where two brothers had just moved their families and opened a stock farm. This was a delightful surprise, and at this arcadia I rested till sundown and took supper, then finished my journey in the cool of the evening. By half past nine I had finished my walk of thirty-five miles without serious fatigue, nor did I feel any ill consequences next day. Not bad for an invalid. I felt that I was ready for the plains, and taking the midnight train entered Omaha early on Sunday morning the 28th. The place had been represented to me as a paradise for the enterprising, but first impressions did not confirm the idea. A furious rivalry raged between the city and Council Bluffs on the eastern side of the Missouri; pretty much in the "You're another!" style of argument. Omaha people spoke of the Bluffs as "East Omaha," "Milkville" and "Iowa-town;" the Bluffites retorted with sarcastic remarks about "Bilkville," "Traintown," and the " Union Pacific Depot over the river." The Omahas assured me that the Bluffs were overrun by people ï~~OMAHA Vs8. THE BLUFFS. 49 out of employment; that there were ten lawyers to every case, doctors till no one could count them, and so impecunious that when a man once fell on Main Street and broke his leg they rushed up in such numbers, and made such contest over the patient, that the mayor was compelled to read the Riot Act. I soon found, as a faithful chronicler, that, like Herod Otus, familiarly known as "History's Dad," I must carefully distinguish between what I saw and what I heard. The Western mind is expansive and generous; full measure is what they always give in local history. I think it must be in the air; that men breathing this light, dry and health inspiring atmosphere, like the Delphian priestess, go mad in poloquent fury, and talk in strains of poetic exaggeration. Therefore, before I go far enough West to catch the same disease, I will indulge in one chapter of hard, prosaic fact. As I have now reached the border of the Far West proper, a general description of the whole country beyond the Missouri will better enable the reader to understand the next four years wandering. The facts are collated from observations in fifty thousand miles of travel, from the reports of personal friends in whom I repose confidence, from official surveys, and other accredited sources. Many facts in a limited space being my chief object, the reader who is bent only upon amusement may skip the following chapter. 4 ï~~CHAPTER II. A COMMON MISTAKE. Our land of promise-Pleasing errors-Painful but wholesome truths-" The Great American Desert" not a myth-Causes of sterility-Drought-Elevation and cold-Alkali-Minerals-Bitter Creek-" Journey of Death"-Travel on the Deserts-Bunch grass-Grand divisions of the West-View of the Plains-Routes across the continent-Freighting under difficulties-Railroad and emigration circulars-Caveat emptor: "Let the buyer look out." HE "Far West" is the land of promise to ten million S young Americans; but of all those who go West, nine S out of ten go just far enough to form an erroneous idea Sof all beyond. They visit eastern Kansas and Nebraska, and traverse the fertile strip which extends from one to two hundred miles west of the Missouri-the only part of the entire West which answers to the rosy views of the expectant pilgrim. There they find the rich bottom lands, the green rolling prairies and fertile vales of political romance; and it is that region, perhaps two hundred by twelve hundred miles in extent, intermediate between the Missouri line and the high plains, which is taken as the basis of comparison by the hopeful visitor, who imagines that with the exception of a few mountain chains it is much the -same all the way to the Pacific. It is difficult to convince such that in the West are regions of utter desert so vast that a New England State might be hidden in them, and only pass for a respectable oasis. Any route across the continent must traverse a complete desert from five hundred to a thousand miles wide. The Union Pacific enters upon it about Laramie, and with the exception of Salt Lake Valley, and perhaps two or three others, continues in it all the way to the Sierras. The Northern Pacific strikes it at the Mauvaises Terre. of Dakota, and thence bar50 ï~~THE AMERICAN DESERT. 51 renness is the rule and fertility the exception to the entering in of Washington Territory. The Southern and thirty-fifth parallel roads strike it in western Texas or at the Rio Grande, and traverse it to Southern California. Draw a line on longitude 1000 from British America to Texas; then go 800 miles westward, and draw another from British America to Mexico, and all the area between these two lines-800 by 1200 miles in extent; or in round numbers a million square miles-is the "American Desert:" a region of varying mountain, desert and rock; of prevailing drought or complete sterility, broken rarely by fertile valleys; of dead volcanoes and sandy wastes; of excessive chemicals, dust, gravel and other inorganic matter. Only the lower valleys, bordering perennial streams, or more rarely some plateau on which water can be brought from the mountains for irrigation, or still more rarely a green plat in some corner of the mountains where there is an unusual amount of rain, or percolation of moisture from above, constitute the cultivable lands; all the rest is rugged mountain, rocky flat, gravel bed, barren ridge scantily clothed with sage brush, greasewood or bunch grass, or complete desert-the last covering at least one-third of the entire region. The causes of these deserts may be summed up under four heads: I. Drought. II. Elevation and consequent cold. III. Excess of inorganic matter, as rock, gravel, etc. IV. Excess of chemicals, such as soda, alkali and plant destroying salts. Generally more than one, and often all, of these causes combine; but for the convenient reference of the reader I will consider them in their order: I. Drought is the prevailing characteristic of all the country far west of the Missouri--increasing westward from that river till one has crossed to the Pacific slope. The causes of this westward increasing aridity are found in the greater elevation, the ï~~52 A LITTLE SCIENCE. trend of the mountains and the direction of the prevailing winds. Look upon the map of the eastern hemisphere, and observe the alternations of desert and fertility between the parallels of 200 and 300 north, and note that the desert steadily increases as we go westward. The causes briefly stated are these: The clouds, surcharged with moisture from the Pacific, are carried by the prevailing winds over China and Anam, with abundant showers; they are wrung dry, so to speak, in passing the high Himalayas, and float over southern Persia and Afghanistan without discharge. They gather again a little moisture from the Persian Gulf, and hence there is rain a little way inland in Arabia; a little more water is obtained from the Red Sea, and light showers sometimes fall in Egypt, whence they sweep over the whole length of the Sahara without a fertilizing shower. Thence across the Atlantic, loaded with moisture, the clouds yield immense rains upon the next intervening continent, producing the dense jungles and luxuriant vegetation of tropical America. In like manner the summer winds from the Pacific send in upon California heavy mists, which are caught and condensed by the Coast Range, whence the valleys opening toward the west are green throughout the year. Between the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevadas the great interior valley of California has rain in winter only when the moisture is wafted from the south, and east of that range the Great Basin is nearly all a complete desert, the rim of the inclosing mountains admitting only the clouds of highest range and least moisture from the south. Between that and Kansas still interposes the loftiest range of the Rocky Mountains, more completely shutting off the summer clouds and leaving all that elevated region, for three hundred miles east of the mountains, to depend upon the uncertain chance of winter snows, upon southeast winds and the percolation of moisture from higher basins and mountain hollows. Progressing thence eastward, we come more and more within the range of winds from the Gulf, and more into a region of moisture. Hence all Western Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota must suffer from frequent droughts, and the region as far east as Western Iowa and Minnesota occasionally from the same cause. ï~~HIGH AND DRY. 53 II. The general elevation of the Great West would alone render much of it unfit for agriculture. Let us for illustration take the Platte Valley and general line of the Union Pacific. Omaha is nine hundred and sixty-six, and Cheyenne nearly six thousand feet above sea-level; and through this long ride of five hundred and sixteen miles there is a gentle and almost continuous up grade, averaging ten feet to the mile. In no place does it exceed thirty feet, while in two places it sinks to a level, and on two short distances there is a down grade: the first on entering the Platte Valley from the hills just west of Omaha, and the second from Archer, a few miles east of Cheyenne, down into Crow Creek Valley. From a car window one may note a curious though very gradual and almost imperceptible change in soil and climate, and consequently in landscape and natural productions. Four hundred miles west of Omaha we find a high, dry country, for the most part fit only for pasturage, where frost may be looked for any month in the year. Wyoming contains 97,000 square miles, and not a foot of land less than 4000 feet high. Colorado has about the average elevation of Wyoming, Denver being nearly on the level of Cheyenne. Manifestly the high plains of these two Territories can never be of value except for grazing. Utah, as reduced, contains over 60,000 square miles; but, except possibly a few of the sunken deserts of the south, the lowest valley is higher than the average summit of the Allegheny Mountains, the surface of the Salt Lake being 4250 feet above the sea. Of the 121,210 square miles in New Mexico, all are upwards of 3000 feet above the sea, except some small portions of the plains east of the Rocky Range, and the lower part of the Rio Grande valley. All of the Territory west of that river rises in a series of lofty plateaus, and Santa Fe, the capital, is so high that its summer temperature is about that of Quebec. Nevada has the same general level as Utah, but its principal towns are much higher than those of the latter, having been built by miners ï~~,.,,.__ _, -,,:,.. w w.., F r t.:, _. T... v P-, _, r:,. u. x _,., __;~. -,,,.. r. _r,...,,_ _.. 5 _<<._ _ ro _, tip. s t s _._..,.:: -:,_. _.,... c,,:... n.rt _ e. m, _,; _ - =, R, - >a-,.._. = ~",. -.,: _. _ e rz,,,, ï~~ALKALI. 55 and tree solid to the ground. A similar experience has followed the attempt to cultivate the soil in most of these high localities; and if there were no other causes, elevation alone would render half the Far West unfit for the farmer. Nor is this a difficulty that can be overcome by any art of man. Those who talk so glibly of the reclamation of waste lands in the West must wait until nature flattens out the country, and brings it down into the region of warmer air, and more abundant moisture. Providence seemingly did not intend that farming should be the leading interest of the Rocky Mountain region; its true wealth is to be found in mining and grazing. III. Of barrenness caused simply by lack of soil little need be said. I have traveled for days together over ridges of gravel, or traversed hundreds of miles with a basis of little more than solid rock, or with barely soil enough for scrubby growths of pine; and generally throughout the Rocky Mountains, instead of being green as are the slopes of the Alleghenies, all the steeps are gray and bare. From the summit of the Sierra Madre in New Mexico, 400 miles westward, I saw no other rock than sandstone, which, disintegrating and blowing down upon the valleys, was slowly covering the fields of the "lost race" and obliterating what little fertility remained. IV. ALKALI is the popular name applied everywhere in the West to that bi-carbonate which whitens thousands of square miles of the interior plains between the Black Hills and the Sierras. East of the former it is often seen in quantity sufficient to appear like hoar frost upon the grass, or render barren a small plat of ground; but farther west it lies in vast beds, or mingled with the soil in such quantities as to poison the water, and destroy all vegetation. Gazing from a car window on the Union Pacific, somewhere not far west of the Platte crossing, the traveler is surprised to see flour or very white ashes, as he supposes, sowed in streaks and patches along the ground; and ï~~1,... A ï~~, ï~~58 BUNCH-GRASS. consider what there may be of value in such a country. First to be noted among the redeeming features is the growth of bunch-grass, which is found in patches over a country at least a thousand miles square. Bunch-grass chiefly differs from the verdure of the East in that it never forms a continuous sod or green sward; it grows in scattered clumps, six or eight to the square rod, or thicker where the locality is favorable. One can span a bunch at the roots, but above it spreads; sometimes several bunches grow so as to form a clump a foot wide. It is never of a deep green, and for three-quarters of the year is a regular gray-brown; hence an Eastern man might ride all day through rich pastures of it, and thinik himself in a complete desert. It gets its entire growth in about six weeks, sometime between January and July according to the locality. It - then cures upon the ground, and stands through the year looking very much like bunches of broomsedge. It is as nutritious as ripe oats, the species with a white top, containing a small black seed, being particularly fattening. With it animals make journeys of a thousand miles without an ounce of grain; without it, nine-tenths of America between meridians 1000 and 120,Â~ would be totally worthless. Probably the most disappointing feature in Rocky Mountain scenery, to all new comers, is the absence of a green landscape; for with rare exceptions the traveler's eye does not rest in summer upon an unvarying carpet of green as in the East. The bunch-grass is a pale green, or quite gray or yellow; the small sage-brush is white, and the large variety blue, the greasewood is a dirty white, and the earth and rocks white, yellow or red; hence the result is a neutral gray, which seems to shroud all creation in sober tints. One may ride all day through good bunch-grass pasture and his horse be walking in sand all the time; or through a tolerably rich country and never see an acre of that lively emerald which is the charm of an Ohio landscape. A plat of green sward is a rare sight in the Rocky Mountains;. but eastward, on the high plains, other grasses appear, changing by slow degrees to the heavy verdure of the Missouri Valley. But the true wealth of all that country is in its minerals. It ï~~DIVISIONS OF THE WEST. 59 is my belief that there is not a range in the Rocky Mountains in which paying minerals cannot be found somewhere. Every year valuable mines are discovered in places which had been given up as hopeless by men of science. Four years ago there was scarcely one in a hundred who believed in the mineral wealth of Utah; now her developed mines are worth $25,000,000. With more experience, more thorough prospecting, and improved modes of working, every part of that vast region will be found rich in some kind of minerals. The agricultural wealth of the country has been vastly overrated; its mineral wealth equally underrated. Two or three more railroads across the continent are needed, to transport machinery and supplies, and then we can say that our mineral development has begun; what has been done will appear as nothing. Of timber all the West east of the Sierra Nevada has barely enough to supply local necessity; of the immense forests on that range I will treat in the proper place. The Great West falls naturally into five grand divisions: 1. The Plains. 2. The Rocky Mountains. 3. The Colorado Basin. 4. The Great Basin-also known as Fremont's and the Interior Basin. 5. The Pacific Slope. The term "plains" is often, improperly, applied to the whole country between the Missouri and the Pacific; it belongs only to that vast inclined plane stretching from the river, from four to six hundred miles, to the foot of the mountains, and extending from Texas far into British America. Ascending this gentle grade anywhere between parallels 350 and 450, nearly the same general features are observable. Let the traveler start at the eastern border and go westward, on any section line, he will for fifty miles traverse a region rich in all the elements of plant growth; the bottoms of inexhaustible fertility, the slopes equal to the Miami Valley, and the ridges generally good for wheat, and always most excellent pasture. ï~~60 THE HIGH PLAINS. Along the streams is found a heavy growth of elm, walnut, hackberry and cottonwood; on the slopes and in the valleys, dense grass, almost the height of man, and over all the ridges, rich prairie grasses mingled with a few other plants, and beautifiully varied by thousands of bright-hued flowers, mingling the colors of the temperate and semi-tropical regions. Westward up the streams we first notice a disappearance of the forest growth; the timber shrinks to a mere fringe along the water's edge, or to stunted and gnarled bushes, contending feebly for life against increasing drought and annually recurring prairie fires. Walnut and ash disappear, and of large timber we find only the cottonwood, box-elder and willow. A hundred miles out, west of the Neosho or near the Verdigris, a marked change is observable; only the valleys are first class land; the slopes are but medium, and the ridges full of rock and yielding scant grass. Fifty miles farther, on the slopes and ridges verdure in its strict meaning disappears; buffalo grass and gama grass take its place, and these show a tendency to bunch together, leaving large portions of the surface bare. The land rises into long ridges stretching away swell on swell as far as the eye can reach-as if a heaving ocean had suddenly become firm, fixed earth-and immense pampas spread away, alternating flint and gravel with strips of wiry, curly grass, or, at long intervals, a protected growth of stunted shrubs. The bright flowers of the lower valley disappear; those that remain appear to have lost color and odor; the blue larkspur alone retains its brightness; the wild sunflower and yellow saffron become dusthued and dwarfish, while milkweed and resinweed sustain a sort of dying life, and cling with a sickly hold to the harsh and forbidding soil. Still the immediate valleys are rich; still occasional depressions or oval vales along the streams contain a few thousand acres of fertility, and half or more of the upland furnishes scant pasturage. The traveler, after toiling for hours over half-barren ridges, stunted grass-plats, or acres of bare gray rock or dead clay, finds his road leading down to some stream, and from a rocky point beholds spreading for miles an oasis, beautiful by nature and delightfill by comparison, watered ï~~DIFFICULTIES OF TRAVEL. 6I by a clear stream, bordered by rich meadows, and marking the course of a long and narrow tongue of rich land. Here are the buffalo and antelope; all settlements are far behind, and the plains in all their vastness are around us. Three hundred miles out and we are on the Great American Desert; it exists, all doubts to the contrary notwithstanding, though more than half of its surface east of the mountains is of some value for grazing. Now appear depressed basins, and valleys with vast patches of white saline matter dried upon the soil; short stunted grass, half-white with salt, saline plants resembling many upon the seashore, and vast flats and marshes, drying in the summer to beds of stifling d(lust. Travel over the high country with teams is there an impossibility. We must follow some stream for grass and water, and hence from time immemorial, aborigine, trapper, and emigrant have had three great routes across the plains-the Platte Valley, the Smoky Hill, and the Arkansas routes. The aborigine adopted these routes from the buffalo; the hunter followed the Indian; the emigrant was piloted by the hunter, and on the last two lines following came the railroads, obedient to the same necessities for water and a smooth route. Leaving these narrow routes as we approach the mountains, we find foothills and ridges extending far eastward on the plains, cut by narrow gullies hundreds of feet in depth, with perpendicular sides--a series of covered ways, equal to the best devised by military skill, admirable hiding places and lines of approach for marauding Kiowas or murderous Arrapahoes. Between the streams which create and mark out the lines of travel, extend broken ridges, crossed by the traveler only on low "divides," where the demands of commerce have made a crossing an imperative necessity. There the discouraged teamster contends equally with heat; thirst, and fatigue; grows old before his time in an unequal struggle with nature; toils over stony ridges destitute of grass and water, or labors through beds of noxious alkali, rising in ever wind-obeying clouds to excoriate his nostrils, weaken his eyes, or embitter the scant streams which are his only resource. ï~~rl 9,, Â~:; F.-,. "....f a.:.r, n c 1,.. '%r =1 fY': 9 wr 'r r - p c _. ' S.9r - ' ' r s i t. 1. r" 1 r "ec_ ~.:;....,.,,o...,. r A A, t _... r 4 ï~~CHAPTER III. FIVE WEEKS IN NEBRASKA. Omaha-Glorious anticipitations-Prosaic facts-A bit of history-FlorenceAn invasion of place hunters-Disappointment-On the road to FontanelleElkhorn Valley-Lost on the prairie-" Any port in a storm "-Down to the Platte-Fremont-Down Platte Valley-Intense heat-Want of domestic economy-Romantic hash- Victuals and poetry-Bovine apotheosis-Farming in Nebraska-Room for three hundred thousand farmers-ClimateSociety-" Professional starvation "-Through Sarpy County-Youthful connubiality-Artificial groves-Increase of rain-fall-Omaha politics-" Bilks" -" IHunting for work,-hoping to not find it." REAT is Omaha, George Francis Train and the Credit S Mobilier! Such was the shibboleth of the Omahas when I first made their acquaintance in June, 1868. He who was not prepared to swear by this local trinity was jocularly advised to emigrate or make his will. At the present writing the second is for the tenth time a "martyr to principle,"-nobody knows to what principle,-viewing the world through crossbars, and the third has become a national scandal, from which an odor of corruption pervades the whole land; but the first still survives, and with a more solid basis of prosperity. It took me two hours to discover that there was no situation waiting for me in Omaha. For some weeks before reaching the city I had continually heard, "It's the great city of the near future," "The heart of the Continent beats there," etc.; and in walking twice along Farnham Street I encountered some fifty persons looking for "light, easy and genteel employment." But after a few days' stay I was convinced that no place in America had been "so well lied about," as no place had been exposed to a wider range of praise and blame. That the city had a future and a bright one was certain; but that five men were dazzled in the hope of that future, and destined to lose 68 ï~~II ï~~SITUATIONS WANTED. 66 year thereafter came a fearful epidemic and swept away 12,000 of these-at least, that strikes me as the easiest explanation, for the National Census of 1870 only credited Omaha with some 13,000 people. Council Bluffs, which had never claimed more than 12,000, suffered but little reduction from the census epidemic. The growth of Omaha was encouragingly rapid; but the Western mind is queerly constructed, and great on anticipation. The air is light, dry and healthy, and the world looks big west of the Missouri; every man feels that the range of all outdoors is his pasture, and is hopeful as a millionaire if he have a few corner lots, and ten dollars in his pocket. Hence magnified reports, and glowing promises of more rapid growth in the next two years; and thousands of young men in the Northern and Eastern States imagined that all they had to do was to come to Omaha, and fortune would shower her favors on them. There was an immense immigratien in 1868, of just such material as a new State does not want, and for every clerk's or bookkeeper's position there were a hundred applicants. But the ninety-nine rejected did not particularly suffer. Some footed it eastward, some tried their fortune farther west, and some went into the country and learned to till the soil; for men will work rather than starve, and there is abundant provision in Nebraska for men to hoe corn and cultivate muscle. But each of the disappointed wrote to his friends or to the press, and for the rest of that year Omaha was the best abused city in the West. The heated term was at its worst, and after ten days in Omaha I once more took my pilgrim staff for the country, following out the California Trail. The telegraph by the road side, continuous to San Francisco, awakened some singular reflections: of the time but a few years past when this was the last outpost of civilization on the long route to the Pacific; of the tens of thousands who made this their starting point for a new Eldorado, and the thousands from every State whose graves line the trail all the way to the Sacramento. Now the border of cultivation and settlement is hundreds of miles westward; half the distance to the mines is traversed by rail, and 5 ï~~,. 1,.<._ <:'..,.:, 4. ' '"eta,"(' t 1,.,.. y, _. a. v',,; r.... w, i y ï~~SOIL AND CLIMATE. 67 show the effects of drought, though much less rain falls in the course of the year than in Indiana. The hard freeze of the - winter makes the ground pulverize finely and hold moisture better in summer, and it is generally dry enough to plow in the spring as soon as the frost is out of the ground. Settlers report that the soil is nearly as dry in winter as in summer, and it is only during the month of May-is it because the snows are then melting in the mountains?-that they have heavy rains here. The winda bother me a little. I am not yet free from the neuralgic affection consequent on last winter's troubles, and the breeze makes me feel giddy-more by its steadiness than its force. So my old neighbor contemplating emigration to Nebraska, may ask himself whether it is nobler in a man to suffer the stings and buffets of these outrageous winds, with freedom from winter rain and mud, or take refuge in the wooded region of Indiana, avoid the winds, and have the other evils. Turned straight north up the Papillion, lay by in the heat of the day, and took dinner with a Swede who had been here a year and understood perhaps fifty words of English. Fortunately he had served as a mercenary in France and Italy, and spoke both -languages like a native. I recalled a little of my boarding-school French, which I hadn't had a chance to air for five years, and we carried on a mongrel conversation in a very barbarous mixture of French and Latin. He tells me there has been a famine in his native province, and that all Swedes here who can raise money have sent it to their friends and relations to pay their passage out, and that accounts for the many young people I see among them who do not appear to be of the family. They are stopping with their friends till they can get homes, which is but a little while in this marvelously fertile region, where every laborer is in demand, and where the State wants the hardy Scandinavian almost as badly as he wants it. I stop for the night with another of the "Deformed Dutch," as the Yankees hereabout irreverently style these German Presbyterians. ï~~.. E 1,... i ",r,. x i,,i., 6 pl ~ qE,;;, *ti,ifs j t o-,:.,, k ae t~v,., fkr ru,... s.'.. 4 NSF. r. 4 ï~~LOST ON THE PRAIRIE. 69 of natural forest. The country is gently rolling and the views very fine. At every turn in the road I exclaim, "Surely this cannot be excelled," and yet the next view as I move towards Fontanelle seems still more beautiful. July 10th.-A dlay about Fontanelle, which is a neat, country village, elegantly situated on a commanding ridge above the Elk horn river. Turning southwest late in the afternoon, I lost my way on the unbroken prairie north of the Platte, and soon after sundown reached a farmhouse which looked very uninviting by starlight, but was my only chance within ten miles. To my earnest inquiry for fresh water, the settler answered that hlie had dug two wells, one seventy feet deep and got no water, but struck sand Swhich "caved so he could not curb." This is the only such casel have found in the State. Sometimes they must dig deep, but they get as fine water as I ever tasted. The family were using water from the creek, of which one tinful satisfied and disgusted me. To my request for lodging he answered that I would find hard accommodations, but he never turned anybody away at night. No mention was made of supper, and I was conducted at once by a ladder to the upper story, where I turned in for the Snight on a shuck bed, and soon forgot in sleep all my troubles but thirst. But oh, the visionary springs that tantalized me, the crystal streams that flowed in inviting, tormenting beauty through my dreams. How often did I see the "cot of my father, the dairy house nigh it, and the old oaken bucket that hung in the well," and wake, just as the treacherous water fled from my lips. July 11th.-Daylight revealed a situation. My host's wife was insane-as he expressed it, "clean daft "-and his six children, ranging from one year old to ten, were growing up like wild bulrushes. A sort of breakfast was prepared, and I forced a scant ration of bread and coffee, but it was a signal triumph of a catholic stomach over a protesting nose. My host was going to Fremont, "to git his sod plow sot and - sharped," and I took a seat in his wagon, and in an hour reached ï~~70 FREMONT. the summit of the slope leading down to the Platte Valley. As I viewed the panorama of beauty my heart swelled at the glory and magnificence of the scene. Far as the eye could pierce to the east and west spread the plain, its surface covered with tall grass, now waving and sparkling in the morning sunshine; along the opposite bluff ran the broad Platte fringed with timber, and on the near bank, some five miles distant, the town of Fremont showed like a toy village half buried in the green carpet. Up the valley from the east rumbled the morning train on the Union Pacific, while far to the westward a band of Pawnees were just passing out of sight, seeming on the level plain, to fade into the blue horizon. The whole scene was emblematic of progress, breathing the spirit of borderland poetry. I wanted to shout or sing. Eagerly I wished for a companion to talk in harmony with the scene and my feelings. But the man at my side was utterly unconcerned. He had seen it a thousand times, and Gallio-like, cared for none of these things. From the bluff the road across the plain looked like a deep ditch with green banks, but this appearance was due to the rank grass reaching on each side nearly as high as the horses' backs. Entering between these green banks, the hitherto apathetic farmer suddenly seized his whip and applied it vigorously to his team, shouting at every blow till they were in a gallop, while the wagon made fearful lurches, and our seatboard rattled over it in every direction. I bounced about the wagon-box, exerting all my ingenuity to save my limbs, and as soon as I could get breath shouted that there was no occasion for such hurry, to take it easy. His only reply in the intervals of plying the whip, was to point to the tall grass, from which I then observed pouring by hundreds, a peculiar sort of clipper-built fly, with green heads, black bodies, and yellow shoulder-straps, which were trying to settle on the horses, and only prevented by the latter's speed. I held on in desperation, and our speed did not slacken for two miles, until we reached the rising ground and got among the cultivated fields near Fremont. There, while I gathered myself up and took stock of abrasions and cuticular losses, the ï~~DOWN THE PLATTE. 71 farmer killed the few flies which had stuck, each one leaving a bright red drop of blood on the frantic animals. July 12th.-Spent Sunday at Fremont, a flourishing western Yankee town of 1200 people. No church or Sabbath school that I can hear of, but plenty of loafers on the hotel porch all day, sociable and communicative, discussing the hot weather, the grasshoppers, and the "craps." All agree that the " hoppers" - are coming, and that it will be "mighty tough on the new settlers as ha'int got their claims paid for yet." Late P. M. walked five miles down the valley. July 13th.-The " hoppers" have come, but fortunately only a light invasion, and doing very little injury. A few fields of wheat in this valley are " nipped," and passengers say that for two or three miles on Papillion, nearly half the crop is destroyed. Travel slowly towards Omaha through the most fertile country I ever saw. Farmers estimate their wheat will average thirty bushels per acre. Corn still looks thrifty in spite of long con-- tinued heat and drought. Thermometer stood at 1000 for four hours to-day. Consequently I stood not at all, but lay by on the porch of a farmer's house till 4 P.m. Stopped for supper in Big Papillion Valley, at an inviting frame dwelling surrounded by fine fields of corn and wheat, from which I argued good cheer. My disappointment was terrible. Tea that drew my mouth awry, without milk; butter, that defied me in selfconscious strength; pork, the rankest that ever smelt to heaven; and bread that defied my geology to classify. After due trial I ventured to assign it to the palseozoic period. It lacerated my mouth; it would have killed rats. For this entertainment (?) my host required "six bits." Left in an ill-humor, and proceeded to criticize the western farmer's style of living. Why do so many of our people poison themselves-even those who are able to do better-when good food is just as cheap? How many families in Indiana and Illinois are cursing the climate for evils which three months' attention to the chemistry of common life would relieve? Know ye not, that what a man eateth that he is? Science has demonstrated that we are totally remade, bone and blood, brain ï~~72 GASTRONOMICAL. and muscle, every seven years. Thus our present selves are ever scooping up our future selves with knife, fork and spoon. And have not I, A. B., a vital interest in what the A. B. of seven years hence shall be? Fried pork, watery potatoes, sloppy coffee, and sad bread! How can the Hoosier or Sucker retain his self-respect when he remembers his component elements? The classic Greeks did well to locate the soul in the stomach. I am not so sure but the enlightened moderns will return to that philosophy. The greatest philosophers to a man were lovers of good eating. Man, dominating the whole animal kingdom, selects only its noblest representatives as worthy to sink their individuality in his, by giving their meat and muscle to become part of his corporation. The highest compliment man can pay the ox is to eat him. By so doing he demonstrates that the bovine is worthy to be absorbed in the human; and if we may believe that animal has a soul, how cheerful to reflect that it meets its proper apotheosis by adoption into the human spirituality. Viewed in that light these animals are indeed immortal; they survive in us, their federal head and final representative. When a man says of the idol of his soul, "I love her well enough to eat her," what does he mean but this: that he has so intense an appreciation of her excellence that he would literally absorb it, swallow up as ittwere her rare combination of soul and body-beautiful simile!-tianslate her, so to speak, and make her a part of himself in fact as well as in figure. In this philosophical light, the lover's tender suggestion of amatory cannibalism is really the most delicate of respectful compliments. Favor is deceitful, and beauty's only skin deep, but there is no discount on boned turkey and scalloped oysters. I have no sympathy with that class of transcendentalists, fortunately small, who deprecate any deep interest in the mere pleasure of eating. " We may live without sentiment, music and art, We may live without poetry, pictures or books, But civilized man cannot live without cooks." Having thus grumbled myself into good nature, I sauntered ï~~BEAUTIES OF NEBRASKA. 73 on towards the city, stopping late in the evening with a prosperous farmer in Little Papillion Valley. July 14th.-A beautiful artificial grove of twenty acres on this farm, shows that, whatever be the true theory as to the origin of these prairies, the soil and climate have the capacity to produce timber in abundance. My host says the trees are made to grow twice as fast for the first three years by cultivating corn among them. Most are cottonwood and soft maple. The locusts along the road have attained a foot in thickness in eleven years. Nebraska has the land, the air, and the water; but lacks somewhat the timber and rock, though the last abounds in a few localities. Reached Omaha to-day, and now sum up a few notes on rural Nebraska: For the width of the State and a hundred and fifty miles back from the Missouri, almost every foot of land is adapted for the comfort and sustenance of man. Thirty thousand square miles of the most fertile land in the world has even now (1873) but a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. There is abundant room for at least three hundred thousand farmers and stockgrowers. Vacant lands can be purchased at from three to fifteen dollars per acre, according to location, the vicinity of railroads, etc. I had offers of as fine land as I ever saw, in the Papillion Valleys, within ten or twenty miles of the Union Pacific, for eight dollars per acre; but it has no doubt doubled in price since. On the Elkhorn, above Fontanelle, is still much vacant land to be had very cheap. In the southern part of the State, between Lincoln and the eastern border, are large sections of railroad land to be had at moderate prices, on annual payments for seven years. Any live Yankee farmer can make the payments on the land after the second year. Farther back lands are still cheaper, with fine facilities for grazing. On the slopes and in the valleys, the soil is continuous of the same quality for six feet below the surface. Immediately under this, lies a bed of soft, rather moist sand, which probably causes the soil to remain moist so long. In spite of the long droughts of 1868, the crops were very fine. While the valleys and ï~~74 HEALTH AND CLIMATE. slopes are best for corn, the uplands produce better wheat. After the hard freeze of winter, with no thaws, the soil pulverizes finely in summer. It is never water soaked; consequently never "bakes" or clods. The best farmers do not plow the land in spring for wheat, after it has been cultivated two or three years; but merely harrow in the seed. Later experience in Nebraska convinced me that the State averaged as many clear days in winter as any part of America. I grumbled considerably about the wind at first; it caused a giddy feeling in my head. But after I got over the neuralgia, bronchitis, catarrh, and six or eight other complaints I brought from Indiana, I rather liked it; and now I quite prefer a region with a r ontinuous gentle breeze of six or eight miles an hour. My obs:vation in the West has led me to conclude that regions with sft ady winds are the most healthful. Socid ty in Nebraska will average. There is no section where they vill murder a man outright because he is a Christian; and none where they will disfranchise him if he is not. The standard of popular intelligence is high. The people are the most enterprising classes from those Eastern States, which have good public schools. The school system is equal to that of any State in the Union. So, on the whole, if you are native to any climate north of latitude thirty-five degrees, and have any "get up" about you, and can and will work, there's a show for you in rural Nebraska. As for professionals-well, most of the towns have doctors and lawyers to all eternity, and insurance agents till you can't rest. Omaha had, in 1868, fifty-three attorneys: business, I should say, for about six. However, for an enterprising young man, without any capital to speak of, and just beginning a profession, it offers as fine a field for successful starvation as any place I.know. Finding at Omaha a dozen or more letters from old friends inquiring about Nebraska lands, I again started afoot, this time toward the southern part of the State. For a few miles below Omaha the country may be called hilly; then it sinks by gentle slopes to the Platte Valley, and thence rolling prairie extends ï~~A VENTURESOME YOUTH. 75 to the Kansas border. Traveled for the first day through a fine wheat region in Sarpy County, the farmers everywhere at work, but complaining much of the intense heat. Where I stopped for dinner there had been, the previous day, two cases of sunstroke, but neither seemed likely to prove fatal. Instead of the breeze generally prevailing on the prairie there was a dead calm, sultry and oppressive. At sundown I turned aside to an humble cabin flanked by a pretentious stable. Found no one at home but a girl and boy as I supposed, of whom seeking hospitality I enquired for the man of the house. An audible smile greeted me, and the lad replied that he was "the only man o' the house there was about." Further conversation developed the fact, that this youthful pair had been married ten months, and still lacked six weeks of nineteen and sixteen years respectively. The girl-matron, "reckoned she could get me something to eat, an' I could sleep in the barn-loft with brother Perry." Under the influence of a cup of tea she became more than social, stating that "Ike's folks was much agin the match, but Ike was a comin' out to pre-empt, and swore he'd have a woman to help him." I gazed at the young husband with that admiration the timid always feel for the brave. They "was married in Iowa, and both worked for one farmer three months to get money to pay for their things, then came right out an' pre-empted." Then she turned questioner, and put me in the witness-box: Where was I born.and raised? Didn't I like this country better than Injiana? And finally, after a pause, and with a sudden jerk of the head as if she had forgotten something important, "What do you do with your wife while you're trampin' round lookin' at the country?" I told her I had no wife, at which she was somewhat taken aback, but recovering handsomely, in a minute or two returned to the charge by asking why I had never married. I answered that I had hardly thonght I was old enough, and no more questions were asked. I had her there. Darkness came, and with it dense swarms of musquitoes from the neighboring bayous of the Missouri and Platte. ï~~? A s # 1i 'i w t. Y { h ~ tr U; w r r 1 e r ' v R d, a.n om f a t, " N k j.l edS'v y t r e t an e W., w a err M, - r ro ï~~RAIN AND TIMBER. 77 inch of my cuticle in a fever, I rose with a full appreciation of Byron's beautiful line* "No sleep till morn," and sat by a "smudge" till daylight.. Thence southwestward for a few days, I found the country about as that west of Omaha, but with more and cheaper vacant land. Every settler had an artificial grove of from ten to twenty acres. It is' a frequent subject of remark in Indiana, that cutting the timber and clearing up the country is slowly tending to dry up the streams; that springs "go dry every summer which never did before." But here exactly the reverse phenomena are presented. It is supposed that breaking up the land allows it to absorb more moisture than it could in the prairie state; and the settlers tell me that breaking up a hundred acres of sod will renew an old spring, and branches are starting in gullies which have been dry for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. The oldest pioneers add, that the fall of rain in Western Nebraska and Kansas has doubled within the memory of man. I returned to Omaha to find it hot, physically and politically. The campaign of 1868 inaugurated; the days were too sultry for politics, but the nights were made hideous by party meetings. General Grant and party, including Generals Sherman and Sheridan, arrived from the West, and fifteen thousand people turned out to welcome them. Omaha then had a "floating population" worth studying. It was the half-way place between the East and the West. Thousands started for the mountains, got to Omaha, got out of money, and stopped disheartened. Thousands were started home from the mountains and got to the city in the same impecunious condition. Daily the tide of emigration rolled in from the East, and passed on to the Far West, leaving here a deposit of its worthless materials; and daily the refluent tide rolled back from the mountains, leaving a larger deposit of more worthless materials. The streets were crowded, but the crowds did not indicate a corresponding amount of money. Nineteen hotels and restaurants ï~~78 "FLOATERS." were in operation, and at every one of them "bilks" abounded. The floating class were in just that condition when men will steal or beg their provisions, but carefully save their money to buy whiskey. A thousand idlers were sitting about Omaha complaining of" hard times," and cursing the country, while in the rural districts the farmers were hunting in all directions for help, and offering three dollars a day for harvesting and haying. Verily something was wrong: "The chain and the bucket were not hitched together." ï~~CHAPTER IV. ON THE UNION PACIFIC. Up the Platte Valley-Beauty by moonlight; barrenness by day-Getting on to the desert-North Platte-" The gentle gazelle "-" Dog-town "-Not dogs, but rodents-" Indians ahead "-The dangerous district-Crossing the plains in 1866-" The noble Red Man "-Cheyenne-Vigorous reduction of the population - Black Hill - Sherman - Down to Laramie - The Alkali Desert-- Benton-A beautiful summer resort!-Manners and morals (?)-Bravery of the impecunious-Murder and mob-Vigilantes-Murderer rescued by the military and escapes-Amusements-"Big Tent "-" Now then, gentlemen, the ace is your winning card "-" Cappers" and Victims-No fairness in gambling. "The Yankee's place of heaven and rest Is found a little farther West." rn0 ND therefore, at 6 P. M. of July 31st, I started westward by the Union Pacific. The intense and protracted heat had yielded at last; a heavy rain of twenty-four hours 'had cooled the air, and washed the dust from the grass, leaving all the region along the road a beautiful rich green. The road ran through a well settled and cultivated country for about fifty miles, but a little west of Fremont, we ran out suddenly into the open prairie, consisting of the rolling slopes and broad fertile valley of the Platte. The sky was clear after the storm, and the sunset was one that, in Italy, would have been "gorgeous," "unrivalled," and worthy of any amount of florid description, but on our western prairie was simply beautiful. Then rose the harvest-moon, now at its full; and leaning out of the car-window I drank in quiet enjoyment while grove, bluff and broad silvery Platte rolled by in ever varying panorama of loveliness. Nor was it till midnight that wearied of gazing I went to sleep. Daylight came, the loveliness was gone, and the whole scene had changed. For landscape beauty there was only grandeur; 79 ï~~y b, C,., S^ _ J ^..nom S e a {, Seri a km m r 7 a w SO j w_ ï~~FIRST VIEW OF THE PLAINS. 81 for rich green prairie and picturesque groves there was only the majesty of distance, an expanse without life, vast plains and rolling hills. The broad Platte, like a stream of molten silver by moonlight, now appeared its real self: a dirty and uninviting lagoon, only differing from a slough in having a current, from half a mile to two miles wide, and with barely water enough to fill an average canal; six inches of fluid running over another stream of six feet or more of treacherous sand; too thin to walk on, too thick to drink, too shallow for navigation, too deep for safe fording, too yellow to wash in, too pale to paint withthe most disappointing and least useful stream in America. Here and there in the river are low islands, barely rising above the water and scantily clothed with brush; and in the bends of the stream, more rarely, clumps of large timber or green meadows. Vegetation begins to show signs of drought. The grass is short and wiry, with a sort of dried, cured look; no more bright flowers are seen, and neither house nor cultivated field appears. As we move westward through the day we occasionally see the blue larkspur and then the resinweed and greasewood; finally Sappear the "sand-burr," a species of cactus, and a stunted flower resembling the fuchsia with weakened pink and blue tints. We appear to be running on a dead level; for though the route is up the Platte Valley, the ascent is so gradual as to be. quite imperceptible. At places the road is perfectly straight for several miles, and at one point I can stand on the rear platform and note the lines of rail steadily converging till they unite and fade away beyond the reach of the eye in far perspective. We take breakfast at North Platte-291 miles from Omaha -an excellent one, too; all the delicacies of an Eastern hotel, and antelope and buffalo steaks in addition, for the moderate price of a dollar and a quarter. Such were the rates till the road was finished. Now one dollar is the standard price for a meal from Omaha to Ogden. Thence we move out upon a high, dry plain, following near the South Platte, having left the junction at North Platte, and at 10 A. M., the cry of " Ante ï~~82 STRANGE ANIMALS. lopes d" brings every tourist to the window. Our car was filled exclusively with "pilgrims;" not a man in it had ever been west of the Missouri in his life, and none were ashamed to exhibit curiosity. For an hour or two we saw only single antelopes, and at a distance; then they appeared in considerable numbers, one herd containing seventy. They came so near the track that we could see the brightness and inquisitive stare of their eyes, then at the sound of a pistol shot from the platform turned and bounded swiftly away over the hills, displaying in perfection all the poetry of motion. They are a little larger than our common goat, but rather resemble the deer. The meat I think equal to venison in the fall and winter, but it is rather hard and tough from May to'September. They can be tamed, but domesticating and handling appear to take all their wild vivacity out of them. Their sleek and shining coats roughen and the hair turns the wrong way; the eye loses its bright, and mobile softness, and they walk slowly about, looking more like sick goats than the "gentle gazelle" of poetry. They can be taken East, but with great difficulty; for they are singularly tender in the back, and a slight blow will break the vetebre, though one can carry off half a dozen shots in the legs or breast, and still escape the hunter. We next entered "Dog-town," eastern border of the prairiedog country, which extends nearly two hundred miles eastward from the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, and over ten degrees of latitude. For over a mile the train runs through a continuous town, the prairie thickly dotted all the way with their mounds. It was a "good day for dogs" when we passed, and the little creatures seemed no way disconcerted by the train, but would sit on their haunches, and converse with each other in short yelps till a shot was fired from the cars, when hundreds of feet would twinkle in the air, and the whole community go under with amazing suddenness. One by one they would peep cautiously out, and soon reappear to gaze and bark till another shot. This peculiar yelp, like that of a young puppy, seems to be the only reason they are called dogs, for they have nothing else in common with the canine genus. They are not cari ï~~yQ Q.- - aQ 4 i y H P ï~~t.Wirt 1 Rol y fr0vu g rJ:m - u. r~u s/ I e a J.F t C r, Sy ra I' f l e } s rs ', Ali.9,ph n f 5 l, auk '.. kt'!P. FS., ï~~FOUR HUNDRED MILES OF DESERT. 85 for two days till they were relieved by a party of soldiers. Two of their number, captured by the savages, were roasted in full view of the besieged. But now a costly peace had been purchased, and Spot Ed. Tail and lady were guests of the Rollins House in Cheyenne. Now as we glide swiftly through the "dangerous district," a small squad of soldiers appears at every section house, drawn up to receive us, and standing at a " present," till the train has passed. Their barracks are walled to the roof with sod, and a little way off is a small sod fort, connecting with the barracks by an underground passage. Occasionally we see a group of Indians looking on from distant sand-hills, and the romantic may fancy them musing sadly, or mutually indulging in lofty strains of pathos, over this curious smoke-breathing monster which is fast hastening the destruction of their race. But in prosaic fact the Indian seldom if ever thinks of such things. He is moved by a blind instinct to plunder and kill, and is not capable of a definite war policy. Not one in a hundred of the plains Indians has any conception of the comparative greatness of the white race. For four hundred miles on our way there are no townsunless the eating stations deserve that name. We dine at Sidney, and late in the day reach Cheyenne, five hundred and sixteen miles, and twenty-five hours, from Omaha, where I stop for two days note-gathering. Six months since it was the "great city of the plains," lively and wicked, with perhaps six thousand people; now it is a quiet and moral burg of some fifteen hundred inhabitants. Seeking information of a young resident, a traveler was informed that the population originally amounted to ten thousand, but they had lately shot and hanged so many that he "reckoned three thousand was now about the figure." From Cheyenne the road is nearly level to Hazard Station, officially pronounced the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains; and thence the grade rises an average of eighty feet to the mile to Sherman, highest point on the whole road, and Summit of the Rocky Mountains-that part, however, better known in the West as the Black Hills. ï~~1'/ 4, S loll ï~~ALKALI PLAINS. 87 Thence the road makes a vast bend, running rapidly downward all the time, for forty miles to the new city of Laramie. It had enjoyed three months of remarkable prosperity as the terminus, and had sprung from nothing to a city of five thousand people; but the terminus town had just been moved a hundred miles farther west to Benton, and Laramie, in the sixth month of its existence, was entering on a sickly old age. After two d(lays there I boarded a construction train for the terminus. Westward the grassy plain yields rapidly to a desert; at Medicine Bow we took final leave of the last trace of fertility, and traversed a region of alkali flats and red ridges for fifty miles. In the worst part of this desert. just west of the last crossing of the Platte, we found Benton, the great terminus town, six hundred and ninety-eight miles from Omaha. Far as they could see around the town not a green tree, shrub, or spear of grass was to be seen; the red hills, scorched and bare as if blasted by the lightnings of an angry God, bounded the white basin on the north and east, while to the south and west spread th'e gray desert till it was interrupted by another range of red and yellow hills. All seemed sacred to the genius of drought and desolation. The whole basin looked as if it might originally have been filled with lye anti sand, then dried to the consistency of hard soap, with glistening surface tormenting alike to eye and sense. Yet here had sprung up in two weeks, as if by the touch of Aladdin's Lamp, a city of three thousand people; there were regular squares arranged into five wards, a city government of mayor and aldermen, a daily paper, and a volume of ordinances for the public health. It was the end of the freight and passenger, and beginning of the construction, division; twice every day immense trains arrived an(d departed, and stages left for Utah, Montana, and Idaho; all the goods formerly hauled across the plains came here by rail and were reshipped, and for ten hours daily the streets were thronged with motley crowds of railroad men, Mexicans and Indians, gamblers, "cappers," and saloon-keepers, merchants, ï~~88 BEAUTIES OF BENTON. miners, and mulewhackers. The streets were eight inches deep in white dust as I entered the city of canvas tents and polehouses; the suburbs appeared as banks of dirty white lime, and a new arrival with black clothes looked like nothing so much as a cockroach struggling through a flour barrel. It was sundown, and the lively notes of the violin and guitar were calling the citizens to evening diversions. Twenty-three saloons paid license to the evanescent corporation, and five dancehouses amused our elegant leisure. In this place I wasted my time for two weeks, waiting for something to turn up, and lounged about the places most dangerous to pocket and morals with the happy indifference of a man who has nothing to lose. It cannot be denied, I think, that the man who has nothing is much braver than he who has plenty; and I further suspect the bravest of our soldiers will admit, that if, about the time he was ready to advance on Vicksburg or Richmond, he had learned that some obliging old relative had conveniently died, after leaving him $50,000, his appetite for fight would suddenly have lost much of its edge. The regular routine of business, dances, drunks and fistfights met with a sudden interruption on the 8th of August. Sitting in a tent door that day I noticed an altercation across the street, and saw a man draw a pistol and fire, and another stagger and catch hold of a post for support. The first was about to shoot again when he was struck from behind and the pistol wrenched from his hand. The wounded man was taken into a cyprian's tent near by and treated with the greatest kindness by the women, but died the next day. It was universally admitted that there had been no provocation for the shooting, and the general voice was, "Hang him!" Next day I observed a great rush and cry in the street, and looking out, saw them dragging the murderer along towards the tent where the dead man lay. The entire population were out at once, plainsmen, miners and women mingled in a wild throng, all insisting on immediate hanging. Pale as a sheet and hardly able to stand, the murderer, in the grasp of two stalwart Vigilantes, was dragged through the excited crowd, and into the ï~~Ol). r 4 r; ), u ^MW W.. ï~~90 " BIG TENT." series of fearful screams, and running to the door, saw the proprietor of a saloon opposite beating his "woman." He was a leading ruffian of the city, and of a hundred men looking on not one felt called upon to interfere. At length he released his hold, and struck her a final blow on the nose which completely flattened that feature, and sent her into the middle of the street, where she lay with the blood gushing in torrents from her face, mingling with the white dust and streaking her clothing with gore. The provost guard arrived again, aifter it was all over, and took the woman away, but paid no attention to the man. Four days after, I saw them together again, having apparently made it up and living on the same free and easy terms of illegal conjugality. Two more rows wound up the evening, the last ending with a perfect fusillade of pistol shots, by which only two or three persons were "scratched" and nobody "pinked." For a quiet railroad town I thought this would do, and began to think of moving on. The great institution of Benton was the "Big Tent," sometimes, with equal truth but less politeness, called the " Gamblers' Tent." This structure was a nice frame, a hundred feet long and forty feet wide, covered with canvass and conveniently floored for dancing, to which and gambling it was entirely devoted. It was moved successively to all the mushroom terminus "cities," and during my stay was the great public resort of Benton. A description of one of these towns is a description of all; so let us spend one evening in the "Big Tent," and see how men amuse their leisure where home life and society are lacking. As we enter, we note that the right side is lined with a splendid bar, supplied with every variety of liquors and cigars, with cut glass goblets, ice-pitchers, splendid mirrors, and pictures rivalling those of our Eastern cities. At the back end a space large enough for one cotillon is left open for dancing; on a raised platform, a full band is in attendance day and night, while all the rest of the room is filled with tables devoted to monte, faro, rondo coolo, fortune-wheels, and every other species of gambling known. I acknowledge a morbid curiosity relat ï~~r n Z; n, r M t\ w r s, t t, Atilt r h ï~~92 S" MY HAND AGAINST YOUR EYES." ing to everything villainous, and, though I never ventured a cent but once in my life, I am never weary of watching the game, and the various fortunes of those wio "buck against the tiger." During the day the "Big Tent" is rather quiet, but at night, after a few inspiring tunes at the door by the band, the long hall is soon crowded with a motley throng of three or four hundred miners, ranchmen, clerks, " bullwhackers," gamblers and "cappers." The brass instruments are laid aside, the stringmusic begins, the cotillons succeed each other rapidly, each ending with a drink, while those not so employed crowd around the tables and enjoy each his favorite game. To-night is one of unusual interest, and the tent is full, while from every table is heard the musical rattle of the dice, the hum of the wheel, or the eloquent voice of the dealer. Fair women, clothed with richness and taste, in white and airy garments, mingle with the throng, watch the games with deep interest, or laugh and chat with the players. The wife of the principal gambler--a tall, spiritual and most innocent looking woman-sits by his side, while their children, two beautiful little girls of four and six years, run about the room playing and shouting with merriment, climbing upon the knees of the gamblers and embraced in their rude arms, like flowers growing on the verge of frightful precipices; We take our stand near the monte table, where a - considerable crowd gathers, silently intent on the motions of the dealer. He throws three cards upon the cloth, points out one as the "winning card," then turns them face downward, and proceeds to toss them about, talking fluently all the time. "Now, then, here we go; my hand against your eyes. Watch the ace! The ace is your winning card. The eight and ten spot win for me. Here is the ace, the winning card (turning it face up occasionally). Watch it close! I have two chances to your one unless you watch the ace. Now, then, I'll bet any man twenty dollars, as they lie, that he can't pick up the ace, and I'll not touch the cards again. Will you go twenty dollars on it, sir?" As he says this, he turns his head away, and addresses a man ï~~A "GUDGEON." 93 at his left-a conservative-looking neatly-dressed man, whom I should take for a merchant. But while his head is turned, a roughly-dressed, horny-handed miner by my side snatches over the nearest card, satisfies himself that it is the ace, and makes a faint pencil-mark on the back of it before the dealer can turn around. Then the miner becomes all at once anxious to bet; puts up all the money he has-$20-is anxious for some one to go in with him; then puts down a watch and revolver, valued at $20 each. The dealer covers the pile, the miner turns the ace, and walks off with a gain of $60. There is a sensation around the board. Old plainsmen look at each other with a peculiar smile which may mean anything, but others get interested. The dealer curses his bad luck, and continues to throw the cards, and now the pencil-mark seems plain on the back of the ace. As soon as the cards are laid down a young fellow of nineteen or twenty, who came on the same train with me from Omaha, hastily produces a ten-dollar note, and offers to bet. " Ten dollars is no money to me, sir," says the dealer; "I've lost too much to fool with small bets; I'll make or break to-night. I propose to bet forty dollars on this turn." The boy has no more money, but produces a pistol, which is counted at ten dollars. "I'll go halvers with him," shouts the conservative-looking chap at the corner of the table, and lays down the twenty dollars. The boy eagerly seizes the pencil-marked card, turns it, and, to his horror and amazement, it'is not the ace, but the ten-spot! I see the boy turning pale, for, as I happen to know, it is his last ten dollars, while the dealer rakes in his pile and goes on with his harangue. Not a smile, not a chuckle, not a single expression of triumph appears; he has had a simple business transaction, and rakes in the money, coolly, quietly, the same affable, conversable, stony-eyed gentleman. The game is now plain. The horny-handed miner, and the dapper, conservative looking gentleman, are "cappers;" they have borne their part in the game, and "hooked a gudgeon," and carelessly stray off to some other table to repeat the operation. The charm is broken; the little circle about the monte table take the alarm ï~~94 9 THE HAZARD OF A DIE." and begin to scatter, and we walk down to the "chuck-a-luck " board. Here a smooth oil-cloth is divided evenly into squares, numbered from six to thirty-six. On two-thirds of the numbers are some articles of value, the rest are blanks. On No. 36 is a gold watch and chain, value $300, and it is not a sham either, and on No. 6 is a $100 greenback. On numbers 7, 8 and 9, and 33, 34 and 35, are articles of considerable value, none less than $50, while the remaining numbers are blanks, or covered with some article of trifling value. Half a dollar is the charge for a throw. The cup contains six dice. If you throw all ones you add up six, and get the hundred dollars'; if all sixes you add up thirty-six, and get the watch and chain, and the dealer will soon show you how you can ruin the bank, and most learnedly explains how you have just one chance in thirty of getting the watch and chain, and the same of getting the greenback. But you will see that yourself. There are but thirty squares-six to thirty-six-and, of course, you stand as good a chance to hit one as another. Do you, though? Try it and see. If you don't throw somewhere between twelve and twenty-five for ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it will be a new fact in physics. And on just those numbers from twelve to twenty-five are all blanks or trifling articles. Of course you do not see this by first glance at the cloth, for the numbers do not run in regular order, but in such ingenious irregularity that prizes and blanks all seem in undistinguishable order, side by side. The dice are not loaded either. You may use your own if you wish, and the result is the same; and if you have any curiosity about it, reader, just try it with six dice on your own table, keep a record of your throws, and see how seldom you will reach very high or very low numbers. And having tried it thoroughly for two or three hundred throws, a moment's reflection will convince you that it would be little short of a miracle for a man to throw all sixes or all ones with dice not loaded. Then take your thirty numbers and make your calculation from the table laid down in the "theory of probabilities," and you will find there is just one chance in 990,000 that you will throw the highest or lowest number. In ï~~MORAL: DON'T. 95 other words, you stand fair to get the watch after nine hundred and ninety thousand throws at half a dollar a throw! Rather an expensive watch. Guess we wont invest. But while we stand here philosophizing, the crowd is pressing to a long table at one side where an airish youth is shouting at the top of his voice, "Come down here now, you rondo coolo sports, and give us a bet." This game, like keno, has less of the "cutthroat" about it than the others. There is a per cent., small but regular, in favor of the dealer; every thing is carried by an exact rule, and the careful player can calculate just what his chance is. But if any man imagines there is the least measure of fairness in ordinary gambling, let him dismiss the thought. I have watched hundreds of games, and never saw a man gain a large sum without learning, sooner or later, that he was a "capper." The evening wears along, many visitors begin to leave, the games languish, and'a diversion is needed. The band gives a few lively touches, and a young man with a capacious chest and a great deal of "openness" to his face, mounts the stand and sings a variety of sentimental and popular songs, ending with a regular rouser, in the chorus of which he constantly reiterates-in other words however-that he is a bovine youth with a vitreous optic "which nobody can deny." As he wears a revolver and bowieknife in plain view, nobody seems inclined to deny it. A lively dance follows, the crowd is enlivened, and gambling goes on with renewed vigor. ï~~CHAPTER V. ON A MULE. A new profession-Off for Salt Lake City-A Mormon outfit-Nature of the over. land freight-Its extent-Great expenses and enormous profits-Luxury of miners and mountaineers-Changed to the railroad-" Kiting towns "-Jonah's gourd-Benton a year afterwards-Platte City-Our company-Mulewhacker's Theology-Pleasant gossip on polygamy-Journal of the route-Horrors of Bitter Creek-Heat, cold, thirst, dust, fatigue-Green River-Bridger PlainsEcho Cafion-Weber Calon-Parley's Park-Down Parley's Canon-Salt Lake Valley and City. I ATE: August 14th, 1868. Place: Benton, Wyoming. Scene: The writer in the rear apartment of a tent, posting his books. Results: Cash on hand $8.65; Resources none; Friends distant. Moral: Something must be done. Thus may be summarized the result of a day's hard thinking. I had got thus far, more by good luck than good management; was wonderfully improved in health, and eager to goon. But when I resolved myself into a committee of one on the ways and means, the committee was obliged to rise and report the matter back without a resolution. I had written six letters to the Commercial, but did not know whether any had been accepted, and was not well enough acquainted to ask a remittance; and there was absolutely nothing for me to do at Benton. One resource remained. Teamsters were in demand, and I thought I knew something about mules. Under ordinary circumstances I should have shrunk from boasting myself skilful enough to drive them, but these were extraordinary circumstances, and as the Turks say to justify the use of wine, "Desperate diseases require desperate remedies." The resolution passed, with an emergency clause, and I started to hunt a job. A Mormon train was to start next day, and just one man 96 ï~~1 t m r;f M e 5v A: q' 4t,.r r u w g,. lvN Mom m 9 S l y 4 9!" r XY. r ï~~98 LUXURIOUS MINERS. was needed. The outfit consisted of ten "prairie schooners " with six mules to each, the property of Naisbitt and Hindleythen a prosperous Mormon firm in Salt Lake City. Our "wagon-boss," absolute monarch of a train while on the road, rejoiced in the name of John Monkins, a Mormon saint in good and regular standing. Seven of the drivers were Mormons, but the "night-herder," Billy Keyes, and two other drivers, Charley Robinson and "Big Frank," were Gentiles, with whom I fraternized readily. Our load was "packed," and about noon of the 15th, we took to the road, the writer seated on his" nighwheeler," and wielding a "big-bellied blacksnake" over the backs of six mules. Freighting across the plains, which had grown in the past ten years to an immense business, was now being rapidly lessened by the railroad. From 1860 to 1869 there were in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana and Colorado, two hundred thousand people to be supplied; and every pound of groceries, manufactured goods, foreign products, mining tools and the like, had to be hauled from six to sixteen hundred miles across the uninhabited regions which lay between the Missouri and the gold mines. The original price, of course, was a trifle; the freight, which ranged from fifteen to forty cents a pound, was the chief item of cost. Hence the apparent paradox, that the difference between first and second rate articles was comparatively much less than in the East. Hence again, the fact that when the miner or mountaineer used foreign luxuries at all, he used only the best quality; for the freight was no more on that than the worst. The difference between crushed white sugar at twenty cents, and common brown at ten, was all important to the Eastern family; but when one added thirty cents a pound for freight, and a hundred per cent. for dealer's profit, the difference was not worth calculating about away up in Montana. Business men necessarily invested large capital, and took big risks, and so indemnified themselves with enormous profits. The best'was cheaper than the second best. Hence also, an apparent extravagance in living, of which the effects show to-day in Rocky Mountain communities. ï~~MOVING REAL ESTATE. 99 This overland trade successively built up Independence, Westport, Kansas City, Atchison, Leavenworth, St. Joseph and Omaha; but when two or three hundred miles of the railroad were completed, it took that route. Hence those "roaring towns," at the successive termini, which sprang up like Jonah's gourd, and withered away with few exceptions almost as suddenly, when Government had accepted another hundred miles of the road, and a new terminus was located. To look on Benton, a motley collection of log and canvass tents, one would have sworn there was no trade; but in those canvass tents immense sums changed hands. E. Block & Co., Wholesale Dealers in Liquors and Tobacco, with whom I lodged in Benton, in a frame and canvass tent, twenty by forty feet in extent, d(lid a business of $30,000 a month. Others did far better. Ten months afterwards, I revisited the site. There was not a house or tent to be seen; a few rock piles and half destroyed chimneys barely sufficed to mark the ruins; the white dust had covered everything else, and desolation reigned supreme. Transactions in real estate in all these towns were, of course, most uncertain; and everything that looked solid was a sham. Red brick fronts, brown stone fronts, and stuccoed walls, were found to have been made to order in Chicago and shipped in (pine) sections. Ready made houses were finally sent out in lots, boxed, marked, and numbered; half a dozen men could erect a block in a day, and two boys with screw-drivers put up a "'habitable dwelling" in three hours. A very good graystone stucco front, with plain sides, twenty by forty tent, could be had for $300; and if your business happened to desert you, or the town moved on, you only had to take your store to pieces, ship it on a platform car to the next city, and set up again. There was a pleasing versatility of talent in the population of such towns. An army officer told me that he went up the Platte Valley late in 1866 and observed a piece of rising ground near the junction of the two streams, where for miles not a live shrub or blade of grass was to be seen. Six months after he returned and the "Great and Growing City of the Platte" covered the ï~~100 MOVING A CITY. site; three thousand people made the desert hum with business and pleasure; there were fine hotels, elegant restaurants, and billiard halls and saloons, while a hundred merchants'jostled each other through banks and insurance offices. All the machinery of society was in easy operation; there were two daily papers, a Mayor and Common Council, an aristocracy and a common peol)le, with old settlers, new comners, and first families. Six months after he returned and hunted for the site. A few piles of straw and brick, with debris of oyster cans nearly covered by the shifting sands, alone enabled him to find it. The "city " had got up and emigrated to the next terminus. Our trip was one of unusual hardship, mingled with much that was novel and amusing. For three hundred miles west of Medicine Bow the country is the real "American Desert." The surface seems hard enough at first view, but a little travel soon works it up into a fine powder; and standing on a little knoll one can see for twenty miles the white clouds of rolling dust which mark the course of teams, and an approaching " bullwhacker" looks at a little distance like an animated flour sack, or the disembodied spirit of Metamora. Our little party of sixteen (four passengers), fraternized much more readily than one could have expected from such a motley crew. On the plains mutual dependence calls for mutual help, and mutual help softens religious and national asperities. We had both. The Mormons were half English and half natives; the Gentiles half Northern and half Southern. Religiously the Gentiles were in the minority, but did the most talking. The native Mormon boys, who had never been east of Benton, were full of curiosity about the States. From the general tone of Mormon sermons, they had imbibed the notion that outside of Utah the world was given over to fraud and lasciviousness, and sold wholly to Satan. That a majority, or anything like a "working minority" of the American people were honest and virtuous, was something they were slow to believe; and that there were rural districts of ten thousand people where grogshops were unknown and a lewd woman a rarity, was nothing short of a " monstrous Gentile lie" to their minds., That all govern ï~~,:,. ï~~102 POLEMICAL TEAMSTERS. twenty-two was already an elder, delivered an exhaustive argu. ment in regard to the finding of the "golden plates" by Joe Smith, to which I promptly made reply: "Don't believe it. No proof." "Do you believe Moses got stone tables from the Lord?" asked the young elder. (Excuse the contradiction between ad-.jective and noun.) "Yes." "Where's your proof?" This struck me as the nearest to a "clincher" ofall I had heard, and I launched into an elaborate argument on, the history of the Bible, internal proofs, analysis of its principles and the like; but it was all Greek to him. And so such arguments must alwpys be to such as fill the Mormon Church. Truly, says Eggleston: "No man ever embraced religious error, from Gnosticism to Mormonism, without a previous mental trainijg to fit him for it;" and he might have added, a previous want of training generally predisposes a man to coarse and sensual beliefs. Reason appears to be wasted on those sects who have just knowledge enough to read the Bible and interpret it literally, without enough to realize that certain principles of natural equity must always remain, true, no matter what the Bible nmay appear to say on the subject. Such did not reason themselves into their errors, and of course, cannot be reasoned out. And so our Mormon companions always thought they had the "best of the argument." Fanatics always do have the "best of the argument"--in their own conceit. For they can understand their own reasoning, and cannot understand that of an intelligent opponent. In Utah one continually hears such statements as this: "Why don't they answer our arguments? They can't." One can go into any lunatic asylum in the land, and find a score of men whose arguments he cannot answer-to their satisfaction. There is a fish called the mullet-head, that cannot be intoxicated by any amount of liquor. It can even swim in that fluid. Reason why: it has no brains, consequently nothing for the alcohol to.act upon. In like manner some sects are invincible in argument. ï~~ROMANCE OF POLYGAMY. 103 But we had one young saint not at all troubled with reverence for the dignitaries, who professed to give us a revelation of the home life of all the Latter-day Prophets. He told us that Brigham, when in his prime, habitually fell in love every spring and fall. Botanically speaking, his affection was a sort of flowering annual, clinging to new supports each time. Also that he then kept a registry, ruled for two hundred schedules,' specifying name and style, which he called every Saturday night to see that none were lost, strayed, or stolen. Our boy ran over the Nst thus: " Black-eyed Sally, Red-headed Milly, Carroty Jane, Sally No. 2," etc., etc. But of all his heroes it appeared to me that Apostle Sammy Richards truly had, as our companion expressed it, "the softest layout in the business." He had seven wives, and spent one day in the week with each. His office kept him comfortably stplied with clothing, and each wife would exert herself to set Jher best table when he came around; she would be all smiles and favors to win as much of the dear man's love as possible, and thus Sammy's existence was a perpetual round of courtship. With such domestic romance, varied by song and story, we amused the evening hours, while the two cooks "slung up slap- - jacks" to the extent of two or three bushels; for supper was our only full meal, and we had it hard enough during the day. The first night we formed corral at Rawlins' Springs, only fourteen miles from Benton. Here are three large springs rising within a few feet of each other, one pure water, another charged with soda, and the third with sulphur. Next day we left the railroad line and made a toilsome journey straight south over the hills, to reach the old stage road; but having two wagons mired in an alkali marsh, made but eight miles, and formed corral in a singular mountainwalled basin known as " Dug Springs." In the centre was an alkali lake of several acres, which, moved by the evening breeze, looked like foaming soapsuds; but on its margin was a spring of pure sweet water. The grass around the lake was of the purest white, coated with alkali to the appearance of fancy frost ï~~104 THE SORROWFUL WAY. work; but near the mountains we found good bunch grass for our stock. For a few days our average elevation was 7000 feet above sea-level, and the nights were extremely cold. On the 22nd we reached Bridger's Pass, and next day entered on the Bitter Creek region-horror of overland teamsters-where all possible ills of western travel are united. At daybreak we rose, stiff with cold, to catch the only temperate hour there was for driving. But by nine A. M. the heat was most exhausting. The road was worked up into a bed of blinding white dust by the laborers on the railroad grade, and a gray mist of ash and earthy powder hung over the valley, which obscured the sun, but did not lessen its heat. At intervals the "Twenty-mile Desert," the "Red Sand Desert," and the "White Desert" crossed our way, presenting beds of sand and soda, through which the half choked men and animals toiled and struggled, in a drjr air and under a scorching sky. In vain the yells and curses of the teamsters doubled and redoubled, blasphemies that one might expect to inspire a mule with diabolical strength; in vain the fearful "black-snake" curled and popped over the animals' backs, sometimes gashing the skin, and sometimes raising welts the size of one's finger. For a few rods they would struggle on, dragging the heavy load through the clogging banks, and then stop exhausted, sinking to their knees in the hot and ashy heaps. Then two of us would unite our teams and, with the help of all the rest, drag through to the next solid piece of ground, where for a few hundred yards the wind had removed the loose sand and soda, and left bare the flinty and gravelly subsoil. Thus, by most exhausting labor, we accomplished ten or twelve miles a day. Half an hour or more of temperate coolness then gave us respite till soon after sundown, when the cold wind came down, as if in heavy volumes, from the snowy range, and tropic heat was succeeded by arctic cold with amazing suddenness. On the 27th of August, one of my mules twice fell exhausted with the heat; that night ice formed in our buckets as thick as a pane of glass. We turned northward from Bitter Creek before reaching the present railroad crossing at Green River, and on the morning ï~~.. ' -!';,; a Fy?.,.,.. e...jA.. f) o. e i., n. ('.,. a ai ' b 'fl M-.a., i.,:Y.. -..Pi.:., v..... l+,i. F 5 " c >,. _ _ ï~~106 M(IOMOM' SZTTLEMENTS. of August 28th, forded the latter stream twenty miles above the main road. Thence we again turned southwest, traversing the plains of Bridger, and entering again on the stage road near Bear River. The whole region appears to my eye totally barren, but among the foothills, and in a few of the gulches, we found enough of the yellow bunch-grass for our animals, and sage-brush for our fires. The nights were still cold, but not so much so as east of Green River; and some stimulating property in the atmosphere enabled me to get along with half the usual amount of sleep. We slept upon the ground under the wagons, generally with a thickness of gunnysacks under us, joining blankets two and two; for though the ground was dry as a featherbed, our sleeping apartment was rather open at the sides and extensively ventilated. My bed-fellow was a lank Mormon with about as much bodily warmth as a dried cornstalk, nevertheless he used to complain that I "snugged up" al- - together too much, and by morning usually had him jammed tight against the hind wheel. At noon of Septemiber 4th, we entered the head of Echo Canon, by way of the round valley below Cache Cave,la beautiful and romantic place. 'Two days we consumed in the journey down Echo, sometimes down almost in the bed of the stream, and sometimes hundreds of feet up the rocky sides, where the road wound in and out on the face of the projecting ridges. Gangs of Mormon laborers were scattered along the canflon, constructing the grade for the railroad, on Brigham Young's contract. At noon of the 6th, we emergd into Weber Clon, and turned southward on the old stage road, There we fiand numerous Mormon settlements, and the first stone.built houses and growing erops I had seen for five hundred miles. The dwellings would have appeared poor and mean indeed in the States, but to us, just from the hot and barren plains, the valley seemed like a section of paradise. Next night we formed corral near Bill Kimball's hotel, in Parley Park, a round green valley almost on top of the Wasatch Mountains; and on the 8th completed half the passage down the wild and ragged gorge known as Parley's Canon. ï~~H t j: ill an,. b v i ï~~CHAPTER VI. A YEAR IN UTAH. Discharging freight-" Beautiful Zion "-First impressions-" Our Bishop "Arguments (?) for polygamy-Rough on Rome-Mormon Worthies-Jews, Gentiles, and Apostates-Queer condition of American citizens-" Millennial Star" and "Book of Mormon "-The original carpet-baggers-" Jaredites "-Mormon sermons-Into the country-A polemic race-Mormon conference-" No trade with Gentiles "-A hard winter-I become a Gentile editor-Founding of Corinne-Glowing anticipations-" The Chicago of the Rocky Mountains "-Ups and downs of real estate-The Author comes to grief. SE entered the city September 10th, and even now my arms ache at recollection of the day, and our eight I hours' work of unloading. For overland transportaS tion goods were tightly packed in huge bales, heavy and unwieldy; and furthermore, most of our load consisted of stoves and castings. To lift against an average "mulewhacker" on such freight was no joke to a man of my calibre, and aching in every limb I sought a "Teamster's Home" at dark, and lay down to a heavy sleep of ten hours. I awoke to a revelation of beauty. "Zion" then seemed to me indeed the joy of the whole earth. The bright sunlight, streaming through the rugged gaps of the Wasatch, cast a flood of glory upon the city, and showed the plat marked out like a checker-board, and streams clear as crystal lacing all the squares with flowing borders. I thought it the most beautiful place I had ever seen. And failing to note that nearly all this beauty was of nature's making, it appeared to me that they could not be a bad people who occupied such a place; I was prepared beforehand to like them. It was a nice place to rest, and I concluded to stay two weeks. The city had a singularly quiet Sabbath-like air, and the people 108 ï~~,,,.,, u. d _: p,.... n,, a.,;,..,, h,,,. ï~~". ï~~ ï~~112 MORMON LITERATURE. gamous Territory; and T. B. H. Stenhouse, editor of a secular paper, the Daily Telegraph, who seemed to be a sort of guerilla captain in the church militant, in no particular hurry to join the church triumphant, and quite indifferent as to whether I favored Mormonism or not. He treated me most courteously as a brother of the quill, and as I listened to his jolly tones, I little thought we were soon to become such savage opponents-on paper. The Gentiles I found non-committal.. They did not know exactly what was about to happen. They numbered but six or eight hundred in a community of fifteen thousand Mormons, surrounded by sixty or seventy thousand more; and thelieads of the church were even then concerting measures to deprive them of their trade. They consisted, in nearly equal numbers, of Jews, Christians, and apostates, all in the same society, and supporting the same school and church. Tihe joke about Utah being the only place where Jews are Gentiles, is an uncommonly good one, it has the merit of a fine old age. But it is true in more senses than is generally imagined; the Jews in Utah are the most intensely American, and opposied to polygamy of any part of the population. At odd hours I read the Millennial Star and "Book of Mormon,"the last the Old Testament of the Latter-day Saints. I read how Lemuel, Lehi, Nephi and other Israelites, being warned of God in a dream, left Jerusalem six hundred years before Christ; traveled eastward many years till they reached the sea, then made a wonderful vessel, and crossed it; landing in Central America, called in the record the "Land of Promise." And then is recorded a real miracle; "And we did find in the forests all manner of animals both wild and tame, both the horse and the ass, and the sheep and the ox." They found the horse two thousand years before the Spaniards introduced him here, and the ass, which naturalists have always told us was not native to this country. They spread over America in a few generations, finding in many places the remains of the "Jaredites"-a colony which had come immediately after the dispersion from Babel; and by ï~~y P o,. x?hn ^ 4 A, x ï~~ ï~~QUEER EMIGRATION. 113 revelation learned that they had been "destroyed for their exceeding great wickedness," which matters fill the "Book of Jared," and two or three others. And here comes in another miracle. These people crossed the ocean in " whale-like barges," made by direction of the Lord, "with holes above and below," under these lucid instructions: If they needed air and light, they were to open the holes above and below (!), and if the water came in they were to shut them again. The only possible conclusion from the cumbrous sentences is, that the barges rolled over and over like tubs, which must have made it uncomfortable for the Jaredites. Then the various divisions of the transplanted Hebrews got to fighting among themselves, and fought till only two of the "righteous race " were left, viz: Mormon and Moroni. They two, about 400 B. c., collected all the histories of those who had preceded them, and added a book apiece, and most curious of all, we are told it was written in "Reformed Egyptian, which is of the language of the Jews and the writing of the Egyptians," though why the mischief these Israelites, who had been in America for a thousand years, should give up their own language and adopt that of the Egyptians, is enough to puzzle philologists. Sunday came, and six or seven thousand people attended services in the huge Tabernacle-irreverently styled by Gentiles the "Mud-turtle "-and I among them. In the afternoon we listened to Orson Pratt, who gave the people to understand that the city of the Saints was a most glorious spot, but back in Missouri was a blessed and chosen spot where they would all be glorified and live a thousand years in happiness. But just before that time fury would be poured out on the Gentile world, and all that were to come would have to make tracks to get in - on time. He would meet them all there; yes, and the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and every kind of cattle, they needed. In short, he gave them to understand that they were bully boys, and their goose would finally hang high in spite jf outside pressure. And the audience sat almost breathless, with 8 ï~~114 NORTHERN UTAH. open eyes and mouth, and swallowed it all down, even as soap suds run into a sink hole. Utah in my original plan was only to be one of several stopping places on my way to California. I expected to take a short rest, find another team going out with produce from the fall crop, to drive to Austin, Nevada, and thence work my way on to the Pacific. Nothing was farther from my thoughts than to subside into a "Gentile," one of that hated minority, who, until quite lately, lived in Utah upon a sort of uncertain sufferance. Yet I did become a Gentile, and a somewhat noted and slightly "persecuted" one too, for a while; and on this wise. Finding no teams ready to start westward, I determined upon a trip to the northern part of the Territory. I traveled afoot and by easy stages nearly to the Idaho line, purposing a visit to Soda Springs; then got tired, and slowly retraced my steps, finding abundant enjoyment in noting the manners and customs of the rural Saints. Near Ogden I found an old Dane living with a mother and two daughters as wives; in Brigham City I saw a bishop with six wives, two of them his cousins and two his nieces, and a little farther on, visited another Dane living with three wives in the single room of a cabin about sixteen feet square-all of which did not strike me as exactly the highest type of domestic felicity which might be hoped for as the result of two thousand years of Christianity and cultivation. As an old bachelor I had not found single blessedness the best possible condition, but it suited me far better than such multiple cussedness. One wife, I thought, would be enough for me, if she were a good one; and if a bad one, why should any sane man multiply his misery? I found the rural Saints an exceedingly polemic race; they were ready for an argument any minute. No kind of mental exercise is so dangerous as theological disputation, especially if a man kndws nothing else; and the Mormons had all read the Bible, and were ignorant of nearly all besides. But I got interested in them. Their absurdly literal rendering of Scripture amazed and amused me, and I began to study their ways with much ï~~GENTILE REPORTER. 115 the same kind of interest, morbid perhaps, with which the student in anthropology would investigate a new phase of monomania. At that time I knew little of their history, or their more obscene and disgusting tenets, and regarded them merely as a curious class of fanatics, silly but harmless. So I returned to the city half persuaded to stop awhile in Utah. The October Conference of the Mormon Church was in session, and the people were in a white heat of hatred against the Gentile world. I had never seen anything like it. The leaders had concocted a plan for getting the entire trade of the Territory into a few hands, and the first move was to have the people vote en masse that they would not trade with Gentile merchants. Ten thousand people-all the New Tabernacle would hold-adopted this resolution without a dissenting vote! To bring them to the proper degree of frenzy the speakers had recited the entire history of the Church, Mormon version, and reopened every wound that the "Lord's peculiar people" had suffered for the past forty years; and the result was such a condition of fanatical hatred against Gentiles that the timid "smelt blood in the air,"' and began to talk of flight. But the experienced said, "There is no danger whatever in the city; Brigham has too miuch at stake to allow trouble here; it is only out in the caflons and distant settlements that the Gentile may be in danger." And this I afterwards found to be true. There was a daily paper in Salt Lake City, in the Gentile interest, known as the Reporter. It was about a foot square, and contained perhaps as much reading matter as four pages of this volume. During the excitement over Conference and its decrees, I wandered into the office, and for want of something to do wrote a few lines of editorial. The proprietor, Mr. S. S. Saul, forthwith suggested to me that I try my hand as editor for a few weeks. The salary was to be twenty dollars per week, -about as good as half that amount in the States. I had sent East for money and got no response; my cash on hand was three dollars, and I was in debt for a week's board; it is needless to add that I accepted the magnificent offer. The paper was enlarged a column width on each side. Mr. A. Aulbach. ï~~116 A FEEBLE JOURNAL. the foreman, was put in charge of the business; Mr. Saul went East to solicit advertisements, and I ran that paper to suit myself for seven weeks. Saul then returned without a dollar's worth of patronage. I had received a hundred and fifty dollars from Mr. Halstead for my first fifteen letters, I felt opulent, and was eager to go on to California. But almost without knowing it, I had slid into the position of an editor; and once there, my destiny was fixed. The course of the Reporter had given satisfaction to the Gentiles, and when I spoke of leaving, they bound me with these flattering words, " We can't do withqut you." If there ever was a more sickly childhood than that of the Salt Lake Reporter, I never heard of it. Established in May, 1868, it had, when I began to edit it, just sixty-nine paying subscribers. When Saul returned from the East we had increased the number two hundred. Saul was cast down; Aulbach and I were confident. We reasoned after the foolishly sanguine manner of newspaper men, that if we could do so well for another, we could do ten times as well for ourselves-a common conclusion with hopeful youth, and one which is not necessarily correct. Saul surrendered the entire office to General P. E. Connor, of whom he had bought it; and we-A. Aulbach, John Barrett, and myself-purchased it. The price was $2500, to be paid at the rate of $300 a month. By the most heroic exertions we raised the first payment of $100 each; the second was paid, I believe, some three months after. Eight months from the day of sale the General was pressing us, for the third instalment, six months over due; but you cannot "draw blood out of a turnip," and he never did get his money till both my partners had sold out to a man of some wealth. I was fixed as Gentile editor in Salt Lake, but the Gentiles were in cruel straits. The decree of the Mormon Church had been carried out strictly, and Gentile stores were empty. It was amusing and provoking to take a walk along Main Street that winter, and see the melancholy Jews standing in the doors of their stores looking in vain for customers. For six months the ten Gentile firms did not sell one-twentieth the usual ï~~QUEER LAWS OF TRADE. 117 amount of goods; their disgust was beyond expression, and their curses against Brigham not loud but deep. It is indeed a singular fact, to the Eastern reader quite incomprehensible, that one man should be able by his simple will to corral the commerce of ninety-thousand people, nullify the laws of trade, reverse the popular current in favor of certain dealers, and completely ruin the business of a score of merchants; and yet that is precisely what was done in Utah. There was no great violence, nothing that the law could take cognizance of, nothing that would make much of a showing before a Congressional Committee; and yet to the sufferers it was actual "persecution," fully as hard as any the Mormons have any just reason to complain of. One by one the Gentile merchants lost heart and emigrated. The leading firm was that of Walker Brothers; four gentlemen, now worth together probably a million dollars; born Mormons, but delivered early in life, by the grace of God, from the body of that death. They offered their immense property and stock at very low figures to the Mormon Co-operative Institution, but being refused, enlarged their store and determined to fight it out on that line if it took no end of summers. For a year or so they sunk money, but pluck and public spirit conquered; the mining development of Utah more than doubled their former prosperity. They are now the merchant princes of Utah, investing heavily in mining enterprises, men of national reputation, and forward in all works to advance the liberal cause. But theirs was the only vessel that outrode the financial storm without serious loss; and Salt Lake City held by July, 1869, no more than one hundred and fifty Gentiles. The Mormon Hierarchy had determined to corral the trade of Utah by a grand co-operative scheme, for the benfit of the Church.; and men who can stand it to live with six or eight wives apiece must be credited with some resolution. And here I may remark that I never was in a country where a little talent would sell so high as at that time in Utah. There were but few men of real genius on either side of the controversy; far more, of course, among the Gentiles than the Mormons. ï~~u 7 i Nl,::' ï~~THEATRICAL. 119 cal of men. He talked long and loud of liberty, equality, and fraternity, but cursed the administration and despaired of republican government; he quoted Tom Paine and Herbert Spencer by the hour, was poloquent on First Principles and Universal Law, and argued on the Supreme Good, the origin of evil, and the control of passion, till he was black in the face with anger. He swore by woman, yet doubted her virtue; unhesitatingly rejected the New Testament miracles, and unhesitatingly accepted everything published in the Banner of Light; put his trust in a miserable half-faith which he called Spiritual Philosophy, and believed every book but the Bible. Such were the materials we had with which to build up a liberal party in Utah. By the middle of the winter the Gentiles had given up the hope of business, and devoted themselves to amusement-principally dancing and the theatre. Brigham's Theatre was then the institution of Salt Lake; and Madam Methua Scheller, John C. McCullough, George B. Waldron and lady, and other "stars" gave us three months of varied entertainment-principally such pieces as the "French Spy," "Daughter of the Regiment," "Naiad Queen," and other sensational and spectacular dramas. Two or three times they ventured on something better, particularly "Romeo and Juliet," which failed of an audience, of course; the parquette, where the Mormons sat, was nearly empty. Indeed, the idea of playing "Romeo and Juliet" before a Mormon audience is a self-evident absurdity. That play represents the essential duality of true love: one man loves one woman, her, and her only, and swears by all creation that he will never love another, while the audience have been taught all their lives that a man can love six women just alike. Singleness of love they hold to be selfishness. If they could have six Juliets leaning half a dozen heads on as many hands out of six windows, all in different orders of architecture, and all the Juliets of different styles of beauty, and one old frog of an elder making love to all by turns, it would probably take. It would have Mormon spice in it. ï~~r Ilk 1 ï~~,..,J,, y,,,., 5 ti r, 'Â~. v A r ',Y % Y,;..., A,;. v ï~~122 UN-REAL ESTATES. lighted, a stand improvised by turning up a dry-goods box, and a number of florid speeches delivered; the crowd then voted unanimously for various heroic resolutions, and dispersed to read their proceedings in the next morning's Reporter. Sanguine real estate owners pre(dicted a city of ten thousand people within two years. And they believed it too. Let no man imagine that the citizens of new and lively western towns are only talking to draw in outsiders; they convince themselves long before they try to convince others-as witness the fact that very few of them sell out when the excitement is at its hight. They hold on for higher prices, and ninety-nine out of a hundred who are rich when the city is on the rise, grow poor again when it goes down. Corner lots in Corinne went up to fabulous prices. All seemed to be satisfied that the location of the "Chicago of the Rocky Modntains" was definitely settled. And they had some ground for their belief. At the head of navigation on Bear River, connecting with the lake, and the most favorable point for shipping freight from the railroad into Montana and Idaho, it was reasonable to suppose that a large town would spring up. Chief among our eloquent real estate owners was Dr. O. D. Cass, better known as "The Doe," formerly-of Denver, who had invested largely in Corinne; and many delightful hours have I spent in his office, hearing him demonstrate from the map the certain future greatness of Corinne. Every morning the Reporter contained a new and encouraging scheme to insure commercial importance. Here was to be an enduring city, the entrepot of all trade from the northern Territories; here was to be the "Queen City of the Great Basin." The Mormon papers rarely alluded to us, but their speakers denounced Corinne as the home of devils, and warned their young men to avoid it as the place of destruction to manners and morals. They ransacked the Scriptures for precedents: it was too dry for wells, too barren for gardens; it was to be as Tyre, desolate and a warning to the Gentile; it was as wicked Sodom to perish under Heaven's wrath; it was Moab, the Lord's washpot; it was Edom, over which he would cast out his shoe. ï~~ ï~~124 crrITY LOTS. The history of Corinne is the history of something near a thousand towns in the "glorious free and boundless West." In a new country, when the first towns are laid out, every body speculates, one makes money and nineteen come to grief. Well do I remember when, now twenty years ago, the people of our place in Indiana first felt the excitement about Minnesota as a place of settlement. Oregon and California had been "all the rage" for four years, and the former State was generally regarded as a cold, barren region, with a few Indian, trading posts; and, perhaps, some good land, but quite too far North for Hoosiers and Buckeyes. But about that time the tide began to set that way. Two young men from our town went out to Winona, remained a few months, and returned with fabulous accounts of the fertile soil, fine timber, and healthful air; "and as to cold," they added, "the ground is so dry and the winters so uniform, we didn't suffer half as much as in Indiana." Then' every body wanted to go West-to Minnesota. And one old gentleman, noted for his prudence, thus pronounced: " Now you see, I ain't 'er goin' to be led away by any excitement about any one place. I've got money to invest, and I'll put in one whole season ridin' about, and a man can tell by the lay of the country where the big town's a goin' to be and there I'll stick my stake." And he went and rode all one summer about the State, and was convinced by unmistakable signs that there was to be one big city in the Northwest, and that was to be at the southern end of Lake St. Croix. All this he demonstrated on his return home by unanswerable arguments-on the mapand went out again with some ten thousand dollars and invested it all at Prescott-at the south end of that Lake; and to the best of my knowledge and belief his lots there are worth as much as they were in 1854, if not more. At any rate I have not heard a word about Prescott-then the "great coming town "-for ten years past. For aught I see in the papers it, like Paddy's little brother, "died a bornin'." In like manner I have heard people demonstrate that Omaha and Kansas City could not be the big places; the true location was a few miles up or a few miles down the river; the site was unfortunate, ï~~VERY UNCERTAIN. 12b and the other place, whatever it was, must finally get ahead. But somehow these "other places" seldom get ahead-if they lose the first two years' start. Moral: you can't most always tell out West where the "big place" is going to be, simply from the" run of the river" or "lay of the country." Nature only determines the general neighborhood-within, perhaps, fifty or a hundred miles-of cities in the new West; between any two sites in the same neighborhood, the pluck and energy of the first settlers always determine the matter. Moral again: If you are in the biggest place, the one that has the start, don't be seduced away to a new place because it appears to have a little better site, but stay where you are, even if" times are dull "just now, and ten to one the place that has the start will keep it. ï~~CHAPTER VII. THE UNION PACIFIC COMPLETED. The last rail and spike-A visit home-An unofficial tour-Whitney, Benton, Burton, Fremont, Stansbury, Saxton, and Gunnison-Difficulties of constructure-Where is the real starting point?-Missouri River Bridge-Out the Platte-Fremont-Columbus-On the plains again-Julesburg-Smoothness of the route-Delightful traveling-Cheyenne-A Western Jeffreys!-Laramie again-A tragedy-A miracle, perhaps!I-" Big Ed's" guardian angel-Pyramid rocks - Beauties of Laramie Plains-Desert west of them-Wasatch-Echo and Weber-Promontory-Moral gamblers-Reflections. N the 10th of May, 1869, I attended the ceremonies connected with laying the last rail, and driving the last spike, on the Pacific Railway, which events took place on the Promontory north of Great Salt Lake. A few days after I came East on the completed road, visiting my home after an absence of thirteen months; and then, in company with other correspondents, made an unofficial inspection of the entire line for our several journals, stopping at all the towns along the way. Reams of paper and gallons of ink have since been exhausted on the great work, and still the reading public asks for more. And there is always more to be said; for the ever-varying circumstances of Western life, the shifting phases which characterize existence beyond the Mississippi, require a new historian every year. History has not decided to whom belongs the honor of advancing the idea of a Pacific Railroad. Probably to no one man. The scheme was such as to suggest itself to many of our earlier statesmen. When Whitney proposed to build it for a grant of land thirty miles in width along its track, it was looked upon as the fancy of a monomaniac. I think myself he would have come out some thirty millions in debt, unless he could 126 ï~~PRELIMINARY SURVEYS. 127 have persuaded Eastern capitalists to purchase the grant between the Black Hills and the Sierras without visiting it. When the great Benton began to agitate the matter, it was regarded as premature-the harmless fancy of an old politician. And as late as 1856, when the National Republican Platform contained a clause in favor of the work, it was regarded as a piece of cheap electioneering "buncombe"-rather shallow at that. Again, in 1860, the English traveler and scientist, Capt. R. F. Burton, in his "City of the Saints," says of the road: "The estimated expense is one hundred millions; it would cost at least twice that sum; it is expected to build it in ten years, but it will consume at least thirty." In nine years from that utterance the road was completed. Fremont, Stansbury, Saxton, Gunnison, and other explorers, seem to have been slow in convincing themselves that the road could be built at all. Stansbury, however, has the honor of being the first to demonstrate satisfactorily that there was any route more direct than the old emigrant trail by the Sweetwater River and South Pass. On his return, in 1850, from his stirvey of the Great Salt Lake, he followed up the mountain pass directly eastward from Laramie Plains, crossed the Black Hills about on the present railroad line, and descended eastward to a point very near where the city of Cheyenne now stands, following down Lodgepole Creek to its junction with the Platte. Southern influence was all-powerful in Congress in those days, and was against the road. The national charter was first granted in July, 1862; the preliminary organization was completed in October, 1863,-authorized capital, a hundred million dollars; and the first contract for construction was made in August, 1864, The first forty miles of the road were not completed till January, 1866. Still the work languished: capitalists doubted it; the government appeared indifferent; the war absorbed every energy of the people, and for a time the very idea seemed forgotten. But all that time a few bold and determined men were working incessantly to insure its completion. By the war the necessity for a closer union with the Pacific States became more apparent, and the mighty energies evolved ï~~128 AT THE MISSOURI. by the civil strife, found their proper object in iron girding the continent. These energies were needed in view of the difficulties. Omaha, the initial point, was not then connected with the East by rail. A gap of a hundred miles or more intervened, over which everything had to be transported by teams. The magnificent engine of seventy-horse-power,.which for a long time ran the company's works at Omaha, was hauled by oxen from Des Moines, Iowa. Under the stimulus caused by the Union Pacific, three through lines have already been completed from Chicago to Omaha. Was the road then built too soon? By no means. But the cost was undoubtedly much greater than it would have been at a later day. It is strenuously claimed by Iowa men that Omaha is not the real starting point; for the plat designated by charter-the common junction of half a dozen roads-is east of the Missouri, some four miles southwest of Council Bluffs. Hence a wordy war between the two cities, which threatened all sorts of terrible things, and was once of sufficient importance to get into Congress. Hence, also, the great Union Pacific Bridge.over the Missouri, which completed the continuous line of rail from Atlantic to Pacific. This structure, entirely of iron, has eleven spans of two hundred and fifty feet each; is fifty feet above high water mark, and seventy above low. The piers are formed of iron cylinders, filled in with boulders and concrete; the cylinders being merely rings, each ten feet high and nine and a half in diameter. In forming the pier one ring was placed upon the sand, tightly capped, and the air within pumped out, when the pressure would drive it down to the level; after which it was uncapped and another bolted tightly upon it, and the process repeated. The eastern pier, first completed, went down seventyfive feet below the surface before it rested on solid sandstone. On the 10th of July we left Omaha for a review of the "first division "-extending in our arrangement, to Fremont, the first place of note, forty miles out. A year before I had entered it from the north, afoot, weary and disconsolate. It looked much ï~~qr. { uF a/} h9 6 f u,.'9a{d { rv wkh' ' r5ra.5xa.xy ^, ^. oe, r9 xn a rr tf K. 0 fl, r i eYY { ï~~130 COLUMBUS, NEBRASKA. better when entered from the cars, in bodily comfort and good company. Fremont has "great expectations." It is the center of a plain of great beauty and richness, is the point of junction for the Sioux City branch of the Union Pacific, and has a population of three thousand. We are here not quite "out of civilization," but merely on its borders; the extremes of society are closely mingled, and both nature and humanity seem full of the spirit of border-land poetry. From Fremont forty-five miles of gentle up-grade-averaging throughout the Platte Valley seven feet to the milebring us to the ambitious "city" of Columbus. George F. Train settled in his own mind that this was the geographical center of the United States, though most people place that point somewhere near Fort Riley, Kansas; consequently he pronounced it "the future Capital,"and proceeded to buy and lay out a town plat. A great railroad was projected from Sioux City to this point, with branch straight north across the Niobrara country to Yankton, Dakota, and a continuation southward through the valley of the Blue to connect with some of the numerous projected roads in Kansas. "The wind-work is all done, and grading will commence about September first"-the sanguine citizens confidently affirmed. They further assured me, seeing that I was a journalist, and only wanted the exact truth to lay before my "numerous and intelligent readers," that Columbus was sure to be quite a metropolis, the great central city of this valley, certainly the capital of the State, and possibly of the Nation. And, like the hopeful builders of my own Corinne, they believed every word of it; town lots were at handsome figures and advancing, and there was speculation in the eyes oft real estate owners. We remained a day, but did not "invest in lots." Columbus is one of the "stakes" of the "Josephite Mormons"--so-called by the profane, but styling themselves the "Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"-- and here I met Alexander and David Hyrum Smith, sons of the late Prophet Joseph, who were gathering the "sinews of war" for a raid into Utah, to wrest the kingdom from the ï~~BUFFALO AND EMIGRANT. 131 usurper Brigham. They traveled with us the next stage to Cheyenne, and continued on to Utah. They went, they sawbut they did not conquer. Their appearance excited little enthusiasm among the saints. Fanaticism, like revolution, never goes backward. Religious bubbles, like all others, must rise till they burst. Very few in Utah were prepared to leave the developed stage of Mormonism to go back to the original. Beyond Columbus there were then no "cities" for four hundred miles. Of all which sprang up on the road, only two or three survive in anything like their first greatness. A speculative and uncertain character attached to all of them; lots in the "wickedest city," Julesburg, which once sold readily for a thousand dollars, are now the habitations of the owls and prairie dogs. But there is one lot in the deserted site of Julesburg whose tenants will not remove to the new railroad town. I mean the cemetery, where lie the bodies of at least a hundred victims of midnight rows, violence and vigilantes. The town lasted only five months, but was quite successful in establishing a graveyard. In that neighborhood, or a little farther east, in the years before the railroad, two great lines of migration and emigration annually intersected: the first of the millions of buffaloes which had wintered in northwestern Texas and were thus far on their spring travel; the second of the overland travelers who had journeyed from the Missouri, reaching this point about the latter part of May. From here to the foot of the mountains was then a great buffalo range; and it is stated that emigrants were hindred from crossing the Platte for several days at a time by the herds which were crowding to pass it. Now they are rarely seen here. The Indians hunt them to the south of Republican Fork, and the Kansas, not the Union, Pacific is the route on which to see buffaloes. One can speak in the highest terms of the smoothness and ease of travel on the Union Pacific--particularly on that portion in the Platte Valley. Hour after hour the traveler is carried rapidly along without jar or discomfort, generally free ï~~132 SEVERE SENTENCE. from dust, with sensations as agreeable as if upon rails of glass. On a table in the sleeping car a glass of water, filled within half an inch of the brim, can be carried hundreds of miles without spilling a drop; and in these moving palaces all the parlor entertainments of books, cards, chess, and even sewing and writing to some extent, can be enjoyed without discomfort. Cheyenne stands on a beautiful plain, half encircled by the bend of Crow Creek; to the west the Black Hills break the horizon, while Long's Peak, ninety miles to the south, and the snowy summits of the Rocky Mountains show with dazzling brilliancy through the rarified air. The city is no longer the paradise of "roughs," but a quiet and orderly community. The political and social revolutions of its first year are worthy the pen of a Macaulay. It is confidently stated by old settlers that Colonel Murrin, while mayor, raised the value of cityscrip eighteen cents on the dollar, by requiring every man who shot at another to pay a fine of ten dollars, "whether he hit or missed." But this unheard-of severity built up a powerful opposition, and Murrin lost his office. This genial official often had the "girls" before him for such trifling charges as "drunk and disorderly," when the following colloquy usually ensued: "Your fine is ten dollars and twenty-five cents." "Yes, y'r honor, but what's the twenty-five cents for?" "To buy your honorable Judge a drink in the mornin'." In those days Cheyenne was in the Territory of Dakota, Wyoming not being organized; but as it was eight hundred miles by the shortest route to Yankton, the new city did not wait for a regular charter, but had a complete government with no basis but the will of the people. A year or so afterwards, those who had fined and imprisoned culprits, or sent them to work with ball and chain, became apprehensive of legal vengeance, and applied to the Dakota Legislature, which legalized the original charter, nune pro tune. We rolled westward from Cheyenne on the 17th of July, but the morning was cold; and the train crept slowly up the mountain-side enveloped in a chilly gray mist, which gave an air of ï~~.' x x ~,-e Ewa... K.. 5 q r x tWB a p ilk ff a y g ï~~]34 BLACK HILLS. added desolation to the gloomy defiles of the Black Hills. The ascent upon the eastern side is everywhere so gradual as to be scarcely perceptible; and even at Sherman, highest point on the road-8342 feet above sea-level-the spectator is less conscious of being upon a mountain than at any other point, the high bare rocks, with a few green plate, spreading away to the north and south, giving rather the appearance of a high meadow than a mountain top. Passing the wild scenery of Granite'Cafon just as the fogs of the morning were giving way to the clear sunshine and blue sky of the mountains, we emerged upon the first rocky "bench," with a free outlook to the west, then passed Dale Creek bridge, at a dizzy hight over a narrow gorge, which seems to split the highest ridge of the mountains from north to south; but a little south of the road it turns sharply to the eastward, and the creek canons out upon the eastern bench, and running across the high plains, empties into the South Platte. Thence, westward and northward, we move down the mountain, first through ragged gaps and rock cuts, then along embankments and rock flats, and then out upon the head of Little Laramie, where the road gets much smoother, but still bearing swiftly downward, till we run out upon the grassy plats and wonderful scenery of Laramie Plains, and stop for a few days at the "city" of Laramie. Laid out in May, 1868, this place had an early history much like that of Cheyenne. But the better citizens, impatient of the law's delay, took the matter into their own hands, and an explosion of popular wrath ended in a "judicious hanging." On a beautiful midnight of the next Obtober, three notorious villains were seized by the Vigilantes, given a short trial, and at daylight of a clear Sabbath morning, "Con" Wagner, Asa Moore, and "Big Ed" Bernard, were hanging stiff and cold to the projecting timbers of an old log-house. And then an incident occurred which long furnished matter for surprise to the cuirious, and conjecture to the superstitious. A neighboring photographer, knowing that the bodies would be removed as soon as daylight discovered them, arranged his instruments and ï~~W x A i nAi'/"i..... N,. yr~ _.. ~. i n,,........ '._ fi F..n+ ï~~136. " LONG STEVE." angel appears as a real figure in the scene; and it is not till one traces the joining of the clouds that he perceives the illusion. Another of the same gang, "Long Steve" Young, had been warned the previous day to leave town; but instead of doing so, he armed himself and swore to revenge the death of his comrades. He was seized at once, given a fair trial, and at nine o'clock of that Sabbath morning was hanged to the telegraph pole at the end of the depot. At his first suspension the rope broke, and he fell to the ground, when an old mountaineer who had been garroted and robbed a few nights before, jumped upon him and stamped him furiously in the face. This extra horror was ended at once by the Vigilantes, and the prisoner hanged till dead. Young had been hanged twice before in Colorado, and cut down at the point of death. The Vigilantes wore no mask, and attempted no concealment; the Deputy United States Marshal was the only official in the vicinity, and he had fled the night before, being rather more than suspected of complicity with the robbers. Some twenty miles southwest of Laramie is a region known as Pyramid Rocks, well worthy a few days' visit. At a distance the rocks look like the ruins of an ancient city, but on near approach are found to consist of clusters and columns of red and white sandstone, from ten to twenty feet in diameter, and from fifty to eighty feet in hight, worn by the ceaseless winds or by the waters of a geologic age till they are round and smooth as if polished with the lapidary's greatest skill. The summits of many of the columns are crowned with a species of parachute, often extending fifteen feet over the edge. Where the columns gather in clusters, these projecting summits unite, forming a solid roof and appearing to one below like vast arches supporting a cathedral dome. Towards the center of the largest group the light fades away, owls and bats peer down from numerous crevices upon the intruder, while still farther into the recesses can be heard the suppressed growl of foxes, badgers and coyotes, and the floor is strewn with the bones of their prey. The great bald eagle has appropriated many places upon the summit for ï~~w y fl w } b, y e r d y.'( K hvl, 1., I / 'N,: ' ï~~138 A WEARY LAND. west through which flow Laramie and Medicine Bow Rivers. Here the. vegetation of the East and West mingles, and the larger part of these plains is covered by a mixture of buffalo and bunch grass, very nutritious, and already the grazing land of numerous stock-growers. We find near Medicine Bow a number of lakes with no outlet, strongly impregnated with alkali, and with borders quite barren except for an occasional stunted growth of sage-brush, greasewood, and desert cactus. Thence for nearly four hundred miles westward, all nature is a weariness to the eye and a burden to the flesh-white deserts of alkali, hare deserts of gravel and sand, gray rock, red buttes, yellow hills, dry gullies, and hot bare plains. Two or three green valleys appear, in which some enthusiastic settlers have half-persuaded themselves that they can "make a country." One such resident met the Honorable (and bluff) Ben. Wade, while the latter was on his tour inspecting the Union Pacific, and with a deprecating air, remarked, "This isn't such a bad country--all it lacks is water and good society." "Yes," retorted the Senator, with equal truth and point in application, "that's all that Hell lacks." The comparison nearly does justice to the country. From this region the road rises by the eastern slope of the Wasatch Mountains to Wasatch Station, the summit of the "Rim of the Great Basin," seven thousand feet above sea-level, a place of wild, rare beauty, and during a large part of winter, entirely above the clouds. I visited the place in January, 1869, and during my stay of a week the thermometer never rose to zero, ranging from three to twenty degrees below, though there was not a cloud in the sky except the light masses near the horizon, and the sun shone with a peculiar dazzling brilliancy. The air, too, was quite still, and sitting in a well-warmed frame tent, and looking through the windows on the yellow waxen sunlight, it seemed impossible that winter held such savage reign without, but a step into the open air soon showed the reality. The terminus was to remain there the rest of the win ï~~r; F'.....,l.. a J r IrN, L i i rt i 1 1' ";, LNN f q,tl.;.,,,.,. a, n M 3 s i o' i. i /. ' - f 5, L.. Br x& r ï~~140 GAMBLING MORALITY. reflux tide of Pacific "self-risers," assisted by the almond-eyed Mongolian. Here we rested for a day at the last "U. P. town "-4900 feet above sea-level, though, theologically speaking, if we interpret Scripture literally, it ought to have been 49,000 feet below that level; for it certainly was, for its size, morally nearest to the infernal regions of any town on the road. In two days I had the pleasure (?) of seeing at least a score of "smart Alecks" relieved of their surplus cash by betting on the "strap game," "patent lock," " ten-die game," " three-card monte " and other beautiful uncertainties, which are so worked as to appear "a dead sure thing" to the uninitiated. What I particularly admire in the "sports" is the fine morality they display in always having the loser in the wrong. The latter is certain he is going to cheat the gambler, otherwise he would never venture. He thinks the gambler ignorant of the fact that the card is marked, or the lock "hampered," or the strap changed, as the case may be, by the "capper;" and goes in on what he considers a "dead sure thing." Hence I maintain there should be no legal action to recover money lost in gambling. Between the gambler and the loser the moralities are equal; both are rogues at heart, only the former is the more expert. My journalistic inspection of the Union Pacific was ended, and on the 1st of August I stood upon the "last rail," which was laid three months before with such imposing ceremonies, and which has, in literal prose, been whittled up, carried off and replaced six times; so that we have had no less than seven last rails, and the end is not yet. Here Irish and Chinese laborer met in their great work, to place the last jet in the band which weds the Orient and Occident, and solemnize their union by the shores of America's Dead Sea. The scene on this burning August day is not provocative of sentiment; the theme is exhausted in song and story, but worthy still of extravagant eulogy as the great triumph of peace in this age; and as I gaze upon the rocky hights around, I almost fancy I can ï~~CREDIT MOBILIER. 141 see the shade of Columbus, still pointing westward, still affirming: " I was right after all: This is the way to India." NOTE:-This chapter originally contained floridly complimentary notices of all the great men engaged in building the Union Pacific, but about the time it went to press, the Credit Mobilier investigation was in progress in Washington, so I thought it safest for my reputation as an author and Gentile prophet, to mention no names. Never praise a man, or name your children after him, till he is dead. ï~~CHAPTER VIII. THE GREAT BASIN. Hunting new fields-Gentile needs-Mines or nothing-Southward-Sevier Mines-Gilmer and Saulsbury-Rockwell's Ranche-The Utah Basin-Will it be sacred ground?-A family ticket-Social robbery-Chicken Creek"Them mules is in the sagebrush; you go hunt 'em!! "-Gunnison-Sevier Valley-Abandoned towns--Marysvale-Up the Gulch-Drawbacks to the district-Mr. Jacob Hess-My later experience-The habitable lands of Utah and Nevada-Productions-Fruits-True policy with the State and Territory"Mormon enterprise "-A silver State-Sunken deserts-Death Valley-.Mournful reminiscence. HE Union Pacific and overland excursion had become too common. Every man who could command the time and money was eager to make the trip, and all who could sling ink became correspondents. At least ten thousand columns had been written about the Mormons, and my local occupation was spoiled. The Bedouin instinct stirred within me, and I longed for fresh fields and pastures new. The Gentiles in Utah were ruined in business if that business depended on the Mormons, and a few of us turned our eyes towards the hills as a last hope. We wanted to live in Utah; to do so we must have a Gentile population, and the only hope for such a population was in developing paying mines. Trade with the Mormons no Gentile could count on, and in agriculture no American could go into the country and compete with the foreign-born Mormons, who worked little five and ten-acre patches, and thought themselves in affluence if they had a hundred dollars' worth of surplus produce. Unless Utah had rich mineral deposits, we might prepare to emigrate. Cottonwood, Rush Valley and Sevier were spoken of-the last far in Southern Utah. The place was beyond the settlements, in the 142 ï~~aa s,, rP:". '' s, h 4, r vn i C' ti) oaf '., ',~ i. f..,.; d/ e F ' ï~~144 UTAH LAKE BASIN. history was mentioned, and say if he met Ludlow he would make it fifty-one! "Port" disappeared from his usual haunts while Judge McKean's Federal Court was running; but when that condition was reversed by the Supreme Court, he was again to be seen and heard in "Zion." His custom, when drunk, is to walk Main Street and give vent to a regular series of prolonged yells, which are sufficiently murderous in tone to make a stranger believe almost.anything about him. But time would fail me to tell even that part of Rockwell's life which is well proved; the palmy days of such men in Utah are passed, and the " Danite Captain's" occupation is gone. From Rockwell's we pass the "Point o' Mountain " and " Narrows," and thence down a long slope into the fine valley east of Utah Lake-the Galilee of modern Saints. Through the flourishing settlements of Lehi, Battle Creek, and American Fork, we pass to the city of Provo, second place in age, and third in size, in the Territory. The bishop of this place was immortalized by Artemus Ward, who tells of giving him a "family ticket," and after congratulating himself on the size of his audience, discovering that all but a dozen of them were the bishop's wives and children. The point of the joke is in the fact that, though the bishop has five wives, he has never been a father. This case illustrates the folly of polygamy, in a politicoeconomical sense, a little more clearly than most others. If the four superfluous wives of this potentate had each a husband, we might, in the course of nature, expect a score of children where now are none. There being one woman to one man in the world at large---not near so many in the Territories-and all men being "created free and equal," who gave one man the right to take five men's shares of womanly sweetness? What robbery so bad as that which robs a man of any chance for a wife or domestic happiness? A community of polygamists is an absurdity--rather an impossibility. From the nature of the case, polygamists must form an exclusive aristocracy, like that of slaveholders. Night had overtaken us before passing Springville, at the ï~~I ï~~146 HUNTING MULES. at the same age. Will it in time be purged of its extraneous abominations, polygamy, incest, and blood-atonement, and with a purer theology develop into a new form of worship, in more vital harmony with the age? In another generation will some great leaeler, some impassioned orator and reasoner, like Saint Paul, seize upon the growing sect, and convert millions to its progressive faith? If so, then Sharon, and Manchester, Kirtland, and Far West, Nauvoo, Salt Lake, and the shores of the American Jordan will become places of holy renown and pious pilgrimage, while Governors Boggs and Ford, yes, and some who have employed their pens against Mormonism, will rank in the fuiture Church History like Pilate and Herod in their connection with the true faith. So much by way of riotous thfancy. But the prospect, melancholy as it might appear to a good Mormon, did not prevent my catching a few minutes' sleep on the smoothest parts of the road, till daylight revealed the north point of Iron Mountain, ailil my last station on the stage road. This was Chicken Creek, whence the main road bears westward, and a trail through a high uninhabited valley leads to the Sevier road. It was the day for the miners' express, and the station-keeper informed me "The mules was in the sagebrush; driver would start as soon as he got 'enm." All new staging enterprises in the West begin with mules. They take whipping and cursing more kindly, and in emergencies can live on the white sage, which horses cannot. The first coaches from the Missouri to Denver were drawn entirely by mules, the stations often forty miles apart; and in some instances a " whipper" was employed to gallop beside the team, and urge them forward. Arrived at the station, the mules were turned out till the next coach came in, when the passengers were expected to hunt them, the penalty for refusal being severe if the driver had power to enforce it. An old plainsman gave A. Ward the following account of the style: "A while back there went along here one of them fellers dressed out to kill in Boston cloze, and the first station they come to they wan't no mules. Says the chap with Boston ï~~ ï~~148 UP PINE GULCH. My memory does not recall a more pleasant journey. The "coves" opening back into the mountains were rich in bunchgrass, which was fairly alive with jack rabbits; sage hens, and other small fowl were abundant on the lower plain, and vast flocks of ducks were found along the river. The valley has a general elevation of five thousand feet above sea-level; the air was cool, pure and invigorating, and the sky without a cloud, deep blue and dazzling. Southern Utah has probably the finest climate in America, or, taking it the year round, in the world. The snow seldom falls more than three inches deep, or lies on more than one night. Cattle live upon the range nearly all winter, and yet the district is free from the scorching summer heats of Arizona. At Marysvale, last town on the Sevier, we found the Mormons returning to their homes, after three years' absence, the Indians being once more peaceful. There we turned westward, and toiled for six miles up Pine Gulch, on which the mines are situated. Along the mountain stream by a narrow "dug-way," with an average up-grade of one foot in four, but cut by cross ravines, and often turned by immense rocks, we slowly made our way towards the mountain top. One moment we were on the edge of a narrow track where an overturnwould have sent us a hundred feet into the bed of the stream, and the next struggling through a narrow chasm at the bottom of the gulch, with walls of granite rising on both sides of us, and above them the sloping sides of the cafltion half a mile in hight, with a descent of more than forty-five degrees, and covered with' immense pine forests to the very summit. The roaring brook, now beside, now far below us, and again under our wagon-wheels, seems to be singing of the snowy hights that form its source; and at every place where a short level or natural dam of robk forms a pool, the shining mountain trout are to be seen in numbers through the clear fluid, though its temperature is but little above that of ice-water, which indeed it is at its source a few miles above. We find Bullion City a straggling row of houses along the one street, which inclines some thirty degrees towards the bed ï~~SEVIER. 149 of the stream. Miners, particularly in new districts, are always delighlted to see a journalist; I was warmly welcomed, made free of the hospitality of the most pretelntious cabin in the place, and spent three days looking at the mines. Then, for the first time, I became familiar with those mysterious terms of the mining language: "lodes," "croppings," "wall-rock," "foot and hanging wall," "dlips," "spurs," "angles," "variations," and "sinuosities." At the end of three days I concluded that I knew all of the science which was of any particular value, and proceeded to write an authoritative report on the Sevier Mines. Two years afterwards, at the end of three months' hard travel, and particularly hard study of shafts, tunnel, etc., I concluded that my education for a " mining expert" had just begun, and was quite likely never to be finished. I discovered that there was about the same difference between any two districts as between any two languages the student may acquire; while certain general principles pervade all, the details are radically different. I discovered, after Utah began to be a mining country, that the position of mining reporter is one of exceeding liability to mistakes, and taken all in all, certainly, the most thankless, unprofitable- But I anticipate. To resume. Sevier ought to have been a rich and well developed mining region. Of that I am still convinced. But it was too far from the railroad; the characteristic of the region was large bodies of low grade ore-too low grade to reward transportation to a great distance-the original locators were too poor to get in mills and machinery, and capitalists then had no faith in Utah mines. My sanguine predictions for the region were singularly falsified; it was the last district in Utah to be developed. My friend and host, Mr. Jacob Hess, held on till the last, and when the district did "come out," had the satisfaction of retiring with a comfortable fortune. After a delightful sojourn in southern Utah, I returned to my editorial labors, a new man physically. I have since traversed the Great Basin in many different ways, and to avoid vain repetition append a few facts which the reader may refer to or avoid at leisure. ï~~150 A HARD COUNTRY. 0 The Great Basin contains nearly one half of Utah, all of Nevada, a large portion of southeastern Califirni:t, and small sections of Idaho, Or.gon, and Wyomin g. In this strange region all nature seems to be reversed: a river is larger at the middle than at the mouth, where it has any mouth; the lakes have no outlet to the ocean, though receiving large streamns; timber grows only on the mountains, all the interior plains b)eing bare; about one-eighth the quantity of rain falls as in the eastern States, and possibly one acre in fifty is fit for cultivation. The rest consists of alkali beds, salt plains, rocky flats, barren mountains, bitter pools and brackish marshes, extinct volcanoes, lava beds, and "dry rivers," with occasional patches of bunchgrass-the last rendering perhaps one-third of the Basin of some value for grazing. Geographically it is divided into a numlber of smaller basins, each with a water system of its own, that draining into Great Salt Lake being the largest. The only land fit for cultivation is found along the base of the highest mountains, where melting snow furnishes some moisture throughout the dry season; or in narrow strips of valley along the streams, where irrigation is practicable. Even of the fertile land, not more than one-third can be reclaimed without a most expensive system of irrigation. In Utah the Mormons have nearly exhausted the valleys which can be cultivated by the common mode; agriculture can only be extended further by more scientific engineering, carrying out canals from the heads of the larger streams upon higher plateaus. In this manner they might reclaim the great plateau west of Bear River, that west of the Jordan and perhaps three or four others. That territory has about reached the limit of its farming lopulation, except some such plan be adopted. Nevada, with 81,539 square miles, hius about as much good land as three average counties in Ohio. But where the land is fit and irrigation practicable, the yield is immense. Wheat averaged last year in Utah, twenty bushels per acre; oats, barley and potatoes are )ro(duced in abundance; a little Indian corn is raised, but the climate is not favorable; peaches and apples may be counted on every year, and nearly ï~~DEATH VALLEY. 151 all the fruits and vegetables of the temperate zone yield bounteously. Politically the Great Basin ought to be all included in one State. It would then have about population enough for one Representative in Congress, which neither of its divisions will have for the next twenty years, unless the number of members is increased every decade; for the country at large is increasing in l)opulation as fast, if not faster, than either Nevada or Utah. The proposed State would be a mining commonwealth, whose laws would apply equally. Mormonism out of the way, its people would be homogeneous, with interests substantially the same in every section, and with the railroads already done an(d in a fair way for completion communication would be easy, as the population is located only around the edges, leaving the center uninhabited. " The Mormons are much praised for what they have done in Utah; but it seems to me a people who were so absurd as to settle in such a country, when empires of good land were begging for inhabitants, have too little judgment to be relied on for anything. We can scarcely respect the general intellect of a man who squats in a mud-hole, though we may wonder at his energy in getting out. As we go towards the southwest all cultivable land disappears. The "Great Desert" of Nevada and Utah covers some 30,000 square miles, and is succeede(d by the sunken deserts which extend down to the Colorado. Most notable among these is Death Valley, so called from the loss of an emigrant train, of which the following account is given: "It is said to l)e lower than the level of the sea, and wholly destitute of water. The valley is some fifty miles long by thirty in breadth, and save at two points it is wholly encircled by mountains, up whose steep sides it is impossible for any but expert climbers to ascend. It is devoid of vegetation, and shadow of bird or beast never darkens its white, glaring sand. In the early days trains of emigrants bound for California passed, under the direction of guides, to the south of Death Valley, by what is known as the old 'Mormon road.' In the year 1850, a ï~~152 APPEARANCE OF THE DEAD. large train with some three hundred and fifty emigrants, mostly from Illinois and Missouri, came south from Salt Lake, guided b)y a Mormon. When near Death Valley a dissension broke out in a part of the train, and twenty-one families appointed one of their number a leader and broke off from the main party. The leader determined to turn due west; so with the people and wagons and flocks, he traveled for three days, and then descen(ded into the broad valley whose treacherous mirage promised water. They reached the center, but only the whlite, glaring sand, bounded by the scorched peaks, mnet their gaze on every hand. Around the valley they wandered, and one by one the men died, and the panting flocks stretched themselves in death under the hot sun. Then the children crying for water, died at their mothers' breasts, and with swollen tongues and burning vitals, the mothers followed. Wagon after wagon was abandoned, and strong men tottered, and raved and died. After a week's wandering, a dozen survivors found some water in the hollow of a rock in the mountains. It lasted but a short time, when all perished but two, who, through some miraculous means, got out of the valley, and followed the trail of their former companions. Eighty seven persons, with hundreds of animnals, perished in this fearful place, and since then, the name of Death Valley has been applied to it. Mr. Spears says when he visited it after the lapse of eighteen years, he found the wagons still complete, iron works and tires bright, and the shriveled skeletons lying in many places side by side." ï~~CHAPTER IX. THROUGH NEVADA. Out of a place-A wanderer again-Tired of Utah-Westward-Promontory--" Salty district-Queer calculations-Down the Humboldt-Elko-White Pine -" John Chinamen "-humboldt Canon-Desert-Reese River-" Sinks"Morning at Truckee-Beauty of the Sierras-Eureka!-Donner and Bigler Lakes-Western Slope-" Forty miles of snow sheds "-Mining towns-Cape Horn-Sublime scenery-Scientific engineering--Swiftly downward-Scenery of the Pacific slope-Out upon the plain-Tue California autumn-Suburbs of Sacramento. RETURNED from Sevier to Corinne to find the affairs of the Reporter in a condition of beautiful uncertainty. Both my partners had previously sold out to a new man, who had, in my brief absence, quietly installed another editor, without the little formality of consulting me. The "Josephite" Mormons were just then gaining a little ground in Utah, and it was proposed to make the paper a sort of " Josephite organ," which did not at all suit me. After ten days of fruitless effort to compromise our views, I gave up the contest, put my share of the concern "on sale," and was out of employment. There remained nothing for me but the uncertain chances of travel, so I renewed my determination of the previous year and started westward. Utah is a favorite place for the curious, but one grows tired even of Utah, with all its curiosities of nature and religion; its hot springs and hotter passions; its pure air and water and impure ethics; its lofty mountains and low conceptions of human nature; its social perversions, blood-mixtures, ignorance and priestcraft. All these charms could not always interest, and on the afternoon of September 23d, 1869, I took the train westward, determined to see how the tide of human life moved on153 ï~~154 SALINE BAYOUS. "'Mid sage-brush in Nevada State, Where silver-miners congregate." " Reaching Promontory, still the junction of Union and Central, by dark, I was surprised, not very agreeably, to find that my fame had. preceded me. All the " sports " seemed to know - me at sight, which I could not account for till a friend mhanded me an old copy of the Cincinnati Commercial, and therein I saw my former letter, containing a description by no means flattering of this same "Robbers' Roost," and a partial exposd of the little games practised here. But one copy had reached the place, and that had been handed around and read as long as it would hold together, causing a dangerous mixture of wrath and mirthfulness. An old monte-dealer, whose acquaintance I had made at Benton the previous year, soon hastened to take me by the hand with many compliments: " Capital, sir, capital Almost equal to Mark Twain; good burlesque; much pleased with your account of how we roped the old Californians. Now then, as long as you stay here, stick by me, and you shan't be hurt." I availed myself of his kind offer, but found it convenient to go west on the first train. We change here to the plainer ears of the Central Pacific, and a down grade of fifty miles brings us to Indian Creek, and Kelton Station, at the northwest corner of the lake, and in a valley of alkali flats and salt beds of indescribable barrenness. The town of Kelton will certainly never spoil for want of salt. The spring rise of the lake covers all the adjacent low lands, and retiring during the dry season, leaves thousands of acres crusted with salt, and here and there a little pond with deposits of the pure crystal a foot in depth. One enterprising firm proposes to dam the mouth of a long'bayou near, and place a windmill on the lake shore, with force sufficient to keep the pond thus created full all summer; the evaporation would be continuous and rapid, making, in one season, half a million tons of salt. The lake has an average width of forty, and length of ninety miles; in the center it is forty feet in depth, the borders shelving gradually, and the entire body will average 18 per cent. of salt, or a little over one gallon in six of the ï~~s.... ï~~156 16 CROCKER'S PETS." fluid. From these figures it is estimated, that the entire body contains five billion tons of salt. Rather a big estimate, but probably it would take that much to sweeten the kingdom of Brigham. Westward from the Promontory we find California work and ideas, pay in coin, and encounter everywhere the Chinese, with their singular dresses of silk and linen, their chip hats, rice feed, and cheap labor. " Crocker's pets," as they were then styled on the Central, worked for thirty-one dollars per month and boarded themselves, which amounted to an effectual embargo on white laborers wherever they came into competition. Of course there was furious opposition, " prejudice against color," and jealousy about "our proud Caucasian blood," and the old-time talk about the freedmen was repeated over and over again, without the merit of variation. Naturally enough, the politicians are deeply interested, and inquiring earnestly, "What shall we do with them?" It never seems to occur to these inquirers, as it did not in the case of the free negroes in the North, that the objects of their solicitude are doing quite well without their interference. It appeared to me somewhat ridiculous that those who took such strong ground against enfranchising the negroes because they were "lazy, improvident, and worthless," were just as savage against the Chinese for exactly the opposite reasons: that they are so patient, temperate, laborious, and saving, that they can work cheaper and supplant white men. I stopped for a few days' observation at the new, enterprising and furiously speculative town of Elko, situated in the best part-the only good part-of the Humboldt Valley, and the point of departure for the White Pine mines and other newly discovered districts. With its enormous freighting business to the mines of Eastern Nevada, Elko has better chances for a continued existence than most of the " mushroom towns" on the Pacific Railway. I found it a pretentious and lively city. Most of the business men were "Californiaized Jews,"-an, improved variety of the race. All transactions are on a gold basis. Greenbacks were then taken from "pilgrims," and ï~~A BIG DIGGER.. 157 under protest, at seventy-five cents on the dollar, not following the fluctuations of the gold-roorih except at long intervals. The climate is a combination of hot sun and cold winds, with occasional wind-storms and frightful clouds of alkali dust-rather disagreeable much of the time. The stages from White Pine came in loaded heavily every day, making an agreeable liveliness and change of population; and from ten to forty tons of freight went on to the same place by the long mule trains, making an equal liveliness in business circles. To all business intents, Elko was a White Pine town. White Pine, the great sensation of Nevada, was discovered in 1865, by a band of" prospectors" from Austin. After a weary journey over the barren mountains of Eastern Nevada, they came upon the first " indications" at what is now known as the Piute District. Not satisfied with these they descended from Diamond Range into the present Mohawk Canon, where they came upon the first "float" now so celebrated. Returning to camp one evening from a weary hunt, they came upon a greasy Piute smelling around their meat-sacks, aud thrusting his filthy fingers into their pot of beans. With kicks and curses they drove away the aborigine, but next morning he returned holding in his hand a piece of green-tinged rock, on which their - practised eyes detected "horn silver." They were upon him at once with questions as to where he got it. "Heap hungryme like um beans," was the diplomatic reply in the best English he could,ommand. No kicks or curses, no driving out now. The best in the camp was at his command, and when gorged to repletion, probably for the first time in his life, the Digger led them to the spot where he obtained his specimenthe place now famous as the original Hidden Treasure Lode. The photograph of that Indian now has an extensive sale in the towns of White Pine, and he may be said to have achieved immortality. Strangely enough White Pine remained almost unknown fora year or two after the discovery. October 10th, 1865, the pioneers organized the mining district, which they named from the forests of scrubby white pine which cover most of the hills. The White ï~~158 RESTLESS MINERS. Pine range extends due north and south for twelve miles, with an average altitude of nine thousand feet; the sumtnmers are rendered disagreeable by storms of wind and dust, and for five months of winter the cold is excessive. There, as in most parts of Nevada, a man with an umbrella is hailed as a "pilgrim"just from the East; for in the summer it rarely rains, and when it does, an umbrella would be torn to ribands in five minutes. Nevertheless, White Pine became the goal of all who desired to be suddenly rich. The "rush" began earl)y in 1868; by the opening of 1870, fifty quartz-mills were in operation, and the county numbered twenty thousand inhabitants. The miner is the most restless of men-except, perhaps, the sailor. In a poor camp lie longs for a good one; in a good one he longs for a better. With steady work, at six or seven dollars a day profit, hlie will drop his pick at a moment's notice to follow a new "excitement." Notwithstanding all the epormous fortunes made at White Pine, I met dozens every day who were cursing the place and their luck in it. Eberhardt, the richest location, is synonymous with Eldorado; but for one Eberhardt there were ten thousand "locations" that never "paid grub wages." It is the history of all very rich mining districts; people will draw too largely on the future, and the wealth of Potosi would not have averted the ruin of those who speculated too deeply and rashly. Leaving the ihst town of Elko-from Omaha 1305 miles, from Sacramento 496, above sea-level 5092 feet-on the morning of September 30th, we moved west-southwest and down the Humboldt. The scenery is not inspiring. The only view of any grandeur is at Humboldt Cation, now better known as the Palisades, a wild gorge through which the river has forced its way in some tfar distant geologic age, and where the railroad track lies along the base of a perpendicular rock many hundred feet in hight. Far below the excavated track the waters of the Humboldt foam over the uneven bottom of a narrow channel, obstructed in many places by the immense rocks, which have fallen from the cliff. The lack of colors in the stone prevents that singular ï~~~_..A ï~~160 A DRY STATE. This brought them down to Gravelly Ford, one of the few places where grass was rich and abundant; and here emigrant companies often remained several weeks to rest and recruit their stock. The Shoshonee Indians also knew the place well, and many a fight with them has occurred here; sometimes, too, it is whispered, with "painted Mormons," caused in both cases by a conflict of opinion in regard to the ownership of stock. Thence down the long, shallow Humboldt there is little to be seen but the same dreary and unvarying wastes, relieved but rarely by patches of bunch grass or sagebrush. Sometimes a green plat appears in a depression of the valley, or an occasional strip of'meadow land near the river; iorth and south of us are continuous lines of hard, bleak and forbidding mountain peaks. Late in the day we reach the opening of Reese River Valley, forming a break in the line of hills south of the Humboldt. Reese River rises away in Southern Nevada, and after running two hundred miles northward, sometimes almost disappearing, and again, when swollen by mountain streams in some parts of its course, taking almost respectable rank as a river, it finally enters the open plain and forms a "sink" before reaching the Humboldt. In this word "sink" the Western man embodies an empirical explanation of the disappearance of the water; but elemental action and reaction are necessarily equal, whether in an enclosed basin or on the entire earth's surface, and the water really goes upward instead of downward. Eastern readers may wonder that all the rivers of Nevada "run to nothing," but a little experience in the State would explain the matter. If the Ohio were turned into the northeast corner of the Great Basin, not a drop of it would ever reach the Colorado-at least above ground. The thirsty alkali soil, hot sun and drying air would exhaust it before it could traverse the State. Hot springs are found at various places along the Humboldt; at Elko, Cluro, or Hot Spring Valley, Golconda, and other places; all of which are reported "highly medicinal "-by those who own town lots in the vicinity I suppose, as I never heard of any chemical analysis. Of the towns along the route little ï~~"IS ï~~r; sr y, w u. 2 r l qtr, v K ' t a: i R ' y der r w A a p " rte'.. by fir, '' 1 r.,n ï~~a7 A A St SX 0 ï~~too" s a _...ate Yi Min 7 ï~~A HIGHWAY. 165 next to the mountains themselves, is the tall timber, everywhere covering the slopes and crests to the very summit. To one just from the treeless plains of Nevada and Utah the sight is delightful, and like an invalid from the lumber districts of Maine who lately passed this way, one feels to exclaim, "Thank the laord, I smell pitch once more." The finest view is at Cape Horn, but the sight is not good for nervous people. An awfuthl chasm, at first apparently right before us, and then but a little to the left, opens directly across the range; and standing on the steps of the car, it seems as if the train were rushing headlong into it. The first view allows the sight to pierce a thousand feet, almost straight downward to the green bottom, where the trees shrink to mere shrubs, and the Chinamen working at the lumber seem like pigmies; a little further down the gorge the wagon bridge, hundreds of feet above the bottom, appears like a faint white band, and still firther the sight is lost in a blue mist. The railroad track is excavated along the sides and around the head of this gorge, where in aboriginal days the Indians had not even a foot-path, as the first descent from the head of the chasm is six hundred feet, nearly perpendicular. When the road-bed was constructed, the men who made the first excavation were secured by ropes let down from a higher point. Coming out of this wild scenery into a region where settlements begin to thicken, and gardens, orchards, and cultivated fields appear, we pass Colfax, Clipper Gap, Auburn, New Castle, Rocklin, ahd Junction. The climate changes rapidly; in place of the gray-brown vegetation of the Basin, we see the bright yellow grass and flowers of the California autumn, and the red branches and pale green leaves of the manzanita. By noon the air is quite warm. Down at last on the California side of the Sierras we emerge from the foot-hills upon a rather level plain, dotted with clumps of trees, and more rarely a cultivated field. We seem in a new world; everything has a more southern or tropical appearance. The grass is quite yellow, in places with a coppery hue, cured, dried up, as if the surface had been uaii ï~~4. r,r M1 rl.. I, l' ï~~CHAPTER X. AFOOT IN CALIFORNIA. New Spain-Poetry and fact-Saxon and Spaniard-Cavalier and Pioneer-Our Heroic Age-The American Iliad-Sacramento-Yolo county-" Tides"Chinese-California Central R. R.-Ague-High and Low Water-marks-- Chinese and Chinese labor-Acclimating sickness-Davisville-Sericulture-- Warner's Vineyard-The land of grapes-Pears, apples, and figs-Up Putah Creek-Drouth and dust-The rainy season at hand-Fruit farms near the coast range-Ranches only, not homes-Popular reasons therefor-Agricultural items-Shall we settle in rural California-Chinese " Devil-drive "-Mongolian Theology-" Josh "- Blowing up the Devil-Ah Ching's opinion-" China like Melica man! "-Off for "Frisco." N his day-dreams, the Spaniard of the sixteenth century, saw an Eldorado in the unknown West; a land of gold and glittering gems, of flowers and fruit, of shining sands and crystal streams, of soft air and mild skies; where a temperate climate and fertile soil promised bodily ease, and unfailing health was to be gained from fountains of youth-restoring virtue-the Hesperia of ancient poets realized in the New World. For this, Narvaez, De Soto, and a host of others, sought long and traveled far, but died without the sight; nature had provided no "Islands of the blest," even amid the soft airs of the Pacific. There was, however, an Eldorado there; not the fabled clime which lured the imaginative Spaniard, but still a land of wealth and plenty, where industry was to find a bounteous reward, and enterprise build up a golden State. But not for a superstitious race, ignorant of true liberty, was this domain reserved. In the divine predestination of history this hidden wealth was to serve the puposes of freedom; it was to aid a civilization based on individual thought and energy; to strengthen a free Republic, 167 ï~~Al ï~~HALF A MILLION HEROES. 169 men of extremes; they did not stop half way, either in their work or pleasures, and with the rapid changes of early days it is not surprising that dissipation and crime kept even pace with hardy enterprise, in the very recklessness of perverted energy. Of all who came to California in the various "excitements," from 1848 to 1855, in general only the most successful or the most utterly ruined, remained; but, combined with the experience of those who returned, their history makes one of the grandest chapters of our day. Time only is needed to add its bright halo, to make that our "heroic age," and those the demigods of our social and commercial history. Consider that twenty-five years ago the vast distance overland was alone enough to appal the ordinary mind; add to that the broad prairies, the rugged mountains and scorched deserts, the great plains without water, the unknown character of the country, the great rivers with their fords of treacherous sands, the savage Indians, then threatening the whole route, the danger from sickness and loss of supplies, and to this all the imagination could supply of unknown terrors, and it seems amazing that any considerable number of men should ever contemplate such a journey. But, despite all this, the love of gold and adventure led half a million men to brave all these perils. We talk much of the noted men in our colonial history; but there is scarcely a township in the United States but has one or more men who have traveled more miles, seen more of nature and adventure, risked greater danger and undergone more toil and hardship, than did the famous Captain John Smith in settling Virginia. Where is the Homer who shall sing the American Iliad--of the half million heroes who attacked and conquered the wild obstructions of nature; or the Odyssey of the returning brave, who retraced their steps for the most part with wounds and glory for their pay? The Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo made California ours in October, 1848. A few weeks before, a laborer named Marshal picked up the first piece of gold in the almost unknown territory. To-day we enter a rich and powerful State by the greatest railway in the world. ï~~n: P S - '171,..r F'. NW; r. x k IC's 7 r kt i!w w. f i " IM. lyi 7, k 4 4 T I jl ï~~SACRAMENTO VALLEY. 171 I remained a week in Sacramento, which I found lively and beautiful; but the peculiar condition of the pocket-nerve rendered it insalubrious as a continued residence for me. Besides, the towns could give me but little idea of the natural wealth of the State, though the towns only have been described by the press, and in the accounts of most travelers San Francisco is California. So on the morning of October 12th, knapsack in hand, I started to see the rural districts. Crossing the Sacramento to the little town of Washington, in Yolo County, then the terminus of the California Central Railroad, I followed the track of that road for ten miles as the best way to get through the "tule lands." These constitute a tract nearly ten miles wide, overflowed during the winter and spring, and till late in summer intersected by almost impassable sloughs. Tule is the Spanish or Indian name of a coarse reed which covers the entire tract, green during winter and spring, but now dry as tinder, and furnishing fuirel for extended fires. Far down among the reeds, which often exceeded ten feet in hight, I saw cattle hunting for scattering clumps of grass whiclh still had a little shade of green in the moisture preserved by the tules. Beyond this tract, the road emerges into a vast plain, overflowed for many miles out in winter, but now dry and dusty, and covered with c6arse grass of a yellowish brown color, which looks to the Eastern eye as if every particle of nutriment were burnt out of it. Eight miles from Sacramento I rested at the Tule House. The previous winter a good-sized steamer ran out every day to this hotel, and tied up to the porch of the upper story, their water privileges being uncommonlygood for four months in the year. Many and various are the schemes proposed to reclaim and utilize this overflow tract, extending some ten miles out from the river. The one most tfavorably received is, to cut an immense canal directly across the big bend of the Sacramento from near Marysville to the head of Suisun Bay, which, according to the engineers, would leave the land dry two months earlier in the spring. The soil is ten feet in depth, formed by deposits from the annual overflows; and the advocates of ï~~kT c,,, V 'l r"a %i e a_ J f S: ï~~,.. o '. R i., ~ u, 'I I ri..,.,/... ï~~174 CALIFORNIA SILK. even; but the overseers credit them with great steadiness, and aver that one does as much in a day as an average Irishman. They use no coffee and very little water, making tea their regular beverage, both at meals and work. Those employed on this road receive twenty-eight dollars a month, boarding themselves and resting Sundays. It costs them a dollar and a half each per week to live. They have but two holidays, which they observe with great festivity: the Chinese New Year's, occurring either in January or February, as their year contains thirteen lunar months; and the "Devildrive," which takes place in October. Chinese labor is only relatively cheap: in California it costs but half that of white laborers, or even less; but in the Eastern States the difference is too little to furnish just grounds to that class who manifest so much horror about "an invasion of barbarous Mongolians." My haste to reach the hills was moderated by sudden sickness, resulting from too free use of water from the shallow wells of the valley, and I learned by painful experience that newcomers must get acclimated in California as well as in the South. Taking a short rest at Davisville, fifteen miles from Sacramento, I, was much interested in a Cocoonery just established ttere. A large field had been planted in mulberry trees; a factory large enough to employ a hundred hands was being erected, and the experiment is now in active and favorable operation. Sericulture will, I have no doubt, constitute one of the leading interests of California, as capable men are entering upon it at several places, and there can scarcely be a doubt that the climate and soil are well adapted thereto. The want of cheap labor has been the great hindrance; and this brings us again to the Chinese, who will probably soon become silk manufacturers here as they are at home. I also spent half a day in the noted vineyard of Fred. Warner, Esq., which contains a hundred acres of grapevines, yielding several thousand gallons of wine yearly. The "picking season" was over, but there were still enough on the vines to furnish a plentiful repast. Many thousand bunches had dried upon the stem and tasted more like raisins than grapes, unless ï~~TROPICAL FRUITS. 175: they happened to be of the more acid Sonoma variety, which had a strong, fiery taste. The capacity of this soil and climate for grapes is indeed wonderful; every variety from the extreme north to the tropics seems to find here a congenial location, a second native country, so to speak, where they attain a size and fineness of flavor almost incredible. In this vineyard I noted particularly a kind called the Black Hamburg, far sweeter than the variety of that name in Indiana, which seemed to me the perfection of grapes. The Californians also boast much of their apples, but Iam not so well pleased with them; they seem to me overgrown, lacking in piquancy, cloying and " filling" to an extreme, and what we, when boys, used to call "pethy." From the vineyard we wandered through a large orchard, noting on the way a heavy growth of large yellow pears, which to my taste partook of the same fault as the apples; and thence into a plantation of fig trees, with broad dark green leaves and purple fruit, of which we found enough of the last crop to satisfy a moderate appetite. When first gathered, figs are almost black, but when washed and dried they turn a pale yellow color--the fig of commerce. The trees never bloom; the heavy leaves are of one color nearly all the year, and the fruit starts like a small knob just below the joining of the foliage. Those on the south side of the tree are, in this latitude, generally best, as they require for protection both heat and shade. They are growing for ten months in the year, sometimes starting even in the coldest weather. The first crop ripens by the first or middle of July, and the second early in September. There is seldom a period of over two weeks between the crops, and generally a few are ripe on the tree at any time. Sometimes enough ripen late in October to constitute a third crop. When gathered from the tree the fig is excessively Sweet and rather juicy, full of soft red seeds; perhaps not quite so cloying as the shop fig, but a very few satisfy. As I wandered through the brilliant maze of red and yellow flowers, and tasted these tropical fruits, it seemed impossible we could be in the same latitude as my home in Indiana, where I had enjoyed sleighing and skating for two months in the year. ï~~176 THE DRY SEASON. From Davieville I travel up Putah Creek, all day through a rich level country, covered now with the rich haze of autumn, the air seeming full of red dust and smoke; pass occasionally clumps of trees and very inferior looking farm houses, seldom painted or well-finished; traverse mile after mile of continuous wheat fields, with stubble still bright though the crop was harvested four months ago, and find the same dry, dusty grassless look over the whole landscape. The entire valley is devoted to the growth of wheat and barley, with the exception of occasional stock-ranches which also appear devoid of life at this season, with the same old look, and half-Southern, half-Spanish air of shiftless discomfort. There is a painful monotony about the road, which runs unfenced through a constant succession of wheat fields, where the dust has blown in rifts till the surface appears to' have been plowed again. But this is the worst and last of the dry season. A few weeks hence copious showers will drench this dusty plain, and a rich velvety coloring will transform the landscape; a few weeks more and the bright green of the "growing season" will follow, and by the first of February, rural California will present a delightful and verdant appearance. Now my prevailing impression is one of drought: fields parched and cracked open, dust in great heaps among the dried vegetation, grass withered and burnt, while the largest creeks are entirely dried up or shrunk to mere rivulets, pursuing their sluggish and doubtful course away down at the bottom of deep gulches which in winter and spring are filled by immense torrents. At 9ight the horizon is lighted up by fires raging in the stubble on the high lands or among the lutes lower down, and by day the sun is obscured and distant objects hidden by the smoke or light haze, which corresponds to our eastern Indian summer and is here the immediate precursor of the first rain. Reaching the foothills of the Coast Range I find an agreeable change among the fruit farms; and after a few days' rest there, I incline to the opinion that most of the beauty of country life in this State, as poets have described it, is to be found in the fruit regions. The grain districts are certainly far from lovely at this season. Grass does not grow about the yards unless irri ï~~AGRICULTURE. 177 gated occasionally, and not one family in twenty has a windmill or other arrangements for irrigation. The people seem to be aware of these deficiencies and are often profuse in reasons therefor: "The country is new, and we hav'n't all got our land paid for yet; many got 'grant land,' and got too much, and are bothered to pay for it; grass don't start up here like it does in the States; it has to be watered and we're not fixed with pumps yet; we want to make some money first, and after awhile when we can build larger houses it will be time to fix up," etc., etc. Another class fall back on this general formula: "If people would only economize here like they do in the States, they'd get rich mighty fast; but they don't economize, in fact, they can't; California's the best place in the world, splendid place, long's you've got plenty o' money; but it's the worst country in the world if you're out o' money." Which opinion I endorse with qualifications, and modestly add: The subscriber never found a good country in which to be "out o' money," having tried it often. As Yolo is an exclusively agricultural county, and a fair specimen of rural California, the prospective emigrant may be interested in a few plain figures, which I copied from the reports at Woodland-county seat-which will enable him to make up his mind better than from any opinion of my own. Yolo has a long irregular shape, sixty miles from northeast to southwest, with an average width of fifteen miles. The eastern half is almost a dead level; next west of that is a narrow strip of undulating prairie, rising gradually to the foothills of the Coast Range. The level strip consists of some five miles of tuie tract and about as much more grain land. Cottonwood, sycamore and willow grow sparsely along the water courses, and oak and pine on the foothills. My figures are for the year 1866, the last obtainable, when' 100,000 acres were under cultivation. These produced 867,590 bushels of wheat, raised on 26,408 acres; 70,000 bushels of oats, 1250 bushels of rye, 16,120 bushels of Indian corn, 150 bushels of buckwheat, 200 bushels of peas, 4000 bushels of castor beans, 4042 bushels of peanuts, besides 1500 pounds of tobacco and 6 pounds of silk cocoons-the 12 ï~~178 CHANCES FOR SETTLERS. last two industries being just established. The same year were produced 97,020 pounds of butter, 7040 pounds of cheese, 162,680 pounds of wool, and 26,244 pounds of honey, with small quantities of hay, potatoes, beets and onions. The pomological report gives the number of fruit trees: apple 29,430, peach 31,350, pear 12,148-fig trees not counted-and a few lemon, orange and olive trees, were more as an experiment than otherwise. There were also a hundred thousand grapevines in the county, and 18,637 gallons of wine and 5687 of brandy were made from the vintage of that year. Of live stock there were 59,166 sheep, 14,644 hogs, 4480 horses, 1976 mules, 2492 cows and 4604 beef cattle. The population of the county was twelve thousand, which shows a good average of individual wealth. The price of land I found to be from one-third to onehalf what it is in the old farming districts of Indiana. The climate for the first six months in the year-I record my later experience in California-is doubtless the finest in the world. For the last four, it is perhaps the worst-two months of terrible dust, followed by torrents of rain and oceans of mud. The other, two months are just as it happens. Sometimes July and August are delightful-always so among the foothills and higher valleys; but if a small amount of rain has fallen, or if the "later rain" has not put in an appearance, they are, in local phrase, "tolerable dry." An eastern man would pronounce them intolerably dusty. If you have average industry and intelligence-and, of course, you won't be reading this book if you hav'n't-and can get there with a thousand, or even five hundred dollars clear, you can do well-far better than with the same amount in Indiana or Ohio. You ought to expect to make preparations for about six weeks of winter, but not one in twenty of the farmers do. Their stock take chances, and those which don't get through alive are merely considered "out o' luck." The country people are generally a trifle shiftless and lazy; and the probabilities are that when you have been there five years, you will be as shiftless and lazy as they are. With the capital above mentioned, you can get some kind of ï~~.' 2; 9 r.. -.! '...... ' r.. +4..., ";,, ï~~180 "1 TOP-SIDE JOSH.' the same as a town in Chiga. There were at least four thousand in the city on this occasion, the workmen from all the railroads being present; and with the blowing of horns, beating gongs, talking and yelling, by Mongolian courtesy called singing, and open air theatres and bands, they made the evening lively. Nearly all the Chinese in America are Orthodox Boodhists, there being very few of the followers of Confucius, who are the fashionable infidels or philosophers of China, while the Boodhists constitute the High Church party. They reason the matter thus: "If God good, why pray? Tend to the Devil." Hence this ceremony of driving out the latter. In company with a few whites I crowded through the mass of Mongolians to where a tobacco factory had been converted into a temporary "Joshhouse." They are not at all sensitive or excluive about their religion, and made way for us to reach the interior very goodnaturedly. We found the Devil "out in the cold "-a hideous black figure, easily recognized as the Evil One, set upon-a pedestal just outside the door. Within were two enormous "Joshes" ten feet high, one in each corner, and over them a shelf filled with little household gods, two feet or so in length, while behind the altar the Boodhist priests and attendant boys were going through a ceremony very similar to High Mass. The Boodhists, like the Mormons, believe in a regular gradation of gods, rising one above another to the great head god, whom the Morminons call Eloheim, and the Chinese "Top-side Josh." Outside, booths with open front were erected, in which various plays were being performed in choice Tartar, the view free to the crowd. This continued till midnight, when a general chorus of priests and bands announced the close of the festival (?), and a torch was applied to the Devil. The figure, which proved to be full of fire-crackers, "went off" in brilliant style till nothing was left apparently but the hideous head and back-bone; these then shot upward like a huge Roman candle, leaving a trail of blue fire, and exploded high in the air with a loud report, followed by a shower of sparks and insufferable ï~~f Ae." 5 1 F, _. O r ( S. y i r 8/ tL.:.. y, _.. ï~~.e.,# i '.;. 1' /. d1 >. ' i.. I',, i,,.: -; ï~~CHAPTER XI. UTAH AGAIN. Elected defendant-Utah law-Polygamous judges-Trial at Brigham CityAssault on the author-Skillful surgery-Rapid recovery-" Write a history of the Mormons! "-Visit the East-Return to Utah-Political-Bear River canal scheme-Author goes to Washington-Miseries of a lobbyist-Election of 1870-Gen. Geo. R. Maxwell-Debate on polygamy-Oui bona -Mormon morals and Gentile associations. HILE I was enjoying myself amid the soft airs of the Pacific, a beautiful mess of trouble was preparing for me in Utah. In most of the Territories it is " Your money or your life;" but in Utah a Gentile was after my property, and the Mormons seeking my life. Between them they got the first, and came very near getting the second; As I previously stated, I had originally two partners in the Reporter, both of whom sold out to one man; and in a month he and I quarreled about the policy of the paper. During my absence he had fixed up a case under the peculiar attachment laws of Utah, and by the merest accident I received a copy of the paper containing the legal notice. Taking the train at once I reached Corinne the day before the trial, which was to take place at Brigham City, the county seat, on Monday, November first. My journal was now in the regular condition of half the Rocky Mountain papers: struggle, debt, and litigation make up their chronic condition, and failure their normal end. But in this case the beauties of Utah law were to be elegantly illustrated. Here was a suit between a Gentile and an "apostate Mormon," who had to leave their own town and go before a polygamous judge, an English Mormon, living in violation alike of the laws of Congress and the codes of Moses and Ma183 ï~~184 " KNOCKED OUT OF TIME." hornet. For this Judge-Bishop Elias Smith, of Boxelder County-is not only the husband of six wives, but two of them are his cousins, and two the daughters of his own brother. These facts are notorious in Utah; and I am informed, though of this I am not positive, that the girls were "sealed" to their uncle by Brigham Young against the protest of their father! From the biography of this Judge, and a few of his colleagues in Utah, the reader may understand the late telegrams to the effect that the Gentiles are looking anxiously for some action by Congress which shall lessen the power of these Probate or County Judges, and bring all important cases before the U. S. District Judges. A few weeks before, I had published a severe criticism of this Judge Smith. His "strikers" now had me at Court as defendant, in a town of twelve hundred Mormons, and o'nly half a dozen Gentiles with me. The facts brought out on trial were so clearly in my favor that I gained the suit. About sundown I started with the crowd to pass out of the Court House, and was just stepping off the portico when I heard the words, "You're the man that wrote that lie about my father," and at the same instant received a violent blow on the back of the neck and head, which sent me upon my face on the gravel walk. I remember nothing more than a succession of blows followed by the trampling of heavy boots, and next I was being raised by my friends, covered with blood, and only not quite senseless. I was hauled seven miles to Corinne, where a medical examination showed that my collar-bone was broken in two places, my temple badly cut, and right eye injured, a section of my scalp torn off, and a few internal injuries received. Then took place what has always appeared to me a miracle of surgery, or of the healing force of nature. Dr. J. W. Graham dressed my wounds, set my fractures, and placed me flat on my back in bed, with instructions that I must "lie just so for three weeks." But the second day thereafter I grew so nervous that he decided the confinement so long would kill me, and invented a new process. Assisted by Dr. O. D. Cass, who ceased for ï~~S X44( t f Â~, 4 t ï~~186 MORMON JUSTICE. It turned out that my principal assailant was the son of Judge Smith. He was arrested by the city authorities (Mormon), taken before the mayor, and fined five dollars! It is well known in such cases in Utah, that the fine is very seldom paid. Two years afterwards a Gentile lawyer of Salt Lake, W. R. Keithley, having been abused in the Ogden Junction, a Mormon journal, attacked the editor and struck him two blows with a cane, doing no particular damage. He was promptly arrested, taken before Justice Clinton, fined one hundred dollars, and put under bonds of four hundred to keep the peace. That is about the percentage of difference between justice to the Gentile and the Saint in Utah. But let us be candid on this subject. It is nothing more than we ought reasonably to expect, when a whole community are of one religious faith, and that of a debasing kind, bound together by the strongest ties, with unanimous vote and nearly absolute political power; and. if seventy-five thousand Scotch Covenanters, Primitive Methodilts, or any sect of foreigners or people not generally educated in liberal politics, had complete possession of any Territory, I suspect they would make it uncommonly lively for dissenters. Indeed, it is evident in the West that a single town occupied entirely or generally by people of one sect, rapidly tends to grow intolerant and absurdly exclusive. Some think, or profess to think, that 'all religious sects should become one. I hope it will not be in my time. For I am convinced that, in the present imperfect condition of man, a multiplicity of sects, each much weaker than all the others combined, and compelled by common weakness to mutual tolerance, is our best security for civil liberty; and the day that sees a hint at any form of religion inserted in the Constitution, marks the beginning of liberty's decline. New sects always preach the New Testament till they get into power, then jump it and go/ back to the Old Testament for precedents. So the Mormons, who first preached a mixture of Campbell's doctrines and Primitive Methodism, now.rarely quote Christ and the Apostles; their trusted exemplars are the patriarch who married his half sister, and took a "dark Egyptian" for his concubine, the 4a ï~~1 FAY! ' t.t 4'. f.,..:i, 6 r,.;.. ï~~( ï~~,,<<_ -;1<,Y LÂ~ ry:. t. Y',.;1 -..;.ii., r. s. d,. i( kr, t% k s f r'; lL ' '.. F ins d"nc; J. a:. ti, ( l ' N. i ï~~190 SENT TO WASHINGTON. the hard year of 1869 was succeeded by better times in Idaho and Montana. There never was so dull a period in the mountains as the eight months following the laying of the last rail. Men had to get down from mountain prices to railroad prices, and the general disappointment made business men sick and hopeless. It is a well-ascertained fact that the Far West lost both population and capital the year the railroad was completed, instead of gaining either. (Everywhere west of Omaha the railroad means, of course, the Pacific Railroad.) In 1870 there was six times as much freight shipped from Corinne to Montana and Idaho as in 1869. Everybody thought that the next year would be "even as this, and much more abundant," and speculation was more lively than ever. Corinne organized a company to irrigate a hundred thousand acres of land in Bear River Valley by one main canal, to be taken out from the rapids at the last canon; and the writer was sent to Washington to get the company incorporated, and secure a small grant of the land to aid in the work. As we only asked two sections per mile, and of land which the Government would not sell in a thousand years without the canal, it scarcely entered our heads to doubt immediate success. It was then I learned the miseries of a lobbyist. Said my constituents to me thus confidently: "All those men want is just to understand the necessity and reason of this thing. You understand the mode of farming in this country. Now, just go down there and explain it to 'em, and she'll go through in a week. 'Why, the modesty of the request will insure its success. And tell 'em we intend to get in here a Gentile colony of a few tLousands, and you've got 'em." I did not find modesty at such a remarkable premium in Washington. I might, with much better success, have asked for ten thousand sections than the sixty I did ask for. I found there about five thousand other fellows with "modest requests," and as it was my first visit to Washington, I was but poorly "heeled " for the work. I soon found, too, that a man from the Territories is of very little consequence; he has no vote for Congressman or Governor, and none for a man who has a vote ï~~MY LITTLE BILL. 191 for Senator, and consequently the political strings he can pull are decidedly limited. I found that, first of all, my bill must be approved in committee-the Committee of Public Landsthen it must be approved by the " committee of the other House;" then it must be introduced, then referred, then ordered printed, then passed to a third reading, and at the end of all this labor, it would be "on the calendar to take its chances," and the real work would begin. Then some member must call it up, with unanimous consent, and if nothing else was pressing, and nobody "objected," it would come to a vote. With a recklessness born of western life I addressed myself to the task of persuading each individual member of both Houses. Obviously there was no money in the scheme; so the newspapers couldn't call it a "job," and my arguments were at least received without suspicion. After one month's exhausting labor I got a hearing before the Senate Committee on Public Lands; at the end of another month my bill was introduced by Senator Williams of Oregon, read by title, and ordered printed. Then said the Senator, " Go home, and wait till after the elections; members then will not be so afraid of a little land grant." I returned in December. The elections had weakened the Republican party, and land grants were thought to be among the chief causes. Everybody began to " hedge" at once, and talk against all grants big or little; the tide had turned and was setting the other way tdo strong to be resisted, and, as on the previous flood many unworthy schemes had gone through with the worthy, so on the present ebb, many really worthy ones were defeated. For months I danced attendance on the committees; waited and sought interviews with members, and cooled my heels in the ante-chambers of official greatness. After two trips to Washington and five months' work, I had got the bill "on the calendar," and now it only wanted a champion to call it up. Senator Warner, of Alabama, whether from intelligent interest in the scheme, or to get rid of my importunities, I know not, twice tried to bring it forward: both times, I, from the gallery, heard the ominous "I object." Surely lobbyists are a need ï~~...,,'.., '. rÂ~,r {,i ',,r. ï~~FATE OF A LOBBYIST. 193 remained before they reached ours; and from tle gallery I listened eagerly and watched the clock, which marked only forty minutes to "adjournment." The Colorado Railway Bill was called; one clause was "objected to;" a debate followed and the Senate adjourned, when ten minutes more would have sufficed for us, and I walked out feeling, like the cynical politician, that republican government was a failure, and I should like to plant a ton of powder under the rotunda, blow the Capitol to atoms, and pound the head of the Goddess of Liberty. So Corinne did not get her canal. But the next Congress she started the matter again, and having the friendship of six Senators instead of one, at the end of the long session, they had the bill once more "on the calendar," justwhere I left it. Early in the session of 1825, a young man from the interior of New Jersey rode up in front of a hotel, long since destroyed, a few rods east of the Capitol, and hitched his horse. Being told he had better have the animal put up, he replied, "No, it aint worth while, I have a little claim on the Government; it's all correct, and there's no doubt about my papers, so it'll take but an hour or two." Annoyed by the quizzical smile of the landlord, he swore he would not leave Washington or unhitch his horse till that claim was allowed and ordered paid. In an obscure boarding house in Georgetown may now be seen a venerable grayheaded man. The excavations two years since for the new block on A street, brought to light the crumbling skeleton of a horse and fragments of iron stirrups. They told the tale of a lobbyist-and his horse. I sought him out, and as I extended my hand in sympathy, a smile of hope illuminated the withered features, and he informed me he had secured the friendship of the Senators from Kansas and Nevada, and was confident his claim would go through next session. He would then bid Washington a tearful adieu, and return to spend a green old age in Jersey. Young men of America, let this case point an awful moral; and keep away from Washington. From my first trip to the Capital, I returned to find Utah hot with the excitement of a political campaign, which resulted 13 ï~~194 EXPERIENCED POLYGAMISTS. in giving Gen. 'Geo. R. Maxwell, the Liberal candidate for Congress, some two thousand votes. For the rest of the season I alternately traveled in the newly-opened mines of Utah, of which journeys the results appear elsewhere, and edited the Corinne Reporter. We had one rare episode that summer-the debate on Bible polygamy between Rev. J. P. Newman and Apostle Orson Pratt. It turned entirely on the Old Testament, and always appeared to me like a huge burlesque. Why not argue the morality and expediency of circumcision, slaughtering the heathen, or any other of the forty things done by the ancient Jews? If a man once admits that that people were for our example, he involves himself in a tangle from which no logic can extricate him. There are some things that a civilized man ought to know by nature; if he does not know them, no argument you can use will ever reach down to him. He ought to know that the free, honestly sought love of one good woman is a thousand times more valuable than the constrained embraces of fifty; and if he does not know it, why waste time in arguments which he cannot understand? Solomon, after possessing for many years a thousand women, thus gives in his experience: "One man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all these have I not found... And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets.... Live joyfully with th6 wife whom thou lovest all the days of thy life, of thy vanity given thee under the sun."-Ecclesiastes. And Brigham Young, with two houses full of women, says irt one of his sermons, "If polygamy is any harder on them (the women) than it is on the men, God help them." The general summary to my mind is, that the polygamist is truly to be pitied, having robbed himself of a pure pleasure to wallow in sensuality. But long after polygamy shall have died out, or been abolished, the other evils of Mormnonism will affect society in Utah. The great evil which is long to trouble Utah, is the terrible effect the past has had upon the young, the legitimate result of Mormon jesuitism. Beyond all question it has been an estab ï~~ti.,,,,, ï~~J 3 oll JAk ati r ro q z. x e e4 ur.a ^ es r '4 ï~~CHAPTER XII. I START AGAIN. Another misfortune and change of scene-Kansas City-Lawrence-Early tragedies-Later horrors-Last great success-Southward-Ottawa-" Don't mention it, Deacon "-Franklin County-Anderson-Ozark Ridge-Allen County-lola-Western enterprise-Montgomery County-Beautiful Mounds -Cherryvale-Northward-A modemrn Methuselah-Troy-Ready to report. SHAVE to request that the courteous reader will make a big jump, from the conclusion of the last chapter-of eight months in time, and out of Utah into Kansas. As previously stated, I went to Washington in December, 1870, and remained three months, as agent of the Bear River Canal Company. I returned to Corinne with a painful disease of the eyes, which I thought not serious enough to prevent a trip to the mines of Little Cottonwood. From that journey I returned to Salt Lake City with both eyes swollen almost out of my head, and for six weeks lay on my back in a darkened room, fighting off blindness. Through the combined skill of Doctors Fowler and Vollum of that place, I recovered sufficiently to reach Cincinnati, and was put under the treatment of the renowned oculist, Professor E. Williams. Having learned a little wisdom by severe experience, I did not start again till he gave me leave, which he did on the 1st of July, 1871. This time I thought I would see something of the Missouri Valley, and on the 6th of that month left St. Louis in company with a journalist companion, by the Missouri Pacific. Indiana and Illinois were, when I left them, in the eighteenth month of an almost continuous drought; but across the Mississippi, the 197 ï~~198 ANOTHER OMAHA. evidences of rain and greater fertility increased as we moved westward. At Kansas City the Missouri Pacific ceases, and the Kansas Pacific begins, though the track is continuous; and we halted for a day's rest. If Shadrach & Co. rested in Neb's furnace, then we rested at Kansas City. The heat was simply fearful, beyond all scope of dictionary terms. I don't wonder the ancient Persians worshipped the sun: it was worth while, if one could thus soften his rays, and it almost seems to me that the moderns will return to that belief. Certainly, if I ever turn heathen, I will become a Luminarian. Kansas City is a second Omaha, lifted up and moved two hundred and fifty miles south, and set down on eleven hills, from fifty to one hundred and fifty feet high, and with bluffs east, north, and west. It is the place where people come to scatter out-the starting point and toll-house to Kansas, New Mexico and the Indian Territory, as Omaha is to the Northwest. Thus set upon a hill, with real estate on the edge, it logically follows that there is twice as much profit in lands; so, at least, the people reason, judging from the price of lots. Still, real estate men assured us there was yet a chance for moneyed men, and a few choice lots can even now be had for cash almost as cheap as in Cincinnati. The people of Kansas City all looked, to my eye, as if they were expecting something to turn up. They are nearer heaven locally than morally, for the social and unsocial evils equally abound. But they are a little ahead of Omaha in hotels. They are satisfied to " size your pile" and take quarter of it. while farther north the aim is to take half or two-thirds. That night we ran out to Lawrence, the Athens of the West, a town of romantic history, delightful to dwell in, of which, though so often described, many good, and some new, things might be said. Its history is the leading romance of Kansas. In the summer of 1849, a party of gold hunters from "away down East," borne along with the flow of that year to California, encamped for a night near the junction of the Kaw and Wakarusa, where the level prairie of the low valley begins to give way to higher ridges and rolling plains. Intelligent men ï~~A HISTORIC CITY. 199 and lovers of the beautiful, they were enchantedwith the prospect, and their leader vowed that if California gave him a fortune, he would some day make this spot his home. He returned to Massachusetts in 1853, interested his friends in Boston, and by the time Kansas was open to the whites by law, the place wad already marked as the destined location of a Massachusetts colony. The Kansas-Nebraska Act became a law early in 1854, opening this section to settlement, and to slavery, ----" The direful spring Of woes unnumbered." The North, beaten in Congress, transferred the conflict to this soil, and by the time the Act received the signature of Pierce, Boston was organizing Emigrant Aid Societies, and in the first formed were several of our California emigrants. Early in '54, Mr. C. H. Branscomb, of Boston, was sent here, reported favorably upon this site, and erected the first "habitable dwelling." The first party, of thirty persons, arrived in August, followed by two other parties late in the fall; a town was laid out, called after Amos Lawrence, and by winter contained a population of 200. Log, "shake," pole and sod houses then constituted Lawrence, a lone settlement of "Free State Men," forty miles from the slave border-a star of hope and advancing freedom. The "Pioneer House" was "all roof and gable," consisting of long poles joined at the top like rafters, with the other ends on the ground, covered with sod, a sort of improved wigwam. It gave way next spring to the Free State Hotel, burned by Sheriff Jones; on the same spot was erected the Eldridge House, number one, destroyed by Quantrel; then came the Eldridge House, number two, from the upper windows of which we look down upon the crossing of Massachusetts and Ohio streets, on a scene of busy commerce, in the business center of a city of twelve thousand people. We are on historic ground here. Lawrence has an ancient, a modern, and a mediaeval period. Yes, I may add, a mythical and heroic age. The city suffered four regular invasions from Missouri in its first three years. March 30, 1855, the "border ï~~ra r r 3.!llccc, ï~~. "CHIVALRY." 2 201 lowed, and Lawrence declined for two years. There were fewer people here in 1860 than' in 1857.' Butthe country adjacent was rapidly developing; people ceased to look for the "spring emigration" as their only chance to make money, and a more legitimate and healthy growth began. Early in 1863 the State University was located here, and the Kaw was bridged, both adding greatly to the prospects of the town, which had a population of nearly three thousand in August, 1863. Then came the last, most cruel blow. Occasional rumors of invasion from -Missouri had agitated the city, but all had ceased, and Lawrence never felt more secure than on the evening of August 20, 1863. Even the little guard of Federal troops had been ordered away by the District Commander at Kansas City.. At 2 P.M. of the 20th, Quantrel assembled his band in Missouri; between 5 and 6 P. M. they crossed the border, and made directly for Lawrence, sending out scouts to guard all the roads and turn back all who might carry information. At the first glimmer of day they were seen passing through Franklin, a few miles southeast; at sunrise they were here. They sent a squad to University Hill, west of the city, to guard against surprise from that direction, and parties of two or three each took position at the principal points in the city, so quietly that those who saw them had not a suspicion of their designs. Then, just as most of the citizens were rising from their beds, the main body dashed into the town yelling like savages, and began the work of destruction. In two hours seventy-five business houses on Massachusetts Street, and all the central part of the city, were in flames, and one hundred and twenty-five citizens lay dead among the ruins or upon the streets. Many were horribly mutilated. At one house two men were killed, and in the presence of their shrieking wives their heads were cut off and stuck upon the gate. Those who died of their wounds brought the number of slain up to a hundred and forty-three. The brutality of the guerillas was only equaled by their cowardice. When resistance was made from any stone building they at once retreated, and many were thus saved. ï~~202 " TWIN RELICS." All this is old, says the critic. Yes, it is ten years past, and we hear much of the political duty of forgetting. Butt it is well to refresh the public memory sometimes, that the younger class of Americans may not entirely forget just what it costs to tolerate a relic of barbarism in a Republic, or give power to its supporters. Slavery raised up a set of men capable of this transaction, as polygamy made a community capable of the Mountain Meadow massacre. When the politics or religion of a people teach them to disregard the rights and happiness of one class, they will soon come to look upon all the "outside and Gentile world" as lawful prey. One of the "twin relics" is extirpated from American soil; the other now knocks at the door of Congress, and asks only the political power of a State. The noted camel of classic fable only asked that he might put his head in at the door; the result was that those who did not like that camel's society might vacate the premises. Lawrence survived--a martyr city in the cause of freedom. When I first visited the place, in the autumn of 1867, there were still traces of Quantrel's raid. The city appears to -me to have nearly doubled in size since that visit, and present improvements indicate that she is still growing rapidly. She has the trade of an agricultural population of thirty thousand, and a growing importance as the junction of the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad with the Kansas Pacific. The new State University is completed, and ranks among the very best in the West. Lawrence is the intellectual center of the Missouri Valley, probably the only city in the Far West that can boast an average intelligence and education equal to any in New England. Ten churches indicate that the religious element is powerful. Two daily, two semi-weekly, and four weekly papers, well supported, indicate that there is a reading population here and hereabout. Lawrence is one of the very few places I see in my western wanderings at which I always want to stop and take up my residence. It is to be the Athens of the West. Thence we took the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad, now completed to Parker, on the line of the Indian Territory. The main offices are at Lawrence, but it is said the ï~~NEW RAILROADS. 203 real terminus is at Kansas City, from which there is a branch connecting with this at Ottawa, thirty miles south of Lawrence, on the Marais des Cygnes, in Franklin County. The history of these roads is a little curious. "Joy's road," as it was, now known as the Missouri River, Fort Scott and Gulf Railroad, runs nearly straight south through the eastern tier of counties, in a few places within five miles of the Missouri line, and is popularly known here as the "border tier road." It passes through Fort Scott to Baxter Springs, the present terminus. When the same parties obtained control of the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston road, the terminus of which was then but a little south of Lawrence, the Kansas Pacific charged them such ruinous rates for transporting their iron over the little distance to Lawrence, that they found it cheaper to send it north to Leavenworth, and ship the remaining distance over their own road. A further calculation, however, showed it would be cheaper to build a line of connection from Kansas City, which was done in a few weeks, and the Ottawa branch is the result. By the charters, the road which first reached the Indian Ter-.. ritory would be the only one entitled to pass through it, and Joy was first in the race until he reached the noted "Joy Purchase," when hostilities so hindered his progress that he abandoned that scheme and bought a controlling interest in the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston. Lately, however, he has retired from this road. At noon of a scorching day we moved out of Lawrence and through a beautiful grove of elm, black walnut, ash, and hackberry, southward into the valley of the Wakarusa. The rich dark green of grass and corn, the entire absence of dust, and the water standing in the furrows, indicated that this had been the rainiest season Kansas ever knew; all this was confirmed by the local testimony. Have Kansas and the Wabash Valley traded climates for the time? It seems so. The bottom-lands of this valley are mostly in corn, the slopes in wheat andl corn, while for miles away extend beautiful rolling lands, covered with rich prairie grasses, and a variety of plants, the whole presenting a strange mingling of the feature of Northern and Southern ï~~204 SHARP TRADERS. farms, corresponding to the peculiar mild climate which characterizes this section. Being in the "agricultural report" line, we made a short stop at Ottawva, one of the "magic cities" of Kansas. Located in 1864, it now has a population of nearly four thousand, has two railroads and two more in course of construction. We found the citizens a decidedly lively people, but slightly prone to large talking-poloquence, I might call it. To them might appropriately be applied a bon mot of Sidney Smith's. Said a friend to him, speaking of a mutual acquaintance: "Thomson is a good fellow, a real entertaining fellow, but you must believe only half he says." "Certainly," was the reply, "but which half?" It is easier to tell which half to believe at Ottawa. But if you locate there, stay long enough to get acquainted before you go into trade. In the early clays a popular clergyman of that city sold a "blooded mare," as he averred, to one of his deacons. Shortly after the deacon observed some motions in his new property he did not like, and sought the minister's study with, "-Brother K., the mare I got of you is very stiff in the shoulders." Drawing a fine Partaga from between his lips, the reverend coolly replied: "Better not tell that, deacon; it might injure the sale of her." New light broke in on the deacon. He "farewelled" and took his leave. The minister, however, had a weakness for "blooded sheep," and a prominent banker, afterward Lieutenant-Governor of Kansas, took advantage of it, and sold him two fine-looking rams, of common stock, at $150 each. He was to be paid in town lots, at a value appraised by two prominent citizens. They learned of the "blooded sheep" trick, and rated the lots at five times their actual value, adding at the bottom of the appraisement this item: "Fees, $10." The banker ran down the list to the "fees," and tapping it significantly, remarked: "That is the only reasonable thing on this paper. That charge I will pay. As for the rest, the preacher's got his rams, and may go to- with them." South of the Marais des Cygnes, or "Swan Marsh," we run for ten miles on the Ozark Ridge, so called by the settlers, ï~~.: i.....,......_,_ k s..,5. - f.. n, '' ',,,,., ' f ~,,., o.:-, v i.,.,. r.,,,, is.,.; -.,..,, i' ^o-...,r.. a.L z,, r,.Â~....,,; x.,,' T a e W sa '. y... r ~5' x., f. If 1 fs,{ F k ï~~206 SOUTHERN KANSAS. The Marais des Cygues River is bordered most of its course by considerable forests of good timber. Franklin probably contains the least proportion of waste land of any county in southern Kansas. With an area of 572 square miles, it has a population (1870) of only 12,000; this in a country where every eighty-acre lot will support a family in affluence, with a commercial population half as large as the agricultural, and with no more manufacturing than is incident to a farming community. It is evident, then, that there is room in Franklin for ten thousand more. But already considerable tracts of the best land are in the hands of non-residents, who hold them a little too high to encourage rapid settlement. This railroad has no large amount of land in Franklin--at least nothing like as large as in the counties south. The Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston seems to be more fortunate in its land grant than either of the other Kansas roads. The Fort Scott road obtained its grant along the border which had been settled many years, the Kansas Pacific strikes directly west towards the " American Desert," and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas tends in the same direction. The L. L. and G. ran through four otf the richet counties in Kansas, while they were comparatively unsettled; in the best position for timber and far enough removed firom the arid plains. The grant was made and the railroad sections allotted in 1863 and 1864, and the road mostly constructed ill 1870 and 1871; but meantime the even sections were open to settlement and rapidly taken in expectation of the road. Hence the railroad lands are intermingled, with old settlements and well-improved farms, and convenient to schools, churches, and all the advantages of society. From the ridge, and the fact that the railroad owns so much land there, it has resulted that Anderson County, next south of Franklin, is not nearly so well settled as the country north and south of it. For ten miles here we did not see a house or a rod of plowed land. Passing Divide, a station on the ridge separating the waters which flow northeast into the Marais des Cygnes, from those flowing south into the Neosho, we run down into Allen County, the great agricultural center and leading county ï~~ENTERPRISING IOLA. 207 of southern Kansas. This county is much better settled. Every rman owns the land upon which he lives, and society has made astonishing progress for so new a country. Ten days we wandered about Allen County, taking note of local manners, the price of lands and leading productions. Iola, the county seat, so named from Mrs. Iola Colbourne, wife of an old settler, is another of the "magic cities ' of Kansas. It was a village before the war, and went down, with all southern Kansas, in that period, but with the great "rush" of 1867-68 it took a start, which is a surprise even in this country of precocious cities. Stone blocks went up which would look well in Cincinnati. A stone bank building graces the square equal to any west of the Mississippi; the pavement in front of it cost two hundred dollars; mammoth glass, which cost in Chicago seven hundred dollars per pane, show the interior glories of the principal store, and generally improvements are conducted with an audacity astonishing, even to the West. While Iola was yet weak, the "King's Iron Bridge Manufacturing Company" were hunting a location for the western branch of their establishment, They tried Topeka, but Topeka was a little slow in accepting their terms. Mr. King visited Iola, and proposed to locate the works there for a given space of ground and fifty thousand dollars in money. A meeting was called at once, the money was pledged that night, and the contract signed before he left town. A few days after, Topeka was ready to accept, but work was already begun at Iola. Bonds were issued by the city, at a high rate of interest, secured by individuals, and it was stipulated in the contract that the works should employ at least three hundred men. The buildings were just finished, and work commenced in one wing, and I had the pleasure of seeing the first bridge put together. All this was accomplished by a "city "then of eight hundred inhabitants. I am astonished at the boldness of these new counties in the line of public works; they cheerfully enter upon outlays which would frighten the oldest counties in Indiana. Iron bridges span the Neosho at several prominent points-the best at Neosho Falls and Iola--costing from twenty to forty thou ï~~n - toy e.z Pill } Won lox Ty sx, TAT, 2 yam ALL 3 t a Po A=.a k5 ï~~SOLID IMPROVEMENTS. 209 sand dollars. Farmers readily vote to tax their land two and a half per cent.---sticking it to non-resident owners pretty steep, by the way-to pay for these things. "Will it pay?" I ask of them somewhat doubtfully, to which they, in substance, reply: "In the older States we have seen the folly of cheap improvements. Wooden bridges have been put over the same little stream every five or ten years for two generations. Here we purpose to begin with stone and iron; double the cost at first, but cheaper in the lifetime of ourselves and children. Besides the difference between these and timber is not as great as in Indiana." There is sense in this exhibit. At one place in Parke County, Indiana, I have, in my short life, ridden over four successive wooden bridges, built at a cost, probably, of twelve thousand dollars each. Stone and iron would have bridged the stream for fifty thousand dollars, and lasted five generations at least. Eight miles below lola is Humboldt, the two enjoying a keen rivalry. Humboldt is the head of the United States Land District; lola has obtained the county seat; but Hulmboldt has secured the terminus of the branch road which is to connect the L. L. and G. with the "Border-tier" road at Fort Scott. This will give a through line from this section to Sedalia, Missouri. But the Iolians say they will have a Y put in with the right branch terminating at their town, and offer to do the grading if the railroad company will insure the rest. This portion of Kansas has had two eras of settlement; as a historian I might say a mythical, a heroic and a modern age, It was settled scatteringly in '55, '56 and '57, and by "free State men" for the most part. The "border war," particularly the horrible Marais des Cygnes massacre, and the perfidy of the administration discouraged progress. It had barely recovered when the notable "'dry season" of 1860 occurred. The bed of the Neosho was dry, and regularly used as a public road from the fails to Humboldt. The settlers contended successively against short crops, no crops, Indian thieves and all devouring grasshoppers. Whole families wintered on poor buffalo meat, 14 ï~~210 EARLY DIFFICULTIES. and dressed almost entirely in the skins and charity clothing. Some lived for weeks on condemned crackers. An old schoolmate from Indiana lived seven months on corn bread "straight," and thought himself in luck to have it. Many loft their health, and a few, very few, died of want and exposure, or the diseases thereby engendered. Extreme want weakened the intellect or distorted the moral perceptions. The brain, lacking rich, red blood, distinguished but feebly between right and wrong. Men stole at first from want; afterward, as evil habits create perverted principles, from second nature, or "because they had got into the habit and couldn't quit." "Jayhawking " was adopted into the language as a delicate euphuism for " taking what you really needed when you couldn't pay for it." Not a few men wandered off into the Indian Territory, became adventurers, and married squaws or practised aboriginal "free-love; "and thus is growing up a race of half-breeds, with all the native cunning of the mother, and the intellectual meanness of the superior white race. Two fruitful seasons followed, and society took a second growth. Then came the war producing worse confusion. Most of the young men entered the army, and many flamilies moved northward. Farms and new claims were abandoned, fences and even houses were burned for fuel, and the whole section went back ten years. Half breeds stole, Indians murdered, and Kansians retaliated, and the rebels impartially plundered all three. Peace came at last, and two years after, the "big immigration" set in. Through '67, '68 and '69, the whole country put on a new appearance, and the old settlers saw with astonishment a new and more enterprising race seizing upon all the fair unoccupied spots, bringing with them all the habits of an old and cultivated society, and looked upon school-houses, churches and public improvements springing up with the rapidity of magic. Society in the settled portions of Woodson, Neosho and Allen Counties will compare favorably with any rural district in Ohio. There are more educated men than usually fall to the lot of new communities. Mu'sic is cultivated to a surprising extent. Corn(non schools surpass the average of those in Indiana, and are modeled upon the plan of Massachusetts. ï~~BEAUTIFUL MOUNDS. 211 Continuing our examination of rural Kansas by successive stages southward, just below the Neosho we pass a large extent of unsettled country. Part of it is a comparatively barren ridge, separating the waters of the Neosho from those flowing into the Verdigris; the remainder consists of rich slopes and the valley of the latter river, nearly all railroad and school land. This has just been brought into market, on easy terms, in seven yearly payments, and is filling up rapidly. Thence we bore down into Montgomery County, upon that beautiful plain, sloping gently towards the Verdigris River, of inexhaustible richness, and dotted at regular intervals by those cone-shaped mounds of rock and gravel, which are the delight of the traveler and the despair of science. All the central, portion of Montgomery consists of rich prairie broken by these mounds. Some of them are perfectly circular, rising abruptly from the plain, with a rocky wall of from ten to thirty feet in bight, upon which stands the cone of gravel, loam and clay, often with a clump of bushes growing upon the top. Others rise gradually in long swells, abrupt at one end, and sloping grad tally to the plain at the other; and still others are moleshaped, of every length, from fifty to ten thousand feet, and from twenty to a hundred feet in hight. They were evidently islands at the time when this valley was a lake; beyond that 'period I do not venture a supposition. One of them, north of Independence, the county seat, overtops all the rest, and from its summit one can obtain a magnificent view of all Montgomery, and much of Labette, Howard, and Wilson Counties. Neosho, to the northeast, is shut off by the ridge separating the waters of the Neosho from those of the Verdigris. Our last stop was at Cherryvale, then terminus of the L. L. & G., and confident of future greatness. It was about the size of Cincinnati, but only four squares were built up yet; mostly with frame tents. It was late in July, and the heat was most intense, so we turned northward, thinking it best to visit the cooler sections of the Missouri Valley. At Ottawa we took the Kansas City branch of the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad, traversing the beau ï~~A ï~~NORTHERN KANSAS. 213 and when only seventeen years old was present upon the fieldnot as a soldier-when Wolfe and Montcalm died. He was in the same neighborhdod when Montgomery fell, in 1775, but soon after the Revolution went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and thence to New Orleans. At first it seems there must be some mistake in a man claiming to be one hundred and twenty-nine years old, but all the old mountaineers, including Jim Bridger, Jim Beckwith, Bent and Goodale, testify to his having been the oldest guide and trapper when they were boys. The journal of Lewis and Clark shows that he was in their employ in 1804 and 1805, and the records of the Fur Company, and of the Chouteau family prove that he was in their service for over thirty years. He had resided in Kansas City for twenty-five years, waiting for death, never having had a day's sickness in his life. He often told with great glee that when the British marched on New Orleans, he offered his services, but was refused enlistment, "because he was too old." How amazing to think of a man living among us who in his youth was doubtless familiar with many survivors of the wars of William of Orange and Queen Anne, and who was of voting age before the Revolution! Two such lives would carry us back to Cromwell's Protectorate, and overlap each other sufficiently for the story of that time to reach us at second hand. Perhaps tradition may be of more worth than we have thought. A hundred average lives would reach back to the conquest of Canaan, and. the same stretch of time would require but forty lives of a length such as we have in every county, and leave a margin for the story to be communicated through each successive link of the living chain. The evidence is conclusive that "old Pinaud " was nearly or quite as old as he claimed. He remarked in the morning, while walking about the yard, that he "would never see the sun go down again," and just before sunset expired without a struggle or sigh, dying of old age and without a sign of disease. Many of his mountaineer companions still survive, between the ages of eighty and ninety. From Kansas City northward we take the Missouri Valley Road, now owned and controlled by the Missouri Pacific Com ï~~214 AMBITIOUS TOWNS. pany--in fact an extension of the same road. Wyandotte, just across the Kaw into Kansas, has, perhaps, three thousand people, and is considered "merely a feeder of Kansas City." A short distance above Wyandotte I was surprised at the sight of half-adozen large stone houses, on a high, rocky flat, with some wellbuilt four-story warehouses, and not a human being in sight. As the train swept on it brought to view more abandoned houses-rather shells-of every size, and finally a village, with some signs of life, behind a bluff. All this, I was informed, was once the renowned Quindaro, the great city which was to be, projected at the same time with Kansas City and Wyandotte, and contesting with them for the lead as metropolis of the border. It was laid out by a town company of ambitious Kan-' sians, and supported a rattling daily, known as the Quindaro Chindowan. The first is the name of the Indian woman who sold the site to the whites, and the latter means, in the Kaw language, "a bundle of rods." Its bright pictures of the future of Quindaro exceed all the specimens extant of Kansas blowing. Here was to be an enduring city, founded on a rock--a second Babylon, while Wyandotte, on the sand, would sink to nothingness; here was to be the entrep6t of all trade from the plains; here was the natural point for all trade and travel from the States to Kansas and the mountains, and here was to be the city of the Missouri Valley. Wyandotte retorted in kind, and with equal vigor; but both soon succumbed to Kansas City, and Quindaro was, in the classic language of the "jayhawkers," "too dead to skin." The founders had kept even by selling lots, but many later settlers were ruined. The site was entirely abandoned for some years, and is now only settled by a few farmers. All these river towns were first built up by the freighting business across the plains; that past, they have passed, except where railroad interests unite. Leavenworth we voted "dull." Atchison a little more lively; then took the Atchison and Nebraska Railroad for the northern border. At Troy, county-seat of Doniphan, the oldest county in Kansas, we stopped for a day, finding a very different country ï~~.;, 4., '. s r.Â~, n,; },.,.,., <:,, _,, x - e,.,. W j,. -u.,: _.,,,, a.- _ _ t. x,,.,,:... } a.,. P, _.: _,-,: h. _,.: _ r.>. _.:, ï~~CHAPTER XIII. STATISTICAL KANSAS. Emgrants, attention I -Topography of Kansas - Climate-Three divisionsAmount of good land-Productiveness-Figures-Fruit-Beautiful HomesSouthern border-Snakes-Local flavoring-Bad case of Trichina-The Kansas farmer. HIS chapter is exclusively for farmers and prospective emigrants. "No others need apply." If any one of the latter has been visited by rosy-hued dreams of an elysium to be realized in Kansas, where man has but to tickle the earth with a hoe, and she would laugh with a harvest of giant maize and wonderful wheat; wirere bovine beauties rolled helpless with fat in perennial pastures, and the " honest farmer" lived in Arcadian simplicity, he had better dream on and not read. But, on the contrary, if he has heard only of "droughty Kansas," this chapter will do him good. The facts herein are collated from personal observations in twelve counties, during three tours in the State, from noting the courses of streams and comparison with similar Western localities; from reports of friends in whom I repose confidence; from official surveys, private letters, and other accredited sources. Statistics are barely allowable in a popular work, but some use of them must be permitted in the inception of such a design. Kansas extends in latitude from the thirty-seventh to the fortieth degree; that is to say, from the latitude of Cairo, Illinois, and Bowling Green, Kentucky, to that of Columbus, Ohio; and in longitude from ninety-four degrees and thirty-eight minutes to one hundred and two degrees west from Greenwich: an immense parallelogram, about twice as long as wide, containing 81,318 square miles, ten times the size of Massachusetts, one216 ï~~>', u,.;., _;,_,_ <,c,,,, r, _. ï~~218 TOWARDS THE PLAINS. Kansas stretches two-thirds of the distance westward, up this incline; hence, while the eastern border is comparatively low, the western part averages nearly four thousand feet jn hight. Down this long plane, more or less regularly, flow all the streams of Kansas to the eastward; the average moisture increasing with continuous regularity, and with it timber and the productive fertility of the land, while salt, gravel, sand, alkali, and other characteristics unfriendly to agriculture, increase westward in an inverse proportion. We should thus naturally look for the best land along the eastern border of the State; but, practically little difference is observable until we get from one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles out from the Missouri River, 1here the rich prairie of the border begins to yield rapidly to ridges scantily clothed with grass and the half-desert of the plains. Of course there is no fixed line or point at which we can say agricultural land ceases, and that fit only for pasture begins; wide and fertile valleys extend far beyond the assumed border; far reaching fertile slopes extend miles along all the larger streams, while occasional depressions present thousands of acres of rich natural meadow, or perhaps an entire township of first-class arable land. Such exceptions are found in the south far up the Wichita, Verdigris, and Arkansas; in the center upon the Kaw, Smoky Hill and Saline; and further north upon the Big and Little Blue, Republican and Solomon Rivers even as far as the border of Colorado. While this is true, each successive section of twenty-five miles westward would show an average decrease of fertility. In Colorado the only tillable lands consist of the low valleys and slopes along the streams, lying in a condition to be irrigated; and yet not all the lands of a nature to be reclaimed by irrigation can be so economically treated because of the absence of a water supply. Thus it will be seen Kansas is naturally divisible into three sections: rich agricultural land, lhalf agricultural and half grazing, and half grazing, half desert. The first-class farming land may then safely be set down as one hundred miles east and west, and the width of the State, two hundred and ten miles, from north to south: twenty-one thousand square miles ï~~.. x;, toy' Gad f Y i r a ". fi. Y4 e s ti L N K y v A0 At 'e 2 f s, NOW A { eA ''.,nom il $ rr r 'G Ls Jae.,t r x r (. z o= r r: f sE r r Alf? '1, Ili Ilt Y + rN 7 q, < 5 t i~ r r 2? e nux w n ZIN, r ï~~220 WHERE TO GO. of unsurpassed fertility, an area sufficient for the homes of an agricultural population of two million one hundred thousand, without being more thickly settled than rural New York. But it will sustain a more dense population than that State; the uniform richness of the soil, and the vicinity of such vast grazing lands, will cause the fertile land to be more closely cultivated with profit. The western third of the State is still the range of the buffalo, and three days',travel with teams will take sportsmen from the terminus of the L. L. & G. Road to the hunting grounds. There the Kioways and Osages still hunt them in the primitive style, but with the improvements in firearms, hunting by the whites is reduced to a science and a minimum of risk. The accounts given by my friends of their hunting exploits were of the most romantic character, until they came to describe their mode of cooking with "Buffalo chips;" then I begged to be excused. The, reader is referred to the cut for a fuller explanation. To return to agriculture. Where shall the immigrant from the Middle States or the central West go? At present, I should say, to one of the counties south of the Kaw; good land there is still to be had at prices not unreasonable. In Anderson, Allen and Montgomery-in the second tier of counties-there are still thousands of acres of the very best land at moderate rates. In the third tier we find Shawnee, Weller and Woodson Counties still almost unsettled, with some Government land and much private land for sale at three to five dollars per acre. Twothirds of the surface of these, counties is of extreme fertility. But the immigrant there has a still wider range. Far out upon the Verdigris or Wichita, and even upon the Arkansas, onethird or one-half of the country mconsists of fertile valley and slope, bounded by high pasture lands. Here the settler can still find public land in abundance, and take a homestead in the assured hope that a few years will surround him with all the society and resulting comforts he now finds on the Eastern border. There are, however, considerable tracts of waste land between these fertile strips-lands which will not be settled or ï~~r. r l f ';3a Ts. [z 6 - taSS }'!V, npVl r lv fy.. r r SA 1, v r VrF- ",Krv'J fit M1r,; aa._4 -.;' " sc,??', tY 4' Qfx ï~~222 KANSAS CHARACTER. improved for a hundred years; but to my mind this is rather an advantage to the settled portions. It is unquestionable that in the Verdigris and Wichita region the valley land is very rich, though those ridges fit only for pasturage take up half or more of the country. If I have a good farm in a well-settled township, what should I care if that be bordered by three other townships of ridges? The good land will be only the more thickly settled, with the waste land for public pasturage and for the ledges of rock, which go a long way toward supplying the lack of timber. And that region is settling fast. At least 60,000 people entered Kansas in 1870, and the first half of 1871-their own statisticians put it at 100,000-of whom two-thirds or more went into that section. The State, admitted in 1860 with 107,000, now (1870) has 360,000 inhabitants. The rich valleys of the Neosho, Verdigris and neighboring streams are fast filling with an energetic population. In every direction the virgin sod is being turned, and claim shanties and neat dwellings are springing up like magic. The overflow of this living stream is just beginning to set toward the Wichita and Arkansas. Domestic economy has made more progress than in most new countries, and the traveler through the settled portion of Kansas can secure most of the comforts of life. The western spirit of toleration, added to the southern spirit of hospitality, and quickened by Yankee enterprise, forms the characteristic of southern Kansas. The immigrant gets a fresh start in character and society as well as in property. Not " What has he done East? " but "What does he intend to do in Kansas and for Kansas?" is the question asked. They care the least for a man's record, if he fails to come up to the spirit of the timres and country, of any people I have seen. If the new comer has been unfortunate, or even criminal, and is really desirous of taking a new departure in manners and morals, there he can have a clean sheet to begin his new record upon; if he will start right he will never hear of the past, and if he is honest and public-spirited in Kansas the past will remain as a sealed book. Deducting something of western swagger and a great deal of local exaggeration, ï~~BRAGGING. 223 the southern Kansian is really a first-rate fellow; frank, generous, and with ideas expanded by change and experience, he is a good fellow to travel with and a desirable neighbor. There the immigrant from the Ohio Valley will find a climate to suit him; warm enough, the summers tempered by the wind, the storms of winter short, though sometimes severe, and all the fruits and grains of the temperate zone yielding bounteously. Cotton could be grown in the extreme south, while the long-leafed Spanish tobacco and the ordinary James-River are an undoubted success everywhere south of the Kaw. There are evils enough everywhere, but many, once thought peculiar to Kansas, are found to exist there no more than elsewhere. Wherever good land is found the season will be found to suit it. In the eastern division of the State drought is not a whit more to be feared, one year with another, than in the Wabash Valley; and when you go far enough west to find "droughty Kansas," the land is unfit for cultivation anyhow. So much for general facts before I come to details. But first a caveat. If the reader, after perusing this, could visit Kansas generally, he would be amazed to think I had drawn it so mildly, compared with the statements he will receive from residents. According to them in most cases, there never was so rich, so great, so prosperous a region, never such a chance to make money before; the towns are all certain to make great cities; lots are sure to double in price in a year; pure fat may yet run in the furrows, and corn tassel and silk in greenbacks; a man's children will grow fat by mere contact with the soil, and his wife return to the beauty of her youth; roasted shoats, with knife and fork stuck in their backs, will rub against him and beg to be eaten, and general prosperity awaits the happy emigrant. And then it is so healthy. An old resident of Deer Creek, we are told, had lived so long, life was a burden (to his heirs probably), and yet the country was so healthy he could not die. Weary of existence he moved back to Illinois, and there succeeded in giving up the ghost, having stipulated that he should be buried on his Kansas farm. But such were the lifegiving properties of this soil that when laid in it animation re ï~~224 DETAIL OF CROPS. turned to his limbs, his heart resumed its pulsations, and the incorrigible centenarian walked forth in renewed health, to the disgust of his heirs and the confusion of those who had doubts about Kansas. I thought I knew something about " blowing towns" on the Union Pacific, but Kansas boys can give them fifty in the game and "double discount" them. That the country has all the elements of a rich and prosperous State, I can see with my own eyes; that there is still room for thousands to do well is equally plain, and that all who will work can acquire a competence, is simply an axiom. But your average Kansian is not satisfied with such a moderate statement. One would think them at first view the happiest people in the world, for every man seems perfectly satisfied with - his own claim, averring it is the very best in Kansas. And yet, strangely enough, about one-third of them want to sell; not but that this is " God's own country," oh, no! " But with the money they could raise on this claim, they could get twice as much out on the Wichita, and have enough left to stock it to their minds." To avoid showing symptoms of the same disease, I present a few figures mostly on Allen and Woodson Counties, where I stopped longest, and knew my informants to be reliable. The winter of 1870-'71 was one of unusual severity in Kansas, and owing to want of preparation therefor, nearly all the cattle began the spring in the last stage of attenuation. One terrible snow storm lasted an entire week, in which the wind blew almost a hurricane, filling the air with powdery snow, and quite a number of cattle froze to death, as well as hogs and chickens. The winter of '69-'70 had been of unusual mildness, and nearly all the cattle in Allen County were wintered upon the lower range and in the wooded bottoms without feeding. It is common with many fArmers to pursue this plan, and depend upon the chances; but the stock are certain to come out miserably poor, and the chances are one in three of a hard winter in which ten per cent. of the stock will be lost. The best farmers prepare and expect to feed from three to four months--two months less than in Indiana. The spring of 1871 opened early and dry, the rain gradually increasing with the advance of the summer, and this ï~~AGRICULTURE. 225 has proved the rainiest season Kansas has ever enjoyed. I say "enjoyed," for it amounts almost to a certainty that this section will never have too much rain, while it may have too little. Old settlers say that "every other season in Kansas is wet---last was the season to sow much small grain; this to plant much corn." It is impossible for corn anywhere in this latitude to (1o better than it did in 1871 in Allen County; the crop was at least twice as good as in any part of Indiana. That the land is never too wet,'and consequently spring lowing can be done under the most favorable circumstances, is one reason why it endures drought so much better than further east. Land which is never water-soaked or broken, wet never clods or "bakes." In 1870 the average yield of corn in this county was forty bushels per acre. Of other crops there is no report for single districts, but the State at large produced (I quote the printed report) as follows: 312,000 acres corn yielded.................................15,000,000 bushels. 117,000 acres wheat yielded............................. 2,100,000 bushels. 91,400 acres oats yielded................................ 3,848,000 bushels. 19,600 acres potatoes yielded.......................... 2,158,000 bushels. 221,000 acres hay yielded............................... 441,000 tons. Wheat has never proved a perfect success in Allen County, though several average crops have been raised. The kinds generally sown are called the "Walker" and "May" wheat. The "Mediterranean " and "White Bluestem," so common in Indiana, do not yield well on the rank soil of a new country. A curious fact is noted, that land when first broken does best in wheat, and after being sown in that crop for some years will produce far better corn than when new. Hence "new ground" here is rarely, if ever, planted in corn. The peculiar saline properties of the soil render new land less fit for corn than old, while the same salts produce no bad effects upon wheat. The fly is a little troublesome to wheat, but its principal enemy is the chintz bug, so-called here, though I see no resemblance in the specimens shown me to our Eastern insect of that name. It will eat almost any crop, but prefers the small grains, having shortened those crops in this section about ten per cent. 15 ï~~226 ROOTS AND VINES. Rye, oats and barley do equally well, though but little of the last has been grown, and this section is thought to be particularly favorable for oats. Mr. A. Hall, whose farm is in the valley at the junction of Deer Creek and the Neosho River, harvested in 1870 seventy bushels per acre from a large area; and J. C. Clark, on the upland near lola, gathered four thousand bushels from sixty-five acres, the entire yield being sold readily at fifty cents per bushel. This is the " money crop" of Allen County as, owing "to stock raising and the vicnity of the Indian Territory, there is always ready sale at good prices. Thus it will be seen, two or at most three good crops will still pay for an average farm in this section. Of ground crops every kind known in Ohio flourish exceedingly in this virgin soil; potatoes and turnips particularly excel. The former grow to an immense size, and never seem "watery" or otherwise bad, while turnips do as well as I have ever seen them in Minnesota, which saying every one who has ever visited that State will consider the highest limit of superlative praise. Beets and pie-plant, I suspect, do but poorly; I hear but little of them, and from comparison of this soil with that of Utah and California, I think the country needs a few years' cultivation to make those plants a success. Allen County in 1870 raised an average crop of potatoes, but in '71 the yield was immense. The Colorado bug has not put in an appearance yet, but will doubtless be along in due time, in spite of State rights. Of vines, every kind known in Ohio is grown; but some few of them have special enemies, which destroy the hope of profit. A fatality seems to attend "Hubbard's Kershaws" and squashes. They are "took by bugs" so regularly that it is nearly impossible to raise any. Pumpkins and other kindred productions yield wonderfully, and watermelons far exceed any in Indiana. A singular phenomenon was observed last year in this section. A moderate crop of small but very sweet melons ripened in July, about which time a rainy period occurred, when a second growth appeared and were perfectly ripe by the last of ï~~CULTIVATED FRUITS..227 September. Of course they were "out o' season," and consequently inferior in flavor; still they were good enough to eat, and valuable as an indication of what the seasons of Southern Kansas will do. Wild strawberries are found in great abundance on the prairies, of several different kinds, as well as of different shapes. When cultivated, the same varieties are most excellent. A very large smooth gooseberry is found in great quantity in the timber, which every one here pronounces fine; but as all gooseberries are slow poison to me, I can only say they look well. Many kinds of wild grapes are found, the "big blue" predominating. Of cultivated grapes the "Concord," "Hartford Prolific," and " Diana" are the only kinds I have met with, the first being by far the best for this section. The rank soil of a new country is not generally thought favorable to cultivated grapes, but so far they have done quite well. I have heard of no wine being manufactured; and rather suspect it would appear too mild a drink or too small a business for the thoroughbred Kansian, whose very life seems to depend on doing or appearing to do everything on a grand scale. On general principles, the people of all new countries will raise corn and cattle rather than wine and seeds. The country districts contain more tee-totallers than I would have expected. Allen County is more temperate than the average in Indiana. In the towns the standard drink is whisky-" stone fence," "forty-rod," and "tarantula-juice." Indeed, whisky and bravery are thought to be necessary for each other; "whisky is the only drink for men," and whoever drinks at all drinks whisky. So your true Kansian says with the Scotch Poet: "Let half-starved slaves in warmer skies See future vines rich clustering rise, Their lot fair Kansas ne'er envies, But blithe and frisky She eyes her freeborn martial boys Take off their whisky." Of wild fruits, plums, grapes, and gooseberries most abound. There are but few wild blackberries, but the cultivated Lawton does well, better than in Indiapa, from the fact that it never ï~~228 PEACHES. freezes out here. The country is too new to form a certain judgment on domestic fruits. Half a dozen orchards on Deer Creek are doing well, and the indications are good for apples. It is already proved that peaches can be grown with great success. The oldest settlers are enthusiastic upon this point, and Mr. E. R. Lynn, a Presbyterian minister, who has resided on Deer Creek for eleven years, tells me his experience goes to show that peaches will be grown nine years out of every ten. The only specific enemy of that tree is the "grub," so called here, an insect of the terebrce species, which works on the roots just below the surface. Growers must dig and examine the roots of peach trees every spring, when the presence of the "bore" can easily be detected. The roots must then be treated with ashes and lime, the latter being almost as plenty here as clay in Ohio. This process is quite effective in destroying the pests. Mr. Lynn says peaches have failed entirely but one year since he came here. They need a northern exposure and high ground; on the southward slopes the buds come forward too early, and for some unexplained reason, the trees fail to do well on the low grounds along the creeks, notwithstanding such are the naturally timbered sections, where one would at first expect fruit trees to thrive best. The orchard of D. E. Rhodes in Iola, is the best in Southern Kansas. In 1870 he made his first sales-a hundred bushels of apples at one dollar per bushel. I see no reason, either in climate, soil, or formation, why this should not be a first-rate fruit country, and yet many doubts are expressed upon the subject. Over in Missouri, where Kansas people have been buying fruit for many years, the farmers are setting out immense orchards in the assured hope that they will supply Kansas for the next forty years, and that the demand will increase with the population. My own opinion is that they will "slip up on it." The residents in new countries are generally grasping for land, but in Allen County they prefer cattle. After getting their land paid for-a homestead merely-they generally put every spare dollar in cattle; for they reason, "the land may double your money in ten yNears or less, but with any kind of ï~~THE CATTLE BUSINESS. 229 care, cattle are certain to double it in two or three years. Messrs. Funkhouser & Longshore, of Carlyle, bought a drove of Texas cattle in November, 1869, and sold them in August, 1870, for exactly double the purchase money. Deducting all cost of wintering, and herding, they realized sixty per cent. on their investment. It is quite common to purchase in Missouri one spring and sell the second autumn thereafter at twice the amount-thus realizing from fifty to eighty per cent. profit in twenty months. There is still so much range in Allen County, and owing to the Ozark Ridge and other ridges, will be so for many years, that this is the great money-making business. Farmers gadly borrow money at ten per cent., secured by mortgage, to invest in cattle, with the assurance of making at least thirty per cent. upon their investment. Of course this kind of business will not last always, but while it does last, for the next few years, is the time to immigrate here. There is still abundant room for farmers and stockhandlers. If people would work here as they do in Ohio, every farmer would be rich in five years. But people in new countries are lazy. The first settlers seem to get it naturally, and newcomers soon fall into their ways and catch the same disease. I thought people on the Wabash were lazy. They are fearful bundles of steaming energy compared to the Kansians. Allen County is settled by a superior class, but I perceive they are fast falling into the old ways. A man can live in a log cabin, wear ragged clothes, and go bare-footed and still be an aristocrat; so what is the use of working to secure a social position. People seldom work for what they have already, except where long habit has made it almost a necessity. For mechanical labor of nearly every kind there is a steady demand, at prices considerably in advance of those paid in Ohio. For stone-masons and house-carpenters the demand is greatest and the wages best. Much good land is still to be had from private owners at from four to ten dollars per acre, unimproved. If one can raise the money it is fully as cheap, if not cheaper, to buy an improved as a new farm; for there are always plenty wanting to sell. There are always some dissatisfied, always many wanting to change their location, and the nearer ï~~230 THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. the border you get, the more you will find who want to sell out and move West. Already there is a considerable movement from this section to the Verdigris, a hundred miles west, and many pioneers are starting for the Wichita, twice as far off. Beautiful and fertile, but narrow valleys, with four times as much half-barren, rolling pastures, as it is so far west, suits the true borderer far better than this section, which is three-fourths fertile and one-fourth barren ridge. The best chance here just now is in the railroad lands, which are just brought into market. They can be had at prices as low or lower than prairie lands, with annual payments for ten years at seven per cent. interest. Better terms could not be offered. By the fourth year a good tfarmner can have enough raised to pay for his farm, at from five to ten dollars per acre. When we consider that timber grows readily on the highest prairie in Eastern Kansas, when the sod is once broken, and fire kept off, and that all the cultivated grasses and evergreens need but to be sown or planted, it appears that the facilities for making a beautiful home exceed even those of Ohio. In 1872, I traversed the southern tier of counties, and found the region rich in soil, but not so healthful for Northern people. The traveler from the State line northward observes a gradual rise in the country. About Chetopa or Parker he will find extensive flats and occasional sloughs. Coming up the Neosho or its tributaries to Humboldt or Iola, he reaches a higher, gently rolling prairie, sloping toward the south, without sloughs, and nowhere rising into barren ridges. From southeast to northwest, from the northern part of Cherokee County to Fort Scott, and thence to Emporia, he finds a fair medium between flat and high lands. In the northern part of Allen County, about Divide Station, on the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad, he leaves this fertile slope for the " Ridge." This is a sort of spur from the Ozark Mountains, running northwest between the waters which flow into the Neosho and Arkansas, and those flowing eastward into the Osage. For ten miles there, along the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad, the country appears to me very barren; in the cuts ï~~REPTILES. 231 the rock shows in compact layers but a few inches below the surface, and the soil is evidently hard and cold. Having passed the divide, a reverse process is noticeable, the country improving northward by similar gradations. "Noxious varmints" are not over-plentiful, still they give some trouble. Snakes are, in local phrase, "uncommon thick and lively," near the southern border. But I suspect it is nearly impossible for the average Kansian to tell the truth about snakes. The temptation to make a "pilgrim" open his eyes is too great for his virtue. I killed one of the species known as "bull snake," which was five feet three inches long. They are quite harmless, and get their name, I suppose, from their thick bodies and blunt heads. Their hiss is so loud and resonant that strangers often mistake it for that of a rattlesnake. But no western man, who has often heard that blood-curdling h'r-ah-h-h, of the real crotalus, will ever mistake any other sound, made by mnan or brute, for it. It is unique, not to be imitated by any art of man's device. We heard so many stories along the border about snakes that we were perpetually on the look-out, and my companion generally walked with eye on the grass and legs limbered, ready for a jump. Besides the accounts which proved authentic, one farmer told us of a diamond snake biting, his horse so badly that the animal fell dead, and when he examined the wound, the marks of the fangs were four iriches apart. Another related that he was hoeing corn, when he stirred up an immense rattler. He aggravated it till it struck its fangs into the hoe-handle. Having killed it, he was proceeding with his work, when he observed the hoe-handle growing larger, sensibly swelling with the poison. It continued getting worse for an hour, when the eye of the hoe popped out,Worms, also, are reported bad; and as Kansians always do more and have more of anything, even of a disease, than anybody else, the Trichina &iralis was peculiarly bad in Kansas. An account is given of one man in Doniphan County, during the prevalence of that newspaper epidemic, who had all the sympteoms, had the "spirals " bore through his skin, in fact got decidedly "wormy." He accordingly took a powerful emetic, and ï~~o full,x Y - "",,... _.:ice k W_ i n w 3 i 5,.r. i a' Y n'. ï~~" HONEST FARMER." 2 233 threw up three or four handfulls of pork worms, three lizards, a section of the worm of a still, two bull snakes, and a few rods of worm fence, after which, adds the local chronicle, he began to feel better. The most dangerous snakes in Southern Kansas are the short prairie rattlesnakes, seldom over two feet long. They are somewhat dull and sluggish, and farmers come upon them or touch them before seeing them, but I never heard of their bite killing any one. "Ye honest farmer," of Kansas, is like the same individual in Ohio, only a little more so; as the farther West one goes the more he finds the people prone to exaggeration. At any rate, things lose nothing in the telling. And the beauty of it is, every man is satisfied with his claim,. pronouncing it the very best, richest, best located and watered in that section. True, lihe would sell, sometimes, if a reasonable price, cash, were offered; but only because he has another claim in view, nearly as good, but farther out, which he can buy cheap for cash, and have enough left from this sale to stock it. There are two kinds of farmers in America. The first is the simple, artless yeoman, who never plots, and is incapable of guile, who does right because he scarcely knows how to do wrong; who will point out the defects of anything he is selling to the citizen; who goes singing to his work, is the pillar of the country church, and a condensed epitome of all the virtues possessed by Adam-before he became a laborer. This is the farmer of romance, of city pastorals, written in a third-story back, by men reared in the city, who don't know white clover from dandelion, but must coin their imagination by running city bucolics at a quarter of a penny a line, or less; but this is not the kind of farmer I am acquainted with. The other kind, with whom and his compeers I spent the first eighteen years of my life, is a totally different being. He is not at all lacking in art. He knows how to ask all he can possibly get, and a little more. He is a being with whom written contracts are quite in order, for I am sorry to say he will too often fail to deliver the promised produce if the second comer offers a little more. Reason: he has no commercial character to sustain, his business ï~~a e 3 9r,' S +r y Mf Â~ p,, r l k '- rte, t " o r; ri ï~~CHAPTER XIV. A FLYING TRIP. Down to St. Joseph-Up the Missouri Valley-Omaha again-Dull times on the Missouri-Reasons given-Off for Sioux City-Up-country people-YanktonCaught in a storm-Dakota--Black Hills-Gold i-perhaps-Sioux - IAPE OAITYE - Called westward - Union Pacific-Mormondom again - Over to "Frisso." FTER "doing" Kansas properly we set out from Troy, Doniphan County, on the first of August, to hunt a cooler climate. From Troy to Elmwood, opposite St. Joseph, we pass rapidly over a down grade. St. Joseph looks well from the opposite side, and, like Kansas City, was a sort of exception to Missouri River towns in 1871, in that it had some business. From there we pass to Council Bluffs on the Kansas City, St. Joe and Council Bluffs Railroad, an exceptionally good one. I remarked the apparent youthfulUess of its management. It seems to be owned, governed, and run almost entirely by young men; the majority of those I saw cobnected with it being not over thirty years of age..The whole road had a general air of newness and freshness; the cars were clean and provided with all the latest attachments. Among these was the air-brake, which was a novelty to me, and a perfect success, while the cars, locomotives and water-tanks were of the latest patterns. We passed right up the Missouri Valley on the east side of the river, all the distance through grassy meadows, stretching from river to bluffs, with enough air, free from dust; and it is superfluous to add it was one of the most enjoyable trips I have taken out West. It was a surprise to me how little of that valley was under cultivation, being of rich soil and supplied with near markets. I would not have thought so much of it, but the Nebraska side was thickly set235 ï~~236 LAND GRANTS. tied. In fact, the eastern sides of nearly all these Western States are more thickly settled than the western sides of the State adjoining to the east. Before one State is filled to its western border another is partially surveyed in the eastern part, and immigration commences to fill it. The new State is a new field for selection, and all open to choice. It thus presents new features of attraction, and the succeeding waves of people pass over into it. Another cause is that large and numerous grants of public lands were made to railroads in Iowa. There were five such wide squares granted east and west across Iowa, and other shorter ones. There was also a grant along this railroad to Council Bluffs, and another thence to Sioux City. On the opposite side of the Missouri the lands were all left free to settlers. At least on that side the grants run westward from the river, and not parallel with it. Upon the Government lands each settler can take a quarter section of one hundred arid sixty acres, while within land grants he can take only eighty acres, for which he must pay double price. The railroads also hold their alternate sections of land higher than the Government price. There are thirty-six sections in each township. Of these the railroad gets eighteen odd-numbered sections. The sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections are set apart for school purposes, leaving only sixteen even numbered sections for settlers, preventing solidly continuous settlements unless they purchase from the railroad. When the great bodies of Governmvnt lands are near they naturally prefer them. We reached Omaha after this pleasant journey, to find it painfully dull. This was shown in its hotels, in its streets and its business houses. There was no movement of people or appearances of trade adequate to the size of the city. One walked along quiet streets and passed fronts of business houses without feeling the hurry and jostle of men deep in business transactions. Clerks had time to sit down and read, and the ledger was often closed. The stir which attended the rapid growth of Omaha was not there, and I did not observe the same surplus crowds of mixed people that once thronged its public places. ï~~MISSOURI VALLEY. 237 The people, however, gave many reasons for this: it was hot, and public energy was relaxed; farmers were busy harvesting and did not buy of the small towns, which in turn could not buy of the cities. The trade had ended for the spring and had not set in for the fall; the crops of this year had not begun to move. The city, however, proposes large plans to control the wheat trade for a large area north and west, and ship grain direct after the plan of St. Louis, receiving return shipments of mrnerchandize and groceries to send out from this center. While there are not apparent reasons present to justify the realization of this plan, there are also other ambitious markets that would object by virtue of their railroad and river highways. Of the four leading towns on the Missouri, St. Joe alone exhibited, in 1871, average life; Kansas City was doing something, while Omaha and Leavenworth seemed to be living in hope of the autumn. All the four did less paying business than Evansville, Indiana, or Toledo, Ohio. We proceeded north to Sioux City, Iowa, by the way of Missouri Valley Junction and the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad. All this distance-a hundred miles-is over the level, broad valley of the Missouri. The southern part of the valley is low and in places very wet and largely occupied by sloughs and old bayous. Particularly is this the case west of the junction of the Northwestern and Sioux City Railroad. The country is settled only on the bordering higher lands and slopes. This improves as' we pass northward, and Onawa and Woodbury are fair little villages in fine stretches of land, and near Sioux City the country seems more generally occupied and better improved. Before reaching Missouri Valley Junction it seemed as if all the passengers were through passengers from the East or West, and one could hardly see a person destined for the, Upper Missouri. But when the call to change cars for Sioux City was obeyed we soon found a car full selected from all the others. These seemed generally acquainted, and the assorting process improved the sociability. At once inquiries commenced about Upper Missouri affairs, and the characteristic interest, callings, business and modes of life of the upper country were soon de ï~~238 SIOUX CITY. veloped. There were Sioux City bankers, merchants and citizens, emigrants for northwest Iowa or Dakota, Indian traders or agents, cattle dealers who had contracts, herders, fur dealers, soldiers returning from furlough, and many other good people. We soon reached Sioux City, and looked at it for the first time. Not prepared to expect much from so young a place, we were rather pleased than otherwise with its showing. While the trade of the Missouri cities was so dull, Sioux City could hardly be called active, yet its travel, trade and business movement was all the season justified. After a brief stay I wrote thus of Sioux City: "The city is fairly and advantageously located at a great bend of the Missouri, where coming from the west between Dakota and Nebraska it curves south between Iowa and Nebraska. The point had long been favorably mentioned in advance of the completion of any of Iowa's railroads. At one time it was supposed the line of the Union Pacific would be westward from this point. Whether by fair means or foul, Sioux City lost that advantage. She now has, however, two good lines of railroad completed, the one connectihg with the Northwestern, and the other east to Dubuque, run by the Illinois Central. Another line is rapidly approaching completion from Minneapolis, and lines are prospected-one north to Red River, one west to Yankton, Dakota, and one southwest to Columbus, Nebraska. The population is about four thousand; there are several large firms and heavy business houses. The town is well built in part with some excellent buildings and large blocks, while there are the usual board houses. Heavy fires are rapidly clearing these away, and where ten days ago a block of shanties was burned, brick stores are being built. What was then accounted a loss, is now declared a gain. Two daily newspapers are proofs of thrift and enterprise. The Journal, edited by G. D. Perkins, Esq., is a reliable Republican paper, devoted to the interests of the region, and well supported. The Times, edited by Charles Collins, Esq., is the oldest paper, is independent, but rather Democratic, strikes here and there as occasion offers, and is hardly so prosperous." ï~~DAKOTA FARMS. 239 The railroad to Minneapolis is now completed, as is another to Yankton. Early next morning I mounted a stage for Yankton. The previous night had brought one of the heaviest rains ever known, and the morning was dull, cloudy, and hot. The mud was like glue. There was a peculiarity in it I never saw before. It seemed to collect constantly on the wheels, at times completely wadding them up, and then it would fall off in a huge pile. The mud was a peculiar mixture of clay and sand, and its tenacity was increased by the prairie grass mingled with it. After all this is a musical world if it is only wound up right, and there never was a stage trip unrelieved by humor. Our load had its chatacters who told their stories in spite of heat and mud. One suggested that this would be a good country in which to store mud for winter use, or catch tadpoles and bleach them for oysters; while his excuse for smoking in the stage was that his corns hurt him in wet weather, and he smoked for his corns. Northwestward, up the Missouri, we struggled, and in twenty miles reached better roads and finer farms, with neat cottages. In the corner, between the Big Sioux and Missouri River, is a French settlement, while further on are many Scandinavian settlements, and elsewhere Bohemians, though the prevailing population is American. The Valley of the Missouri is from five to fifteen miles wide, a broad, high, level flood plain, bordered along the streams with heavy bodies of timber. On either side of the road were waving heavy fields of grain, just ripe, and in them were reaping machines at work. All the people seemed busy and fairly prosperous. We saw one noticeable sight. A Dane, about six feet in hight, was driving four oxen to a self-raker, and two big Danish women binding after it. Farther away were Norwegian women binding and shocking wheat. Oh! Anthony, Stanton, Stevens, how would not your tears of sympathy have been shed at this sight. But I suppose there is no relief. The Legislature of Dakota, last winter, refused to enfranchise the sex of which ye are the representatives. In Dakota they evidently have an eye rather ï~~t h y c ^d F d ï~~pp lj r ï~~Ir Kk ï~~FRIENDLY DAKOTAHS. 243 and of that third, less than one-tenth is settled. The only white inhabitants are in the southeast corner and in the far northeast, at Pembina, near the British line. Along the eastern border, including the valleys of Big Sioux and Red River, is a fertile strip a hundred miles wide; this also extends a little way up the Missouri. The good land may be represented rudely by a V, the left arm much the shorter and more narrow; all the rest consists of high and half-barren plains, sometimes scantily clothed with grass, and often entirely bare. All the center and west are occupied by various bands of the Dakotahs or Sioux. Those at the Lower Agency are "civilized," that is, they raise some crops, swear, drink whiskey, and dress with some approach to the white costume. One flourishing church; Episcopalian, is composed of Sioux, who have also a weekly paper. It is called the lape Oahtye, meaning "Talk carried about," is Republican in politics, and ardently supports the "humanitarian Indian policy" of President Grant. The western part of Dakota extends into the Black Hills, and every year or so exciting rumors reach us of gold discoveries in that section; but as it is in the great Indian Reservation, the U. S. officials forbid all immigration. Northward and east of the Missouri are the " Bad Lands," regions of desolation and death, to which all that can be said of Western deserts fully applies. The eastern part, and as much of the central as is.valuable, is being rapidly surveyed; the Territory has doubled in population within four years; and presents an inviting field to the emigrant from our most northern States and Northern Europe. My second Sunday at Yankton, I was startled by a telegram bringing notice that a party was then waiting at Omaha, and earnestly desiring my company on the great overland excursion. On Monday I staged the sixty-five miles thence to Sioux City, and of all the staging I ever did in the West, I am qualified to say that experience was the worst. Starting at 4.. M., we jogged on for sixteen weary hours in the dead air of the Missouri bottoms, the bluTh shutting off all air from the northward, and the timber along the Missouri giving the effect of a hot ï~~Was 4k An e. A aW IF: a x how ï~~A HOT RIDE. 245 brick wall on the other side. The sun in that latitude shines fifteen hours daily in August, and most of that time the thermometer never sank below ninety degrees. Seven men were crowded into a close "jerky," without springs, the stock 'was miserable, and the drivers apparently half dead, and in the middle stage we were six hours going fifteen miles. One passenger was half insane with heat and fatigue; another was attacked with gastritis; the other four, besides myself, were discharged soldiers returning from Fort Berthold, who made the day hideous with blasphemy, constantly cursipg the driver until the air was so impregnated with damnation I am confident it added ten degrees to the temperature. I reached Sioux City completely exhausted, but somewhat relieved to find that the intense heat--or some other motive power--had produced even worse effects there, as there had been one deadly assault, two bloody riots and a daring robbery, all within twenty-four hours. It was a black day in the calendar of Sioux City. As I walked out to get cool before retiring, the open doors of half a dozen concert rooms invited the weary; saloons seemed surprisingly thick for a State which gave forty thousand majority for a temperance ticket, and evening business of all sorts was lively. And yet Sioux City was not happy. It had been so generally prosperous, and grown so rapidly since the completion of its two railroads, that the general dulness on the Missouri seemed to its citizens twice as bad by contrast. The average of business was good, but average business the old settlers call "dull times." The ride down the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad to Missouri Valley Junction is through a broad,'rich prairie bottom almost unsettled, and in northwestern Iowa generally the towns are a little ahead of the country. The new telegraph line from that place to Yankton is a worthy exhibit of the enterprise of western Young America. It was projected by Mr. Rome J. Percy, known to journalistic fame as correspondent of the New York Herald from Mexico, at the time of Maximilian's occupation. With two others he put up the line from Sioux City to Yankton as a purely private project. There their means gave ï~~,y. r W O - 34 l f { v P 4 Ir AM ï~~WOMEN TOURISTS. 247 out, but Congress came to their aid, and granted a small subsidy for its extension, and they are now engaged extending the line to the forts on the Upper Missouri. The valley down to Omaha is only interesting for prospective agriculture; man has not much improved on nature as yet. Reaching Omaha, I found an unusually merry party ready for the trip to California; and I may add as a wonder that most of the ladies enjoyed it even more than they had anticipated, for women are nearly always disappointed with the western tour. Woman, as a tourist, is not a success. In the first place, she is too elaborate in the relations of space as well as time; requireÂ~ too much room, and has too many needs and dependencies. Perhaps I should say this of the eastern woman on a tour out west. We approach such criticisms or reports with proper awe, but are driven to them by the manifest suffering about us. The woman suffers from the alternations of heat and cold, sun and shade, to which she is unable, by experience or habit, to accommodate herself. More than all else, she suffers in the item of provisions. A man rushes in to the table without elaborate toilet, and eats heartily, even if the place does look doubtful. Woman prefers temporary starvation to a questionable meal. This dilemma is unavoidably presented frequently. A little starving may be all very well were it not for the consequences. The result is generally a headache, an illness at the next stopping place, and inability to eat when she reaches a suitable table. The nerve from the brain to the stomach is not so large in woman as in man, so she can starve with less present pain, but it produces worse effects. Farther west comes the alkali, or in places the chemical springs; the vicious air turns the rouge to green and the toilet powder to a dirty brown. Lovely woman becomes a fright, realizes it through her jaundiced feelings, and suffers in temper and spirits accordingly. It is not wonderful that we sometimes hear her asked such questions as, " What is the matter, notow " the last word with more of irony than art, suggesting that something is generally wrong. All this is very sad, and perhaps unavoidable; but there are three-fold greater evils, most of which might be avoided if fully informed before setting out. ï~~248 TAKE THE TRIP. Of all the women who for any motive are known to cross the Plains not one in ten really enjoys it. There is an excess of baggage; they seem to regard it as a long picnic, and expect the same attention from their male companions. All is very nice for a day or two, like a picnic or brief excursion, but such a style becomes a fearful bore when kept up for five or six weeks. A trip across the plains should be a practical exemplification of woman's rights. She should be self-reliant and largely able to take care of herself. In fact it is a terrible dilemma presented to the female mind in this shape-less baggage or very little comfort. I noticed one little Missouri woman to whom this was evidently neither a first nor second trip. She wore a short dress, not elaborated much beyond usefulness, of stout material, not of a kind to show dust. She had one trunk and no hand packages, enjoyed reasonably broad soled walking shoes, and carried not an ornamental fan, but a tough Japanese. The cars and accommodations suited her because she was prepared to suit them. With some such outfit, and a determination to start right and keep even, an eastern lady may make the western tour with little more annoyance than a man. To these reflections I am driven by observations on various trips. The majority of the passengers are eastern people looking at the West. Many of them are ladies, and these are all about equally miserable. Of course no American will think of going abroad till he has seen something of his own country-particularly that important part which may be seen by a trip over the Union Pacific. I wish that sentence were as true as it appears to me reasonable. For really there is no excuse now for one who wants to travel and can afford it, and does not see some of the wonders of the West: especially when so great a variety may be seen at comparatively little expense. The company have exhausted the resources of railroad ingenuity, and what with palace cars, observation cars and dining stations, with other appliances of art, all may enjoy the trip to the utmost, and excursions are more in favor than ever. Great has been the rhetoric expended over ï~~REVOLUTION. 249 this line, but it has not become stale; still the overland railway seems as great an accomplishment as ever. The company has lately issued an elaborate series of views representing points of greatest interest, from which the tourist can most easily learn what he wants to see and how to see it. We reached Salt Lake City at the end of fifty-three hours from Omaha, and after the inevitable visit to the warm baths I strolled over to Main Street, and as I turned the corner of First South Street, I stopped with amazement. Never, in all my experience with western cities, have I seen such a change as had come over Salt Lake within a year. Stacks of bullionsilver and lead-graced the corners, crowds of miners thronged the pavements; half a dozen hotels were full of visitors, capitalists and superintendents, all Gentile; bright open fronts and gay lights displayed the interior glories of the " Alhambra," "Magnolia," "Salt Lake Billiard Rooms" and half a dozen other places of resort, and for two or three squares Main Street was emphatically an eastern-more than all, a Gentile-institution. At least ten thousand miners were at work in this, Toelle and Juab Counties, and a financial, social, and political revolution was in such rapid progress that the actors therein stood amazed at their own work. That revolution has continued, but more slowly; never so fast as in 1871. Still the Mormon Church is the really dominant power; still it governs the city and Territory, though the popular exclusiveness is yielding so fast that the priesthood are alternately in rage and despair. Revolutions invariably bring hidden evils to the surface, and the Mormons show eager haste in pointing out the had effects of which a few have followed this great influx. The evil must come with the good. On either side of the dead-line of moral mediocrity and religious formalism, lies a broad field of evil or good; and it is impossible to open to a man the highest range of the one without leaving him free to enter the other if so he will. Mormonism boasted that it had produced a city of quiet and order; and so it had-the quiet of mental stagnation; the order of a perfect religious conformity, of a system which brooked no schism and of which the advocates "knew they were right, and wanted no ï~~, w= ss z 1c; s ' r ri'" d J, 2 t..:a-, y.Y, Y 4,, j,-. r r -.:. i i, Y v ' < ï~~CHAPTER XV. WONDERS OF THE SIERRAS. Off for Calaveras-The route-Copperopolis-Up the Sierras-First view of the Grove-Particular trees-Emotions excited-Route thence to Yosemite-Table Mountain-Bret Harte-Terrible descent-Into the Valley-A world of wonders-Fatigue and reflection-Description impossible. LL aboard for Yosemite and the Big Trees! How the mind swells as these words are called through the hotel, and the fancy paints what is to come: visions of giant vegetation and wondrous woods; of riotous nature in a tropical clime and fertile soil, exceeding all the wonders of romance with growing reality; of rocky canions and happy valleys; of glacier-hewn cliffs, reared thousands of feet in the air; of waterfalls and mirror lakes; of immense flumes, cut by living streams in the solid granite; of majestic falls, and crystal cascades foaming from a hundred hills. But between us and these wonders intervene many miles of wearisome travel, days of toil and nights of broken rest. Before my visit I wondered that so many excursionists visited California, and never went to Yosemite or the Big Trees. I wonder no longer; for the trip is one which may well make the most hardy hesitate, though truly assured that in the end he shall see wonders that have no equal upon this planet. Two hundred and fifty miles of staging upon the rocky Sierras, beneath an August sun, and half the time enveloped in red dust, are enough to make one seriously ask, Does it pay to visit Yosemite? We leave chilly "Frisco" at 4 P. M., and spend the night at Stockton, experiencing in that short distance about as great a change of climate as if we should go in April from Chicago to New Orleans. Thence at daylight we take the Stockton and 251 ï~~win tiaa E. a r t p< x 4 x vF. f - t w^ g a x A # Â~ r a r r Â~Y ï~~k 'Nor 5 sa t 3 W 4 nr <- F i AN, let a ï~~G' L r r f ears. k r ï~~7S ï~~o 1 1 46 A s. 'ILI ï~~FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 257 branches add much to this illusion from the fact that they bend downward, starting even from the body of the tree at an angle of twenty degrees below the horizontal. This, I am told, is caused by the weight of winter snows, continued annually through all the thousands of years of their growth. The smallest of these adjacent trees in an Ohio forest would create astonishment; yet here they appear trifling, as mere striplings shading off and filling nature's intervals between the mammoths and common underbrush. Strangest of all, other things appear much dwarfed. As the coach drives between the "Two Guardsmen," at the entrance of the Grove, the horses appear like mere ponies, shrunk to half their natural size. My companion, as he leans against the monstrous trunk, and extends his arms for me to judge its width by them, appears a mere mannikin; the smallest tree, one I had guessed at four feet, spreads a foot or two on either side beyond the natural reach of his fingers, and dwarfs him amazingly by comparison. Here is the place for man to realize his littleness. In the evening shades of these green arches, how naturally the mind reverts to thoughts of the vast, the unchangeable, the infinite. Heaven itself seems nearer in our thoughts; riotous mirth is hushed; solemn awe fills the soul, and in low-toned exclamations alone we briefly converse. But forty miles of staging over boulders and rocky up-grade, with dust enough in us to start a second Adam, incline our party to think more of supper and bed, than of the biggest trees nature can produce. These comforts, first-class, are found at the Big-Tree Hotel, and for a summer resort one can spend weeks very pleasantly there. Daylight at 4.30 A. M. shone through the green arches with a new and wondrous beauty, and we awoke to the contemplation of a new world, another creation as it were, where nature seems to have proceeded on a special plan, too cyclopean for the common world outside. Of course, the first object for to-day is the great fallen tree and stump, the latter now covered with a handsome summerhouse, and fitted up as a pavilion for dancing. On the Fourth of July a cotillon party of thirty-two persons danced upon the 17 ï~~1 01) IMP gx, r 5 Ire t u y.. J is ' rE ï~~gfUII,ai re Uy i y r I H r, yv gv V I As aw A By ï~~fi a WIT, 5 r a Two -'2 "oil NMI ni 4 1 k v r P ~< l Fn g r r v, Y.,; j_ ï~~o a v. 17 > i Â~ v OF 4 a r e 5 a ITT a.rte,...., 1. a rt lot, tom. _ a wof _OAA S r s: t s v >E A > w a A rt E ï~~iJI+I' If iwi ï~~STRANGE COTEMPORARIES. 263 boughs before my chamber window, now sighing in the evening breeze of the Sierras, but drop intelligible words, what of primeval history might they not tell-of combats of savage beasts or equally savage men. When Magna Charta was signed, these giants were already of size sufficient to have astonished all the Barons at Runnymede, familiar as they doubtless were with the great oaks of Boscobel and Epping Forest. When Rome yielded to the Goth, the "Father of the Forest," grown old and decrepid, was tottering to his fall. When Rome was founded, the "1Burnt Tree" was still a vigorous sapling, rearing his head two hundred feet upon a body of ten feet diameter, and when the Saviour bowed his head on Calvary, we may well believe that here a mighty forest groaned and shuddered in the throes of universal nature. Nay, when Solomon sent to Lebanon for cedars and Hiram rafted him "curious woods" from Tyre, had navigation so far extended, he might here have found solid redwoods of sizesufflicient for the heaviest beams of the "House of God." When Homer suting of Troy, this grove was already a wonder, and when Horace delighted himself in the Sabine Woods, here were trunks to put to shame the largest oaks of the Apennines. And yet these are not the oldest trees in the world. In Africa there grows a species of mimosa which, by the same indications, is proved to be six thousand years old. A sapling when Adam was a stripling! There seems to be no satisfactory theory to account for their growth here. Climate and fertile soil may have done much; but I incline to the belief that they are a sort of relict of the age when all vegetation was gigantic; as one age of geology must have subsided with easy grades to the next, we may have here the last vegetable survivors of the age just before us, and after their fall, no more big trees. Eight miles south of here is another collection, known as the South Grove, and containing thirteen hundred and eighty trees in close order, averaging larger than these, but the largest a foot or two less than the largest here. But we have seen enough for the present to fill the mind with images for years, and weary us in conjecture. Time presses, and with to-morrow's earliest light we are off for Yosemite. ï~~Ji i ' f.; -.....; A f c l rJ J. rj. v 'J J:: - d 1. y l r..,,,.. w f r,.. U ' ' K.. ' t.,.. /; - '.,: Y 1.. N=F. R r d,.',,; > '.,,, ~'P, y,,..,..,;.,I,. n~,. -, { ';t,irrr re Fr t. F,,Fv sE Ley, 7 x..,,,,,.,,,, -.., a1, 4t r,.,, ï~~THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION. 265 ocean is the Coast Range, nearly half the hight of the Sierras, shutting off the sea breeze and accompanying fog; and between these lies the great interior valley, which is, in fact, California, or four-fifths of it. Hence the State has three grand divisions of climate: First, the Coast climate, damp all the year from ocean mists, cool in summer and warm in winter, with perennial pastures; second, the interior climate, hot and dry in summer and warm and wet in winter, and lastly the mountain-valley climate. Of thirty different valleys opening out of the Sierras, each has a specific climate, from those with four months' snow to those where ice is never formed. Our southward route, one-third the way up the Sierras, involves great variety, taking us across deep gorge and abrupt gulch, varied by side caflon and fertile valley. We come back on the Big Tree road as far as Vallecito, where we change to a light wagon to cross Table Mountain and the Stanislaus. Speaking of special places, the various names herein used are either Spanish or Indian, and pronounced as follows: Stanis-lowh, Val-le-cee-to, Tu-ol-un-ny, Mo-kel-lun-ny, Gar-ro-ta, Man-zan-ee-ta, Cap-i-tan, Mer-eeed, and Yo-sem-i-ta. After passing Table Mountain we come upon a precipice where the eye, glancing downward two thousand feet, perceives the Stanislaus like a narrow silvery band flowing down a rocky trough. But how shall we reach it, is the question; for the sides of this forbidding gulch stand at a threatening angle of at least seventy degrees, and, except the sharp turn to our left, where the road seems to disappear in the rock, there is no trace of passage. In fact the stage road is but a series of grooves cut zigzag into the solid rock or mixed earth and boulders: first to the right a hundred yards or so, then where a flat projection affords a turn, the same to the left, then right " and left alternate, a series of monstrous Zs with track ten feet wide and grade of one foot in four, reducing the seventy-degree angle of the mountain side to a series of passable rocky inclines. Down this combination of dips, spurs, angles, and sinuosities the driver takes us at fill trot, with all lines taut and foot on brake, ready to check at a moment's notice; for an instant ï~~266 ON THE STANISLAUS. moderating to a walk as we make the outward turn on some rocky flat, then loosing his team to a full run as we shoot into the inward grooves, the coach bounding over boulders or reacting from the stone bulwarks which line the most dangerous places. We cringe and close our eyes in many places, or cling to the side of the coach, half ashamed of the fear our acts betray; but before we can question or exclaim a dozen times, we are at the bottom and ready to ferry the Stanislaus. The narrow band, as seen from above, has widened to a considerable river, now quite low; but in winter and spring the melting snow from the notched hills six thousand feet above, swells this stream to a destructive torrent, rising fifty feet above its present level. On the south side another mountain-grooved road leads up twenty-five hundred feet to the divide between the Stanislaus and Tuolumne. No running here, but with slow steps the steaming horses drag us along, and we lounge back over the coach seats, gazing alternately at frowning cliffs above and the river sinking in dim perspective below. Half way up our intelligent driver stops to point out, down a side gulch, the cabin where Bret Harte lived when he wrote his first notable piece, "The Row upon the Stanislaus." Written as a mere local amusement, and tossed about from camp to.camp, it has since become famous, and the manuscript is carefully preserved in the archives of the district. No wonder that California is producing a new race of original poets; for, surely, if a man have the poetic instinct, this clime and scenery will bring it out in tropic luxuriance, and cause his genius to put forth wondrous growths of fireshness and quaint originality. This society, these scenes and this clime-Italy and Switzerland combinedare the true home of poetry and romance. Two hours of toil bring us to the summit and thence down a barren hollow a sudden turn reveals an oval valley of rare beauty, in the midst of which is the pretty town of Columbia, fourteen miles from where we changed coaches. Here we enter the great region of placer and drift mining, once alive with twenty thousand miners and musical with the hum of an exciting and curious industry. For six miles we run among ï~~MINING DITCHES. 267 washed out placers, beds of "tailings" and "poor dirt;" wind around sluice-boxes, or cross ditches which lead in the water from a main canal which begins fifty miles up the Stanislaus. At intervals all day we encounter the great ditch of the " Union Water Company," sometimes winding along the mountain side in rocky flumes, sometimes passing beneath us in deep cuts through narrow ridges, and as often far above our heads in midair aqueducts-carried on trestlework for hundreds of feet across a rocky hollow-to me a curiosity almost as great as any in the scenery. This ditch, built by an incorporated company at an expense of two million dollars, begins at the very head of the Stanislaus, where that stream is formed by affluents from the irielting snows of the Sierras. It is sixty miles in length, winding a devious course to preserve its level, along the mountains and through gorges down to the foothills; furnishes water to a hundred mining camps, and at last, after being used, collected, cleared in reservoirs and used again half a dozen times, its water, yellow with the refuse of pay dirt or red with iron dust, spreads in a dozen irrigating streams upon the lower valley. Careful study to select the route, skilful engineering to lay it out, economy of space and material, perseverance and capital-all spurred on by the love of gold---combined to produce the work. Mining here began with the "rocker," many of which we see even now rotting along the gulches; next came the " long tom " which shares the same fate, and lastly was introduced "piping" and complete hydraulic mining. Little by little this great industry has passed away; the works are fallen to decay; the placers are mostly worked out; three-fourths of the mining camps are abandoned, with picks and "long toms" lying among rocks and debris, and California from an annual production of forty millions in gold has sunk to half that amount. "Ranching" came next, and all this industry is not lost; the flumes and water are used for irrigation, without which the smaller vegetables and fruits are not a perfect success. Still mining continues in many places, enough for us to witness the method. Along the rocks or columns of dirt left for the ï~~a-Â~ 41, t _. k;v SIX x q 1,ykt1 's _ Ally z WIT i a. w. r ï~~SONORA. 269 grow out doors all the year, and gardens excelling the utmost flights of my fancy. Apples, peaches, pears, apricots, figs, damsons, grapes, and quinces, we see growing luxuriantly in the same inclosure, many now ripe and affording most grateful refreshment to our heated excursionists. All along the route to Yosemite fruit is abundant and cheap-all one can eat for ten cents-growing even to within half a day's staging of the valley. But here this beauty is brief. Right beside these blooming gardens, right up against the walls, are worked out mines, hundreds of acres of bare boulders in beds, all the soil "piped" away in search of the "pay dirt," which lies below the soil and upon the rocks. A massive brick church stands in the south part of the town, around it lies an acre of ground dotted with tombstones, the city grave-yard, and up to the very walls of the inclosure the dirt is washed away down to an unsightly mass of bare, gray rocks, leaving the church-yard by rare grace perched upon an eminence ten feet above the placer flats. There the rude forefathers of this mountain hamlet-dead miners by scores-lie in "pay dirt"-fit resting place-and their living companions seem to have barely respected their last repose. Over all this region, with rare exceptions, is a peculiar air of abandon and decay; worked-out placers, deserted cabins, dry flumes and sluice-boxes falling to pieces look as though the site were haunted by the ghost of former prosperity. Fifteen miles of comfortable staging in the valley of the Tuolumne bring us to Chinese Camp, originally settled by Mongolians working "old diggings," but since mining gave place to agriculture, settled by the whites. A few hundred Chinese remain, and as we pass the outskirts of the town, we note a rude frame tent and beside it a dozen China women chattering and howling alternately, and learn that a sick Chinaman has been removed there to die. These people never allow one to die in their dwellings if possible to prevent it. When past all hope the sick man is removed to a rude outhouse, all his bedding and all clothing he has worn since sickness are burned, and, if means permit, the dead Celestial is boxed air-tight and returned ï~~t r y.l h ap " ".. reil4. '' ti e..... q,.,;,,,......, aiy,......,;,,, - r',. -..._ _. ~ _ s.:...... -,F= t sn, k T a.,.... d " " _,,.:,, F,. wyr,....... " r u,/ r..,Â~ rcr <. ry.,,. - u.....,... k,.M. -i ns'"v ~ r P. e ",.,:,, r'.. li.,.. A r. >-.:..,,......,. <,... '...:. ' a,,,,, P,, ", y r h.,.. i....,.,..,.; ï~~) r L ï~~272 TIMID TOURISTS. the driver having made good time, gives frequent halts for us to look about and gather curiosities. Many trees are as large as the average at Calaveras, but none within less than two or three feet of the largest there. Over all this part of the Sierras, probably forty miles each way, the timber is immense. We drive between two trees, each twenty feet in thickness. We find one stump forty feet high and twenty-six feet thick, and hundreds scattered for miles along the way from ten to eighteen feet thick, and from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet high. If the traveler does not wish to make the diversion by Calaveras Grove, he can still enjoy the sight of tall timber here, on the direct route to Yosemite. Thirty-seven miles from Garrote bring us to Tamarack Flat, the highest point on the road, the end of staging, and no wonder. The remaining five miles down into the valley must be made on horseback. While transferring baggage-very little is allowed-to packmules, the. guide and driver amuse us with accounts of former tourists, particularly of Anna Dickinson, who rode astride into the valley, and thereby demonstrated her right to vote, drink "cocktails," bear arms, and work the roads, without regard to age, sex, or previous condition of servitude. They tell us with great glee of Olive Logan, who, when told she must ride thus into the valley, tried practising on the back of the coach seats, and when laughed at for her pains, took her revenge by savagely abusing everything on the road. When Mrs. Cady Stanton was here a few weeks since, she found it impossible to fit herself to the saddle, averring she had not been in one for thirty years. Our accomplished guide, Mr. F. A. Brightman, saddled seven different mules for her (she admits the fact in her report), and still she would not risk it, and "while the guides laughed behind their horses, and even the mules winked knowingly and shook their long ears comically, still she stood a spectacle for men and donkeys." In vain the skilfill Brightman assured her he had piloted five thousand persons down that fearful incline, and not an accident. She would not be persuaded, and walked the entire distance, equal to twenty miles on level ground. And shall this much-enduring woman still be denied ï~~FIRST VIEW. 273 a voice in the government of the country? Perish the thought. With all these anecdotes I began to feel nervous myself, for I am but an indifferent rider, and when I observed the careful strapping, and saw that my horse was enveloped in a perfect network of girths, cruppers and circingles, I inquired diffidently, "Is there no danger that this horse will turn a somerset with me over some steep point?" "Oh, no, sir," rejoined the cheerful Brightman, "he is bitterly opposed to it." With all set and everything tightly "cinched," we took the start with guide in front, finding the first mile and a half to Prospect Peak not particularly difficult. A sudden turn brings us in view of the valley, but little is to be seen as yet; then we emerge from the timber upon a shelving rock, and the guide stops for us to take our first view at Prospect Peak. We walked out upon the rock, which becomes level as we near the edge, with a feeling of disappointment; but suddenly, when far enough, to see below, we l)aused and trembled. Astonishment and awe kept us silent for a moment. At our feet yawned a chasm bounded on this side by a precipice with sheer descent of near two thousand feet; on the other a mist-enveloped cascade poured from hights so high and dim, that to our eyes it seemed tumbling from the clouds. Far, far below, the Merced foamed through the rocky gateway which forms the outlet of the valley, while the whole wall below us seemed fringed with pines, jutting from every crevice, and growing apparently straight into the air from the solid wall of rock. The cliff, the falls, the frowning rocks, the wondrous gorge, all seemed to say, "Uncover in the presence of the Lord." We turn again to the left into a sort of stairway in the mountain side, and cautiously tread the stony defile downward; at places over loose boulders, at others around or over the points of shelving rock, where one false step would send horse and rider a mangled mass two thousand feet below, and more rarely over ground covered with bushes and grade moderate enough to afford a brief rest. It is impossible to repress fear. Every nerve is tense; the muscles involuntarily make ready for a spring, and even the bravest lean timorously toward the moun18 ï~~274 A TERRIBLE DESCENT. tain side and away from the cliff, with foot loose in stirrup and eye alert, ready for a spring in case of peril. The thought is vain: should the horse go, the rider would infallibly go with him. And the poor brutes seem to fully realize their danger and ours, as with wary steps and tremulous ears, emitting almost human sighs, with more than brute caution they deliberately place one foot before the other, calculating seemingly at each step the desperate chances and intensely conscious of our mutual peril. Mutual danger creates mutual sympathy---everything animal, everything that can feel pain, is naturally cowardly-and while we feel a strange animal kinship with our horses, they seem to express a half human earnestness to assure us that their interest is our interest, and their self-preservative instinct in full accord with our intellectual dread. We learn with wonder that of all the five thousand who have made this perilous passage not one has been injured-if injured be the word, for the only injury here would be certain death. One false step and we are gone bounding over rocks, ricocheting from cliffs, till all semblance of humanity is lost upon the flat rock below. Such a route would be impossible to any but those mountain-trained mustangs, to whom a broken stone staircase seems as safe as an ordinary macadamized road. At length we reach a point where the most hardy generally dismount and walk-two hundred feet descent in five hundred feet progress. Indeed half the route will average the descent of an ordinary staircase. Then comes a passage of only moderate descent and terror, then another and more terrible stairway-a descent of four hundred feet in a thousand. I will not walk before and lead my horse, as does our guide, but trail my long rope halter and keep him before,-always careful to keep on the upper side of him, springing from rock to rock, and hugging the cliff with all the ardor of a young lover. For now I am scared. All pretense of pride is gone, and just the last thing I intend to risk is for that horse to stumble, and in falling strike me over that fearful cliff. At last comes a gentler slope, then a crystal spring, dense grove and grass covered plat, and we are down into the valley. Gladly we take the ï~~, r Sol-,F.,. r A Sri' 4 F r" f zr e t.'~ = 1 Y r,r l e r 1 r 4 rr 6 r oil rv r - lv > Y Y yl,Sr':. 4r its; wig! t j, ~wlt o rr r j.Tr - s r Y s, ff ra J p r ~ u ï~~CHAPTER XVII. "JOHN. " Popular nonsense about the Chinese-The bugbear Chinaman-The romantic Chinaman-The real article.-His history, art, music and drama-Objections to them considered-Do they cheapen labor?-Will they overrun the country?-Do they degrade labor?-Their condition--Missionary workSacramento system-Rev. O. Gibson-Better specimens-Yellow ChineseMrs. Laisun and daughters-Chinese students-Hope for the race. SO come at once to the point, I feel no anxiety about "John Chinaman," either ds a political problem, a disturbing social power, or a source of injury to the laboring classes. The talk about his doing this, that and the other terrible thing on the Pacific coast is threefourths of it political demagoguery, and half of the 'other fourth, pure nonsense. Nor, on the other hand. can I find in him that remarkable virtue and sterling honesty, or that industry and ingenuity with which his apologists have credited him. Such ideas are but the natural reaction of a generous mind, enthusiastic to defend an oppressed race against a cowardly and brutal class, who maltreat them for some fancied injury. " No California gentleman or lady ever abuses a Chinaman." "Twain" never spoke a truer word. But there is in California, as elsewhere, a considerable class, many of whom have themselves but lately sought an asylum in America, whose worst instincts are excited against a race differing so widely from themselves; and demagogues stoop to pander to this feeling. Hence a world of declamation about the horrors of Chinese invasion. Honorable mention should be made of a few exceptions. Hon. Geo. C. Gorham was not afraid to raise his voice publicly in defense of the oppressed, though by so doing he lost the support 313 ï~~314 HA LF-CIVILIZATION. of the masses, and was remanded to private life by an overwhelming majority. Our wild man G. F. Train, also did a good thing in his public utterances in San Francisco; and I often heard the remark there, that he had said what no other man in America could have said and lived. Still the abuse of Chinamen continues, though more and more rarely. Then come the apologists and claim for "John" a score of virtues which he does not possess. He is, they say, the cleanest, most temperate, faithful, and honest of all domestic servants. All this, as it is in (lefense of tihe oppressed, is very noble, very generous, almost praiseworthy. It has but one fault: it is not true. "John" is simply a half civilized heathen, with an odd mixture of tolerably good and very bad qualities, and in a fearful minority, which alone would prevent his being of one-tenth the consequence attributed to him. "John" has a civilization which is, sui generis, perfect as far as it goes. But a little examination shows there is a singular and radical defect in everything he does: he is an admirable painter, but knows nothing of perspective; he draws rapidly from a copy, but can rarely design; he imitates like a monkey, but cannot invent; he has a wonderful memory for details, and follows the bad copy just as faithfully as the good. His music is perfect as to time, but has no element of melody; while the third division, dynamics, makes the only variety. His acting is faultless as to plot, incident and action; but it is acting only by which he conveys the impression of feeling. The voice, that wonderful instrument by which every shade of emotion may be wafted from the speaker's mind to the hearer's soul, is utterly without variation: the dying groans of the expiring hero, tIhe battle cry of the bold and bloody Rip Salt, the love songs of Kam Pou, and the passionate breathings of his mistress are all delivered in one screaming falsetto. The stranger who drops into their theatre on Jackson Street for one evening, does not fully observe this, as he knows nothing of the idea expressed; but let him attend often enough to catch the sense from the pantomime, or better, take a native to explain the ï~~u z t r a 3 'IVA' a 11 fS, ï~~316 SAMENESS OF DEVELOPMENT. progress of the play, and he will see that the want of harmony between sound and sentiment, when not shocking, is too ludicrous for description. If" John" has any conception whatever of melody, as distinct from mere racket, I can find no evidences of it. The same one-thing-lacking appears in all branches of their culture. Their literature is but repetitions and combinations of that of their ancestors; their history all reads alike, as if each century had taken pains to repeat all the doings of the century preceding; and their fine arts present an endless array of dragons, griffins, Boodhs, flying monsters, and spike-tailed devils with pagoda-shaped hats. To suggest that the poets or orators of to-day have improved upon those of two thousand years ago, would be an insult to a Chinese scholar. To say that they are inferior would scarcely be less an insult; but might be forgiven as a delicate compliment to the ancestors whom the Chinese worship. Of course there was a time when the Chinese mind was inventive; but it was many centuries since. About two thousand years ago the race, which had progressed for twelve-hundred years, probably reached the climax of their cranial capacity and stopped. Since then they have stood still or, some think, have begun to retrograde. They number perhaps 100,000 on the Pacific coast. What then are the objections to them? 1. They work cheap, and so throw white men out of employment. In the first place, it is evident at a glance that less thanw onefifth of them come into competition with white labor. The rest are doing work which white men would not do at all. In the swamp and tide-water lands, in working old placers abandoned by white miners, in silk culture, and in cheap laundries, are found one-half of the Chinese-where white men would not take the labor. Of the other half, many are house and hotel servants, and others work in gangs on the railroads; while a very few are manufacturers. But do they work cheap? Only in a local sense. It is cheap in California, but would not be in the East. When the gang was brought to North Adams, Massachusetts, two or three ï~~K ï~~318 "A CHINESE INVASION." where white men will not work; in silk culture and in working "poor placers," California needs and can employ a quarter of a million Chinamen without displacing a single white. And the results would double the wealth of the State, lessen taxation one half, increase the demand for skilled white laborers, and make profitable places for five times as many as are now sitting about the cities complaining of dull times, and cursing the "haythen Chinee." The argument on this "cheap-labor question" has a comic resemblance to that of the Yankee who was sued for the value of a kettle, borrowed and broken. His answer in court had three counts: first, he never had the kettle; second, it was broken when he got it; third, it was whole when he returned it. Similarly, but with more truth, of the Chinese: first, more cheap labor will not hurt California; and, second, the Chinese will not cheapen labor to any appreciable extent. 2. But they will overrun the country! They have been coming for a quarter of a century and only number a hundred thousand. At this rate they, would, at the end of a thousand years, be in as great a minority as now; for we get twice or thrice their whole number from Europe every year. Of course, their immigration is liable to increase. But if all the emigrant ships running to all the ports in the Union should go into the Chinese-carrying trade, they could only bring over a quarter of a million a year. It would take them a hundred and sixty years to reach our present numbers, even if we stood still. Can we not Americanize and Christianize as fast as they can immigrate? In the light of plain figures, "the oncoming millions of Asia," with which California orators threaten us, appear rather as a violent figure of speech than an imminent fact. 3. They will degrade labor! If there is anything I particularly enjoy, it is to hear a lilyhanded office-seeker discourse on the "dignity of labor." I have been reading the Bible somewhat of late, and learn therefrom that labor, like death, was put upon man as a curse instead of a blessing; and I observe that his natural instinct leads him to ï~~"DEGRADING LAROR." 319 put off the one as long, and have as little to do with the other, as possible. Also, that those men who go around as the " workingman's friends," getting up " Labor-reform Associations" and talking so eloquently about the "(dignity of labor," are the ones who have managed to do the least of it. Hence, in California, I was not at all surprised to see that all the antiChinese orators regularly employed a house full of Chinese servants. Enquiring of one such why this was so, he frankly replied, " We can't help ourselves; other servants ask wages we can't afford to pay, and are offensive and uncertain besides." A very good excuse; but did our forefathers and foremothers so compromise with their principles when they refused British tea? If these fellows were in earnest, they would heave the Chinese servants overboard, as those others did the tea, and do their own work. Why are our speakers poloquent, and our newspapers full of glowing paragraphs, about the "dignity of labor?" Is it because there is, after all, a sort of doubt in the minds of thousands about it? Of course, labor is dignified and honorable; but why not take it for granted, in a country like this, and cease to make such a rumpus about it? We shout and hurrah over the simple proposition so much, that we make the secret doubt apparent. The Chinese will "degrade labor" just so far as the laborer, by his own acts, consents that it shall be degraded, and no farther. The social condition of the California, particularly the San Francisco, Chinese is unqualifiedly bad. They are herded together in narrow streets and alleys, in crowded tenement houses, living almost like brutes, and, in a Christian country, with the morals of heathen. Of course, this presents no just standard by which to judge of their condition at home. That they want to do much better is clearly proved by the fact that as fast as they are able they do improve, live cleanly and comfortably, and with a tolerable degree of morality. A Post Street merchant is not an unpleasant gentleman to associate with, by any means; and the style of his apartment and dress shows considerable taste. Chan Laisun, reported to be worth a million or so, does not look particularly handsome at his best, the more so as he insists ï~~N N ï~~EDUCATING "JOHN." 321 Episcopal Mission Board. This gentleman had spent ten years in China as a missionary, and finding the Sacramento schools flourishing and the system good, adopted it entire and made it general. There were, in 1870, seven schools in San Francisco, one in Oakland, one in Santa Clara, one in San Jose, one in Stockton, two in Sacramento, the original one with forty scholars, one in Marysvale, one in Grass Valley and three in Oregon, at Salem and Portland. The largest had a hundtred and fifty scholars on the list, and two others a hundred each; the average of the others about thirty. In all, a thousand Chinese were under instruction, with an average regular attendance of five hundred. The number has no doubt largely increased since my estimate was made. They learn English letters and spelling rapidly, but cannot pronounce the r or the th. By invitation of Rev. O. Gibson I attended the Teachers' Meeting called to discuss two points: flow best to teach English; and, How far to teach Christianity at the start. It was concluded to first teach out language, social practices and customs; then, religion specifically. Chinese religion is a strange study: a queer, cold, uninviting, chilly and repellant theology. In conversations with the missionary, interpeters, and two Chinese merchants of my acquaintance, I was convinced that the race would give it up, if a more vital and cheerful belief were offered in its stead. Boodhism is the religion of profound sorrow-of deep, deep, hopeless, and unutterable gloom. There is no Mediator, no atonement, no forgiveness, no redeeming love: all is to be suffered out, labored out, struggled over, agonized through; and fallen man, if forgiven at last, is only forgiven in complete negation. Heaven is not a positive state; only an escape from hell: it is not happilness, but merely the negation of misery. In its genius is nothing bright or joyous; nothing inspiring in its theology. It is, sinmply, sin leads to suffering, to be atoned for by ages of misery. Its public ceremonies have their funny side, too; but only to the Onlooking Fanqui (" White Devil," or "Scoffer"). Whether "John " be a skeptic or believer, the ceremony awakens no mirth in his mind. 21 ï~~... t,, r u,;;;.;x,a.: ",. ~ = yt.r.,.. -.. s.,v /.,,P;.i ' f'. i y '7... \ r=s. 3' ':) e.;.,. ' +,.. Â~ r i... ~i.. a v. 2 a,9 _ ir. nÂ~,,, ï~~BOODHISM. 323 There are really three forms of opinion in China, but they can hardly be denominated so many religions: Confucianism, Boodhism, and Taouism. The first is rather a system of philosophy, a sort of addendum to their religion, as nearly all Chinamen believe to some extent in Confucius. It treats of the "Five Relations" and duties dependent thereon: 1st, Rulers and Ruled, 2d, Parent and Child, 3d, Husband and Wife, 4th, Brothers, and 5th, Friends. The instructions are very minute, even telling one how to walk when visiting a friend. Some adopt Confucianism so far as to practically disbelieve the rest; in short, become infidels. Some of these in California are quite well acquainted with the New Testament, and consider its principles quite good in themselves. but as drawing the line too close, and quite too high and sublime for mortals. But they have no idea of the Atonement; it seems nearly impossible for even the most intelligent to form any conception of it. "Dead Works "are the only foundation they build upon: even if a man should, from to-day henceforth, do exactly right, he must be put through one or more of the chambers of hell to pay him for what he has already done. Boodhism, their religion proper, is a system of idolatry introduced from India many centuries ago. It deifies the remarkable (lead. Its grand idea is, to attain to a state of perfect repose-soul and body utterly without emotion-this is perfect bliss and highest good. From their description, it would be to us perfect nonentity. Hence the general statement that "Annihilation is the Boodhist Heaven;" still that does not seem to be their precise idea. It is still perfect consciousness, but without any of the ideas or emotions which, in this state, result from consciousness. Faithful devotees are to become Boodhs, though the original Boodh was the Creator. Men are to become inferior Boodhs by absorbing the spirit of Boodh. One year of his equals twenty-five million common years. In this they beat the Mormons, who only make "one year of the Lord" equal to a thousand common years. Taouism (Tah-oo-ism) is a system of spiritual philosophy, filling all creation with an infinity of spirits. Just above the heads of mortals is the region of the gods. This sect have per ï~~',, A,.t, M.. r:" ï~~, a;,, ï~~CHAPTER X VIII. MINES AND MINING. A prospect-Outline of mining region-The Cottonwoods-How I came there-. Mormon anti-mining sermons-The dry summer-Unhealthfulness of Salt Lake City-I go to the mountains-" Prospectors "-We hunt a mine - Mode of silver mining-Different in gold mining-One chance in twenty-five thousand for an "Emma" or "Comstock "-" Struck a horse "-Over to Big Cottonwood-Fire in the mountains-Promise of war in Utah-False alarm-Off for Bingham-Chicago fire-Thence to East Canon - I invest-And come out minus. PROSPECT CAMP, WASATCH MOUNTAINS, U. T., September 25, 1871. AM sitting at the door of a frame and canvas cabin, ten Sfeet by twelve; as near as I can determine, a thousand W, feet below the highest point in the Wasatch Range, seven thousand above Salt Lake, and eleven thousand higher than the level of the sea. We have thawed a little ice from our water buckets this morning, and taken a hot breakfast; my companions are off down the mountain side, picking at "indications," and mapping out the "run of the country rock," and at 10 A. M. I find my fingers warm and pliant enough for the pencil. A party of prospectors from Uintah, working their toilsome way through the mountains to Camp Floyd, have just halted to drink and gossip. The men look haggard, and ragged with toil and exposure, while the horses' breath steams up, as in an eastern winter, and their manes and tails still show traces of the frost of last night. Four rivers head within five miles of me. To the south the rugged cliffs fall off abruptly to a deep cation, from which the Timpanogos or Provo flows out to Utah Lake; a little farther west is the American Fork, and far down the valley a faint green and blue haze marks the location of Provo City; beyond it a faint cloudy whiteness proves to be 326 ï~~k. ION lot. Â~a i y. r _. ' All a ov c; y e " ï~~328 MINING AND PROPHECY. year. Take it at the best, it is a hard, hard life. But there is silver here-no longer any doubt on that point-and a community of active and enduring Gentiles is springing into life upon the very tops of these cold and forbidding mountains. But how did I get here? Behind waits a brief narration, for I have followed the advice of Horace.to epic poets, to plunge in medias res--freely translated, " into the middle of things." After a lengthy stay in California, and journeyings not set down in this chronicle, I returned to Salt Lake City to find all my friends wild on silver mines. Everybody was talking about "feet," "prospects," "indications," "specimens," "assays" and "dividends;" and I soon caught the same disease. There were two or three thousand Gentiles in the city speculating in mines and Miner8; five thousand more in the mountains hunting for mines, and perhaps two thousand actually working mines. All was confined to the Gentiles as yet, and by that beautiful spirit of contradiction which prevails in Utah, the priesthood were sermonizing against mines and anathematizing everybody who took stock in them. Three months after they were investing heavily. Now they claim that "the Lord" revealed the existence of these mines to Brigham, but told him they must not be worked till "in His own good time He uncovered them." Capital afterthought. Mormonism is the handiest religion in the world-for an argument. If "the brethren" prosper, it is the blessing of the Lord on the faithful; if they fail and suffer, "The judgments of the Lord begin at the house of the Lord." If an "apostate" suffers, it is at once pronounced "a judgment;" if he prosper, "the devil takes care of his own." It is a sure thing either way-" heads, I win; tails, you lose." The Mormons now propose to become a mining people. It was the notable "dry season of 1871," and Salt Lake City soon grew intolerable to me. The atmosphere was very unhealthy. Fifty-five persons had died in three weeks, in a population of fourteen thousand. Two-thirds of the people were complaining of something. ï~~ROUTE TO THE MINES. 329 I had come from California in the best of health, and in one week was prostrated with nervousness and indigestion. Such a season had not been known in Salt Lake since the notable "famine year." In view of these facts, I took stage for the hills. The evening before the clouds were lowering darkly over the Wasatch, and I waked to see her peaks glistening with the first snow of the season. But delay would not mend the matter; I was soon seated in a "jerky," and in three hours reached the mouth of Little Cottonwood Cantion, sixteen miles southeast of the city. The "Equinoctial storm" (liable, by the way, to occur some time between July and November,) had fully set in, and seemed to move towards the mountain at an even pace with the coach. In these enclosed basins clouds rise from the lakes and marshes and float away, without shedding their moisture, to the mountains; there they are checked and fall in rain, causing the mountain sides to be covered with dense timber, while the valleys are always bare. The ten-mile route of rocky uphill to Central City, center of the mining region, is toilsome and appears dangerous. A damp, numbing wind swept down the canflon, growing colder every mile, till overcoats and gloves failed to secure warmth; while above and around us everywhere the peaks glistened with snow, seeming by imagination to add to the cold, and by the middle of the afternoon we saw the trees on the slopes gray white with rime, and knew that we had invaded the domain of winter. All was not peace in Central City. The night of my arrival was signalized by a general free fight, in which some twenty shots were fired, one of which struck in an upper room of our hotel. The impression goes out that miners are a quarrelsome set. Exactly the reverse is the fact; they are exceptionally quiet and peaceful. But they are careless and free with money; their mode of life engenders a love of gaming, and following close upon them, about all mining towns, is a "float" of gamblers, strikers, demi-reps and dancing girls. A camp is always considered prosperous where they are plenty, and Central had a surplus. I took a two days' rest there to get accustomed to the mountain air; then took a mule ride to the foot of the cliff, ï~~z c A- SIN u, - p lotIt e v.. r z s e e wÂ~ s W F, A VON 'N We ï~~SCIENCE AND BUSINESS. 331 nine times out of ten they sell quickly, spend the money lavishly, and are off to prospect again. The man who has prospected a few years rarely settles into a regular miner; though the latter often prospects to find his own claim before working it. Of course they are a peculiar race; of course they are superstitious about luck, have strange theories about lode-formation, prejudices about the "run of the rock," and undoubted faith in their own future, and all expect soon or late to discover and develop a "Comstock" or an "Emma." How many of my readers ever saw a prospect for silver, or could trace a vein from surface indications, "crop," "float," etc.? For silver mining in the United States is a new thing, and your returned Californians, who may have spent half a lifetime in placer gold diggings, would know nothing therefrom of silver mining. Miners read the Scripture thus: "Surely there is a vein for silver, and a place for the gold where they find it." By this they mean that silver generally (not always) runs in lodes, defined ledges, layers in wall rock; but gold is "where you find it"-in placer flats, beds of wash gravel, "pay dirt," eddies in shallow streams with natural "cleats" in the bed-rock, and in the dry flumes of extinct rivers. Silver mines-that is, real mines-have a defined seam; their extent can be measured, their richness estimated, and the time required to get out the ore and its value per ton; the stock is put upon the market, quoted and sold as legitimately as corn or wheat. Gold discovery is often an accident, creating an "excitement;" silver mining is an enduring industry, growing slowly through many years-except in the rare cases of chloride flats, horn-silver, etc., as at White Pinelasting ten or twenty or hundreds of years, according to whether the discovery proves to be a "chamber," "pocket," or "deposit," or a "true fissure vein." Come with me, then, and let us in imagination follow our "prospectors," now a thousand feet below me, and from their present action appearing to have "struck something" half-way down the cliff, where the limestone formation changes suddenly to slate and quartzite. This change is an important matter to us here; for in looking for a vein of silver we are guided by ï~~7 v r ï~~" FLOAT." 333 nmap of a mining region: the surface denuded to a bare skeleton of the original mountain, the backbone of the range where the ledges are laid open. But another element enters into this calculation-the heat which was active in the formation of the lodes; so the silver and lead thrown up by the primal convulsion, either burst their way through solid rock, and formed lodes thousands of feet in length, or lacking force, the fluid turned aside to existing crevices, or "blew out" through hollow chambers, which so often mislead the miner. To each variety of these side affairs a specific and descriptive name is given, whence all the strange terms in mining parlance: "true lodes, fissure-veins, pinches, pockets, deposits, chambers, blow-outs, chimneys, fumerols, dips, spurs, angles, variations and sinuosities." But few of any of these, however, reach the surface to guide us; even where lodes "crop out," the tol rock is rarely of the same nature as that in the vein. Having found evidences of volcanic action, as we "prospect" up the mountains, the first thing we look for is "float." This consists of mineral broken off from "croppings," or thrown out or washed out from fissures. It is of almost infinite varieties; in general any piece of detached rock, big or little, "carrying indications of galena," is "float." Abundance. of " float" on our line shows that the lode is--somewhere. But where? The majority of prospectors say it must be uphill from the "float;" but a respectable minority maintain that it may be downhill; and I suspect they are right, as the hills may have changed their level since the "float" was deposited, or it may have been carried by other means than the common wear of the elements. So we must "trace." We are often assisted by mineral stain, particularly where water exudes from the rock. Copper stain is generally green, and may or may not exist with silver; iron stain is red, and seldom exists with silver; lead stain is of various shades, all easily known, and lead is never found without some silver. The "Pittsburg" mine in American Fork was developed by digging merely from a deep lead stain; but they had other fine indications, particularly that the formation changed there from slate ï~~334 THE CHANCES. to limestone. "Between the runs of country rock" is the best place to look for a vein; next to both walls being granite, a " footwall" of slate or porphyry, and a hanging wall of other rock is to be preferred. From reasons given above, we are more apt to find our lode continuous if it is between two formations. At the "Pittsburg" stain they dug and struck a rich vein of carbonate ore in ten feet. Along that line between those two formations a hundred locations now extend for two miles. Our mineral stain, then, is encouraging, but by no means assures us of a good lode; for that we must dig. When we have found the "float" thick'enough to suit us; when there is the right stain on the rock; when we are sure of the strata being right, then we must dig. Do we find a faint vein going down, though no thicker than a knife-blade? Do we encounter silica, ochre, or small brittle chunks of galena, and do we find a wall with clay selvage? Then we dig on until other indications warn us we might as well stop and save our money. We may be fooled at last. It may be a trifling crevice, formed by infiltration from some larger vein; it may be a "chimney" from some lode ten thousand feet away through solid rock, and it may be any one of the fifty other disappointments. Of all "prospects" struck, one in five becomes a location; one location in five is pushed to some depth. Of those so pushed, one in ten pays something more than expenses, and become real mines, and of real mines one in a hundred develops into an "Emma" or a "Comstock." Logical reduction: The "prospectors" must strike, locate and develop twenty-five thousand times before he realizes his big expectations. For every dollar taken out of mines, eighty cents are spent; but that leaves a dollar and eighty cents in the country. Let us therefore encourage mining. Under the general fact that lodes are formed by volcanic action are many minor theories, each camp having a sort of science of its own, as there is a wide difference "in the indications" of any two camps. The following, for instance, I find to be universal in Cottonwood: In places far removed from the origin of the ore, the primal impetus was barely sufficient to force the ore to a certain hight; there meeting with obstructions, ï~~" A HORSE." 335 the fluid column turned into crevices already existing. These natural fissures are generally nearly horizontal. Hence, in following down the first fissure struck, if it gradually changes from the horizontal to the perpendicular, this is taken as an indication that one is nearing the original source of the ore, getting towards where it first started, and had force enough to burst straight upward through the solid rock. But, during this primal convulsion, iminmense masses of limestone, quartzite, porphyry, granite and other hard rocks fell back into the liquid ore; and these now present sudden interruptions in even the most regular veins. Indeed, some theorists maintain that.unless these "wedges" had fallen in, there would have been no lode, as the walls would have settled together, completely closing the fissure. But, of course, the opening is not perfectly regular; and a little calculation will show, I think, that there is not one chance in a thousand of the whole mountain side settling back exactly as it separated, so that the bulge on one side would strike the hollow on the other whence it came, and unless it did so, there would not be a complete closing. Such an interruption is known among miners as a "horse," and generally a small portion of the vein (or lode) can still be traced around or under it. So, when a miner following his shaft finds it suddenly stopped by a" wall of dead rock," (without metal), it may be from either of three caies: the obstruction may be a "horse," from a foot to five rods thick; his supposed lode may be a mere "pocket," ending then and there; or he may still be only in one of the "side fissures," which has taken a sudden turn, "pinching out" for a few rods, or "doubling back on the ledge." In such cases science seems to be at fault; and though of the highest importance to the practical miner, no two agree as to the meaning of the "indications." The miner's only recourse is to pick and blast, onward or downward, until hlie finds something, or convinces himself there is nothing. Sometimes, again, the miner starts with a vein a foot or more wide, expecting to reach the main lode very soon; but finds it narrowing rapidly to an inch in width; then it suddenly "chambers" to some size, then "pinches" to the thickness of a ï~~336 SUMMIT OF BALD PEAK. knife blade, or sinks to a mere stain on the wall rock, and so on, " pinching" and "pocketing" alternately towards the interior. My friends in the "Kentucky" followed such a "pinching" vein for a hundred feet, when it terminated in a "chamber " about the size of a barrel and full of rich ore; and that was the last of that vein. The vein of the celebrated "Emma" was followed nearly two hundred feet before they struck "good pay-rock." From Bayview I came down to more temperate regions, and inspected all the mines south of Central City, seriatim. At noon of the last day we were at the "Peruvian," and four thousand feet above us towered the top of Bald Peak. It was stated by the miners, that no visitor had ever reached it the first day, which excited our ambition, and we determined on the attempt. Striking directly up the bare mountain side, which inclines in the upper part at least sixty degrees, we struggled on for three hours, to the highest point on the Wasatch Range-12,000 feet above the level of the sea. A breath of relief and a long look around the horizon were succeeded by astonishment and awe, which held us long in subdued silence. A hundred miles to the north-east, Medicitne Butte rose in plain view; a hundred miles south appeared the peaks of Iron Mountain and Mount Nebo; as far to the east, the slopes above Uintah River; while all the northern and southern shores of Great Salt Lake could be traced as easily as upon a map:: one comprehensive view of thirty thousand square miles of mountain, valley and gorge, fringed by clouds below our level and lighted up by the declining sun. Salt Lake City was hidden from our sight by the Twin Peaks; but above that place the whole of Jordan Valley lay in plain view, with the river down the center like an irregular band of silver. The air was unusually clear, as is common just after the first autumnal storm, and we could scarcely have found a more favorable day for the view in the entire year. The descent was much faster than the ascent had been, though, in proportion to time, much more wearisome; but we reached our cabin by dark, andsoon after slept the sleep of the just and the weary. The two days following, I visited the mines on the northern ï~~eÂ~"..._.,, r..,i.,;" A...; _, j ",;. y,.x ï~~338 A DAY OF CLIMBING. Big Cottonwood lies just north of Little Cottonwood, separated by a rocky ridge, barely passable at two or three places; and the last day I was on the northern side, the air in that direction seemed to grow more hazy than usual. Looking northward, we saw the whole sky of a peculiar ash and copper color, and old mountaineers shook their heads ominously, and said: "The fire is out in Big Cottonwood." From where I stood it was not more than eight miles in a direct line, to the noted lake at the head of Big Cottonwood, where the Mormons celebrate the 24th of July-"Anniversary Day;" but it was impossible to reach it along the cliffs, and we must descend into Little Cottonwood, and pass over another "divide," to what is known as Silver Fork, opening into the other canon. Next morning the mountain tops were shrouded in smoke, and I spent the day in Little Cottonwood, hearing reports from the other side. About 4 P. M. a great white column shot into the sky for thousands of feet, apparently just over the "divide," then swaying back and forth settled into the shape of an immense cone, and we knew to a certainty that the wind was "down the cafton," and consequently the fire nearing the town and smelting works. It took me all the next day to pass the "divide,' for the lowest point on the ridge is three thousand five hundred feet above Central, and the descent still greater on the northern side. If the reader has ever run up a steep pair of stairs, let him imagine two hundred such in succession, varied with jutting rocks and boulders, and that in an atmosphere so light that dyspnwea results from the slightest exertion, and he will have a faint idea of this climb. It is amusing to notice new comers and watch its effect upon them. Some men get used to the rarefied air in a few d(lays; others labor in breathing for weeks or months, and still others never gain in breathing capacity. Stranger still, it is not the stoutest men always who take most easily to the bills. The best mountaineer in this camp is just my size, (one hundred and twenty-five pounds,) and of very slender limbs, without an ounce of fat, but he has large hands and feet, and a chest like a gorilla. When I reached that side the fire was still a mile above, but, ï~~AN AWFUL SIGHT. 339 moving slowly on the town. When night fell the scene was indescribably grand. From the summit of Granite Mountain, dividing the heads of Big and Little Cottonwoods, down through the lake region and "Mill Canon," to the tops of Uintah Hills, for eight miles in a semicircle around and above us, the view was bounded by great swaying sheets of flame. The sky to the zenith was a bright blood red, and down to the west a gleaming waxy yellow; while almost over us Honeycomb Peak, where the timber had burned to a coal, and which was divided from us by a large rocky gorge, stood out detached and glowing red like a volcano outlined against the sky. Morning came, and with it detachments of miners from neighboring camps, working their way through the lower defiles, to fell timber and "burn against the fire." The town is in a grove of quaking asp, and was in no great danger; but across Cottonwood Creek, where the Smelting Works stand, the growth is mountain pine, which burns green or dry. The whole caflon was so full of smoke that the sun could barely be discerned, and the pyrotechnics of the night had given place to a deathlike gloom. From the creek to the mountain summit south was a roaring mass of flames, when at noon the wind suddenly changed, and for twenty-four hours blew almost a hurricane utip the caflon. The timber had been felled for two hundred yards around the works; it was now set on fire and the great business enterprise of this camp was saved. After the day of wind came rain, then snow, and next morning the latter, four inches deep, was melting slowly into black mud. A week in Big Cottonwood convinced me there was a great deal to learn about mining, and I was about to start on a vigorous campaign against the hills, when the semi-weekly mail arrived from the city bringing news. Judge McKean's Court had reached a decisive point, and matters looked warlike. Two letters I received spoilt my appetite for "prospecting." The first, from a gentleman in the Review (Gentile paper) office, contained this: "Matters look squally here, you bet. The co-op. store bought a thousand muskets at the Government sale, and they ï~~340 A HUGE SCARE. are all in the hands of the 'brethren.' They say they are drilling every night. For three nights we kept a lookout, expecting the office to be attacked. Fifty or a hundred men marched up one night and stood in front of it, but made no sign. It is known that Brigham is indicted, and a few of the Gentiles are nervous. If signs don't deceive me, there will be work for warriors; so come down in time." The other letter was in a sort of nervous-hystericky, Italian hand, the gist of it running thus: "We are so glad you are up in Cottonwood, where everybody's Gentile. Mr. S. says they will kill all the Gentiles and Apostates first thing. Do you really think there is much danger? I know there is some. Ma says she a'nt afraid of the Mormons; but all the miners will come in, and they will fight right in the streets, an(d rob everybody. O, dear, I never wais out of Utah in my life, and a'nt it dreadful if we all get killed right here? Don't come down a Sunday; go to American Fork, or go away down to Star District. Of course they'll kill you first one." Of course, I answered by taking the earliest conveyance, at 6 next morning, for the city, well knowing, though there might l)e some excitement, there was no more danger of a general fight than there is to-day in New York. The down-hill of sixteen miles to the valley, which requires half a day going up, we made in a little over two hours, and thence traversing the "bench" and hill behind the penitentiary, came in fiull view of the city, just as the morning sun rose above the Wasatch, its bright beams reflecting beautifully from the freshly-fallen snow on the summit. Below us lay the city, calm and peacefill as on a Puritan Sabbath. Rain had fallen since my departure; the d(lust was laid and the air clear, cool and stimulating. The streams were again running among the checkered squares, mapped out before. us, and lacing all the green plats with bright and flowing borders. There were no signs of war there. The excitement was measurably over, but as the nation had never really asserted its'full authority in Utah before, we can scarcely l)lame the Gentiles for thinking such unwonted action must produce war. The most ridiculous rumors had agitated the city. ï~~BRIGHAM AN INFIDEL. 341 The Mormon papers and speakers had exhausted their resources depicting what might be the result "if the people should be goaded beyond forbearance," taking precious good care all the time not to directly threaten resistance; for matters looked as if the Federal authorities meant "business." All day Sunday rumors thickened. Many ladies came and anxiously inquired of my hostess (an English woman who has been here since '49) "if she really thought there was any danger," to which she replied, with a contemptuous sniff, "No, no. I've been through forty such excitements as this. There won't be a drop o' blood spilt. Brigham's got too much sense." There she touched the root of the matter. The whole position turned on this question, Is Brigham an impostor or a fanatic? If the former, he. will never raise his finger for "this people" to take up arms, and they are too well under control to fight before he does raise it. An impostor is governed by the ordinary rules which influence men in war and business, but a fanatic never stops to count noses. He dashes in, regardless of odds, with "God's on our side; one shall chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight." And should this be Brigham's caliber, he could have had every one of us massacred in a day. Although he and his people should suffer for it afterward, that would be small comf6rt to us, the decapitated. But I knew that Brigham was not a fanatic, an(l, consequently, there was no danger. Like all new comers, I once was disposed to credit Brigham with being honest in his religion. But I was long ago convinced, by most undoubted proofs, that he has no faith in it whatever. He is simply a philosophic infidel, believing, as he has substantially said, that he had "as good a right as Christ, or Mohammed, or any other man, to set up a new religion." So none of the old Gentile residents or officials were a particle disturbed. But new comers were nervous. The wives of Governor Woods and Frank Kenyon, proprietor of the Review, went on a long-contemplated visit to California, and when the report reached me it ran that "all the Gentile ladies in the upper part of town were leaving; that the Governor had sent away his family, for he knew there would be trouble." A day or two after, repeated ï~~342 I GO TO BINGHAM. dispatches came back from the East of the bloody doings in Salt Lake and the flight of the Gentiles, all of which read amusingly enough there when the scare was over. On Sund(lay night two hundred soldiers arrived, and a day or two after as many more; but the Mormon papers had passed from the extreme of incendiarism to the extreme of deprecating all excitement. They had only hinted before what might be; they now took special pains to declare in the plainest words that "there was no excitement among the people; there would be no resistance to law; everything would go peaceably to a just conclusion. God and the Supreme Court would reverse all this action," etc. Brigham was formally arrested on Tuesday, and Daniel H. Wells on Wednesday, and both gave bonds to appear the next week. The comical feature of the whole affair was the perfect celerity with which all the Mormon leaders backed square down from their old positions, and, after all their threats, never hinted at resistance; and, particularly, the ease with which they were able to convince the fanatical people that it was all for the best. The excitement was over; the Saints had concluded to trust in "God and the Supreme Court," and there was no "work for warriors" or war correspondents either. The " nervoushystericky Italian hand" resumed its beautiful regularity on pink-tinted "acceptances," and, after a few days, I struck out again for the mountains, this time going to Bingham Canon. The mouth of Bingham is twenty-four miles southwest of Salt Lake City, and thence the caton opens directly across the Oquirrh, or West Mountains. The aboriginal name means " Lost Mountains," from the fact, probably, that this range is detached, terminating abruptly on the north at the shore of Salt Lake. The characteristic of Bingham is immense bodies of low-grade ore. The West Jordan Mine, which is accounted the oldest in Utah, is simply a vast hill of "black galena" ore -enough to employ a hundred men for fifty years, but yielding only fifty dollars a ton in silver. It was " located" September 17, 1863, and among the fifty names signed to the By-laws and District Organization appear those of General P. E. Connor, ï~~4 _.,,:,:. -,, s, _., r {., _ x,......,_ k,<.. _,: i...,.., x. a., M.. _ _,. _,,_;,, n F k.;,r,., ff. 4, w f Â~-,.s, M a:,,F., m.,,..<;.,- #,,,,' y e.., _,.:,,, a,'ri,.k., s 4 8: _ -:y,. ~ _.,t, ' Â~'. rrv i Â~ ". z... ~.:,,.. a _- _,.. - ~n.:: i. t.t.; r r r mF i -.-. t ' >y,. $ r _. } '.. -.. '3 j i e+,. ï~~344 OPHIR DISTRICT. per cent. of silver to the ton; and they had no refining and separating works. Freight across the Plains was twenty-five cents per pound, and lead in the States was worth ten cents. The result was-twenty-five into ten "goes no times" and fifteen cents over the wrong way. Now ten thousand miners are at work in Utah, and her developed mines are worth twenty-five million dollars! Verdict: The Union Pacific feeit. On the morning of October 10th, as I was starting up Markham Gulch, a friend arrived from the city with the news, "They say there is a big fire in Chicago." Next night I returned; Chicago was in ashes; a mass meeting was called, and Bingham, with a population of eight hundred, at once raised $500 for the sufferers. No late event illustrates like that fire how closely the civilized world is being drawn together by the ties of commerce and religion. Every part of the great body feels a local to be a general ill, and hastens to alleviate. Let us cease to look backward for the better day. It is before us. This day has more of light and humanity than any that have gone before, and steel and steam are the true motors for the "golden age." West of the Oquirrh lies Rush Valley; at its northeast corner is Stockton Mining District; at the southeast East Canon breaks abruptly into the mountains, bordered by two districts; while west of it are Columbia and Cedar Mountain Districts. I went over to East Canon, and, with headquarters at Ophir City, put in two weeks diligently studying the formation. I had taken the contract of writing an "exhaustive report" on the mines of Utah for the Review-Gentile Journal of Salt Lake City-and at the end of a month could talk learnedly of "shafts, tunnels, drifting, sinking, going down on the lode, chlorides, bromides, galena and bed-rock, footwalls and hanging walls." Then I read reports of mining experts, and became confused. I traveled another month, took accounts of the miners and studied the rocks; and at the end of that time came to the conclusion that one man knows about as much what is in the ground, out of sight, as another. I may have been wrong in this conclusion. If so, I am willing to be forgiven. ï~~,_:, -;.,, ~<<: -. -,. - r, z ï~~346 WHERE MY POSSESSIONS LIE. expected thereby to raise money enough to marry on." To such a plight came the owner of "a $250,000 mine." Nason stuck to the claims honestly; did work enough to hold them, under the District laws, and I am still the happy owner of an "undivided, one-third interest" in three claims of eight hundred feet each on Mineral Hill; and an errant prospector whom I met last November, tells me that a weatherbeaten stake in an abandoned neighborhood, above a hole in the ground, still bears this: NOTICE. "November 20th, 1871. "We, the undersigned, claim eight hundred (800) feet on this ledge, lode or vein, of mineral-bearing rock-counting each way from this notice-with all its dips, spurs and angles. Work done according to the By-Laws of Ophir District. The same known and recorded as the Ad Valorem Lode. " J. II. BEADLE, 200 feet. " E. G. NASON, 200 feet. " N. C. TEETER, 200 feet. "DISCOVERY, 200 feet." I have not heard a word from " my mines" or "resident partner" for six months, and my conclusion, therefore is, "No dividends declared." Mining districts abound with "bilks," and the experienced tell me I got off cheap. I have known miners to pick up a piece of rich ore from an old mine, hammer it into a crevice in the side of a shaft, and when a visitor came pick it out as a "specimen" of the new mine. "Salting a claim" after the old mode is too well known, and a score of new dodges are invented. "Top-rock" is generally what the visitor sees most of, and he is told, "Of course it gets richer as you go down." This may or may not be the case. In some ores disintegration by elemental action takes away all but the "pay-rock," and that on the surface is the only part that is rich. But the mines of Utah are too great for their development to be retarded by such tricks. The growth of this interest has been steady, healthful and rapid; and with improved transportation and machinery, a hundred mines now unworked will prove remunerative. My attempt as mining reporter was scarcely a success, praise ï~~7, $' 1, / / t: /k..Y t H.. s / / / / ~~_.. // 7 / / / I )/ 4 (b/ ï~~CHAPTER XIX. A CHANGE OF BASE. A hard winter-The last rain-Eastward-A merry party-The great Blockade -On the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad-Southwestern Missouri-Among the Cherokees-Spring roads-Up into Kansas-Meet C. G. Du Bruler, Esq., and return-Down to Muscogee. ifINTER "pinched in" on mining operations in Utah, and I seized the occasion to visit the East. Coming down from the mountains to Salt Lake City, I found < that heavy snows had fallen over eight hundred miles of the Union Pacific; there had been two d(lays' delay of the trains, and five hlundred people were in the city waiting to start. There was a vast amount of discussion, and no little grumbling at such a delay. But a few, who claimed extra knowledge of the climate, thus oracularly pronouncedl: "If the winter proves unusually severe, the road may be blocked a week at a time," which provoked a chorus of dissent from expectant passengers. Little they knew what a "hard winter" meant. The travelers held frequent conferences, and the general conclusion was, "We will wait till one or two trains have run through on time, then take the next. With these women and children we don't want to stop an hour on the road." But eight single gentlemen, myself included, determined to take the first train and risk it. We waited through the day at Ogden, leaving that place at night instead of morning, and ran through to Omaha without losing an hour. Being out of the regular time we were delayed there half a day, then made time to New York-losing twenty-four hours on the entire trip. We left Salt Lake on Saturday morning, and sat down to an eight o'clock breakfast at the Astor House the next Friday morni:g. 348 ï~~JOLLITY BY RAIL. 349 It was the jolliest trip of the age. Eight gentlemen in o.(% Pullman Palace Car from "Zion" to Gotham: Messrs. Shipman and Sherman, merchants of New York city; Mr. Fisher, an elderly retired merchant of Philadelphia; Hon. Audley Coote, an English gentleman returning from Australia; Mr. Rice, a middle-aged Bostonian, coming home from a ten years' residence in the ports of China; the writer, and a foreigner with unpronounceable name, who joked in four languages and swore in a dozen more with graceful fluency. Anticipating a blockade, we had laid in "supplies." Rolling along, twenty-five miles per hour, through the rugged gorges of the Wasatch, over the barren plains of Wyoming, between the lofty snow-banks of the Black Hills, out upon the high plains and, down the long five hundred mile incline to the Missouri, then through fertile Iowa and the Northern States, by night and by day we made the car a rolling palace of gayety: without were storm and darkness, sleet and snow rattling against the windows; within song and laughter, cigars, "spirituals" and genial society. We represented all parts of the world, and each knew just what the others wanted to hear. It was indeed a trip long to be remembered by all the parties, and as the genial Englishman and I took our farewell "smile," just before he went on the steamer, I thought after all there was something in the High Joint Commission, and all this talk about "our common language" and "common Shakspeare, Milton," and all that. One more train ran through on time, then another week's blockade took place; and most of the five hundred we left wintered with the Mormons. A few trains got through from one to eight days behind time, and then the "great blockade of 1872" began. Of its horrors I know only by report. I had reached the eastern side of the mountains, and when the time came to return there was no use making the attempt. But when I passed over the rood eight months after, the effects were still to be seen in the debris of wrecked cars at various points. The moral to be drawn from it was, that Rocky Mountain winters are very variable and uncertain. "Late falls and late springs" is the formula of old residents ï~~z, dy.... v F ' ' 1'. Y.rF:;111 +..n..... ~. 5,, Y.. off r.. 7, f l 1(-, I ï~~WESTERN RATES OF FARE. 351 mission: to inspect that line, or as much of it as possible, from St. Louis to San Diego. On the morning of March 21st-a bitter cold day-I left St. Louis by way of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, and ran all (lay through the poorest country I ever saw east of the American Desert. The general direction of the road is west-southwest; on the one side the streams flow eastward into the Mississippi, and on the other northward into the Missouri; and for the entire distance this road seems to wind about so as to keep exactly on the "divide" between these headwaters, on hard, barren ridges. Its present terminus is at Vinita, some forty miles into the Indian Territory, and three hundred and sixty-five from St. Louis, for which distance each passenger pays the moderate price (for the West) of eighteen dollars and fifty cents. Nothing surprises Eastern pilgrims so much, and I may add so painfully, as the steady increase of prices as they go westward. The traveler from New York to San Francisco finds a regularly increasing tariff, at the rate of one or two cents per mnile, at each change of cars. On the New York Central he pays two cents per mile; on the Michigan Central three cents; from Chicago westward four cents, with liberal discount for through tickets, and through Iowa five cents. On crossing the Missouri River he takes a big jump and pays seven cents per mile on the Union Pacific, and at Ogden changes to the Central Pacific at ten cents per mile (currency) thence to San Francisco. If he grumbles he is told: "It's the custom of the country; everything is high out here," etc.; at least that's all the satisfaction I ever got. Stage fare increases at even a greater ratio: five cents in the East, ten in Iowa and Nebraska, and twenty in the Territories. Provisions also increase in price, but in mnuch smaller ratio. To travel long out West a man must be, in the local phrase, " well heeled." This road, if I may judge from the country, ought to charge fifty cents per mile, for surely there can be no way trade worth naming. We had a bright enough day for the trip, but saw everywhere evidences of an unusually hard winter and late spring. No swelling buds, no birds, no shade of green; but heavy ï~~352 SOUTHWESTERN MISSOURI. smoke from the few dwellings, and along the streams ice in plenty. The country seemed to get poorer every mile. The soil was white or yellow, the timber scrubby, and the few houses of most ancient "double-log" pattern; in the sheds between the rooms, or under the projecting roofs, were the old style wooden pins, hung full of gears and "varmint" skins, among which played or reposed lank dlogs and dirty, towheaded children. Occasionally a switch-tail sorrel horse, about half size, and better framed than filled in, languidly moved out of the way of the train: or the hazel brush opened to view a' black and sandy spotted hog, about four feet long and four inches thick, with legs like an elk, and nose like a bowsprit. I did not see a single fat specimen, brute or human. The few towns were indescribable-no streets, no regularity, no paint, no style-and at each stop the train was surrounded by shiftless crow(ls of gaunt, long-haired men, yellow, short-haired womnen, and no-colored children-the old folks often with cob pipes, the men with grizzled beards, streaked with tobacco juice, and the women with high-backed combs which looked like sections of a flax scutchell. Toward Rolla the country grew a little better, and a few of the local aristocracy came aboard. Their hair was cut short and covered with close, slick caps, stuck on one side of the head. They were clad in stout riding suits, with heavy jangling spurs, and carried heavy riding whips. Their clothes were "trimmed with ruchings" of horsehairs; their boots smelt of horse, they looked all horse, and their talk was of the horse, horsey. At Rolla we found a good eating-house and a pretty fair town, but soon after entered a worse country than ever, too poor even to produce timber, and this continued to near Springfield, which we reached soon after dark. There we stopped for the night, " to catch the express train in the mornin'," the conductor said, though that struck me as a rather queer way to catch anything. That seems to be the Southern Missouri style, however. Old Springfield is two miles or more from the railroad, but at the depot has sprung up a new, modern, and decidedly tasty town, with a first-class hotel of the new Southern style. ï~~LIFE AND TASTE. 353 In the morning we were astonished to find the ground covered with three inches of snow, and more coming, "the Ekynoxual stawm," the landlord said, and for aught I know, he may be correct. "What are the productions of this region?" I asked a citizen at breakfast. "Oh, cawn, muils, sweet taters, and stock. Not as much cawn as afo' the wah, but mo' stock. Things changed 'round so since the wale. Been better for some places, wuss fo' others. Lots o' our people kep a fussin after they come hoam. Then about three yeahs ago the wusst ones went off to Arkansaw and the Injun Nation, and new eemigrants tuck their place. But these new fellows settled all in spots, and the places whcr' they settled has gone ahead, ye see, and the rest of the country's gone back." Springfield and Rolla are the only places where I have observed any signs of "new eemigrants." The train started at 7.30 and Soon took us out of the Springfield oasis into a worse country, if possible, than we had yet traversed. Wearied of the sight, I concluded to read, and the train boy brought his stock of books, which struck me as so good an index of the taste of most of his customers on this road that I made out a list: "Confession of Hildebrand, the Outlaw, Murderer and Guerrilla;" "Confession and Trial of Ruloff, the Learned Murderer;" "Life and Death of James Fisk;" "The Coral Lady;" " Mysteries of New York;" "Confession of Horn, a Wife Murderer;" "Ginger Snaps;" "Habits of Good Society;" "Jolly Joker," and two of Charles Reade's works. Such is the mental aliment of the average traveling public here. The country continued barren till we neared the edge of the Indian Territory. Then we got upon a down grade in a narrow but pretty valley, which widened rapidly towards Grand River. We crossed a narrow strip of woodland belonging to the Seneca Indians, then came out upon a rich prairie clothed with beautiful groves and bordered with fine timber, in the country of the Cherokees. An hour's run through the "Nation" brought us to Vinita. 23 ï~~354 RAILROAD LINES. The terminus of the Atlantic and Pacific is only a mile beyond, and here it is crossed by the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, running due south. By the treaty of 1866, two railroads were to be allowed to run through the Indian Territory, and by Government charter this priviledge was granted to the two roads which reached the border first. The Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston road and the Kansas and Fort Scott road both started for it, but were distanced by the Missouri, Kansas and Texas; hence both of them terminate at the border. The Atlantic and Pacific reached it first from the East, early in 1871, was soon after completed to Vinita and stopped, "waiting the action of Congress," the people say. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas was running to Canadian River, seventy miles south of Vinita, whence stages ran through Texas to El Paso, in Mexico, and to Fort Sill, in the western part of the Territory. The railroad is to continue on to the gulf, or tap the Texas Central. At Vinita is the junction of two long lines in a new country, with good soil, climate and timber, and we should naturally expect to see a place. In Kansas or Nebraska we should see a city of life and activity, lots selling at from one hundred to two thousand dollars, dwellings and stores going up on every hand, one or two live journals blowing the place as the "future metropolis of the boundless West, the last great chance for profitable investment," etc., and a dozen streets lively with the rattle of active commerce. Here, we do see nothing. We feel the dead calm of stagnation; ve breathe the atmosphere of laziness. There is one tolerable hotel, one stone store, and two frame ones, kept respectively by a Cherokee and a Delaware; and, besides the railroad employes, there is a population of perhaps a hundred -a few good men, more shiftless whites, average Indians and suspicious-looking half-breeds. New comrners soon get disgusted and leave. The railroads own the adjacent land, and in September, 1871, laid off a town, and had a sale of lots. They ranged from $80 to $200. Februry '72 the same lots sold at from $15 to $60. The trade of the country was next to nothing. Cattle were ï~~" MIXED." 355 the only export, and the money received for them was all that came into the country. Nowhere is there a surplus of grain raised, and along the border there is considerable import of staples from Missouri and Arkansas. This portion of the Cherokee country is but little settled. Most of that tribe live on Grand River, extending a continuous line of settlements d wn to Tahlequah, their capital, seventy miles from Vinita. My first Sabbath in the "Nation" was bright and clear, with a shade of green upon the prairies, and all the indications of advancing spring; and being informed that there was "an Injin school-house with preaching som 'ers three miles down on Cabin Creek," I started to hunt it. Before I was a mile on my way, the wind rose with surprising suddenness and blew almost a hurricane for the rest of the day. This is the most windy part of the West I have yet visited, and I suppose it is for that reason I always find the Indians living in the timber along the creeks. Nobody could tell me what route to take, so I called at the first house, where I was directed to the next by the occupant, who announced himself as a "White Cherokee." "Is your neighbor an Indian?" I asked. "Well, he has an Injin family." "And the next man?" "Well, hlie's sorter white, but he's married to a Shawnee girl. Next house thar lives a White Cherokee, but that man over thar knows most about the country. Better ask him." I went as directed to a pretentious frame house, the nicest I had yet seen in the " Nation," where I found a family of nine children and young people, of just nine different shades of color, from pure white, with blue eyes and red hair, to almost pure Indiah. I found the owner very communicative and rather intelligent. His first wife, he informed me, was half Shawnee, from Canada, and her first husband was a full-blood Cherokee. Hence the three children of that union were nearly full-blood. By this woman he had four children, only quarter-blood, but differing very much in shade. He then married an Irish ï~~...__. a..;n-,.,. 7 w,.;,. A, x,. _ { r t _... _ n, y_._ q. ^ _,,_ _.,.,.. = _.,.. a..; w.: <.. -_ -.,._,: T, - 5. f -: _. ti,.- _k a.. t -.:_,;: a, ~.. ï~~THE CONGREGATION. 357 A mile farther on I was overtaken by a Mr. Parks and family, and accepted a ride with them to the church. Like the more intelligent citizens of the " Nation," he was quite communicative, and, learning my business, insisted on my spending the day, after church, at his house. He was a native of East Tennessee, his father a white man, and his mother a half Cherokee, who refused to come with the main body of the tribe in the spring of 1839. He fought through the war on the Southern side, then came out and claimed his citizenship in the " Nation," to which he was admitted by the Supreme Court (or Principal Chiefs), after proving his ancestry. He showed not the slightest trace of Indian blood, but his little boy looked like a half-breed. His youngest daughter had the rolling black eye and sad expression of the Cherokee; with a fair skin; while the older ones, misses of eighteen or twenty, were both fair and beautiful. Both were dressed very richly, with black silk dresses and mantillas. Rich dresses were numerous at church, particularly of corn-color silk, this and black and red being the prevailing colors. Many of these people were quite wealthy before the war, and remnants of their wealth remain in costly shawls and jewelry, which seem oddly out of place amid the general poverty. The place of worship was a rude log school-house, perhaps twenty-five feet square, the cracks covered with clapboards, and the congregation consisted of fifty-two persons-not a fullblooded Indian among them. Most of that color live east of Grand River, and Cabin Creek is considered rather a community of half-bloods. The school teacher, with whom I conversed after service, was as white a woman as I ever saw, with blue eyes and light brown hair; yet she is considered a Cherokee, and traces her ancestry from pure bloods. Rev. Mr. Valentine, who preached to us, is also considered "a citizen of the Nation," and, though of pure white blood, was born and reared among the Cherokees. Just as, before the war, we called every man a "nigger" who had the faintest trace of negro blood, though it were but a sixteenth, so here all are called Cherokees who have a drop of Cherokee ï~~358 " WHITE CHEROKEES." blood. The phrase "White Cherokee" is generally applied to those of less than half Indian blood. One may travel for days in the Territory, and never see a full-blood. Nevertheless they are still in the majority, as shown by the census. But they live away from the main lines of travel, and generally in the timber along the streams. I heard much of the jealousy between the pureand the mixed bloods, but saw no evidences of it. The popular idea is that the Indian is being rapidly exterminated, which is incorrect as regards the civilized tribes. Absorbed would be a better word. It is true, that the pure bloods are certainly not increasing, perhaps slightly decreasing; but the amount of Indian blood remains, if it does not increase. It is by constant intermarriage with whites, that the pure stock lessens in number. Among the "White Cherokees" are some very curious people: pure white to all appearance, but still called Cherokees, and with no recollection of any ancestry outside of the tribe. Some of them are supposed to be descendants of missionaries, who settled in the tribe five or six generations ago; and some of white captives taken in their first wars with our race, or of children stolen in North Carolina early in the eighteenth century. The services were conducted in the order of the Baptist Church, to which sect the minister belongs, as do a majority of the Cherokee Christians. The Moravians, Methodists, and Episcopalians number many converts among the other Nations, and some among the Cherokees, while the Presbyterians are quite numerous among the Delawares and Shawnees, and farther west. The Indians seem to be naturally prone to fatalism, and their theology, even when Christian, is of a singularly cold and melancholy character; not so bad, however, as that of the California Chinese, which is the most gloomy, chilling, and repellant of all ethnic religions, but enough like it to point to a kinship of race. The Senecas alone of all the tribes in this vicinity, (they live just east of Grand River,) retain their aboriginal heathenism. Sacrifices, incantations, and a separate priesthood are still maintained, ï~~OK-LA-HO-MA. 359 and once a year they burn a certain number of dogs to propitiate the spirit of evil. That entire tribe numbers but ninety persons, and my host informed me that when last he visited them, they had only one child in the tribe. Their decay has been rapid. All the more intelligent admit the steady decay of the pure bloods, and, though there is a slight increase at present in the Cherokee Nation at large, yet in the pure bloods there is a decrease. I have only given, thus far, a few points gleaned from my conversation with the "White Cherokees," but our talk at dinner assumed a more personal and political turn. Mr. Parks had invited some of the older citizens to dine with us, and, as at a Sunday dinner in the country districts of Ohio, politics came up for discussion. "What will you do with us?" was the gist of the first question. "Will the Government give half our lands to railroads, and let the whites come in on us to try for the other half?" "The Government will not establish a Territory here and throw it open to white settlers, unless the Indians are willing; but why are you not willing, if you can have a farm secured first to each citizen of the Nation?" "Because our more ignorant people and full-bloods can't live with the Yankees settled all among them. Some tell us we can't hold our land in common the way we do. Why can't we? If we can't, then let it be allotted, so much to each family, and the rest common pasturage. These full-blooded Cherokees are the most simple minded, honest people in the world. They don't know anything about trading or scheming with white folks. But you know it is the nature of white people to be grasping. Let them settle here and they would take all advantage in trades, and the Indians could not live here." The principal talker, an aged "White Cherokee," continued at some length and in good language to argue against the "Bill to establish the Terrritory of Oklahoma," of which he produced a copy and read extracts. He related with increasing pathos, the principal facts in the history of the Cherokees: their first general war with the whites, many years before the Revolution; their removal to the hill country of Georgia, Carolina and Ala ï~~36 0 INDIAN POLITICS. iamna; their second move to Arkansas and a band to Texas; their expulsion from all other places and settlement here. As he progressed a growing sadness showed on every face. Hie concluded, and an oppressive silence settled upon the company, so profound that I could feel the reproach which seemed thus cast upon my Nation. The melancholy gravity natural to the Cherokee countenance seemed to deepen to the intensity of a fixed despair; young and old had the same solemn quiet, and even the rosy little girl bowed her head almost to the table, and her sweet sad face seemed shadowed with the wrongs of three generations of her race. To a question about the wishes of the full bloods, the speaker replied: " Well, the full bloods won't take any vigorous action. They are an indifferent sort of people. They just say, Let it alone. If the United States is a mind to break all treaties and all agreements, and break us up and destroy us, they'll do it anyhow. They can do it, and we arn't able to stop it. General Jackson swore by his Maker that this land should be ours 'while grass grew and water run,' and if they're a mind to break that, why they'll have to do it, that's all. That's the way the full bloods talk about it, sir. They won't do anything at all about it, just wait for it as if it was a storm or a streak of lightning." From this and other conversation I found there were three distinct parties among the Cherokees: First-the Territorial party: in favor of Oklahoma and white immigration, after setting apart, in fee simple, a considerable farm to each Indian. Second-the Ockmulkee Constitution party: in favor of sectionizing the land, giving each Indian his farm and the two railroads their grant, keeping all the rest in common as it is now, and uniting all the tribes under one government of their own (the Ockmulkee Constitution), with American citizenship and local courts; but no territorial arrangement and no white settlement. Third-The party in favor of the present condition. On further examination I found that the first party was very ï~~UP TO KANSAS. 361 small among all the tribes-or rather Nations-and that the members of it were regarded as traitors to their race; that the third party had as yet a large majority of the whole people, but that the Ockmulkee Constitution promised most for the Indians, and had the support of their most able men. After four days in the "Nation," I changed my mind and concluded to go northward, and do my railroad traveling while early spring was giving way to settled weather; for I found March the worst period to travel afoot or on horseback through the country. The sloughs are full, the streams are swollen, and the prairie roads muddy, though fast drying under the warm winds. About April 15th the delightful season begins in that section, for the period our Ohio poets celebrate as May lasts there from April till the middle or last of May. So I took the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Road northward for a brief trip into Southern Kansas. From Vinita it is but thirty miles to the Kansas border. The country along the way bears the same general character as below-gently rolling and moderately fertile prairies, with clear but somewhat sluggish streams, and occasional clumps of rather inferior timber. Near the road, in a small grove, a cabin was pointed out to me where the once noted Perry Fuller spent a winter in company with the "White Cherokee," Boudinot. Fuller had been engaged in some questionable transactions with the Indian ring, and had his reasons for wishing to live somewhat secluded for a while. Accordingly he and Boudinot stocked this cabin plentifully with the Democratic necessaries of life, and spent a few months very agreeably there, the place being then comparatively unknown, and visited by none but their particular friends. " White Cherokees" tell me there are many "tricks that are dark" being operated all along the border even to this day. The Territory swarms with United,tates Marshals and deputies, but white residents insinuate that nobody is arrested who cares to avoid it and is pecuniarily able to do so. As we near the edge of Kansas a sudden and surprising change occurs. From east to west appears an even line, with fence nearly all the way-on the south side an unbroken ï~~362 SOUTHERN KANSAS. prairie, on the north farms, orchards, nice dwellings and every evidence of civilization. If on Fourth Street, Cincinnati, the north side should remain as it is and the south side utterly vanish, leaving an unbroken plain as far as the eye could reach, the change would scarcely be more striking. There is no gentle, almost imperceptible fading away from cultivation to wilderness; it is a sudden jump from civilization to nature's wildness, a sight every hour presenting powerful arguments in favor of the white settlement policy for the "Nation." It is an argument the Kansians appreciate, and once over the border I found the popular view of the Indian question wonderfully changed. There is no casuistry in the Kansian view. They take the high ground that that land was put there to be fenced, broke, cultivated and improved; and if the Cherokees will not do it, "why, d-n 'em, the Government ought to let them have it that will (1do it." In my tour through Southern Kansas I everywhere observed, as I neared the Indian border, the hostility to that people steadily increasing. In Allen and the counties north, it took the form merely of a mild and rational objection to the neighborhood of such a people. A little further south, a stern opposition to showing any more favor to the race; and along the border, an intense, almost fanatical hostility, and an expressed desire to "exterminate eve;y red devil of 'em." The borderer has no faith whatever in Grant's policy, or any other policy looking toward the civilization of the Indian. He is an enthusiastic believer in the theory of "doomed races." Old Presbyterians who had lived upon the border here for ten or fifteen years, told me they had never seen a Christian Indian, had never had a reliable account of one; that they were convinced the natives were a reprobate race, and there never was one soundly and truly converted. The testimony of other denominations was about the same. The Kansian view continues: Why should the Indian be fed, housed and clothed at our expense, and at the same time be allowed to roam over an empire, keeping white men out of the best portion of the public domain? Why not make them citizens, with the same rights ï~~KANSAS V8. THE INDIAN. 363 to take and hold a given piece of land as other citizens? The answer, of course, is that when that thing is done the Indian's day is also done; he can never stand in competition with his white neighbor, and will pass away. The reply comes back: If the Indian cannot stand on his own personal merit, or with any native strength, then he has no right to stand at all; he must go sooner or later anyhow, and the cheapest and most mnerciful way is the best. The neighborhood of the savage is an aggravation, and the virtuous Kansian is indignant because the occasional Indian will steal, and will not be chaste and temperate. The pivotal point of much of this talk is the Indian Territory, which the Kansian thinks by far the richest and most desirable of all the sections yet within the disposition of the Government. The people of Kansas have seen altogether too much of that region to rest in peace. They have traversed it in the purchase of stock; they have driven cattle through it from Texas; they have pursued thieves into it, and the universal testimony, as given to me, is, "the finest country, sir, God ever made." On that country every young Kansian has his eye fixed. Young men living on the border already have their quarter-sections picked out in the Nation, ready to jump at a moment's notice,. rush over and take possession. People easily believe what they wish, and hence the universal opinion in Southern Kansas is that the Indian Territory will be sectionized and thrown open to settlement in three years at the farthest. Should such action be taken by Congress, then all former excitements in our Western settlement would be as nothing compared to the "rush" which would take place. At least half a million people, from Kansas to Pennsylvania, are waiting for some such chance; for, be it remembered, the good land still at the disposal of our Government is pretty nearly exhausted. Southwestern Kansas and the Indian Territory are the last I know of in this direction. East of the mountains the limits of pioneering are rapidly narrowing, and men will not settle in the interior valleys, between the Black Hills and the Sierras, and irrigate little patches, until every other chance is exhausted. Religious fanaticism ï~~364 OCKMULKEE OR OCKLAHOMA. alone induced the Mormons to colonize the interior while so much good land remained east of the mountains. Here is a region containing more good land unoccupied than the cultivatible area of Indiana. Let Congress pass an enabling act for that Territory, and in three months these roads leading southward from Kansas City and Lawrence would double their business; in six months it would quadruple. Throw open the Territory next January, and it would be ready for admission as a State by January, 1875. There is unoccupied land for a hundred thousand homesteads. Settle it with white men, and the lands of Southern Kansas would nearly double in value. During, the process of settlement, they would have a ready market at their doors for all kinds of provisions at high prices. A troublesome border question would be settled, and several border towns would take a new lease of life from the consequent trade. All the public lines through Missouri and Arkansas would largely increase their business, and Texas and Louisiana would share in the benefits. It will be seen that many powerful interests would unite even now in furtherance of the scheme, so many that Congress would probably resist but feebly. All the delegations in the Senate and House from Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas would be enthusiastic in its favor, and other border States would join from natural sympathy. All these railroad interests press strongly in the same direction. Thus the proposition would start in Congress, with a powerful party, and despite what Eastern members may think of the inherent merits of the scheme, or of natural justice toward the Indian, I am led to think that the Kansians anticipate rightly, and that the Territory will be open to settlement before 1875. These arguments are ever present to Congressmen and lobbyists, while the protest of the Indians yearly sounds more feeble; and unless the Indian nations can be persuaded to adopt Ockmulkee, they may soon be compelled to accept Ocklahoma. A little west of the railroad, where the beautiful Arkansas Valley widens southward into the Territory, hundreds are ï~~%-,,;r, k;:,, u ' x i a,. m.,.,,. a k..... _ _ 3..:. ME R.: - r s " _ - r, X, J,..,, < j s,. z z Â~G - ~, 4, - e,.., r,r r r } i r / Std 5 j t x. c r e r $. "y F " ï~~366 LOCAL POLITICS. d(lay and night, and have developed evidence of "astounding frauds." The "Corruptionists," (those who have run the city for the past two years,) point to "magnificent public works." The names of Tweed, Hall and Connolly are taken in vain every hour of the day, as bases of infamous comparison; and the last issue of the Chetopa Advance shows, by actual figures, that "Mayor Fox and his guilty coadjutors have wronged the city out of the enormous sum of ten thousand dollars." [Five exclamation points.] All the frauds in New York and Cincinnati are as nothing compared to this! A general meeting of the friends of reform, a few evenings before, was invaded by the " Corruptionists," a row occurred, pistols were freely displayed, and speakers were driven off the stand. The night of my stay J. W. Horner, editor of the Advance, was assaulted upon the street by a friend of Mayor Fox, and appeared at our table next morning with a beautiful set of "moss agates" (as we say in Utah), wearing them, however, upon his eyes instead of his shirt. It appeared as if "Bleeding Kansas" was about to bleed again in the cause of municipal reform. This is the age of investigation, and the Reformers of Chetopa had begun vigorously, having, besides their own municipal affairs, lodged indictments against most of the Senators and public men of the State. The ordinary rule of criminal law appears to have been reversed, and Kansas Senators are held to be guilty until they prove themselves innocent. I made a flying visit to Lawrence, where I had the good fortune to meet Mr. C. G. De Bruler of the Cincinnati TimesChronicle (now of the Evansville Journal), on the same mission as myself; and together we returned to the Indian country the first week in April. The "growing season" seemed fairly set in in Southern Kansas, fast tinging the prairies with a rich shade of green, and farmers everywhere were busy with the spring crops. We stopped for twenty-four hours at Parsons, the terminus of the Sedalia Division of the M. K. & T., and, we are positively informed, "the future metropolis of Southern Kansas," "railroad ï~~MUSCOGEE. 367 center," etc. For particulars see land circulars, and the columns of the Parsons Sun. We ran thence down the M. K. & T., passed Chetopa just at dark, and by midnight were ninety miles from the border at the new town of Muscogee, then the terminus of the passenger division, though the road was completed to Canadian River. I opened my eyes next morning upon a long, straggling, miserable railroad town, the exact image of a Union Pacific "city," in the last stages of decay. Some two hundred yards from the railroad a single street extended for nearly a quarter of a mile; the buildings were rude shanties, frame and canvas tents and log cabins, open to the wind, which blew a hurricane for the thirty-six hours I was there. If Mr. Lo, "the poor Indian," does in fact "see God in the clouds and hear Him in the wind," as the poet tells us, he has a simple and benign creed which gives him an audible and ever-present deity in this country, for the wind is constant and of a character to prevent forgetfulness. The weather is mild and pleasant enough, but walking against the wind is very laborious, and the howling so constant as to make conversation difficult inside a tent. I have observed in my travels that windy countries are generally healthful, but a different report is given here. They say bilious diseases of all kinds prevail, and complain particularly of fever, ague and pneumonia. We ate in the "Pioneer boarding car," and slept in another car attached; five of them being placed on a side track, anchored down and converted into a pretty good hotel. Here and about the depot were the citizens employed on the road. Of the town proper, a majority of the citizens were negroes, with them a few whites of doubtful "rep.," and perhaps a dozen Indians. The negroes were formerly slaves to the Indians, but slavery here was never severe, and they are little more their own masters thtan before. They earned a precarious subsistence, the women by washing and the men by teaming and chopping, and were all sunk deep, deep in poverty and ignorance. All day the wenches were strolling about in groups, bareheaded, barefooted, half naked, stupid-looking, ragged and ï~~368 MUSCOKEE. destitute. Here, as at Vinita, I saw no farms, no signs of cultivation. The Indians live off the railroad, in the timber, and along the streams. On the road is no enterprise, no improvemnient, no trade of account that I can see. Three grocery stores, a tobacco shop and a few meat markets completed the town. The rest were cabins, filled with greasy wenches and lounging bucks. Around the town, far as the eye can reach, extend fertile prairies of a rich green, rivaling Ohio meadows in May, while five miles northeast a heavy line of timber marks the course of the Arkansas. Muscokee, or, if spelled as pronounced, Mooskokee, is the aboriginal name for the tribe we call Creeks, and having decided to thoroughly inspect these Indian sovereignties, and their relations to each other and the General Government, we begin with these. ï~~CHAPTER XX. MUSCOKEE. Desperadoes-Laxity of Government-Out to the Agency-Stirring up a rattler -" A free nigger settlement "-Creek History-Tallahassee Mission-Delightful experiences-Creek education-System of government-Back to Muscogee -Reckless shooting-State of the region. S RAD. COLLINS is on a big spree, ain't he?" "You bet he's a chargin'." "Killed anybody yet?" "No, only had one fuss. Him and two other Cherokees went into the car last night with cocked six- shooters, and scared some Eastern fellers dirned near to death." "Mind the time he shot that ar marshal?" "I reckon I killed him right in front of this car. Shot at him twice afore. Fetched him dead that time. Then come in next day and give himself up. Tuck him down to Fort Smith, and turned him loose in a little while. Lord, that Court don't amount to nothin'. Anybody 'at's got money can git away thar." "Marshal's got a good thing, though." "I see you; best place to make money in the United States. These Deputies are the biggest rascals in the country. That Court is a disgrace to the American people, and 'll ruin us here yet." Such is a small part of the conversation we heard our second morning at the table of the dining-car in Muscogee. It was anything but encouraging to a man of peaceful proclivities. A few days after, I had my first view of this somewhat notorious Bradley Collins. I was sitting in the tent of an old Cherokee Woman in Muscogee, listening to her account of the expulsion 24 369 ï~~.,. -,; y ï~~CHEROKEE ROUGHS. 371 to throw a pistol in the air, causing it to make half a dozen turns, catch it as it fell, bring it instantly to a level, and strike an apple at thirty paces. He is reported "so quick on trigger," that all the other "shootists" in the country have an awe of him. He is known to have killed three men, and was then under bond of one thousand dollars to appear at the May term of the Federal Court in Fort Smith, for shooting at a United States Marshal with intent to kill. Many excuse him in the case where he actually killed a Marshal, as it was a private quarrel, in which both had sworn to "shoot on sight." Associated with him were a dozen or more young " White Cherokees," who were suspected of being robbers, and known to be drunkards and gamblers. A dozen such men can do the cause of Cherokee independence and nationality more harm than all the Rosses and Downings and their able compeers can do it good. hut we must take all we hear on the railroad with this important qualification: It is the interest and policy of these railroads to belittle the Cherokee government, and make its officers appear ag inefficient, and its few criminals as desperate and dangerous, as possible. And the roads themselves have added a vast amount of evidence in favor of their indictments against the Indian governments. The records are simply horrible. During the few weeks that the terminus and stage offices were at Muscogee and Gibson, sixteen murders were committed at these two places, and in a very short time five more were killed at the next terminus. One man was shot all to pieces just in front of the dining-car at Museogee, and another had his throat cut at night, almost in the middle of the town. It is true, Strangers, travelers and outsiders are rarely if ever troubled. These murders are upon their own class, and new-comers who are weak enough to mix in, drink and gamble with them. But a few days before our arrival a Texan reached Canadian Station with the proceeds of a cattle sale. He met these fellows at night, was seen at 10 o'clock with them, drunk and generous with his money; a few days after his body was washed ashore SOme miles down the Canadian. And yet I am assured, and I believe it, a man with a legitimate business, and who will let ï~~372 START FOR.THE AGENCY. whisky alone, can travel through this country as safely as in Cincinnati. The better class of Cherokees regard these railroad towns with perfect horror, and are never seen about them. These young desperadoes are permitted to enter the Creek nation, but not the Choctaw. The latter complain that the Creeks can only execute their law with their own people. The Cherokees, when one of their young men begins to lounge about the railroad towns, give him up as an outcast, or consider him the same as dead. Off the road, in their country, all was peace and quiet; on the road, gambling, rioting and death. The night "Brick" Pomeroy reached Muscogee three men were shot dead. Brick walked from the train to the diningcar, and spent the night; walked thence to the earliest morning train and left the Territory. The railroad men tell rather amusing stories of the way he "saw the country." After two days at this lively town, we concluded we had better see the Creeks at home, and started afoot for the Agency, traveling over a beautiful, rich prairie, gently rolling, rising from the river into long ridges, which occasionally terminated in sharp bluffs, crowned with pretty groves. The prospect was delightful by nature, and was not a little enlivened by scattered herds of cattle cropping the rich green herbage. In the balmy air, and with the fair prospect before us, we had quite forgotten the sort of country we were in, when a sight of some gliding creature in the road brought us to a halt, and on the instant a sudden whir-r-r-h-r-a-a-h and a sharp hiss caused the two Bohemians to execute a double step backward, which would have done credit to a stage gymnast. While we stood in doubtful expectation (fifty feet off), the reptile curled his shining folds into a circle about the width of a peck measure, and raised a head which said as plain as words, "Noli me tangere." He was of a pale purple color, with beautifully flowered spots of steel gray running in spirals from head to tail, which, as he moved in the bright sunshine, glistened in a manner that would have been beautiful in anything but a rattlesnake. We knew him by his popular description, for the principal amusement of the old settlers had been to tell us what ï~~4., ï~~374 BLACK CREEKS. log cabins, including some three or four acres. We saw no signs of Government buildings, and but one neat, commodious house. There we were directed to a double-log building, corresponding to those of the poorest farmers in Indiana, some distance from the square in a field, and that we found to be the Agency. Here we were welcomed by Major J. G. Vore and his assistant, Mr. A. S. Purinton, who have charge of the place during the absence at Washington of the Agent, Major Lyon. Major Vore has been in this country, and among the Indians of Texas and New Mexico, for twenty-seven years, and is a walking encyclopedia of aboriginal history. To him we are indebted for many courtesies and facilities in obtaining informniation. This settlement has the general appearance of an abandoned camp-meeting ground in the backwoods of Ohio, and is inhabited almost entirely by negroes, who have literally invaded the Agency. A continuous line of settlements and farms, or rather "patches," extends ten miles along the Arkansas, with a population of about a thousand negroes and perhaps a hundred Creeks. The soil in this vicinity is of inexhaustible fertility. I walked through fields of lately planted corn, and in the patches of thriving vegetables, and noted everywhere a loose and active soil, as black, as rich, and as easily cultivated as any part of the Wabash "bottoms." None but the poorest and lowest of the Creeks will live among these freedmen, and on this beautiful and fertile tract, capable of producing in amazing quantities all the fruits and grains of the temperate zone, a thousaind or two of these creatures live in dirt, ignorance and abject poverty, barely one remove from actual starvation. To go from this "free-nigger settlement" to a town of pure Creeks, as I did, seems like emerging from barbarism to enlightenment, for my opinion of the Creeks has been considerably raised since I have seen them at home. The appearance and conversation of the pure Creeks-above all, the practical results they are able to show--are calculated to give one high hopes of the race, and of the results of the present policy. They are quite different in appearance from the Cherokees---stouter, but not so elegant; ï~~ ï~~376 CREEK HISTORY. same language and using the same medicines and war-whoop. Embassadors were sent, the two tribes met, and, though their kinship could not be traced, they formally united, and, ever since, the two divisions have been known as Upper and Lower Creeks. The combined tribes moved eastward and attacked a nation afterward known as the Alabamas, then living on the western bank of the Mississippi. After a long and bloody contest the Alabamas were driven northward, and the Muscokees took possession of their towns. Many years after, they heard of the Alabamas, went after them and again defeated them, the latter this time crossing the Mississippi and settling somewhere between that and the Ohio. The next generation of Creeks renewed the war, crossed the Mississippi and again drove the Alabamas, who traveled a whole season toward the south, and settled in what is now probably the State of Mississippi. The Creeks also turned toward the south, and in the next generation.again came upon the Alabamas, and destroyed all but a remnant, who fled eastward and settled in a valley in the present State of Alabama. Learning that their hereditary enemies were again upon the move, they sent a deputation and sued for peace. The Creeks had from time immemorial pursued a policy of absorption similar to that of the ancient Romans. When they met a strange people, the first move was war. If the attacked fought desperately and were only conquered after a long struggle, the victors pronounced them worthy to be Muscokees, and adopted the remnant into their tribe. They now adopted the Alabamas, who maintain a separate race and language in the Creek Nation to this day. They slowly moved eastward, and there for the first time came into conflict with the Cherokees, who dominated the entire hill country of Southeast Tennessee, Western North Carolina, and Northern Georgia and Alabama. A long and bloody war followed. The Cherokees on their own ground, among the mountains, invariably defeated the Muscokees, and were defeated when they ventured into the country of the latter. The Creeks could neither conquer nor absorb the Cherokees, so a lasting peace ï~~THE CREEK TROUBLES. 377 was made, which has never been broken; they agreed to be "friends and brothers for ever," and to the Cherokee was granted the right of "elder brother in council." This seniority is acknowledged in general council now. The various tribes are considered as ranking in a peculiar order of relationship. The Delaware is considered the grandfather of all; the Creeks, Chickasaws, and some other southern tribes, as younger brother to the Cherokee, while the Choctaw is considered "the son of a younger brother." What became of his father the old Creeks were unable to inform me. From this point the historical account of the Creeks, as connected with the whites, begins. Traders penetrating their country from Pensacola named it, from the number of streams, the Creek Country, and gave the Muscokee Nation the title of Creek Confederacy. In the war of 1812 a portion joined the British, most of whom were driven away from the tribe into Florida. For many years all the dissatisfied or turbulent ran away and joined these exiles, to whom the Creeks gave the name of Seminole (Say-mee-no-lay), meaning "wild," or "outcast." The whites, meanwhile, crowded upon the Creeks, who assigned most of their land by the treaty of 1832, and had the remainder allotted in farms, one to each male Indian. The most outrageous frauds were then perpetrated upon these individual holders, who had expressed their wish to cultivate the land and live after the manner of the whites. Transferring Agents were appointed by the Government to see that no Indian parted with the title to his land through ignorance, as they always refused to sell or do more than lease. But the swindlers employed half-breeds or ienegade Indians to personate the actual owner and sign the deeds before the Agent. Hundreds of men had their lands sold who knew nothing of the transaction until called upon to give possession to some third party who had purchased of the swindler. The buyers called upon the Government to put them in possession of their lands; part of the Creeks rose in revolt, the militia was called out and a general war threatened. Some of the men thus dispossessed were brought to this country in chains. Many Creeks volun ï~~378 ON THE ARKANSAS. teered to help put down the troubles, believing that justice would be done. But in most cases it was not, and old citizens of the Nation now have title to Alabama lands and legal proof that they have never sold them. The entire tribe then agreed to sell, but were removed before they had time to do so, and some lands there are yet unsold to which the Indian title is acknowledged good. A considlerable tract which had been set apart " for orphans of the Creek Nation too young to make selection," had been covered by white squatters; but the Government paid them for it, and the money was invested as " Indian Trust Funds." A few Creeks arrived here in 1825; the main body came in 1836 and 1837. About the year 1807 a small band had gone to Texas, and were so harassed by the Texan Government that in 1840 and 1842 they came here. A small portion.still remain in Florida and Alabama, whom the Creek Nation are negotiating with, to induce them to remove here. So much by way of history, from the records and accounts of ld Creeks at the Agency. But we had not seen the best p)art of the Nation, and determined on a visit to,Tallahassee Mission School-a sort of college of the Muscokees. It is situated a few miles north of the Arkansas, on the high point between that stream and the Verdigris, and leaving the Agency at 3 P. x. on Saturday, we struck down the hill and into the forest which skirts the Arkansas. The river was nearly a mile wide, but all, except a channel of some three hundred yards in width, was quite shallow, and the whole stream running thickly with red mud. No one was in sight where the trail struck the river, but on the opposite shore we made out something which might be a ferry-flat; so the two correspondents jointly lifted up their voices and shouted, "Hallo-o-o! the boat!" for about the space of half an hour. One man appeared, took his seat in the boat and seemed to go to sleep. We shouted another space, and two more men took the boat, which one of them poled across. Meanwhile the sky was suddenly overcast with clouds, and by the time we were conducted l)y the ferryman to a small hut in the thicket, a furious thunderstorm broke upon us. The two ï~~...,..K. f. (........j.2. ï~~380 AT THE MISSION. Such a mistake is excusable in Indian children. We were cordially received and entertained by the Superintendent, Rev. W. S. Robertson, and family, which consists of himself and wife, two daughters, accomplished young ladies, and two small boys. Five of the oldest teachers had left within a few months, and Mr. Graham and lady were to leave in a few days, leaving the entire care of the Mission to Mr. Robertson and family. These changes were caused by differences as to management, both among the Creeks and the teachers; and sad as such a result is, it was much to be feared that the institution would close with that year. The building is a hundred and twenty-five feet long, with three stories; the lower for dining halls and residences for teachers, the middle for recitation rooms, the upper for sleeping apartments. Complete separation of the sexes is the rule; they do not even recite together, and never meet, except at meals and in the presence of the teachers. There is room, and the contract is made with the Creek Nation, for forty boys and forty girls; but only seventy scholars were present, ten having been lately expelled for violation of the rules. The building appears very old and dilapidated. It was erected in 1848, but badly damaged during the war, having been used part of the time as a hospital, and afterwards for a stable. The Mission was set in working order by 1849, and did more than any other agency towards the rapid advancement of the Creeks for the ten years before the war. It was founded by the agents of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, who made an equitable contract with the Legislature and Supreme Court of the Creek Nation. The Nation appropriated one-third of the cost, the United States Government one-third, and the Presbyterian Board one-third. The Board selects the teachers and pays their salaries, and attends generally to the intellectual and moral department of the school; the Creeks pay the expenses and attend to the material wants. For some years past they have appropriated six thousand dollars per year, but it has proved insufficient. The Nation chooses five Trustees who, in conjunction with the Superintendent of Publio ï~~DISCIPLINE OF THE SCHOOL; 381 Instruction for the Nation, manage all the affairs of the institution, and select from each of the forty Creek towns one boy and girl as scholars. Many of those who graduated here before the war are now the chief men of the Nation, and three of its five Trustees were once scholars in the Mission. The rules adopted by these Trustees are quite rigid; in particular, I venture to suggest that the provision forbidding the sexes to recite together, or meet in common literary exercises, is exceptionally severe, and according to my obervation in the Western States, impolitic. Incalculable have been the advantages of this Mission to the Creeks. Every year it sends out a graduating class, who scatter through the Nation, building up local schools, inciting a spirit of improvement, and rapidly elevating the intellectual tone of the people. I cannot repress a feeling of sadness at the thought that it may soon cease to exist. For twenty-three years---ever since 1849, with the exception of the war period-- Mr. Robertson and his devoted family have labored for the good of these people. He begins to see rich fruits on every hand. His former scholars are guiding the councils of the Creek Nation, teaching in her schools, and laboring at Washington City to avert the ruin threatened by the acts of a few traitors. And should this Mission have to appeal to its denominational friends in the States, I ask for them a favorable hearing; and surely no enlightened Presbyterian but must feel a pride in this fountain of light in what so lately was all darkness, or hesitate to extend aid to the work of these brethren who have made themselves voluntary exiles "for Christ's sake." Supper was called soon after our arrival; we took "visitors' chairs," and watched with much interest the orderly incoming of seventy young Creeks, of every age from eight to twenty-two. Nearly all were pure bloods, and the whole scene was a revelation to me. I had seen the savage painted Indian, and the miserable vagabond on the white frontier; but the civilized, scholarly Indian boy and girl presented a new sight. Supper over, a chapter was read and the school united in prayers and ï~~'I / \~ \ ï~~A CREEK SOCIABLE. 83 Natchees, Hitchitees, Alabamas and Creeks proper,-all represented in this school. A Uchee or Alabama can no more understand Creek than he can English; he learns that language here by association with other boys, and thus he must acquire two tongues in the Mission. Think of an Ohio boy having to learn two languages before his education proper begins. When the institution first started, this difficulty was much greater; now all the older scholars speaking English or Creek indifferently, the beginners pick it up rapidly. Like the common school system of our own people, this school tends to break down tribal prejudice and make the people homogeneous. Two Uchee boys, of the reading class, conversed awhile in that language at my request. It is entirely devoid of labials; for five minutes they touched the lips together but once. It also rarely requires the dentals; and thus to a Ucliee it is almost impossible to distinguish between b and p, d and t or a and e. This inability produces most ludicrous results in spelling. Pronouncing the words to be spelled orally, the teacher cannot possibly determine in the quick sound whether the spell ing is correct or not, that is, with Uchee beginners. But when they come to write it on the slate bat becomes p-e-t, hat A-e-d, bad b-e-t, and so on. Two bright Alabama boys were introduced who rejoiced in the names of Tecumseh Tiger, and Commodore Mcintosh, and gave us illustrations of their native tongue, though both spoke English fluently. Noting some sounds I thought similar to the Greek, I asked the boys to observe some poetry I would recite, and see if they recognized any of the words, or any sound. I then repeated the first ten lines o' the Iliad, and the boys promptly pronounced it Cherokee! They had heard the language often, they said, but did not understand it. On being told it was Greek, and being unable to distinguish between the 0 and C, they replied, " No Creek; must be Cherokee." My attempt at comparative philology was not a success. Meanwhile many of the girls had sent in a request "to see their brothers and cousins." They were admitted as well as a number of boys, and we had a regular Creek sociable. Some of the ï~~384 CREEK SONGS. scholars retain their Muscokee names, others adopt the English ones of a friend or teacher, and still others simply translate the Muscokee name into English. Of the last class, I was introduced to Thomas Deer, Eli Tiger, Nancy Postoak and Susan Berryhill. The Creeks are lively and affectionate, and yet their original language does not contain a single term of endearment! What a rascally poor language to make love in. Many have lately been literally translated from the English. I wish the reader could hear the rendering of the word "sweet-heart." Each of these words is long in the Creek, and combine literally but reversed, making it "heart-sweet," about eight syllables in all. Think of murmuring such a jawbreaker into a maiden's ear by moonlight. Mrs. Robertson and her daughters speak the Creek fluently, and represent it as difficult to learn. Its grammatical structure is perfect. Never did I spend a more delightful Sabbath than this at the Mission. The Sunday-school was worth coming a thousand miles to witness. Seventy Creeks, bright lads and really handsome girls, mingled their clear voices in sacred songs, led by Miss A. A. Robertson, with a finely toned organ, alternating Creek and English songs. All sang in the Creek, but not more than half in the English. Our alphabet has been adapted to the Creek by Mr. Robertson and an interpreter, and a series of books printed. On this plan the Creek hymn book is composed. All our familiar tunes are there set to Ceeek words, in a rather free translation of the original. My musical talent is small, but I felt all the enthusiasm of the occasion when the whole school (seventy sweet voices mingled) took up the air: "Shall we gather at the river, where bright angels' feet have trod." The words in Creek look anything but beautiful. Here they are, first verse: BEAUTIFUL RIVER. Uerakkon teheceyvr haks Cesvs em estolke fullan Cesvs liket a fihnet os Hoyayvket fihnet os. ï~~-,, ï~~386 DISTINGUISHED CREEKS. adopted, may not the humanitarians vary the question, and with confidence ask: Can not the Indian be civilized, and Christianized too? After two delightful days at the Mission, we continued our wanderings in the Creek country with an improved opinion of the people. When we learned of the Indians from white men and freedmen, or at the railroad towns we were discouraged; when we visited them at their homes, we thought their condition more hopeful. We have met but two of their leading men: Chicota, their principal chief, and John M. Moore, of the late delegation to Washington. The Creek country is in the form of an irregular triangle, making a long point eastward, and lying between the Arkansas and Main Canadian rivers, and extends westward nearly to longitude 97Â~. From east to west its greatest length is one hundred miles, and its western border, which is the only boundary forming a right line, measures about the same. Taking into account the winding of the rivers I estimate its area at six thousand square miles; the authorities at 3,7{0,000 acres. Of this area about one-third is barren, or comparatively so, consisting of spurs from the west mountains and sand ridges. The remainder is for the most part exceedingly well watered and fertile. The population consists of ten thousand Creeks and four thousand freedmen, a proportion slightly over two to the square mile, making this by far the most populous of any part of the Indian Territory. It is considerably more than twice as thickly settled as the Choctaw country, and nearly three times that of the Cherokee; but the long western strip of the latter greatly reduces its average. On this soil we see every kind of vegetable in rapid growth, and increasing quantities of stock, thriving on the natural productions of the earth; while almost every Creek dwelling is the center of a beautiful grove of fruit trees, at this delightful season green with springing leaves or white and red with peach and apple blossoms, and redolent with the sweet scents of advancing spring. But when winter destroys this natural beauty, I suspect the scene is dreary, for little has ï~~AN INDIAN REPUBLIC. 387 yet been done in the shrubbery line, and neat as most of the log-houses are, they would look bare and mean alone. The government of the Creek Nation is republican in form, but with our notions we should call it an elective monarchy. For though nominally any one may be elected to the highest office, yet really they seem to be confined to a few families. The entire "Constitution and laws" are printed in a small pamphlet, which would make about ten pages of this volume. The Criminal Code, definitions and all, consists of seven sections of from three to five lines each, covering two-thirds of one page. The law-making power is vested in a House of Kings and a House of Warriors: the members of each are elected for four years, by general vote of all the mali Creeks over eighteen years of age. Each of the forty towns sends one member to the House of Kings; each town one to the House of Warriors, and an additional member for each two hundred citizens. The Kings elect their own President, the Warriors their own Speaker-in-Council; each house elects its own interpreter, and all speeches made in English are forthwith rendered aloud into Creek, and vice versa. The records are kept in English. The Executive of the Nation is styled the Principal Chief, his Vice the Second Chief; they also are elected for four years each, and thus the entire Government is liable to a complete change at each election. The judiciary begins with the High Court, which consists of five persons, chosen by the Council, for four years. They have original jurisdiction in all cases involving over one hundred dollars, and appellate jurisdiction from lower courts in criminal matters. The Nation is divided into six districts, in each of which a judge is elected by the qualified voters; they have jurisdiction of all cases involving sums under one hundred dollars, and local criminal jurisdiction. Of course, with such a brief and simple Criminal Code, there is much left to the discretion of the Judge, and as far as a white man can see, he seems to have almost absolute power. The death penalty is often inflicted. Each district elects a "light horse company," onsisting of one lieutenant and four privates; these act as sheriff and deputies under orders of the District Courts, and are ï~~388 - SEVERE LAWS. subject to a general call from the principal chief to execute the mandates of the High Court, or suppress extensive disorders. In hundreds of instances these light-horse companies and the District Judge simply make the law as they go, calling Court on each particular case, following the statute if there is one, and if not, assigning such penalty as in their judgment fits the case. The laws are singularly plain and unambiguous. No space is wasted in definitions, it being taken for granted, apparently, that everybody knows the meaning of such terms as "steal" and i murder." Section 4 of the Criminal Code reads: "Be it enacted, That should any person or persons be guilty of rape, he shall for the first offence receive fifty lashes; for the second offence he shall suffer death." This crime is now very rare, or, the Creeks tell me, entirely unknown. I should say it was entirely unnecessary. The Creek women are of good average repute for chastity, but the freedwomen are quite the reverse, and with them associate a few of the baser sort of Creek girls. Section 5 reads: "Be i enacted, That should any person or persons be guilty of stealing, for the first offence he shall receive fifty lashes; for the second offence one hundred lashes, and for the third offence he shall suffer death." This penalty is by shooting, irrespective of the amount stolen, and is often inflicted. Women who attempt or assist at infanticide or abortion, receive publicly fifty lashes on the bare back. This crime, formerly common, is now almost or quite unknown. A healthy pride of increase and" nationality has taken root in the Nation, and before the war the Creeks were increasing about as fast as white communities of the same size. Their progress from 1850 to 1861 was unprecedented. All their rude shanties or wigwams disappeared and were replaced by neat and comfortable frame and log houses; their old wooden plows were discarded, and most of them became good farmers. They were rich in fruit and hogs. The war came and ruined them. Only within the past four years have they again been sensibly improving. The Nation now has thirty-one common schools, mostly taught by native teachers, and three High Schools or Missions. These last are ï~~.:. v..,,.;41 i l,. -... _ r... i. ':.. ï~~390 "STUPID SANDS." Simple as is the form of government, the Nation did not succeed in establishing it without a rebellion and period of reconstruction. I have spoken of the old and main division of the Nation into Upper and Lower Creeks. Under the old aboriginal system each of these was entitled to a chief and minor officers; there were civil chiefs and war chiefs, and a vast multitude of offices, three or four times as many as at present. This continued with various modifications until 1867, when the Constitution was adopted. Two-thirds of the old dignitaries had to go out of office, and those who failed of election under the new system were properly disgusted. Among them was an arch-plotter, named Ok-ta-ha-sars-ha-go, literally translated "Stupid Sands." He raised a company of several hundred, appeared at the Council Ground on Inauguration Day, and declared in favor of the old system, announcing his intention to break up the new Council by force. The Chief elect, Chicota, sent away the women and children, put the town in a state of defence, and called out his supporters, who soon considerably outnumbered the others. Sands then appealed to the freedmen on questions of loyalty, but they failed to respond. His party dwindled away without a fight, and Major Lyon, Creek Agent, succeeded in reconciling most to the new Government. Sands then began to intrigue at Washington, and appealed to the people at home, but was overwhelmingly defeated in 1871, Chicota being re-elected. Sands died while we were in the Nation, his death being hastened, the people said, by disappointment. Just west of the Creeks lie the Seminoles, who are at this time in great distress, for the following reasons: The main body " were induced to leave Florida," and settle here, soon after the Creeks came. The latter acknowledged the old kinship, and a close friendship was established. By treaty of 1866 the Creeks ceded all the western part of their country to the United States, "upon which to locate other Indians." The Seminoles at once sold all their first reservation to the United States, at fifteen cents an acre, and bought two hundred thousand acres of these "ceded lands," next to the Creek line, at fifty cents an acre. ï~~F A. s a j J3 j f ) y y. T a..V, ï~~392 PROGRESS AND HOPE. and the Nation is moving to bring them out. The people of the Alabama, Cowassartee, and Boluxshee towns (of the Creek Nation) tell us that they have a large number of relatives and friends now wandering in Southern Texas. These are the last of a detachment who were part of the "Old Nation" east of the Mississippi. They left there between 1807 and 1812, when the Nation first came into contact with the whites, and moving by successive stages westward, settled between the Sabine and Naches Rivers, then a part of Mexico. In 1839 they were forcibly expelled from there by the new Republic of Texas. They started hither; a few reached this Nation, more settled among the Choctaws, and about five hundred, totally destitute of horses and provisions, were obliged to remain in Texas. Since then they have been outcasts and vagabonds, driven to and fro among the whites, always longing to reach this section, but never able to come. The Creeks have kept up regular coinmmunication with them for years, and now propose to petition Congress to bring them here. The main body has now been here thirty-five years, in which time they have totally abandoned idolatry, become good stock raisers and tolerably good farmers; half educated one generation, and made arrangements to fully educate the next, become eminently peaceable and a little more than self-sustaining. Can we not afford to leave this section to them one generation longer-at least until we have settled and improved all the waste places of the two States and the Territory north of it? At noon of a bright April day we return to the railroad at Muscogee, to find matters worse than ever. As we sit down to dinner in the boarding-car, a half-blood Creek, crazy with smuggled whisky, is galloping up and down the row, brandishing a huge revolver, and threatening death to all opponents. At one moment hie rides his horse into a shop, emerges the next, and'gallops upon a group of wenches, who scatter with a chorus of screams. A file of soldiers from a detachment on the road appear on the scene, arrest and disarm him, and the town returns to its normal condition of listlessness andl idle chatter. Severe penalties are prescribed against selling whisky in the ï~~SMUGGLING WHISKY. 393 Territory, and that which is smuggled in is the vilest compound known to the trade, familiarly called "tarantula juice," from the most deadly insect in the country. A few traders make this smuggling a regular business, the partner in Kansas shipping whisky to the partner here in cases marked "eggs," "tobacco," etc. An old acquaintance of mine in Chetopa told me, merely as a matter of news, that he followed the business a year before being detected. He was then arrested and taken to Fort Smith, Arkansas, Federal Court headquarters for this country; he brought his case to trial at once, "before the evidence could accumulate," and got off with a loss of four hundred dollars fine and costs. He returned at once to Chetopa and engaged again in the business, without the loss of a week's time. Being better posted and more wary; he run the business six months longer without being suspected, and retired respectably, with large profits. A small company of soldiers is stationed here, under command of a Lieutenant, and others at various points in the Territory; and all of them look ever more listless and uninteresting than soldiers generally on the plains, which is saying quite enough. Officers are abundant enough all over the Territory, but I have met no one who could give me any clear information about the condition of civil government. Says an old Southern physician, who has lived here ten years: "The fact is, there is no government actually, but lots of trials. If both parties are Indians-that is, have ' head rights' in the Nationit's tried by Indians under their laws; if either's a white man, it's tried at Fort Smith, and that's just no trial. There is no collision of governments, for the Federal authorities don't care a d--n about the country. My protection and government is in these stone walls, a shot-gun and six-shooter. If these Creeks was not just the most quiet, peaceable people on earth, a decent man-couldn't live here. These infernal white scalawags would ruin the country. Yes, sir; there's plenty of law and lots o' trials, but no government." Here, as about Vinita, we hear much of the proposed Territory and reform of the land tenure. This last, it is evident, ï~~,9 -... T.... p.. - ~ s n -.. x TF _ S -... 0 - a,,, c,z.., c s L i y 4. - y *.r d _., v e _ i i _ 3::;,.,,a..,,... v.-.... -.w..,.i - _2 ï~~y ~joji jkI I ~I p I { / (lif M{J X ~ AO~4 { 1Y 6- fA j 0 4 ï~~CHAPTER XXI. THE INDIAN TERRITORY. Railroads-The Thirty-fifth Parallel Route-Down to the Canadian-In the Choctaw Nation-Tandy Walker, Esq.-Secretary Delano visits the TerritoryTramp to Fort Gibson-" White Cherokees " again-An Indian feud-At Widow Skrimshee's-" Pikes," on the animal migration-Tahlequah-Cherokee documents-Curious records-History of the Nation-Summary of the Indian Territory. WO railroads traverse the Indian Territory: the Missouri, fKansas and Texas, from north to south, averaging forty miles from the eastern border; and the Atlantic and Pacific, from east to west, about as far from the northern border. The A. and P. still languishes, being completed no farther than Vinita; but is a road of considerable pretensions. Its nominal terminus is on the Pacific Coast. The "thirty-fifth parallel" road and the entire line has been surveyed through the Indian Territory and New Mexico, and now its agents speak of San Diego, California, as the real terminus. We are assured " there is no snow on the line at any season of the year," meaning, I suppose, none to do any hurt, which I am quite prepared to believe. But I am not yet prepared to judge between it and the better known (at present better supported) El Paso route. The M. K. and T. runs from Sedalia, Missouri, to Fort Scott, Kansas; thence, southwestward to Parsons, where it joins the other branch running southeast from Emporia. The two form a complete Y at Parsons; the lower stem continues nearly straight south through the Indian Territory, and is being extended to connect with the Texas Central, and so form a continuous line to the Gulf. We were off from Muscogee at 7 o'clock A. MI. to see the S 396 ï~~CANADIAN RIVER. 397 r"maining forty miles of road completed, then a little south of the main Canadian. The country traversed is Creek, of the same general character as that heretofore described-the low lands very rich, and the higher knolls and ridges too light and sandy, "quick" for pasturage and producing an early growth of grass, but too thin for cultivation. We cross Little Canadian or North Fork, within a mile of the Methodist Mission, which is reported in a flourishing condition, but we lacked time to visit it. Two miles down the river is situated North Fork town, an important Creek village. We hear that a white man has just been mortally wounded in an affray there, all the parties being railroad followers. Between the two Canadians the piece of road is some seven miles long, and midway thereon was then the nominal terminus and the station for the El Paso Stage and Mail Line. We pause here an hour. Dusty and travel worn pilgrims are coming in from all points in Western Texas, and spruce, clean looking people from civilization, starting out on long and toilsome journeys through the sandy plains between here and the Rio Grande. Thence to Main Canadian we traverse a dense forest; all the point between the two rivers is heavily timbered, and choked with underbrush. The main stream is now wide and rapid, apparently thick with red mud and sand; but after standing a few minutes, it is sweet enough to the taste, and close examination shows the stream to be tolerably clear, the red showing through the water from the bottom. The bridge here was finished several months before, and about the time the track was laid the southern abutment gave way. It was found that the stone used, from a neighboring quarry, was entirely unfit, falling to pieces in the water; and the entire pier had to be rebuilt. We went over on the first locomotive which crossed; hitherto construction cars had been shoved across singly by hand. After our passage the engine brought over a very heavy train loaded with iron, and the bridge was then officially pronounced safe. We had observed, with a slight uneasiness, that Brad. Collins and his party came down on our train, and it was generally ï~~tAA NN RK. -r t ï~~CHOCTAW NATION. 399 log-house," built in the Southern style, with open porch or passage between. Here we took dinner, and found him a gentleman of unusual intelligence and enterprise. He tells us he is the only Choctaw in the district who is in favor of sectionizing and admitting white immigration; and there are not probably a hundred in the Nation who favor it. He was once a leading man, but is now almost ostracized for his vote and opinions. He has five white men in his employ; and, like the Logan who "had none to mourn," he is "pointed at as the friend of the whites." By the laws of these Nations, white men can reside here by being employed by a legal citizen, in which case the citizen is responsible for their misdemeanors; or he can pay a license and take out a "permit" for his white emnploy6s, and the Nation takes the responsibility. The Choctaws and Chickasaws, though marked on the map in separate divisions, are now united. They have one agent and one government, and the citizens have equal rights in the whole country, which is known officially as the Choctaw Nation. This Nation is bounded on the south by Red River, and on the north by the Main Canadian and Arkansas, both running nearly eastward. Its east and west boundaries are right lines, being the border of Arkansas and longitude 98Â~. Thus its length is exactly two hundred miles, and its width from north to south will average a little more than half as much, being varied by the windings of the rivers, giving a total area of nearly twenty-one thousand square miles, or two-thirds the size of Indiana. All the southern third of this area is of great average fertility, as reported by all visitors, consisting of the rich valley of Red River and its many tributaries. In the center, particularly toward the west, are many mountain spurs and sand ridges; while the immediate neighborhood of the Canadian and Arkansas is very fertile, but yields soon to high, rolling prairie, valuable only for pasturage. This country, equal to two or three New England States, and of greater average fertility, has a population of 22,000; fertile land equal to one-third of Indiana, with the population of an average county. Of its people, 16,000 are Choctaws and 6000 Chick ï~~ ï~~SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR. 401 were profusely displayed on horses, carriages, and the Indians' persons. The amount of fine clothes and jewelry sold by traders here at that time seems incredible. The war swept them clean; literally broke up and ruined them, leaving absolutely nothing but the land. Before the war Mr. Walker was accountedl a millionaire. He began again, in 1865, with fifty dollars and one saddle-mule. He was ahead of his neighbors only in this: his fifty dollars were in greenbacks, theirs were in Confederate notes. Those who "went south" were even worse ruined than those who "took the Federal side." Some, it is said, died of grief and despair, on returning home in 1865. But most went resolutely to work, and are once more prospering. But many years will be required for those vast herds of cattle to be renewed. This neighborhood has every sign of a prosperous community of civilized farmers. On the whole, I rather like the Choctaws. While we were "locating tracks" through the Choctaw Nation, the Secretary of the Interior and his party came to inspect the railroad, remaining one night at the Canadian. Being in the interior, we failed to see them; but on our return found the community jolly over the party's rich experience. The day they reached the end of the M. K. and T. tracl' a man was seized at 4 P. M., near the cars, by four robbers, and relieved of eighty dollars in gold, and that night one was shot dead within a hundred yards of their sleeping car. Mr. Woodard, Superintendent of the road, accompanied the party, and was rather lively in his jokes upon the employds for complaining of these ruffians and asserting there was danger on the road. That night one of the party was taken sick, and Mr. W. started outit to look for a doctor. By mistake he poked his head into the tent of a gambler, named Callahan, who happened to be a little out of humor. He thrust a six-shooter into Mr. Woodard's face, and exclaimed rather pointedly: "Air ye lookin' for ie? I'm ready if y'are." Of course such intention was promptly disclaimed, and the Superintendent made good time off the ground. The Secretary was considerably stirred up, and issued some 26 ï~~402 A REBELLIOUS TEXAN. stringent order against "intruders in the Indian country." A lieutenant was sent to the terminus with a squad of cavalry, under orders to notify the "intruders," and shoot all who refused to leave within twenty-four hours. AlPl the railroad business had been moved from Muscogee to Canadian River, and all the roughs who were able had followed. On the afternoon of a rather sultry day my companion and I left the abandoned town and struck out afoot northeastward for Fort Gibson. Three miles out brought us to the old Texan road, original wagon road and cattle trail from Western Texas to Kansas City and Leavenworth. Here we were overtaken by a grizzly, weatherbeaten old Texan, with a light load for Baxter Springs, Kansas, who politely asked us to ride. As we dropped valises in the wagon, he asked, with what sounded like an eager tone: "Got any whisky in them?" "No," was the answer, with expressed regrets. "Ef ye had, ye'd walk, you bet; wouldn't have you get in here with one pint of whisky for five hundred dollars!" This radical temperance platform in this Jatitude excited our astonishment, and we called for an explanation. He gave it thus: "A burnt child dreads the fire. One pint, yes, one dram o' whisky 'd cost me this hull load. These Deputy Marshalsd-n the thievin' rascals, I say-they'll search y'r wagon any minnit, and if they find one drop, away goes the hull load to Fort Smith, and d-n the haight of it d'y ever see again. One trip a nice lookin' chap enough asked me to ride. He got in, and pretty soon pulled a flask. 'Drink,' says he. 'After you,' says I. Well, in less 'n ten minutes comes the marshals and grabbed us. If they find a drop even on a man as is ridin' with you, they take everything, and nary dollar do you ever git. Why, that feller was in with 'em, of course. They seize everything they can git a pretence for, and then divide. There won't anybody but a scamp or a rough take such an office as Deputy Marshal in this country. They're all on the make, and in with these roughs. That's what I say." I would fain hope the old man was mistaken in his general ï~~ARKANSAS FERRY. 403 estimate of Federal officers in this Territory, but there is too much evidence of this nature to permit me to believe the charge entirely false. That most outrageous frauds have been perpetrated by these fellows I cannot doubt; I can only say that the people generally, both white and red, credit a few of the marshals with honesty and official probity. Three miles with our slightly rebellious Texan friend brought us to the Arkansas River, and to a steam ferry-boat, which caused in me unbounded astonishment. I could scarcely have believed there was such a thing in this country. But, indeed, this was a very important road before the railroad came, and here, at the mouth of Grand River, is the head of navigation on the Arkansas. Steamers run up the Grand River, which has back-water from the Arkansas, three miles or more, and land at Fort Gibson. By a series of dams and locks, like those on Green River, Kentucky, I am convinced the Arkansas could have slack-water navigation a hundred miles or more above this. The waters of Grand River and those of the Arkansas, show like two broad bands, one misty blue and the other dirty red and yellow, in the main channel as far as we can see below their junction. The residents tell us the two streams, the clear and the muddy, run side by side for nearly twenty miles, when a series of riffles and sharp turns mingles them freely in a fluid of pale orange tint. We landed below the mouth of Grand River and walked some three miles across a rich bottom, containing many nice and well-cultivated farms, the homes of Cherokees. The ferry landing is the joint property of two "White Cherokee" widows, who rent it for forty-five hundred dollars per year. Not a bad thing for gentle savages. Their neat white frame cottages, and those of their neighbors, embowered in white blossoming fruit trees, and surrounded by handsome grain fields, look like anything but the homes of a barbarous people. Arrived at Gibson, we find quarters at the inevitable "double log-house" hotel, with open porch, veranda and multitudinous additions, kept, and well kept, too, by an old Penasylvania Dutchman, with a "White Cherokee" wife. Our host, Mr. ï~~404 FORT GIBSON. Kerr, is a noted man in the Nation, and has been here ever since 1833. Before that he was a hunter and trapper in the Rocky Mountains, and has camped many a night on the spot where Salt Lake City now stands. He was full of questions about that region, and called to mind a dozen landmarks I had seen, where, in his time, was an unsettled wilderness, and where he then thought gold and silver would some day be developed. Here we rested till afternoon of the next day, visiting, in the meantime, Mr. Cunningham, Judge Vann and Hon. A. Rattling Gourd, prominent men of the Cherokee Nation. We found the town disturbed and the intelligent Cherokees in deep distress. For bad news had just reached them, news of an event that to their minds seemed to threaten civil war and consequent destruction to Cherokee nationality. As we heard the story at Gibson, it ran that a Cherokee Court, while in session trying a man for murder, had been attacked by enemies of the prisoner, led on by white men, and that ten or a dozen were killed on each side. This had happened in Going Snake District, north of Tahlequah, so we determined to push on to the latter place and learn the official report. Fort Gibson takes its name from the former military post here, disestablished soon after the war. Most of the buildings remain in tolerably good order, and all are occupied for various business purposes. The town has half a dozen nice frame and brick houses, and some fifty neat log houses, probably three hundred inhabitants, two good hotels, and an air of enterprise. It is the entrepot of a large agricultural district, and the location of a Cherokee Court, and Secretary Delano has decided that a term of the United States District Court shall be held there for the Indian Territory, instead of at Fort Smith, Arkansas. This would be a most important reform. Business, which has hitherto tended toward the eastern border, will now set toward the railroad, and it is best for white, black and red to have the Court. which takes cognizance of inter-race difficulties, in the - center of the country. The distance to Tahlequah is twenty-two miles, which we must divide in two journeys. "Better stop at Widow Skrirnm ï~~lj x x. r, 5. d! a 0 R re j lot, ï~~406 "4 8KRIMSHEE." Common sheep, what the Kansas folks didn't steal, tuck the scab and died. Was in favor of Ockmulkee Constitution, opposed to Oklahoma. Did not see what white men wanted here, with so much good land up north yet. Reckoned they was like spoiled children-always wanted a thing ten times as bad if they knowed they oughtn't to have it," etc. We traveled on in the cool of the evening, and at dark reached Skrimshee's completely fagged out. We found the widow a dark Cherokee, social and intelligent, with a handsome half-blood daughter, married to a white man. With a pleasing Southern accent she related her experience in the "old Nation in Geaugey," and removal here. Her memory ran back to a time when a few of the Cherokees still practiced some heathen rites; but the tribe was always rather advanced in some respects. For a hundred years they have cultivated corn and tobacco, and occupied well built log houses. She inquired with great interest of flon. James Ashley, who stopped at her house when on his special mission here; and if the honorable gentleman should read this volume, he is hereby assured of Mrs. Skrimshee's continued high regard. Morning showed this to be a place of great natural beauty. A gentle slope toward a clear stream is covered by fine timber; behind the house rises a beautiful mound, and at the foot of the slope is an immense spring of cold, clear water. At some distant day this will be a place of fashionable resort. Near the spring, which is enlarged to a rod square in the solid rock, were encamped a number of families en route from Texas to Missouri. The young man of the house, who had lived there five years, assured us there was a considerable number who moved once a year, raising one crop in Missouri and the next in Texas, dodging the tax-gatherer, trading along the way a little and living many weeks on the road. Some of them he knew by sight who had passed three or four times. As the wagons rolled out I scraped acquaintance with the chief man of the outfit, our entire conversation being just this: Myself-" Moving back, eh?" He-" No, by G--d, a movin' right straight ahead." I felt that I had obtained some inbformation, and forbore. ï~~Â~ 9, /i ï~~408 WILLIAM BOUDINOT. ears, and the familiar music of the "Cornflower Waltz" strikes us with a strange mixture of the odd and pleasing. It is a day of merriment with the "White Cherokees," for Mrs. Thomson's youngest daughter was married yesterday to a white young man, son of an old missionary, and we arrived in the middle of the "infair." The bride is the prettiest girl I have yet seen in the Nation. Her one-fourth Cherokee blood makes her an olive brunette, to be voted as of rare beauty anywhere. The musician we heard proved to be William Boudinot, a rather noted citizen, editor of the Cherokee Advocate, brother of the Eli~s Boudinot who has been active at Washington in pushing forward the Oklahoma Bill. William is earnestly opposed \o that measure, and to white immigration, but advocates the Ockmulkee Constitution and allotment of land-that each Cherokee may hold his own share in fee simple. A few of the more intelligent agree with him, but the mass of the Nation are equally opposed to both plans. They are suspicious of all changes. To them sectionizing and allotment look only like cautious schemes to admit more white men; they are ignorant alike of the minor points in Ockmulkee and Okl:homa,* and alike distrust both. The Advocate is the official and national organ of the Cherokee Nation, and is a handsome, well edited sheet. The Choctaws have a small paper called the Vindicator. These are the only journals published in the Territories. Here we receive the official account from Judge Sixkiller and the Sheyiff of Going Snake District, of the late terrible riot there; also, the account of the other side, published in an Arkansas paper. It appears, from both accounts,. that the prisoner Proctor, some time ago, shot at a white man, missed him and killed his wife, a Cherokee woman. As to the murder, both parties being Cherokees, the United States Court left that to the Nation; but a warrant was issued against Proctor for shooting at the white man "with intent to kill." Of course the greater crime took precedence, and the Cherokee Court proceeded to trial. It was whispered about that Proctor would be * A Cherokee compound word signifying "The State of Red Men." ï~~A CHEROKEE FEUD. 409 cleared, and the friends of the woman gathered, expressing their determination, to kill him as soon as released. The Courts, fearing an attack, had a strong guard. Meanwhile United States Marshal Owens came with a warrant to arrest Proctor as soon as the Cherokee Court should discharge him, and most unwisely yielded to the clamors of the party hostile to the prisoner, took them as his posse and started for the Courthouse. As he neared the door, a nephew of the murdered woman sprang in before him and pointed a gun at the prisoner. The latter knocked it down, when it was discharged into the floor. The guards then fired upon the attacking party, and a general battle ensued. The leader of the attack and Marshal Owens were mortally wounded, and seven of the outside party shot dead. Judge Alberti, the prisoner's.counsel, was killed in his chair, as were two of the jurymen. Several more inside were wounded, including the Judge, Sixkiller, and the prisoner. The total loss is set down at eleven killed and eighteen wounded, two of them mttally. This terrible affair was one of sad import to the Cherokees. Their Courts had usually run with so little difficulty that the slanders of their enemies had died for lack of any basis in fact. This occurrence, they feared, would be heralded over the country and at Washington as an act of resistance to law, and be made a powerful argument against their independence. We had a delightful rest of three days at the capital of the Cherokoes. The town reminds me of the better class of country villages in the interior of Indiana-not quite so well built, perhaps, but beautiful, with flower gardens, orchards, and cultivated grass plats. The place is rich in historic interest. For twenty years all books, papers, and documents having relation to these people have been collected; and what with excursions, talks with the young people, and reading Indian literature, we had a season of novel enjoyment. The Cherokees represent the best history and the hope of the Indian race, as regards civilization, justice from the whites, and a future. If they are a failure, the race is doomed. They have been an organized Nation, with Constitution, elected ï~~f ",., 1 E L j 1il 4,' y,. r A. ' 4 a A f Ys' 5 (y t" z cL, e s.i i N 1 ' f N P, f; Y i, 5. F,.t Jf N A" v / f t 8 u ' _,f i r(; ' f. _,Â~ r A a Lr i b. U.. I ï~~411 A number of acts following bear the signatures of "Turtle-athome, Speaker of Council," and Ehnautaunaueh. The grammnar is often bad, but the meaning clear and explicit, and the punishments prescribed very severe. An address, issued May 6, 1817, sets forth that "Fifty-four towns and villages have convened in order to deliberate on the situation of our Nation;" and ends by proposing a "Set of Rules," or new Constitution, of six articles, "as a form for the future government of our Nation." The Constitution would Cover about two pages of this work, and appears to have been unanimously adopted. The new government had been in operation but a few years before it was troubled by "rings," and a huge Credit Mobilier scheme, darkly hinted at in an act passed October 30, 1819, beginning thus: Whereas, The Big Rattling Gourd, William Grimit, Betsey Brooms the Dark, Daniel Griffin and Mrs. Lesley have made certain promises, &c.: Be it now, therefore, known,...... The above persons are the only legal proprietors and a privileged company to establish a turnpike, leading from Widow Fools', at the forks of Hightower and Oastinallah, to the first creek east of Joha Field's, known by the name Where-Vann-was-shot, etc. An "investigation" resulted, of course, but it,proved that no member of the House of Chiefs or House of Warriors had any stock in the turnpike. The next act divides the fifty-four towns into eight judicial districts, naming a council house for each; and full provisions were subsequently made for light-horse companies, to serve as a posse, under command of the sheriffs. From such feeble beginnings the organization of government appears to have proceeded much as among other people until 1825, when the grand agitation began for the removal of the Cherokees. Fifty acts or more appear, relating to encouraging missionaries, establishing schools, preventing the woods being set on fire, the return of estrays, etc; then most of the laws refer to their dealings with the whites. A more complete Constitution was adopted in 1827; and, in 1829, an official paper established, edited by Elias Boudinot and Stephen Foreman, and known as the Cherokee Phenix. Meanwhile part of the tribe had removed to Arkansas Territory; and their laws, "Entered by request of ï~~412 CHEROKEE ARCHIVES. the old Chief, John Jolly," and signed by Walter Webber, Black Fox, Too-cho-wuh, and Spring Frog-wonder if he was in that Credit Mobilier?-are bound up with the rest. The Eastern and Western Cherokees reunited in their present country in 1839, and the "Act of Union" is signed by James Brown, Te-ke-chu-las-kee, George Guess (Se-quo-yah), Jesse Bushyhead, Lewis Ross, Tobacco Will, Thomas Candy, Young Wolf, Ah-sto-la-ta and some others. At the conclusion is this endorsement: "The foregoing instrument was read, considered, and approved by us, this 23d day of August, 1839: Major Pullum, Young Elders, Deer Track, Young Puppy (!), Turtle Fields, July, The Eagle, The Crying Buffalo, and a great number of respectable old settlers and late emigrants too numerous to be copied." A new and much more elaborate Constitution was adopted, and among the names of the legislators appear O-kan-sto-tah Logan, Young Wolf, Bark Flute (probably a musical orator), Oo-la-yo-a, and Soft Shell Turtle. Thence the acts continue with an odd mixture of the ludicrous and severe; but when we come to their history as connected with the whites and the Government, the record ceases to be amusing. Far back of the time when white men met them, the traditions of the Cherpkees are so well connected and consistent that they deserve the name of history. Between five hundred and a thousand years ago the aborigines of Western North Carolina found themselves crowded upon by a superior race moving southward along the eastern base of the Blue Ridge, a branch of the great Waupanuckee, to whom the whites gave the name of Lenni-Lennape, or Delawares. By their account the Powhatanese, the race of Pocahontas and Opechancanough and other noted tribes, are part of the same stock. After a brief period of warfare they established themselves in an irregular square consisting of Western North Carolina, East Tennessee, and Northern Georgia and Alabama, and were considered as "the younger sons of the Delawares." Some twenty years before our Revolution, occurred their first general ï~~.. p:.,.,. ' a,, mx,. ~ r, A, w i,t <;,' <., ï~~414 CHEROKEE EXODUS. The irregular wars which followed were terminated by the treaty of Hopewell in 1785, made with the American Confederation, the first treaty of which the Cherokees have any account. They adopted the arms, household and agricultural implements of the whites, took some steps in civilization, and have ever since striven to live at peace with us. This was followed by the treaty of Holston in 1791, the treaty of Philadelphia in 1794, and that of Tellico in 1798, all made with the United States, and each containing words expressly recognizing the Cherokees as "a separate and independent Nation, with power as a body politic, and to be dealt with as one Nation deals with another." This express recognition has been repeated in nineteen successive treaties, and judicially determined in their favor by the Supreme Court of the United States. In the year 1794, letters patent issued for the Cherokee lands, bearing the signature of George Washington. All these solemn agreements were broken at once, in 1802, by the "compact between the State of Georgia and the United States," a compact to which the Cherokees were neither a party nor advised thereof. They were simply its helpless victims. They were told then, as now, that they must civilize; and then, as now, they were striving to progress, already had much of their land under cultivation, lived in houses, welcomed teachers and missionaries, and had schools, workshops and newspapers. In the administration of Jefferson, the States in which they lived began an agitation for their removal; it increased to a popular frenzy under Jackson, and ended by a new treaty under Van Buren. Then took place the world-renowned "Cherokee Discussion." It created schism in the State Legislatures, it firnished eloquence in Congrsss, and gave point to party warfare; the mild but persistent energy of the Cherokees, their diplomatic ability and shrewdness, above all the evident justice of their cause, made them world-renowned; the sympathetic heart of Whittier has overflowed in rhythmic plaints for their wrongs, and the story of their fortitude was embellished by the genius of Halleck. Triumphant before every legal tribunal, up to the Supreme ï~~INDIAN TERRITORY ORGANIZED. 415 Court, they yielded at last to the threats of superior power. But the whole country had become interested in them, to an extent which we can now scarce realize. It was the question of the hour. The files of papers of that period are full of reference to them. The States from which they moved, and every department of the National Government united in most solemn and repeated pledges to the Cherokees, if they would consent to remove, of a country which should be theirs and theirs only forever,-pledges of protection from war, trespass and intrusion, of local and self-government, and of the unquestioned ownership of their new lands by a fee simple title, under letters patent, signed by the President. The Cherokees became divided on the.subject of removal; part agreed to go, and another pledge of protection was made to the few who desired to remain. This division was recognized by the Government in two treaties of 1817 and 1819. President Monroe's message in 1825, recommended the setting apart of a country for those "semi-civilized races for their occupancy forever," and Jackson renewed the proposition in 1829. Thus called upon by the Indians' "Great Father," Congress passed, on the 28th of May, 1830, the act setting aside this Territory, with the most solemn guarantees. One clause reads: "It shall and may be lawful for the President solemnly to assure the tribe or Nation with which the exchange is made that the United States will forever secure and guarantee to them, their heirs or successors, the country so exchanged with them, and if they prefer it, the United States will cause a patent to be Made and executed to them for the same; provided, always, that such lands shall revert to the United States if the Indians become extinct or abandon the same." Under this the most of the Cherokees agreed to, and did, remove. Tradition tells us that as the main body of several thousand took up their line of March for the river on which they embarked, sad and silent, they moved with a quiet dignity the whites have often called sullenness, disdaining to show the grief which rent their bosom,; but when they reached the hights from which a last look could be had of their most beautifidl valley, the oldest woman of ï~~,' _,,.,, Â~, ï~~WEALTHY CHEROKEES. 417 solemn forms, and with renewed promises, attested by every department of Government, and double-secured by a patent for their lands. Bear in mind, this is not an "Indian title," so called, not a title by occupancy, not a " squatter's right;" but a patent of the United States, specially provided for by act of Congress, bearing the name of the President, adorned by the broad seal of the National Government, twice pronounced perfect by the Supreme Court, and since fully recognized in eight solemn treaties! Could title to land be more perfect? The next treaty, that of New Echota, in 1835, renews all previous pledges, and the treaty of 1846 repeats almost the exact language of the act of May 1830, ending with the same words: "Such land shall revert to the United States if the Indians become extinct or abandon the same." Under these last three words the land robbers now seek to enter. They maintain thait when the chief men and part of the Nation went into the rebellion in 1861, they did, by that act, "abandon the same" lands, that they became forfeit to the United States, and that there is now nothing but the savage Indian's title of occupancy, which we may abolish at pleasure. But the Cherokees seem to have been at last convinced that this country was to be theirs forever. They went to work, gradually learned the ways of civilization, welcomed teachers, established schools, and opened farms; by 1840 they were already considered prbsperous; they lived in greater comfort, and consequently their numbers began to increase. By 1850 ithey were considered a wealthy people. The new generation numbered many who had fine educations, and their progress thence to 1860 was astonishingly rapid. Their average wealth was greater than that of any community in the West. Single herders owned cattle to the value of a hundred thousand dollars. In this mild climate and upon these rich prairies cattle multiplied rapidly. There was soon no land "running to waste," for all was utilized as pasture. Many white men sought citizenship or married Cherokee girls,jand were adopted, and the advance of the Nation was healthful, natural and rapid. Such wealth, with the lingerings of a wild 27 ï~~418 RUINED IN THE WAR. taste, resulted in a semi-barbaric splendor which excited the astonishment or envy of white visitors. Their trade became of vast importance. Cattle came out, and carriages, pianos, fine horses and accoutrements and golden ornaments went in. Returned traders of 1860 speak with astonishment of gaudy displays at their public gatherings, of their rich caparisons and golden tassels, and of wealth which showed ostentatiously in gold dollars worn by the dozen as buttons. Ten years more of such progress and a generation of Cherokees would have risen to invite white immigration by successive degrees, and to assist their more tardy Indian brethren in progress. Such was the scene in the spring of 1861. In 1865 the Nation was an almost uninhabited waste. Their cattle had been driven by tens of thousands into Kansas, Arkansas and Texas. Men are now living in opulence in the former State who made their money out of Cherokee cattle, "confiscated" during the war. Their surplus was gone, they were on the verge of starvation, and had neither seed nor stock to start them again. The Southern Cherokees came back, and the Northern ones met them; they made up their quarrel, sadly gathered up the little remnant they had left, and went to work again. But before they had recovered anything they were startled at having it announced that their lands were forfeited on account of their rebellion. Unlike the Southern rebels, they were to suffer confiscation; "corruption of blood and forfeiture," which the Constitution forbids against an individual, the borderers claimed should be the rule against the Nation, and general distress and uncertainty prevailed through the period of reconstruction. These matters were finally settled, or supposed to be settled, by the "General Treaty of 1866," the twentieth and last treaty between our Government and the Cherokee Nation. They gave up much; surrendered all claim to their Kansas lands, and ceded their land west of meridian 960, "for other Indians to be settled upon," reducing their former territory from fourteen to seven million acres. But they still had the best part of it, and received in return for the rest new guarantees, reaffirming all before the war as to title. By this ï~~CHEROKEE TITLE. 419 treaty the Government waived all rights, if it had any, to take advantage of their rebellion. By the twenty-sixth article thereof, "The United States guarantee to the people of the Cherokee Nation the quiet and peaceable possession of their country against domestic feuds and insurrections, or the hostilities of other tribes.... They shall also be protected against intrusion from all citizens of the United States who may attempt to settle on their lands or reside in their country." In return they grant the right of way to two railroads. Such is a brief account of our dealings with these people, and of the tenure by which they hold their lands, compiled from public documents, and in view of the present move against the title, I would ask in all seriousness: is. there a farmer in Ohio who has a clearer, more legal or better supported title to his farm than they?-a title twice especially provided for by Congress, twice supported by Presidential patent, twice confirmed by the Supreme Court, gained by the cession of lands held in severalty, and recognized by a dozen treaties! The' Government can do anything. For it to crush this feeble Nation would be like the chivalry of a giant trampling upon an infant. Granting for argument's sake that they do allow much of their country to go to waste, still it is unquestionably theirs, in fee simple, and.we could hardly advocate the right of taking an Ohio farm from the owner because he did not till it well. But the statement is not true. Nearly all of their country was utilized before the war, and will be again ere many years. They are unquestionably progressing in civilization quite as fast as we could reasonably expect. Have we not broken faith with them often enough? Can we not afford to try the experiment of honest dealing with one generation of Cherokees? April 26th, 1872.-I am ready to leave the Indian Territory and go westward to Santa Fe, but first let me "sum up" on Oklahoma. I have now traveled a month among the Nations, some two hundred miles by rail and the same through the country afoot and on horseback. I have seen the Indians at home and on their farms, have attended their churches and visited their ï~~420 THE SITUATION. -schools, have talked by their hearths and slept in their cabins, "eaten of their salt and warmed at their fires." My general impression is one of the most agreeable disappointment. I have seen so much more of progress, of improvement and education, than I had been led to expect, that from a doubting indifference I have attained to an earnest belief in their capacity and willingnesA for a perfect civilization. And if my conclusions should sometimes read like an argument for the Indians here rather than a simple statement of facts, I will not deny that my sympathies are powerfully enlisted for these people, and I would willingly do them a kindness if my humble pen could accomplish it in a portrayal of their case. Here are sixty thousand red men who are neither hunters nor root diggers; they are agriculturists, herdsmen and mechanics. They long ago advanced from the savage to the barbarous state, when they first met the whites; since then they have advanced from the barbarous to the half-civilized and civilized, and in another generation we may reasonable hope to see them civilized and enlightened. This Territory contains the hope, the stay, the glory of our aboriginal race. If these.can not be civilized, the race is doomed. With more than ordinary interest, therefore, I have studied their condition. I am now returned to where the prejudice is strong against them; I hear them cursed every hour of the day, and from my window, at this moment, can look out upon an angry company of "intruders," just expelled by the military from the Osage lands in the Arkansas Valley. As briefly as possible, I propose to sum up my general observations, and the reason why these Indians are entitled to the continued protection of the Government. The Indian Territory extends westward from the border of Arkansas to longitude 1000, which geographers roughly assume as the eastern border of the American Desert; and northward from Red River to latitude 37Â~, the southern boundary of Kansas; a region with the same general climate as Tennessee and northern Mississippi. The exact area, including the windings of Red River, is not officially ascertained, but is estimated approximately at forty-six million acres, or about seventy-one ï~~NOT A HEALTHFUL REGION. 4 421 thousand square miles, two and a third times the size of Indiana. Of this entire area one-third may be safely set down as totally barren and worthless, consisting of the San Bois, Wichita and Boston mountains and spurs, and various high sand ridges between the streams. One-third more is of only average value for grazing purposes, and the remaining third is fine agricultural land. This last consists of thelong valleys of the Arkansas and two Canadians and their tributaries; of the valley of Red River and Grand River, and adjacent country. Along the eastern border again is another stretch of barren ridge and flinty hills. Most of the good land is very fertile, consisting of low-lying valleys, receiving the wash of higher lands; but there is very little of what.is called "bottom," or overflow land. The climate can not be considered healthful; in fact, from my own observation, I should call it very unhealthful. At the Creek Agency I had an attack of ague, for the first time in many years, and saw many other cases. Sickness is quite prevalent among the workmen on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Road, and contractors informed me that last summer one-half of their force was disabled by malarial diseases. The Indians, being acclimated, are more fortunate; but any considerable removals among them are followed by great sickness. Typhoid pneumonia, in particular, has been endemic the past winter on the Arkansas; and Mr. Robertson, the Presbyterian missionary and teacher, assured me that in his acquaintance on that river (new settlers up north) "one in every eighteen died since the fall of the leaves." This was strictly confirmed by physicians at Vinita and Muscogee. Indeed, it is evident on the surface, along the railroad, that the country cannot be healthful. There are no springs, and none of the evanescent towns have endured long enough to dig wells; slough and river water were used exclusively there, and it was not till I was twenty miles away among the Cherokees that I- got a single draught of spring water. The full-bloods live iwthe timber, along the streams, and frequently have tolerably good springs; but everywhere on the prairie the water used is from sloughs, or very shallow wells. ï~~,y ï~~GOVERNMENT. 423 Fox, Legislators, and Turtle-at-home, Speaker in Council. One of the most intelligent Cherokees I met was known as Beavers-grandmother. The delicate self-flattery thus implied doubtless is, that as the beaver is the wisest of animals, the beaver's grandmother must be exceedingly wise. All these governments are carried on very cheaply; the highest salary paid is seven hundred dollars. Only three get over four hundred. The Cherokee Nation pays one literary pension-three hundred dollars.a year to the widow of Sequoyah. For most of the minor judicial positions, the honor is considered sufficient reward. The Cherokee Government was organized in a semirepublican form, as early as 1805. Over these various little Republics extend what might be called the Federal Protectorate. The entire territory is attached to the Western District of Arkansas, with Federal Court at Fort Smith. Thither are taken all criminal cases in which either party is a white man, not a citizen, and civil cases where any white man is a party in interest: The boundaries of the two jurisdictions seem accurately enough defined, but still there are frequent conflicts of authority, the Cherokees being naturally a little jealous of the authority of their courts, and the United States Marshals emphatically "on the make." I am sorry to say that the report I had of them from both white and red was, with a few honorable exceptions, unqualifiedly bad. The location of a Federal Court at Fort Gibson, near the center of the Indian country, is a decided improvement. Of the territory, the Cherokees occupy the northeast quarter, their country running to a point southeastward between the Arkansas River and State line. The Choctaws have all the country between Canadian and Red Rivers, while the Creeks run partly in between the other two, in a long point eastward. Scattered among these or on their borders, in little divisions no larger than a township, are various minor tribes, remnants of decayed races from the North and East, such as the Quawpaws and Senecas in the northeast corner of the Cherokees, afd the Wyandottes, Delawares and Shawnees, who by contract have ï~~424 ENUMERATION. bought a "general head right" in that Nation, sunk their tribal individuality, and become Cherokee citizens. On lands just west of each Nation, ceded for that purpose, several new tribes are lately settled, making twenty tribes and fragments of tribes in all. I estimate their numbers respectively as follows, from their vote, census, and recorded "head rights" at the agencies, assigning each to the proper Nation: CHEROKEE NATION. Full bloods...................................................................... 8,000 Mixed.................................................................... 4,000 Freedm en....................................................................... 1,500 Whites married in or adopted.,........................................... 500 Delawares........................................................................ 900 Shawnees......................................................................... 700 W yandottes...................................................................... 400 Quawpaws,....................................................................... 200 Senecas........................................................................... 100 Total Cherokee Nation................................ 16,300 To which should be added some 2000 Cherokees now in North Carolina, who are desirous of settling here, and for whose removal the Nation is making provision, bringing the whole number up to about 18,000. I do not here include those new tribes west of 96Â~, not yet formally incorporated. CREEK NATION. Full Bloods..................................................................... 9,000 Whites and mixed bloods.................................................. 1,000 Freedmen................................................................... 4,000 Sem inoles........................................................................ 2,000 Total Creek citizens....................................16,000 CHOCTAW NATION. Pure Choctaws.................................................................10,000 M ixed............................................................................. 4,000 W hites........................................................................... 1,000 Chickasaws...................................................................... 5,000 Freedm en...................................................................... 2,000 Total Choctaw citizens...............................22,000 ï~~m........... AY ï~~426 THE LAND TENURE. give up the old language and bring the English into general use. Many Cherokees who can talk English will not, and there seems to be a prejudice against those of their people who speak it exclusively. The Creeks appear to be a peculiarly docile and teachable people, accepting readily the suggestions of white teachers. Teachers and missionaries are welcomed everywhere; the mode of living will compare favorably with the Southwestern States, and it appears to me that there is a security for life and property equal to any other Territory, and a foundation for a really prosperous and powerful State. The present weakness of these people-at once their greatest drawback and the temptation to outsiders-as it seems to me, is their imperfect land tenure. The land is held in common by the whole tribe, but whatever area any citizen incloses with a lawful fence is his while he occupies it. He may be said to own the improvements, but not the land. Nothing is absolutely a fixture. Anything may be removed at the owner's will; hence there is practically no real estate, no conservative landed interest-the only true foundation for a progressive society and a stable civil structure. The herder, hunter or explorer, from Kansas or Texas, rides through a beautifill tract, and when he asks who owns it the only answer is, "the Injuns-it's Injun land;" that is, in his estimation, nobody's land, if he can by force or fraud get a foothold. If he were told that it was the property of John Johnnycake or William Beaverdam, or any other individual, with a patent title on which hlie could sue and be sued, the case would be very different to him. A strong party, therefore, is rising up, agitating for this reform. This is the distinctive feature of the Ocmulkee Constitution, which commands the support of the best men of the three Nations, and looks to a union of all the tribes under one government. It should receive every legal encouragement from Congress. But the common people are suspicious of this move; to them sectionizing looks like an entering wedge for some scheme for dividing up their lands among railroad corporations and white immigrants. And where shall we look for the real power which gives impetus to the movements lately inaugurated ï~~RAILROAD GRANTs. 427 looking to a Territorial Government, and the opening of this country to a general immigration? By the treaty of 1866 all the Nations agreed to yield the right of way, with three hundred feet along the track, to two railroads, through the country. The roads which reached the border first were the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, running southward, and the Atlantic and Pacific westward. Look at the charter of the first road and you will find one clause to the effect that the road is to receive every section designated by odd numbers for ten miles on each side of the track-total of sixty-four hundred acres a mile-with these words conditional: "Provided said lands become a part of the public lands of the United States." The moment the Oklahoma Bill becomes a law they do become "public lands," and the railroad title attaches at once! To the Atlantic and Pacific road, with its Van Buren branch, the grant, with the same condition appended, is twenty sections to the mile. Besides these, two other roads are pressing their claims for contingent grants with fair hope of success. The present area of the Cherokee country, exclusive of lands ceded for "other Indians to locate," is about 4,500,000 acres. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad runs through this for eighty miles; the Atlantic and Pacific railroad will run about the same distance. Considering, then, only the roads actually being built, this gives them at least 1,500,000 acres! The Oklahoma Bill, seventeenth section says: "The Secretary of the Interior shall cause the lands in said Territory to be surveyed, and from and after such survey the Indian title shall be deemed and held to be forever extinguished, and the lands to be public lands of the United States, subject to all grants and pledges heretofore made by acts of Congress." Is it difficult to see where the motive power, and the "sinews of war," come from? But the territorial bill specially provides that each Indian shall have a hundred and sixty acres. Let us see, then, where the white settler would come in. There are at least sixteen thousand Cherokees entitled to "head rights," and two thousand more who can and will claim them by coming here. This takes up 2,880,000 acres. Besides, there are ï~~428 LET THEM ALONE. reserved school lands and some grants to mission stations. Add these up with the railroad grants, and you will find there is not quite land enough in the Cherokee country to fill the bill. To' call it a bill in the interest of white immigrants is nonsense. In the Choctaw country there would be a small surplus-none in the Creek. Besides, in the Cherokee Nation the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad runs right down the Grand and Arkansas Valleys, through the very best land, but in the Choctaw Nation it crosses the fine valleys at right angles, leaving a little more surplus. Where, then, in the northern part, would the white settler come in? He could buy of the railroad at, perhaps, five dollars or more per acre. Shall the Government revoke a fee simple deed and cover itself with ignominy, not to benefit white immigrants, but to pile up mountainous fortunes for a few corporations? The first fee simple patent to the Cherokees bears the honored name of George Washington. Their patent for this country, for which they traded other lands held in' fee simplelands sold by the Government for five times what it paid the Indians-was signed by Martin Van Buren, and it cannot be that their successor of to-day will sanction such an act of gross injustice and bad faith, so contradictory to his own wise and humane Indian policy, which has given him not the least of his great claims to historic immortality. There are a score of reasons why a little more time should be given the Indians, and why we should not now throw open this country to general settlement. In the first place, we have solemnly agreed not to do it, which is reason enough for any honorable man. Secondly, there is no present necessity for it. There are countless millions of acres lying idle in every State and Territory north of it, untouched by the cultivator, and even unoccupied by the herdsman. There is more unused land in Kansas to-day than in the Indian Territory. There is room in Nebraska for half a million farmers. There is a tract in Dakota about the size of "Indiana, yet unappropriated, with a climate suitable for Northern people, and a most prolific soil. When these are filled, and our population really begins to feel ï~~IT WILL NOT PAY. 429 erowded, it will be time enough to trouble the Indians; and long before that time these people will themselves vote to open the country, become like other borderers, and ask for immigration to help develop it. But with Kansas on one side and Texas on the other, with as much or more good land, it appears to me as if thousands are half crazy to rush into the Indian country, just because it is forbidden. If these fellows who have been harassing the Osages, and running across the border here and back for the past two years, had put in the same labor almost anywhere in Nebraska, they would have each Owned a fine farm by this time. In the third place, to sectionize the country and throw it open on the present plan, would do the white borderer little or no good. The railroads, of course, get the first grab; their land is already secured, and in the case of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas road, it would take the very heart of the country. Then the Indians, according to their custom of living, would take all the fine timbered land along the streams, and what would be left? Any prospective immigrant can figure for himself from the statistics given, and he will find that less than one-fifth of the good land would remain to select from. A few men would secure fine farms unquestionably, but for every such one twenty would be disappointed. Several thousand young men in Kansas are fooling themselves badly about this country. There is not so much good land here as they imagine. And unquestionably, the climate is unhealthful for Northern people. Nor is it for the interest of Kansas as a State to have this country opened now. Her Senators should oppose it strenuously. If there were half the amount of good land they imagine, Southern Kansas would lose twenty thousand of her people at once by having it opened. It is not now a waste as regards them. Before the war, it was their great region of cattle trade and supply, and ere long it will be again. At present we have a National use for the Indian Territory. Our true policy is to secure these people in their homes, apd make them our agents to deal with the wild tribes on the plains. Much has been done already, and more will be, to set the race ï~~430 ABORIGINAL RACES. forward in civilization. Half civilized and barbarous races are slowly being reached through the medium of their more advanced brethren. The Nations here are already moving in the matter, and a little assistance only is needed to enable them to reach and negotiate with all the wild tribes of Northern Texas and New Mexico. I am hopeful enough to believe that with a proper policy all the tribes in the same latitude, except possibly the Apaches, might eventually be made citizens of this Territory. The treatment and fate of aboriginal races has varied greatly under different governments. The Romans absorbed and Romanized when possible; 6therwise, they removed and relocated them. When the Teutonic race overran Western Europe, the Celtic aboriginals mostly disappeared; but, in certain districts, from special local causes, or from a more humane policy on the part of the conquerors, remnants survived; and in portions of Scotland, the Erse districts of Ireland, in Wales, Brittany and Celtiberia, are flourishing communities to this day, little islands of Celts in an ocean of Teutons. We alone have had no fixed policy looking toward the saving and reclamation of any part of the native race. Writers, statesmen, and theorists have made haste to assume that they were a " doomed race," and the Government has followed the exact policy to-practicalize that theory. We have sent them our worst men and most destructive practices, and have systematically broken faith whenever it seemed profitable to do so. Here only has a policy, something near sensible and just been pursued, and the results are not discouraging. Let it be improved and extended, and we may reasonably hope the Indians of all the Southern Territories may be gathered here; that an aboriginal community of two hundred thousand may grow into a high civilization; and in due time we may have a real native American State, a progressive and prosperous State of Oklahoma. ï~~CHAPTER XXII. AROUND AND ABOUT TO SANTA FE. No thoroughfare from Indian Territory-Northward through Kansas-On the Plains at Last--The Ride over the Kansas Pacific-Ellsworth, and its Former Felicities-In the Buffalo Country-The "Big Pasture" of America-Arrival at Denver-" Them's my Sentiments "-The Country from Denver to Santa Fe-A case of Delirium Tremens. Y original intention was thwarted before I left the Indian Territory; for there was no route thence westward to Santa Fe. I went some distance west of the Arkansas, but there were no inhabitants for two hundred miles from the Creek border. Then Kioways and Arapahoes domminated all the country for six hundred miles farther, before one could reach the Mexican settlements. We might have gone by Stage from the Canadiai River to Fort Sill, in the southwestern corner of the Territory; but from there to Santa Fe we must have depended on the chance of a Government train, which might go in one month or one year. Farther south a regular line of stages runs from the end of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad to Fort Concho, Texas, connecting there with another line to El Paso, on the Rio Grande; but at that season we preferred a more northern route. Accordingly we turned northward from the western part of the Cherokee country, reaching the Kansas border at Parker, terminus of the Lawrence, Leavenworth and Galveston.Railroad. The country south of there, which will be traversed by the Atlantic and Pacific, is of the same general character with that I have described about Vinita, consisting of gently rolling prairie, with occasional strips of not very good timber and low bottoms, the latter quite rich and the prairie of average fertility. One tolerably barren ridge 431 ï~~432 ON THE BORDER. is found, and then the land improves westward again toward the Arkansas. A stage company now run daily coaches along the State line from Chetopa to the Arkansas River; and where two years ago they ran at will over the prairie, they are now confined threefourths of the way to narrow lanes, fences and improved farms multiplying in every direction. The land seemed to improve vastly in quality as we got into Montgomery County, as we were there upon the fine fertile slope leading down to the Verdigris. Parker is only the nominal terminus of the Lawrence, Leavenworth and Galveston road, and looked distressingly dull in spring. About a quarter section of cattle-yards and" shoots" extend around the depot, and over into the Indian country. The town and railroad company have purchased the right of herding for fifteen miles over the line. At the season of live stock exchange the place is exceedingly lively. The citizens were just then in a state of extreme disgust at the railroad company, averring that the corporation had agreed to make this the terminus town, with all the advantages thereunto belonging. Afterward they made the real terminus at Coffeyville, three miles above, and now a dummy engine merely backs one car down to Parker on a switch. Two fine hotels are shut up, and one third-class hasherie de Kaitsaise poisons the unfortunates like us, who wander in from the south. Coffeyville is only a little better satisfied. The old town happened to be just three-quarters of a mile away from where the company concluded to put the terminus, and already New Coffeyville has grown into a lively business town of a thousand or more people. The three cities, in a line of three miles, are moving for a consolidation. Meanwhile the railroad has projected and built a branch from Cherryvale, twenty miles north, out west to Independence, the county seat, and that is now freely spoken of as the real terminus. It reminds me slightly of some matters I have known on the Union Pacific Railroad. Four years before, there were some twenty farms located in Montgomery County, and one post-office. The county, in 1872, ï~~ON THE KANSAS PACIFIC. 433 cast a vote of 3000, from which, according to the general ratio in Kansas, they argued a population of 12,000; and there is not a valuable quarter section of land in the county without a family or a claimant on it. The first man to settle in the county was a fearfully black and greasy negro, who lives just out of Coffeyville, on his original claim, and when interviewed on the rapid growth around him is too much overcome to give a connected account. Visitors tell me that along the State-line Road, westward, to the Arkansas, every quarter section has an occupant; that Cowley, the new county on that river, is about full; and that the stream of emigration has turned a little, and is now flowing up the Arkansas and to the northwest. Thence northward to Kansas City, stopping at various places on the road, the Kansians thus summed up the changes since we left: "Fine chance o' corn planted an' doin' well--splepdid lprospect for fruit-peaches sure of a whalin' crop; but wheat don't look well. In fact that crop a'n't a certain thing yet in Southern Kansas. Garden spot o' the world, sir, no doubt of it; but wheat h'ain't made a sure thing yet.?' At midnight of May 2d, we left the State Line (of Missouri) for the long ride across the plains. The hour is inconvenient, but this is the only through train. One train leaves in the morning, thus enabling the traveller to see Eastern Kansas by daylight; but it stops at Brookville, some distance west of the capital, and waits for the midnight train, when both finish the route together. This is done to pass through the buffalo and Indian country in the daytime. The Kansas Pacific is now an old road (for the West), its business and facilities increasing steadily, and in healthy proportion with the development of the western interior. Its running rate is a very little less than that of the Union Pacific, but in all other respects, whether of smoothness, comfort, or elegant appliances, it seems to me to fully equal the former road. Before noon of our first day out I see no signs of a different country from that on the eastern border; timber is plenty qjong the streams, the soil appears rich, and a continuous line of farms borders the road. We are in the valley of the Kaw or 28 ï~~434 ON TIHE BORDER. Kansas, until nearly noon; then leave it for the Smoky Hill Valley, after crossing Republican, Big Blue and Solomon's Fork. All these "rivers" furnish about enough water to make a stream like the Miami at a moderate stage. But they have wide and fertile valleys, carrying the limit of cultivable land at least a hundred miles west of its border on the upland, away from the streams. May 3.-Daylight found us near Junction City, the last point of connection with any Eastern road. From that point, the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas runs southwest, and down the Neosho Valley, to Parsons, in Southern Kansas. The railroad system of Kansas may be said to develop north and south from the Kansas Pacific as a main stem. The Missouri River and Fort Scott road traversing the eastern tier of counties, the L. L. & G., the second tier, and the M. K. & T., diagonally from the fourth to the first tier, the northern counties having a very similar system; it will be seen that the railroads in Kansas are disposed to the best possible advantage. It is a question if the assembled wisdom of railroad men throughout the Union could have devised a plan to build the same number of miles of road, and have them more judiciously distributed. There is not a town or considerable farming district within a hundred miles of the eastern border, from which one cannot reach St. Louis within forty-eight hours or less. We find the country pretty well settled for fifty miles west of Junction City, with every appearance of natural fertility; prairies of rich green, considerable bodies of timber, and a black, loose soil wherever the sod is turned. We take breakfast at Ellsworth-a good one, too. When I was out here in October, 1867, Ellsworth was the terminus of the road-also the terminus of something like a hundred or two of human lives. "Shall we have a man for breakfast?" was the morning salutation; and rarely was it answered in the negative. Ellsworth was the hardest of all hard towns which flourished for a day at the end of the railroad. Mr. J. H. Runkle, then Prosee tor for the District, informed me, that for ninety-three days, there was at least one homicide a day in the town or vicinity. ï~~;. "1E a -r e a...>.....;p.; s y,F n; n r.,,,. -,,. n E a ~ F a,}, }, uNb 4" pA >.. swi t Â~'..,.w w,. e. {n.. ï~~436 THE GREAT PASTURE. Our route this afternoon and to-night is through the "Big, Pasture" of America. It extends from latitude 520, in British America, to Texas, and has an average width of 250 miles, spreading eastward from the base of the Rocky Mountains. Say in round numbers, 1200 by 250 miles, and we have an area of 300,000 square miles, set apart by nature forever, as our great national park and pasture. Not one-twentieth of this area can be settled and cultivated under any mode of farming now known in America. It is too high and dry, and the nights are cool enough to insure some frost nearly every month in the year. At the same time it produces the sweetest and most nutritious of grasses. More range is required here than in eastern pastures for the same number of stock, for the grass does not renew itself the same season, as it does there; but still here is room for the development of incalculable wealth in flocks and herds. If the reader will take a board, four times as long as it is wide, lay it north and south, and tilt it a very little towards the east, then score it from east to west with a number of furrows, he.will have a tolerable map or miniature copy of what is called the "plains." The western border, the high plateau near the mountains, has an average elevation of 5000 feet; thence eastward the general slope will average ten feet to the mile; so, by the time we reach the settled portions of Kansas and Nebraska, we are but 1000 feet or so above sea-level. Going westward you are going uphill and nearer mountains and deserts; consequently into a dryer and colder country, and finally into a region fit for nothing but pasturage. But the notion once industriously circulated, that cattle could be wintered here without feeding, is now abandoned. Last winter pretty effectually set it at rest. We hurry on, and soon after noon enter the buffalo country. We see but a few live ones, for it is too early for their great move northward; but whole catacombs of the dead. For twenty miles in one place, the sight is awful. Whole herds died here during the heavy snow of last winter. As far as the eye can reach, or as a good field-glass can sweep the horizon, they lie at ï~~;,,,,~.. F, '..il s... i ï~~438 DENVER. distance feeding. The heat had grown oppressive, the country looked dry, and the grass had completely changed. Verdure, as farther east, was rarely seen; the growth was buffalo grass and gama grass, short and wiry, but very sweet and nutritious. Darkness comes over us, still fifty miles from the border of Colorado. May 4th.-We reach Denver at 7.20 A. M., and hasten to the Broadwell House, where we are beset by newsboys with the cry: "Here's your Rocky Mountain News-latest from Cincinnati -Horace Greeley for Priesident." This was news to us, for passengers across the plains lose one day's dispatches en route. The usual political discussions enlivened the breakfast room. Eastern arrivals were much excited- about it, but the Denverites appeared quite indifferent. Colorado cannot vote for President, although she has made three several and earnest attempts to "take her place," etc. (The quotation is so old everybody can finish it.) In fact, Congress did admit her once, but Andrew Johnson vetoed her, creating a fearful mortality of iicipient Congressmen and State officials. Byers' Rocky Mountain News (the paper is scarcely heard of as dissociated with Byers) is the institution of Colorado. It has survived fires, floods, Indian blockades and Federal patronage, and survives to tell us every morning at breakfast all of note that has transpired in any part of the world down to the midnight preceding. It is, indeed, a monument of. enterprise, whereby no disparagement whatever is meant for other journals here. It is one of the "curiosities of literature" with me, how these mountain towns can support the papers they do. Here is Denver, with ten thousand people, and three dailies. The Territory has six dailies, and some weeklies, with fifty or sixty thousand people. Little Corinne, Utah, with some fifteen hundred people, has kept up a vigorous daily for two years and a half. "It's a wonder how they do it, but they do." May 5th.-I find myself totally mistaken as to the location of Denver. I had always heard it was in the mountains, and supposed we ran across one chain before reaching here, and into a sort of basin. On the contrary, Denver is "on the plains," ï~~f i fn'Ar+R " ^ w 4 w m.:,n y u CIO, r n4f F Kra. log's i S! a r y a 4 H ' 4 Sol m i ti.W... ï~~1. r V fir....,; by < I Y / ï~~INTELLIGENT DENVERITES. 441 I should prefer Denver, on the score of beauty alone. The advantage of Salt Lake City is that it is twice as old, and its shade trees, shrubbery and the like have had more time to grow. But here we find bright irrigating streams, fine gardens, shade trees, grass plats and many fine residences. In the last respect this far exceeds Salt Lake. But the noticeable point of difference is in churches, school-houses and daily papers. In the two former Denver will compare favorably with any Eastern city of its size, and in papers exceed most of them. A hundred little matters illustrate, in a marked degree, the difference between this progressive, homogeneous people and that of the Mormon Capital. At the Post Office, of an evening, one finds almost the population of an average Western city, and has to "take his turn" after long waiting. At Salt Lake I never saw a crowd at the delivery large enough to be troublesome. From the best data at hand, I think this office gives out three times as much mail as that at Salt Lake. Here area people who read and write, think and question, deliberate, examine and come to a conclusion: there a people who open their mouths and swallow what the shepherd gives them; obey their Bishop like good children; believe the whole outside world to be doomed, and, therefore, don't want to write to, or hear from them. May 6th.-Three days at Denver convinced me that it was quite a place. But why should a journalist, looking for new fields, stop long at Denver? Is not its history and marvelous growth written in chronicles of every Western rambler for the past ten years? And have not Greeley, Richardson, Bowles, McClure and a score of lesser lights, exhausted the resources of the dictionary, in trying to tell the simple truth about its present greatness and certain future? I can only adopt the plan of the conveniently pious young man, who wrote an elaborate prayer, posted it at the head of his bed, and when ready to turn in, pointed at it and said: "Lord, those are my sentiments!" Now, therefore, read again all that the above worthies have said in praise of Denver, and "Those are my sentiments." I must cut short my stay in Denver, and all on account of the weather, which is said to be heating up very fast down ï~~, 6, >>Â~ M' Ye....e v. a 1.. E 4 r.r IQ F, Yri 1,.. I Â~ U ll, )', r.... '. - J z ii_ f xC rte' 4., i: t..... ( FE f r., y' a f K..... l r < -. ï~~" 'TIS SAD TO PART. 443 May 7th.-At 7.30 A. m. I boarded the cars of the narrow gauge Denver and Rio Grande R. R.-familiarly known here as the "Narrow Gouge," in delicate satire on its rates of fare. Ten cents a mile does look a little steep for a railroad, but consider, that before this was built the tariff was twenty cents a mile by stage; that the road is not assisted by grants or subsidies; that the amount of travel is too small as yet to pay expenses, and that the question is, whether you are willing to pay half stage fare for the luxury of a car, or go back to the old style. I only wish I could go all the way to Santa Fe by such carriage, for I do dread the three hundred and twenty-five miles of staging. At the last moment, Mr. De Bruler decided not to accompany me; principally because I did not know exactly where I was going myself. That the thirty-fifth parallel road ran through northern Arizona we guessed from the map; but whether through the Apache Country, and whether safe or the reverse we could not learn; nor whether I could go through at all. So my journalistic companion shook my hand warmly, and with empressement thus pronounced: "Go, Beadle; in the interests of science, and for the honor of the profession. You can risk the savages; old bachelors don't amount to much anyhow. But I-I have a family." It was too touching; I dashed the saline globules from my cheeks, and scooted for the depot. He wandered briefly in Colorado, then returned to the bosom of his family and the editorial columns of the Cincinnati Times and Chronicle; thence lie has transferred his brains to the sanctum of the Evansville Journal, where he flourishes like a greenbay horse. I return to my journal. We journey at a sobre passo gait of ten or fifteen miles an hour, southward and up the Platte Valley, which has the appearance of an old, settled and cultivated country. The farm-houses appear to me in much better style, and the system of irrigation more scientific than in Utah. Farmers are plowing, and the spring crops are coming forward finely. Colorado wheat promises well this year. It is considered settled here that it is the best wheat in the world. In ï~~444 SHEEP REGION. Denver, Colorado flour is $14.00 per barrel, while "State flour" is only $10.00. About 10 A. M., we leave the Platte and follow up 'a small stream to the "Divide." Here we are in the lumber region, as shown by the immense stacks of the same about the depots. Singularly enough, near the "Divide," on both sides are considerable fields cultivated without irrigation, there being sufficient rain when one draws near the summit and the timber! The timber causes the rain, or the rain produces the timber, or the mountains are the cause of both; or some other sufficient cause accounts for all three, I don't know which. If this theory is not scientifically correct, Quien sabe? As soon as we pass the summit and get on the head-waters of the Fontaine Que Bouille, we see on all the slopes immense herds of cattle and sheep. At Colorado Springs lives one man who has 13,000 sheep in this region; and I am reliably informed there are 150,000 head of stock in the system of valleys opening out on this stream. The country is evidently one of the best in the world for sheep. It is high, dry, cool in summer, and not very cold in winter, with just moisture enough to produce good grass. For about fifty miles we traverse a beautiful grazing region. At the Springs we stop an hour for dinner. Here is one of the coming towns of Colorado, having a fine fertile valley, immense grazing area, and the noted chemical springs-already a great place of fashionable resort. I am most agreeably surprised by southern Colorado. There is very little desert, and except the bare mountains it appears to me a country of great natural richness. The valleys are very fertile, and most of the slopes furnish good pasturage. The railroad terminates at little Buttes, ninety miles from Denver; and there we take the stage. Nineteen passengers go on to Pueblo, which we reach some time after dark, and all stop there except Captain H. H. Humphreys, of the Fifteenth United States Infantry, his wife, his servant, and the subscriber. I am the only through passenger, the others go to Fort Union, New Mexico, and we travel together some forty hours. A night ride in a coach is not a subject for poetry. Ours is as comfortable as the average. ï~~1 'N ' r%... -;-' r F,, '-,:. ï~~446 PASSAGE OF THE RATON. waist. My essay at Spanish amused him, and he told me, when I reached Santa Fe, to procure at once una diccionaria dormiente-" a sleeping dictionary;" but as he accompanied the remark with a fearful facial contortion, and a poke in my side that nearly dislocated a rib, I take it lie meant a joke, though I cannot imagine where the point is. The morning air is quite cool, but the afternoon warm and pleasant. The scenery is grand. To our right are the Spanish Peaks, in front Fisher's Peak, of the Raton Mountains; both glistening white with snow. The last named looks as if it were about five miles distant. It is fifteen miles in a straight linemeasured by the U. S. Engineers-from the hotel in Trinidad, at the base of the mountains; and we are yet four miles from Trinidad. We reach that place, the last town in Colorado, at 4 P. L., rest an hour, take supper and change to a small, stout uncomfortable coach, in which to make the passage of the Raton. We reach the summit just at dark, and have a fearful run down the southern side. Fortunately we cannot see the danger, if there is any; and have nothing to do but bounce about in the dark inside the coach, butt each other's, heads, shift ballast to suit the pitching of the coach, and enjoy ourselves generally. About midnight the jolting ceases, and the gentler motion indicates that we have come out into a smooth valley and on to a good natural road. We compose ourselves, hang to the straps and geb two or three hours tolerable sleep. May 9th.-About 3 o'clock this morning, we are 'roused by the driver with notice that an important bridge has been washed away, leaving only a foot-log, on which the passengers cross while the coach makes a circuit of some miles. Our party of four were soon on the banks of the stream, and, by the light of a lamp, saw a fearful gorge, crossed by one narrow log, while fifteen feet below ran a stream strong enough to wash us out of sight in ten seconds. Three sets of passengers had already crossed on that little foot-log, round and slippery as it was, but none of us would venture on it. While the driver threw the lamp glare on the log, and our party stoodl huddled together gazing into the awful chasm, like a lot of departed sinners upon ï~~ON THE CIMARRON. 447 the River Styx, I noticed that the banks were not too steep for descent, and so climbed down by the aid of rocks and bushes, to the water's edge. The other male passenger soon followed, and we found enough of the ruins to construct a half floating bridge. An hour's labor, with the driver kneeling on the log above to light us to our work, made a bridge on which the ladies succeeded in being helped across with fewer screams than could have been expected. A short walk brought us to the next station, where the coach overtook us in an hour. Daylight finds us at Maxwell's Ranche, or Cimarron City, at the crossing of Cimarron River--a hundred and seventy miles from where we took stage, and still a hundred and fifty-five miles from Santa Fe. The night has told heavily on us, and we begin to lose interest in external things. The two ladies complain of their heads; the captain and I are principally concerned about our stomachs. All this morning the wind blew a small hurricane, and after noon we had a chilly rain to complete our misery. We breakfast at Maxwell's, the center of an old Mexican grant of several hundred thousand acres, for many years the property of a noted mountaineer by the name of Maxwell. The grant contains fifty or sixty sections of the finest land in New Mexico, several good locations for water-power, and one rich gold mine. Maxwell has lately sold it to an English company, who are bringing in machinery to work the gold mine, and propose to improve the entire grant. An hour's rest and a pint of hot coffee restored my intellectual balance somewhat; and I entered upon the third day of staging with more vigor than I had expected. 'At Fort Union my three companions got out, and a young German got in to go to Santa Fe. We had traveled the last twelve hours in a southeast direction, leaving the main chain of mountains some distance to the west, and crossing the Rayad6, Otate and other tributaries of the Canadian. The old trail runs southwest from Huerfano to Fort Garland, crossing over to the headquarters of the.Rio Grande;.but the stage road continues on this line to Las Vegas, before turning westward. Las ï~~448 ENTERING SANTA FE. Vegas is a little south of Santa Fe, on the extreme headwaters of the Pecos River. That city, which we reached at d(lark, dates away back to the first Spanish invasion, and has a population of three or four thousand. There we took on three United States officers, and the Right Reverend John B. Lamye, Bishop of Santa Fe, who exerted himself to cheer up the heavy hours of the night, as our coach labored through the mountain passes down to Santa Fe River. The cold was intense, and by the morning light we saw that a heavy snow had fallen. May 10th.-The fourth day out, and I begin to be oblivious: my head pitches forward and back in involuntary "cat-naps " of a minute each, and I long for port. After four hours riding down hill, by 10 o'clock in the morning the snow had disappeared; once more nature asserted herself, and I was really feeling bright again when we came in sight of Santa Fe. In all my travels I never remember being so disappointed. One might pass within two miles of the city and miss it. It is not in the Rio Grande Valley, as I had supposed, but at least twenty miles from that river, quite in a hollow; and appears a miserable, low, flat collection of mud huts. Whole squares are walled in with stones, mud and adobes; then the'width of a house roofed around the square on the inside; partition walls are built, passages cut through, and a score of dwellings in one group are complete. As the coach rolls through the narrow, ugly streets, it looks more like driving through a dirt cut in some excavation than the streets of a city. As we near the center of town these squares seem more compact; holes appear to have been cut through, making shut alleys or narrow streets, and other openings show the interior of these mud-walled squares to be a sort of stamping ground in common, for pigs, chickens, jackasses, children, ugly old women, and "Greasers." Reaching the plaza, things look a little better. There at least is a patch of green, a tract grown up in alfalfa or Spanish clover. We stop at the Exchange, the only hotel in the city for white men, or rather Americans, the other distinction, though perfectly accurate, not being well relished here. The Exchange is a one-story square, like all the rest; but across the middle ï~~IN A FIX. 449 of the square is a line of buildings containing the dining-room and kitchen, and dividing the stable yard and poultry run from the open court for human use. An arched way between the kitchen and dining-room connects the two courts; on the human side women and children take their recreations, and men of quiet or literary tastes can sit and read; while the stable side is sacred to dog-fights, cock-fights, wrestling matches, pitching Mexican dollars, and other exclusively manly pursuits. The people of Santa Fe evidently do not take in their philosophy the statement that "Man was made to mourn." At the Exchange I left the coach, feeling almost comfortable; but no sooner d(lid I touch the pavement than the 'earth commenced such a rocking that I walked only in circles and ellipses, traveling at least two rods in advancing ten feet. I shivered with cold, and my head and face were scorched with heat. I was desperately sea-sick. Grasping the casing I got in at the door, and felt my way to the lounge'near the stove, for, though it was bright sunshine, the weather was cold. I sank on the lounge and in five seconds was oblivious. In two hours I awoke with the delirium tremens. Seriously, though I had not tasted liquor for months, I had all the premonitory symptoms of that terrible disease. The figures on the wall scowled at me; the illuminated Saint over the mantel looked sick at my prospects; and a great grinning demon, top-ornament to an old Spanish wall-sweep clock, seemed to snap his fingers and Wriggle with delight at my misery. I had sense enough left to know I should lose my senses if this thing continued long, so I took to the street again. But there everything was unsettled. The distant mountains wabbled, the houses were turning topsy-turvy, " Greasers" grinning and rolling apparently in every direction, while the scioritas seemed to go sideways or on their heads, waltzing along the narrow streets in most immoral attitudes. Worst of all was a horrible feeling about my Stomach, as if millions of insects were crawling from there up to my head; and a sensation of pitching backward and forward, feeling as if my head were unscrewed, loose, and liable at any moment to be jerked off. 29 ï~~,.' r,.. r j,...,,:, i. ï~~CHAPTER XXIII. SANTA FE DE SAN FRANCISCO. First impressions-Location of the city-U. S. officials--Learning Spanish-The Baile - Valse da Spachio- Mexican Law- Religion - Children -Dark vs. White races-Mexican transportation-Historical-Remarkable journey of De Vaca and his companions-Expedition of Coronado-" The seven cities of Cibola" I-" The American occupation "-Query. ANTA FE DE SAN FRANCISCO-so the old Spanlards named it-is a high old city: seven thousand feet high, and two hundred and fifty years old. A dry, hard, worn out, and most uninviting place, too, it appears to me; but any place with water, shade and beds is a haven to me since my stage trip from Colorado. That was an experience I hope never to repeat; for, if I have so long a trip hereafter, I shall divide it into sections ot' a hundred miles or so each. Santa Fe has been a city inhabited by white men for two hundred and fifty years; and nobody knows how long before by Pueblo Indians, one of their old cities, or the ruins of it, being partly on the same site. In the latitude of Memphis, it has a summer climate cooler than that of Canada, and that of 1872 Was an exceptionally cold spring. Except from 10 o'clock till 4, fires were agreeable in the hotel, and heavy bedclothes were in order with me. A suit of summer clothing is rarely seen in Santa Fe. There are not ten days in the year when they are really needed. The winters are mild and dry; snow rarely falls, and the range of the thermometer is. about equal to that of Washington City. The city is in the narrow valley of Santa Fe River, on a gentle slope, seven thousand feet above sea-level. Just northeast of the city, though thirty miles 451 ï~~Y 1 & 3 n 1 r,fi Px- t, If r. Y t xf AAK nr s d,rc A i.. rF IN I AW "I f 1Ii 4.1. t.. a., r i t ii ï~~" DRY!" 453 In fact, any road to reach Santa Fe must really run past it, and then turn back up the side valley to come at it. The streets and walls are inexpressibly dreary; the dwellings low, flat and uninviting. I don't think there are twenty twostory houses in the city. The residences of some of the officials display a little taste; two or three of the merchants have houses with pretty surroundings, and Bishop Lamye has a place which Would almost be considered pretty in Ohio. I saw perhaps a dozen gardens; all the rest of the view is bare, gray and dried inud color. As I stood of an evening on the hill above town, and looked on the mean and dirty streets, filled with donkeys carrying hay and wood in Mexican fashion, and saw the gangs of natives swarming among their mud walls, and the lifeless looking women squatted in the open courts, I could but ask: Is this the Santa Fe of which I have heard and read since childhood? The place where the Missouri traders used to go, in those long caravans which furnished subjects of brilliant illustrations in our story books; where they sold millions in goods and brought back riches beyond estimate? If this is the place, it has sadly changed. There are not fifty houses there that would be allowed to stand a day in Cincinnati. They say they have a population of six thousand, but I don't see where they put them. Perhaps these mysterious hollow squares, with so many dark holes and corners, are more densely populated than I imagine possible. And yet here are old withered Mexicans, native to the place, whose fathers and grandfathers were born, lived and died in this valley; for Santa Fe was a noted Spanish city one hundred years before our John Cleves Symmes crossed the Ohio. Yes, Santa Fe has one merit-it is rich in historic interest. The number of whites not of Spanish origin is estimated at five hundred. At the last election three hundred non-Mexican whites voted, and as there are some twenty families with many boarders and servants, the total number is put as stated. Of these the officials and their families constitute the first division. Until I made their acquaintance I felt somewhat lost, for after the novelty wears off, Santa Fe is but a dull place. ï~~454 OFFICIALS. Governor Marsh Giddings, appointed from Michigan, entered upon his duties in August, 1871. I found him a most pleasant gentleman, though the "opposition " are just now attacking him fiercely for his activity in the movement for a State organization. United States District Attorney T. B. Catron is from Missouri, and a fluent speaker, both in English and Spanish. Hon. Henry Wetter was then Secretary, though another has succeeded. Joseph G. Palen, Chief Justice, also came in for a heavy share of abuse from the opposition. Associate Justice Hezekiah S. Johnson is a resident of Albuquerque. The other Justice's place was vacant, Judge Bristol, of Minnesota, having been appointed; but not yet entered the Territory. The other offices are filled by Mexicans, and it is a source of wonder to me that there is so little conflict of jurisdiction here, with all these differences of race and religion. New Mexico is politically the most quiet of all the Territories, and instead of the everrecurring religious squabbles of Utah, or the internecine strifes of Dakota, these people seem always satisfied with what the officials do, if it is within a hundred degrees of right. They consider a Governor as only one remove below the Deity; or, rather two removes, the Virgin Mary coming next, and the Governor being about on the same degree with St. Peter. To one like myself, accustomed to the studied contempt, or lordly indifference, or good-natured and irreverent bonhommie, with which Territorial Governors are regarded, respectively in Utah, Colorado and Dakota, it was something amusing to witness old, gray-headed men, with hat removed, bowing low to Governor Giddings, and to hear the sefloras direct their children as he passed, "No hable auste tanto. El Gobernador!" All these people, no matter of what rank, are excessively polite. General Gordon Granger, commanding this department, resides here, and with the officers on duty, adds not a little to the American society. Attached to headquarters is one of the finest bands I ever listened to, which plays in the plaza every afternoon, furnishing the Santa Fe public with a splendid musical ï~~" HAY BAILE.". 455 entertainment, and with all these helps, life after a few days did not seem to me quite so insupportable as at first. Next to the officials come the merchants, nearly all of whom are Jews. There are ten extensive firms here, and last year a million dollars worth of goods were sold. Besides these, there are clerks, agents of two stage companies, two hotel keepers, and perhaps fifty "floaters," making up the American population. I was pleased to meet there Major Nash, formerly of Cincinnati, but now chief commissary of this department, who took me in and did me good. But mny acquaintance in Santa Fe was of quite a miscellaneous character--" from the duke to the dustman." I took a Spanish teacher (male), and the third day of my studies "interviewed" him thus: " Hay baile esta noche, Seftor!" "Si, Seor, quiere uste avenir? Habra Sefioritas bonitas." " Eo quisiera yo." The result of this attempt at Castilian was a visit to that evening's bails (by-lay), or Mexican dance. Americans improperly call them fandangoes, applying the name of one kind of dance to the whole proceeding-as if one should call an American ball a "schottische." They are the national amusement. All new-comers of importance are welcomed with a public ball, and all public enterprises are inaugurated and ended by the same. Scene: A long room, wide enough for one cotillion and long enough for half a dozen; a raised platform for a first-class string band, and a chair at the other end for la maestra (feminine) of ceremonies, with seats ranged against the wall for fifty or a hundred spectators. The Mexican girls are exceedingly graceful, with very small hands and feet and most enchanting voices; but their features are not handsome, being dark, in the first place, besides having an indescribable something which I imagine I can see in all dark races, and which, for want of a term, I call dormant tigerishness. As dancers they cannot be excelled. They never have the set "called," as in the States, dancing being too much a lifetime affair with them--something ï~~f r ) p 311 t rrn J,. a r z Y ï~~PUBLIC BALLS. 457 lowing the motion of the "head lady," the couples come rapidly together, and, as the music breaks suddenly into a lively air, are whirled to all parts of the room in quick gallopade. This again subsides, and they waltz back into a sort of hollow square, from which each lady in turn issues and makes the circuit of the sett in slow waltz, tantalizing different cavaliers with feint and retreat. It looks childish on paper, but is enchanting to witness. There seems to be no distinction at these public balls on the score of character. The social indifference on that subject would astonish most Americans. If the Stantons, Anthonys, etc., are really in earnest in the statement that "wpman should have no worse stigma than a man for sexual sins," they would certainly be gratified here, for the disgrace is, at least, as great to one sex as the other. Indeed, I think the general judgment for marital unfaithfulness is much more severe on a man than a woman. The young Americans bring their mistresses to the baile with the same indifference the Mexicans do their sweethearts. These "girls " are scrupulously polite, and so unlike the same class in the States, that it can only be accounted for from the fact that they see no disgrace whatever in their mode of life, and feel no sort of social degradation. One witnesses no drunkenness, no obscene word or gesture, nothing to offend; and the uniform testimony of the American youths is, that they are the most faithful, kind and affectionate women of that class in the world. Without chastity, they still possess all the other distinctive virtues of the sex. The force of an improving public opinion has, in the last five years, caused many marriages between such couples, and the civil, or old Roman law, prevailing here, legitimates all their issue, no matter how old at the time of marriage. Speaking of law, the Mexicans cling tenaciously to all their old customs in the administration of justice. They stipulated for this at the American occupation, and General Kearney, by proclamation, continued all their judicial officers with the same code. So the mattes grew into a prescription which can not be changed; and as the givil or canon law was in force in all ï~~458 PARENTAL LAW IN NEW MEXICO. Spanish America, it is the common law of New Mexico to-day. Under it the power of parents is practically almost without limits-no matter what age their offspring may be. A son who lives with his mother is subject to her orders always, and the alcalde in rural districts is occasionally called upon by a woman whose "boy" of twenty-five or thirty has rebelled. In such cases the alcalde goes with his constable, arrests the "boy," puts a riata into the hands of the mother and bids her lay on until the youth roars for mercy. Sometimes a senorita living with an American is whipped by her mother for some want of attention or proper conduct toward herself or the mart, and though he protests,,the mother asserts her right. They even claim that if a father chose to kill his child, the law would allow it; but I am certain no test case could arise, as in general these people seem to me the kindest and most indulgent of parents to their small children. It is impossible to convey in English an adequate idea of the long drawn-out and musical endearatives and diminutives in which their language abounds: Povrita mia, muy bonita, dulee Huanita, mucha preciosa mucha-chita, (" My poor little one, dearest one, my sweet little John, most precious little girl "). This climate is said to be the best in the world for childhood, and their children are peculiarly bright and lively, but not handsome, unless for those who admire dark beauty, which I do not. After wandering for hours among the narrow streets and adobe squares, when I got into the officials' part of the town, the few little American children looked like little angels, with their clear blue eyes, soft light hair, and clear Saxon complexion. Did you ever, as you looked upon a dark face in the street, think for a moment what it would be to spend your whole life among people of that color? Until I made a long journey without sight of a white man I could not appreciate the condition of missionaries and captives among dark races, I thought only of the physical evils of their lot. But what a wearing grief it must in time come to be never to look upon a fair face; never to press the soft brown tresses, oi feel the touch of a pink baby hand; never to trace the blue veins of a Saxon fre ï~~"PR'ETTY SQUAWS." 459 head, or hear the sweet music of childish English. Keep a man among Mexicans or Chinese a few years, and I think he would fall in love with the first white lady he saw. "Pretty squaws" we often hear of, and I have seen some of those called so; but it was a beauty only in the sense of physical proportion. Barbarous people are never really beautiful; and where women are freest, there most beauty is found. Our ladies are the queens of beauty throughout the world; and after due inspection of a dozen races I conclude: Let others take what course they may, but give me an American woman or give me death. Such blessings at home are like air and sunlight, so common that we never think how much of our daily life they make; but it seems to me if I had lived a few years exclusively with Mexicans or Chinese, I would walk a hundred miles to see and talk with a few Saxon children, such as are seen in thousands upon our streets. Yes, we may occasionally feel that the claims of civilization bear heavily on us; but it is philosophically as well as poetically true: "Better fifty years of Europe Than a cycle of Cathay." I got on famously with my Spanish. My partial friends used to tell me that I had "a head for languages," and I am confident Spanish can be learned by any one in less than half the time required for French or German. Consider these points in its favor: no nasals, no gutturals, no silent letter (except, perhaps, the initial h), no sibilants, except those we have in English, and a uniform sound in every combination. I thought it best to learn enough for ordinary purposes before attempting to go through Arizona. But, strange to say, there are men who have been among them ten years and do not understand the language. Language has a strange similarity to music in that respect. Some of the most acute and intelligent men can not distinguish a tune, and could not by any possibility acquire a foreign tongue. Some funny mistakes occur in consequence. An Irishman lately established a wayside hotel near Albuquerque, and was often "done out of a day's board" by impecunious ï~~460 AN ENRAGED IRISHMAN. Mexicans, until hlie became suspicious. One day there arrived a doubtful looking "Greaser," who saluted with, " Comrno stay, Se&iior?" (How do you do?) "You've come to stay, have you?" says Pat. "We'll see about that. Got any money to pay your board? " "No intenday, Seior." (I don't understand.) "You don't intend to pay! D-n you, git out o' this," and he kicked the unfortunate Mexican into the street. A Federal official came to Santa Fe with half a dozen assorted phrases, which he thought sufficient to carry him through ordinary business. Entering a restaurant he did not know what to call for. At length he saw on the wall a rude picture of a dove, representing the Holy Spirit, such as is common in Catholic countries, which he took to be a sign for some game fowl, and asked: " Como se llama eso?" (What is that?) " Un Espiritu Santo, Senor," (A Holy Spirit, sir,) replied the waiter. "Da me dos Espiritus Santos muy cursos," (Give me two Holy Spirits well done,) requested the official, to the great horror of the devout Mexican. The people are so polite that one rarely knows if he has made a mistake. They compliment every step of progress, and if one pronounces within a hundred degrees of right, exclaim: " lay bueno, &Sor, muy claro Castilliano." Take them all in all, they are a strangely polite, lazy, hospitable, lascivious, kind, careless and no account race. Their total lack of enterprise shows in the most ludicrous ways, but most in their style of transporting everything on the backs of asses. I saw but one Mexican wagon in the city, and that had broken down. About the streets are seen droves of jackasses of a very small breed, some with bundles of hay or straw strapped on their backs, others with stove wood stacked up on each side, reaching from the ground to a foot above the back and tied on with raw hide--a regular perambulating wood-yard. Occasionally one loses his balance or trips, and goes over on his back. Then he can not get up until unloaded. I saw one get down in the Santa Fe river; and having enjoyed the cool bath and freedom from his burden, he refused to rise ï~~AN OVERBURDENED DONKEY. 461 when unloaded. A withered old eefora was belaboring him with a musical accompaniment of "caramnba! potr Dios! va maladitto!" and adjuring all the saints in the Litany, ending with a vigorous thwack on his head and a direct appeal to Saint Anastasia, who is supposed to have a peculiar power over refractory mules. But the heterodox beast shook his long ears lazily, and exhibited a most Protestant contempt for the whole saintly outfit. As I passed on she had called to her assistance a muchacho, who was spearing the donkey along the back-bone with a ferule-cane with some promise of success. All the timber from the mountains is brought into the city by this method, and one often sees a drove of donkeys, each with a heavy joist on each pannier, projecting ten feet beyond his head and dragging on the ground behind him. One morning I noticed a miserable little burro, no bigger than a good-sized ram, staggering under an entire bedstead, piled up and strapped together on his back; and another with an immense trunk strapped "cut-angular" from his left hip to his right shoulder. They are the wealth of the poorer class, and when the household donkey dies a Mexican family goes into bankruptcy. But to an antiquarian--and I have that taste a little too strong for a brief chronicler--Santa Fe is a most delightful place. All sorts of valuable documents, bearing on the early history of the West, are in the archives, and I only regretted that my time for digging among them was so short. Here, for instance, is the official report of Don Francisco Vasquez Coronado, who left the city of Mexico three hundred and thirty years ago, with a commission from the Viceroy Mendoza, and a large body of troops, to find and conquer "The country of Cibola, and the Seven Cities." He traversed Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Northwestern Texas; gave the mountain peaks and rivers the names they bear to-day, and added to the Spanish Empire an area twelve times the size of Ohio--eighty years before the Pilgrims sailed from Holland. And here is the original journal and narrative of Castenada, a private soldier with Coronado, who accompanied that army in its movements for five years. Also, the autobiography of Vaca, ï~~462 HISTORY. a companion of Narvaez, who was wrecked from the former's fleet of boats, on the coast of Texas, and passed from tribe to tribe all the way thence to the Colorado, escaping at the end of ten years to the city of Mexico. And these are not romances, but for the most part veritable history, as well authenticated as the history of Massachusetts. Here is, indeed, a delightful field for the antiquarian. Alvar Nunez Cabeza d(le Vaca was the first white man who stood upon the soil of New Mexico, or, as he called it, Tierra de Cibolas. This Yaca was a Spanish gentleman of high rank, native of Jerez de la Frontera, grandson of the Pedro de Vaca, who made the conquest of the Canary Isles. At Pena Blanca, New Mexico, now lives a gentleman by the name of Don Tomas Cabeza de Vaca, who is the tenth in the direct line of descent from Alvar Nunez. The latter is described as having the most handsome and manly figure of all the Spanish officers, and is spoken of in the poetry of that period as the "Illustrious Warrior." His narrative, though supported by his solemn affidavit, made for a Judge in Spain, is disfigured by most improbable stories, and utterly incredible accounts of cures performed merely by means of prayer and "laying on of hands." These features have caused the eminent historian, Bancroft, to reject the whole as containing too much error to be of any value; but as his descriptions of the country exactly coincide with our present knowledge, and a large part of his account is attested by other witnesses, we may safely assume the possible part as in the main correct. In company with the unfortunate Pamphilo de Narvaez, he sailed from San Lucar, Spain, on the 17th of June, 1527, and landed in Florida the ensuing April. Every schoolboy is familiar with the sufferings and fate of that expedition. The private journal of Vaca begins on the 4th of the next September, at which time the Spaniards determined to construct boats, and attempt to reach their countrymen's settlements in Mexico. Nails, saws, and axes were manufactured from their stirrups and other iron equipments. Vaca made a pair of bellows of deer skin. A Greek named Teodora, pitched the boats with resin, which he manufactured from the pine trees, and while at ï~~SPANIARDS AS PHYSICIANS. 463 work they lived upon their horses, of which they made the skins into water bottles. They embarked on the 22d1 of September, and skirted the coast of Louisiana. A violent storm scattered the fleet, and on the 6th of November, Vaca's boat was cast upon the shore, on one of the low, sandy islands lining that coast. They were treated with great kindness by the Indians, and after partly recovering their strength, repaired their boat, and again-embarked, but were thrown back upon the same island. After long delay they again repaired their boat, but, attempting to embark, it was swamped in the surf. Despair now took possession of all but Vaca, Dorantes, Castello and the Greek; they determined to start for Mexico by land. Many of the others died of grief and exposure; the Indians became hostile, and left them without food, and in a short time out of eighty who had been cast ashore (another boat also had been wrecked), but fifteen remained alive. Still the four above named cheered their companions with the hope of escape, and all started westward, believing that the Spanish settlement of Panuco was not far distant. Of Narvaez and the others driven out to sea with him by the storm, nothing more was ever heard. Vaca named this island Malhado, (misfortune,) and gives a particular account of the customs of the Indians there, which agrees very well with later accounts. The Indians made the Spaniards act as physicians, and having no medical knowledge, their practice was, says Vaca, "to bless the sick, breathe upon them, and recite a Paternoster or Ave Maria, praying with all earnestness to God, our Lord, that he would give them health and influence us to do them some good." He adds, that in every instance the patient recovered, after which their treatment by the Indians much improved. In the spring of 1529 they determined to escape, but before the time set Vaca fell sick. The others, now thirteen in number, started without him, and he remained with the Indians in that neighborhood nearly five years, or until some time in the year 1533. He went without clothing and conformed to the condition of the Indians. Having got to another tribe he gave up the profession of a physician, and adopted that of a peddler, ï~~464 VACA BECOMES A SLAVE AND ESCAPES. rightly judging this would better enable him to travel from tribe to tribe. Sometimes he was well treated, and sometimes for long periods made a slave. But in all that time he never succeeded in getting more than two hundred miles from Malhado, and could hear nothing of his companions or of Panuco. At length he was joined by another Spaniard named Ovieda, who had been left by the main party, and together they started westward in company with some Indian peddlers. Yaca relates that they crossed four large rivers, then made a long stay at a bay, which is supposed to have been the bay of Espiritu Santo. There came to them some Indians he calls Quevenes, who stated that "a few leagues beyond there were three men white like themselves, all that was left of a large party, slaves to a tribe who treated them with great cruelty." At this Ovieda became frightened, turned back and was never heard of afterward. Vaca went secretly and hung about the camp of the other tribe, until by the merest chance he met Andres Dorantes. They "mutually returned thanks to God," and in a short time Vaca was united with the other two captives, Castillo and Estevanico, a Barbary negro. These were the last of the thirteen who had left Vaca six years before. Vaca became a slave, and the four captives spent almost a year in devising a plan of escape. They got from tribe to tribe far into the interior, and at length became slaves to a people who "lived where there were many cattle," of which Vaca says: "Cattle come as far as this. I have seen and eaten of their meat. They are about the size of those in Spain, but with small horns like those in Morocco, and long hair, flocky like the Merino sheep. They come as far as the coast of Florida (Texas?) in a range from the North over four hundred leagues. The people kill them for food, and thus many skins are scattered through the country." These, of course, were the buffalo. Of all the four hundred Spaniards who had started for the conquest of Florida, but three remained alive, Vaca, Dorantes and Castillo, and with them the negro, Estevanico. They traveled many weeks toward the northwest, stopping some time on a river which was "breast high." From Vaca's description ï~~"' THE TOWN OF HEARTS."4 46 the place has been identified on the Canadian, some distance down in the Indian Territory. From there they turned westward, and after traversing much of what Vaca calls the "cow country," they came to a desert. They crossed this desert and some mountains, and came to "a people of fixed habitations." These people were very kind. "They went in a state of nature, except the old, who dressed in skins. The season was unusually dry. Rain had not fallen for two years, so they begged the white medi to ' tell the sky to. rain,' and also to pray for it, which last request was complied with." From there the Spaniards went straight west, and found the "same kinds of peoples, in fixed habitations, and dwelling between high mountains," for a hundred leagues. The women, though, were better treated and better dressed. They also wore shoes. "When a woman bore a child, she brought it to the Spaniards to receive their blessing." They must have been at this period among the Pueblos, or a people who greatly resembled them. The Spaniards spoke six Indian tongues, but these people understood none of them, and their communication was entirely by signs. They continued towards the west till they reached a place Vaca calls "The town of Hearts," because the Indians "gave to Dorantes many hundred split hearts of wild game." One day's travel west of that they saw an Indian "with the buckle of a sword belt and the nail of a horseshoe," at which they were delighted, as those things indicated the neighborhood of Spaniards. Vaca says of that region, "It is in the entrance of many provinces toward the South Sea. There is no maize on that coast, but the people eat straw and fish. They are a melancholy and emaciated people." They had evidently got among the degraded aborigines of California. The Indians stated that a few days before their arrival "certain men, who wore beards like themselves and came from heaven, had come as far as that river; that they had lances and swords, and had killed two of their people, after which they had gone to the sea and returned homeward to where the sun sets." Convinced that they were near their countrymen, they pressed rapidly southward, passing 30 ï~~466 VACA REACHES THE CITY OF MEXICO. through territory abounding in good land and beautiful streams; but the natives everywhere had fled to the mountains for fear of the Spaniards, who had made an expedition from Mexico. As they advanced, they saw repeated indications of their countrymen, and at length "came upon four Spanish horsemen." Strangely enough, Vaca indulges in no particular description of his feelings on the occasion. He merely asked the horsemen to take him to their commander, Diego de Alcaraz, of whom he requested "a certificate of the day, month and year of his arrival among them, and the manner in which he came." Alcaraz explained that he himself was lost, and did not know which way to turn. He sent them forward with a small party, and after a long and distressing march they reached the town of Culiacan, in the present Mexican State of Sinaloa, where they were received with unbounded astonishment. The Governor of that province sent them to Compostella, a hundred leagues further. From there they were everywhere received with public demonstrations, great crowds of people flocking to see them, on the road to the City of Mexico, which they reached "on the day before the vespers of St. James," in 1536. They were received with great honors by the Viceroy, and Castillo and Esteranico remained in Mexico. The next spring Vaca and Dorantes went to Vera Cruz, and shipped for Spain, and after many vicissitudes reached the harbor of Lisbon, August 9, 1537. Vaca was presented at court, and married a noble Spanish lady. The Emperor conferred upon him the Government of Paraguay, with the title of Adalantado. But his constitution seems to have been enfeebled, and his life had completely unfitted him for public business. He soon' returned to Spain and settled, in the enjoyment of a handsome pension, at Seville, where he died. At Seville he wrote his narrative, of which many manuscript copies were made, some still remaining in the archives of the Narvaez family. Nearly two hundred years after it was translated and published at Paris, of which translation the above is a summary. I am told also, that an English translation or abbreviation has been published in Washington, by ï~~ANOTHER EXPEDITION TO NEW MEXICO. 4C 7 Mr. Buckingham Smith. It would certainly be an exceedingly popular work, having all the interest of the most exciting romance, and the value of authentic history. Many of Vaca's descriptions are as exact as could be written to-day. At that time, 1530-40, all the country north and east of the Rio Grande was called by the Spaniards Cibola. In Mexico this is, by common consent, the word for buffalo, but in the Spanish lexicons it is translated, "A quadruped called the Mexican bull." The next expedition into New Mexico was by an army under the command of Don Francisco Vasquez Coronado, appointed by the Viceroy of Mexico, in search of "The Seven Cities." The Spaniards had heard of these cities as so rich in precious metals, that the household implements of the people were of gold and silver, and their currency pearls and other precious stones. The army, numbering at least seven or eight hundred) was largely composed of young Spanish cavaliers, who were as enthusiastic as our own " Pike's Peakers," and announced in Mexico that "neither they nor their families would ever have need of more gold than they should bring back from the Seven Cities." But just before this, a friar named Niza had penetrated some distance into Arizona to convert the natives, and only returned when his last companion was killed. Coronado set out on his march in January, 1541. With him was one Castaneda, a sort of Spanish Xenophon, a scholar, private soldier and adventurer, who has left a full account of the trip. They marched from the town of Culiacan northward to the Gila River, which they crossed near the present Casas Grandes. The Indians seem to have been rather too sharp for the Spaniards, as each successive tribe assured the latter that they were themselves very poor, "but about a hundred leagues fhrther on they would find the golden cities they were in search of." They did find seven cities---in fact several different nations, each with seven cities; but the largest only contained a few hundred inhabitants, and none of the gold they were in search of. Soon after crossing the Gila, they found the whole country mountainous and barren. Of one town Castaneda says: "This ï~~7r., f ' ï~~SANTA FE FOUNDED..469 Arkansas. Castaneda's description of that country will answer very well at the present day. Coronado then determined to return, and against the wishes of the entire army, they set out for New Spain, which they reached some five years after leaving it. Coronado was deprived of all his offices, and went to Spain in disgrace. Castaneda applies to him a phrase which is literally translated into modern slang, "out o' luck." Forty years passed away, and two friars came into New Mexico with a religious company, all of whom were put to death by the Indians. Another expedition was undertaken by Antonio de Espejo, with a small force, which explored the valley of the Rio Grande, and returned to Mexico without loss. He is credited with having founded Santa Fe, in or about the year 1580. Next came Don Juan de Onati in 1591, with an army and a considerable band of colonists, and succeeded in establishing some settlements about the close of that century. He left a voluminous report, portions of which have been copied, "s well as his private journal, and translated into English. The original was in the Secretary's office in Santa Fe, and not long after the American occupation was stolen and has never been recovered. About a wagon load of Spanish manuscripts are in the Librarian's office. Seventy years after the settlement the Pueblos rebelled and drove out the Spaniards, and the province was recovered by Governor Otermin and General Vargas, after a bloody war. Then follows a list of some forty Spanish and Mexican Governors, Captains, Generals and political chiefs, who ruled New Mexico a hundred and forty-six years, ending with Don Manuel Armijo in 1846, who collected a large army to meet the Americans, and, like the noted " King of France," marched out to the canfon commanding the country, and then marched back again, abandoning the province without firing a shot. Whether these people are bettered by an American occupation, I have my doubts. That they have not progressed for a century and a half is self evident, They could not possibly have been more ignorant, superstitious and unenterprising than they are now. ï~~470 POPULATION. "Since the occupation," meaning since the the Americans annexed the country, is a phrase continually heard in New Mexico, in much the same way as "Since the war," in the South: a general era from which to date " All times, all seasons, and their change; " as then the modern history of the Territory may be said to have begun. Twenty-two years passed, each exactly like the others; then came a better class of Americans, and soon began to agitate for the adoption of a State Government. Nearly all the Federal officials and most of the genie fina, or leading families, were in favor of it; the air was full of arguments on the subject, and the figures in its favor were recited unto me daily. The population, exclusive of Pueblos, is 92,000, which makes the Territory appear on the census roll to have lost 2000 since 1860. This was caused by Colorado taking four counties, containing 12,000 people, and Arizona a strip containing 8000; so the area which was New Mexico in 1860, has really gained 18,000 in population. The census rolls make no distinction between American and Mexican, but from the best data obtainable, the former are thought to number fully 6000, and are just now increasing rapidly. This leaves of all shades of Spanish 86,000-from pure Castilian to the darkest "Greaser." Of those nominally Americans, over half are Jews, Hungarians, Frenchmen, and Germans, all naturalized citizens, however. Have we here, then, the elements of a progressive American State? The leading men of both races maintain that we have, and the Constitution now before Congress was submitted to the people last June, and adopted by a large majority. The Democrats have heretofore opposed it, but now are divided on the question. The most intelligent Mexicans are Republicans, and most of the rest follow their lead with but little question. They are the most easily managed people in America. The Constitution presented is almost identical with the new one of Illinois, except the voting clause, with some features added from Nevada. If put in operation, this will be the cheapest ï~~WEALTH OF THE COUNTRY. 471 State Government in the Union: The highest salary paid is fifteen hundred dollars, and under the Alcalde system each town is practically a law unto itself. At the outside, and making the highest allowance for extra legislative expenses, the State can be run for $20,000 a year more than the Territory expends on its own account. The assessed value of property in the Territory is thirty-two million dollars, and the rate of taxation will thus be as low, or lower, than in Massachusetts. We may sum up the population of New Mexico thus: Am ericans.................................................................... 6,000 * M exicans........................................................................ 86,000 Citizen Indians (Pueblos).............................................. 10,000 W ild Indians (perhaps)...........................,....................... 20,000 Total................................................................122,000 The common people are incredibly poor. If a late peon, now free, has a dollar, he neither labors nor thinks till it is gone. Twenty-five cents of it buys flour, twenty-five goes for dulces for the seora, another twenty-five pays for absolution, and the rest buys a lottery ticket. No matter if his ticket draw a blank a hundred times in succession, "may be some time I win" is to him sufficient answer. A few families own all the wealth of the country. E-en they have their wealth mostly in flocks and herds, and immense as it is, it brings them but few of the luxuries of life. If this Territory is admitted now as a" State, it ought to be called the State of Pobritta (" Little Poverty"). Each of these wealthy families has from five hundred to two thousand dependents, some of whom were their peons before that system was abolished, and continue to yield obedience by nature and habit. If a State, this would be a most complete "rotten borough "-the worst "carpet-bag" State in the Union. Fifteen families with ease would rule the State-the Chaves, Gallegos, Delgados, Senflas, Garcias, Pereas, Oteros, Quintaflas, and a few others. These families have three-fourths of the wealth of the Territory, and all the influence. The poor Mexicans do anything they are told; in fact, don't know how to do ï~~472 RELIGIONS. otherwise than as they are told. These families, in combination with half a dozen priests, and a dozen or more Americans, would divide the home offices between them, and send whomsoever they pleased to Congress. If an American is " in with the noble families," he is a made man. It would be an eminently peaceable State, however; the Government need anticipate no trouble or need of reconstruction. They are very friendly to an American, seeming to regard him as actually a superior. The Mexican women almost look upon a white man as a sort of little divinity. Religion seems to interpose not the slightest objection. A Protestant can get office as easily as a Catholic, if not more so. The Americans, of course, are Protestants, but for the most part like A. Ward's showman partner: "Gentlemen, these are my sentiments; but if they don't suit you, they kin be changed." Father Hays, a most genial, humorous and intelligent Irish priest, gave me an amusing account of a young Virginian who lately arrived there, and coolly proposed to the Father to become a Catholic, if the latter would introduce him into the better class of families. He stated that he intended to settle in the country, and wished to marry a Mexican lady with some property. The State of New Mexico would be a quiet one, if not progressive. The country unquestionably abounds in natural wealth, and after two railroads get there, and fifty thousand Americans, it will be the richest of all the new States. There is little or no provision for public schools. The Convent School in Santa Fe is good, and nearly all the Americans patronize it. The Episcopalians and Presbyterians have a small school. The Catholic Bishop, G. B. Lamy, camne to Cincinnati twenty-seven years ago, and in the diocese of the present Archbishop Purcell was ordained, and ministered some time in Covington, Kentucky. He went to New Mexico twenty-two years ago, and is the best posted man in all matters relating to the nature of the country, climate, soil and mineral wealth that I met. The French and Irish superior priests in the city are first-class men; the native priests in the country are very uncertain. Bishop ï~~NOMENCLATURE. 473 Lamy tells me that the Pueblos are among the best practical Christians in New Mexico. I hope it is so, for I must travel among them soon. He has devoted a lifetime to the reformation of the Church throughout the Territory, and still them is vast room for improvement. Of all the native priests only two, I am informed, escaped being silenced. As they were in race neither Spanish nor Indian, so they were in faith neither Catholic nor Aztec; their religion sat loosely upon them, and they lived to all intents like the rest of the population. Each one kept his seaorita, and though the children took the mother's name, the paternity was well known. Queerest of all, and most clearly showing the singular "faith without knowledge" of these people, are the proper names..Jesus, Marie, Mariano and Jose (Joseph) are favorites, the second and third comm on to both sexes. A prominent citizen of Santa Fe is Don Jesus Vigil. His parents probably intended him for a." watchful Christian." Fortunately for sensitive American ears, it is pronflounced Haysoos Veheel. Irreverent as it may appear in me to write it, there is a well-known citizen whose name is Jesus A. Christ de Vaca (Haysoos Antonio Kreest day Bvahea). But the Spanish Americans generally are brilliant in nomenclature. The full name of a cow-herd sounds like the title of a grandee. Americans who settle in the country very often either translate their own names, or give them a Castilian termination. By such process Mr. Meadows becomes Senor Las Vegas; John Boggs, Senor Juan de Palos; and Jim Gibbons flowers out as Don Santiago de Gibbonoise. An Irishman from Denver settled near El Paso, married a wealthy Mexican lady and lives in style; his original name, Tim. Murphy, is long since forgotten, and he signs his bank checks as Timotheus Murfando. Sometimes, among the gente fila, the marriage contract specifies that the sons take both names (united by "and"), from Some principles of the law as to entailed estates. Thus Don Jose Vigil y Alarid is the son of a lady of the Alarid family married to Senor Vigil. In like manner my young friends insisted that my rough Saxon patronymic did not suit the soft Castilian, and I became Don Juan de Bidello. ï~~r,::,;,,,., ï~~PUEBLOS OR CITIZEN INDIANS. 475 aborigines, who number eight or ten thousand in the entire Territory. Heretofore, they have not been considered citizens; but the question was raised, and by the last Supreme Court decided in their favor, and henceforth they are voters. They are eminently civil and honest, and in every respect as civilized and progressive as the Mexicans. Indeed, it is the uniform testimony of travelers and American residents, that they are the most trustworthy of all the people of New Mexico. From what I see of them about the streets of Santa Fe, they seem to have more of the commercial character, and to be much more active traders than other Mexicans. But they still dress in the ancient costume, which is neither Indian nor Spanish, but a sort of mixture, with pantaloons somewhat in- the Turkish style, and when in full dress with a profusion of red and yellow. They inhabit twenty-six villages, principally in the Valley of the Rio Grande, the most important of which is San Juan, thirty miles northwest of Santa Fe. They live totally distinct from the surrounding Mexicans, each village having its own government, and no bond of union between them; but all live in the greatest harmony with their neighbors. Each village has a Governor, a cacique or justice, a fiscal or constable, and a "council of wise men." Besides these civil officers there is also a war captain, who attends to military affairs. A few hundred acres of land belong to each pueblo (the word means "village"), which is parceled out for cultivation to the various families according to their size. They are more industrious than the Mexicans, and have abundance of wholesome food. They live almost exclusively on beans, mutton, and corn meal, their lands producing the vegetables in great quantities. Their herds are extensive, and consist of the small, hardy breed of sheep. They were long ago forced to adopt the Catholic faith, but have mingled it strangely with their old religion, as some of them seem to regard God and the sun as the same. Sabianism would appear to be the natural religion of all races aboriginal to a dry, healthful climate, with clear air and much bright weather, as we find to have been the case in Chaldee, Persia, and Mexico. They pray upon the flat roofs of their ï~~ra... -, F... 'Ji,.. rt r =N. L I.. i {.. P,i r..... f li'...: ï~~OBJECTS OF INTEREST. 477 information of them. The late Albert Gallatin took great interest in this question, and after careful examination pronounced the Pueblos to be of Toltec origin. A still more interesting question to me is, what of their old civilization-was it spontaneous, as in Egypt and the Orient, or did they derive it from some foreign source, from some Asiatic immigration? Unfortunately, we are here out of the domain of obtainable facts, and remitted to vague theories and more or less probable guesses as to the "Mound-builders," and the "Tartars in America," whom the California Chinese aver to have been sent hither by Kublai Kahn in the twelfth century. Bishop Lamy is of opinion that the Pueblos are actually Indians, with a civilization peculiarly their own, and pronounces them the best practical Christians in New Mexico. Among so many objects of interest Santa Fe assumed new beauties in my eyes, and I could almost forgive the natives for presuming to exist. They style the location "the western base of the Rocky Chain," but to me it seems not the base, but half or two-thirds of the way up the mountain. The valley of the Santa Fe River is nowhere more than a mile or two wide, the river itself about a rod wide and six inches deep, and on both sides of it the city extends in tolerably regular squares. About one-tenth the amount of rain falls in a year as in Ohio. The river is diverted from its main channel into bcecquias, one for each street, and all the crops are watered regularly, though by an awkward and unscientific method of irrigation. Daily I studied the routes through Arizona, and each day brought fresh tales of disaster. First came a Mexican from El Paso, whose two companions were killed by Indians on the edge of the Jornrada del Muerto; and next a butcher from the western border, whose Mexican herders were killed and all his stock run off by the Mescalero Apaches. And while he was yet speaking came another messenger and said that nine prospectors, who left by the northern route, went too far south, fell into an ambuscade, and "their scalps now ornament the lodges of Collyer's pets." We next receive Arizona papers with the information that ï~~., o I..,. ï~~CHAPTER XXIV. NEW MEXICO. Off from Santa Fe-La Bajada-Rio Grande Valley-The Pueblo de San Do. mingo-Mexican farms-Albuquerque-Crossing the Rio Grande-On the Desert-Rio Puerco-El Rito-" Town of the Lake "-Cubero-McCarty's Ranche-Murder by the Navajoes-Agua Azul-The extinct volcano-Summit of the Sierra Madre-At Wingate-My soldier comes to grief. SWELVE days I abode in Santa Fe, and my summing up is about like that of the sailor who had agreed to write to his friends of the manners and customs of the people he visited: when shipwrecked on the coast of Patagonia he wrote, "These people have no manners, and their customs are disgusting." No, I am wrong there: they have a surplus of manners; it is in morals there is a deficit. The Territory contains about eighty thousand native Mexicans, divisible into three classes: the genie fina, or noble bloods, of whom there are about fifteen families; the respectable middle classes, who may possibly amount to two thousand in all; and the "Greasers," who make up about ninety-five per cent. of the whole. Taking out fifteen families, it is my solemn conviction that the property of all the other Mexicans in the Territory will not average fifty dollars apiece. I thought, before this trip, that Utah was the poorest part of America; but the Mormons roll in wealth compared to the New Mexicans. As to morals, which is the worse, polygamy or promiscuous concubinage? That is a great moral question which I am not competent to decide. People who have lived among them many years confidently assert that there are some, in fact a number, of virtuous people among the natives. I hope it is so. Let us take it for granted, and dismiss the subject. At 11 A. M. of May 22d, I took my seat on a freight wagon 479 ï~~480 REMINISCENCES OF SANTA FE. and rolled out of the new Mexican capital. Crossing the Rio de Santa Fe, we left the valley and struck across the mesa in a southwest direction, the city behind us appearing to sink slowly into the earthl. Looking back upon it, this noted town appeared to my eye exactly like a collection of old brick yards. It is my invariable custom to say something good of a town on departing, if I can possibly think of a good thing to say; but I am puzzled what to say for Santa Fe. Verily my stay there left the worst impressions I ever had of any city in the West. The few Americans there I liked, but as for the natives, if there is hope for them, morally or intellectually, I have failed to see the signs. That the city has no commercial future is, to my mind, self-evident. I find it difficult to convey on paper the exact reasons, but if one could stand on the mesa a few miles southwest, he would see it at a glance: the mountains extend around it in a semicircle, putting out north and south of it almost to the Rio Grande, and all practicable passes for railroads completely flank it. Either the Atlantic and Pacific, or the Denver and Rio Grande would have to go forty or more miles beyond it, then bend around the points of the mountain crescent and run back and up a rise of two thousand feet or more to reach it. The site, moreover, is five hundred feet higher than the highest point on the surveyed line of the Atlantic and Pacific. It was an important place in the old days of freighting from the Missouri border, because it was on the first level and fertile piece of ground the trains could reach after getting through the mountain passes; but it can never be a railroad center. It may some day have a branch road, but even that I consider very doubtful. My only companion from Santa Fe to Fort Wingate was Frank Hamilton, of the 8th U. S. Cavalry, stationed at that post. Frank had been detailed to come to Santa Fe on military business, and had improved the occasion by getting gloriously drunk, in which condition he remained most of the time he was at Santa Fe, and was barely sober enough to know the road when we started. The average regular soldier will take his tod-as often as he can get the chance. ï~~,.,. -. (, s,,n,,, u..,,.., _,,,..,,.,;, r. %, try., L,; ' G H Y r r fi. Qi e... c x -:. tir -,. _'1:.: J iM x,r~,,, V Â~.:.cr. ",.-, ï~~482 HOTEL IN LA BAJADA. quadrangle of rooms around an open square, which contains some flowers, two shade trees, benches and wash-stands. The rooms have floors of wood, instead of dirt; the walls are whitewashed; two mirrors and a buffalo-skin lounge adorn the sitting-room, and generally the place almost ranks as respectable. Two bright-eyed, graceful, copper-colored seHoritas bring me a supper of coffee, side meat, eggs, and tortillas de mals, and entertain me with a voluminous account in musical Spanish of their personal recollections of the place. I have learned enough of the language to be able to say "ah," "yes" and "no" at nearly the right place, and that is the most required to keep a Mexican woman social. My companion, jolly drunk, was barely able to get his team into the corral, when hle fell back into the wagon asleep, and, as he was the cook of our outfit, I was obliged to stay overnight at the hotel. Except the two houses mentioned, the whole town is of a uniform dull clay color, walls of mud, fences of mud, door and window casings of mudcolored wood, roofs of slightly sloping poles, covered with earth twvo or three feet thick, floors of native earth beaten hard, and nowhere a patch of grass to relieve the wearied eye. No words can convey to an Ohio man the utter dreariness of an average New Mexican town. I was curious to know the meaning of the name, for it was the first Mexican town I had seen which was not named after some saint or angel. They have the saintliest names and the most unsaintly looking towns of any people I know. The words mean "The Descent," and are pronounced altogetherLavvahadda. We left La Bajac a in the coolness of the morning, for we had got down to a warm climate, and descended a gentle slope to the valley of the Rio Grande. The river was as great a disappointment as most of the towns had been: broad, swift and muddy, navigable for scows and flats only, and at this season too thick to swim in. The rise had spoiled the usual crossing place, and we must travel down the river two days to Albuquerque. We left the Indian pueblo of Santo Domingo some three hundred yards to our right, but while the driver jogged along at ï~~,; f,-,' 1^ S, l n, ii'' 'p;, z; rz fiy d,, ",, ': ark;f ~ -~ ra,; ~ f r,....,; - r i u~ ^ k, ï~~484 DECREASE OF THE PUEBLOS. five hundreds instead of thousands; but the whites best acquainted with them tell me that they are rarely able to count beyond a hundred, and generally reckon only by tens. Any number beyond a hundred is "infinity" or "eternity," and vaguely expressed by the word quinientos. Three miles brought us down into a beautiful vega, containing some two miles square of rich, natural meadow on which the Pueblos had several hundred head of horses and mules. My compabion pointed out with some pride his own manada of sixty mules and mares, attended by his three boys, and urged me to stop at his rancheria and take dinner. But appearances were not inviting, so I plead no tiempo, and hurried on after the team, Antonio leaving me with a friendly grasp and, "Addio, &Sor, pasa buenas dies." (May you pass good days.) A little farther on we drove within a quarter of a mile of the river, where almost the whole village of Pueblos were hauling a rude seine. They held up some good-sized fish, shouting the price; but on my declining, waved me off with, "Buena jornada, Se&iior!" (A good journey, sir.) The slow but steady decrease of the Pueblos is attributed by different persons to many different causes. I think it is largely owing to the system of intermarriage pursued in each pueblo ("village"). The authorities have assigned to each a sort of reservation, generally six miles square, as they are scattered in every part of the Territory and mingled among the Mexican towns. This makes of each one an isolated community separated by many miles of Mexican country from any other pueblo, and left to its own population exclusively for society. The Indians of one know little or nothing of those of another. Many of them number no more than two or three hundred inhabitants each, and in this small number the same families have married back and forward for hundreds of years till every member of the community is some akin to every other member. Degeneration and decay are the inevitable results. To speak bluntly, the stock needs a new graft. This "marrying in and in" is a Spanish custom, also, and the Mexicans, who cannol plead necessity, consider such marriages rather preferable. ï~~i',,-.. r, i y..,. - - n a w ï~~486 APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY. and it would be difficult to estimate the benefit that will result to the Territory from its completion." We pass the little pueblo of San Felipe, and from this vega rise on to another desert-for ten miles the same eye-wearying panorama of dry sand, dark gray rock and treeless, grassless mesa, the whole uninhabited and uninhabitable. About 3 P. M., we descend to another oasis of two or three square miles, where we spend the night at the town of Algodonas. All that I had previously seen of unsightly Mexican towns is eclipsed by this straggling row of unburnt brick kilns, walls, fences, houses, fields and corrals of dried mud. My companion had fortunately got sober enough to cook our dinner (or supper rather) while I hunted for some additions to our fare, which consisted of army bread, pork, coffee and potatoes. I found three luxuries for sale: vino de pais, (native wine,) eggs and goat's milk. My soldier took the milk by choice, but I confined myself to the eggs and wine with the regular fare. After supper I ran about town till I found one intelligent citizen, who gave me much information about the country, in a mixture of French and Spanish. "When will the Thirty-fifth parallel road be built?" and "Will New Mexico be admitted soon as a State?" were the questions on which he earnestly desired information. He set forth the arguments for a State Government at great length. The strongest in his estimation seemed to be, "The rich (los ricon) are all in favor of it." As they must pay the expense, he thought they should have whatever they wanted. We were off at six next morning, and a few miles from Algodonas entered the great oasis of Albuquerque, the largest body of fertile land in New Mexico. For nearly a hundred miles, with slight breaks, extends the fertile valley of the Rio Grande, varying from two to eight miles wide. In this portion an acecquia, taken out of the river above, runs along the bluffs, from which side ditches, one every furlong or oftener, convey the water among the fields. There we see ridges of dirt thrown up, dividing each field into little squares, of some five rods each, to hold the water. The labor of irrigating seems to me much greater than in Utah. In places the careless ï~~ra _ Hr till 3 a; r R r< a s T. 0 ï~~48. DESCRIPTIVE. the mountains and highlands are of some value for pasturage.. For five miles before reaching Albuquerque, our.road is through a highly cultivated country, containing some vineyards and many shade trees, forming an agreeable contrast with the rest of the country. In most of these towns one sees no shade trees, no rills of sparkling water coursing the streets, as in Utah and Colorado. The Mexicans only care to live; they have little or no conception of beauty. One might almost say that the valley of the Rio Grande is New Mexico, just as that of the Nile is Egypt; for outside of it nine-tenths of the country is either totally barren or fit only for pasturage. All the important towns are in that valley or in some tributary thereto, and one may ride from El Paso to Taos through a tolerable continuous line of settlements, while to cross the country from east to west, he will often travel for days together over barren mesas, without sight of a dwelling. At noon of a broiling day we turned westward across the valley, finding a delightful place of rest in the only grove I had seen, towards what appeared from a distance as another array of "green" brick yards; but which is located on the map as Albuquerque. Among the little farms near the city the inhabitants were repairing their fences, as usual just before the summer drought. A box-frame, some two feet square and a foot deep, with no bottom, was placed upon the ground and filled with tough mud mingled with a little grass; then the frame being lifted, left.a section of the wall in place to be hardened and whitened (a little) by the sun. Successive blocks were stacked on each other till the fence was four or five feet high. Such a mud-wall, with the ditch by it from which the dirt was taken, is the only fence you will see in days of travel on the Rio Grande. Albuquerque is the coming town of New Mexico, if it has a coming town, which I am much inclined to doubt. Here the Atlantic and Pacific road will bisect a community of one hundred thousand people, who will purchase yearly ten or twenty million dollars worth of goods; and the general trade of the country will double in a few years after the road is built. But ï~~J ï~~490 JUNE RISE OF THE RIO GRANDE. Friday afternoon and Saturday I rested, wrote and rambled in the queer, flat old city, calling also on the padre, who is usually the most intelligent man in a Mexican town. All the acting padres are now French or Irish; the native Mexican priests have been retired, whether on half-pay or not I did not learn. The padre gave me many facts: that the oasis of Albuquerque was some eighty miles long, and averaged four miles wide, and that it was now two hundred and fifty years since the Spanish Duke of Albuquerque encamped on this spot, though the city is not so old. His family title in full was Don Alphonso Herrera Ponto Delgado de Albuquerque. I asked the padre "what was his front name," but he did not seem to know. His descendants now belong to the genie fina, that is to say, the first families before mentioned (F. F. N. M.), people who have the sangre azul in their veins. We smile at the solemn humbug of these people, who are so exclusive on account of what somebody did two or three centuries ago; but it is really matter of curious thought that there were considerable cities and Spanish temples in New Mexico before any of our pioneers had crossed the Alleghanies. The vicinity is pretty well cultivated, but the people are very poor, pious and contented. A palacio of dried mud, a meal of corn and pimiento, and a slip of corn-shuck filled with tobacco and rolled into a cigarette, is the hight of a "Greaser's" ambition. On the 26th, we left Albuquerque, just as the Sunday amusements began. They usually have splendid cathedral services in the morning, a dog-tussle about noon, and a cock-fight later in the day. In the evening, if reflective, the "Greaser" smokes cigarettes and meditates; if sentimental, he goes courting. My soldier was sober again, by chance, and eager to start, while I felt refreshed, and ready for the desert. The "June rise" of the Rio Grande (El Rio they call it there--" The River ") had come on a week or two earlier than common, and a vast bayou covered two-thirds of the "bottom" between the city and the main channel. In this we encountered dangerous whirls and jump-offs, the wagon often plunging ï~~"ABOUT SO HIGH."4 491 in up to the bed, and two or three times the little lead mules were obliged to swim a rod or so. When we reached the narrow strip of high ground near the river, the whole population of the string-town opposite were collected on the bank, on their way to the Cathedral and other Sabbath amusements. Half a dozen families were laboring across in their own skiffs, while the main ferry flat was loaded to the guards. The women, in gay robes and black rebosos, were laughing, shouting and singing, while the men screamed, swore and shouted directions all at once to the four boatmen, and the flat drifted in circles down the swift current. Fortunately, the actual channel is not more than two hundred yards wide, and the flat only descended half a mile in making the passage. A boat load of Mexicans on the way to church can make more noise than two circus shows. Having passed the main current, the ferrymen jumped overboard, and, wading up to their armpits, with tow ropes on shoulder, hauled the flat to shore. This trifling incident is a beautiful illustration of the Mexican style of doing everything. Once landed, the male passengers took to the bayou without a thought for their summer pantaloons; but the women, being gaily dressed for church, dropped upon the grass, snatched off their under clothing, raised their dresses "about so high," and waded to town with the utmost nonchalance, laughing, chattering, and singing hymns to the Virgin! Here and there was seen a youth of unusual filial piety, carrying his mother astride his shoulders; but most of the women encountered the difficulties of the way with a hardihood fully equal to that of the men. Two hours of Mexican awkwardness set us across, and we left the west bank for the sand hills just as the great bell of the adobe Cathedral was calling these copper-colored Christians to morning mass. The western hills looked bad enough from the town, and more than kept their promise. One mile across the valley brought us to the first mesa, not more than fifty feet above the river, and covered for four or five miles with a tolerable growth of greasewood, cactus and bunch-grass, indicating some fertility. Then we entered upon another gradual ascent ï~~,r,;,.r Â~: r,F,. r r k,,;..,,;.,h,.,,,,',. F_ 1. s, a.,,, v,F. - 4,. k s_, '... x. 0 L.. r,r,ry;,,..,. a u w m n.,, ï~~WATER FOUND. 493 two days without water, and avoided any serious suffering by this simple expedient. A piece of silver, or small splinter of mountain pine, held in the mouth and rolled about with the tongue, is often used for the same purpose. In an hour the evening wind rose, and we moved on. At 5.P. M., we reached a down grade, and saw on the western, horizon a straggling line of dwarf pines, indicating the course of the Puerco. Our mules showed new life, gave a grateful whinny, and broke into a trot. Fortunately we found some water still in the channel, though fast sinking. Three weeks ago the Rio Puerco (Spanish for "Hog River") was a torrent; one week more, and it will be a resaca (" dry channel "). It runs but two months in the year; at other times, travelers must hunt along the dry channel till they find a brackish pool, or dig in the river bed. The water looked exactly like dirty milk, and its temperature was about 700; but it was grateful enough to us. The driver drank two quart cups of it in ten minutes, and the poor animals crowded down the only accessible place, and shoved each other into the stream in their eagerness to get at the dirty fluid. Fortunately the dirt which gives color to the water is so fine, that one cannot feel it grit in his teeth, and aside from the earthy taste, the water is not disagreeable. The immediate valley of the Puerco-what we Hoosiers would call the "bottom "-is about two miles wide, and has every sign of great natural fertility. The soil is black, and as loose as any part of the Wabash "bottoms;" water alone is lacking. In early March the mountain snows send down a flood of water, and the whole valley is covered with green grass, which endures till near the 1st of May. Then all moisture disappears except the river channel; the plain changes from green to striped, from striped to yellow, and from yellow to velvet, and finally dirty brown. The grass, dead ripe, drops its seed in the deep cracks produced by the sun's heat, and is blown out by the roots, and the whole plain becomes a bed of black dust, seamed occasionally by cracks in which a goodsized child might be lost. Ten years before, the Mexicans attempted to settle it; built a dam to retain the spring freshet, ï~~494 DEAD MAN'S CANON. and constructed half a dozen adobe houses near the road. But, on account of their usual awkwardness, their dam was destroyed by the first freshet, their acequia was dry the 1st of June--just when they needed it-the impractical "Greasers" gently complained to Nuestra Madre de dolores, and abandoned the settlement. We spread our blankets in one of their abandoned domos, and passed a comfortable night. The head of the Puerco, it is said, is only a few hundred yards from the main head of the San Juan, a perennial stream, and a canal to irrigate this entire valley could be constructed for ten thousand dollars. The fertility of these valleys, when irrigated, is wonderful, and the reclamation of the hundred or more sections on the Puerco for the above sum would be very cheap. From the "Hog River" we have twenty-six miles more of desert, totally destitute of water; hence we turn out at 2 P. M., and are on the road by moonlight. All that which yesterday looked so drear is enchantingly lovely by the clear light of a New Mexican night sky, and the turbid Puerco now seems like a current of molten silver. There is but one place in which it can be crossed, the channel being some twenty-five feet deep and not more than fifty wide at the top of the bank. It had fallen six inches during the night, leaving but three feet of water (a rod or two wide), from which my companion inferred that it would be totally dry in less than a week. Thence we rise again to another desert, and in ten miles reach the ancient border of the Navajoes, (or Navahoes, if spelled as pronounced,) a series of rugged gulches and narrow canons, bounded by perpendicular walls of yellow soapstone. They run from north to south, and form a break in the road something near a mile wide, evidently the bed of a long extinct river. Wash gravel and marine shells are heaped in fantastic piles by the wind. The deepest is known as Dead Man's Canon, where are buried twenty whites massacred many years ago by the Navajoes. This tribe was long the terror of Northwestern New Mexico, They were slowly depopulating the outer Mexican settlements, when, in 1864, General W. H. Carleton organized his grand campaign, and reduced them to perfect submission. A party of them overtook us at the Rio ï~~DARWINIAN THEORY. 495 rande, one chief and eleven warriors, who had been down to the Comanche country on a stock stealing expedition, and at the cafion we learned that they had passed westward some hours before us, having made the forty-four miles afoot in a little over one day. They got no horses and had some men wounded. Many apprehensions were expressed by the Mexicans that the tribe would soon go on the war path, as their crops were a total failure 'the previous year, and no appropriation having been made for this deficiency, they must steal or starve. By our early start we escaped the midday heat upon the desert, but the drying air produced strange effects. My nose, lips, and wrists, which blistered yesterday, peeled to-day, and I started to grow a new cuticle on those members. My nose was coloring like a new meerschaum, forming a very striking feature of my countenance. How convenient it would be, sometimes, if man could sprout new members in place of lost ones, as a lobster does his claw, or a bee its sting. But then we don't seriously need such a faculty, or we should have it. According to Darwin, all that is necessary is to be placed in a condition where it is a sort of necessity, and cultivate the desire for it a few hundred or thousand generations, and the faculty will spontaneously develop. Beautiful theory! From Dead Man's Canon we ascend a gentle slope and travel some twelve miles through a wide pass, almost level, bounded north and south by abrupt mountain spurs, which show indications of iron ore in great abundance. Thence down a gentle slope, where the earth is red with iron (sesquioxide), we enter a vast baked plain of barren clay, as hard as the sun's rays can make it. On the western side of the plain appears a slight depression of most inviting green, containing probably five sections of exceedingly fertile land. North, south and west of it rise mountain ridges, with hollows scantily clothed with grass, and just this side of the oasis on the baked plain--for they can not afford to build on fertile soil--stands the Mexican hamlet of El Rito (" Little River"'). We had made our day's drive of twenty six miles by noon. Before leaving Santa Fe I had procured an enlarged map of New Mexico, which had numerous ï~~496 EL RITO. streams located all through this country; but in place of water, in three fourths of them, I found a channel of shifting sand, which had evidently been subjected to the action of water once, but whether one month or a thousand years ago, I could not determine. My entertaining companion, who had made at least three distinct remarks since leaving Albuquerque, here suggested that my map was made in February or March, when all these gulches do run great torrents of water. As he said this in perfect innocence and good faith; it amounted to a pretty good thing for him to say. Of all the employments on top of ground I think private soldiering in this country most completely dries up the mental fluids. Some of these streams run as long as six weeks, and the rest of the year are dry beyond 'an Ohioan's conception. They call them here arroyos or resacas. El Rito is a strange, old, isolated Mexican town, away out on the edge of the desert, twenty-five miles from the nearest neighbor; and yet it is a century old, and has doubtless contained the same families-perhaps forty in all---during all that time. No church, no school, no papers, no books, or very few, to introduce a new idea; but family concerns, town concerns, the winter's rain and the spring rise; the rare passage of a Government train, and the rarer visit of the itinerating padre to baptize the children and confess and absolve the elders, make up their little world of incidents. The oasis is plowed with a sharpened log, well seasoned and hewn into the shape of an Irish spade, and the crops tended with hoe and rake; while the goats, sheep, and asses are pastured in the mountain hollows, and the hens live upon crickets and earth worms. If the family burro (donkey) does not die, if the goats do well, if the water is sufficient for enough of mais and chile Colorado, and the hens lay eggs enough to send off by the weekly peddler, and procure a little tobacco and flowered calico, then Quien quiere por mas? (Who cares for more?) In this little community of degenerate Spaniards A's children have married B's children, and vice versa, and in the next generation double-cousins married double-cousins, for a hundred and fifty years, till the wine of life has run down to the very lees and flows dull in ï~~/ ' P ' d h i 1.. ï~~498 AN AMERICAN FROM TIPPERARY. The men and larger boys were at work in the public field, or tending flocks among the hills; the women asleep, or sitting on the dirt floor smoking cheroots of corn shuck and tobacco, and the whole juvenile population looked to me like a miserable batch of rags, sore eyes, and sin.. There was not a tree, a flower, or a spear of grass in the place. Those persons I spoke to were even too lazy to understand Spanish-as I spoke it, anyhow. They only grunted, "No eabe," and pointing to a rather superior adobe on the hill, remarked, "Alli, tun Americano." Thither I went, and found an "American" indeed. His name was Ryan, and he was "from Tipperary, indade." However, he spoke English and Spanish fluently, and gave me much valuable information. He drifted in there six years ago, liked it, married a Mexican woman, had several Pueblo servants and a flock of sheep, and was general advisor, advocate and scribe for the settlement. A delegation of Pueblos from the next town were at his house to complain of the Navajoes, who had been stealing their stock, and to seek redress. iHe took me to the public fonda, where I got a good supper of goat's milk, tortillas and eggs, and a clean room, and spent the evening quite pleasantly. The nights there are delightful; a little too cool toward morning, perhaps, for comfortable sleeping in the open air, but with abundant blankets we did well. The entire mountain range southwest is said to be a mass of minerals, coal, iron, and copper. It is a region of curiosities. In the next valley south is the largest one of the abandoned cities of-whom! Quien sabe, is the universal answer of Mexican and Indian. Most of the houses there are of sawed stone. Three miles ahead, and on our road, is the noted Pueblo de Laguna, probably the best built of all the Montezumas towns. This pueblo, (" town of the lake,") is so called because in ancient times a vast causeway extended across the upper part of the valley, which was constructed by the Pueblos, to retain the winter floods for summer irrigation, creating a lake several miles in extent. The road from El Rito runs around in a regular U for seven miles to get up to the next higher valley; ï~~HOUSES ON THE ROCKS. 499 but there is a rocky trail straight up through one of the mountain passes which reaches the town in three miles, and this I followed, gaining some two hours on the team by that and my early start. The sun was just rising as I entered the pueblo, and the inhabitants were mostly on the house-tops preparing their implements for the day's work. The town is situated upon the east end of an oval rock or mole, some two miles long, and rising gradually at each end to a hight of a hundred feet above the bordering plain. The top is comparatively level, and the sides fall off in a succession of abrupt benches, each a yard or so in width and hight, rendering the whole place a splendid, natural fortification. On these rocks the Pueblos first built for protection, and are slow to change, though in the present lengthy peace some of them are beginning to build out on the farm. I had met the Cacique of this pueblo the day before at Ryan's, in El Rito, and been introduced to him. He is one of the most intelligent of the race; spoke Spanish fluently, and a little English. He treated me with rare courtesy, and by many cross-questionings, gestures and repetitions we managed to converse with interest. Unlike all other Pueblos I had met, he seemed to have some definite idea of the antiquity of his race and their origin. He gave me to understand that from the traces in Arizona and this Territory, they must have come originally from the west, and had always been at war with other Indians. Slowly repeating the few words of English he could command-"All 'e times war; no times peace; all 'e times Pueblos' house onrock, no times on field "-hlie swept his hand in great circles to indicate a vast and indefinite lapse of time. He then had recourse to many gestures and voluminous Spanish, of which I understood but little, and that seem to imply that many hundred miles west of here I would find Pueblos "away up on steep rocks," where they could only get up and down by ladders. Many of the houses have a second story, not more than half or one-third as extensive as the lower one; and some few have a sort of tower, or third story, on top of the second. To this I several times signified a desire to ascend, but the Cacique either did not ï~~500 RELIGION OF THE PUEBLOS. understand me, or d(lid not see fit to grant my request. Uneducated and semi-barbarous people as they are, themselves destitute of the intelligent curiosity of the civilized man, can not understand the existence of it in him, and nearly always attribute its manifestation to some mean or possibly hostile motive. Generally the Pueblos dislike to have white visitors; few of them are communicative to one who asks many questions, and, long as the Zuni branch of the race has been in contact with the whites, I am told there is very little positively known about them. Still less do they appreciate any religious motive; to them a people's religion is their property, just as their land or houses are, and a part of their customs, like their wars and dances. Hence, they at first distrust religious teachers or visitors more than any one else. For these reasons the accounts of missionaries, especially their first accounts, among any barbarous people, must be received with great caution. It is nearly or quite impossible to make an Indian understand why any one should want him to give up his religion and adopt that of another; he can not assign any probable motive for such solicitude, and invariably concludes there must be a swindle in it soniewhere. He will readily acknowledge that the white man's religion is true and good-for the white man. And, of course, the Indian's religion is equally true and good-for the Indian. There had been trouble in this pueblo lately on religious matters, though I could not fully understand the merits of the case. It seems that when the Spanish Jesuits "converted" these people, some two centuries ago, they found it impossible to eradicate entirely the Montezumas faith, and so made a compromise. They gave them the Catholic religion, with its most impressive ceremonies, and permitted them to keep all their Montezumas customs which did not amount to actual idolatry. These consisted mostly of dances and feasts at stated times, which had more of a national than a religious significance. But since Governor Arny took charge of them an attempt has been made to convert them to Protestantism, and this has created difficulties among themselves. Since visiting that pueblo, I have learned there was a white man there teaching, though I did not see him. ï~~a.V ï~~502 " MOUND BUILDERS." think, translucent but not transparent. It lights the interior nearly as well as glass. The Cacique spoke with some pride of the many cattle, sheep and goats owned by his town, and then broke out into bitter complaints of the Navajoes, who had lately stolen a dozen horses and ten cattle from them. The Pueblos have always been at peace with the whites, except the brief period of the rebellion against the Spaniards in 1680-'90, and from time immemorial have had the same customs, and the same grade of civilization as now. They did not learn it from the Spaniards; they dwell in the same houses and use substantially the same implements as before the latter came-the only change being that in some cases they fasten timber with iron where they formerly used seasoned wood. Their women are neat and modest. The children mostly go naked to the age of ten or twelve years, and are hardy and well formed. All ages and sexes have splendid teeth-perfect rows of pearls. No one can tell the age of this town.it was here when the Spaniards came, and has been here, the Indians say, ever since their grandfathers had any account. Some twenty miles south is the ancient Aztec city of Sobieta, which has been in ruins from the earliest historic times. Many of the thouses were constructed of square stones, which even now show marks of the saw; others of flat stones laid in mortar, and some apparently of timber and adobe, though but the merest outlines of these remain. All the towns show their people to have lived in a state of continual warfare. New Mexico is notable as being the only part of our country in which a civilization has been once established and completely overthrown. I might say twice established and the second time decayed, for it now seems to me that these New Mexicans must be far inferior to their Spanish ancestors, and that they are still retrograding. Modern research has done much to clear up the mysteries of this region, and from more thorough exploration of Yucatan and South America we may yet learn the true history of the Aztecs and the " Mound Builders." The subject is full of interest, but it is a melancholy interest. It has about it much of that feeling which results from the contempldtion of decay and ruin. There ï~~RELICS OF PAST AGES. 543 is an eloquence in decay, but it is a sad eloquence; and growth has more of vital interest than decline, even as we gaze with more pleasure upon the robust boy than upon the decrepid old man. But I am powerfully impelled, as I look upon these relics of age, to ask: Is this the necessary fate of all peoples, all civilization? Must all grow old, become effete, and wither and die like an individual, while genius, learning and progress take their flight to other lands? And must we, too, cover our land with connecting lines of wire and rail, and build cities and temples, only that thousands of years hence another people may dig among our rui'ns, and wonderingly inquire of us and our works? Even if our civilization survive, some day our Nation, our Government must pass its manhood, grow old, decay and perish-perhaps in a sea of blood! History teaches this as truth, and we can only sigh with the poet: "Yes, come it must, the day decreed by fatesHIow my heart trembles while my tongue relatesWhen thou, beloved State, thyself must bend, And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end." Something less than three hours had passed at the pueblo when our team moved on. The road runs partly over the east end of the rocky mole, on which the pueblo stands, and thence along its northern side, and we descended into a beautiful and fertile valley, some five miles long, the common property of the Pueblo. The place has a population of at least eight hundred, and the valley does not contain more than twelve sections of amrable land; but they cultivate it closely, and there being abundant water for irrigation, it produces amazingly. Wooden plows were running, breaking up the ground for late crops, and on the adjoining hills I saw extensive herds of goats and sheep attended by young Pueblos. Crossing this oasis we entered another broad cafion, which we followed for some ten miles to the town of Cubero, somewhat better than the ordinary Mexican hamlet. It is built on a series of shelving rocks; some of the dwellings were of stone, nearly all had stone floors, and the place seemed literally bask ï~~50-4 PUEBLOS ON A SPREE. ing under the fierce rays of a New Mexican sun. There is no part of America which so exactly answers the best descriptions of Syria as western New Mexico. There are the same yellow and striped mountains, seamed and scarred as if blasted by a million years of storm and lightning; the same cafons with perpendicular walls, and stifling with hot, stagnant air, and the same dry sands and white deserts and treeless, grassless mesas. And here and there, too, are fertile oases, where privileged nature seems to have exhausted the resources she denied to all the rest of the land; rich valleys, that return a hundred-fold for the husbandman's seed, and over all a sky of dazzling purity, with moonlight at times so bright that one can read ordinary print. And here and there among the mountains, in the dryest and most unexpected places, springs bubble out and cool water drips over the rocks, and green, rank grass covers a plat of an acre or two with rare beauty, all the more enchanting for the surrounding desolation. At certain points, too, one finds square wells as large as an ordinary dwelling, cut, as it were, down into the solid rock, with a never-failing supply of water; and these become places of renown, historic spots, the boundaries of little nations or communities, council grounds and camping places of repute in every part of the country. But among these mountains New Mexico has what Syria has not: a supply of minerals that will bring the energy of the nation here and create a third civilization which Apache and Navajo can not destroy. As regards agriculture, the country West does not contain amrable land enough to supply garden-sauce to an average lpopulation, such a population as will some day be at work among the mines. At Cubero we found another party of Pueblos on a general spree. One able-bodied "buck" was staggering along the street, while his wife followed close beating him in the back and head with the butt end of a wagon whip-literally "taking him home;" while most of the Mexican population, those who were not asleep, were out laughing at the sport. Women's rights prevail extensively armong the Pueblos. Thence we passed another low "divide," from which five miles brought us down into another oval valley and to "McCarty's Ranche," where we stopped for the night. ï~~A LONELY WIDOW. 505 McCarty is a wandering Irishman, drifted into these mountains and settled, and married of course to a Mexican woman. I found her far superior to most of her race, speaking English fluently. As I sat in the shade of the house taking sketches of mountain and valley, I was surprised at the appearance of a beautiful little girl of two or three years, with soft golden hair and that beautiful English fairness and transparency of complexion which so soon attract the traveler among the dark races. I called her to me in English.; she came, but replied to my questions, O, un hombre Americano, and ran away to the opposite side of the hacienda, where a young American lady appeared. I was amazed at seeing her in that place, and noted the singular deference with which all the Mexicans regarded her. Next morning, having learned that I was a journalist, she met me, and explained the fact of her being there. She was the daughter of an old United States army officer, and was married very young to a Scotchman named Dennis Landry. He was trading in western New Mexico, and she had accompanied him thus far, when two months before he left Bluewater (Agua Azul) to return to McCarty's, and had never been seen since by whites. His wife employed the friendly Pueblos to hunt for traces of him, and they soon brought conclusive proof that he had been murdered by the Navajoes. Indeed, the individual who did the killing had since acknowledged the fact in Cubero. But there seems no convenient way to get at these cases, where an individual of a friendly tribe murders a white. The murderer simply goes to some other tribe, or bebecomes a "dog soldier," at large in the mountains; the friendly tribe either deny his guilt entirely, or profess a willingness to give him up, if he can be caught. Mrs. Landry informed me she had spent the last two months here, lonely enough, but still hoping to recover the remains of her husband, "for," she continued, "why should I go to Santa Fe, or farther East? All places are equally lonesome now. I am as well here as there." Such tragedies occur everywhere on the border, and communities necessarily become hardened and indifferent while individuals continue to suffer. ï~~506 LAVA ROCK. The fertile valley in which McCarty's Ranche is situated, and which is to be traversed by the Thirty-fifth parallel road, gradually narrows westward, and a gorge not more than two hundred yards wide opens into another valley. The last three miles of the former valley is mostly marsh, and thither the officers from Wingate often go to hunt ducks. At the west end rise the springs which water the valley. They boil out from under the rock half a dozen streams of cold, clear water. But a few rods from them the lava beds begin. As I walked over the plain, it looked as if the lava had just cooled. I could see all the little waves and ripples in its surface, and near the springs it had evidently overflowed in successive layers, each an inch or so thick, the lower cooling a little before the one above it was deposited. In places these folded layers had been broken directly across, folded and contorted, leaving singular gaps and fissures, the sides of which appeared coated in places with lime or sulphur, and in others by what looked like red sealing-wax turned to stone. Where contorted or twisted the lava rock presented precisely the same appearance as if one should lay down successive folds of tarred canvas till the pile was ten or twelve feet thick, and then roll the mass over and over and into long heaps. Some extensions of this twisted mass reached even to the edge of the springs, and I saw indications where it had overflowed into the pools; but most of the way across the valley one could trace the division between the lava and the original rock base on to which it had flowed as easily as with a daub of mud thrown upon the floor of a house. By a rise of perhaps ten feet we entered upon this mala pai8, and soon came to where the lava was not in waves, but seemed to have cooled in a mass, presenting a granulated appe trance, much like cooling sugar; and a little farther we found it light and frothy looking, as if a hot, foaming current had cooled to stone, porous and spongy like pumice-stone. A mile westward brought us out into the broader valley, and, looking backward, it seemed to me that the lava flow had been choked in the narrow pass about the time the supply was exhausted. Five miles over the level land brought us to another descent, leading down into another oval ï~~BUSHELS OF GRAIN. 507 plain; and, running in a serpentine course across it, I saw a shining line which I judged to be water-the irregular course of some mountain stream. But it soon appeared too dazzlingly bright, and we found it only a narrow, dry gulley, bottom and sides crusted with salt and alkali, painful to the eye and torturing to the sense. A little water runs there in winter, just enough to bring down the alkali from the mountains. I can not account for the singular succession of valleys, or passes, like vast sunken river beds, on this route. For a hundred and twenty miles from Albuquerque, except at Dead Man's Cation and the moderate ridge just west of the Rio Grande, there is no rise of more than ten feet which is not gained by a grade gentle enough for a railroad. From the lava-beds, or mala pais, to Wingate, we are continu.lly in this sunken channel, which only widens to a great oval at Agua Azul; and soon after we strike the Puerco of the West, which furnishes the same succession of passes down to the Little Colorado. Nature has certainly given the railroad a wonderful way of passage here, whether she has furnished the natural wealth to make it profitable or not. Owing to these openings there is not a serious obstacle or even a difficult "cut" or "fill" for over two hundred miles west of the Rio Grande. From the plain of the mala pals we descend a little into Red Valley, about Agua Azdul. It is walled in by fearfully abrupt mountains of black and red stone in an irregular circle, and is about five miles by three, containing at least eight sections of land of the utmost fertility. Near the bordering mountains the soil is red, giving name to the valley and the central butte, but lower down it is dark. Running water was found only at the southwest corner of the valley, and there M. Provencher first began to cultivate the soil, when he established the ranche four years before. The yield from this soil of volcanic origin was astonishing; wheat produced thirty-six bushels per acre; corn thirty-eight fanegas (a fanega is 136 pounds), and oats grew to the hight of a man's head, yielding bounteously. But only one crop was raised; then the dry season, which has lasted for three years in western New Mexico, set in; the water failed, and it ï~~508 VISIT TO THE OLD CRATER. is found that even that small stream could not be depended on more than one year in three. Could a certain supply of water be obtained, by artesian wells or otherwise, this little valley would support a community of two thousand peop)le in affluence. Such is the productiveness of this soil, where it is productive at all. Though but one-tenth of the surface of New Mexico' can be cultivated, that tenth would supply abundance for a million of people. Fortunately for me, though unfortunately for the soldier, I had plenty of time to examine this singular basin. For, about 3 o'clock next morning we were awakened by a terrible racket and barking of dogs, just in time to see that our mules had broken corral and were lighting out toward Wingate with a speed which showed thre was no place like home to them. The soldier went in pursuit, and I visited the Red Butte and old crater therein. The butte is nearly two miles long and a mife wide, rising evenly from the plain on every side, and so abruptly, by a series of " benches" or narrow terraces, that it can only be ascended in two or three places; and the dimensions on top are only onefourth less than at the bottom. M. Provencher's theory is that the entire valley was the original crater, bounded only by the rocky battlements we see around the plain, and the size of the present crater of Kilauea. But when the volcano was nearly extinct, the internal fires having died out sufficiently for a solid crust to form over it, another, smaller crater formed inside, as a vent for the last eruptions, feeble compared with those preceding them. From the plain it looks as if the top of the butte were level, but having reached it, we find it to be only a rim, an exact pattern on a much reduced scale, apparently, of the rim of the main valley. Inside the rim falls off in abrupt cliffs, rugged knobs and jagged spurs, fifty feet or more, to a sort of bowl-shaped hollow. This looks as if it had been filled with coal, iron, wood, petroleum, lead, copper and scores of combustible minerals, and then the whole subjected to a blast furnace until nothing was left but debris and ashes. This is all I can compare it to, for we find in it the powdered, burnt ï~~.r. r ~l v n-. a.y ev ï~~510 A SOLDIER PUNISHED. pass, in many respects resembling the South Pass of the old California trail. It is simply a high, barren and sandy valley through the mountains, bounded on the north by almost perpendicular sandstone cliffs from five hundred to a thousand feet in hight, and on the south by scantily timbered hills which rise one above another to the highest mountain peak. In the pass and neighboring hills rain is frequent; twenty miles east or west of it none falls for three or four months at a time. The Atlantic and Pacific railroad line is located through this pass, and the grade is so gentle that no difficulties are met with. For three hundred miles west of the Rio Grande, nature seems to have provided a series of valleys especially for a railroad. The real trouble is that the country has so little in it worth building a railroad for. It is a splendid country to travel through; a miserably poor one to stop in to make a "stake." On the evening of May 31st, we drove into Wingate; my soldier " reported" and in precisely twenty. minutes was a close prisoner in the guard house-" held for trial." "Charge-Unwarranted disposition of stores placed in his care." "Specification-In this that the said Frank Hamilton, being entrusted with a team to transport one thousand pounds of potatoes from Santa Fe to this post, did unwarrantably dispose of three hundred pounds of the same on the way, etc., etc." He was found guilty of this, and more; and during my stay I was daily pained at sight of him "cleaning quarters" with a most uncomfortable bracelet attachment to his ankle. Take him for all in all, hlie was the most unfortunate traveling companion I ever had. Moral: Don't go for a regular soldier. Or, if you do, don't trade Government potatoes to Mexican women. ï~~CHAPTER XXV. AMONG THE NAVAJOES. At Fort Wingate-Natural beauty-Wealth of nature-A region of curiosities - The Zunis-Their wonderful civilisation-Cafion de Chaco-San Juan ruinsOn to Defiance-Navajo history-Their semi-civilization--Their wars with the Spaniards-American relations-Major Brooks' negro-Navajo War-Sub. jugation and decline-Their return and progress-End of stay at DefianceSounds of wrath from Santa Fe-Apology-An original "pome." IGHT days I remained at Fort Wingate, and enjoyed every moment of the time. On arrival I introduced myself as a journalist "surveying the line of the Thirtyfifth parallel road," and was most hospitably treated by the officers. Having letters to Lieutenant S. W. Fountain, formerly of Pomeroy, Ohio, then Commissary of the post, he made me exceedingly comfortable at his quarters, and I messed with him and Captain A. B. Kauffmann, of the Eighth Cavalry. Lieutenant Fountain is of the same company. I am also under many obligations to Lieutenant H. R. Brinkerhoff, formerly of Union County, Ohio. He assisted me to obtain much information of the surrounding country, and his estimable lady made my stay more like a renewal of "home society" than one would have thought possible in the wilderness. In my Western wanderings I have always found the United States Army officers gentlemen, pleasant, hospitable, and well posted on the country where they happen to be located. Besides these mentioned I enjoyed the pleasant acquaintance of Lieutenant D. R. Burnham, of Company H. Fifteenth Infantry, and Dr. R. S. Vickery, Captain and AssistantSurgeon in medical charge of the post, both Pennsylvanians. Fort Wingate, nearly two hundred miles west of Santa Fe, is a "four company post," but had then only three companies, viz: 511 ï~~',,,,,, <<,:.,., Â~,, x s,. r ï~~MINERA LS. 513 A branch is conducted by piping to the central portion of the fort, where a commodious bath-house has been erected by the soldiers for general use. Most of the water is drawn into an aceoquia and conducted to the common field on the plain below, where the companies have gardens sufficient to supply them with vegetables most of the season. When not used for irrigation all the water sinks before running two miles, owing to the singular formation of this region. The latitude is 350 28', the longitude 108Â~ 25' (W. Greenwich), and the elevation 6600 feet above sea-level; hence the climate is about the same as at Santa Fe-that is to say, with pleasant or temperate d(lays and nights cool enough for two good blankets. (I can always represent temperature by bed-clothes better than by a thermometer.) I can not conceive a more delightful climate for the three summer months. The atmosphere is singularly clear, and distance very deceptive. The country about is practically worthless for agriculture, with the exception of a few small valleys, and in them only the short-lived vegetables are produced. Corn will not ripen at all: wheat is generally cut off in the flower. The grazing is good, but an extensive range is required for one herd; the grass only grows once in the season, and, like these mountain bunch-grasses generally, does not renew itself the same year. Every mineral known to science is found in these hills. Gypsum, salty and iron are particularly abundant. A short distance west of the fort is a whole mountain of gypsum, so to speak-enough to bury an eastern county. Neither gold nor silver has been found in paying quantities. Precious stones of various kinds have been found near, particularly garnets and turquoises. Lieutenant H. R. Brinkerhoff has a large collection of curious stones, picked up within a mile or two of the fort, among which, I think, are some of value. Magnetic stones, the size of one's fist, can be had by the bushel. Some of them, when thrown loosely upon the ground, will roll over toward each other till they gather in a group. All the hills are covered with timber, and in the larger cations is abundance of pine fit for lumber. The mountains north and east present the appearance of a succession of lofty cones, with 33 ï~~, - ~ <~,,., r,:;,, Y F. =n..~, $ s. l '. Â~ # q 1',. 7., ï~~ZUNI. 515 is relapsing to a perfect desert. Others, that the original condition was continuous drought; that it never rained, in former times, between March and November; that some thirty years ago the climate began to slowly change to one of more moisture, and that the last three years are only a partial and temporary return to the original condition. This last theory has some hard facts to meet. Here and there, all over the country, are to be found ruins of towns and acecquias where no water now runs at any season of the year. Only thirty miles southwest of Wingate, near the head of the Little Colorado (you will find the place marked on Johnson's map as "Zuni ruins "), is a valley some forty miles long, strewn from one end to the other with fragments of Zuni pottery and stone and adobe work, and yet there is no living water there now; also, among the Moqui villages are found plains showing signs of having once been cultivated, on which water can not possibly be brought at present by any engineering skill. The evidences in this region certainly are that New Mexico once had a more rainy climate than at present. Wingate is the center of a region full of curiosities. Forty miles west is the great Zuni town, an enormous pueblo-a terraced building of five stories---containing a thousand halfcivilized Indians. They have always been friendly to the whites, but showed great bravery in their wars with other Indians. They cultivate the ground with great skill, producing abundance of corn, wheat, beans and melons. Their wealth is in sheep and goats, blankets, beads and pottery. In this great human hive are carried on all the complicated concerns of an advanced condition of life: government, manufactures, art and religious rites. The officers from Wingate visit them often, and the engineers. on the railroad line speak of them in the highest terms. Both sexes are strictly virtuous, any departure from chastity being severely punished. They formerly had the art of writing, but appear to have lost it in their many mutations. They preserve one book, but the last man who could read it died many years ago, and the priests regard it merely as a holy relic. It consists ï~~y.. g. r y, i v ï~~THE NAVAJOES. 511 of hard sandstone, and enclosed a city of at least ten thousand people. Farther west are the "Cliff cities" of Cantion de Chelley, which I visited, and many others; and southeast are Sobieta and still more extensive ruins. At least a quarter, possibly half of a million people devoted to agriculture, once occupied the system of valleys opening upon the San Juan. They are gone long ago, and their places are occupied by the nomadic races: Utes, Navajoes and Apaches. The streams upon which they depended dried up, and cultivators necessarily yielded to hunters and shepherds; just as we find wandering Arabs encamped in the ruins of Baalbec and Palmyra, or barbarous nomads wandering over the once populous and fertile Babylonia. The dominant race of this section are the Navajoes, who roam over a country three hundred miles from east to west, and nearly two hundred from north to south. They are a most interesting race of barbarians, though savage in war and somewhat inclined to thieving. They and the Apaches have been at war from time immemorial. The Navajoes are splendid specimens of physical humanity-the finest race of Indians I ever saw, except, perhaps, the Chippewas, of Northern Minnesota. These are the first Indians I have met who have not the stereotyped "Indian face"-the face we have heard described so often, either overcast with a stern and melancholy gravity, or lively only with an uncertain mixture of cunning and ferocity. Their countenances are generally pleasing, even mild and benevolent. They have many young fellows whose faces show the born humorist. Wit, merriment and practical jokes enliven all their gatherings, and, quite contrary to our ideas of Indian character, they laugh loud and heartily at everything amusing. They are quite inquisitive, too, and seem vastly pleased to either see or hear something new. Both men and women work, and are quite industrious until they have accumulated a fair share of property; then they seem content to take things easy. In short, they are as much unlike the "stage Indian," and as much like a tribe of dark Caucasians as it is possible to conceive. ï~~qll' 3 Y a., c f r 7f J w: u, v M., "a 44Vnro ei ï~~DURABLE BLANKETS. 519 two sticks the warp, or "chain," is stretched very tight, the two sets of strands crossing in the middle. This, with two loose sticks;, dividing the "chain," and a curved board, looking like a barrel stave with the edges rounded, constitute the entire loom. The squaw sits before this with her balls of yarn for "filling" conveniently arranged, works them through the strands, and beats them firmly together with the loose board, running it in between the strands with singular dexterity. The woolen yarn for "filling" is made from their own sheep, generally, and is of three colors, black, white and red from native coloring. Running these together by turns, with nimble fingers the squaw brings ott on the blanket squares, diamonds, circles and fanciful curves, and flowers of three colors, with a skill which is simply amazing. Two months are required to complete an ordinary blanket, five feet wide and eight long, which sells from fifteen to fifty dollars, according to the style of materials. At the Fort, officers who wish an unusually fine article, furnish both "chain" and "filling," but those entirely of Navajo make are very fine. One will outlast a lifetime; and though rolled in the mnud, or daubed with grease for months or years, till every vestige of color seems gone, when washed with the soap-weed (mole cactus) the bright native colors come out as beautiful as ever. They also manufacture, with beads and silk threads obtained from the traders, very beautiful neck-ties, ribbons, garters, cuffs and other ornaments. More interesting to me than any of their handicraft, is the unwearying patience they display in all their work, and their zeal and quickness to learn in everything which may improve their condition. Surely such a people are capable of civilization. Officers and agents universally tell me that Navajoes work alongside of any employds they can get, and do full work. They dig ditches and make embankments with great skill, handling the spade as well as any Irishman. The most intelligent of them say it will be no use to import laborers here to work on the railroad; they will learn how and do the work themselves. Fort Wingate was established in August, 1868, by the troops who came there that year with the Navajoes. It is nearly on ï~~520 ZOOLOGICAL. the same site as old Fort Fauntleroy, afterward called Fort Lyon, which was hastily abandoned in 1862, when the Texans overran New Mexico. When this was built, old Fort Wingate, sixty miles southeast, was abandoned. The region has many wild animals. The antelope, blacktailed deer, black bear, big gray wolf, wild-cat, gray fox and beaver are found by hunting in the mountains, while the coyote is altogether too common, and even in the fort my sleep was sometimes disturbed by its long-drawn and melancholy howl. But the game near the post has been greatly thinned out lately by the Navajoes, and the officers go out some distance to hunt. There must be myriads of some kind of insects, judging from the presence of insect-eating birds, such as the woodpecker (two varieties), fly-catcher, large raven, bluejay, blackbird, owl and hawk (several kinds), magpie, and Rocky Mountain bluebird. The officers tell me that during most of the season there are vast flocks of buzzards hovering constantly about the fort, but at this time they are off in the woods or cliffs hatching. It is rather curious there should be such an abundance of animal life in what appears to be such a barren country, and more particularly that there should be so many scavengers (buzzards, etc.) in a dry and cool locality. It may be partially explained by the fact that there is more timber about there than in the mountains generally, and in the timber probably more food for small birds, etc., than one would think from the appearance of the plain. On the 6th of June, Mr. Wmn. Burgess, blacksmith for the Navajo Agency, at Fort Defiance, Arizona, reached Wingate from that post; and I concluded that was my best chance for company on another stage of my journey. 'The distance between the posts is just forty-five miles, as measured by Lieutenant Beall's odometer, in 1860; and Defiance is about three miles west of the Territorial line. This distance we rode easily in nine hours, stopping an hour at noon. There is water at but one point on the road, Stinking Springs, sometimes politely called Sheep Springs. Our mules drank of it, under protest, and with many sniffs and contortions ï~~ROAD TO DEFIANCE. 521 of the lips; and I tasted it from curiosity. It appears like a solution of blue-dye, and tastes like white-oak bark. To some it is a dangerous cathartic, but to most a powerful astringent. We left Wingate with full canteens, and having a delightfully cool day, did not suffer from thirst. Our road wound about to nearly every point of the compass, bearing generally northwest; and here and there we encountered the Navajo trail, often crossing our road at right-angles and striking directly over the hills, thus lessening the distance at least a third. But it is safer for white men to follow the main road, the trail being indistinguishable for a mile or two in places, on the bare sand rock or among the piflon thickets. Four miles from Wingate the valley makes a great U to the northward, and our road runs over the foothills for three miles; then enters the valley again, Which there narrows to a mere pass. A vast dyke of hard trap-rock extends across the country from north to south, standing out above the sandstone like an artificial stone battlement; runs out from each side of the valley in abrupt causeways, and leaves a rugged gap only a hundred yards wide. This opens into a broad and fertile valley, across which three miles bring us to the Rio Puerco of the West. The Puerco I crossed on the 26th of May runs southeast into the Rio Grande; this one southwest into the Colorado Chiquito. We cross this Puerco, rise again into the northern foothills, and stop for noon in a piflon thicket. The A. and P. R. R. line follows on down the Puerco, running fifteen miles south of Defiance, and I have traveled directly along its line from El Rito. For the ninety miles, from the old volcano at Agua Azul to Defiance, the " country rock" is entirely of sandstone, or occasionally soapstone, if that be counted an exception. The solitary break in the formation is the large dyke of traprock. I saw not a particle of granite, slate, quartzite, or primary limestone--consequently, no indications whatever of gold or silver leads. The general testimony of soldiers andeexplorers here is that the formation slowly changes toward the north, even to the San Juan River. There it is granite, and there, also, are valuable gold and silver mines. ï~~522 DRYING UP. At the Puerco I left the line of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. I might have followed it southeast to a point a little beyond the Zuni settlements, which is regarded as the northeast corner of the Apache country; but just then I did not care to go farther in that direction. A fifty mile strip of Zunis and Navajoes is the least I cared to have between me and those interesting savages. I could hear enough about them at that distance. Twenty-five miles from Wingate we descend a gentle slope into "the Lakes;" not bodies of water, as the name might imply, but an oval valley of great natural fertility, some five miles by three in extent. A few years ago it was overflowed in winter for a month or two; but in the general drying up which this country has suffered of late, it is perfectly dry all the year. I examined the soil with some curiosity, and found it exactly like that of our Wabash and Ohio "bottoms." If the reader will imagine one of our most fertile tracts of black, rich, loam, plowed, then well rolled, and left for a few years without a drop of rain or dew, he will have an exact picture of one of these rich but unwatered valleys. I easily kicked up the black, loose soil, which bore not a spear of grass, and yet had every element of abundant plant-life but the one thing, moisture. Three showers would cover it with a rich carpet of green; water enough for irrigation would make it a blooming garden. Everywhere in this region we come upon dried lakes, dead springs and wells, and occasionally cross river beds which evidently once had a volume equal to that of the Miami. Marine and fresh-water shells are found by the wagon load in dry flumes, and near them piles of Pueblo pottery and broken adobes, where the only indication of moisture at present is found in a few sickly cottonwoods, annually growing less numerous. Twelve miles more of gently rolling hills and piflon groves bring us to the "Haystacks." These are a series of cones of yellow sandstone, something over a hundred feet high, and fifty feet wide at the base, running up to a sharp point. They stand upon an almost level plain, but half a mile away is a rocky ledge containing a vast natural bridge, arched gateway, and all ï~~"STARVE OR FIGHT."5 523 the forms of rocky tower and battlement which can be imagined. Eight miles farther brought us to Defiance, situated at the foot of a low rocky range, and almost in the mouth of Canon Benito. Approaching the post across a sandy plain we first come to a dry river bed, with enough of stunted grass to show that water still runs there sometimes. Following up the stream we find first a pool of water, then a flock of sheep, then Indian farms, and occasionally a hogan, from which the Navajo squaws and children peep out at us with a sort of hungry curiosity. We cross a common field of a hundred acres or so, which the Navajoes have thrown up into beds of two or three rods square for irrigation, and ride into the fort. The white population sally out nearly en masse with one cry, "Where's the mail? Why the h--1 didn't you bring the mail! " My companion explained that high water on the Rio Grande, or some other cause, had prevented any military express reaching Wingate from Sante Fe, and consequently there was no mail. The general disgust was painful to witness. "Here's a gentleman," said my companion, "just from there; may be he can tell you about Congress." Then all centered on the question: "How about the Indian Appropriation Bill? Will they do anything about provision for these Navajoes?" I replied that to the best of my knowledge and belief, Congress had made no special provision for the Navajo Agency, and pending the present issue in National affairs, probably would not. Then every man in the outpost looked as if all his relations had just died insolvent. General assent was given to the remarks of one employ6: "There'll be another Navajo war, and we'll all have to clear. These are the best Indians on the continent, willing to work, and don't want to fight. But, d-n it, they can't starve to death right here. We've destroyed their living; run off all the game and shut 'em up here, and their crops failed two years. If we were in their place, we'd fight. They must steal, or ï~~524 AGENCY MATTERS. Starve, or fight, one o' the three. Ain't a man here in Government employ that's been paid a cent for twelve months. They'll give the Apaches sugar and coffee and flour, because they're a murderin' and robbin', and won't give these men anything because they've been peaceable for eight years, and these fellows know it, too. Well, they'll be another Navajo war,-that's what they'll be." Defiance is only nominally a fort. There is no military post, no soldiers, and only twenty whites all told-four American ladies, one Mexican and fifteen Americans, all employds of the agency. Mr. James H. Miller, Agent of the Navajoes, was absent on an expedition to the San Juan country, and his place supplied by Mr. Thomas V. Keams, the clerk. The other officials and employds were: J. Miller, carpenter; W. Burgess, blacksmith; J. Dunn, wagonmaster; Perry H. Williams and Ezra Hoag, "on issue of rations;" A. C. Damon, butcher, and Andrew Crothers, in charge of grain room. The religious and medical staff constitute an entirely separate department. The physician, Dr. J. Menaul, was also a minister, and held service every Sunday; and his lady, Mrs. Menaul, was the teacher employed for the Navajoes. John H. Van Order acted as interpreter from English into Spanish, and Jesus Alviso from Spanish into Navajo, both employed by the Government and both necessary to a perfect intercourse. Nearly all the employds understood a little Navajo, but not enough to interpret. As I had to travel with them for some weeks, I set in most industriously to learn the language, and at the end of half a day's hard work had mastered two words, viz.: "Ah tee eheee" (" What is that?"), and "loot chin" (" money"). It is the most diffictult of all American tongues, and the more complex portions of it have never been learned by white men. I give in the two words above the nearest possible sound in English letters, but no alphabet of civilized men can represent the Navajo language. It combines the worst features of the French, German and Chinese; it is extremely nasal, extremely guttural, and abounds in sibilants and triple consonants. A word of three syllables begins very high in the nose, and ends very deep in the throat, ï~~f ( k, Jl ems" r,, i ',,r t c,..,.,,. ". r, ',.,; p... t,.;:. q,.1,, F ï~~526 STARTLING NEWS. by the Secretary of War. The agent and farmer had their wives here, the physician his wife and sister, bringing up the population of this strange isolated community to a total of twenty whites---sixteen men and four ladies: all interesting as occupants of the last outpost, on my route, of civilization. From here my companions for a dreary four hundred miles were to be Moquis and Navajoes. As it was but seventy miles to the De Chaco ruins, I was making ready to visit them with Navajo guides, when the news of an unlooked for tragedy reached us, and threw the little community into a state of consternation. We were seated at breakfast the morning of the 13th, when one of the party which had gone to San Juan arrived, completely exhausted, and announced that Agent Miller had been murdered, and all their horses stolen but one; that he had started immediately with that, and the rest of the party were coming afoot. Next day the others arrived, quite worn out, having walked a hundred miles in three days, carrying their baggage. Their account is as follows: The party, consisting of Agent Miller, B. M. Thomas, (Agency Farmer,) John Ayers, and the Interpreter, Jesus Alviso, left Defiance on the 4th of June, to inspect the San Juan Valley, with a view of locating the Navajo Agency there. The examination was most satisfactory, as they found one fertile and beautiful valley near the river, capable of being irrigated by a single acecquia, and sufficient to support the whole tribe. At the same time, three others left the settlements on a prospecting tour, reached San Juan one day after the Agent's party, and were camped twelve miles from them on the bluff. Neither party dreamed of danger from the Utes, as that tribe had been at peace many years; and, though they annoyed the Navajoes greatly, had not molested white men. On the morning of the 11th, just at dawn, Miller's companions were awakened by the report of a gun and whistling of an arrow, both evidently fired within half a dozen rods of them. They sprang to their feet, and saw two Utes run into the brush; ten minutes after they saw them emerge from the opposite side of the thicket, and ride up the ï~~MURDER OF AGENT MILLER. 527 bluff, driving the company's horses before them. They did not know, at first sight, that the Utes were hostile, or that they had fired at them. John Ayers spoke to Miller, who did not reply; he then shoved him with his foot, still he did not wake. They pulled off his blanket, and found him dead. The Ute's bullet had entered the top of his head and passed down behind his right eye, without disarranging his clothing in the slightest. His feet were crossed, and hands folded exactly as when he went to sleep; his eyes were closed, and lips slightly parted into a faint smile, as if from a pleasant dream-all showed beyond doubt that he had passed from sleep to death without a struggle or a sigh. Thus died James H. Miller, a true Christian, faithful official, and a brave man. He was a native of Huntington County, Pennsylvania, enlisted in the Fifty-fifth Pennsylvania Volunteers, and served three years and four months, most of the time as Lieutenant in Company H. He was appointed Agent of the Navajoes, in December, 1870, entered on his duties soon after, and in the midst of discouragement. The annuity for the previous year was exhausted; the crops had partially failed, and in 1871 the failure was total. On the verge of starvation, the Navajoes were still kept in tolerable order by his exertions, until the next annuity arrived; and he was carrying out more extended plans for their benefit at the time of his death. He was a devout Presbyterian, and an earnest supporter of what is technically called "the humanitarian Indian policy." The race lost an active friend by his death. The grief of the Navajoes was profound and unaffected. His companions and the mining party buried him near where he was killed. His wife and infant son were at Defiance, but started to the States in a few days with the military express. A general Ute war was apprehended, and all thoughts of an expedition in that direction were abandoned. I wandered about the Navajo country, gathering curious stones, and studying the "lay of the country;" but mostly amused myself by taking notes of the Indians. Their condition was worse than ever before. The last grain in the Agency storehouse was ï~~528 HARD TIMES. issued to them on the 14th, and most of them looked lean and hungry enough. They began on their horses and sheep, having decided to eat their old horses and wethers. first, saving the ewes and goats to the last; for these are more hardy, and besides, their milk is an important item. As long as there was grain, we purchased goat's milk of them, paying in grain; and I found it very palatable and nutritious. But I did not relish the flesh, finding it rather rank and stringy. I did not taste horse-flesh, though in my visits to some of the more distant hto.qans, I found them gnawing away at what looked suspiciously like equine shanks. The white men who have eaten it say it is very nourishing, but I am too old now to overcome my early prejudices. The Agency employds had not been paid for a year, and as they have to buy their own provisions, things looked blue for them. When I first arrived, they were faring sumptuously on coffee, bacon, bread, potatoes, and goat's milk; but one by one, our luxuries vanished, and for the last three days we lived on Navajo bread, coffee, and "commissary butter," straight. In all their troubles the Navajoes are lively, cheerful and looking for better times. To see ten thousand people able and willing to do almost any kind of work, with natural talents of no mean order, and most anxious to improve, to see such a people shut up on this barren plateau, and kept out of that part of their country in which they could live, literally perishing without a chance to help themselves, was enough to sadden even a hard heart. What would a community of ten thousand whites do in such a case? Who, if anybody, is to blame, I do not know. The melancholy facts I saw. But Congress did not adjourn without passing the Indian Appropriation Bill, and soon the Superintendent at Santa Fe sent them grain enough to last till a new crop came in. There was rejoicing in the hogans in consequence. The Navajoes are the original Romans of New Mexico and Arizona. For two hundred years they carried on almost continual war with the Spaniards, disdaining all offers of peace or alliance, and preying upon the valley of the Rio Grande. At length each separate ï~~THE NAVAJO WAR. 529 Mexican settlement adopted the plan of buying off its nearest Navajo neighbors, paying tribute to one band to guard them against the rest. This succeeded admirably until the American occupation; then the "Greasers," emboldened by the idea that our army would protect them, refused the tribute; and the Navajoes descended in three bands, and swept several settlemnents clean of their stock. They committed their worst depredations all around, and within twenty miles of, the last division of Kearney and Doniphan's forces. A flaming proclamation of war was issued, and of the results the report of J. Madison Cutts, with the army, speaks thus cautiously: "The campaign against the Navajoes was accomplished in the dead of winter, without supplies or tents. He succeeded in forming a treaty with these troublesome Indians, represented as more warlike than the Mexicans, to whom they were a great source of dread and injury, on the 22d of November, 1846." The fact was, our army could not then afford to go to war with a brave and desperate race in such a country as the Navajoes occupied. Occasional difficulties took place until Fort Defiance was established, in 1850. Then there was peace for seven years. In 1857 a negro slave of Major Brooks, an officer stationed there, had a difficulty with a Navajo sub-chief. The friendly and compliant manners of the Indians had led the soldiers to consider them cowardly as well as peaceable. The negro passed the chief on the parade ground one day, and turning behind him, gave him a violent kick. The Navajo whirled about and let fly an arrow, which passed entirely through the negro, who fell dead. The Indian fled to the mountains; the tribe refused to surrender him, and another war began, and lasted, with but slight intermission, until 1864. The National officers found it impossible to conquer the Navajoes except by destroying their stock. It is reported that over fifty thousand sheep were bayoneted. One little valley, a few miles from Defiance, is almost literally paved with the skeletons of sheep destroyed there to prevent the Navajoes from using them. 34 ï~~530 ABANDONED FIELDS. The Utes also drove away many thousands, and this tribe was completely beggared. But before they were entirely subjugated, the Texan invasion of 1861-2 took place, compelling the abandonment of this post and Wingate, and the Navajoes had things their own way again. In 1863 General W. H. Carleton led an army thither, completely destroyed their means of subsistence, and induced the whole tribe to surrender. They had not a sheep left, and very few horses. Numbering ten thousand, they were taken in a body to the Fort Sumner reservation, where small-pox and endemic fever preyed upon them, and one-eighth of the entire tribe perished. The venereal poison also was there introduced among them, which has destroyed many. In 1868 their great Chief, Barboncito, made such representations to General Sherman as induced him to consent to their return here. They went zealously to work, and in 1870 raised about half a crop. The seeds furnished by the department were unsuited to this high altitude, and most of their plants were cut off by the September frosts. In 1871, they planted extensively, worked hard, and had every prospect of an abundant crop, when, on the night of May 30, came a storm unprecedented in this region; the ground was covered an inch thick with sleet, and every plant and young fruit tree frozen solid to the ground. The annuity goods and provisions of that year were soon exhausted, and theft or starvation was the only alternative. But the sheep given by the Government had increased rapidly, and are now numbered at thirty thousand in the tribe. Their horses are returned at twenty thousand. The difficulties in the way of improving their condition are many: they are a pastoral rather than an agricultural people; their most fertile and extensive valley, on the San Juan, they can not now farm on account of the Utes, and many other valleys formerly productive are now barren on account of the four years' drought. Near where I crossed the Puerco is a beautiful valley from which, as Mr. Dunn informs me, when he was a soldier here, they hauled fifty wagon-loads of corn, and destroyed on the ground a hundred more. Now, no cultivation could raise a grain there. The Puerco at that ï~~; a ï~~532 GRITTY BREAD. tinue men in a better country. Women will change to fish for awhile, and afterwards to something else. But they don't trouble themselves much about the next world. If they had plenty in this, they would consider themselves in luck., The luxuries of life are not obtainable at Defiance, some things we should call necessaries are rather scarce. Navajo flour is the only kind used. The first meal I was delighted to see our Indian servant bring in what I recognized as an old Yankee acquaintance-"Graham biscuits;" though they looked rather more coarse and lumpy than the Eastern kind. The first mouthful I thought was half dirt; it "gritted" so on my teeth that I could not restrain an expression of disgust. At this my host, Mr. Keams, acting agent, apologized by saying that the "Navajoe grindstones were soft, and left rather more grit in the flour than he liked." A few meals soon reconciled me to this grit, and I am convinced that Navajo flour makes the most wholesome bread in the world. The grinding is done by women, who become quite skilful. The lower stone is some eighteen inches long, sloping a little from the worker. The upper stone is about six inches square. The woman lays a clean sheep-skin on the ground, sits on one side of it with the wheat by her, and the stones in front; then rakes the wheat up by a regular motion of the left hand running the small stone over the other with the right. The wheat rolling down as she grinds, is reduced to a fine pasty flour. For corn two or three women usually grind together, each one passing it to the next, who reduces it to a finer consistency. In their bright-colored garments, with long black hair swaying as they move their bodies back and forward, a group of them looks very picturesque, if not neat; while at work they sing a monotonous song, which sounds very much like our rural "Barbara Allen," in very slow time. For their own use they make of this pasty flour a very thin mixture, no thicker than starch, which they cook on hot stones. The fire is built in a small hole, on which is placed the flat stone, no more than an inch thick; when sufficiently hot, the squaw thrusts her hand into the starchy solution, and rapidly draws a handful, which she spreads upon the stone. In a half-minute it is cooked ï~~s -. G 4;;,: Â~,,, -,; ' ï~~f',,,.,;,,:;Â~, Â~=.,, z ï~~" EL-SOO-SEE EN-NOW-LO-KYH."5 53o They unconsciously perpetrated a small joke on the writer. There are so few white men there that they know every stranger, and generally give him a name. In my wanderings among them, I frequently heard them speak of En-now-lo-kyh, sometimes joined with the word el-soo-see, and as I stooped to enter a hogan, could sometimes hear the head of the family call to order with "fHah-koh! El-soo-see En-now-lo-kyk!" Learning that this was my Navajo name, I sought the interpreter, highly flattered at my noble title, to learn its meaning. A broad grin adorned his features as he informed me that the two words, translated literally, meant" Slim-man-with-a-white-eye." Feeling this to be somewhat personal, and inferentially abusive, I had him explain somewhat of my business to them and construct a name indicative of my profession; and henceforth I hope to become historical among the Navajoes by an unpronounceable word of six syllables, meaning in English "Big Quill." When a communication is twice translated, it triples the ambiguity; and that is the method employed with them; one interpreter speaks English and Spanish, the other Spanish and Navajo. I made my remarks in the plainest, most terse English I could command, which the American translated into the florid Castilian; this, in turn, the Spaniard rendered in the hissing, complicated phrases and cumbrous polysyllables of the aboriginal tongue. But while pleasantly employed in labors philological, ethnological and antiquarian, the second week of my visit came an officer from Wingate, bringing letters from Santa Fe and news of such a storm of wrath at the writer, that it would seem the roar might have.been heard over the Sierra Madre. Santa Fe was in a white heat of indignation, and my name was coupled every hour of the day with the most opprobrious epithets two languages could furnish. My letters from that virtuous city to the Cincinnati Commercial had come to hand in due time; an indignation meeting of Jews and Mexicans decided that the public mind must be informed how badly I had slandered Santa Fe, and one of the former was deputed to squelch me. He prepared a three-column broadside, which was sent to the ï~~536 SANTA FE AGAIN. Commercial and various Western papers, setting forth the "damning facts" that my associations in Santa Fe were not of the best, etc., etc. Now, I have just this much of an apology to make to Santa Fe: I saw, in two days there, that it was a queer place; and, when I began to take the evidence of old residents, I saw that if I published the half that was told me I should stir up a beautiful row. Therefore I carefully took down each man's name and his evidence, with a note of his facilities for getting information; and then, duly mindful of the religious character of the Commercial, I expunged all the really vile and loathsome portions of the testimony, and only sent the mildest statements. I find on my note-book the names of seventeen citizens who gave me their testimony. They begin with Honorables and Reverends, and run down to hotel-waiters and black boys. If the citizens of the "City of Holy Faith" are distressed about the photograph I took of them, I can furnish them some pretty respectable authorities. I have since suspected that some of the young fellows were trying how big a lie they could tell; and as they were the ones most enraged, if their reputations have suffered, they have no one but themselves to blame. Moral: Don't vote the next stranger a fool because he happens to have a halt in one foot or a cast in one eye; but wait and see if he is "a chiel a takin' notes;" before you try how big a lie you can tell about your own town. But if they feel sore over my light touches, what do they think of the following, written by a brave soldier who had spent three years of service in the two Territories? With a little toning down it strikes me as a pretty correct picture. I expurgate the worst passages: ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO. Having seen many illuminated oil paintings and water-color sketches of this "Terrestrial Paradise," I beg leave to present my photograph for inspection. PRINTED FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE AUTHOR. Fierce Mars I bid a glad farewell, And turn my back upon Bellona, To photograph in doggerel New Mexico and Arizona. ï~~ ï~~638 A CABALLERO. Each mountain chain contains a hive Of these marauding sons of thunder, Who somehow manage and contrive To live upon mescal and plunder. Too long my pen has dwelt upon These foes to railroads, soap and labor, A few short years, and they are gone Beyond the reach of prayer or saber. Now turn we to another race Inhabiting this sunny region, In calm and fearless truth to trace Their manners, habits and religion. There is no fairer law than that Which gives to Casar what is Caesar's, Yet this is not a land of fat Because the people are called Greasers. These natives, in a Yankee's eyes, Have neither virtue, brains nor vigorA most unhappy compromise Between the Ingin and the nigger. Their language is a mongrel whine, From which the meaning seems to vanish, Like strength from lager beer or wineA parody upon the Spanish. On what they live-besides the airYou may perhaps be interested; They have as queer a bill of fare As human stomach e'er digested. They eat frijoles, carne, (free-ho-lays, car-nay) corn, And on a hog's intestines riot; Tortillas, sheeps-head (hair and horn), With chile (chee-la) for the favorite diet. But little care he ever feels, So he but apes the Spanish hero, With monstrous spurs upon his heels, And on his head a broad sombrero. He looks so grim and full of fight, You might suppose his temper soured; But danger turns him nearly white, And proves the hero is a coward. ï~~MANNERS AND MORALS. 539 He grimly scowls at Gringo jokes, Though he has not a single tlaco, With dignity he calmly smokes His cigarette of bad tobacco. Smoking and lolling in the shade, Their lazy souls no thought perplexes; But make a chimney undismayed Out of the noses of both sexes. They tell a thousand barefaced lies, To all the saints in heaven appealing Confess their sins with tearful eyes, Devoutly pray-but keep on stealing. They go to church, believe in hell, (Where their own torment must be hot ones), They play on fiddles, ring a bell, And worship God with drums and shot-guns. Upon their heads in triumph reign Great swarms of vermin, fat and saucy; Those rovers of the Spanish mane, Cruise fearless 'er an ocean glossy. Their moae of travel on the road W ould frighten one who never met a Dirty, screaming, stupid load Of Greasers in an old curreta. Great wooden wheels, devoid of grease, And oxen rushing with a vengeanceA noise like forty thousand geese, Or like a score of new steam-engines. They plow the soil with forked logs, For fuel dig the earth with shovels, Cut grass with hoes, chain up their hogs, And keep their horses in their hovels. When Gabriel plays his final trump, And all the nations are paraded For grand inspection in a lump, This breed will prove the most degraded. ï~~540 A DESIRED IMPROVEMENT. An earthquake which should sink the land, Some great subterranean motion, And leave this tract of barren sand The pavement of a heaving ocean, Some huge convulsive water shake, Some terrible spasmodic movement, Subsiding but to leave a lake, Would be a most desired improvement. I've not, in picturing this clime, Been either brilliant or pathetic, But told of facts in simple rhyme, By far more truthful than poetic. My photograph, I must confess, The country does by no means flatterThe people and their customs less, But it is true-that's what's the matter. If any think me too severe, Or call my yarn a wicked libel, I'll take, to prove myself sincere, My "davy" on a Mormon Bible. The author of this "pome" had to fly the country. His picture is a little overdrawn, but there is too much truth for a joke in it. ï~~CHAPTER XXVI. A RIDE THROUGH WONDERLAND. Diamonds! perhaps-Curious stones in Arizona-Navajo country-Kindness of Agent Keams-Navajo Forest-Entering De Chelley-The " Cliff Cities "An evening of beauty-Out upon the Desert-Water! Water!-Sickness and exhaustion-Navajo doctoring-Climbing for water-Down again, and nightride-Camp at last-" HIah-koh Melicano! "-Reach Moqui-Curious peopleChino and Misiamtenah-" Moquis steal nothing." f aREAT events-if rumors and excitements may be styled c events-were about to occur in relation to the country I was traversing; but happily I was ignorant thereof. For had I turned aside from my regular business to hunt diamonds, I should undoubtedly have been so much poorer from time lost, and the public poorer by lack of needed information. In my excursions about the Navajo country I had everywhere remarked the strange abundance of curious and sparkling stones. Quartz crystals might have been gathered by the bushel. Every Indian had a pint or so of garnets-none of them particularly valuable; and common turquoises were so plentiful that many a Navajo belle was adorned with a string of them, ground into octagon shape and worn as beads. Many other curious stones I saw, of which I did not know the name. Continual discussion was in progress among the Agency employes as to whether it was, or was not, a diamond country; and a little book on "Diamond Mines," belonging to Mr. Keams, was read almost to pieces. My Navajo companions on our trips brought me great quantities of glassy pebbles, of which I selected only the most curious. Had I known then what thousands of people learned after they invested, I would have known that the beautiful glitter of the rude pebble was proof positive it was not a diamond. 541 ï~~542 PRECIOUS STONES. "All is not gold that glitters," to which the practical miner adds, "Nothing is gold that glitters in the mine;" for native gold is rather a dull mineral. Similarly: "All that sparkle are not diamonds," and nothing that sparkles in its native state is a diamond; for a native diamond is just such a rough stone as the unscientific would invariably reject as a dull pebble. Only the practiced eye can detect it. The brilliant hues are in it, somewhere; but only the lapidary's skill can give their brightness show. However, we did not know that so well then as we did three months afterwards; and when one Dr. Stallo, jeweler, of San Francisco, arrived at Defiance with a small party and provisions for six months, to gather diamonds, we considered the matter about settled. On the ant-hills all over that part of Arizona one can often find numbers of small garnets, brought there by the ants. It is generally supposed that they bring up the bright stones and shining gravel found on the hills, from their chambers below; but Indians and old plainsmen say this is an error, and that they bring them from a distance, and pile them on the dirt mound to make a hard, firm surface. They are evidently attracted by bright articles, whether from a sense of beauty or otherwise, and I have found on their mounds garnet, flakes of mica, fused quartz, and many grains of glassy stones. A species of aqua-marine is very plentiful, of every size from a grain of wheat to a large cherry. The post trader at Defiance had a quart or so of these, which looked to me like those used as Swatch crystals. A few very fine sapphires had been found, one of which was taken to New York and cut, proving quite valuable. Opals have been found farther north, but rarely. There were no specimens there. One "spinel ruby," of considerable value, was found, and many had stones which they believed to be diamonds. Those shown to me were only fused quartz, or other vitreous stones. Malachite is found there in small chips, a half inch or an inch square; but during my stay an Indian brought from some place south a slab of it three inches long. Some beautiful turquoises were found in the same neighborhood, and many inferior ones. The country abounds ï~~TOPOGRAPHY. 543 in curious petrifactions, and more fossils than Agassiz could classify in a hundred years. It presents to me the appearance of a country in which rivers were once numerous and animal life abundant; but sudden drought came upon it, the rivers dried up, and the plants and animals turned to stone. In 1871, some men came here from San Francisco and spent the summer in collecting stones, supposed to be precious, of which they took away three or four bushels; and it was reported that 'they obtained from the whole mass over a million dollars worth of garnets, rubies, turquoises, and diamonds. Dr. Stallo went south from Defiance to the region where malachite abounds, expecting to find turquoises in the same vicinity. Whether they are right in their theory that the country has the exact formation for a diamond region, I can not say. It is an elevated sandstone country, with few living streams and many dry riverbeds, with heaps of wash gravel, shells and curious petrifactions, but no indications of recent volcanic action. Coal indications are not infrequent. There is one considerable vein a few miles east of Defiance. Whether these facts do or do not indicate precious stones, quien sabe? Defiance is located on some maps directly on the Territorial line; by others in New Mexico, and by others, still, some sixty miles west of the line in Arizona. It is, in fact, three miles due west of the surveyed line. On maps of later date you will find a Fort Canby in New Mexico, and Defiance in Arizona. They are the same, called by different names. The situation is pleasant and romantic. The Benito Hills, averaging five hundred feet above the plain, run directly north and south. On the west side of them is a vast inclosed basin, from which Calton Benito breaks directly through the hills-a sharp, abrupt gorge, square across the formation, with perpendicular walls entirely inaccessible. The east end of the canon broadens into a little valley, at the mouth of which, though out on the plain, the fort is situated. A large river once ran through the gorge, of which the successive periods can be traced on the sandstone walls to a hight of two hundred feet. This seems to have been the original bottom of the cafnon, whence the river steadily ï~~544 WALKING CATFISH. cut deeper until it had completely drained the basin above. The river had long been dry when the fort was located, but several springs in the east end of the canon created a stream sufficent to irrigate two sections of the land on the plain. Here the Navajoes had raised corn and melons from time immemorial; they had no other vegetables when found by the whites. The present occupants of Defiance have thrown a dam across this end of the cantion, producing a beautiful artificial lake some three hundred yards long, and rising so high as to leave barely room for a wagon road. The lake is strongly alkaline, but a few rods below is a strong spring of the nicest and purest water to be found in these mountains. It is the one important treasure of this post, which, without it, would be almost uninhabitable. In the States towns are located according to convenience for trade; in the mountains settlement is determined by the presence of never-failing water. The lake contains a species of "catfish with legs," which are found in other alkaline lakes in this region. I give the name as used there, but think them a species of siredons-other species of which are found in the alkaline lakes of Wyoming. They have the body and mouth of a catfish, with a very long tail, and four legs. At my request the Navajo boys shot their arrows through some of them in the shallow water, and brought them ashore. They were ten inches in length, with teeth like common fish, and skin like catfish. Their legs were soft, but terminated in five claws as firm as the finger nail. They can climb a bank or travel over a dry bar, but never remain long out of water. Ten days among the "gentle savages "-for so the Navajoes appeared to me-had given me a rest, and I was ready to go west, expecting to accompany part of the tribe on their "summer hunt" down the Colorado. But time was pressing, and I concluded to employ one to take me vid De Chelley to the Moquis, where a trading party would overtake us, and go on to St. George, in Utah. Mr. Thomas V. Keams, Clerk and Acting Agent, outdid official courtesy to give me a good sendoff; and calling in Juerro, war-chief of the tribe, together they selected a most intelligent young man of about twenty-five. I ï~~QUEER LANGUAGE. 545 also procured gun, horse, and equipments, blankets and provisions at reasonable rates; for it takes an Indian to trade with an Indian. I was to provision myself and one man to the Mormon settlements, and one man back, besides his fee. Thus ran the bill: Thirty pounds of flour, ten pounds of bacon, ten pounds of sugar, five pounds of coffee, and six boxes of sardines, the whole costing but twenty dollars. The same sum to my guides, and five dollars for the hire of a burro, made the total expense for a trip of nearly five hundred miles, forty-five dollars-not much more than railroad fare. My horse, bridle, saddle, lariat, gun (a Spencer) and two Navajo blankets cost me two hundred dollars; but these are not to be counted in the general expense, as they were worth nearly as much in Utah. My Navajo knew a few words of Spanish, perhaps fifty in all, about equal to my list in his language; but unfortunately for general conversation, our words covered about the same objects, such as travelers most frequently use. The following, from our common list, will enable Oriental scholars to trace considerable resemblance between Navajo and the Turanian tongues. (I represent the sharp accent at the end of the word by doubling the final consonant, and the prolonged nasal sound by n h.) NAVAJO. MEXICAN-SPANISH. ENGLISH. Tohh, Agua, Water. Klohh, Cicata, Grass. Chizz, Brado, Wood. Knhuh, Lumbre, Fire. Klee, Caballo, Horse. Klitt, Fumo, Smoke. Hahkohh! Veen! Come! Tennehh, Hombre, Man. The numerals, as far as twenty, are as follows: Kli, nahkee, tah, dteen, estlahh, hostonn, susett, seepee, nastyy, niznahh, klitsetta, nahkeetsetta, tahtsetta, dteentsetta, estlahta, hostahhta, susetetta, seepetta, nastytsetta, nahta, nahta kli, nahta nahkee, etc. June 18th, we were off at 10 A. M., the whole population (white) joining us in a "stirrup-cup," and waving a hearty good-bye. John, as I christened my Navajo companion, has an 35 ï~~546 NAVAJO PASTURES. intellect that is not to be sneezed at. He knows the whole country between the Big and Little Coloradoes like a book; and in the good old days before his tribe were bound by troublesome treaties, has been on many a trip to the Mormon settlements in the business of equine abduction. (Nobody steals now-a-days.) He rides a short burro, which carries in addition the flour and bacon; while I ride a large, gray American horse and take charge of the sugars, coffee, and other light articles. Our direction is north by northwest to the head of Canon de Chelley. All this part of Arizona consists of a succession of high, almost barren sandstone ridges, separated by narrow valleys abounding in rich grass. While on its eastern border I thought the Navajo Reservation a very poor strip-it contains nearly 6000 square miles-but since I have seen more of it I think it will graze at least half a million sheep and goats, besides horses enough for the necessities of the tribe. Three miles out, a turn around a sandstone cliff brought to view a delightful surprise in the shape of a beautiful green valley, about a mile square, perfectly level and covered with grass a foot high. On every side of it rose bare columns and ridges of sand-rock, but from their base trickled here and there tiny rills of water-enough to keep the valley fertile. Herds of sheep and goats, attended by Navajo girls, and some horses attended by boys, enlivened the scene. Through this, and on to another sand ridge, then three miles more, brought us to a long narrow valley, winding for miles among the hills, and looking as if it had once been the bed of a river, and been heaved up by some convulsion. For hours we crossed such valleys every two or three miles, none of them more than a hundred yards wide, and separated by barren ridges. The grass in the valleys was rank and thrifty; the ridges had nothing but an occasional sprig of sage brush or cactus. Everywhere along the grass plats were shepherd girls with considerable flocks, each girl carrying a set of Navajo spools and a bunch of wool, on which she worked in the intervals of watching. These spools are very similar in shape to those used in our rural districts, but large and clumsy. With a ï~~NAVAJO FOREST. 547 pointed stick, turned in the right hand, the spinner runs the wool on to the larger spool in rolls somewhat smaller than the little finger. Having filled it, and transferred to a smaller stick, she runs it to the smaller spool in the form of a very coarse yarn, when it is ready for the "filling" in a blanket. Herding is the most laborious work the Navajo girls have to do; they have all the advantages of the healthful climate, without the fatigue of long expedition, and are, as a rule, stronger and healthier than the men. They are the only Indian girls I ever saw who even approximate to the Cooper ideal. Their dress is picturesque, consisting of separate waist and skirt; the former leaves the arms bare, and is made loose above and neat at the waist; the latter is of flowered calico, Swith a leaning to red and black, and terminates just below the knee in black border or frills. Neat moccasins complete the costume, the limbs being left bare generally in the summer. They are very shapely and graceful, and their strength is prodigious. How these mountaineers, on the thin food they have, manage to produce such specimens of perfect physical womanhood, is a mystery to me. One of the prettiest girls I saw at Defiance, named "Zella" by the Teacher, who knew a little English, informed me that for months at a time she had nothing but goats' milk, boiled with a thin, watery root, which they use for food. Where goats' milk is plenty, the children thrive well on that alone. These shepherds are the best situated of any part of the tribe, and their living, though plain, is not so uncertain as that of the cultivators. From the grazing region, we descended a slope of some two hundred feet to a wooded hollow, on the opposite side of which we encountered a rocky-faced hill, rising six or seven hundred feet, thick-set with scrubby pines, and barely accessible. ToilSing up this, with frequent rests when a "shoulder" of the rock gave our animals level standing room, we entered at the summit on the most magnificent forest I have seen since leaving California. The tall sugar pines, from three inches to two feet in thickness, mingled with a few dwarfish oaks, were scattered in regular proportion, and their branches completely excluded ï~~r, h w Â~ m wA,, i, ï~~INTO BAT CANON. 549 if they learn how to use it; for when the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad is completed, every section of this timber will be worth at least five thousand dollars. The timber continued to the entrance of Bat Canon, by which we enter the De Chelley. There my guide points to a side gulch, exclaiming, Tohh klohh no mas, ahd we stop for the night. Hoppling the horse for a night's grazing, we sample our provisions, with satisfactory results, and retire. Navajo blankets will not admit the moisture of the ground, even if there had been any, which there was not; and with two over me, and the saddle blanket below me, I was comfortable till toward morning, when the cold was more intense. June 19th.-We hasten to descend into the canon before the sun is high, going down the first liollow, which soon widens into a sandy plain, dotted with scrubby hemlocks, and sometimes with timber of larger growth. The surroundings all show that we are on the Pacific coast: the dry, gray and yellow grass, straight sugar pines and scraggy hemlocks, and the soft airs loaded with resinous odors. We enter next upon a vast flat of sandstone, on which the little feet of Navajo burros have cut the trail into a groove two inches deep, and cross it to Bat Canon. The first view of it is frightful enough. We come suddenly to an abrupt break in the sandstone, no more than a rod wide, but down which we can look to the yellow bottom, eleven hundred feet below. The trail runs along the cliff to a point where the callon has widened to a hundred yards; then enters a side canon, and leads down to the main one, and through a series of rocky grooves we work our way with slow and cautious steps. Making the packs and saddles fast, each man fixes his lariat to train over the horse's back; gets behind, and slowly urges him down the rocky incline. There are several places where even the thickness of a man's limb is too much between the horse and the cliff, and hlie would suffer a fearful squeeze, or be the cause of throwing himself and horse hundreds of feet down the ragged rocks. We advance, perhaps, half a mile in descending, and near the bottom the canon again narrows, and we pass under overhanging cliffs, ï~~,./ ï~~1 7;, i ï~~552 THE THREE PEAKS. the narrow opening into the gulch, that the latter widened out behind the cliffs into a rocky valley where her herd of goats were feeding. She preferred the common request for chin-ne-ahqo (bread), and in return for a small gift, conducted us to a plat of good grass, near the junction of Cantion de Chelley, where we let our animals graze two hours, as I intended remaining in the cation all day. I have said that the Navajoes are apt, social, and industrious; but these virtues are balanced by some troublesome vices: they will beg, and occasionally steal, in which they are like all other wild, Indians. But, if you employ one, he will neither take nor let others take the value of a cent; in which they are unlike nearly all other Indians. We had scarcely got our baggage piled, before the whole community of three families were about us. I pacified them with tobacco, preferring, if we got into a strait, to do without that, rather than bread. Bat Cantion there runs nearly straight west, and is joined by Cantion de Chelley from the northeast; the meeting of the two and the turn below produces three grand peaks, facing to one center, some fifteen hundred feet high, and quite perpendicular. But the most remarkable and unaccountable feature of the locality is where the two cantions meet. There stands out a hundred feet from the point, entirely isolated, a vast leaning rock tower, at least twelve hundred feet high, and not over two hundred thick at the base, as if it had originally been the sharp termination of the cliff, and been broken off and shoved farther out. It almost seems that one must be mistaken, that it must have some connection with the cliff, until one goes around it and finds it a hundred feet or more from the former. It leans at an angle from the perpendicular, I should say, of at least fifteen degrees; and lying down at the base on the under side, by the best "sighting" I could make, it seemed to me that the opposite upper edge was directly over me. That is to say, mechanically speaking, its center of gravity barely falls within the base, and a heave of only a yard or two more would cause it to topple over. Appearances indicate that it was originally connected with the point of the cliff, but the intermediate and softer sand-rock has fallen, been reduced to sand, and wafted away down the cantion. Climb ï~~" ETTAH-HOGANDAY." 553 ing to some of the curious round holes in the cliff I could see the process of wear going on; the harder particles of the sand being blown into the holes, were being whirled about by the wind, slowly and steadily boring into the cliffs, and beginning that carving which is to result in more of the grotesque shapes. We were.off at noon, after a light lunch, and while leaning on the pommel of my saddle in an after dinner rest, I was startled by a shout from my guide of " Ah-lyee! Ah-yee, Melicano, ettah-hoganday!" (" There, there, sir American; the mountainhouses.") Looking, I saw the first hamlet, a small collection of stone huts some fifteen hundred feet above the canon bed, and perhaps three hundred feet below the summit. One glance served to disprove many of the theories advanced about rope ladders and the like. It could not have been reached thus, for the cliff overhung considerably both above and below it. Indeed, a rope dropped from the brow of the cliff above would have swung over the cation a hundred feet farther out than the ledge on which the houses stood. As near as I could judge at the distance, the ledge was fifty feet wide, and the houses some twenty feet square. Evidently the "Aztecs" who boarded there did not go to bed by means of a rope ladder. My guide was now all life and animation, shouting and calling my attention to everything of note on the cliffs as we walked our horses slowly down the sandy stream. He seemed to take as much interest in the ettah-hoganday as I (lid. An hour more brought us to a better object of study: the ruins of a considerable village were on the bottom of the cation, by the foot of the cliff, and about a hundred feet straight above them, ten or a dozen houses in perfect preservation, standing all together on a ledge a hundred feet wide, and completely inac-' cessible. Above the village the cliff was perpendicular for a hundred feet,or more, then gradually swelled outwardly till it extended considerably over the houses, leaving them thus actually in a great crevice in the rock. Here was a wonder. My Navajo ran about with the activity of a cat, and in several places managed to climb up twenty feet or so, then the smooth wall cut off further progress. Hunting along the rock he found and ï~~All r R lu a rr ï~~INSPECTION 0 THE BUILDINGS. 555 called my attention to some holes looking like steps cut into the stone, which seemed to lead up to a point where one of the peculiar stone slabs I have described leaned against the cliff. The opposite side of the canlon was accessible, and not more than two hundred yards distant, so we went over there and climbed to a point somewhat higher than the pueblo. I then saw that the ledge or groove in the rock, in which the pueblo was built, ran along the cliff for a quarter of a mile, some distance beyond where we found the stone steps; and thought I saw indications of steps, leading down from it a little way toward the detached slab. Possibly, I thought, this slab may have been fast above when the village had inhabitants, and furnished them a winding stairway. I saw also, that the houses were of a most admirable construction, built of flat stones laid in niortar, and neatly whitewashed inside; and that the joists were of massive timber, round, nearly a foot thick, and dressed with some care. At the distance of seven or eight hundred feet there was much uncertainty, but I fancied I also saw fragments of iron and leather on the floor of one house-the only one into which the sunshine fell directly. From the situation of the cliffs, I judge that about 10 o'clock in the morning the sun would be shining directly in the front doors. A remarkable echo is observable here. A sentence of ten words shouted from the south side, is returned clearly and distinctly. Not far below we found the ruins of another house, not more than forty feet high, with shelving rock below. The Navajo found steps to lead half way up. He then walked along a flat offset five or six feet below the house, and held his hands against my feet while I climbed a shelving rock and reached it. It was in ruins, and most of the material lay in a heap in the cation below. Only the fire-place and chimney, built against the cliff, remained whole; they were of the common Pueblo pattern, and showed dabs of whitewash. I sustained one serious disappointment. Through some blunder of my guide or the interpreter who instructed him at Defiance, I missed the greatest wonder. We ought to have turned up the Canon de Chelley from where we entered it, and a mile or two would have brought us to the largest pueblo, one capable of containing ï~~556 HOW DID THEY REACH THEM? a thousand people, and situated on a ledge fifteen hundred feet above the cantion and three hundred below the cliff. I had been told of this at Defiance, but through ignorance of the locality missed seeing it and several others. A lieutenant (name forgotten) from Wingate visited it some weeks before with ropes and a powerful field-glass. From the opposite side he saw the interior of most of the houses, all of the common pueblo style. They were neatly whitewashed, and the fragments of acquarra showed that they had translucent windows. Broken pottery lay about in heaps, but there were no skeletons or indications of any, showing either that the inhabitants had ample time to escape, or that time has destroyed all trace of them. This village, it is said, could be reached by ropes from above; and as I have only partly attempted what ought to be well and scientifically done, I venture a suggestion. A party of half a dozen should start from Defiance, with ropes, a ladder or two, and powerful fieldglasses; and thus several of the ruins could be reached. The country is perfectly safe, only two hundred and fifty miles from Santa Fe, and the Navajoes are the best of guides and servants. Many and various are the theories among the few whites who have visited these places as to their inhabitants, and how they reached their houses. Besides that of the rope ladders previously mentioned, it is often suggested that the bed of the cation was at that hight when the houses were built, and has since washed down. But this will not do, for the plainest indications show that it would require, at the very least, a hundred thousand years for such a wearing down, or washing out, to take place. Besides, the best evidence shows that the cation is filling, instead of deepening, on account of the sand drifting down. In my opinion, these slabs of stone help to explain it. But this is only a venture, and whether there were once projections from the cliff sufficient to furnish a road, since fallen away, it will take more evidence to settle. I can only sum up as do other visitors: the houses are there, and I have seen them; but how they got there is a mystery. Who were the inhabitants? Pueblos, unquestionably, I think; of the same general stock as the Moquis, Zunfiis and Teguas. ï~~WHO WERE THEY? 557 The houses are an exact reproduction of those, formerly described, at the Pueblo de Laguna, including stone, mortar, towers, acquarra windows and whitewashed interior. The country once, no doubt, contained five times as many as to-day, since swept off by increasing drought, Utes and Apaches. Their whole existence was a continual war. They seem to have retreated from the lower valleys to the most hidden or defensible canons, and then to these cliffs, where their horse-riding enemies could not follow them. There they pastured their goats in rugged gorges, and cultivated a few little patches where they could find water. They must often have suffered seasons of famine, and probably never had an abundance; and, by the kind law of nature forbidding increase with no promise but want and misery, the nation slowly dwindled away. The Zunis, Moquis, New Mexican Pueblos and the Teguas, perhaps also the Pimoles and Maricopas, are their fragmentary survivors. Their ruins, and broken pieces of their pottery, still attest their former extent. Agent Miller's party discovered on the San Juan the ruins of one pueblo which might have contained two thousand inhabitants: nor was it abandoned on account of drought: their acecquias still remain, and the San Juan is ample to fill them. The formation of Canon de Chelley is exclusively of sandstone; I have, indeed, seen no other kind for a hundred miles. The canon bed presents the appearance of a vast river of sand. As we journey down it, the water sometimes appears, and runs a feeble stream for a few rods, then disappears, and we travel over what seems a glistening dry plain. But examination shows the sand to be quite moist; our horses' feet turn up moisture, and occasional Navajo corn fields indicate some fertility. At one place we find a large acecquia running some miles along the northern side, which,\the guide tells me, formerly ran full till late in the summer, but has been totally dry for some years. The disintegrating sand cliffs are piling barrenness over what was once cultivated land. Occasionally bright meadows,of green grass appear on the slopes, and again the river of sand seems to divide and flow around a fertile island a little higher ï~~558 A WALLED CAMP. than the main land, and containing a few acres of dense wheatgrass, as high as a man's head. Again we find the cliffs sinking from a perpendicular to a slope of sixty degrees or so, and bordered by considerable foot-hills; and there we see shrubby hemlock, bunch grass, a few herds and Navajo hogans. Above are their goats clambering up what appears the bare, yellow face of stone; but riding near we observe hundreds of little gullies worn in the rock, each with a slight stain of soil and a few bunches of yellow grass. Looking for camp early, we came upon a green island of some ten acres, containing three Navajo huts; my guide shouted to the first shepherd girl he saw, who pointed to a peak half a mile away, exclaiming, "Klohh-tohh!" We rode thither, and to my surprise found that the cliffs gave back and inclosed a level plat of a few acres, a sort of mountain cove, sodded with luxuriant grass, and containing another Navajo settlement. Their goats were kind enough to prefer the high gulches, leaving the green grass of the plat in abundance for our stock. In the center was a dug spring, but no running water. The community had abundance of goats' milk and white roots--nothing else. While the Navajo prepared our supper, I went to the first hogan, finding an old man quite sick, who asked-the only Spanish he knew-if I had any azucar y cafe, adding that he had not tasted food for a week. His daughter went back to camp with me, after the sugar and coffee, and all the other women in the settlement having arrived, they waited to see us eat. Opening a tin box, to their great astonishment, I took out a sardine and jokingly held it out for them to see, then ate it, when they turned away with such expressions of horror and disgust that I was heartily ashamed of myself. Their feelings were probably about the same as ours would be on seeing a Fejee chewing on the corpse of his grandmother. Fish and turkeys either will be or have been human beings, in their theology; they never touch the former, and the latter only to escape absolute starvation. I had been warned that I would find my Navajo prone to disregard cleanliness; I found him rather neat and careful. But imagine my astonishment when I saw that ï~~INDIAN DISEASES. 559 all his native politeness could not entirely conceal his disgust at eating with me! The sardines have done the business for my reputation among the Navajoes. After supper I took an evening stroll as far as I could go up one of the gulches, and after lighting my pipe had sat down upon a rock to watch the line of sunshine and shadows slowly creep up the sixteen hundred feet of the opposite cliff, when I was startled by something like a groan. Within a rod of me, but so low that I had not noticed it, was a temporary hogan; and glancing in I saw a woman with ulcerated face, lying on an old blanket, and murmuring in troubled sleep. She waked, and, seeing me, muttered, "Hah-koh!" which invitation being declined, she reached out a trembling and blotched hand, murmuring, "Nah-toh, nah-toh" (tobacco). Having given her all I had with me, she became quite communicative; then, seeing I did not fully understand, pointed to the sores on her arms and mournfully muttered, "COhah-chos, chah-chos," a Navajo word indicating the venereal poison. She was in the last stages, and had evidently been removed to this place to die, as they never use a hogan in which any one has died-another singular resemblance to the Chinese. Their physicians treat this disease with the sweat-house and the application of a peculiar clayey stone, pounded fine, and indigenous herbs; and often, white men tell me, with great success. There is something horrible in the idea of these simple mountaineers receiving such a curse from the superior race. Sunlight gave place to moonlight as I returned to camp,the bright moonlight of this climate, which poured a flood of glory on the barren scene east of us, transforming the sand peaks to shining mountains of gold, and the flat to a flowing, glittering stream of gems. I was weary, but the sight was too glorious for sleep, and so I sat and gazed for hours. When I attempt to philosophize or geologize on mountain scenery, or speculate on the age of such peaks and cahons, or the causes that brought them about, I soon drift out of science and into mystical imaginings. Such scenery never will let me philosophize; ib will have me muse. ï~~560 A POOR PROSPECT. We may go back, back, from one geologic age to another; from cosmic process to cosmic process; from the wearing period to the glacial period, and thence to the cooling period and the gaseous period, and come at last to a mighty void, over which the mind can only reach out to "IN THE BEGINNING, GOD---" There in childhood we began; there, after weary years of science, must we rest. Reason, exhausted, leans on faith, and learning's last endeavor ends avhere Moses and Revelation began. June 20th.---We were off at the first glimmer of dawn, hoping to reach gtass and water early in the afternoon, and knowing that at the best we had a long day's ride before us. it is delightful for traveling till about 10 o'clock; then the morning breeze dies away, and as the afternoon breeze does not rise till about three, the intervening heat is terrible. We are already nearly two thousand feet below Defiance, and going a little lower every day, with corresponding change in the climate. The grand scenery continues to the very mouth of the caflon, which we reached in two hours, then breaks down into a brief succession of foothills and ridges of loose sand, and brings us to an open plain. Here were two or three sections of land under some sort of cultivation by the Navajoes, but it was the most pitiable prospect for a crop I ever saw. The feeble, yellow blades of corn, three or four inches in hight, had struggled along through drought and cold till the heavy frost of June 17th, and now most of them lay flat on the ground. My guide waved his hand over the field, exclaiming, mournfully, "Aluerto, muerto" (dead); "no chinneahgo Navajoes." A few of the more resolute were out replanting, which they did with a sharpened stick, or rather paddle. They dig a hole some ten inches through the dry surface sand to the moist layer underneath, in the edge of which they deposit the grain. They plant wheat the same way, in little hills a foot or so apart, and weed it carefully till it is grown enough to spade the ground. If there is water they irrigate; otherwise, it has to take its chances, and the guide informed me that the acecquia we saw issuing from the cation had been dry paear muchoa afos. Twenty bushels of ï~~CHALKY MOUNTAIN. 561 corn and ten of wheat are extra crops. If any citizen of rural Ohio, who can deliberately sit down three times a day and recklessly eat all his appetite craves, is dissatisfied, he ought to travel awhile in this country. The stream that sinks above gives this tract enough of subsoil moisture to insure some growth. Crossing the dry arroyo we rose on the western side to a vast flood plain, ten miles wide, and running as far as I could see from north to south. The surface showed that it had been flooded some time within the last few years; there was not a trace of alkali or other noxious mineral, and the soil was of great natural fertility. But there was not a spear of vegetation on it, simply for lack of moisture. Here are at least a hundred square miles, formed of detritus and vegetable mold, utterly worthless for want of water. If artesian wells are possible, the whole tract may be of great value. We rose thence by a succession of white sandhills to a horrible desert, which extended some twenty miles. Our horses suffered from both heat and thirst, and the water in our canteens was soon simmering warm. As we neared a low range of gray and chalky-looking hills, the sagebrush appeared a little more thrifty, and sometimes showed a faint green tinge, indicating there was water somewhere in the vicinity. A faint track, as if made by sheep or goats, crossed our trail, whereat the guide whirled his horse toward the ridge, ran his eye along the peaks, and selecting one which to my eye in no way differed from the rest, exclaimed, " Toh!" and we started for it. At the mouth of the gorge was a sickly little cottonwood in a small depression, at which the guide remarked: " Toh pasar muchos anos" ("water many years ago"), and we struck up the nearest gulch. The rock everywhere was crumbling away; it was like riding up a mount U n of chalk. At the foot of, and partly underneath a large cliff, we found two holes, scooped out by Indian hatchets, and containing a gallon or so of water to each, the one almost cool and the other blood warm. After treating ourselves to a quart or so each-my horse drank the cool one and the burro the other, and we struck into the desert again. On the western side, my guide had told me, we should see the last Navajoes; but we 36 ï~~-1i 1 ï~~VILE DRINK. 563 soon met most of the colony driving before them their little herds, and to the guide's question they replied that the grass there was gone, the water dried up to one spring, and that was hohkawah ki wano (decidedly not good). Though I did not quite understand this, I saw, by its effect on the guide, that it was bad news for us, who had already ridden forty miles. We found but one family left, and their brush hogan showed that they were on the move. The woman brought out a copper kettle full of water from the only spring, a mile up the gulch which was horribly slimy and stinking; but the guide decided that we must have some of it, and in an hour's climbing we reached it. All around the little pool the sandatone had been trodden to powder, and was blowing into the spring, the water was of a sickening green, full of weeds and ugly creatures, and looked and smelt as if ten thousand goats had waded through it. Nevertheless, a catholic stomach triumphed over a protesting nose, and I drowned half a pint of it like so much necessary physic, while my horse drank freely. My Navajo pointed sadly to a few tufts of grass, which had been chewed to the ground, and even the roots pulled up by the goats, and intimated, by gestures, that we must go till long after sundown to find good grass. We were not an hour on our way when both of us felt symptoms of the water "coming back upon us," and I soon rolled out of my saddle on to the sand, too sick to sit up. The fluid part of the water had been absorbed, and the solid contents were putting my stomach to its trumps. The guide hastily rigged a blanket on the largest sage brush, furnishing me a little shade; then placed another under my head, gazed awhile at my contortions, and decided, as shown by signs, that "it must come utip." He ran to a gully a few rods away and brought back a few dry, yellow flowers, which he lighted with a wisp of sage brush, and held under my nose, resulting in a violent sneezing and discharge of blood. He then got my pipe, filled, lighted and placed it in my mouth; the taste was horrible at such a time, but he insisted that it was wano. As this did not seem to produce the desired effect, he moistened a lot of ï~~t,4.j, ~,: - ' - i Y.. i ',. ï~~SLEEPING IN THE SADDLE. 565 just in time to avoid his plunging head first into a ravine, but not in time to save himself, as the saddle girth gave way just at the wrong moment. As he went head first into a pile of boulders and sand, I looked on in horror, fully satisfied that I was left alone in this terrible place; but hlie sprang up instantly, and with a silly smile, and, " Vah, vah, Meliceano, malo, malo!" remounted and rode on, only rubbing his crown occasionally. Getting back to the plain, we continued our former course southwest along the foot of' the mesa. My eyelids began to droop with weariness, and for fear I should drop off may horse in sleep, I loosed my feet, and raising the stirrup leathers, wrapped them about each arm. The position was not favorable to sleep, nor could I keep entirely awake; and soon I suffered from that dangerous symptom of dreaming with the eyes wide open, and fixed upon the very object of my dream. The bright moonlight fell upon the projecting peaks of the ridge to our right, and I endeavored to keep awake by contemplating their beauty; but as I gazed I saw suddenly a score of bright, clear streams dashing dlown as many gulches, and a broad savanna. on the plain below, rich and green with inviting grass. I shouted to the guide: " Kloh! Toh!" (" grass, water"), and jerking up my horse, pitched forward on his neck and awoke. I braced myself more firmly to keep awake, and in a few moments, looking on a rock a little ahead, I saw a hideous painted Indian bound out from behind it and take position in the sage brush near the trail. I yelled to the guide and grabbed my gun, and just as the hammer was clicking under my hand, Indian and rock disappeared, and the answering shout of the guide brought mte to my waking senses. I knew there was not a hostile Indian in fifty miles, so for fear I should shoot my own horse, I gave the gun to the Navajo, and again resolved to keep awake. He still pointed ahead for grass, but indicated that it was now "pokeeto" ("a little way"). While gazing on a sand ridge we were crossing, I seemed to see it covered with grass and flowers, and shouting that this was the place, reined up my horse suddenly, and again butted him in the back of the head, at the imminent risk of giving us both the poll-evil. - ï~~566 " HAH-KOH, MELICANO!" At last, about 11 o'clock, we reached the promised place I had anticipated in so many fitful dreams-a little valley, rich with bunch and herd grass, where we made a "dry camp." Taking the estimated distance from De Chelley, and deducting the remaining distance to Moqui, we had ridden at least sixtyfive miles, probably much more, and this under a burning sun, without a bite to eat, and with water only three times. We stood it amazingly, but it is a wonder it did not kill the animals. I think the little burro, not much bigger than a sheep, and carrying a good-sized Navajo and twenty pounds of provisions, stood it better than my horse. As soon as I could unload and hopple my horse, without removing any clothing, I wrapped both blankets about me, sank upon the grass, with head on saddle, and in two minutes was sound asleep. June 21st.-I scarcely seemed to have closed my eyes when I was aroused by a "Hah-kok, Melicano," and starting up, saw my Navajo with the animals ready to mount, and pointing to the east, already rosy with the coming dawn. Moving his hand toward a point half way to the zenith, he remarked: "Kloh, toh--no calor," Spanish, Navajo, and sign-language, meaning infuill, " By starting now, we shall reach grass and water the middle of the forenoon, and before the heat of the day." It is astonishing how much conversation two men can carry on with only a hundred words in common, if both are good at gesture. Thus, on starting out in the morning, I point to the zenith and ask: "Kloh, toh 7" to which my Navajo replies:,'O0 ay," pointing to the animals with a rapid gyration of his fingers. This means in full: "Shall we reach grass and water by noon?" "Yes, if the animals travel well." True, this does not admit of going into the higher realms of literature or philosophy, but men lose much of their interest in those higher realms while crossing these deserts. Grass and water are the most sublime objects of their search; and the country is so generally barren that all journeys have to be measured and calculated with regard to the few places where these are to be found. The knowledge of the Indians on this subject seems almost like a sixth sense. Standing on the plain, my Navajo ï~~yy,, fR i 4!... t i.r.i T / '!.. iig,. 7 t /n. u...,. j....::...Z s.. =Jr ' Jr' r,!" ). k;,.,.y,.z -., -:" t,..l _.. gyn..,,..;,. y....,.,.,..:.. h _;:..,,., _ ',.,. y.,..;... - -;..;, i Jl ' j,.,..;:-;, i kw a.,, 6 0, L F fir..< < < y rs>. x..,,' Jt -'" t s. u... s,: < ï~~568 DISTANT VIEW OF MOQUI. the plain; but when the guide indicated grass and water up and over a perfectly bare white sand hill, I shook my head. He only smiled, and led the way. With frequent rests to our horses, we had toiled up and over the rising sand hills for something like a mile, when a sudden descent brought us into a circular hollow, containing half a dozen shrubs and nearly an acre of densely matted grass. At the foot of the cliff was a slight moisture, and pointing to a black rock which appeared nearly five hundred feet straight above us, the guide intimated there was our spring. Everything was stripped from the animals except the lariats, but how we ever got them up that hill is a mystery to me; but we did, and found plenty of good water, brought down our supply, and remained in this camp until 3 P. M. I am now convinced that my horse could go up or down any pair of stairs in Cincinnati. We had exhausted what bread we started with, and cooked a fresh supply here; after which we enjoyed a delightful "laze" of four hours in the shadow of the rock. From this point, when the afternoon breeze had sprung up, we entered upon the sandy plain, and followed a slight trail towards the mesa. Occasional depressions were filled with yellow bunch grass, but most of the plain was of hard bare white sand, seeming to literally bake in the heat of the sun. Approaching the foot of the mesa wve found the sand a little more loose and dark. Here I noticed rows of stones a foot or so apart, and was amazed to find, on examination, we were in a Moqui field. By every little hill of corn or beans they had laid a stone, about half the size of a peck measure; for what I cannot imagine, unless it is to draw moisture. From the foothills I gazed with astonishment upon the perpendicular walls and projecting cliffs of the mea, rising a thousand feet above me. It is little over half a mile long and half as wide, and rises abruptly from the plain on every side; around it run half galleries and footpaths, winding in and out upon the crevices and projecting shelves of rock; and far above my head, as it seemed almost in mid-air, I saw goat-pens upon ï~~Ia ï~~570 AT THE FOOT OF THE MESA. in the land. Around the entire mesa there is but one narrow way that a horse can ascend, and on that, at a score of points, a squad of boys with nothing but stones could defy the cavalry of the world. The springs which supplythe community are situated around the base of the highest cliffs, where the foothills begin, but so far up that most of them can not be reached by horses from below; and even most of their little fields are hidden among the foothills, and only to be found from above. From the general level of the plain to the flat top of the mesa I estimate at a thousand feet. Half of this rise is by a succession of rolling sand ridges, and then we come to a perpendicular cliff, only surmountable by these rock-hewn galleries. The community owns neither horses nor cattle; nothing but goats, and equally agile burros, can surmount the obstacles of such a situation. It is at once the strongest, most astonishing and unaccountable site for a town I ever saw. We entered upon the ascent in a hot and narrow pass between two sand ridges, and soon reached the first spring, below which was a succession of walled fields. Each field was about three rods wide and six long, and contained some three hundred hills of corn; they were built up against the sand ridge, a stone wall four or five feet high forming at once the division for one and support for the dirt in the next, the fields rising in a succession of terraces. The feeble stream was exhausted before it passed the second field, and it is only in the night that the lower ones can be irrigated. Farther down, where there is no water, the Moqui digs a hole in the sand eighteen or twenty inches deep, and plants his corn where a slight moisture has percolated from above. We passed the slope, and were about to enter on the gallery road, when a Moqui shouted to us from directly overhead, and in obedience to his directions, though at the imminent risk of our necks, the guide turned down a rocky footpath to another gallery. A few steps showed us that a vast sand-rock had fallen across the other road, and a new one had been built. As we turned the last groove in the gallery, and, almost before we were aware of' it, the houses looking so much like stone, we were right in the first town, all the men of which seemed ï~~MISIAMTEWAH. 571 to be absent. At Defiance I was told to ask for Chino, the Ortpitan of this mesa, before I talked to any one else; so I shouted to call out some one. A woman came on top of the nearest house, and seeing me immediately set up a cry ofjokow! jokow! Then from every house women and children, with occasionally a man or good-sized boy, came running on to the house-tops and down the ladders to the street, while the cry went ahead from house to house, jokow! jokow! jokow! A population of several hundred was soon crowdiug about me, or gazing in astonishment from the house-tops; the women were chattering and exclaiming, and the children when I rode near a house yelling with fright, and altogether we were creating a decided sensation. Again I called for Chino, and a dozen boys jumped into the road and ran along the cliff, beckoning me to follow. We passed through the first town, the whole population following in a tumultuous mass, and in the scond town-a hundred yards on-found and were admitted to the lower part of Chino's house. He was not at home, but they let us into an extension of his dwelling, containing but one story, where we deposited our packs. Twenty boys and women were already on the house-top, jostling each other to look through the square opening at us; as many more were crowding into the room, and about four hundred were outside struggling for a good place. It is not pleasant to be stared at, even by barbarians; my Navajo also got embarrassed, and suggested that Chino could not be far away, and a few shots from my gun would bring him. I stepped to the edge of the cliff and fired three shots as fast as I could run the slide of my "Spencer," which elicited universal cries of jokow! Then an old woman suggested something that sounded like Mice-eye, and a boy was sent after that person. He arrived in a few minutes and asked at once, in pretty good Spanish, who I was, what I wanted, where I came from, where was I going, and what did I intend to do when I got there? His name he told me, and had it written on a card by some white man, was Misiamtewah. He had seen the Mormoneys, and could talk Moqui, Tegua and Spanish, and a few ï~~ ï~~EL CAPITAN CIHINO. 573 words of English. What could I talk, and what did I want at Moqui? I made friends with him at the start. Chino soon arrived and assigned us a large and commodious room, a sort of addition to his house. Here were the cooking utensils, and a few books left by Mr. T. C. Crothers, son of the Pueblo Agent at Santa Fe, who had visited Moqui the previous year and remained several weeks. With them were a number of star candles, some writing paper, a clay pipe, and old newspapers, all of which Chino had religiously preserved, and now delivered them to me. Per Misiamtewah, Chino assured me this was my room, my town, my country while I stayed; and John soon piled all our property inside, and sent tihe animals out to Chino's herd. I suggested that he had better keep a sharp lookout for our little luxuries; but he answered, with a meaning smile, in halting Spanish and Navajo, with gestures most expressive of hooking, what might be filly translated thus: " Oh, no, Senor, among Mexican and Melican you watch; Navajo you watch, when you have no good one with you; but here you never watch at all; Moquis steal nothing." It proved literally true. Not one of Chino's family would touch an article without my invitation; and it is the testimony of all, that among these people the women are chaste and the men- scrupulously honest. By the third day of our stay John is in a fever of anxiety to go home. He ought to be satisfied to await my pleasure, for he is enjoying three meals a day at my expense; but the impecunious cuss knows there is five dollars waiting for him there, when he brings letters from me, and he wants to get there and have a time with the boys. Luckily, he cannot buy whisky, but he will have his spree all the same; and his extravagance will break out in reckless displays of new paint and flowered calico, and lavish gifts of white sugar. I hate to part with him, for he has proved a good fellow. Like most common Indians, the poor fellow has no name, or I should immortalize him. ï~~CHAPTER XXVII. THE LAST OF THE AZTECS. Theory and fact--What I know about the Moquis-Location-Numbers-- Dwellings-Dress-A dinner of State-Dog-meat and a Catholic stomachStrange dialogue on religion-Tuba and Telashnimki-Oraybe Radicals-Further enquiries-Division of the subjects-Mounds in Ohio-In Mississippi Valley-Mexico-Central America-Peru-Theories-Jews, Chinese, Malays, Phoenicians, Romans, or Atlanteans-Modest conclusion. HO are the Mloquis? This historical conundrum must be referred to the class of inquiries relative to the "Mound-Builders," and other prehistoric races of America; for it is, to my mind, self-evident that the civilized Indians of Arizona are but the last feeble remnants of a long series of races. Theory is worthless without a good basis of fact. Let me, therefore, recount what I saw before I attempt antiquarian researches. The three Moqui towns, on the one mesa, where I spent four days, are situated as nearly as I can determine in latitude 306Â~ north, and between the meridians 1100 and 1110 west of Greenwich; in the center of an oval plain, some twenty by thirty miles in extent. It appears to be walled in by precipitous mountains, with five or six openings; but this is only in appearance, as a succession of ridged mesas, scattered over the country, appear to the traveler at any one point as forming a circle. Around the border, where it rises toward the enclosing hills, the plain is rich in bunch and white-seed grass; whence toward the towns it falls off to a horribly barren plain of dry and burning sand. From this plain the mesa rises, oval-shaped and equally on every side, to the hight of one thousand or twelve hundred feet. At first view I set it down as much higher, but having since been around it, and climbed down and 574 ï~~-rc 1,, 1..... i. nl I 16/'! - ".v < q,.y '.. Li,.. r '.., m. t, i,, Â~s, F r p,. a.if,a l.,. l n %li i. j. r,... y. J.. i-, _" _ G ' 'fit,,....n n1Y %...:.. i Y. ï~~576 SEVEN TOWNS. The three or four springs which supply the place break out from under the rock about the point where the abrupt cliff joins the foot-hills, and can all be fortified against the approach of an enemy from below. All the provision is stored as fast as gathered, in the houses, and thus they seem always ready to sustain a long siege. As far as possible up the cliffs, where caves open inward, flats have.been worked upon the rock, and sheep and goat pens constructed leading into the caves. As I stand upon the cliff soon after sunrise I can look down hundreds of feet into the outer portion of these pens, and see the Moquis milking their goats in what seems like a great rocky balcony standing out from the wall. All around extends the yellow plain, and as I walk upon these hights in the bright starlight, it seems tossing and heaving below me like a sea of molten brass. Moqui, a common name given by whites and the other Indians, is only the name of one town; but there are seven in all: Moqui, Moquina, Tegua, Hualpec, Shepalawa, Oraybe, and Beowawe--so spelled by the Spaniards, but pronounced by themselves, respectively, Mokee, Mokeenah, Taywah, Wallpake, Shapalawah, Orybay, and Baowahway." The first three on this mesa contain altogether, I conclude, about a thousand inhabitants. Their houses are generally square, and of first rate architectural design. They are built of flat stones laid in a fine cement, which seems to harden with time; the joists are of immense timbers, apparently a species of sugar pine, hewn round; they are plastered heavily inside, and whitewashed with a material which gives a hard, smooth polish. Thus they are easily kept clean, and always have a neat, inviting appearance; indeed, there is very little dust or dirt flying about on the mesa. Sand storms raised below, strike against the cliff some distance down. Houses are built together in groups, with but narrow passages between, and thus neither town covers more than four or five acres. They are two or three stories in hight, the stories each very high except the lowest. That is seldom used in summer, and not being more than four or five feet high, I at ï~~ ï~~578 A FRIENDLY RACE. by the projection of stone always built out at one of the corners so as to form a rude staircase. The better class carpet their houses with sheep-skins, and all have sheep-skins to sit on, though the floor is kept scrupulously clean. There is not dampness enough to produce troublesome mold, even in the lowest story, and only one noisome insect, (genus unknown to me,) the presence of which is at once betrayed by the whitewash, so it is easily guarded against. I had supposed they were a rather reserved people, but I found them exceedingly kind and communicative. When the novelty of my appearance had worn away a little, and I could walk about town without a wondering crowd after me, I rarely turned toward a house without receiving the welcome wave of the hand to the lips and breast, with the words, "Ho, Melicano, messay vo;" or sometimes, as many know a few words of Spanish, "Entre: Pasar adelante." Then a boy or girl would run down the stone staircase, and extend a hand to steady me in ascending. They took me into every room in their houses, and seemed to take a pride in exhibiting their best specimens of pottery, wicker-jugs, and other property. Of their children they were particularly demonstrative; and, indeed, they looked well enough. I did not, in all the towns, see a single birthmark, blotch or deformity, except albinism. Children of both sexes go entirely naked till about the age of ten years. I noted one curious fact: The small children seemed almost as white as American children, till the age of six months or a year; then they began to turn darker, and at ten or twelve had attained to a rich mahogany color. They play for hours along these cliffs, chasing each other from rock to rock at that dizzy hight, and yet they seemed surprised when I asked if accidents did not happen. Their mode of living is very simple, and I happened upon a time of unusual scarcity. The general drought of the past three years had cut off their crops. As often as Chino, the Capitan of this mesa, visited me, I had presented him a tin of warm, sweetened coffee, of which they are very fond, and which was the only thing I could spare; and I had partaken ï~~HIGH LIVING. 579 of parched corn with him the evening of my arrival, when I received a special invitation to dine with him "the day before I left." (People with weak stomachs may skip the next paragraph.) 1 They breakfast early, and dine between 11 and 12. Besides Misiamtewah, a sort of official interpreter, there is another Moqui who speaks Spanish tolerably well, having been a year in Tucson and Prescott; and both were at dinner with us. We sat upon sheep-skins on the floor, in a circle around the earthern bowls, in which the food was placed. The staple was a thick corn mush, which to me was rather tasteless for the want of salt. The regular bread of the Moquis is a decided curiosity. The wheat is ground with metats (smooth stones), as by the Navajoes, but much finer, six or seven women grinding together, reducing the flour to the merest dust. It is then mixed as thin as milk; the woman cooking dashes a handful on the hot stone, where it cooks almost instantly, and comes off no thicker than paper, and of a bright blue color. The flakes are about two feet long, and as they are stacked two or three feet deep on the platter, look remarkably like a pile of blue silk. They raise white, blue and red corn; and by various mixtures of the meal with wheaten flour, produce seven different colors in the bread. These they stack in alternate layers for a feast, producing a pretty effect. It is very sweet and nourishing, but there are two objections to it: one can eat an hour or two before getting satisfied, and then, in some cases, they mix it with chamber-lye, which makes it all a little suspicious. Clean as their houses are, they are as dirty in their cooking as the wild Indians, and will not compare at all with the Navajoes. Their goats' milk, as I purchased it, was always so suspicious, that in this case I took my private tin cup along, and strained my own share through a handkerchief I reserved for that purpose. It was rather an awkward thing for an invited guest to do, but I did not perceive that it gave any offence. But the piece de resistanee was the meat, which consisted of the hinder half of a very fat young dog, elegantly dressed and well cooked, that animal being the favorite food ï~~ ï~~MODE OF FARMING. 581 With my Navajo guide and Chino's son, we formed a very pleasant party of six, and had quite a social time. The second interpreter informed me that he went to Prescott some years ago with Melicanoes and Meshicanoes, and that they named him-it was probably in sport-Jesus Papa (Hay-soos Pahpalh). Hie was much more communicative than Misiamtewah, and had a very fair idea of the Americans. To these simple people I represented in person all the dignity of that great Nation, of whom such wonderful reports had reached them. And here I must own to a little deceit. They were at first very inquisitive as to my business, and could not imagine wlhy a white man should be making such a long trip with only Indians for coinpanions. Savage people can rarely understand that intelligent curiosity which is the product of civilization, and suspect sonme ulterior purpose when one has nothing to trade, and wishes to buy nothing. Repeatedly questioned at first, I told Chino I was un escribano del Gobierno de los Indios ("a writer for the Government in regard to the Indians"), which may be passed as partly true in a sense. The Moquis have a close struggle for existence. The sand surrounding the mesa presents the poorest show for farming I - ever saw, yet everywhere among these sand hills are their little walled fields, three or four rods square, and from the measure Papa showed me, I estimated that his field had produced what would amount to twelve or fifteen bushels of corn, and half as much wheat to the acre. The water front neither of the springs runs more than ten rods before sinking in the sand; but in sonic places they have constructed little troughs of rock or wood which carry a stream perhaps as big as one's finger to the field and help the case a little. With a sharp stick they dig a hole about eighteen inches deep through the top sand, which brings them to a stratum of moister sand, in which they lodge the grain. Around the hill they then place a few stones, and after dressing in clean clothes, sit in solemn silence for hours by the fields-supposed to be praying for rain. If no rain comes, which is generally the case, they usually carry water in their wicker jugs from the spring, and pour a pint or so on each hill. ï~~582 HISTORY AND TRADITION. I suppose the stones are put there to draw or retain moisture; but it mgy be merely to mark the exact spot. A month often elapses before the stalk appears above ground. It rarely grows more than two feet high, and the ear is short and thick, with dark, round, very hard grains, much like that variety we used to call "squaw corn" on the Wabash. Along the foot of these bordering sand-hills, in the shallow where there seems to be some moisture, and in the bordering mountains, grow many peach trees, which bear abundantly every year. The kernels of the stones are pounded and formed into little cakes, used apparently as a sort of relish. With all this the difficulty of living is very great, and the industry and enterprise displayed quite astonishing. Their sheep and goats are always sure of good pasture somewhere in the neighborhood, and these furnish their dependence when all else fails. Of history or tradition they seem to have little or none, and all my endeavors failed to discover the slightest trace of any religion. The simplest form in which I could put questions on that point seemed to completely bewilder them. The Spanish word'Dio8 they had never heard, and the American word God only as an oath, and did not know what it implied. To my question, " Who made all these mountains?" Papa only smiled, then stared, and finally replied: "Nada; siempre son aqui." (" Nothing; they are always here.") Fearing from this that my limited command of Spanish had caused him to misunderstand me, I entered into a very minute explanation, in the simplest possible words, of our belief, and had him repeat till I was sure he fully understood it, but apparently it roused no answering conceptions in his mind. Part of the talk struck me as so curious that I at once copied it: Myself-The Melicans and Mexicans have one they call God, or Dios. We think He made us, made this mesa, made these mountains, made all men and all things. We talk to and ask good things of this God. Papa-Yes; I much hear Melican man say "G--d----" (repeating an oath too blasphemous to be written). Myself-No, no; that is bad. He was a bad Melican who ï~~,,.H,,;;,, r:r.. - r f Y: X17, L L..,v -. caw, f y''1 -'A'f_ i,,u1T f ":.. J, j 1,...., ï~~/:. ï~~A DELIVERER LOOKED FOR. 585 length of the mesa with a number of cow-bells attached to his belt; the entire population turn out at once, and while the others proceed to milk their goats, the bellman and a few young men descend to the plain and go a mile or more towards the East. An army officer who has visited them, says that they look for a deliverer to come from that direction; and send an embassy every morning to meet him! How wide-spread, how deeply rooted is this Messianic idea. From the Jew who looked for one that should restore Israel and break the Roman yoke, to the poor Hindoo who fondly trusts that the Tenth Avatar will descend, "And Camdeo bright, and Ganessa sublime, Shall bless with joy their own propitious clime;" from the cultivated white Christian to the poor brown Moqui -all, all are looking for One who shall spe'k with authority, bring universal peace, and restore to each his own. Is it a myth? Did God send hunger, and not send bread? Did He implant a universal hope and longing, for which He was to provide no realization. This world-wide hope means something. One has come, or is to come, who will usher in a time " When useless lances into scythes shall bend, And the broad falchion in a plow-share end; When wars shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail; Returning Justice lift aloft her scale; Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend, And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend." Of their own arrival in the region they now occupy, the Moquis have no tradition; but have a well connected account of the Navajoes, who came, "the grandfathers say," not many generations ago, from a northern country. They have also a vague account that they were once more rich and numerous than now. "The grandfathers" often told them that the ruins on the adjacent mesa were inhabited by a powerful race of Moquis, and a big spring watered the plain; but an earthquake threw down many of the houses, and dried up the spring; many of the ï~~586 ORAYBE. people perished of famine, and the remnant went to a south country. They have much more acquaintance with white men than I had supposed. Several Mormons, particularly Jacob Hamlin, the Indian Agent, have visited them and remained some time. Telashnimki and Tuba, two Oraybes, husband and wife, accompanied H11amlin to Salt Lake City,and were delighted with all they saw. Since their return, a portion of the Oraybes have seceded from the main body, and established a new settlement,to which they invite white men, and propose more friendly relations. The Moquis pointed out Oraybe in the distance; but did not think it safe for me to visit it, as the Apaches visit there constantly. The Mormons are establishing friendly relations with all the tribes of northwestern Arizona, and will, it is to he hoped, succeed in peace in their vicinity. One question frequently asked me was, "Are the Mormoneys Americans?" A plain affirmative was near enough to the truth for the views of the Indians; but, in point of fact, the question is open to argument. Two years before, an American was wounded in the neighborhood, and remained at Moqui nearly a year; and the previous winter Mr. O. C. Crothers, son of the Pueblo agent, at Santa Fe, had remained there three or four months. They now receive regular annuities of Government goods. Some ten or twenty miles west is another mesa, with three villages, and fifteen miles from that the Oraybe village; thus their total number must be about three thousand. The Orbayes refuse to receive an agent or make any treaty, and repulse the advances of whites, but have committed no violence. They trade and fraternize extensively with the Apaches. The dress of a Moqui consists of very loose jacket and draw. ers, made of calico obtained from traders. The first is made close at the neck, and flows loosely to the hips; the second reaches from the waist to a little below the knees. Heavy sandals protect the feet. But this dress is only conventional, and they often appear entirely naked, except the girdle and breechclout. The women wear a heavy woolen of their own manu ï~~INDIAN POLYGAMY. 587 facture, consisting of single skirt and a sort of half-waist, or rather a fold thrown over the shoulders, and leaving one arm and breast bare. Their disposition is eminently civil and unwarlike. They have a great horror of shedding blood, and always retreated before any attack. The oldest men have no recollection of any time when they were at war, and I saw no weapons of war among them. Polygamy seems to prevail to a slight extent. Chino and Misiamtewah each have two wives, but from what little they said on the subject, I conclude thiey consider it a burden rather than a privilege. The women are rather homely, short, and stumpy, I think from carrying loads upon their head. None of them will compare with the graceful and shapely Navajo girls; nor are they prolific. Their numbers are evidently decreasing steadily. The town at the south end of the mesa is slowly falling to ruins; not half the houses are inhabited, and through the other towns there are many abandoned dwellings, now used for stables and sheep pens, or for storing hay. The kindly law of nature will not permit increase in a country which can only furnish a bare living. Moqui means "Dead Man," and Moquina may be translated "Little Dead Town." This is the half-abandoned town on the south end of the mesa; and I was informed by Jacob Hamlin that some five years before most of the inhabitants there died of small-pox. Most singular of all, two languages are spoken on this mesa. The Tegua town, the one we first enter on coming up the cliff, has a language quite distinct from the ordinary Moqui. Those who have examined say the Tegua is the same as that spoken by the Pueblos near the city of Mexico. If true, this is a most important fact, and to my mind goes far to supply the missing link in Baron Humboldt's history of the Aztecs. Governor Amrny, of Santa Fe, collected many facts on this subject, but whether they have been published I do not know. But the most gratifying part of my experience here was a sight of some of the renowned "white Indians," though the result was rather ludicrous than otherwise. I had learned all that Papa and Misiamtewah could tell me on the subject, when ï~~588 " WHITE INDIANS." the former came to my room one day and stated that a family of them, three men and two women, had just come on a visit from the next mesa. I was transported with delight. I now had an opportunity to bodily examine a people who might almost be styled fabulous. For halfa century we have had enchanting stories of this people, seeming all the more romantic from the fact that they had to be repeated through a dozen channels before they reached the philosophic critic. It was said that a Welsh family had settled in the tribe two centuries ago-as to just how they got there the tradition was silent-and that their descendants had multiplied to an extensive class, with white skin, blue eyes, and red hair. Another story was that they were captured Spaniards, adopted into the tribe. But the most romantic account ran thus: In the reign of Queen Elizabeth a Spanish fleet made a descent upon the western coasts of Great Britain and Ireland and carried off several hundred Scotch and Irish. According to the custom of the time, they were sent to work in the newly-opened mines of Mexico. There they revolted, and escaped in a body to the Aztecs of the north, who were still resisting the Spaniards, and became the ancestors of a new race. It is a pity to spoil so much romance, but the prosaic fact is, these "'White Indians" are nothing but Indians, pure and simple, as much so as the blackest of the tribe. They are nothing but albinos, and differ only from African albinos in the fact that this form is rather more apt to be hereditary than the other. In the majority of cases it is transmissible, but not always. The fact is proved conclusively by hair, skin, and eyes: the first is a sickly, pinky red, mixed with white; the second is a waxy white, stained in places with yellow, and the eyes are very weak and "mooney," or perpetually "dancing." The girl of this family was almost blind at noon; the woman had tolerably good sight, but was "moon-eyed;" and the man's eyes looked like two glittering pieces of glass stuck in the bottom of auger holes. His sight, however, appeared tolerably good, and the two boys, whose complexions were more nearly like those of other Moquis, had good natural eyes. It is possible, of course, that there may be somewhere in Arizona a race ï~~DECAYING RACES. 589 of "White Indians," but as for these, among the Zunis and Moquis, they are evidently not a distinct race. Both interpreters tell me all the others are just like these; that they sometimes have dark children, and occasionally full-color Moquis have white children. Their whiteness, in fact, is nothing but a disease. If the term be medically correct, IP would call it a species of American leprosy. We need not go far to find the causes: a people living in this hot, dry climate, on hard, dry food, in the midst of burning sands, drouth, and misery, and shut up in these little isolated communities, where the same families have intermarried in all probability for twenty-five generations. The only wonder is that they are not totally extinct, or ring-streaked, speckled, and grizzled. With the exception of their houses, the Moquis do not appear to me as much advanced in the arts as the Navajoes. They weave blankets, but not as good as those of the latter. They make beautiful crockery, painting it with fanciful figures and flowers by means of different colored clays or stones obtained from the mountains. Their cookery is inferior to the Navajoes, and they learn much less readily. They are, in fact, a decaying race, at the last end of the series; while the Navajoes are at the beginning, a new and vigorous race. In the "good old time," when the Pueblo races dominated the whole country, they were much more numerous than now, and their settlements nearly continuous; intermarriages took place between the various towns, their language was nearly the same, and they were prolific and progressive. Now they constitute but little islands, as it were, in an ocean of Utes, Navajoes, and Apaches; the separated towns have gradually grown apart, and become distinct nations; they have no central priesthood or ecclesiastical connection, their religion and learning steadily decay, and even the tradition of a common origin is fast becoming obscure. So much for what I know about the Moquis. And as I proceed to a wider range of inquiry, allow me to state that in what follows there is no attempt at an exhaustive or scientific treatment of the subject. I merely aim to state, in popular language, (1) What is positively known; (2) What may be considered ï~~590 THE MOUND BUILDERS. proved; and (3) What may reasonably be conjectured in regard to the ancient civilized inhabitants of America. I.-WHAT IS POSITIVELY KNOWN. A people for whom we have no name, vaguely included under the general term of Mound-Builders, have left evidences of extensive works in the vicinity of the Mississippi and Ohio and their tributaries. These remains are of three kinds: mounds, square and circular inclosures, and raised embankments of various forms. Of mounds, the following are most important and best known: One at Grave Creek, West Virginia, 70 feet high, and 1000 feet in circumference at the base; one near Miamisburg, Ohio, 68 feet high, and 852 feet in circumference; the great truncated pyramid at Cahokia, Illinois, 700 feet long, 500 wide, and 90 in bight; the immense square mound, with face of 188 feet, near Marietta, Ohio; and some hundreds of inferior mounds from six to thirty feet in hight, in different States, from Wisconsin to the mouth of the Mississippi. Some of those in Wisconsin are described in the first chapter of this work. Unlike all the mounds in Mexico and Central and South America, those in our country have no trace of buildings on them. Why? Until I visited Arizona I had no answer. There the solution was easy. In those regions stone was abundant, and timber scarce; here the reverse was the case. Our predecessors built of wood, the others of stone; the works of the latter remain to this day, while wooden buildings would leave no trace after one or two centuries, if indeed they were not burnt by the savages as soon as abandoned. Of the second class the best known are: the square fortification at Cedar Bank, Scioto River, Ohio, with face of 800 feet, inclosing a mound 245 feet long by 150 broad; the works four miles north of Chillicothe, Ohio, a square and a circular fortification inclosing twenty acres each; the graded way near Piketon, Ohio; about a hundred mounds and inclosures in Ross County, Ohio; the pyramid at Seltzertown, Mississippi, 600 feet long and 40 feet high, and a vast number of mounds, inclosures, ï~~MEXICAN ANTIQUITIES. 591 squares and pyramids on the upper lakes and scattered through the Southern and Western States. Of raised embankments I note: the Great Serpent, in Adams County, Ohio, five feet high and thirty wide, winding in serpentine form for 1000 feet, and terminating in a triple coil; embankments enclosing sixteen acres, seemingly intended to fortify a hill, in Butler County, Ohio; besides a number of graded ways at Circleville, Ohio, and Frankfort, Kentucky. The work of Messrs. Squier & Davis, published by the Smithsonian Institution, the highest authority on the subject, gives account of over two thousand of these remains, scattered over the Southern and Western States. Their location caused A. D. Richardson to say: "The centers of population are now where they were when the Mound Builders existed." But there is this important difference: the densest population was then in the South; their military border was towards the North. The second division of American antiquities begins in Utah and Nevada, and extends southward through Arizona and Mexico. Like those in the United States these are pretty well known and described; for but few of them are located in dangerous districts. The ruins heretofore described, the Casas Grandes on the Gila, the remains of the original City of Mexico, the great pyramid at Xochicalco, State of Mexico, the City of Tulha, ancient capital of the Toltecs, and a regular line of ruins thence down to Central America, and across to the mouth of the Mississippi, serve to connect these with those of the United States and those further south. Among them are remains of dwellings, palaces, temples, vast tumuli, acecquias and aguadas, or artificial ponds. They were of hewn stone laid in mortar, and have consequently endured better than our own wooden erections. The third, and by far the greatest, division is in Central and South America; and here we find ourselves at the point where our ancient civilization reached its hight, among works which are the astonishment of explorers and perplexity of scholars. Yucatan is a vast field for antiquarian research; dotted from one end to the other with the ruins of cities, temples and pal ï~~592 ANCIENT YUCATAN. aces. But in the great forest which covers the northern half of Guatemala, the southern half of Yucatan, and parts of other States, covering an area larger than Ohio, is to be found the key to our ancient history. Within a few years past cities have been found there which must have contained a population of a quarter of a million, in an advanced condition of life; and yet, owing to the jealousy of the natives and the indifference of scholars, next to nothing is known, and few scientific researches have been made upon this intensely interesting subject. Nevertheless, by the labors of Stephens, Del Rio, Bourbourg, Captain Dupaix and others, a good beginning has been made. I append briefly the facts and figures definitely known: Palenque, in the Mexican State of Chiapa, was unknown alike to the Aztecs and invading Spaniards-forgotten long before the time of Cortez. It is so named from a small town near, now inhabited. Two hundred years after the conquest, to wit, in 1750, the ruins were first discovered by the Spaniards; and in 1787 Captain Del Rio visited them, and took measurements of "fourteen edifices admirably built of hewn stone, extending seven or eight leagues along the river Chacamas and half a league the other way." Many others have since visited the place. The largest building, called the Palace, has a pyramidal foundation 40 feet high, 310 long and 260 wide; the edifice is 228 feet long, 180 wide and 25 feet high, with fourteen doorways on each side and eleven at each end. It was built entirely of elegantly hewn stone, laid with precision, in mortar of the best quality. There is much fine carving, and evidence of some skill in painting. Other noted buildings are of somewhat smaller size, and the entire city must have contained a hundred thousand inhabitants. Copan is in the extreme western part of Honduras, in a solitary and almost impenetrable forest. The natives are barbarous and suspicious of strangers. Nevertheless the place has been visited and fully described. The ruins extend three miles along the river, but how far back is not known. There are walls of sixty and ninety feet in hight; the front of one palace with richly sculptured designs; another with fine arabesques, and a number of carved monoliths and basso relievos. ï~~QUIRIGUA AND MITLA. 593 Quirigua (KeereewaA) is a name given to a vast extent of ruins on the river Motagua, in the forest of Guatemala. The ruins appear to be much older than those previously described, and are evidently those of an immense city. There are pyramidal structures with stone steps, immense carved monoliths, large obelisks carved with human figures, and a vast armray of broken walls, the sides covered by inscriptions. Mitla is in the Mexican State of Oxaca, in a valley, surrounded by a barren waste. Only six edifices and three pyramids remain; but these are most elegant. Captain Dupaix and Desir6 Charnay (who saw them in 1866) both speak in most extravagant terms of the elaborate work. Says the latter: "Evidently the palaces were built with lavish magnificence. They combine the solidity of the works of Egypt with the elegance of those of Greece. But what is most interesting and remarkable in these monuments, which alone would be sufficient to give them the first rank among the orders of architecture, is the execution of their mosaic relievos, very different from plain mosaic, and consequently requiring more ingenious combination and greater art and labor. They are inlaid on the surface of the wall, and their duration is owing to the method of fixing the prepared stones into the stone surface, which made their union with it perfect. Their beauty can only be matched by the monuments of Greece and Rome in their best days." In the same region is an astronomical monument, with a figure of a man in profile, holding to his eye a tube which is directed toward the stars. On all these ruins are found patches of inferior stone work on the superior, and evidently of later date; and on that work traces of painting wholly primitive in style, rude figures of men and idols, and wandering lines that have no significance. These facts are held to indicate that after the first builders, the places were occupied by a somewhat inferior people, who in turn gave way to comparative barbarians. But when we pass to the third division, in Peru and neighboring countries, we find the most conclusive proofs of art and civilization many centuries before the first of the Incas. The proofs multiply with every examination. There was a vast 38 ï~~594 A WONDERFUL PEOPLE. empire, extending over twenty degrees of latitude. There was one paved road five hundred miles long, the pebbles of which it was constructed so well laid that large sections of it remain to this day. There were curious manufactures, and there arc beautiful monuments. There were gauzy articles, wrought of pure gold, so light that a zephyr might waft them from your fingers. They had complicated records, both public and private, kept by the quippue-threads of various colors, ingeniously arranged and tied in knots to express ideas, numbers and sentences. A skull in the possession of a lady in Cuzco, from one tomb, shows that they understood the operation of trepanning; and the skill displayed was equal to that of the present day. Their surgical instruments, now in the Bureau of Peruvian Antiquities, show that they practised bleeding, tooth-drawing and amputation; they treated fractures by wrapping the broken limb in several species of plants till reunion of the bone took place. Several heads have been found in which the natural palate had been destroyed, and the difficulty somewhat relieved by a fine gold plate. Numerous drawings both of plants and figures show that they examined the tongue in gastric troubles, employed a species of valerian as an antispasmodic, and gave a decoction of the plant from which quinine is made as a remedy for fevers. They had timbrels, bells, drums, a pipe with nine reeds, a stringed instrument resembling the guitar, and a variety of flutes and trumpets. One has been found, made of a human thighbone. Their religion was a sort of enlightened idolatry; light, fire and the sun were objects of worship; and from numerous vases, cups and drawings, Dr. Augustus Le Plongeon, latest and most thorough explorer, demonstrates that they practised baptism, confirmation and confession, and believed in the immortality of the soul and a future of rewards and punishments. Their principal city was supplied with water by pipes inlaid with gold, from immense springs in the mountains. The Indians at the time of the Conquest destroyed most of these, to deprive the Spaniards of water, and the latter cut up many for the gold; but one remains entire, and now supplies the convent ï~~PROOFS POSITIVE. 595 of Santo Domingo. The obscurity hanging over their history seems utterly impenetrable. There are numerous inscriptions, but nobody can read them. Some few of their books remain, but scientific enquirers have not yet obtained possession of them. The furious cupidity and fanaticism of the Spaniards cut off our best sources of knowledge; they converted the natives to Catholicism with the stake, sword and bloodhound; they melted every golden ornament and destroyed the most important fortifications, while the priests burned every book they could obtain, and employed the most destructive means to eradicate from the native mind every vestige of their ancient faith. Incredible were the precious evidences of art and learning that vanished before the blind fury of these gold-hunting Christians, who only excelled those they supplanted in one particular-the science of shedding blood. But it is now known that a few of the books escaped. M. Brasseur de Bourbourg has rendered one inestimable service to American antiquarians. He passed several years among the Mayas Indians of Yucatan, learned their language, and thereby found a key to translate one of the o!d books of Mayapan, throwing a flood of light upon its history. But no connection has been established between it and the Peruvian inscriptions. II.-WHAT IS CONSIDERED PROVED. In my limited space I confine this enquiry mostly to the remains in our own country. From what we see in the Western and Southern States, the following conclusions are evident: 1. The Mound-Builders constituted a considerable population, under one government. No wandering and feeble tribes could have erected such works; and the extent of the works, evidently many years in erection, as well as their completeness and scientific exactness, show the controlling energy of one directing central power. 2. They were an agricultural people. The barbarous state requires at least a hundred times as large an area for the same number of people as the civilized state; and the savage condition a much larger. The State of Ohio will support an agri ï~~596 THE TOLTECS OUR MOUND-BUILDERS. cultural population of ten millions; it never contained fifty thousand savages. It is easily demonstrable that that portion of the United States east of the Mississippi never contained half a million, probably not a quarter of a million, Indians. It follows, also, that a very large portion of the country around their works must have been cleared of timber and in cultivated fields. 3. They left our country a long time ago. Nature does not give a forest growth at once to abandoned fields; a preparatory growth of shrubs and softer timber comes first. But forest trees have been found upon the summit of their mounds which show, by annual rings and other signs, at least six hundred years of growth. Their works are never found upon the lowest terrace of the formation on the rivers; though many signs indicate that they built some as nearly on a level with the streams as possible. Their "covered ways," leading down to water, now terminate on the second terrace above. It is demonstrable that of the various terraces-" second bottoms "--on our streams, the lowest was longest in forming. From these and many other signs, it is proved that the last of the Mound-Builders left the Ohio valley at least a thousand years ago. 4. They occupied the country, at least the southern part of it, where their population was densest, a very long time. This is shown by the extent of their works, the evidences of their working the copper-mines of the Superior region, and many other proofs. The best judges estimate that nearly a thousand years elapsed from the time of their entrance till their departure from the Mississippi valley. 5. At the south they were at peace; but as they advanced northward, they came more and more into contact with the wild tribes, before whom they finally retired-again towards the south. These facts are clearly proved by the increase of fortifications northward, and.broad flat mounds, suitable only for buildings, southward. So much for proof; and, connecting these with other proofs, the latest antiquarians are of opinion that the Toltees--the civilized race preceding the Aztecs-were our Mound-Builders. ï~~THE COLHUAS. 597 When we pass to the more southern ruins the proofs of great antiquity, large population and long occupation are vastly increased. Some of them have been alluded to. The great forest of Guatemala and Yucatan is nearly as large as Ohio and Indiana combined, and could easily have sustained a civilized population of ten millions. The Aztecs, whom the Spaniards found, were the last of at least three civilized races, and much inferior to the Toltecs immediately preceding them. Their history indicates that they were merely one of the original races, who overthrew and mingled with the Toltees, adopting part of their religion and civilization. The Peruvian Incas, found by Pizarro, seemed to have been the second in the series of races. But civilization is not spontaneous; it must have required nearly a thousand years for the first of the three dynasties to have developed art and learning far enough to erect the buildings we find. To that race before the Incas, the authors of the original civilization, De Bourbourg and others have given the name of Colhuas. Thus we have the series: a thousand years since the MoundBuilders left our country; a previous thousand years of settlement and occupation, and a thousand years for the l)reced(lent civilization to develop. Or, beginning in Mexico, etc.: a thousand years of Spaniard and Aztec; a previous thousand years for Toltec migration and settlement, and a thousand years before that for the Colhuas to develop, flourish and decline. This carries us back to the time when the same course of eyents was inaugurated on the Eastern Continent. We know that it has required so long to produce all we fee in Europe and Asia; all reasoning, by analogy and from independent facts, goes to show that at least as long a time has. been required to produce equally great evidences in America. III.-WHAT MAY REASONABLY BE CONJECTURED. Besides a host of surmises there have been at least nine theories promulgated, and strenuously defended, in regard to the origin of this civilization. 1. The Jewish theory. Some forty years since Major Noah ï~~.w } r.. +. 4_', " i +r. S + A.:. 3, 5 T}..y, X,. ' I r y Â~ 1.l.Y, 1 4 ' _; 5 _ { - ); ' 9 F. ' }. l ''F i,,'.,... i s'. " ' t' 4,...;3a iÂ~ r. a,,.' y r -'i,4, { t,,,. " { ff s _ s ^ _* _.rv.... a, F, w:% h '" ' a fr,. ' c tr. rt r.' ï~~JEW, MALAY OR ASSYRIAN. 599 maintained that the "Lost Tribes" were the ancestors of the American Indians and the builders of the ruins described; and a few others held that, if not the Ten Tribes, there was a Jewish Colony. It would certainly be an amazing thing if such a people as the Jews could, in a few centuries, lose all trace of their language, religion, laws, form of government, art, science, and general knowledge, and sink into a tribe of barbarians. But when we add that their bodily shape must have completely changed, their skulls lengthened, the beard dibpped from their faces, and their language undergone a reversion from a derivative to a primitive type-a thing unkown in any human tongue-the supposition becomes too monstrous even to be discussed. As far as I know Orson Pratt, the renowned champion of Mormonism and polygamy, is the only scholar of the present day who maintains that theory; and he is forced to admit that all these changes must have been the result of a stupendous miracle-" God cursing them with black skins." The average Gentile mind is not equal to the task of receiving such a theory. From Alaska to Patagonia not a Hebrew letter has been found in any inscription. 2. The Malay Theory is that a great Malay Empire, once existing in the island of Malaysia, planted colonies here; but this is easily disproved. 3. The Phoenician Theory: that those ancient navigators planted colonies in America. If correct, this would be certain of demonstration; foir they were preeminently a people of letters and monuments. The Phoenician alphabet is the parent of all the alphabets of Europe except the Turkish. They must have left some trace of their language. But none has been found. Nor can any similarity be traced in the ruins with the works of the Phoenicians. 4, 5, 6. The Assyrian, Egyptian and Roman Theories fell for the same reasons as the Phoenician. The works of none of these people have any marked resemblance to those found in America. A pyramid or temple here is no more like an ï~~600 WHY AN EXOTIC? Egyptian or Assyrian one than a Chinese pagoda is like an American Church. 7. The Northmen in America have been credited with these works. It is barely possible the remains in the United States might be thus accounted for; but how about the far more extensive and elaborate works in Mexico; Central and South America? The cause ascribed is utterly inadequate for the effect. 8. The Chinese or Tartary Theory is, that about the year 1250 Kublai Khan seat Tartar colonies to America; that among tlhemn were some Nestorian Christians, which accounts for the crosses found. The time is utterly inadequate. Palenque and Copan were built and abandoned before the year 1250. 9. The Atlantean Theory is, by far, the most brilliant and fascinating of all proposed, and appeals with subtle power to the imagination. It is propounded by Brasseur de Bourbourg, who maintains that the Island of Atlantis, often mentioned by ancient poets, had a real existence; that it extended nearly across the Atlantic, and was the cradle of civilization; that it actually sank in the sea as the Greek poets tell us, and that the West India Islands are the only portions that remain above water. He conjectures that from this common center civilization spread cast and west, and supports this view by numerous traditions from both sides of the Atlantic. Of this theory we must regretfully say, " Not proven." To dispose of so many theories to make way for my own opinion, is scarcely in keeping with the modesty I had proposed to myself; but, in my humble judgment, these theorists all start from one fatal assumption: that this civilization was nece&sarily an exotic. Why not a civilization native to America as well as to any other country? I would suggest that a good basis might be laid by analogy with the course of civilization in Europe. There it began in the South, spread slowly by successive developmnients towards the North, where it was overwhelmed and driven back, as it were, by an irruption of barbarians; it again revived in the South, and slowly extended to the North, where it is now advanced beyond the original. Similarly here the Colhuas originated civilization in the South; ï~~A NATIVE CIVILIZATION. 601 their successors, the Toltecs, carried it towards the North; about the line of Ohio, they encountered the irruption of northern barbarians, and slowly retired towards the South; there civilization again revived, and was steadily advancing towards the North when the Spaniards came and destroyed it. On each continent the full cycle required about three thousand years. On this basis I should place the Moquis and other Pueblo races the last in a series of four, the second the greatest, and a decline thence to the last: Colhuas, Toltecs, Aztecs, Pueblos. In summing up, why are we reduced to the necessity of adopting any hypothesis of an Eastern origin? Is it unreasonable to believe that self-improvement began among savages in America, as it did three thousand years ago among savages in Egypt and Greece? Does sound philosophy forbid the theory of a spontaneous civilization in America? We are, perhaps, too much in the habit of thinking that everything really good originated with our branch of the human race. To my mind, the evidences are many-though a profound American archaeologist might smile at the supposition that this civilization was sui generis, native and not derived. We now know that in China a civilization developed spontaneously, totally unlike and receiving no aid from that of Europe. Two starting points proved, what is there to forbid the idea of a third? This is as distinct from the European as is the Chinese; it shows no signs of derivation, and facts indicate clearly that the native mind of America is naturally equal to either of the others. Within the memory of man a Cherokee has invented a complete alphabet, one serving the purpose in his language better than ours does in the English. (Better because each letter represents invariably one and the same sound.) This fact is worth a volume of conjecture. It shows that the human mind was slowly working toward something better in America, the same as in Europe, the only difference being that, from reasons of race or climate, it there got an earlier start. And as to the Northern barbarians who destroyed this civilization, why are we driven to inventing a plausible theory as to how they crossed from Asia? The account of a literal Garden ï~~602 CONCLUDING THEORY. of Eden, and one only pair from whom all the two thousand varieties of our race descended, is given up by many of the most learned divines of the age. Nor is the hypothesis of a confusion of tongues, in the popular sense, borne out by a critical reading of Genesis ix.; and the structure of language shows it to be totally unnecessary to account for the present variety of tongues. Every one of them would have existed just the same, resulting from a natural principle of divergence, if Babel had never been. On the whole, then, I incline to flank all the difficulties of the main question thus: America, as shown by geology, is the oldest of the continents, and, it is quite reasonable, therefore, to suppose, was first inhabited. She had an original population of her own, independent of Adam and Eve, Noah, or any other man. This race had a native genius peculiarly its own, totally unlike that which developed in Asia the Chinese civilization, or that in Europe which created that of the Greek and Roman and the later nations. Like them, thousands of years passed in barbarism before even a start was apparent. But civilization did begin in America, and was reviving from its first overthrow when the whites came. In seeking to engraft on it an alien civilization they destroyed it. Mexico had advanced through the savage and barbarous to the half-civilized state; the New England tribes had taken the first steps toward improvement, and the New York Indians had already a political organization, code of laws, national confederacy, and system of representative council and government. Had the whites discovered America a thousand years later, they might have found on the Atlantic coast a completed native civilization, as perfect as that of China to-day, or more so. The innate power of the Indian mind, among the superior tribes, is evident. The inferior ones would have perished as did inferior aboriginal races before Asiatic and European civilization. As I disclaimed in the beginning a critical acquaintance with American archaeology, this may go as merely my theory about the Pueblos. If the reader don't like it, he is quite at liberty to construct one of his own. ï~~CHAPTER XXVIII. ARIZONA. A big country-A strange parallelogram--A region of mountain, eaRfon and plateau-Antiquities-Wild Indians-Maricopas and other village IndiansWe leave Moqui-Nature of the country-Camp of the "Outlaw Navajoes"Romantic narrations-Navajo beauty-Their theology-Fish, turkeys, and human beings-Who are they?-Their treatment of women. SISTANCES are deceitful in the far West; and, as the Eastern reader understands them, it may almost be said that figures will lie. For when I say that I journeyed eight hundred miles in nine weeks, through New-Mexico and Arizona, the reader will hastily conclude that I must hlave seen most of the country worth seeing. In reality I saw but a very small part of it; for the two Territories together are five or six times the size of Ohio. I merely saw a specimen of each division, its productions and inhabitants. But before I go north ward, a brief sketch of Arizona entire, is appropriate. This Territory and the western half of New Mexico form a singular parallelogram, with an area about five times that of Indiana. Size is the only point of comparison with our State which would be intelligible to the Eastern reader: all the processes of nature, as well as the productions and inhabitants, seem to be on a totally different plan. This parallelogram is bounded on the east by the Rio Grande (" Great River"), on the west by the Colorado (" Red-earth River "), on the south by the Gila (ifee-lay), and on the north by the Colorado and San Juan ("St. John "). The whole square lies in a succession of plateaus from two to eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. Nearly down the center--some fifty miles east of the Arizona boundary-runs the Sierra Madre 603 ï~~T ifi Y} 4 V 5 r,, yam" y.. '" t - r 1 5 2 " U g a'" 3 v, 1 1.. r= r r., y Y i-l Al a k 3 lr r i w-t, { F" IqA }rid I z r y {' K Y Y{ Y i. r a i ï~~TOPOGRAPHICAL. 605 ing away from ten to a hundred miles in width. A great change appears westward of the sum&it. There the high plateaus are broken across by awful chasms; gorges with perpendicular sides go winding tortuously through the formation; all the streams run in great cafnons from two to five thousand feet in depth, with bottoms from one to four thousand feet above the level of the sea. Here and there the barren plateau appears to drop suddenly to a level plain, and rocky ranges of hills enclose an oval valley, walled in on every side by inaccessible mountains, and with passes out only up or down the beds of ancient streams, long since dry. It is the oldest country on earth, except perhaps the "back bone" of Central Africa; natural convulsions have slowly heaved it far above the region of abundant rains or snows, and the great Colorado, with its affluents, has for ages been slowly cutting deeper and deeper channels in the sandstone formation, tapping the sources of the springs at lower points, and steadily sucking the life out of its own basin. On the rocky hills are still some fine forests; on the slopes the Indians find abundant bunch grass and wild sage for their hardy animals; and at rare intervals, a hidden valley is found, low enough to have a growing season without frost, with water enough for irrigation, its soil the volcanic detritus of neighboring hills, and of wonderful fertility. Perhaps one-twentieth of the entire area is fit for agriculture. Along the northern portion of this parallelogram are found strange races of friendly and partially civilized Indians: the Pueblos, Zufnis, Moquis, Teguas, Oraybes, and Navajoes. All but the last are included in a general class as Pueblos, meaning " villagers." They plow the soil with forked logs; raise corn and beans; manufacture blankets and pottery, and are generally simple, civil and unwarlike. Far otherwise is it south of the Little Colorado and Puerco. There the San Francisco, White and Mogollon Mountains and their spurs break up the country into a thousand hidden valleys, in which the murderous Apaches hide, and graze their stock; the few trails go twisting through narrow cafions, in which at most unexpected places the savages let fly upon the unwary traveler a shower of ï~~606 COST OF AN APACHE. poisoned arrows; and dreary intervals of fifty or a hundred miles separate the few water holes, which are hidden in rocky coverts or scrubby thickets, where the Indians keep almost continual ambush. Hence in Arizona the white population is found exclusively along the Gila, and in the southwestern corner, unless we include a few Mormon ranches northwest of the Colorado. The whites consist of four thousand Americans and seven thousand Mexicans; and this small number average a loss of ten per month from the Apaches-about half the mortality of an army in active service. The entire Apache race, consisting of the Pinal, Mohave, Coyotero, Mescalero, and White Mountain tribes, does not exceed seven thousand persons--perhaps two thousand warriors. These warriors cost the Government annually a thousand dollars apiece: two million dollars a year for the army in Arizona, to protect four thousand Americans against two thousand Apaches. It is a costly experiment, and almost a total failure. There are a few tribes with whom the present policy is not a success. Hence I turned northward when I reached the border of the Apache country. It is my firm belief, from considerable study of the subject, that the American Indians are capable of civilization, if a proper course were adopted. But there are exceptional branches among them, just as there are among white, black or brown races: certain tribes are doomed to extinction, and chief among these are the Apaches. The build of their heads forbids all idea of quiet industry; the conception of civilization could not be fired into their skulls. Every Apache is a born robber and murderer. Extermination, whether in war or under the form of reservations and legal justice, is their certain fate; and the quickest way is, perhaps, the most merciful. It is directly the opposite with the Navajoes. They acquired considerable civilization before they met the whites; they will work readily at any productive employment, and learn the use of tools very readily. There is as great a difference,between a Navajo and an Apache skull as between that of a Saxon and a Malay. I took occasion to examine several of both tribes when our party got down to the old hunting-ground, where ï~~ND \ DE~d:D O*N O4 mid had hw bu LoaU.:d wh rte.o pr? ku N he Apwho nd majn T he ar b u a3 an eon t ow mu hYo op w t. n e pulsuw te capway o OpM,} s r u- oo 1~ ec, w 2ue,ra n b e.H. -h \\,a d he 7- - ad 00 vL5. SI ï~~,.d, 1, = s ~,... r 4, { - r s,, ~,. { ', r hP' v - s:; t ï~~FARMlING AND MINING PROSPECTS. 609 stances, and if the Indians would only let us alone, we would do well enough. We are living in hopes that a railroad will soon be built through the Territory, which will clear out the Indians, while nothing else will. The country has plenty of rich mines, but no mines in the world can be worked and pay the prices we now have to pay for everything we use, not including the losses to be sustained from Indian depredations. Now it takes two men to do one man's work: one to watch for Indians while the other works. One day last week the Indians drove off every hoof of stock from a mining camp thirty miles south of here. This is no unusual occurrence; on the other hand, it has become so common that it is forgotten in a day. A railroad will change all this; for with it comes cheap transportation and plenty of men to work the rich mines of the country. " There is no doubt but the Thirty-fifth parallel railroad is one of the best routes across the Continent. It passes through the richest portion of the country, on a route easily built, and one that will have no snow to interfere with its travel in the worst winter. It passes through a country well timbered, a fine grazing country, apd the richest mining country on the continent, which, without the railroad, is of but little value. "One-half of the Territory is an unknown land. Every year parties make trips into the Indian country, and never fail to find good farming and mining prospects, though they can never give the country a thorough exploration, as the red-skins are always after them. There is a strip of country 100 miles wide and 200 miles long here, known to abound in minerals of every kind; but the white man can not get into it to do anything until the Indians are disposed of. This is what we are all waiting for, and for this I am going to stay; and if the Indians don't last longer than I do, I expect yet to have something out of the country. "Crops have been short, almost a failure, except when they had water for irrigation. There is plenty of land here that has water for irrigation, but most of it lies in localities that cannot be used on account of Indians. 39 ï~~a. i per E e e j = c.. _... tom:.. r s x. ' r 2 yet m Y ï~~ARIZONA RIVERS. 611 The average Arizonian mind will effervesce on the Apache question. On the map, Arizona appears to have abundance of water; and, on general principles, it would seem that a Territory with water frontage of six hundred miles on as large a river as the Colorado, and crossed by two rivers each five hundred miles long, would have fine facilities for commerce. Quite the reverse is the fact. "For thirty miles from the mouth of the Colorado River the spring tides rise twenty-five or thirty feet, and are preceded by breakers six feet high, rushing up stream with terrific velocity, and endangering small crafts and even large vessels if insecurely moored. The channel is very crooked, with an average depth of eight feet in low water, with occasional bars that have only three feet. The ordinary tides rise ten fret, and the river is ten feet deeper during the July freshet (supplied by the melting snows) than in November. The current has an average speed of two and a half miles per hour in low water and five miles in high water. There are snags and shifting banks of sand, but few rocks for three hundred miles from the mouth of the river; then we come to one hundred miles of the best part of the river for navigation, where bars of gravel are frequent; then there are fifty miles of stony bed, with frequent rapids; and beyond the rapids we come to the celebrated Colorado Cantion, the rocky walls of which rise steeply in some places almost perpendicularly to a hight of four or five thousand feet. The river-bed in the canon has a rapid descent and many large rocks, so that navigation is very difficult and dangerous. The explorers of the canon have found places where, by looking up through narrow tributary gullies, they could see the stars at midday, so little of the sky was in sight, and so dark was the spot where they stood. The elevation of the river four hundred and fifty miles from its mouth is eight hundred feet above the sea, showing an average descent of two feet per mile." Along the Gila are various tribes of peculiar and interesting half-civilized Indians: the Pimas, Maricopas and Papagoes. They cultivate the ground with some skill, and in that fertile soil and warm climate produce immense crops of wheat, pump ï~~a.,r,. ~ ~,.:,,,.'..,.,:. s,,_ _,, n:r ' 'r ar. y>,:, s, <,W, ~y,...,.;:' a..;:G l r; r; a,d,v iii G N ri i,.. '.,. 9 _,,.,, - 'i,n( i, ï~~1 JOls." 613 "The Coyotero Apaches have few horses, and are very poor. The Pinalenio Apaches are the most formidable tribe, having more courage, cunning, and animosity against the white men than any of the others. The Tontos are hostile and murderous, but cowardly. The Wallapais, the Yavapais, and the Coyoteros are divided up into little cliques, some of which want peace and others do not. Among the Arizona Indians there is no strong tribal organization, and no men of much influence. The hostile parties are often made up, not from any one clique or small settlement, nor do the members join at the command of a chief; but some ambitious leader sends word that he will start on a raid, and invites the braves of the vicinity to join. It is, therefore, utterly impossible to govern the tribes through the chiefs in the manner practised east of the Rocky Mountains." So much for Arizona at large, I resume the course of my own journey. The last day of my stay at Moqui, Navajocs were arriving and departing in considerable numbers, some to trade at other Moqui towns, and others to go on the trip westward to the Colorado. Among them were the father and sister of my new guide, the former en route to Utah, and the latter merely on a friendly visit to the Moquis. My guide arrived on the 23d, and presented his nelsoass, which read as follows: "To all whom it may concern: "The bearer, a Navajo Indian, with his father, have permission to accompany J. H. Beadle, Esq., to the Mormon settlements. They are good Indians, and I trust any one who meets them will treat them kindly. THOMAS V. KEAMS, Clerk Navajo Agency, June 21, 1872. Acting Agent." For convenience' sake I christened him John, the universal title for Indians and Chinese. And here I must record a marvel of aboriginal mail service. My spare time at Moqui I had employed in writing, and when my first Navajo started back to Defiance I delivered him an immense envelope full of MSS., directed to the Commercial, ï~~614 MAIL SERVICE. with instructions to deliver it to Mr. Keams at Defiance. From there an Indian is sent once a fortnight or oftener down to Wingate, and thence a military express runs once a week to Santa Fe. My letters went through all those changes, and the material I delivered to John on the 24th of June was published in the Cincinnati Commercial on the 13th of July! Mem. to Senator Ramsey: Send for some Navajoes to take charge of the mails in Utah, and on the Union Pacific, where I once lost seventeen letters in three months. A heated discussion ensued in regard to the route. All were agreed that the usual route, straight westward vid the Oraybe village, would not do now, as the unusual drought had dried up most of the pools; and the others were in favor of a more southern route, requiring two more days, but with abundance of water. John, however, decided on a more northern route; and the result was he and I started alone, with the understanding that we were to meet with others on the way. The flowered calico I had taken to pay expenses at Moqui was exhausted, as the people had been extremely kind in furnishing me milk, and carrying in blankets full of grass for my horses; so I had nothing for a parting present to Chino but my sole remaining linen shirt-no use to me in this country. He gave me in return a most affectionate parting hug, and a large roll of mescal. This plant (more properly maguey) is only occasionally used by the Moquis, but forms half the living of the Apaches, as it comes to better perfection down in their country. In its green state it is the size of a large cabbage, but a little more compact, the leaves resembling those of a young mullen plant. Stripping these off, the fruit inside appears in shape much like a pine-apple, but not quite so large. It is crushed into cakes and dried, when it appears of a rich brown color, looking and tasting very much like a mass of dried peachesor, rather, like those sugar-soaked canes we sometimes find in Orleans sugar. I like the taste of it very much, but on the road it seemed to produce too much thirst for comfort, unless we are nearing water. It is slightly cathartic in tendency, and is a very good change with dry bread and bacon. ï~~" DRY CAMP." 615 All set and off on the morning of the 25th, after the warm embrace-Moqui good-bye-from Chino and the interpreters. From the north end of the mesa, we traveled about northnorthwest nearly all day, through a country which did not seem so complete a desert as most of that east of Moqui. After leaving the immediate rim inclosing the villages, our route was over a surface either level or only gently rolling; good bunchgrass abounded everywhere, and on the ridges were considerable thickets of scrubby pine. Occasionally we would descend to a lower flood plain, with every evidence of great natural fertility, but from want of water perfectly barren, or only scantily furnished with bunch-grass. A heavy rain--a rare thing-had fallen the previous night, and we found water enough for our noon rest in the hollowed surface of a rock. A considerable ridge continued a few miles west of us all day. By expressive pantomime---this guide, I was sorry to observe, knew no Spanish--John informed me that west of that ridge is a desert with neither grass nor water, which my horse could not cross from sunrise to sunrise; but that we would go around the north end of it, and along a good road. About 4 P. M. we came upon horse trabks leading westward, at which John was much excited, declaring them to be of Navajo stock. Here we turn toward the point of the ridge, and at the foot find a pool with water enough for our horses, and to fill our jugs, as we must make a "dry camp" to-night. Navajo and Moqui jugs are made of close wicker work, coated within and without with some gummy substance; they are very light and convenient for transportation, but give the water in the lapse of a few hours an unpleasant taste like tar water. An hour consumed in reaching the summit, though it does not appear more than a thousand feet high, we rode a few rods westward to a singular peak of conglomerate rock, and came out ofthe pines upon a splendid prospect. The cliff we are on slopes gently for some hundred yards, then breaks square off in a rugged precipice of a thousand feet to a plain below, which stretches north and west as far as I can see. But to the north ï~~r ti - r., a r fi = e J', _.,q.. -.. _,...,. _ n -. m s< > x t >,{ A, j. s l a",x a; ï~~FINE STOCK. 617 hundred feet high, and on the north by gently sloping hills, rich in grass. This band are the wealthiest Navajoes I have yet seen, the five families having over a thousand sheep and goats, and at least two hundred horses. Men and women have each a good riding horse, rather elegantly caparisoned, with stylish bridles and spurs, and in their camp equipage I notice many handsome vessels and copper kettles. That they are of the aristocracy is further proved by the fact that they did not loaf about our camp or ask for anything; but received our advances with civil dignity, and sold us half a gallon of milk for fifty cents, like so many Christians. All their stock is in fine condition, and the place evidently affords rich pasturage. They were just bringing the stock to water, presenting a fine sight; the horses galloping down the cliff, the Indian boys after them on slopes where an American would not venture his horse in a walk, and the sheep and goats filling the vale with their bleatings, presented a scene to have delighted a pastoral poet. Their band contained several American horses of superior breed, of which two excited my particular admiration: one was a powerful, heavy-limbed, dark bay mare; the other a bright chestnut stallion, rather light-limbed and swift, who galloped around our horses a few times in provokingly showy style, his sleek coat glistening as if just from under the hands of a skilfill groom. The pair would have run up toward a thousand dollars in Ohio. To my inquiry as to where he got them, the chief said he did not know--an evasion, of course; but in a moment stated that he bought them of the Mormoneys-a lie, I strongly suspected. No matter, however, if he Jid steal them; the owner will never get near enough to prove property, in this country. We concluded to remain here the rest of the day, and recruit our animals before entering upon the worst stage of our journey. Besides the milk I purchased, John got a piece of smoked antelope meat, and we had quite a breakfast feast, after which the Chief and family came and took a cup of coffee, the only thing I could spare. He was fluent in signs and Navajo, continually repeating till he was certain I understood. He exhibited a ï~~618 THE INTERPRETER. German-silver dipper, and stated that many, many years ago, when he was too young to wear clothes, three white men came from the north and hunted here for gold. They went south, and one was shot by the Apaches; the others brought him back antdl hlie died here. The others then traded everything they had for horses and provisions, and his father gave a horse and blanket full of corn for that dipper, which they had had ever since. The white men returned toward the Colorado. But long before he got to the end of this story we "stuck" completely, when he went toward the cliff and shouted for "Espaol!" A bright lad of some twenty years came down and addressed me in first-rate Spanish, acting thereafter as interpreter. He informed me he was captured in the beginning of the last war, and lived with the Mexicans six years, whence his Indian name, "The Spaniard;" that he had driven teams to Denver and been on the railroad from there to Cheyenne, and consequently knew all about the Americans and their ways. The chief then struck in. It was three days to the Mormoney hogande, the first one where we would cross the river; his horse could go it in two, but mine could not, for his feet would not stand the stones; his horse was better than my horse, and he could travel better than I; there was sand all the way to Mormoney, no more springs and only water holes in the rock. In answer to my questions about the country, he drew a rude map in the sand with a sharp stick, and pointed out that it was nearly a day north for my horse to the big water, and two days south to the little water; that four days west they came together so (joining his fingers in the form of a V), and that three days northwest of that place was a great Mormoney casa, and that they were people like me, with plenty to eat and many horses. One fact he gave rather puzzled me, though he insisted on its truth. He said that straight north was a Mormon Doctor, who had come and fixed his leg here (showing a frightful scar), where the chestnut stallion kicked him; that he could walk to this doctor's in a day, but it would take my horse one day and till the sun was so high-about 10 o'clock-as there was a place ï~~THIEVING NAVAJOES. 619 in the rock he could climb down, and my horse would have to go far around. Like the Moquis he inquired particularly if the Mormoneys were Americans, and said that some of the Indians had made war on them after they were at peace with the latter. I endeavored to explain, as I had to Chino and Misiamtcwah, the difference between native and naturalized citizens; but did not succeed; making them comprehend, however, that the Mormons were Americans. As we gather up in the evening ready to start early, I find my Navajo whip and knife sheath-among the curiosities I had purchased---missing. I had not supposed that John knew any English, but when I pointed out the loss, his face grew dark and he muttered, "Damn Navajo, slteal mooch," and darted for a boy some fifty yards away, whom he dragged into camp. A violent discussion ensued till the boy, with John's grip tightening on him, pointed to the cliff and muttered " Espanol." "Damn Espanilol, shteal," said the guide, and ran up the cliff, where I heard another violent altercation, Navajo words mingling amusingly with English and Spanish oaths, and in a few minutes John returned waving the whip and sheath in triumph. The Navajoes will steal, but if you hire one he will guard your property against all the rest, in which respect they are better than any other Indians. As I made ready for early sleep, Espanol and other lads came down on a visit, and sat about the fire smoking our tobacco and talking as socially with John as if nothing unusual had happened. From-what I learned of them on arrival in Utah, I judge these were of the "Outlaw Navajoes," a portion of the tribe numbering a thousand or more who do not agree to the treaty, or recognize the Agency party. They are quite friendly with the whites, but have made one raid into Utah since the peace; and at John D. Lee's I learned that the chestnut stallion which so excited my admiration had been stolen from him. Two hundred years of war with the Spaniards was surely enough to confuse a people's moral perceptions, and cause them to consider "levying tribute" on the whites as a perfectly legitimate operation. ï~~620 THE NOBLE RED MAN." This was the last settlement of theirs I visited, though they range down to the junction of the two Coloradoes; and in the evening they made our camp merry with their lively conversation. Those who see the Indian only on the border know nothing of his real character; for it is only the lowest and meanest of the race that hang about the white settlements. And their consciousness of oddity in appearance makes them feel and look meaner. One needs to go far into the interior, where they are "the style" and he the oddity; then their feeling of superiority gives them an air that is very near lordly. What it might be among the lower and more squalid tribes, I know not; but a summer's ramble with the Navajoes would be a delightful novelty to me. They have excited the curiosity of all intelligent men who have seen them: Governor Arny, of Santa Fe, thought they might be the result of a Japanese colony mingled with the aborigines; Major Powell considers them pure Indians, a branch of the great Shoshones race; Sequoyah, or George Guest, who invented the Cherokee alphabet, thought they were a branch of that tribe, and lastly a New Englander who visited them with Kit Carson in 1843, writes thus: "The Navajoes are a remnant of the ancient Mexicans who have never submitted to their Spanish conquerors..... They reject all offers of amity with the present Mexicans, with whom they have fought for a hundred years, though very friendly with Americans. The men are tall, lithe and active; the women very handsomely formed, with bright, mobile and most pleasing features." The last part I can emphatically indorse. For the first time in my travels I found the "noble red man" and the "beautiful Indian maiden," whom I had supposed to be creatures of romance, among the Navajoes. In the slang of the mountains, the Navajoes are "my pet Injuns," the only branch of the race I could ever feel any friendship for. When we reached the Colorado, the old man of our party spent many hours in teaching me their history and theology. There are twenty-one bands in the tribe, each with some peculiarities of belief, but the general ideas are these: ï~~,,,,o ï~~622 ORIGIN OF THE NAVAJOES. refilled the animal creation. The turkey was made from a fish in a lake covered with foam, which lodged on his tail as he swam ashore; hence, the white feathers in the turkey's tail. White men after death go up into the air; Navajoes go down through Bat Canon and into the earth. Thence they come out a long way west, on the edge of a great water. The shore is guarded by terrible evil spirits in the form of men, but with great ears reaching from above their heads to the ground. When asleep, they lie on one ear and cover with the other. Whether they ever "walk off on their ear," the old man did not inform me. Only half of them sleep at a time, and the Navajo has to fight his way through them. If he is brave, and has treated his women well, he gets through;. then the goddess takes him across the water. There, like the white man, they stop; from that country no one has ever come back, to say what is there, or tell us about the climate. But the resider must not too hastily infer, as do some, that all this is a tradition of the Noachian deluge. No savage people could possibly have traditions reaching back half so far. Their "long, long years ago" refer to much shorter periods than is generally supposed. The mind of a savage is like that of a child, easily fatigued; he will not think long or earnestly on any abstract question, for thinking tires him. All wild people have traditions of famines, floods, and earthquakes, because all have had famines, floods, and earthquakes; not one flood, but many. Since my return to the States I have been astonished to learn that American archaeologists have generally decided that the Navajoes were originally a Pueblo race; and that they became partially wild from having fled to the mountains on account of the Spanish invasion. Professor J. H. Baldwin, author of "Ancient America," gives them a high rank among the old civilized races; and other writers assign them to the Toltec branch of the Mexicans. They add that the Natches, Nez Perces, and Navajoes, instead of being original wild tribes improved by contact and mixture with Pueblos, are original Pueblos degenerated by mingling with the wild tribes. This ï~~THE PRICE OF A WIFE. 623 theory explains more of the facts I observed among them than any other. Like barbarian races generally, they sell their daughters in marriage. Common to average can be had for property to the value of $25; prime to fine for $50; while young and extra go at $60, the standard price of the Navajo speckled pony. While in Canon de Chelley, I was offered a beautiful Miss of fifteen for $60, or the horse I was riding. Perhaps I should have closed with the offer-it is so much cheaper than one can get a wife in the States. Two months vigorous courting will cost more than that-particularly in the ice cream-season. ï~~CHAPTER XXIX. DOWN TO THE COLORADO. Diversion from intended route-Summary of the Thirty-fifth parallel routeLeave the outlaw Navajoes-Addition to our party-Our interpreter-Lost on the desert-An aboriginal joke-A wonderful grazing ground-Battle-field of Apaches and Navajoes-Comparison of skulls-Reach the Colorado CationSublime sight-A fearful descent-Nine hours going down hill-No passageFind one of Major Powell's boats-Dexterity of the Indians-I risk the passage -" Major Doyle "-Indian romance-Castilian and Navajo tongues-Good-bye to my dark friends-Safely over at last. Y original intention was necessarily abandoned on leaving Moqui; for I could not follow the line of the Thirtyfifth parallel road any farther west without entering the Apache country. After passing the summit of the Sierra Madre, the route turns a little to the southward, and at Defiance, Arizona, I was fifteen miles north of it. From Defiance to the Moqui towns, leaving out the departure to Canon de Chelley, my course was nearly straight west, and that of the road a little southward; and at Moqui I was forty miles north of the line. The road continues to bear a little south of west, and crosses the Colorado at a place called the "Needles," not far from Mohave. The slope westward is great, with a corresponding increase of heat, and the Navajoes-a race of mountaineers, native to a singularly cool and bracing climatecan not endure the heat of southwestern Arizona nearly so well as a white man. At this departure a brief summary is in order. The general result of my observations was not a disappointment, as my expectations of this western country were not so high as those of some who have never visited it. The first section of the Thirtyfifth parallel road, through Missouri, traverses a good country, 624 ï~~DECREASE OF POPULATION IN SANTA FE. 625 with the exception of that upon and near the Ozark Ridge. The second section, in the Indian Territory, crosses that fertile strip, which is two to three hundred miles wide, west of the Missouri line, and stretches from the Gulf of Mexico two hundred miles into British America. This road runs about the same distance through this fertile strip as the roads do in Kansas and Nebraska; and in much the same manner the good tillable land yields gradually to the "plains" proper. This last section, from two to four hundred miles wide, may possibly have one acre in fifty fit fi)r cultivation, by the aid of irrigation. A large portion of it is good for grazing; but grazing lands rarely build up large cities, and for speculative purposes all that portion of the road between longitude 1000 and the Rio Grande may be dismissed from our summary. West of the "plains" comes the first mountainous region, which is practically of no value in our calculation; and the next section is the Rio Grande Valley. Deducting the Jornada del fuerto (" Journey of the Dead ") and upper lands, fit only for pasture, this oasis may be set down as three hundred miles long and ten miles wide, of great natural fertility. The railroad line bisects this tract, leaving nearly three-fourths of it south of the point of crossing, and at that point, as regards towns or town sites, was the only chance for speculation I saw on the whole route. The road, running nearly straight west, reaches the river at Bernalillo; it then runs down the east bank through Albuquerque to Isletta, and there crosses the river and proceeds westward. One of these three places is to be a very important city; all of them will be considerable towns. The chances as to location appear to be in favor of Isletta, as the natural entrepdt of all the valley south of it, but Albuquerque has the start. Santa Fe I consider entirely out of the question, though its inhabitants were properly indignant at my estimate of them and their town. It appears to me entirely out of the track of any railroad, and destined to slow death. All the signs indicate that its population is much less than it was ten years ago, and must continue to decrease for the next twenty. 40 ï~~626 6 AMERICAN DESERT." Leaving the Rio Grande, we enter the "American Desert," which continues with but rare oases all the way to and beyond the Colorado. This route is like all other routes across the Continent in one respect: it must traverse a desert region from four to eight hundred miles wide. But this line has two advantages: the desert country is more narrow, and the natural route better. The whole region between the Rio Grande and Colorado, from latitude 340 to 380, is a grand succession of plateaus. Here and there in western New Mexico is a small valley where half a dozen sections, by the aid of irrigation, sustain a miserable Mexican hamlet of a few hundred people; and in Arizona there are larger tracts on the San Juan and Colorado Chiquito. The mountains about Fort Wingate abound in timber. On the Navajo Reserve I crossed one splendid forest fifteen miles square, and southwest of Moqui, on the slopes of the San Francisco and White Mountains, the road runs through a heavilytimbered country for over fifty miles. All accounts agree in representing that the timber there is very fine and the country well watered. In their best days, before their last war, when the Navajoes were the wealthiest tribe in the mountains, they pastured nearly a million sheep and goats between Dead Man's Canlon and the junction of the two Coloradoes-about all the country could sustain. Many large tracts of grass are found without water, several of which we crossed. But making all possible allowance for timber, grass and water, at least half, if not two-thirds of this vast section-three hundred by four hundred miles in extent, four times the size of Indiana-is utterly worthless and irredeemable, uninhabited and forever uninhabitable. Certainly it can not average one acre in a hundred fit for cultivation. It has some advantages over most of these deserts; where I traveled there is very little alkali, and the climate is not disagreeably warm. During the entire time I was with the Navajoes, my hardships were less than they have often been in the same amount of time on railroads. The absence of alkali added greatly to my comfort, and the nights were always cool, the days often relieved by a pleasant wind. We were off from the camp of the Outlaw Navajoes, after ï~~A DOUBTFUL TRAIL. 627 the usual handshakings, on the morning of June 27th; and went in a succession of zigzags all forenoon, to nearly every point of the compass. In two miles we found the broad beautiful valley narrowed to a mere cation; and a little farther the cation to a deep, dark gorge, with walls quite perpendicular shutting out the sunshine, and the bottom thickly grown with Scrubby pine. The stream had entirely disappeared a mile below the spring, but the condition of this timber showed that there was an under stratum of moist sand. Occasionally I saw a cavity which looked as if it might have been a spring a thousand years ago, in which one or two sickly cottonwoods sustained a sort of dying life-enough to show that there was moist earth two or three feet below. The rock on our right appeared at one place to be broken square across, displaying a dark cross-cut, into which John whirled his horse. I followed to find a terribly dangerous-looking trail, up which we climbed some six or seven hundred feet to a tolerably level plain. For two miles due north we traversed a patch of rich grass; then the guide, a hundred yards ahead of me, suddenly disappeared, as if he had sunk into the earth. I hurried up to find him going down another narrow gorge, which opened as a rift in the earth not more than twenty-five feet wide, with an incline of forty-five degrees ti the sandy bottom five hundred feet below. Through this a mile brought us out on another plain, across which we traveled some four or five miles; then brought up at a ledge which rose something like a thousand feet almost perpendicularly above us. Along the foot of this, westward, a few miles brought us to a point where the face of the cliff fell back to a slope of forty-five or less; we sidled up this, and reached the summit with horses pretty well exhausted. Entering on another gently rolling sandy plain, with only occasional patches of good grass, about 10 A. 3. we found a hole on the surface of the rock containing enough rain water for our horses. While resting a moment, a Navajo lad of some fifteen years came galloping up. He had reached Moqui the evening after we left it, and run his horse nearly to death(to overtake us, which our halt at the springalpe enabled, bir to do., He had some fine ï~~628 UNPLEASANT POSITION. blankets, woven by his mother, and expected to trade them for a horse at the Jlormoney casa. We made a "dry camp" for dinner, took an hour's grazing, and were just off when up galloped Espanol, also with a few blankets. He had concluded, an hour after we left, to go to the settlement; because, as I suspect, he had noted the size of my provision sacks. We were now four in number, and traveled the rest of the day on a sandstone ridge tending west-northwest. Far as I could see the country appeared to slope from this ridge northward and southward toward the two Coloradoes. About 5 P.f M., we reached a regular water hole, to find it dry-to the dismay of the Navajoes. After a brief consultation, Espanlol informed me they would hurry on down the slope southwest, and find water on the other side of the next valley; and that I might follow their tracks, poco-poco-poco (moderate walk). They galloped off, and were soon out of sight; I followed, and in an hour had lost their trail on a sandstone flat. Still I maintained the course toward a bright, green valley, which now appeared in the distance. I reached and crossed it, to find that the green was not from grass, as I had supposed, but from thrifty greasewood. There was not a spear of grass nor a drop of water, though the shade of green on the brush showed there was moisture below; and nA a horse-track or a Navajo in sight. I began to feel very uncomfortable and nervous. The prospect of being lost in that place was decidedly not pleasant. I fired my gun two or three times, and shouted with all my might, but no response. Determined finally to ascend the ridge west and overlook as much country as possible, I struck up a sloping hollow, and in half a mile came upon the three Navajoes sitting round a deep pool of water and grinning in concert. The aborigines had witnessed all my embarrassment, and attempts to trace them below; but, true to the "noble instincts" of the race, preferred to sit and smile at me working out my own salvation. The horses could not get down in the water hole, so they had taken a blanket full of sand and made a dam across a little depression in the rock; this we rapidly filled with our wicker ï~~SCARCITY OF WATER. 629 jugs, and so enabled our horses to drink. At 6 o'clock we were off again, and at 8 made a "dry camp." I soon went to sleep, but woke in an hour or so to find that the Navajoes had built an immense bonfire on a hill near by. This was soon answered by another, apparently twenty miles to the south. Our party then took torches of pine limbs and waving them as they went, built three more fires in a line a little north of west. The other party responded with three fires in a line apparently due west, or a little southward. Espanflol translated this to mean that a considerable party of Navajoes were half a day's ride south of us; that they would go straight on west, crossing the Little Colorado, and we would not meet them. We left camp on the 28th by moonlight, as the ride to water was to be a long one, and accomplished some twenty miles by 10 o'clock A. 3. We had traveled two hours down a sandstone slope, to find at the bottom a deep, moist hole, but no water. A little damp mud showed that it had been dry only a few days. The Navajocs consulted, and Espanfol explained that they would go due north some fifteen miles, and at the head of a hollow running into the Great Colorado would find a hole which usually held water longer than this, and therefore had enough now. As his horse was fresh, he would take two jugs and gallop on ahead, the others should follow in a trot, and I come on pocopoco, till he brought back water to me. I was soon alone again, and had a weary, hot ride, of at least twelve miles, when I descended into a grassy valley, several miles wide, but saw no trace of the Navajoes. I rested, chewed mescal and let my horse graze an hour; then rode nearly across, when I saw Espanol coming down the opposite side. He had enough water for me, and a hatful for my horse. They had reached the spring, rested an hour, and then concluded I had lost the trail again. A mile or two brought us to the water, which I found to be in a round hole, some ten feet deep in the sandstone, warm and stagnant; but it made good coffee, and the stock drank it with avidity. Espanfol had started on the trip with about five pounds of dried antelope and two or three quarts of parched corn; everything was in common, and we had quite a feast here. We ï~~630 60 EL.MONTE! GRANDE AGUA!" started due w.st to come on our former trail, and in a few miles left the sandstone ridge and went down into a beautiful vale eight or ten miles wide. The bunch-grass and white seed-grass were the finest I had seen, and there were many clumps of piflon pine, but no water or arable land. They informed me that this valley extended entirely across between the two rivers, and was this wide, with good grass, all the way; that at the south end it sloped down to the Little Colorado in broad green meadows, where was the only water in the whole tract. If their account be true, here is a section of one or two hundred square miles of rich pasturage, with no water except at one end. Far southward a mountain peak, its summit dazzling white with snow, rose in the form of a sharp cone; and Espanol informed me that from the foot of that peak, there was much timber and game to the Little Colorado; also, that when the first snow fell on the lower hills, the antelope and other animals came across into this grassy country by thousands; then the Navajoes went on their fall hunt, and used to meet the Apaches here long ago and had many fights. But now the Apaches never came this far north. We soon came to where skulls were quite numerous, sometimes with other fragments of human bones. My companions called attention to the difference between those of the two tribes; and when we came upon five skulls in one place, two Navajo and three Apaches, Espafnol said with a grin " Todos muertos, pero mas Apaches" (All killed, but the most Apaches). In the dry climate, on that sandy soil, the skulls may have lain there fifty years. We passed this and another sandstone ridge, on the west side of which we found a little depression with some five acres of good grass, and made a "dry camp)." The dark cavity and blue mist over the Colorado had been visible all the afternoon, and John decided that we should descend the first cliff and go to the nearest spring before breakfast. We were off next morning by daylight, in a sweeping trot, and in an hour I heard from Espafilol, in the lead, the glad cry of "El monte! Grande agua!" and hurried up to the cliff; but at the first ï~~I~ A sA ï~~,.,. -, t, _,.. w -...,-.. s,. - _ i 'c -. a^n '.'.. ' u n 'P. r w;,. '.x, '.,... a" u u o'a sy,.,_,., A as v. '....,...,. 4_4.._,-. f..a b Â~ 0 r; t _ t,. y ~,..: ï~~THE SECOND DESCENT. 633 heads, and looking up saw three more Navajoes just entering on the descent. The sight made me shudder; they looked like some species of wild animal clinging on the face of the cliff. We reached the promised spring and found no water. The Navajoes insisted there was some in the gulch, so we hunted along it toward the mountain till we found a little moist sand and green, watery grass; there we fell to with our tin cups and butcher knives and dug several holes, which soon filled. The water was cool, but tasted like a mild infusion of Epsom salts. It made coffee, but all the sugar it could dissolve did not sweeten it perceptibly. Skirting along the foot of the cliff in a northeasterly direction, every mile or so a section of the lower cliff, a hundred feet or more in hight, seemed to leave it and bend back to join the upper one; and down this succession of "benches" we worked through convenient gulches, sinking slowly toward the level of the river. In another gulch some three miles firom this so-called spring we found a hole with moist sand, and dug again, this time finding good water. I was beginning to congratulate myself that our labors were nearly ended, when we came upon an abrupt ridge, at least two thousand feet high, putting out to the river and completely shutting off the trail in that direction. Over this we must go. The path turned southeast, and walking in front of our horses we again commenced climbing. It was the worst job we had, and defies description. The Navajoes were an hour ahead of me when I reached the summit; but there was only one trail, and that a plain one. The opposite side of this ridge broke into a dozen pointed spurs. Out one, down a slight slope and into a groove in the rock, I found the trail leading along back into the hollow; then out another ridge and back into the second hollow; then bapk again around all the windings of the two hollows, and I found myself on the sharp end of the first ridge again, but in a groove five hundred feet below the one where I had left it. Around this peak I followed to the southwest, then back and forward till I was dizzy, and more times than I could count. I came out at length upon a gentle slope, which brought me down to the plain at a point where the river was running nearly straight north. It was ï~~834 A SHORT PROSPECT. 3 o'clock P. xi., and I glanced back to the point of the upper cliff which we had left soon after sunrise; it appeared about four miles distant, and six or seven thousand feet above me. Had I not made the trip myself, I should have been qualified to make oath that no human being, much less a horse, could ever get down or up there. We were in a sort of cove, the mountain shutting us in north and south, with bold headlands running out to the river in the shape of a U. To our left the river set with great violence against the base of a rock some sixty feet high, on which was a lookout, whence we could make out a house and garden on the other side, nearly two miles distant. We shouted and fired guns at intervals all afternoon, without response; but at sundown, when the wind was too high to hear distinctly, somebody answered. John's father and two other Navajoes soon arrived, having killed a young antelope on the way. The meat at this season was very tough and hard; but if we were to stay here long it must serve as our subtitute for bread. I retired, slept, and rose again, out of humor with all Mormous, but particularly those on the opposite side. Here were six Navajoes and one white man imprisoned on a sand bar, for want of the boat, and they seemed to take no care about the situation. I climbed to the lookout before sunrise, and saw peol)le moving about the house; yelled myself hoarse, and had the mortification to see the only man in sight climb on a horse and ride off in the opposite direction. I attached two white handkerchiefs to a pole, upright on the peak, and came down disgusted. The spot on which we were encamped would soon starve our horses; we had bacon, coffee and antelope for two days, but no bread, and thanks to the prejudices of Navajoes, I had the two remaining boxes of sardines to myself. Now sardines are a decided luxury with the usual accompaniments; but when one attempts to live on them without bread, they are a very embarrassing diet. The Indians soon hunted a crevice on the other side of the peak below us, which enabled them to get down to the shore there. ï~~INGENIOUS BOATING. 635 A shout of surprise brought me to that side, and I saw the boys had discovered a boat cached against a rock and covered with brush, leaving only the bow visible. They rigged an arrangement to let me down with lariats, where they had climbed, and we all went to work on the boat. In three hours we had it out of the sand and brush, and into the river; then the Navajoes were clamorous for me to make an immediate trial of crossing. But we found no oars. The boat was eighteen feet long, with places for four rowers; it had two comp)artments, and on the stern was the name, " Emma Dean." I concluded, correctly as it proved, that it was one of Major Powell's. But all our search brought to light no oars. They were cached so effectually that even the Navajoes could not find them. The river there appeared about as wide as the Ohio, at Cincinnati; but running three or four times as much water, being very deep, swift, and full of rapids. I had no hope whatever of getting over under such circumstances, and more with a view of satisfytng the boys than anything else, explained to them the force of that current; that I must have two oars of some kind, and that the boat must be hauled up at least a mile on this side. To my surprise they fell to at once, declaring they would haul it up in time for me to cross that day. Navajoes are utterly ignorant both of rowing and swimming, as with the exception of one or two places on the San Juan, their country does not contain water enough to drown an infant. Hence, I judged they would never get the boat around the first point, which would have baffled many boatmen; as a rocky headland overhung the river at a hight of sixty feet or more, under and against the base of which the bend threw the full force of the current in dangerous whirls. But I had underrated their wonderful skill and activity. The boat had about a hundred feet of rope attached. One of the Navajoes climbed to the rocky point, dropped a lengthened lariat, and climbed down a crevice and out one point, till he could swing it clear. Then he began a slow oscillation, steadily increasing to the utmost reach of joined lariats; but the swinging end was still twenty feet distant from the farthest point out to which one ï~~636 DANGEROUS CROSSING. could reach below. John then took the rope and threw it again and again, while the man above swung the lariat; but it was nearly an hour before they succeeded in lapping them together to connect. That difficulty was then over; another lariat was passed over the rock, the rope thus hauled around the point, and a hold obtained above. John stuck to the boat and shoved the bow off shore, while the others hauled it up opposite our camp. Meanwhile, the two old men had taken pieces of drift wood, and with their butcher knives hacked out two concerns, which might serve in a rude fashion for oars. They thought it strange that a Melicano, who professed to know how to row, should hesitate to cross; but I did not like to risk it. The very aspect of the place frightened me: the lofty walls inclosing a cafion six or seven thousand feet deep; the rocky face, red and scarred as if blasted by angry lightnings; the bare sand plain, and the swift river roaring against projecting rocks, all looked very different from the placid -Wabash and Ohio, where I learned rowing. A nmile above, the upper and lower cliff appeared to run together, with an offset% of but a rod or two, and there the sheer descent from the plateau to the river was at least six thousand feet-almost perpendicular. I fixed my eye on pieces of drift wood to measure the current; it was a little more than twenty minutes from the time they came in sight above till they disappeared in rapids two miles below. How could I hope to paddle across in less than twenty minutes? It was 1 v. M., and we had the boat at our camp and two oars. I took my coffee and sardines, chewed mescal reflectively for half an hour, and then proposed to the boys that we make our blankets into horse collars and lariats to gears, and haul the boat across the point. The bend above, I had noticed, would throw it off shore, and with the aid of an eddy put us half way across. They objected decidedly: the horses would kick each other, and forty other evils to their property would result. Ignorant as they were of that element, they much preferred taking it by water. Their own lives and limbs they were ready ï~~A WOMAN WITH HOPE. 637 to risk, and at my service; but as to their horses and other property-if it was all the same to me, they preferred to be excused. They had evidently adopted the sound philosophy that life without a fair share of property is not worth caring for. Their horses, etc., said Espanlol eloquently, were their all; did" I expect them to go home poor? So to the river we betook ourselves, though to me the case looked hopeless. The bank was so steep that it could only be descended once in two or three hundred feet; and overgrown thickly nearly all the way with willows and thorny bushes, often twenty feet out into the water. The rope could not be dragged over these; it had to be passed outside of them, taking advantage of a bare point to haul in, rest and make a fresh start. The four young fellows stripped and took to the water. I, in the same condition, sat astride the bow and shoved off shore. They would drag the boat to a convenient point, then take the rope in their mouths and pass themselves around the willows, holding by their.hands with bodies in the water. A most ridiculous sight it would have been to one free from our solicitude: the naked barbarians plunging and scrambling in the river, the naked white man, almost barbarous for the occasion, sitting astride the bow shouting in wretched Spanish and mixed Navajo, and sometimes plunging into the shore-mud or swift stream, where a little swimming had to be done. We would toil until steaming with sweat, and then into the river, which felt like ice-water. Nobody ever "catches cold" in this country, or I should have expected a musical case of asthma, catarrh, etc., as a result. In the middle of our work a woman came to the opposite bank, but the wind had risen to such a blast that we could not converse, and I could barely make out the words "old man, to-morrow." By night we had made three-quarters of a mile; the wind had fallen, and the woman appeared again; after yelling back and forward until I raised blood, I made out her statement. "The old man was gone to Kanab, and she and her boy was afraid to try the boat; thoughtwe was all Injins when we hollered yesterday; old man would be back in two or three days, and if we had provisions for that time, we might wait." She ï~~638 " THE OLD GENT." insisted on knowing my name and business, and to my query about crossing with what oars I had, answered that "certainly I might, but it was risky; bad rapids three miles below, and no place to land for twenty miles after passing the bend." This translated to the boys, they were again clamorous for rme to try the passage first thing in the morning. Their repute(l stoicism did not hold out under poor food and delay any better than mine. Another breakfast of rancid bacon and clear coffee decided me; I would prefer a slight risk to living so two days longer. I got the boat into an eddy and tried to teach John and Espanlol to row. But if a man has never had an oar in his hands till the age of maturity, rowing is too much of.a science for him to learn it in one day. So I made paddles for them and the boy, and instructing them to paddle, in one motion regardless of the course of the boat, shoved off. In' three minutes we were in the current, and it really seemed to me we would go down to Fort Yuma before we reached the other side. But we did reach it, only a mile below the starting point, and nearly exhausted I ran the boat into a little creek. We made our way across the sand flat and through a dense thicket to the house. The woman met me at the gate, and our first conversation was"My God, stranger, did you risk your life to swim that river?" "Not exactly that, but next thing to it." (Doubtfully)-" Are you a white man?" "Madam, I was three weeks ago, when I last saw a lookingglass." A glance at one showed me I was not very white, though still an American. As she informed me, they had no boat but one of Major Powell's, like the one I had found and crossed in. If we had put up the white signal Saturday, "the old gent would have come down at once, but he thought it was only Injins. Had gone Sunday with his other woman to the ranche near Kanab. These were the other woman's four children here; had five of her own, making a right smart family of nine, 'thout the old gent; but none of 'em big enpugh to risk the ï~~ABORIGINAL YARNS. 639 boat; had no meat, and only ten pounds o' flour, but plenty o' milk, butter, eggs and cheese; would they do? " I rather thought they would, and requested that about five pounds of each might be served up at once. She got me up a splendid breakfast, and let the Indians have a plentiful supply, and a cooking kettle. Before noon we went back with a supply to the Indians on the other side. She gave me the oars, which enabled me to cross without danger, but to cross our horses we must wait till "Major Doyle" came home, as that was the name she called the "old gent" by. Two days passed; the "old gent" did not arrive, and our horses were hungry enough to chew sand-burrs and desert weed. I passed most of the day at the cabin, and the evening with the Indians, explaining the situation and hearing the old man's chants and aboriginal yarns. They were all of a piece: the Navajoes had been very rich, they were now very poor; they had never lived in any country but this, nor did they come from anywhere; Whilohay made them here, and said if they tried to live anywhere else they would all die; they did nearly all die when they were moved down to Bosque Redondo (Fort Sumner); they were great warriors and good Indians; the Utes were dogs, and the Apaches wolves and snakes; and the Zunis ground-hogs, and the Melicanoes never would have whipped the Navajoes if they had not got other Indians to help them. In short, his harangue sounded so much like an ordinary Mormon sermon-all self-glorification and disparagement of everybody else-that I got tired and dropped to sleep just as he was telling how great a warrior his father was, and how many horses he once took from the Nach kyh (Mexican towns). As Espafnol rendered all this into voluminous Spanish, with many cross-questionings on my part and repetitions on his, to make sure I had the correct meaning, the conversation would have had its charms to the comparative philologist. Sitting in the summer night by our camp fire on the great river, named by the Spaniard three centuries ago, its current roaring against the rocks below us, part of the romance of the sixteenth century seemed to return. ï~~640 COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY. It is scarcely possible to conceive of a greater contrast between any two languages spoken by man, than that between the Navajo and Spanish. The one the oldest of living languages, and first heir to the Latin, no one knows how much older; soft, smooth, flowing, musical and rich in expressive inflections; the result of three thousand years of Roman, Moorish and Gothic cultivation; with the wonderful and stately march of the Latin sentence, the soft lisp of the Moor and sonorous gravity of the Goth: the other, youngest born in the family of languages, with roots striking only in the shallow soil of hard and primitive dialects, probably not a thousand years old as a separate tongue, without cultivation, without letters, with no abstract expressions, and names only for the material and tangible, a harsh alliance of the nasal and guttural, the speech of barbarous mountaineers. Yet here they are found on the same soil, struggling for the mastery; the Spanish an enduring monument to the energy and bravery of the Castilians of the sixteenth century, who overran and subdued more than half of the New World. Every time a Navajo says agua instead of toh, he bears unwitting and involuntary tribute to the hardy vigor and bold intellect of that wonderful race, who carried their arms and language, and a fair share of their arts, to the most secluded portions of this country. A novel fact to me is, that an Indian will "sunburn" as much or even more than a white man, taking on very noticeable additions to his color in four or five days. John, my special guide, grew considerably darker than when we started; and those who live indoors about the Agency seem no more than half as dark as the hunters and wanderers. In fact, the more I get acquainted with Indians, the more I am convinced that many of our generally received notions about them are quite erroneous, and continue to be repeated and believed only because they are not authoritatively contradicted. For instance, it is a great mistake to suppose they can travel so long without eating. They do eat, three or four times a day, even on these deserts; but of various roots and plants which a white man would not venture to touch. They know the country, and know what ï~~INDIAN ENDURANCE. 641 roots are nourishing and what poisonous. In many places over this section between the two Coloradoes grows a species of milky weed, with tough, stringy root, in taste resembling the "sweet hickory" the boys used to pull and chew, along the Wabash. The Navajoes cook this in boiled milk, or with bacon when at home, and on journeys without supplies take it raw. It contains, of course, very little nourishment, and on such journeys they get "poor as snakes;" but it will keep soul and body together, give the stomach something to do and prevent that deadly faintness which results from complete fasting. With no food whatever, I think an able-bodied white man would outlast an Indian. They endure thirst, though, better than we do. And the reason is obvious: their food contains no salt, their bread no chemicals, they seldom have intoxicating liquors, and use little tobacco. With unsalted bread, very little bacon, and coffee night and morning, I soon found I could go half a day or a day without water with no great inconvenience. Nor do they eat large quantities at once. With three regular meals a day none of our party ate as much as myself. But after long fasting they seem to lack, from what I hear, the judgment to restrain hunger; but the result is quite as bad to them as to whites. This was one cause of the great mortality among the Navajoes when captured by General Carleton. They had been a purely pastoral people, by far the wealthiest in the mountains, and enjoyed considerable abundance. Ganado Mucho alone had a herd of forty thousand sheep and goats, all of which were bayoneted by the soldiers in one valley, and the Navajoes surrendered only when compelled by famine. In this condition they were taken to the Bosque Redondo, almost without food on the way, and there received large rations. One man informed me that he had nine Navajoes put in his charge who had traveled from Canon de Chelley to Santa Fe with only a pint of corn to each. He issued them one afternoon ten days' rations. Next morning five of the nine were dead. During the war the Utes cut down some twenty thousand peach trees in Peach Tree Canon. The Navajoes still suffer the results of the policy then pursued, as their herds are not recruited. It is a pity this policy 41 ï~~642 SAVAGE QUARANTINE. was necessary, as it has produced a hatred between the tribes which many years will not assuage. Only a short time before, a Navajo was killed in the Zuni village, in revenge, as alleged, for the murder of two Zunis. During the war some fifty Navajo captives were intrusted for safe keeping to the Zunis, who corralled them in their plaza for a general feed, and then fell upon and killed every one of them. The origin of the venereal poison is a subject much discussed by the Indians. Most of them assert that they had none of it till the Melicanoes came, but the old men admitted that eases were introduced, many years ago, from Mexico. The Coyotero, White Mountain and Mogollon Apaches have never had a case of it. If one of their women offend with a white man, her nose and ears are cut off and she is made a slave. The Moquis appeared quite ignorant of the existence of such a disease. The Tabequache Utes have a woman publicly whipped for infidelity with whites. If she be found diseased, she is forthwith lanced and her body burned. This savage quarantine has effectually preserved the tribe, and I supposed at first it was for that purpose; but our old men asserted that it is rather an act of mercy to the woman. The Mohaves are perishing rapidly from this scourge. The Navajoes claim that there is now very little of it among them, and that they treat most cases successfully. To sum up, finally, on my Navajo friends: I am decidedly of the opinion that they can be civilized, and that the present policy of the Administration has been, and will be, a perfect success as applied to them. Their career, I think, will be somewhat like that of the Cherokees, except that they will become cultivators and manufacturers in much shorter time. The great mistake, I think, in treating on Indian character is this: Writers and statesmen ascribe certain traits to Indians without any distinction, classing all in one category; while the simple fact is, there is a greater difference between different tribes than between the native Caucasian of Boston and the native Caucasian of Hindoostan. The Navajo is no more like the Pi-Ede or Pi-Ute than the average American is like the Hindoo. There are tribes evidently progressive, others stationary, still ï~~MORMON'ISM AGAIN. 643 others retrograding. There are many incapable of the slightest advance, and awaiting only a slow extinction. On the other side we talked at random, without need of an interpreter. Mrs. Doyle, as the lady called herself, was a thorough frontier woman, and informed me that "Our old gent had had eighteen wives. Two left him, one went to the States, and another to Montana, and when McKean got up such a bobbery, he divided his property among them that were living, and only regarded her and Rachel, the one up at the ranche, toward Kanab. Old gent had had fifty-two children, most of 'em living; had been through New Mexico, and all that country, with the Mormon battalion, and had been a big man in the Church, but was now here on.a mission, tending to this ferry. The Mormons will establish a fine ferry here and a good road, as they intend to settle all the good country on the other side, and are now settling into Arizona as fast as they can. Will settle Potato Valley first, then down in the White and San Francisco Mountains," etc. Her own history was both sad and interesting. She was born in Brighton, England, and reared in London. Her folks were well-to-do English, and signs of early education and refinement showed plainly through the rough coating of a frontier and Mormon life. She had embraced Mormonism at the age of twenty, and came at once to Utah-sixteen years before -in the first hand-cart company. They got through with little suffering. It was the company after that suffered so. She "had gone in second" to Major Doyle, by express request of Brigham Young. They had pioneered all the new towns south. Had a fine place in Harmony, and sold it for $4000, when ordered here on a mission. She was living here, a hundred miles from the nearest settlement, in the extreme of hardship, and her folks begging her to come to them: And now, at the end of all these sacrifices, a growing skepticism was evident in her talk. It was plain that she doubted seriously whether all this had not been vain-worse than useless. She firmly believed in polygamy, she said, when she came a girl from England, but not now; there was so much evil in it that could not be from God. ï~~644 THE INDIANS LEAVE. What must be the agony of a conscientious soul which has endured and suffered everything for a faith-a life-time of sacrifice for an idea-when convinced at last that the idea is a snare, the faith a delusion? What can result but the blackest skepticism, and utter disbelief in the existence of true religion on earth? Of all losses, property, honor, friends, opportunities, what one leaves the utter mental blackness and void, the complete despair and irreparable loss of the devotee who has lost his god? What wonder that recusant Mormons are the worst infidels in the world, utterly unapproachable on the subject of religion? By the fourth day our horses presented fine subjects for the study of anatomy, and the patience of the Indians gave out. They came in a body to request a nelsoas--my certificate to the Agent at Defiance that they had seen me safe across the Colorado. This I hfurnished, and all the cheese and meat Mrs. Doyle could spare; and at 3 P. M., they began the toilsome journey up the cliffs. I watched them out of sight with regret; for the simple aborigines had been more company for me than I could have imagined possible. In three hours after their departure, Major Doyle returned, and next morning we crossed my horse without difficulty. ï~~CHAPTER XXX. FIVE HUNDRED MILES OF MORMONS. An astonishing revelation-" Major Doyle" becomes John D. Lee, of Mountain Meadow notoriety-Hie relates his version of that affair-Comments-Why verdict "Guilty"-Off for the settlements-Jacob's Pool-Long, dry ride-The Pi-Utes-Into Kanab-Jacob Hamlin-Major Powell's party-Pipe Springs - Gould's RItanche-Virgen City-Toquerville-Kanawa- Into the Great Basin-Beaver-The "Jerky"-An old comnrade-Fillmore-" Cutting off"-Staging-An unconscious joke-Arrival at Salt Lake City-Surprise of my friends. WAS out of the wilderness and across the river; but Sstill a hundred miles from the nearest settlement, and five hundred miles from Salt Lake City. But a surprise of no ordinary kind was in store for me. Having been four days at "Major Doyle's," his wife told me so much of his travels and labors for the Church, that I wondered at never having heard of him in the history of Utah. At supper, on the 3d instant, I casually inquired if he knew of such a man in this vicinity as John D. Lee, for the agent had informed me I must cross at Lee's Ferry. "That," he replied, "is what they sometimes call me." "What!" I exclaimed, "I thought your name was Doyle." "So it is," said he, "John Doyle Lee." I almost jumped out of my chair with astonishment, not unmixed with a feeling of confusion. Here I was the guest of, and in social intercourse with, the most notorious of all notorious Mormons-the man most hated, shunned and despised by Gentiles-John D. Lee, the reputed planner and leader in the Mountain Meadow massacre! My surprise was toosudden to be concealed, and I blundered out: " I have often heard of you." "I suppose so, and heard nothing that was good, I reckon," was the reply, with some bitterness of tone: "Yes, I told my wives 645 ï~~646 MOUNTAIN MEADOW MASSACRE. to call me Doyle to strangers; they've been kicking up such a muss about polygamy, McKean and them, and I'm a man that's had eighteen wives; but now the Supreme Court has decided that polygamy's part of a man's religion, and the law's got nothin' to do with it; it don't make no difference, I reckon." Of course this was only a subterfuge, but I could not have ventured to recur to the real reason of his being hidden, as it were in this wild place, if he had not approached the subject himself soon after. Then I hinted as delicately as possible, that if it were not disagreeable to him, I should like to hear "the true account of that affair which had been the cause of his name being so prominent." It had grown dark, meanwhile, and this gave him, I thought more freedom in his talk. (It is to be noted that he did not know my name or business.) Clearing his throat nervously, he began, with many short stops and repetitions: "Well, suppose you mean that-well, that Mountain Medder affair? Well, I'll tell you what is the exact truth of it, as God is my Judge, and the why I am out here like an outlawbut I'm a goin' to die like a man, and not be choked like a dog -and why my name's published all over as the vilest man in Utah, on account of what others did--but I never will betray my brethren, no, never-wlhich it is told for a sworn fact that I violated two girls as they were kneeling and begging to me for life; but as God is my Judge, and I expect to stand before Him, it is all an infernal lie." He ran off this and much more of the sort with great volubility; then seemed to grow more calm, and went on: "Now, sir, I'll give you the account exactly as it stood, though for years I've rested under the most infamous charges ever cooked up on a man. I've had to move from point to point, and lost my property, when I might have cleared it up Sany time by just saying who was who. I could have proved that I was not there, but not without bringing in other men to criminate them. But I wouldn't do it. They had trusted in me, and their motives were good at the start, bad as the thing turned out. ï~~G _ 0i ï~~648 PROFANE AND WICKED EMIGRANTS. "But about the emigrants. They was the worst set that ever crossed the Plains, and they made it so as to get here just when we was at war. Old Buchanan had sent his army to destroy us, and we had made up our minds that they should not find any spoil. We had been making preparations for two years, drying wheat and caching it in the +mountains; and intended, when worst come to worst, to burn and destroy everything, and take to the mountains and fight it out guerilla style. And I tell you this people was all hot and enthusiastic, and just at that time these emigrants came. "Now they acted more like devils than men; and just to give you an idea what a hard set they was: when Dr. Forney gathered up the children two years after-fifteen, I believe, they was-and sent word back to their relatives, they sent word that they didn't want 'em, and wouldn't have anything to do with 'em. And that old Dr. Forney treated the children like dogs, hammerin' 'em around with his big cane. "The company had quarreled and separated east of the mountains, but it was the biggest half that come first. They come south o' Salt Lake City just as all the men was going out to the war, and lots of women and children lonely. Their conduct was scandalous. They swore and boasted openly that they f helped shoot the guts out of Joe Smith and Hyrum Smith, at Carthage, and that Buchanan's whole army was coming right behind them, and would kill every G-d d-n Mormon in Utah, and make the women and fchildren slaves and..... They had two bulls, which they called one 'Heber' and the other 'Brigham,' and whipped 'em thro' every town, yelling and singing, blackguarding and blaspheming oaths that would have made your hair stand on end. At Spanish Fork-it can Sbe proved-one of 'em stood on his wagon tongue, and swung a pistol, and swore that he helped kill old Joe Smith and was ready for old Brigham Young, and all sung a blackguard song, ' O, we've got the ropes and we'll hang old Brigham before the snow flies,' and all such stuff. Well, it was mighty hard to bear, and when they got to where the Pahvant Indians was they shot one of them dead and crippled another. But the ï~~INDIANS ADVISED TO PUNISH THEM. 649 worst 's a coniin'. At Corn Creek, just this side o' Fillmore, they poisoned a spring, and the flesh of an ox that died there, they poisoned that-anyhow it was poisoned, may be at the spring-and they give it to the Indians, and some few of themni died. Then the widow Tomlinson, just this side, had an ox poisoned that died; and she thought to save the hide and taller, and renderin' it up the poison got in her face, and it swelled up and she died. And her son come near dyin', too. This, you know, roused everybody. They come on down the road, and with their big Missouri whips would snap off the heads of chickens and throw 'em into their wagons; and at the next town there was the widow Evans come out and said, 'Don't kill my chickens, gentlemen; I'm a poor woman.' And the man yelled, 'Shut up, you G-d d-n Mormon, or I'll shoot you.' Then her sons and all her folks got out and swore they'd have revenge on the whole outfit. "But the Indians had gathered and was followin' 'em close, and at Mountain Meadow overtook'em. Then came the council with us, and all asked,' What shall we do?' I was sent for and said, ' Persuade the Indians away;' but I was overruled, and the council said, 'Let the Indians punish them.' "They had gathered from every direction; all the bands were out for hundreds of miles, and they planned it to crawl down a deep, narrow ravine, and get in close, then make a sudden rush altogether. But some men was up about the fire, and the dogs kept up such a barking that they knew Indians were Sabout, and one fool Indian off on the peak fired his gun and killed one emigrant, and give the alarm. This spoilt their plan, but all in reach fired and killed, well, five or six men; but the Indians did not make a charge. Then a sort of regular siege begun, and lasted several days. The fellows inside done well-the best they could have done. They got the wagons corralled, and dug rifle-pits. The Indians couldn't get any more of them, but shot their stock, killed all their cattle and nearly all their horses. I believe it was after three or four days that I went to the Indians and tried to persuade them. Says I, 'You've certainly killed as many of them as died of ï~~650 THE MASSACRE. your men, and you've harassed them a good deal, killed their stock and punished them enough-now let them go.' But they said these white men were all bad and they would kill all. Jacob Hamlin, the agent, you know, was away from home then, and I hadn't much control over the Indians. We was weak then in that section to what we are now, and did not really have the upper hand of the Indians; and may be, if we interfered with 'em, it would cause trouble with us. I heard women inside begging and praying, and saying that if the Mormons knew how they were situated they would come and help, no matter if some had treated 'em badly. And they begged some of the fellows to break out and go and get help. Then I run a big risk to get inside the corral. It was pitch d(lark, and I could see the line of fire from the guns, and the balls whistled all about me. One cut my shirt in front, and another my sleeve, and I could not get through. But I went back, and was pretty near getting the Indians all right, and would have succeeded fully, but then come the thing that spoiled all. "Three of the emigrants had broken out of the corral and gone back for help; and next day met some of our boys at a spring. Well, I don't excuse our men-they were enthusiastic, you know, but their motives were good. They knew these emigrants at once; one of them was the man that insulted widow Evans, another the one that swung his pistol and talked so at Spanish Fork. The boys fell on them at sight, shot one dead and wounded another. But the two of them got back to the company. "Then came another council, and all our men said: 'We can't let 'em go now; the boys has killed some, and it won't do to let one get through alive, or here they'll come back on us with big reinforcements.' And, to be sure, why should we risk anything, and may be have a fuss with the Indians, to save people who done nothing but abuse us? But I still said, 'Let 'em go; they've been punished enough.' " I never will mention any names, or betray my brethren. Those men were God-fearing men. Their motives were pure. They knelt down and prayed to be guided in council. But ï~~INDIAN BARBARITY. 651 they was full of zeal. Their zeal was greater than their knowledge. " I went once more to the Indians, and begged them to kill only the men. They said they would kill every one: then I told them I would buy all the children, so all the children was saved. There was not over fifteen white men actually went in with the Indians, and I don't believe a single emigrant was actually killed by a white man. "An express had been sent to Brigham Young at first to know what to do, and it is a pity it didn't get back; for those enthusiastic men will obey counsel. The President sent back orders, and told the man to ride night and day, by all means to let the emigrants go on; to call ,f s f., -...,:. r 4.,.,; L I _. i <, 6' a d 1.. - (< -. 0 7 1 t& F Â~.,.,. r " ï~~rtv ' yl 1 ';a y h r s Y zypr, ~ z rg.- t } 5 r ï~~SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS. 709 not pay my passage out of Minnesota, whence I had resolved to go before cold weather, and it was then the second week in August. Finally, one William Long, near Garden City, "thought he could raise five dollars 'fore I'd want to leave." I helped him harvest and make hay, but the money he could not raise. Thence I went up the Watonwan River, and shoveled gravel on a mill-dam for forty cents a day; but gave out the third day, minus some ten square inches of palm cuticle. Then I tried a livery stable; drove carriage and the like for excursionists visiting the country, for some two weeks, when, to my surprise, I was peremptorily discharged. Being but a boy, I lacked the judgment to keep still, and often entered freely into conversation with my passengers, without knowing just how to assume that naturally deferential air which is thought to be due from him who holds the reins to the one who sits beside or behind him. For, if you imagine, kind reader, that political equality makes social, or civil, or any other kind of equality, you only demonstrate that you are an innocent pastoral in the dry fields of politics and social philosophy; and that you are almost as ignorant as was your servant, the writer, at the age of nineteen, in the year of grace 1859. In a variety of positions I have since discovered that social distinctions are as natural and inevitable under a republican as a monarchical government; and when, during the "Reconstruction Period," the souls of the fearful were disquieted by the sleep-murdering spectre of "negro equality," I was calm as a summer morning. For I reasoned with myself thus: Have I not been a servant, and an employ6 in many positions; and do I not know that voting never produced any social equality among whites? How, then, can it between whites and blacks? But I digress. My freedom offended somebody, and thereby I lost my lucrative position. Moral: Never know more than your business demands. After that I went wild, so to speak, and lived awhile with two Canadian half-breeds on the shore of Loon Lake. We worked in their little patch about half of each day, hunted and ï~~710 GOOD FARM LAND IN MINNESOTA. fished the rest of the time, lived on game and corn bread, and made the night hideous, often till the "small hours," with our songs, dances, and barbarous patois. I lost my hat the first night I was with them; hadn't a cent to buy another; went without two weeks or so, and got as brown as a hazel-nut. Loon Lake was then the western limit of settlement; now the railroad passes only four miles west of where our cabin stood, and the population of the county has grown from five to twentytwo thousand. Late in September Mr. Long borrowed five dollars from a Mr. Baker, formerly Auditor of State in Ohio, and then a candidate for the same office in Minnesota; paid the sum to me, and I struck out afoot for St. Paul. Strange to say, my health rapidly improved through all my ups and downs, and I had become reconciled to staying in Minnesota. But the new State just then did not want men without capital, unless they had an immense amount of muscle, and were willing to use it for little or nothing. In these new countries it is pure Darwinism-" natural selection and survival of the fittest." I was not the fittest, and did not survive as a citizen of Minnesota; but returned quite contentedly to my college, and there remained till I was of age, when the wat gave me another opportunity to leave home with credit. I thought Minnesota the most beautiful State in the Union; and during the short farming season, it is certainly the nicest State to farm in. I speak of the mere pleasure of working in the ground. The land is never water-soaked, never "bakes," and I never saw a clod as big as my fist. There is no "sour clay" land; it is nearly all black and loose, with just sufficient mixture of sand to make it warm rapidly and pulverize beautifully. The season in spring is astonishingly rapid. There are many popular errors as to the comparative advantages of warm and cold climates. Carolinians think it cold enough where they are, and a little too sharp in Virginia; the F. F. V's wonder how the farmer can get through the winters in New York; while the Yankee shudders as he thinks of the ï~~CLIMATE. 711 hard fate of the " Canucks" and "Blue-noses" of British America. But in these Northern latitudes people know just what is coining, and prepare for it; there will be no let-up from the middle of November to the middle of April, and winter travel is even more important and better provided for than summer. In Benton county, Minnesota, in the winter of 1871-2, they had a hundred and thirty-four days continuous sleighing. The winters are long, cold and dry; the river forms ice three or four feet thick, supporting the heaviest teams safely; no "January thaw" need be apprehended, and it is the unanimous testimony of young people that they enjoy the winters much more than the 'summers. The snow remains till about April 1 or 10, then disappears all at once, apparently; the ground is dry in a week, and summer succeeds winter so rapidly as to leave scarcely a month for the intervening spring. The local records show that the Minnesota seasons should be divided thus: winter, five months; spring, one month; summer, four months; and autumn, two months. The soil will be found to suit the climate. If this section had the heavy clays of Southern Indiana, it would produce nothing; but with the prevailing black sandy loam the crops are immense. "Snow is the poor man's manure," and the soil that is frozen hardest in winter will pulverize finest in summer. Here, after twenty-four hours' rain, the plowman returns to his work without waiting for a "dryup;" and in the haste of spring work they frequently "break up" the south slopes while the snow is still lying on the north slopes. Wheat, rye, buckwheat, turnips and potatoes are the leading productions. In the first and last Minnesota leads the world. From two to four hundred bushels per acre is the yield of potatoes. The Sauk Valley particularly excels in this line, and in 1859 several fields exceeded the last figures. It used to be said at that time that they "grew as thick in the entire ground, for a foot deep, as their round shape would permit them to lie; and if some one could in ent a square or brick-shaped variety, the whole soil might be grown to a solid mass of potatoesI!" The summer heat is intense for about one month, during ï~~y / IPI 1 n I l 1s 'H ï~~THE WEATHER. 713 which time the black, sandy soil will blister the bare feet. In the early spring a single warm day will keep the crops growing two or three days of cold winds. In June, at the point where I resided, the sun shone nearly sixteen hours a day; and the early and late twilight made the day last from 3.20 A. M. till 8.40 P. M. During the latter part of that month the prairie wind alone tempered the air sufficiently for us to work; and if it fell dead calm even for an hour we generally "fell" with itin the shade. I kept a regular diary that year, and the following extracts will indicate the rapidity of the seasons: "May 25-Cold rain, chilly winds. "May 28-Clear and cool. "May 30-Pleasant, and gaining warmth. "June 5-Settled summer weather. "June 15-Prairie flowers all in bloom. "June 25-Intense heat; strawberries nearly formed. Heavy thunder shower, with most vivid lightning, just after sunset; cooled the air considerably. "July 4-A cooling rain. All families in the township gathered at house of J. Smith; had music, some dancing, and a dinner of ham, eggs and rice-pudding--quite a treat for Minnesota. "July 8-Very hot weather again; strawberries beginning to turn. "July 12-First mess of ripe strawberries. "July 14-Early vegetables begin to be used. "August 1-Hottest weather seems to be past. Learn that harvest is ripe in the southern counties, and conclude to start. "August 20-(In Blue-Earth County)-Finished cutting wheat; fine crop, but no market. Early roasting-ears; canteloupes ripe on east side of Blue-Earth River. "September 1-Making marsh hay. Corn hardening fast; all kinds of melons ripe, and most gone. "September 18-Heavy frost, apparently all over the county, destroying buckwheat; no other crop particularly injured. Nights getting very cool. "September 28-Thin ice on water; thermometer down to ï~~714 OLD FRIENDS. 280 this morning. Splendid appetite; weigh ten pounds more than when I came to Minnesota. Started afoot for St. Paul." The crops were good that year, but there was no market, and the people continued poor. The past season farmers in that county paid from three to four dollars per day for harvest hands, and found a ready market at good prices in Mankato. On nearing that place I was anxious to see some of my old acquaintances in poverty, and left the railroad at the beautiful village of Lake Crystal-so named from the pretty sheet of water, four miles west of Loon Lake. I made the best of time to the spot where my Canadians' cabin used to stand, but not a trace of it was visible. The very tree under which I used to sit I could identify; but the whole neighboring region, then an unbroken prairie, is now parceled out in splendid farms, and beautifully improved with neat cottages and tasteful gardens. I hunted the "oldest settler," who told me with some pride that he had been here ten years. (Bah! what a set of moderns they are, compared with " us pioneers! ") He had heard of my two friends: one of them went to Nebraska with the Winnebagoes, when they were removed from here ten years ago; and the other joined the First Minnesota, and "was never heard of after Bull Run." Proceeding on to Garden City, I found that I was" indeed a stranger in the land." My old employer was still there, but he had been on the losing side in the long drawn out legal fight over the town site, and was now poorer than then, if possible. Much to my regret I found that the railroad had missed most of my old friends; the country had improved, but they had lost heart in the long, early struggle, and did not profit by the change. Said Mr. Long to me, as we sat at his table next morning, "It was mighty tight times with us, gittin' thro' the winter after you left (1859-60). It jest seemed like we must go under sometimes. Then when all had got a good start came the Sioux Massacre, in 1862, and ruined us agin. I fit one whole day at New Ulm. It was awful. There was seven hundred women and children in the one big stone hotel, and them Dutch, as didn't know how to load and fire a gun, hid in ï~~,,,:;J, K.o,f,..f 2:,a., 7 r..... ï~~716 ST. PAUL. district; and Mankato, then a straggling village of six or eight hundred, is now a flourishing city of five thousand people. But the effects of the "hard times" of 1857-59 still remain in many places, in the shape of interminable lawsuits, unsettled titles, broken fortunes, neighborhood feuds, and men whose energy is gone and their temper soured by disappointment; many a Minnesota woman is prematurely old from the troubles of that period, and even in the faces of those I then knew as children I fancy I can see some pinching lines which ought not to mark the visage of blooming youth, unpleasing reminders of a childhood passed without its natural pleasures, and often stinted because of parental poverty. Thence to St. Paul, down the beautiful and fertile valley of the Minnesota, I saw everywhere delightful evidences of a great improvement since I footed it along the same line in September, 1859. Hamlets then are large towns now; unimportant towns have grown to cities. Everywhere was heard the hum of busy life and Yankee industry; and mingled with it, just at that time, was the roar of political excitement. St. Paul astonished me. Except near the river I recognized none of the places familiar in my memory. Twenty thousand visitors were in the city, attending the State Fair; and on the grounds were specimens of vegetation from every spot for seven hundred miles north and west. Notable among these were bunches of wild rice from the northern lakes; monster turnips and beets from the line of the Northern Pacific; native grass from Red River Valley, four feet long, and wheat grown at Fort Garry, Red River Settlement, B. A., which yielded seventy bushels per acre. St. Paul is in the southeastern corner, and is the hatural entrep6t of a wheat-growing region four hundred miles square. Fertile land continues to a point two hundred miles north of our national boundary; there a sandy desert sets in, and continues to the Arctic Circle. Our party continued to change the programme at each successive point of departure, as the latest intelligence continued to grow more discouraging in regard to the Missouri River navigation. The final plan was to go up the eastern side of the ï~~a f r< 4 r r r f YF l H t, ~ r nfb ï~~718 " LOGGING CAMPS." the northern limit of white occupation, now a flourishing city of some two thousand people, and consideredrather in the central part of the State. For a few miles out of St. Paul the country.is not very attractive, that county (Ramsey) being the least important agriculturally in Central Minnesota. It is rather hilly, for the most part, with a light sandy soil; but the advance in real estate near St. Paul has been remarkable-about 300 per cent. within the last five years, and over 1000 per cent. since 1859. Our long train of passenger cars was densely crowded, all the standing room taken, with people returning from the State Fair; but most of them left us at the St. Anthony Junction. From there northward the country'rapidly grows more beautiful and fertile, presenting that strange feature of the Minnesota landscape known as "oak openings." A traveler from the East is apt to fancy himself in an old orchard, the trees being scattered about in the same proportion, very little larger and with coarse grass between them, These openings, alternating with clear prairie, form the landscape for about a hundred miles northward, then the heavy pine forests begin and extend from one to two hundred miles farther. All the main affluents of the Mississippi from the east take their rise in these forests, and form natural channels by which the lumber is brought to market. The lumbermen spend the long winter in the "logging camps," getting out and hauling the logs to the nearest stream; then, when the spring rise occurs, each company comes down on a "drive," hunting such logs as have lodged along the way, and giving them a fresh start in the current. Every " boss" has his own particular mayk cut in the bark; and the whole mass is caught in the various "booms " near St. Paul, formed into immense rafts, and taken down the Mississippi. In 1859, when I lived upon the banks of that river, in Wright County, there were never less than a hundred logs in sight, and we generally knew of a coming "drive" a day or two beforehand, by the increase of "floaters." The business is always hard and laborious, sometimes very dangerous; for occasionally logs will catch on the head of a low, rocky island, and form a "jam," containing many thousands. ï~~MINNESOTA AND HER LAKES. 719 In such a case several "drives " often unite; there is generally what is called a "key-log," and by attaching a rope thereto the whole mass is loosened. Climbing over the "jam," hunting for this "key-log," and loosening it, is a most perilous business, as the whole mass often gives away at once, and rolls down into the water in a few minutes. I saw a "jam" just above the Copperhead Rapids, near Anoka, which was estimated as containing 25,000 logs, and the loosening of a single one freed the entire mass. Travelers coining down the river often made use of these logs, and in July, 1859, I made forty-five miles in one day, on two I had pinned together, using a pole and paddle for steering. Quincy, Illinois, was then the great market for this lumber. Anoka, at the mouth of Rum River, which was a modest hamlet when I last saw it, now appeared from the car windows to be a thriving place of at least two thousand people. Thence northward to Big Lake we traverse a gently rolling prairie, diversified occasionally with " oak openings," and dotted with those clear, white-bottomed lakes which add such a charm to Minnesota. The State has ten thousand lakes, varying in size from five acres to five miles square. In every part of America, as will be seen by a glance at the map, the lake region is on the "summit level," the reason of which is easily seen. Minnesota is on the great "summit level" of the continent, her waters flow out in four different directions; hence there are more lakes here, probably, than in all the other States. But even here the process of natural drainage still goes on to a slight extent; lakes are becoming marshes, and marshes slowly receding to "water-meadows," and I find that two or three considerable flats of shallow water I knew in 1859 are now dry. I stopped a day at Big Lake, as it was in the nighborhood I formerly ranged. Monticello is just on the opposite side of the river in Wright County, and near there I worked on one farm some six weeks; but of all the Americans I knew there, not one remains. My old employer, Mr. Randall Smith, served through the war as a captain, then settled in the South, "tired of a country where ye have to feed stock seven months in the ï~~720 EARLY PIONEERS LOSE MONEY. year." Others lost heart in the long continued "hard times" and moved back East; still others were dead-some, I fear, of continued disappointment-and a few had gone "farther West." Of all with whom I lived and worked, I could hear of but one or two who had lasted through the " hard times" and come out with bright hopes. And every year of my Western experience convinces me that the real "pioneers" seldom or never make the big profits in a new country. It is the second "invasion," those who come in with money after the "pioneers" have lost heart, who reap the richest harvest. The "old settier" comes with but a moderate amount of cash-men move West because they want money, not because they have it-and when he has paid for his claim and got up a cabin he is at the end of his resources. Then if there come short crops for two or three years, or "tight times" from other causes, it takes him years to "get round;" and nine times out of ten before he does "get round," he is willing to sell out for much less than his place cost him. Everywhere on the border in Kansas and Nebraska, even in tolerably prosperous times, I found oplportunities to buy improved places at less cost than it would take to improve a new one. I took a day of rest in the delightful region about Sauk Rapids and St. Cloud, the latter on the western side of the Mississippi, at the foot of the rapids, and two and a half miles below the former city. Back of St. Cloud the fittile Sauk Valley extends for fifty miles, and the country is' also good for the same distance up the Mississippi; but on the eastern side Sank Rapids seems to be the northern boundary of first-class land. The town bids fair to become an important place for manufacturing, as the rapids supply the finest water-power, and the region for a hundred miles north and east is excellent for sheep. A company with abundant capital has been formed, and is just beginning an extensive system of works to utilize the rapids. The situation is very favorable; the river channel is but a few feet below the general level of the country, and the firm rock bottom presents the best natural facilities for wingdams. When I was there, in 1859, St. Cloud was considered ï~~" ORDER OF ST. FRANCIS."7 721 the head of final navigation, a class of light-draught steamers running between that point and the St. Anthony Falls; but since then still smaller boats have been put on above the rapids, running to Brainerd, and in a few instances further. The Mississippi yields its greatness slowly, and even at a point a hundred miles above St. Paul, it is still a big river. At 2 P. M. of the 21st, we left Sauk Rapids-it ought to be called Sauk City, to distinguish it from the rapids-in a very uncomfortable, "jerky" stage, and struck directly northward. Our road lay along the east bank of the river, seldom a mile distant from the stream, and ran through a poor, sandy region, alternating scrubby timber and narrow prairies, covered with coarse grass. The cuts in the road and washes near it, showed the soil to be nowhere more than five or six inches deep. The grass starts early in the spring, and, rain being abundant, renews quickly after being cropped, but two or three years of cultivation wear out the soil. Singularly enough all this region was settled, and tolerably thickly, eighteen years before; but nine-tenths of it was afterward abandoned, and it is only at rare intervals, in some low, fertile plat, that we see a farm house. There was a general disappointment in the soil; it proved quite different from the black sandy loam of Wright County, and "wore out" rapidly. On the west side settlementsappear numerous. Our little "jerky" carried ten passengers; a lady and gentleman outside with the driver; inside six gentlemen and a Sister and Mother of the "Order of St. Francis." The last two were on their way to Belle Prairie to take charge of a Frontier Academy just established, and were most enthusiastic over their contemplated field of labor among Chippewas and half-breeds. The Mother Superior was a native Englishwoman, and the most intelligent one of her Order I ever met; the Sister was an American lady from the South, lately converted to Catholicism: a widow, I judge from her.account, and a Sister indeed; one who, yet in life's prime, had adopted a life of arduous toil on this lonesome frontier for simple devotion to an idea. When I meet these Sisters in the Far West, as I often did formerly in the army hospitals, I am compelled to a pro46 ï~~722 OBJECT OF THE ORDER. found respect; and the dogmas of Infallibility or Immaculate Conception appear but small things in view of a life-time of self-denial. The day had been barely pleasant, and toward evening a cold wind came sweeping over the prairies, compelling us to muffle in our blankets and close the coach, as if for winter travel. But, soon after dark, we entered a body of larger timber; then the air became calm, an(l at 9 o'clock the gibbous moon arose, throwing a flood of cheering light upon the d(lull landscape. All became more animated, and the Mother Superior, yielding to the general curiosity expressed as to her hopes of success among the Indians, gave us an interesting account of her Order, its appointed work and her own life, while I listened with pleased surprise to hear the Indian and the educational question discussed from such an unworldly point of view. The Order of St. Francis is devoted to the specific work of teaching, but in times of public calamity, such as war and pestilence, they beconime nurses. The Mother had resided many years in France as teacher, but spent the whole time of the Franco-Prussian war andl a year after in the hospitals. There her health was injured, and she was sent to the wilds of the Northwest to again become a teacher. To an emphatic statement from one passenger, that "an Injun couldn't be converted," she replied: " O, perhaps not in my time, but surely soon, the race will come to know and embrace the truth. We work for God, and He will take care of it. If we convert one, it will pay us ten thousand fold." Towards midnight we reached their destination, Belle Prairie, consisting of a few cabins, a small school-house and little chapel near, its white cross gleaming in the cold moonlight-in that strange solitude a fit symbol of one of the ten thousand outposts of Rome. Wondrous, wide-extended power of Mother Church! Who can travel beyond the reach of her world-embracing arms? Alike on the banks of the St. Lawrence and the Rio Grande I have seen the white cross of her chapels; and on the wild frontier and in the hut of the savage have met her hardy missionaries, bronzed by every sun, and weather-beaten by the storms ï~~I 'I N ï~~CHAPTER XXXIV. ON THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. Brainerd-The Pine forests of Minnesota-Sioux and Chippewas-Pahya Goonsey-Detroit Lakes-Down to Red River -Moorehead-Out to Jimtown-Red River Valley-" The equinoctial storm"-Eastward again-Russian Quakers -Scandinavian settlers-Scenery on the St. Louis-Duluth-Emigration Companies-" POST OFF "-Humbug of land circulars-Climate on the Northern Pacific-" Be not deceived "-The testimony experience of A. Toponce, Esq. -Comments. OARAINERD is emphatically a railroad town, but in two C!y) importanit particulars far superior to the new towns on Sthe Union Pacific: it is built of the finest of lumber, and stands in a forest of slender pines. Except between the railroad track and Front Street the native pines are left standing along the roadsides-the middle of the street only being cleared-and thus all the side streets look like magnificent avenues. The St. Paul and Pacific road is already graded to this point, and as the junction of the two lines, the city has a prospect of future greatness. From the Rapids to Crow Wing the Mississippi was but a few feet below our road; since then we have been coming up hill, and the stream at Brainerd runs in a considerable gorge. The Northern Pacific bridge west of the town is a magnificent structure, of three span-sixty feet eachand appears to me the best bridge I have seen in the West. The water of the river is not quite eighty yards wide, and said to be from five to ten feet deep. So it is no longer the Great River, and a hundred miles north would bring us into the midst of that circle of lakes, Itasca, Leech, Cass and Plantagenet, which form its source. This black pine is not the valuable pine of Minnesota; that is known generally as the Norway pine, and is divided into the white and yellow varieties. Beginning a 724 ï~~THE CHIPPEWAS. 725 little northeast of here, at least ten thousand square miles abound more or less with it. After a good dinner at "Headquarters," as the railroad houses on the Northern Pacific are called, I started out for a look at the town. I saw that no one was at work on the railroad buildings; that all the saloons were open and lively, and here and there a man had on a clean shirt, which suddenly reminded me that it was Sunday. In front of the principal saloon a band of twelve or fifteen Chippewas were performing the "war dance" with an audience of whites. The only instruments were a tin drum and what appeared to be a buckskin tambourine; at the end of each performance, the only "brave" who could speak English went around with a hat, addressing each white with "ten cents a man-n-n, ten cents a man-n-n," while the next in rank delivered a fluent speech in the aboriginal tongue. Only a few rods away there was afternoon service at the Episcopal Church, the only one in the place. The Chippewas are much lighter in color than the Sioux, and bear some resemblance to the Navajoes in their physique; but are far inferior to them in every element of civilization. They are simply low, degraded savages, who enslave their women and attempt no improvement--consequently in course of steady and rapid extinction. They had been at war with the Sioux from time immemorial, and the country from here to Crow Wing is historic ground to them as the scene of their greatest battle. North of town, near the river bank, are signs of rude intrenchments and rifle-pits, of which the old voyageurs give this account: In 1827 all the available warriors of the Sioux Nation came on a grand campaign against the Chippewas; and having met with no. enemy for a hundred miles above here, were floating carelessly down the river. But the main body of the Chippewas was ambushed at various points between here and Crow Wing, while the advance guard occupied these rifle-pits under command of the great Pahya Goonsey-the Napoleon of the Northwest. As the Sioux came floating carelessly around the bend, a hundred rifles suddenly blazed from this cover, and forty Sioux ï~~726 GOOD TIMBER. fell dead from their boats. But the remainder rallied, and sue., ceeded in ellecting a landing. Runners were dispatched to bring up their other parties, and a most desperate battle raged for four days, in which the Chippewas were five times driven back to Crow Wing, and as often regained their ground. Finally their last detachment arrived; they attacked the weakened Sioux, and soon drove them entirely beyond Red River, which has ever since been the boundary between the two Nations. How bravely some of these old aborigines fought, and how little the world knows about it. They had no newspapers. "Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride; They had no poet-and they died." We were off from Brainerd the next day, just as the cold air and lowering sky gave notice that the first touch of Indiau summer was over, and bad weather at hand. For about seventyfive miles westward of that place, the country on the Northern Pacific is rather below the average; the soil is sandy or swampy, the prairie almost barren, and the timber little more than the worthless black pine and tamarac. But after that a rapid improvement is evident, and at Detroit Lake we seem to enter fairly upon the great and fertile valley of the Red River. For the last fifty miles, before reaching that stream, we moved down a scarcely perceptible slope, through a region of mingled prairie and timber, with every indication of great natural fertility, and occasionally a nice improved farm. But settlements are scarce, and the few towns are nothing more than stations, with half a dozen or more of hastily extemporized cabins. The great advantage of the Northern Pacific in the article of timber is everywhere apparent. The commonest cabins are of good lumber, instead of the sod or adobe houses seen on the Union Pacific, and are surrounded by neat fences of plank or paling. Throughout this last division one sees no swamp land, but every few miles bring to view a clear, pretty lake, from a hundred yards to four or five miles in length. The passengers resident in the country tell me that in winter these lakes are frozen almost solid; and then is the best time ï~~CLIMATE OF MINNESOTA. 727 for freighting, as the sled routes take a straight track from point to point without regard to lakes, streams or sloughs. It is the general testimony that there is less snow in northern Minnesota than in the region one or two hundred miles south, though the air is colder; but the little there is blows worse, and it is more dangerous to be " caught out." Frequently a broad prairie will be so bare as to render "logging" quite difficult, while in the narrow strips of timber the snow will be two or three feet deep. Moorehead, on the eastern bank of Red River, is the end of the passenger division on the road, and the nominal head of navigation; but it is only in the months of June and July that any steamers run to that point. -Frog Point, sixty miles below (northward), is the head of navigation for the rest of the summer, though boats rarely ply before the latter part of May. As Red River has a general course due north, the thaw occurs at the head first, and forces a great break up and massing of the ice down at Fort Garry and other ports in Winnepeg. But the railroad is fast pushing on to relieve this seven months' blockade. The "Pembina Branch of the St. Paul and Pacific" is located on a line bearing northwest from St. Cloud, crossing the Northern Pacific at Glyndon, seven miles east of Moorehead, and following thence down the eastern bank of Red River. While work on the lower end is suspended, or pushed but slowly, the road is already constructed and regular trains running for a distance of eighty miles northward from Glyndona rather singular instance of the middle section of a road being finished before either end makes connection. Freight and passenger steamers of two hundred tons burden ply pretty regularly on Red River for five months in the year, and the travel from Manitoba and adjacent sections already takes this course. Limiting the fertile land to fifty miles on the east of Red River and twice as far on the west-and I am certain it does not exceed that-we have the Red River Valley, with a width of one hundred and fifty miles, and length of over three hundred, comprising probably fifty thousand square miles of fertile land. ï~~128 PRODUCE. This must be the source of the prosperity of the Northern Pacific, for I am convinced that after one leaves Red River Valley, and begins to rise to the plateaus of western Dakota and Montana, barrenness is the rule and fertility the exception, even to the border of Oregon and Washington. This large fertile area will produce all the cereals in abundance, as well as turnips and potatoes, /with a moderate amount of Indian corn. Wheat can be grown in Winnepeg to a point nearly two hundred miles north of our National boundary. Cranberries and wild plums are the only fruits I hear mentioned as "successful." Moorehead is a rather rough looking frontier town, consisting of rude frames and "shake-ups" of pine lumber, and containing perhaps five hundred people. Fargo, on the Dakota side of Red River, looks even more distressing, and, as I toiled through its streets on a windy morning, carrying my luggage from the end of the passenger division to the beginning of the construction division, I felt an active sympathy for those who "have lots to sell." The river appears about the same size as the Mississippi at Brainerd, and flows due north with a gentle current. The country is being settled, where settled at all, by colonies generally, and most of them from northern Europe. At several of the principal towns the company has erected vast frame hotels, or, rather, reception and lodging houses, especially for the use of emigrants, and unusual facilities are afforded to foreigners coming to seek homes. It is my conviction that native Americans will form but a small part of the future population of this great valley, and that the bulk of its people will be Scandinavians, with perhaps some Scotch and Russians. The latter people now have some agents out here looking for a location for a peculiar religious sect, who might be called Russian Quakers. They number several thousand, and refuse to bear arms; the Czar has ordered them to fight, pay, or emigrate, and they have concluded to come to this region in a body. Straw-ticks, beef and potatoes could be had in either of the barn-like structures, serving as hotels, in Moorehead, for two dollars per day; but there was nothing to be seen requiring ï~~EMIGRATION. 729 more than one night's stay. Omnibuses go no farther; so we carried our own baggage nearly a mile across the bridge, and through Fargo to the construction train, on which we traversed the last hundred miles. The "Equinoctial storm" had just got down to actual business, dealing cold rain, wind and sleet, when we started westward at 10 A. M. For fifty miles the country appears as level as the calm ocean; the eye can not discern the slightest incline in the general surface, except at the Shyene and another stream; and through all this distance the rank grass above, and the black soil below, marking two feet deep in the few cuts, indicated great fertility. We jogged along at eight or ten miles an hour, with thirty platform cars loaded with ties and iron, which gave me fair time to'look at the country from the caboose. About noon the cold rain ceased, and I tried it to the next " siding" on top of the flat cars, in order to get a better view. The time was two hours, and I was heartily glad to get inside again; the heavy wind from the northwest chilled me to the bones, and toward the last the air showed signs of flying frost. We cross the Shyene River twice, and about midway between the two crossings is a sort of ridge or "divide," which breaks the ordinary monotony. Shyene is merely the English spelling of the French Cheyenne, meaning "scarred arm," the aboriginal name of the tribe which formerly ranged from this river southwestward to the Cheyenne Pass in the Black Hills. Between the Shyene and Dakota or James River, generally known in Dakota as Jim River, is a very considerable rise, and the country is neither so fertile nor monotonous as in the eastern half of this division. West of the "divide" we cross Salt Lake, socalled, though little like the great one of Utah. It appears to be some five miles long, and from one to two wide; and differs only from the ordinary alkaline lakes of Wyoming in having a little more salt and a little less alkali. Authorities appear to differ about its having an outlet; the reason is, the Surveyor General tells me, that a low piece of ground connects it with the nearest stream, into which it sometimes overflows in very wet seasons, thus having sometimes an outlet. ï~~730 COLD WEATHER. Night had come before we entered upon the slope leading down to James River, and about 11 o'clock the train drew up on the eastern side of that stream, and we were left to hunt our way through the darkness, across the hollow and into Jimtown. The cold was intense, and the wind had increased to a perfect hurricane. If there is any wind-breaker northwest, between there and Alaska, I had no evidence of it. Burdened with only a valise, I had to stop half a dozen times in half a mile to get breath; and my overcoat and blanket presented so much sail in proportion to my light hull, that I was in imminent danger of blowing away. Magnificent Railroad circulars talk of eattle "living out all winter" in this country, but where I can not "live out" in September, I should like to see the bovine that could do it in January. However, there is one comfort: all the citizens assure me " it's something very uncommon-in fact, it's the Equinoctial storm; if you stay it through you'll see a month o' good weather after this." Every tent in the canvas town was full, but after an hour's hunt I got half a bunk from a young Irishman. The astute islander took care to have me lie next the edge of the tent, where the wind whistled over my back in mournfill tremolo, and after five hours cold napping I rose and sat by the fire till breakfast. About noon the wind began to fall, the cold decreased and a regular snow storm began. Far as I could see the prairie was white, and the air full of damp snow. Summing up my experience of the last three days I was much inclined to set down a great deal I had heard and read of the "mild, dry and salubrious Northwest," the "health-giving air of Minnesota," and the " northward deflection of the isothermal line," as merely the exuberance of a playful fancy; for, as my blue fingers stiffened around the pen, in a tent which clattered in the wind as if it were bound to fly away, the thermometer stood at 280, and outside the air was full of flying snow, which indicated anything but the "mild and salubrious." They tell me there that this is something very unusual-" in fact, it's the Equinoctial storm;" but how anything can be "very unusual at this season" and at the same time the "Equinoctial storm," ï~~r ï~~732 SCENERY. on the Union Pacific; and the passengers by stage from Winnepeg complained of suffering some from the cold. The usual three days' duration for these storms was over; by the next morning the weather was almost moderate, with indications of a mild autumn. The return trip developed no new feature; we rose by an imperceptible grade from Red River to Detroit Lake, through a very fertile region; then traversed the half barren strip of black pine, tamarack and scrub-oak to Brainerd, where we took another short rest. I like that place better than any I saw on the road west of Duluth. The head of navigation on the Mississippi, the junction of the main line of the St. Paul and Pacific, and a lumber depot for the pine forests north, it has the promise of a good permanent trade. But I saw no land in the vicinity which appeared to me valuable for agriculture. The city census had just been completed, after the liberal manner of Western towns, I suppose, and made the population nearly two thousand. It had two daily phpers, of different politics-at least nominally-though published at the same office. East of Brainerd the country was a decided disappointment to me, consisting for some eighty miles of nearly equal parts of Stamarack swamp, sand plain and marshy prairie. Reaching the St. Louis River, some twenty-five miles west of Duluth, the country becomes more picturesque, with indications of good timber. The scenery on that stream is fine, and is said to gain in grandeur as one goes up it to the northwest. Duluth has a fine site on the northern shore of the extreme western point of Lake Superior. The flat along the lake is wide enough for four or five squares; then the land rises, at first gently, then more abruptly, to a wooded hill. I should guess the population at four thousand; probably the city census reports it twice as much. The prosperity of the place will corie from two sources: the lumber trade from Northern Minnesota, and the shipping of produce from the Red River Valley. Duluth will advance with a steady and regular growtlh in just the proportion that that valley is settled and developed. The sanguine dream that this is to be a second Chicago, and the ï~~F FT UE OF TE,C pcqvu:tk oftw or~~~~~ the ni0ha ï~~734 " POST-OFFICE." tage just after a September snow-storm; but it was lively with immigrants, colony agents, real estate speculators, travelers and freighters. All are anxious to assure me that this weather is "not a specimen-we really have a mild climate," of which more anon. For many reasons, in this northern region it is much better to settle with a colony; and one meets here many representatives of the North European people looking for locations. I learned of but one purely American enterprise, the "Red River Colony;" but they appear to me to have the best location of any. In Clay County, Minnesota, and the adjoining part of Dakota, about the head of Red River, are sixteen townships, containing 400,000 acres of the finest land in the Northwest, and nearly all railroad land. The St. Paul and PacificBreckinridge line-and the Pembina Branch, both traverse the region; and both having liberal grants, bring the entire district into market together, and no part of it a day's drive from a railroad. One of the lines is now in operation, and the other will be within a year. The price fixed at present is $4.50 per acre, with many advantages stipulated in the way of transportation; and the native of New England would not find the change of climate particularly troublesome. L. H. Tenney & Co., of Duluth, are the corresponding officers of the colony, which is just fairly inaugurated. I think the Scandinavians make half or more of the population of the adjacent parts of Minnesota and Dakota--a most desirable class of citizens. An old traveler relates that he was toiling over the black sandy prairie, one of the hottest (lays of their hot but short summer, when to his joy he came upon a dirt-roofed log-house with the word ICE in prominent letters on the right side of the door. Drawing near with thirsty haste he saw on the left side in smaller, dimmer letters the word POST OFF. A Russian or Swedish name, he thought it, and called for ice-water. The woman, ignorant of English, handed him a bundle of letters with instructions in pantomime to pick out what belonged to him! The only American about the place being absent, he made out after a lengthy discussion with the woman that the two signs were to be read together, and meant POST-OFFICE. ï~~ ï~~736 LETTER. Storms of fifty hours' duration are not uncommon even in Nebraska, and at Cheyenne I have experienced weather cold enough to freeze the most hardy animals if unsheltered. Five hundred miles south of the Northern Pacific I have seen cattle frozen stiff in their tracks, horses left in the spring with only the stump of a tail, birds fallen dead from the air in cold wind storms, Indians without nose enough left to blow after a winter's journey, and buffalo by tens of thousands literally frozen to death on the plains. In the light of such well-established facts the assertions in the pamphlets and land circulars quoted, are something more than mere audacious impudence-they are an insult to the popular intelligence. Of course there is fertile land on the line, and a climate which suits natives of the extreme north; and in the course of half a century it will have, and comfortably support, a considerable population. Life is not intolerable in the climate of Canada and Nova Scotia; and men raise stock, acquire wealth and found noble communities under the skies of Sweden and Norway. But to promise the expectant immigrant an Arcadia, where common sense and common experience forbid the idea, is a fraud. Of a hundred witnesses known to me to be reliable, I will cite but one. The loss of an immense train on the upper Missouri by Alex. Toponce, Esq., and his partners, being a matter of some notoriety, in my collection of evidence on the climate I addressed him a note of inquiry. I select his reply from a mass of letters and documents to the same effect: " CORINNE, U. T., March 8, 1873. " MR. J. H. BEADLE:"Dear Sir,.... I give you with pleasure the items of interest of the long-to-be-remembered snow-storm that overtook me in Montana, in 1865. I left Fort Benton in company with Jerry Mann, on my way to Fort Union, on the 14th of November of that year, with an outfit of sixty-one wagons, and 787 head of work cattle; twenty-five head of horses and mules, with seventy-one men; we arrived at Fort Union ï~~HARD ON THE ANIMALS. 737 December 16th, loaded and started for Fort Benton December 28th, with weather favorable for a successful trip. About forty miles out on the return trip, on a stream known as Quaking Asp River, putting in on the north side of the Missouri in latitude 48j degrees; on the eighth day of January we were overtaken by a terrific snow-storm. The first day of the storm we lost about 150 head of cattle by freezing. Not being able to move - we corralled our wagons, and built a stockade around them as a protection from the Indians. "In ten days we had lost all the animals we had except two mules and two steers, which we protected by covering with buffalo robes and wagon sheets, and built fires around them, feeding them on bark, dried buffatlo mbeat and corn-meal. On or about the eighth day of February, in company with Mr. Mann, I started with the two surviving mules for Helena, for a fresh supply of cattle to move our wagons (here I will say that none of the cattle lost died from starvation). Mercury congealed, and never moved for fifteen days; the air was colder than a man could breathe, walking against it. "The horns of the cattle cracked and the pith burst out. Their tails would freeze stiff in horizontal positions, and dur- ing all this time the buffalo gathered into the timber and thousands of them froze to death. They were perfectly tame; would make but one jump on the approach of man. On the seventh or eighth day after leaving camp, as above mentioned, we arrived at Fort Copeland, at the mouth of Milk River, about sixty-five miles travel through snow from two and a half to - three feet in depth. There we laid over one day with some traders, when we resumed our journey for Fort Benton, with no settlements between the two points-a distance of about 250 miles. At the three forks of Milk River we found three Indian ponies, herded them on the ice and caught them. They came in excellent play, as our mules were played out. At this point the snow was about gone. " We arrived at Fort Benton with nothing farther of interest; there we got fresh animals from Messrs. Carrol & Steele. All this time we subsisted on buffalo meat without salt--our mules living on the same and on bark. We started back from 47 ï~~738 HORSES AND MULES DISAPPEAR. Helena on the 20th of March, with six hundred head of cattle and forty-eight horses and mules. No farther difficulty until we reached Sun River, where we were again overtaken by a terrible snow-storm. We camped on the island opposite the Government corral, and the second day of the storm I rode around our camp, a circle of about six miles, looking for Indian signs. Seeing none, that night we turned our stock loose. What was our astonishment in the morning to find all our horses and mules gone, except one that Mr. Mann had at the Government farm, and one that would not be driven away, from camp. Five Indians had been camped only two hundred yards from us during the storm, in the willows. "Then we were obliged to drive the cattle afoot to Fort Benton. There two of our men had a little row, and both were killed. Procuring more horses we drove to the Marias, twelve miles below Fort Benton, built a raft to run over our supply wagons; upset all our provisions in the river, and were again left to subsist on the country, as no supplies could be obtained at Fort Benton. "No farther trouble, except dodging around the country to avoid hostile Indians, driving cattle on foot, wading sloughs in extreme cold weather, and living on buffalo meat-the amount it takes to satisfy a man you would hardly credit, eight men often eating in one week the meat of a cow-until we reached the lower crossing of Milk River. There in gathering up our cattle we missed one; one of the men went back some four hundred yards after him, and in sight of camp was shot, scalped and a checkerboard cut on his back before we could get to him, by Indians in ambush, of whom some forgot the number of their mess. "On the 10th of April the ice very suddenly commenced breaking up in the Missouri River; gorged against a bluff bank - in a short bend of the stream, and dammed the water so that it set back fifteen miles and found a place for a new channel. It broke in above us, and ran through our camp on the Quaking Asp, taking wagons, cabins, trees and everything else before it, drowning elk, deer, and all the animals on the bottom. It came ï~~THE FRESHET. 739 so sudden, that men sitting in the cabins had not time to put on their boots, climbing out through the chimneys to save their lives, the water running about fifteen feet deep. One of the cabins floated dlown the river about eight miles with three men on it, who cut up a buffalo robe and tied the corners together. Two of them survived. Others climbed trees, hanging on for sixty hours. One party built a fire and cooked their meals on the roof of a cabin. Three men in all perished. Some were crippled by having their limbs broken; others by hanging on to the trees and chilling nearly to death. "By this freshet I lost my whole train of twenty-six wagons. Mr. Mann's train was camped on the bluff bank, and the water merely rising up into some wagon beds damaged considerable freight; but the others escaped. We lost all the hundred head of cattle brought down from Helena. I was loaded with 200,000 pounds of valuable freight, of which all was lost except a few things that lodged among the drift-wood and were not perishable by water. "The merchandize at that time was worth $125,000; the stock and wagons about $50,000 more, making in the aggregate $175,00. We gathered ulip what little was left and reached Helena on the 28th of June..... I could write much more of my experience in these hard winters, particularly of the stock lost on Snake River and in other portions of Idaho, in the winter of 1864, when I lost a hundred and sixty head. "Friend Beadle, I have given you a plain, unvarnished tale of facts known to a dozen others; but I must say that, with all my experience of a mountain life, the Mormons have given me. a worse jolting up this winter than I ever had before-as you have seen by the Gentile papers.* " The route traveled over between Fort Union and Fort * Under the jurisdiction claimed by the Probate Courts of Utah, the cause of the present difficulties there, Mr. Toponce was arrested at the suit of some Mormon cattle-dealers; but in spite of a fearful array of "inspired witnesses," they failed to make out a case. It was pretty clearly proved to be a malicious prose. cution, for which, however, there is no remedy under Mormon law. ï~~740 " TEMPERING GALES." Benton is inhabited by the Sioux, Assineboines, Crows, Groq Ventres, Piegans, Bloods and Blackfeet Indians, all hostile. "Truly Yours, ALEX. TOPONCE." One of the brilliant pamphlets above quoted explains that the low passes there in the Rocky Mouiitains " admit the tempering gales from the Pacific," thus accounting for a "mild and equable climate" in that latitude, Mr. Toponce's route was along those "low passes," and accordingly he should have experienced those "tempering gales;" but they appear to have missed him somehow. How could these "tempering gales" get over three ranges of mountain, from six to twelve thousand feet high? The region above spoken of has a good climate for five months in the year-sufficient to produce all the necessaries of life; and eastern Dakota has a fertile soil. But as to the "mild winters," even the buffaloes know better than to believe it; for they go south in winter---or start south, though many are frozen to death before they get far. ï~~CHAPTER XXXV. THE WAY TO OREGON. Westward again-Iowa--Union Pacific--Utah-Central Pacific-Sacramento-- California and Oregon Railroad-Chico--General Bidwell's Ranehe--SemiTropical Fruits and Flowers-Reading---Shasta--Joaquin Miller---Shasta Indians-" Venus and Adonis "-Staging on the Sierras--Mount ShastaYreka-Frontier justice-Immense Forests--Oregon-Rogue River-Umpqua -Willamette-Portland. ROWN October, 1872, found me again rolling through Iowa, rid the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad, to visit the western end of the Northern Pacific. Five seasons had made great changes since I first crossed the State. Now there are four lines of rail from Mississippi to Missouri, and others in course of construction. My fourteenth trip over the Union Pacific, at the prettiest season of the year, was an unusually pleasant one; and reaching "Zion" I found the truce of the past season broken, and Mormon and Gentile in their regular and normal condition of attack and defence. Eastern people earnestly and honestly inquire: Why can not the two parties there simply let each other alone? Similarly it was said: Let Slavery alone, and it will not cause national trouble. But there are certain institutions which can not be left alone, because from their very nature they can not' let anything else alone. If Mormonism were Qnly a Church, it could easily be let alone; but it is a political entity, claiming divine right to rule a certain portion of territory, and to regulate the trade, pursuits, marriages, and social relations of all its subjects. Shall we submit to any political power because it is also a Church? A. is a merchant; the Church takes her stand at his door, and orders away his customers. B. is an artizan; he withdraws 741 ï~~.: ". J..,.; 1 a.a,. v.. - r;, -, -,,,, ï~~w, p f ï~~a/ r7 ï~~DIFFERENT ROUTES. 745 long depot--longest I ever saw." They continue down the western slope to an elevation of only 4500 feet above the sea, where there is no danger of a blockade; and cost a million and a half. No snow can fall sufficient to block the road, as they are built against the upper side in such a way as to shed it into the deep valleys, inclining to one side or the other with the slope of the hills. Down the western slope we found the climate moderating rapidly every mile. Soon we were out of the snow and among the brilliant leaves and yellow grass which mark the autumn scenery of the Pacific slope. There had been very little rain yet-only two light showers-not more than enough to moderate the dust. The stimulating.air and cloudless sky showed that the rainy season was not regularly begun; and I was to have delightful weather for my inland journey to Oregon. The route from Sacramento to Portland consists of three divisions: By the Oregon Branch of the Central Pacific, one hundred and seventy miles to Reading, present terminus; then two hundred and eighty-two miles of staging to Oakland, then terminus of the Oregon and California road, and thence one hundred and eighty-one miles on that road to Portland. It is an open question, and vehemently argued there, whether this or the route from San Francisco by water is the more pleasant. Probably it depends on the individual traveler, and whether he is more subject to sea sickness or stage sickness. In order to give an intelligent opinion, I went one route and returned the other. Through tickets from Sacramento to Portland this way can be had for forty-five dollars, the fare by water ten dollars less. As we move out of Sacramento, the country shows signs of some rain having fallen; the bright yellow of the grass, and summer-dried look of the leaves have yielded to a velvety brown, with patches of pale green; and the vineyards and fig orchards show that the face of nature has been slightly washed. As we proceed northward and up the valley, signs of fertility increase, more rain has fallen, and the soil is naturally much richer than the red plains east of Sacramento. At sundown we ï~~746 GENERAL BIDWELL S RESIDENCE. stop half an hour at Marysville, in Yuba County, a beautiful place of some five thousand people, with more of a New England look, and less of that half-Spanish air which marks so many California towns. I had determined to stop at two or three of the principal towns, and having run past Chico was informed that I had left one of the most important; accordingly I stopped over night at Nord Station, and returned by early train next morning. Thie principal point of interest here is the great ranche of General John Bidwell, containing 20,000 acres, and under the best general cultivation of any part of the valley. The plains of the Sacramento have a varying width of from twenty-five to fifty miles between the Coast Range and the foothills of the Sierras. In a state of nature, they were neither prairie nor timbl)ered, but "oak openings," the growth very scattering, and abundant grass everywhere among the trees. The ranriche of General Bidwell includes part of the city, and his magnificent residence is but twenty minutes' walk from the hotel. Four years since he represented this district in Congress, and ranks here as a pioneer of the pioneers, having come to California during the "first invasion," in 1846. This is the notable year, before the discovery of gold-the same year that Governor Boggs and party, Judge Thornton, Edwin M. Bryant-first American Alcade of San Francisco and the unfortunate Donner party, crossed from Missouri and Illinois; for at least five thousand Americans had crossed the Plains, and settled in California before the "great rush" of 1849. Most of them engaged in cattle-raising, the only business of the Mexican population; for as late as 1850, few people believed that these dry summers would admit of regular farming. The General's ranche is one of the old Mexican grants, to which the title was stipulated for by the treaty, and has been repeatedly confirmed by the United States Courts. All the fruits and grains of the temperate zone are produced, with many of those of the tropics; but wheat and barley are the principal products. He has raised some corn also every year, but only a few of the lowest tracts of the valley, containing most moisture, are fit for ï~~RAISIN' CULTURE. 747 that crop; the long dry summers would require too expensive irrigation. Even of the moist lands, it is found that most are more profitable for hay and grazing, and corn is not considered staple. The ranche has a hundred and fifty acres of orchard, and seventy-five in vineyard; but on the last only one-third of the vines are yet bearing. The rest are one, two, and three years old. The General is going extensively into the raisin business, now planting species of grapes especially for their manufacture. The favorites are the White Muscat of Alexandria, the White Malaga, and White Neisse. The first is by far the sweetest. Another kind, imported from Spain, and known as the Fiahzagos, makes an elegant raisii, but they are thin-skinned, and do not bear transp)ortation well. Hence they are only useful for home consumption. So far the preparation of raisins in this vicinity has proved quite a success. Mr. J. J. Moak, of Chico, last year shipped a large quantity which are quoted in the market as equal to any from the Orient. Sixty varieties of the grape are now produced here, of which a third or more will make good raisins. There is inexhaustible wealth in these foothills, only requiring a moderate industry to develop it, and it is a kind of wealth that is permanent and increasing. A vine once growing and productive, is good for two generations. The use of grapes, as of fruit of all kinds, is on the increase here, and must result in an improvement of the general health. People will learn to use fruit more, and stimulants less. When this country was first settled, men lived on meat and bread alone for years. Such was the living of the original Californians, and the Americans fell into their ways; beef only was plenty and cheap, and beef was the staff of life. Such a style of living could not produce the highest type of humanity. By a law of "natural selection," men sought only the most fiery stimulants; and even now it is a source of surprise to visitors that, while the State produces the finest of wines, the national beverage of California is whisky. Arriving at a wayside hotel at this season, three to one the traveler will find no fire; and if he complain, the common answer is: " Walk right ï~~A a: r s oe ï~~WHEAT. 749 the "later rain" is light. Thence the showers grow slowly less and less frequent till some time in May. The wheat is about full grown, early potatoes begin to appear, and slight signs of drought are manifest. The grass gets ripe, the Spanish oats (wild) begin to turn yellow,'and early in June the wheat is harvested. It lies or stands in shocks on the ground, to be threshed out at will; for no rain need now be apprehended. The surface begins to show signs of extreme drought; by the middle of July the freshets are all past and the marshes dried up; the ground cracks open in long fissures, into which the grass seeds fall and are preserved to another growing season. As summer advances all the minor vegetation loses its green; the grass, Sdead ripe, stands cured to a bright yellow, varied in places by a dirty brown; creation assumes a gray and dusty color, and only the purple fig leaves and faint green of those trees which have a deeper root relieve the general aspect of barrenness. On the slopes of the Sierras the red dust lies six inches in depth, and the prospect is brightened only by occasional patches of verdure along the mountain streams, and the pale-green oval leaves of the manzanita. Still the heavens remainclear. Then one may see through the valley of the Sacramento great stacks of wheat in sacks, standing in the open fields till a convenient time arrives for hauling it away, and threshing machines running in the open air, with no fear of rain. The stubble of the old fields retains its brightness, and the long dry autumn of California is fairly inaugurated. The marshes become beds of dust, which blows up in stifling clouds; the mirage appears upon the plain in deceptive floods of what the Mexicans call "lying waters," the tules become dry as tinder, and at night the Sacramento is lighted for miles by the fires that rage over the same area where eight months before a steamboat could ply at ease. The yellow grass is eaten to the ground, and the herds are driven far up the mountains; the dust, which has become insufferable in the roads, seems to blow away and on to the fields; the roads are often bare and dry, hardened like sunburnt brick, and the depressions in the fields knee deep in dust. The ï~~750 THE RIGHT TIME TO VISIT CALIFORNIA. sky at last appears to become coppery, or obscured; the sun rises red and fiery, and disappears about 4 o'clock in a bank of yellow haze. The wind on the coast, which has been from the west for months, begins to veer round to the southwest, and people begin to prepare for the rainy season. A few boards are nailed on the worst places of the apology for shed or barn; what wheat remains in the field is hastily hauled away or stored, and the Californian is prepared for winter. After a few preliminary showers in late October or early November, the "early rain " begins in earnest; torrents of water descend upon beds of dust, and all creation is changed to a sea of thin mud. But this continues only for a few weeks; by January 1 the soil again becomes soaked and firm, and in two weeks more the growing and delightful season is again inaugurated. Moral: If you are coming to California for pleasure, come between New Year's and the Fourth of July. Between Chico and Reading I encountered the first rain of the season; but, like most California rains, there was very little bluster about it; the rain fell in a steady shower, without driving winds, and the air was about as cool as that of early April in Ohio. All the accompaniments were those of a spring rain in the East; there was a soft, balmy air, the grass appeared to revive under the shower, and the red foot-hills sent down vast streams of muddy water, through gulches which had been dusty for six months. We reached Reading, terminus of the road, at midnight; and the stage passengers started on at once for the three days' ride to the south end of the Oregon and California road. After a few hours' sleep I mounted a cayuse and rode seven miles over the hills to Shasta, a straggling irregular mountain town, stretching two or three miles along a narrow valley, and the county seat of Shasta County. Here and in this vicinity are the materials for the unwritten history of Mr. Heiner Miller, now better known to the literary public as Joaquin (Wawkeen) Miller; he resided hereabouts for three years-1856 to 1859-and did not adopt his poetical title till some time after his hurried departure. His achievements ï~~DIGGER INDIANS. 751 are still celebrated in local chronicles; his Shasta squaw still lives near here, and in the county are many traces of him. He is accused of all sorts of misdemneanors, and the county records cpntain papers of strange import as to his reputation. His Indian wife was of a Pitt River band of the Diggers, and now lives with an old mountaineer named Brock, in the upper part of this county. Miller joined the band in 1856 and lived with them nearly two years. His half-breed daughter was born early in 1857, when Miller and his squaw lived in a cabin on Cloud River, a branch of the Pitt, at the foot of the Shasta Mountains. He and Brock were good hunters, and supplied themselves and Indian companions plentifully with game, but in other respects lived exactly like the Indians. The staple food of the Diggers is of acorns, grass-seeds, pine nuts and kamas roots; but in times of scarcity they eat service-berries, manzanita berries and the balls of the mountain buckeye. These last, in their natural state, are a deadly poison; but toward spring they become comparatively harmless. Then the Diggers gather and pound them in a mass, which they allow to freeze; of this they make a sort of paste or bread, which is highly nutritious. Their great luxury is dried, or tainted, salmon; and white men, strangely enough, learn to eat it so, and like it even more tainted than do the savages. But this Pitt River band appears to me one of the very lowest ofethe Digger race; and from the specimens I have seen I should say the sight, or rather the smell, of one of their squaws would turn the stomach of any man not a poet. Nevertheless many old mountaineers, and even some later comers, are to be found cabined among these hills, living each contentedly with his squaw; and it is common testimony that after a white man has lived with one of them two or three years, he would not leave her for the best white woman in the country. They learn to do housework after a fashion, and on gala days rig out in hoops and waterfalls of most fantastic pattern. But they boil or roast the carcasses of their dead relatives; mix the grease with tar, and mat it on their heads and necks, making a sort of helmet, with only the eyes and mouth free; then for seven weeks they howl on the hill ï~~T.z, t s rc - G ao,, 3i.,.::,, t., i Â~ ~ _..,..,,. _., r' yr,: - -.. _ - c,., n.;. a, r,, ). f. - S, t,' Â~ i P..,4;. e -.v:..i6 c nr., 4 - y: ï~~PITT RIVER MASSACRE. 753 fire from the companionship of Shasta squaws, a serious tragedy was enacte(d, which nearly provedl the death of the incipient p)oet. In January, 1857, a colony of twelve whites, on Pitt River, were massacred by the Indians, some of the same race with whom Miller was living. Among the settlers were twin brothers named Harry and Samuel R. Lockhart, but the latter being absent down the river, escaped(l, the only survivor. He swore undying vengeance against the whole Pitt River band, and pursued them for nine years, until he had killed twentyfive, every one of the band concerned in the massacre. He became a monomaniac on the subject, and though often arrested by the Federal authorities, as soon as released took to the mountains, " hunting for Shastas." lie stole two Indian children, and made them spies and decoys, and by their aid killed several of the family with which Miller was connected, and captured Miller himself. Uncertain of the poet's guilt, he tied and brought him to Yreka, and into the office of Judge Rosborough, where he stood guard over his prisoner for two nights and a day, until the Judge could collect the evidence. There was none to crimninate Miller, and Lockhart was with difficulty persuaded not to shoot him. The fate-of Lockhart was a melancholy one. After the last of the guilty band was killed, he went to Silver City, Idaho, and was employed by the noted Hill Beachy as a guard on the Ida Elmore Mine. When the battle took place over the possession of the mine, Lockhart was shot through the left arm. Amputation was delayed by his obstinacy, until Beachy had convinced him there would still be enough of the arm left to rest a rifle across and take aim. It was then too late; mortification followed, and hlie (lied a terrible death. We were off from Reading by the stage at 1 o'clock in the morning. It carried all the delayed mail which had accumulated during the last storm-seventeen hundred pounds of it. On the top, rear and "boot," it was piled as long as it could be strapped fast; the front seat was filled to the roof, and the rest of the little coach was left for seven passengers and their minor luggage. Besides myself, there were an old man returning 48 ï~~754 IMMENSE TIMBER. home to Oregon from a visit "to the States," two invalids to. try the upper country, and three emigrants to Oregon, but fortunately no ladies. The stage company had done the best possible under the circumstances, but the storm had left five feet of snow on the other route-there are two stage routes from Reading-the coaches had to draw off that line, and delayed mail and passengers were scattered at every main station along the way. At daylight we were ferried over Pitt River, and entered fairly upon the mountains. The valley of the Sacramento, which has been narrowing northward for fifty miles, may be said to stop at this point, as the spurs of the Sierras put out westward toward the Coast Range, and, in mining parlance, " 1)ilnch in " upon the plain. Pitt River is really the Upper Sacramento, being the largest of the confluent streams, and preserving a general course southwestward, after emerging from the mountains. Along its right bluff, we preserved a general northeast course all (lay. Again and again we thought we had left it, as the coach turned directly away and labored up mountainous passes, and along frightful "dugways" for miles, to an elevation of hundreds of feet above the stream; then we would turn to the right, and come thundering down a long rocky grade for two or three miles to the water's edge again. And every time we appeared to be coming back to the same place: there were the same timbered hills and rocky bluffs, perpendicular on one side of the stream and sloping on the other; the same immense gray boulders, rocky islands and towers in the bed of the stream, and the same white foaming rapids. For fifty miles the river is a series of cascades and rapids; and though, through our utips and downs, we but kept even with the stream, we must have been gaining rapidly in general elevation. The sun rose clear, and the bright day and sublime scenery made us forget the fatigues of the way. The immense timber through which this road runs is a constant astonishment to the traveler. For two hundred miles, broken only by two or three open spaces, stretches a vast forest of firs and pines of every diameter, from one to ten feet. Here is in ï~~ ï~~756 ROUGH COACH RIDING. seats till p)hrenological development went on at both ends with most uncomfortable rapidity. The old man, occupying the middle of our seat, took up at least half of it, and every lurch our way threw his whole weight on me, while his groans and smothered curses made me fear several times in the night that he would die right on top of me. Lean men, in general, can not endure coach riding as well as plump ones; and I think (if there be any truth in Darwinism) in my years of travel I ought to have grown or "developed" a series of pads on the angles which strike the vehicle. Nature probably knew what she was about when she gave man his present make-up, but she evidently intended him for turning up the soil in a level country. For mountaineering I could suggest an improvement-a cast-iron backbone with a hinge in it, terminating below in a sole-leather, copper-lined flap. We reached Yreka (only four hours behind time) at 2 A. M., and the old man, two invalids and myself tumbled out of the coach, exhausted, and applied for a "lay over," unable to go further. Nine hours' sleep did me some good, though I felt as if I had been pounded from head to foot with a clapboard. Passengers usually ride through the two hundred and eighty miles between the railroads without stopping, but I learned at the telegraph office that the last five loads are scattered all the way, stopping at convenient places for the next coach, then riding fifty or a hundred miles, or as long as they can stand it. Yreka is a place of wonderful beauty. From the town a gently undulating valley extends in every direction, rising by a succession of timbered foothills to the lofty mountains, whose notched and pointed summits, now dazzling white with snow, seem to join the blue heavens or lose themselves in clouds. But it is only on the points of the mountains that any mist can be seen; above us the sky is cloudless, and the cool air is exhilarating as some ethereal gas. It is difficult to give Eastern readers a general description of California climate. When so-called generally, it always means the climate of the interior, which is three-fourths of agricultural California, including the Sacramento, Joaquin and Tulare Valleys. But there are also at least ï~~MINING. 757 thirty minor valleys opening out of the Sierras, of which each has a different climate; from Sonora, where lemons and pomegranates ripen, and flowers bloom all the year, to Yreka, where snow often lies upon the ground a month, and the cool stimulating air in winter is like that of late October in New England. A few miles east of Yreka is the home of the Modocs, and soon after the region becomes historic on account of that curious " tempest-in-a-teapot," the Modoc War. Like all old mining counties, this is heavily taxed. In some counties the taxes have often amounted to five per cent. on the valuation. When I visited the State first, in 1869, her politicians were discussing the project of having the State afford relief' to some of them. This was officially decided to be unconstitutional; but it is now suggested that it may be done indirectly, by allowing these counties a rebate on State taxes. A mining population of ten thousand or more organized a county on a magnificent basis, voted public works and bonds to erect them, and thus imposed a debt which would not have been oppressive to such a population. But the miners nearly all left, and a community of three or four thousand farmers, graziers and wine-growers have to pay the debt and run the county. Mining began near Yreka in 1850, in Shasta County then; and the town was known as Shasta Butte City. The real, aboriginal name is Wyeka; as no Indian uses the letter "r" any more than a Chipaman, and that name is still seen on one of the oldest signs. There is a tradition that a Dutch baker painted the present name on his sign by mistake, and it was noted that Yreka Bakery spelt the same both ways, which struck the citizens as such a curious and happy combination that it was retained by general consent. In like manner the name of the new county soon organized, Siskiyou, is supposed to result from the Indians and miners' attempt to pronounce the French Six Cailloux (" six boulders "), the name of the district from six large rocks in the river. As one of the old settlers informed me, most of the early comers learned French and Indian by the aid of a "sleeping dictionary," the pronounciation is not strictly academic. When the miners first came they learned that a ï~~758 JUSTICE. Scotchman named McKie had been living among the Klamaths for forty years, and was very popular with them; hence their first salutation was "aak a Mak/ckee7 "-" Are you a McKie?" or good white man-a question which facts soon answered in the negative. The records of the early Courts are ludicrous. The first Alcalde, in 1851, was known as "Cut-eye Foster," but hlie left no docket, and soon ran away, and George C. Vail reigned in his stead. No law book was ever used in his Court; he decided each case on its own merits, writing out the full history, and his docket is a curiosity. In one case brought before him, a boy had driven a team from Oregon and worked all winter for a man, who declined to pay. He sold out in the spring and was leaving suddenly when, on complaint of the boy, Vail and two constables stopped him on the road. It was proved that he had received three thousand dollars on his sale, but hlie declared himself unable to pay, though not denying the boy's claim. Judge Vail decided in these words: "Constables, stand this man on his head, shake him well, and see if you can't hear something drop!" No sooner said than done. A vigorous shaking brought to light a wallet containing two thousand dollars in gold dust; the boy received his claim of three hundred dollars, the Judge and constables took an ounce apiece for their trouble, and the defendant went his way a lighter man. Justice like this was cheap at three ounces. The next coach did not arrive till 4 in the morning, giving us a night's rest, and four exhausted passengers took a "lay-over," making room for the recuperated four to go on. We traveled northwest for two or three hours, crossing the Klamath River by a "swing-ferry" soon after daylight. I was surprised at the size of this stream, which is not among the noted rivers of the coast; it looked big enough at the crossing for navigation with goodsized boats. The valley amounts to but little agriculturally, as the stream runs between rugged hills through most of its course; but on its head-waters is the greatest game and fishing region in the West, if not in the world. Every kind of game known to the Sierras is abundant, and the cold waters of Klamath Lake and tributaries are alive with trout. It is the paradise of sportsmen, ï~~FINE CLIMATE. 759 and nothing but its remote and inaccessible position prevents its being a region of great resort. Our ride to-day was a pleasant surprise: we had no rugged mountains to cross, and the coach was quite comfortable.. Soon after leaving the Klamath we enter Oregon, and the impression given on this road is that the State is covered by one immense and gloomy forest. In places the very daylight seemed to vanish into a mild twlight, and, in the few "clearings" we passed through, the sunshine was novel and enjoyable. After noon the country began to show signs of improvement; settlers' cabins became numerous, and, after running down a narrow cafion, we came out into the beautiful valley of Rogue River. Here is said to be the finest climate in Oregon, and to wearied passengers just over the mountains the sight was like a revelation of beauty. Where we enter, the valley is no more than two miles wide, but as we go down it widens gradually to five, thirteen or twenty, while on every hand appear fine farms, thrifty orchards, great piles of red and yellow apples of wondrous size, barns full of wheat and fine stock, and we feel with delight that we are out of the mountains and " in the settlements." Though far retired fronm the road, the mountains still appear rugged and lofty, sending out a succession of rocky spurs-one every two or three milesand between these, far back into the hills, extend most beautiful coves in long fan-like shapes. The air was mild, the roads firm and smooth, and the coach rolled along with just enough of motion to give variety-and appetite. Everybody and everything we saw had the unmistakable S"Oregon look." We were among the "Web-feet" at last, and a comely race they are, if I may judge from the plump forms and fresh, clear complexions I saw on this part of the route. The climate had no suggestions of extra dampness; the sky was clear and the air cool and dry, with the general features of Indian Summer in Ohio. Double plows were running in many of the fields, "breaking fallow for spring wheat," the natives said, and the apples, just gathered, were lying in heaps, to be stored away the last of the month, showing that no freeze is to be apprehended before December. Though not extensive, this ï~~ ï~~TRAVELING. 741 entered on a timbered canon, down which we made but fifteen miles in four hours. The heavy coach alone was a load, over the rocky road, for the four horses, every one of which filled exactly Isaiah's description of the natural man, their whole heads were sick and their whole hearts faint, and from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot they were wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. We were now so near the settled Willamette Valley that lumber is an object, and the whole trade of this district consists in getting out logs and floating them down Canon Creek to the Caflonville sawmills. Driving hour after hour through these seemingly endless forests, often hidden from the sunlight in their somber shades, it seems strange that lumber should be scarce anywhere, for here is enough of it to supply the Nation for half a century. But the railroad is needed to make it available, and the general opinion there is that the road will not be completed for some years. The same company own the road that own the principal line of ocean steamers from Portland to San Francisco; and it is freely stated that they only want the road to the head of Willamette Valley to serve as a." feeder" to their ocean line, and that to construct it through would be only to make a rival for themselves. As the routes now are, I will "take sea-sickness in mine" rather than travel by stage over the Shasta Mountains again. At Cafonville we ran out into the Umpqua Valley, at the point where the river comes in from the east. Crossing it by an uneasy and dangerous bridge, we travel down the east side of the valley the rest of the day, as the river there turns due north. Many clear and pretty streams dash down from the Cascade Range, cross our road and the valley, and empty into the Umpqua. The valley is larger than that of Rogue River, but the climate does not appear so genial. The Cascade Range, which is really a northward continuation of the Sierra Nevadas, bends in more toward the coast; hence, none of these valleys are so wide as those of the Sacramento and Joaquin in California. After a long pause at Oakland, the Oregon and California road had just been completed to Roseburgh, where we arrived ï~~WILLAMETTE VALLEY. WILLA METTE VALLEY. at dark, and saved eighteen miles of staging, as we expected to go to Oakland when we left Reading. The hardships of my trip were over when I reached the end of the Oregon and California road, and I was in a condition to properly appreciate railroads. And I fully realize that in spite of all' which has been done in the last ten years, Oregon is still a long way from "the States," and an exceedingly difficult place to get to. I used to wonder why a naturally rich and very extensive country, which had been in process of settlement for nearly a third of a century, should still have less than a hundred thousand people; but I now understand it. I can not remember a more pleasant trip than our slow Sunday ride down the Willamette Valley. Roseburgh is a little beyond the "divide," and on the slopes leading down to the Klamath River; but the intermediate ridge is not very high, and mountain spurs always look much more romantic from the inside of a comfortable car. Forty miles brought us fairly down into the Willamette-the great valley of Oregon. It is a hundred and forty miles long, with an average width of forty miles-five or six thousand square miles of the most fertile land in the world. The day was like those of our late October, and the train seemed a sort of excursion outfit for the people at the various villages along the way; twelve hours were consumed in making the run, giving ample time to study the natives. The "Webfoot" is sui generis; there is a distinctively Oregonian look about all the natives and old residents which is hard to describe. Certainly they are not an enterprising people. They drifted in here all along from 1845 to 1855, and some of them at an even earlier period, when many western Americans came to the Pacific coast to engage in cattle raising-not considering the country fit for much else. They left Missouri and Illinois-most of them-because those States were even then "too crowded" for them, and they wanted to get away where "they was plenty o' range and plenty o' game," and have a good, easy time. With one team to each family (time being no object to such people) it cost them nothing to move; and the peculiar land laws applied to Oregon gave ï~~SETTLERS. 763 them every advantage, and have been a serious hindrance to settlement ever since. Each single male settler could acquire title to three hundred and twenty acres, and each married man to six hundred and forty; there were besides some inducements to families, so that the birth of a child was a pecuniary advantage to the parents. The result was that hundreds of girls of eleven, twelve and thirteen years of age were married; and the further result, that all this fine land is owned in vast bodies by these old families, many of whom will neither sell, improve, nor hire any one else to improve. They acknowledge their own laziness, and talk about it so good-humoredly that one is compelled to sympathize with them. One of the better class gave me this account: "These old Pikers don't want the country fenced up and the game scared off. What do they care about your style o' livin'? One of 'em will go out and tramp a week till he can kill a deer-then bring it home, and while his wife cuts it up, he'll lay down and sleep and sleep till his head' aches; then he'll get up and eat and eat till his belly aches; then he'll sit on a log and whittle and whittle till his back aches, and then he'll think o' goin' after another deer." I think the climate adds something to their natural laziness. It is delightfully balmy, mild and temperate for about' seven months in the year, and the rest of the time foggy, muggy, and neither warm nor cold. Their chief export is wheat; on this "voy depend for supplies. In townships where thousands of bushels of apples lie rotting on the ground it is impossible to get a drink of cider, and most of them tell me that they import their dried fruit from California. And land is high, too. Inquiring along the way between Eugene City and Portland, I find it held everywhere fron twenty to sixty dollars per acre, and the aninual rent is stated at from two dollars and fifty cents to five dollars. These facts do not strike me as encouraging to immigration, though this valley has not one-fourth the agricultural population it ought to have to equal most of the Western States. The soil is wonderful, being in many places from fifteen to thirty feet in depth, literally inexhaustible. And for locatiop it is extremely fortunate. The high Cascade Range shuts off all ï~~ ï~~ALMOST A LONDON FOG., 765 There were only two or three towns along the way of much importance. Eugene City, near the head of the river, looked rather more lively than Oregon generally. Salem had a delightfully quiet New England Sabbath look, and Oregon City, at the falls of the Willamette, had the appearance of a thriving manufacturing town. To one lately accustomed to the driving ways of the Union Pacific and Iowa roads, there does not alppear tb be any particular stir about the Oregon and California road. On the upper (southern) end I saw enough to convince me that they do intend to continue it some time. The papers announce with an air of confidence that it will be completed to the connection in California by 1874. If the "Webfeet" don't display more enterprise in this than in other things I've noticed, I should say 1974 would be nearer the figures. I reached Portland at sunset of a beautiful Sabbath evening -not at all suggestive of the fog and rain which are generally attributed to this climate. For two days the weather was delightful, though everybody spoke of it as the coldest they had ever experienced. The wind was from the northwest, very gentle, the sky clear, and ice half an inch thick formed on the gutters-a rare thing in Portland. In the evening the thermometer rose from 280 to 380, and next morning I wondered why I waked up and was so restless in the night. I turned over suddenly, and an old shot wound in the knee gave me a fearfiul wrench. Then I felt something like ague along my backbone. I struck a match, looked at my watch, and it was nearly 8 o'clock. Such a fog!I One could almost chew it up and spit it out. With a sharp knife it might be cut out in chunks and stored for dry weather. They say the winters here are healthful. It must be for differently constituted lungs from mine. It don't seem to me like breathing; it is rather a sort of pulmonic swallowing. Only the smoke and dust of a great city here is needed to give Portland occasional fogs fully equal to those of London. This fog continued till noon, then broke away, and a gentle drizzle finished the day. Portlanders all agree that they have the finest climate in the world in summer, and part of the spring ï~~;4 ï~~CHAPTER XXXVI. CHAPTER XXXVI. IN CONCLUSION. Season too late-Washington Territory-" Good-bye, Jonah "-Down the Willamette-I the Columbia-A fog-Salmon fisheries-Strange instinets of the salmon-On the heaving ocean-" The first to fall "-Down below-"Just a little qualmish "-Philosophy on the subject-Smoother water-" On an even keel "-Arrival'at Frisco-Bancroft & to.-Homeward bound. HAD delayed too long on the eastern end of the line, for the heavy Oregon rain was coming fast, the roads were becoming intolerable, and it was too late to make a tour in Washington Territory without great discomfort. To go all the way to Oregon to visit the west end of the North Pacific, and return without doing so, is somevhat like the case of some of my friends, who go all the way to California to see the Yosemite, and then are scared at the stage ride, and do not go. Nevertheless, it is just what I did. During the five dlays I spent in Portland, I met from five to fifty persons a day just returned from the utipper country, and the unanimous opinion was: "It is too late for you to go and see anything." All who were interested in that country urged me not to go and see it at this season, as they were certain I would bring up an evil report of the land. Portland is located on the west side of the Willamette (pronounced Wil-lam-et), twelve miles above its mouth, at the head of navigation. They have two feet of tide-water, but back- - water from the Columbia often causes great rises, giving the surface of the stream a variation of thirty-two feet. At the anchorage I noted one English vessel, one loading for the Sandwich Islands, and two ocean steamers, for ports on this coast, 767 ï~~II I J f } ' iii ' " Â~ 'fUi'; N. r J 1 z yff vlYlc r' r fry l::...,... J.. rv,Y ï~~LOCATION AND INHABITANTS. 769 part of town occupied by private residences is yearly growing in beauty. As one result of their smooth planked streets, much attention is given to fine turn-outs and stock, and of pleasant afternoons the main avenues are quite lively. The location is picturesque. The Cascade Range is visible part of the time; Mount Hood rears its white summit sixty miles to the eastward, but looking as if it were just out of town; while Mount St. Helens is often visible, though eighty miles to the northeast. "Pigtails" are even more numerous on all the streets than in "Frisco," and I learn with surprise that onesixth of the population of Portland-two thousand in all-are Chinamen. They are porters, washmen, railroad laborers, cigar-makers, and some few artisans of other sorts, but they have an unusually large number of the higher castes, engaged as merchants and importers. Sam Poy Sahong has seven stores on this coast, his headquarters being at Portland. Calling at his establishment one evening I found him posting his books for the day, and I can pronounce him a rapid writer and intelligent man. The firm of Tung Duck, Chung & Co. charter vessels and import from China. Some other Chinese firms import extensively, and there are several large dealers among their merchants. Other foreigners are not numerous; I think the Jews predominate. Aside from them there are few Germans, and not many French or Irish. In fact, Portland has almost an exclusive Yankee population, as to the whites; there are cornmparatively few Western people immediately in the city, though the bulk of the rural population is from Missouri, Illinois and neiglhboring States. For enterprise, the city seems to have that which the State at large lacks; for I am sorry to say my opinion of rural Oregon's enterprise has not at all;improved by longer acq(luaintance. The steamer, by which I engaged passage down the coast, was to start on Friday evening at dark;-but, going on board, I was-informed that the start was delayed till next morning, "to get the high tide on the bar at the mouth of the Colulbia." So my friends made an evening of it to see me off properly, 49 ï~~770 REMEDY FOR SEA-SICKNESS. and, by way of encouragement, gave me their experience with sea-sickness, and a world of good advice. All had come to Oregon by sea, and all had been sea-sick; but there was one little difficulty about their advice, no two agreed in any particular but one. Said number one: "Lie down and stay there. No need of being sea-sick as long as you keep perfectly still. The moment you sit up or move about, you are sick. I lay in my berth all the way from Frisco." "Bosh," said number two, "you stay on deck right in the cold air just as long as you can. The minute you go below, where you move without seein' it, and the lamps and things Sare swingin' around, you're a goner! Take your stand right on the bow, an' stick to it." A grave and reverend senior thus pronounced: "The will has more to do with it than you'd think. Make up your mind you're not goin' to be sick, and ten to one you wont." A chorus of dissent. Then another recommended lemons and sherry wine! But all agreed on one thing: that it was best to eat every meal one could, and take plenty of air and exercise. Having properly prepared my nerves, and emptied fourteen bottles of "Bass," the party of six saw me aboard, at midnight, with the parting "Good-bye, Jonah, and when you begin to heave, think of us." I found on board an "old salt," with whom I had got acquainted at the hotel, and his advice was: "Take half a dozen limes in your pocket, eat one whenever you feel giddy, walk the deck with me, and I'll insure you. Stick to the deck, with a blanket and overcoat, if it's cold, and you can't get very sick." This I did, and found it the best plan. At daylight, the bang of a six-pounder on the bow aroused me from dreams of shipwreck, and pretty soon the "hoh-he-hoh" of the seamen's chorus, and the rattle of lines and jingle of bells announced that we were off. The easy motion of the vessel lulled me to another nap of an hour, from which I awoke to find that we were dead still-neither tied nor anchored, but swinging with the current, and buried in a fog, ï~~ON THE WATER. 771 so dense that I had to feel my way along the berths to the cabin door. We were near the mouth of the Willamette, and were to stay there any time from one to twenty-four hours. Hour by hour the fog slowly lifted, drizzle and mist taking its place, and chilling one to the very bones. The cabin passengers crowded around the stoves, while the Chinese and other steerage passengers walked the deck, or crowded around the smoke-stacks for warmth; the melancholy "Johns," with glazed caps and black pig-tails, looking like a lot of half drowned crows. About 2 P. M. blue spots began to appear, bright rays broke through the gloom, a light wind was felt from the northwest, and soon the fog was sailing away in fleecy clouds toward the Cascade Range. The call of "Tickets, gents," showed one man without "the pasteboard; the davits were loosed, the boat swung to the water, and two hours more were consumed in setting him ashore on a point three miles away. Moving down the broad stream-little to be seen but low, wooded banks-we ran out into the Columbia, and were soon surrounded by extensive flocks of ducks and wild geese,.with occasionally a gull or walloon. But most of them kept out of gunshot from the vessel. I saw no settlements anywhere on the Columbia bottoms, unless the fishermen's cabins can be so called. Timber of medium size lines the river everywhere, and very few cleared fields are to be seen. By dark we had reached the principal salmon fisheries, and there, for some reason to me unknown, the steamer stopped for the night, probably to wait for another high tide on the bar. The amphibious race who follow the calling of fisherman on the lower Coluinmbia, might be set down as a separate variety of our species. They know all about salmon, and next to nothing of everything else. Here and next morning at Astoria, our boat took on a hundred tons of canned salmon-" no putup, at all," the clerk said-and the figures given me as to the extent of shipments appear incredible. Three hours' persistent interviewing of the fishermen developed these facts: The salmon vary from five to thirty pounds in weight, twelve pounds being a fair average. They are now a standard luxury ï~~772 SALMON. in all the markets of the world. They begin to ascend the river in the spring rise-May or June-and turn into all the tributaries and small creeks, to the highest point they can reach. During the "season " a salmon is never found with head down stream-" always bucking agin the current," says the natives. In many places they get entangled among the rocks, and some are found wbrn almost smooth by their struggles. No instance is known of one of these being caught with a hook, and from observation the fishermen are universally of opinion that the salmon eat nothing during the entire spawning season. The consequence is that they get poorer, and the meat whiter, every mile up stream. No Oregonian will eat of salmon caught above the mouth of the Willamette. When they enter the Columbia the meat is of a bright red. color; in the Willamette it is of a pale vermilion, and at Oregon City, and up at the Dalles almuos, white. The nearer the mouth of the Columbia, the more valuable the fisheries. When they have reached the highest point attainable, they spawn among the gravel and on the rocks, where the water is but two or three inches deep. Then they die by thousands, and masses of dead salmon are cast ashore, or found floating in the eddies. It used to be thought that all which came up died; but the fishermen say it is now known that many of the old ones survive to return to the ocean; but they float sluggishly with the qurrent, keeping very low in the water. Next year the young ones go out to the ocean in vast schools, and occasionally one of them is caught with a hook, but not often. The meat of the salmon is poison to a dog. Their spawning grounds have been found as far as a thousand miles from the sea. There is a remarkable difference between various localities. At places on the Sound, the salmon is not fit to eat; at others it is inferior, but still palatable. The Columbia takes precedence of all Spoints on the coast. We spent three -hours at Astoria, a curious old town strung along under the wooded hills, and a party of us walked out to see the first house built in Oregon-the old residence of Astor. The place is now of little importance except for shipping salmon. ï~~I >0 ï~~ ï~~"ETHIOPIAN WALK-AROUND." 773 The call to a late breakfast showed the fifty cabin passengers all on hand, each one speculating humorously as to how many would sit down to the next meal; for we could already see tle white foam on the bar, and knew that a " high sea was running outside." The Columbia bar was long the terror of navigators, but it appears to have been such only through ignorance, and since proper soundings have been made, no more accidents have occurred in the last twenty years than at the mouths of other large rivers. We passed it in an hour, without difficulty, and soon were upon the "heaving ocean," of which we read. It was a rough introduction. The heaviest sea encountered on the voyage was at the start. One minute the bow appeared to be rearing up to square off at the midday sun, and the next to get down and root for something at the bottom of the ocean. Bets were made as to who would be the "first to fall," and a party of twenty or more of us went to the hurricane deck to stand it out. With songs, shouts and laughter we danced about - on unsteady footing, attempting an "Ethiopian walk-around" on the heaving deck, determined to fight off the sickness to the last moment. Then we practised balancing against the waves, watching the water in the hollows of the deck, and seizing on the moment when it started one way to throw ourselves to the opposite. While enjoying this pastime, a lad of some fifteen years suddenly sank to the deck, then rose and emptied his stomach at one vast heave. There was a yell of laughter as he started below, but in a minute two more followed suit. Then they fell away rapidly, and in an hour only five of us remained. As I gazed on the bow, admiring the majestic sweep of its rise and fall, and the swell of the ocean beyond, it suddenly appeared to stop; then it stood dead still, and the whole body of the ocean appeared to rise and fall instead, and in a moment my head seemed to rise and fall with it, leaving the bow between us quite fixed. I had been warned not to look at the bow, but I forgot it. I tried in vain to restore the natural order, but the illusion had become to me a reality: the bow was still, and my head and the ocean alone moved. At every rise my neck seemed to stretch out longer, my head get farther from my body, ï~~ym.;; eat v 1 f f ï~~SEA-SICKNESS. 4 775 over, and I was defeated. The terrible mal de mer had me in spite of my struggles, and I felt my way to my room. Next door to me was a family of four, making their first trip away from Oregon. As I passed, the little girl and boy were lying in the lower berth, with their heads over a basin, moaning with sickness; the young mother lay above, pale as the sheet, and unable even to resist the motion of the vessel, which tossed her from side to side, and the husband sat by trying to cheer them, while the dark bile swelled up in his cheeks and his eye showed the composure of despair. I could not repress a sickly smile, for they had been the most hilarious of our party on deck. From the gentlemen's berths came a mixed sound of curses, groans and regurgitations. One enormous fat old fellow was crying like a baby, and finally called out in despair:"O-o--o I can't stand this; won't some Christian throw me overboard." My sailor friend, who was standing at my door to encourage me, promptly made reply: " Well, I ain't much of a -Christian, but if it's any accommodation, I'll chuck ye overboard." My sickness lasted for three hours, then a most delightful calm succeeded, followed by a long sweet sleep. I learned a new fact, to me: there are really two kinds of sea-sickness; one begins in the head, the other in the stomach, and a man may have either or both. The latter, I am convinced, is simply a reversal of the peristaltic motion of the stomach and bowels. In the long swells as the boat rises one feels perfectly delightful; the "insides" settle down, down, down, and are at rest. But as the boat sinks all the internal viscera rise--as one passenger expressed it, "you fall away from your grub "-they press even against the throat, producing a fearful and indescribable nausea. There is nothing I can compare it to. Even now the recollection makes me shudder. And one may have this kind of sea-sickness without being a particle giddy. But the other kind begins in the head; it is the result of the eye having nothing fixed or solid to rest upon.. Everything one looks at is moving --the boat, the lamps, the waves are so many sources of irrita ï~~rp; ï~~a ï~~778 OVER THE PACIFIC RAILROAD AGAIN. The second night we saw from afar the glowing summit of Point Arena Lighthouse--a sublime sight from a distance upon the ocean. Next night, soon after (lark, we passed the Golden Gate, and at daylight I was delighted to find myself once more on terra firma. No "Life on the ocean wave" for me, if you please. My first trip has convinced me that I haven't the head for life on the Atlantic; for what we saw on the Pacific is a mere nothing. Solid ground is good enough for me. San Francisco showed great improvement since I had first seen it three years before; but my walks were mostly among the publishing houses, of which the city has an extensive supply. A quarter of a century since, a dull and sleepy Mexican mission adorned (?) this row of sandhills; now a city of nearly two hundred thousand, is supplied by sik daily papers, half a dozen periodicals, and several large publishing houses. That of A. L. Bancroft & Co., established in 1852, now equals any in the Eastern States. Almost everything in that line which is peculiarly Californian bears their imprint. In law books particularly, and other work usually confined to a few houses in the East, they have shown great enterprise. Besides their original works, several hundred thousand volumes of Eastern books have been sold by them on the Pacific Coast. Their fine building on Market Street is an enduring monument to the general intelligence and love of literature of the people of California. To leave the mild air of "Frisco" for the snows of the mountains was anything but agreeable; but there were rumors of impending snow blockades; important business called me to Indiana, and I took a. hasty departure from the Far West. To close happily, every book should have a hero; but this has none, unless the author may by courtesy be permitted to fill that position. Suffice it then to say, that seven days' riding from San Francisco brought inme again to my native Hoosierdom, vastly improved in health by my five years of Western travel. ï~~A MONTH IN TEXAS. I. THE WAY TO TEXAS. HE terribly severe winter of 1872-'3 turned the attention of prospective emigrants from the Ohio Valley towards the new State of Texas. I use the adjective "new" advisedly; for, although sparsely settled as early as 1830, and slowly increasing in population since, Texas. still has more good land unoccupied than any other State or Territory in the Union. With an area a little larger that France, the State has a population of only a million and a quarter; ninety million acres of public land are still open to the pre-emptor, of which more than half is of great natural fertility, and most of the rest is valuable for minerals, grazing or timber. Two millions of people in the older States, pressed by poverty, or feeling the want of more room for development, are asking, Where shall we go? Texans, on the other hand, are asking, Where shall we get the live material to develop our vast natural resources? "The chain and the bucket need hitching together," and in this state of affairs I felt that the Texans had need of a historian. The completion of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Road, and the Texas Central, have brought all Northern, Central and Eastern Texas within easy reach of emigrants from the Northern States; and a new spirit of immigration has been excited. Now there are several ways from Evansville, my starting 779 ï~~780 DIFFERENT ROUTES. point, to Texas. The old way was to drop down the Ohio and Mississippi; thence across the Gulf to Galveston, and up into the country at will. An older way was by wagon and horse, through Southern Missouri and Arkansas to the crossing at Fort Smith; thence south-southwest. But the quickest and cheapest way now is to take the St. Louis & Southeastern lIoad to St. Louis, from which place the Missouri, Kadsas & Texas Road will land you in Denison, Grayson county, Texas, in thirty-six hours, for the sum of forty dollars and seventy cents. There you niay take the Texas Central for points on the Gulf, or for connecting lines of rail and stage with all important points in the State. From Sedalia, Missouri, the road runs nearly southwest to Parsons, Kansas; there it joins the Western Branch from Junction City, and the main line runs nearly straight south through the Indian Territory to Denison. At Caddo Junction, a branch runs to Paris, Texas, and one may now ride, without change of cars, from St. Louis to Galveston, 1009 miles. Seventy miles of grading are already done on the southwestern continuation of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas; and it is prop)osed to push it forward through Central and Western Texas to Camnargo, on the Rio Grande, and eventually to the City of Mexico. Within ten years, or perhaps five, when the great bridge at St. Louis is completed, one may ride without change of cars from Evansville or Cinciunati to the Mexican Capital. I decided to diverge a little from the direct route, and spend Sunday with some friends in Kansas. Reaching Kansas City, I found it (distressingly dull, and interviewed a friend as to the causes, who declared: "I haven't made a cent for three months." "What is the cause?" "Damfino!" (Supposed to refer to a heathen goddess worshipped there.) "Somethin' the matter over in Kansas. Not a dollar comnies uip the two roads from the southern part of that State. Lots o' corn there-can't sell it for nothin'. No market for anythin' except cattle, and the farmers are holdin' on to them to get a little cash to pay taxes. Mighty tough ï~~CHEAP LIVING. 781 times down there, I tell you-some a cussin' the Government, more a cussin' the railroads, and all take turns a gettin' up before day to cuss Pomeroy. Reckon, they all deserve it. But if you want to buy'land down there, this is the best time since 1860." It was too true. When I took the southward train, the two passenger cars on the Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston Road contained just two dozen persons, and all of them looked blue. My friends in Allen County, who were so enthusiastic over Kansas in 1871, now mildly hinted, that if I was looking for land they " knew of a man who would sell part of his very cheap." Why is this thus? An enormous crop was raised last year, wheat excepted, and the people are all out of money, Corn is fifteen cents a bushel, oats eighteen cents, potatoes twenty cents, ground crops you can not sell at any price, and hay can be had by the thousand at two dollars a ton I Only one branch of produce "holds up "-cattle-and most of the farmers are holding on desperately to what few they have, as if the daily sight of them alone prevented them from feeling the pangs of conscious poverty. The low prices of living are simply amazing. Pretty good board can be had at one dollar and a half a week, extra fine at twice that sum. Many houses in Iola are vacant, and meals at the hotels are but twenty-five cents each. The authorities report that the cost of maintaining the criminals and paupers need not be over ten cents a day, and prices generally are flat. For those who have money, this is as good a time as any-that is, for one in a thousand of the population. Families live in affluence on four hundred dollars a year, and an income of one thousand dollars would make one a bloated aristocrat. In the country, the old settlers are "land-poor "--so rich that they can not pay their taxes. I have previously stated the fact, that "pioneers do not generally make the money." That fact is still more apparent here. The pioneer has come, bought land, and spent all his money in improvements; now he has big crops, which he cannot sell forash. It is timq now for the "second invasion," men with money, to come in, ï~~782 PROTECTIVE TARIFF. Now is the time to buy land in Southeastern Kansas, for every other man wants to sell half his farm. Many are the causes assigned; but most center on the railroads. The figures show that something is wrong. This corn, which sells for fifteen cents at the depot here, is sold for sixty-five cents in the eastern market. Who gets that fifty cents? Does it really cost that to transport grain to the seaboard? The farmers maintain that it ought to cost but half of it, and that the margin of twentyfive cents should be divided between them and the eastern consumer, giving them more for their grain, and enabling them to get eastern products cheaper.. They are organizing extensively into Farmers' Clubs and Protective Associations, determined to elect Representatives without regard to party politics, to see if laws can not be enacted to help the case. I do not question the justice of their plan, but I doubt its practicability. Farmers' organizations are very seldom concentrated and effective. The material of which they are composed is too much diffused, and their objects too diverse. Three hundred men running a railroad or manufactory, can act with tenfold the promptness of three hundred thousand farmers tributary to them. A diversified industry is what they want. And though they are now "passing through the low grounds of sorrow," I perceive that great good is to come out of this evil-if the railroad companies only maintain the evil long enough. The Protective Tariff is heavy enough in Ohio, but it is fully twice as heavy in Kansas; for the freight tariff on the railroads is the surest protection in the world. The reports from Missouri and Illinois contain some warning figures for the monopolists. The increase of home manufactures there has been amazingly rapid, and Missouri can either produce or manufacture at will, while those from whom she has heretofore bought are, by nature, limited to the latter. Kansas is moving in this direction as rapidly as her means will admit. The city of Lawrence is constructing an immense dam in the Kaw River, which will furnish two thousand horse-power. The company engaged in this work, composed of the wealthiest citizens of Lawrence, are renting sites for manufactories, with a guarantee of sufficient ï~~CHANUTE. 783 water power. This plan carried out, and there is no doubt of its practicability, and Lawrence in ten years will be a city of fifty thousand people. Living is very cheap, and building material abundant. This road will bring any desired amount of cotton direct from Texas, at forty per cent. of the cost of taking it to New England. Of course, all this would have happened some time anyhow, but the railroads have hurried it uip half a century. The monopolists may not immediately realize it, but they are most effectually knocking their own cow in the head. Warm weather was at least a month later than usual this spring in Kansas; and at 2.P. r. of a January day-the almanac says it was the 15th of April-I left Chanute, by the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, for a warmer climate. Chanute is the result of eighteen months' war and a compromise. At that point, the Lawrence, Leavenworth & Galveston crosses the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, at a very long angle. The followers of the first built the town of Tioga, those of the second built New Chicago; and between the two lay eighty acres of open prairie. This funny condition lasted until both towns were exhausted by mutual strife, and when there was nothing left to quarrel about, they united and formed the town of Chanute-named for the Superintendent of the Lawrence, Leavenworth & Galveston Railroad. After two hours' delay at Parsons, we started due south, though the cold seemed to increase every mile. Vinita, in the Cherokee Nation, the last place we saw by daylight, has improved greatly within a year, and the friendly co-operation of this road with the Atlantic and Pacific will make an important place of that town, their point of junction. Nearly half our passengers left us at Muskogee-not the town I visited a year ago, but a well-built place a mile below-whence stages run to Fort Gibson, Tahlequah, Fort Smith, the Creek Capital, and other important towns. It seems that the District Court for the Indian Territory is still located at Fort Smith, Arkansas, though the Department promised last year that one should be established at Fort Gibson, principal town of the Cherokee Nation. ï~~784 THE ALAMO HOTEL. Daylight found us in the center of the Choctaw Nation, still sixty miles north of Red River. The wind had ceased for a few hours; the trees were nearly in full leaf, and we seemed to have met the advancing spring at last. Timber covered about half the country, most of it post-oak, growing rather thickly along all the streamns. There the soil was very black, deep and rich; but on the prairies it was rather sandy, with a thin, black layer. Grass springs up there early in the season, but cultivation wears it out in a few years. Getting down in the regular valley of Red River, the land is first-rate for thirty miles north of that stream. No improvements, no towns, no cultivated farms are seen along the road;. but occasionally a cattle-yard appears, indicating the only trade, and more often a stylish log house or rude cabin, from which "White Choctaws" peer out at the train, with an air of lazy admiration. In the heaviest timber, wild turkeys often fly near us, and smaller game are quite abundant, while on the high prairies large herds of horses and cattle show the wealth and employment of the Choctaws. About 8 A. tM., we run down a long, steep cut, with red clay banks; thence upon a short bridge, and make the passage of Red River into the sovereign State of Texas. In fifteen minutes a regular "norther" was blowing, and when we left the cars at Denison, overcoats were almost as necessary as on the previous day in Kansas. But after leaving the warm Pullman car for an hour or two, I find that it is only cold enough to be gently stimulating; and, judging from my experience, I should say this part of Texas has a delightful climate. Red River City, on the banks of that stream, laid out by the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, was to have been the great place, but all the trade has concentrated at Denison, four miles below. The Alamo Hotel, where I stop, deserves a week's study. It unites the characteristics of the Yankee hotel, the Southern " public house," and the foreign hostelrie, while its patrons are from every State in the Union, and almost every country in Europe. Denison is a northern town; two-thirds of its citizens, nearly all its business men, are from the North, and this hotel ï~~DENISON. 785 is run in the best northern style. But the native Texans delight to throng in the bar rooms and billiard halls, and spend their money freely for all the new-fangled Yankee luxuries. At the table I hear them speak of "canned milk" and "sure enough milk." Not one hotel in four in Texas uses "sure enough milk;" the "condensed" article is your only resource. All the butter used here comes from Goshen, New York, and the natives tell me there is not a county in this section that turns out five hundred pounds a year. "Cheaper to sell cattle an' buy it," they say, and I suppose they know. This fragment of conversation from two of my neighbors at breakfast interested me: " Hows the haalth on Noth Fohk?" "Pooty fayh. But the spiral maginnis tuck a good many of 'em down Main Trinity" (Trinity River). On inquiry, I learned that this was Texan for spinal meningitis. In like manner the motto, "Sic semper tyrannis" (universally known in the South as the exclamation of Wilkes Booth), is freely translated in Texas, "Six serpents and a tarantula." Denison is the quietest railroad town I ever saw. In two days there I did not see a drunken man, notice a knife or pistol in any one's belt, or witness a brawl. There is said to be a great deal of life and dissipation of evenings, but none of a vio. lent or dangerous kind. The State has a stringent law against carrying concealed weapons, which is strictly enforced in this vicinity. There is rather more security for life than in Eastern places of the same size. Denison is but six months old, and was not very bad even before the city government was organized. A miscellaneous collection of frame and log houses, with a few fine stone buildings and some canvas tents, stretching a mile each way, this town is rather better than the average Union Pacific towns, and has a striking family resemblance to Cheyenne in its best days. This or Sherman, eight miles south, is to be the metropolis of North Central Texas; but nobody can say which as yet. Their rivalry is lively and good humored. Grayson county has been settled somewhat for thirty years; but there are still vast quantities of uninclosed land in convenient 50 ï~~786 PLENTY OF GOOD LAND AT LOW FIGURES. reach of the railroad, for sale at from three to ten dollars per acre. Near Red River the land is somewhat sandy, but it gradually changes southward, and all the southern part of the county is the richest-of a black loam-yielding large crops of corn, wheat or cotton. There are no dairies, and few potatoes are grown here. Those on our table are from Iowa, of a uniform large size, and worth about six cents apiece. Apples sell "three for two bits." Per contra, very good lemons can be had for "four bits a dozen," fish very cheap, and Texas beef for a little less per pound than potatoes-i. e., six or seven cents. The freight business here is immense. A small regiment of men are employed about the two warehouses at the connection of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad with the Houston & Texas Central. The latter commenced building northward on the broadest gauge; but on nearing this road changed the plan and finished on the medium gauge. Hence the same freight cars can run through to Corsicana, 127 miles south of Denison; there they break gauge and transfer. That line is moving its rolling stock southward, and as fast as it wears out will narrow the gauge until the same width is continuous to Galveston. Evening draws on, and the motley crowd in the street in front of the Alamo increases to hundreds. There is the regular railroad follower, with glazed cap or slouched hat, dark red complexion, red shirt and brawny arm; the "sporting gent" of faultless exterior, whose wide-awake air in the evening, and eye with dark under-stain, indicate wakeful nights and sleep by day; and the Yankee merchant and his Southern clerks, the usual combination here. And there are the rural Texans lounging in groups of four or five, most of them dark, gaunt and grizzly; a few Mexicans, who have come with cattle herds all the way from San Antonio, and numbers of white "bull-whackers," sunburnt, healthy and jolly, carrying with them constantly their murderous whips, which look as if one heavy stroke with them would flay a cow's back. All are good humored and sociable; their language is the horror of grammarians, and such phrases as "dun gone," "clean clar out," "git shet of it," are elevated to the dignity of good ordinary speech. About ten per cent. of the ï~~NORTHERN TEXAS. 787 crowd are negroes; the waiters in hotels and.restaurants are sleek and polite, but the great mass are greasy, ragged and offensive. Everybody over ten years of age smokes, and a few under that age; and even little darkeys watch for the "old stubs" as they are thrown away, and extract a deal of comfort from the last half-inch. The popular Northern idea of the Texan is of a "half-horse, half-alligator" sort of a being, stuck around with pistols and knives, going up and down in the earth, seeking somebody whom he may "chaw up," and particularly hungry for Northern blood. But these are certainly not of that class; they are rather of the opposite extreme, especially the country people-mild, a little slow-motioned, open, lounging and communicative. The universal testimony is that there is no special antipathy to people from any section of the Union. I am surprised to find many partnerships of a Northern and a Southern man respectively, and late Union and Confederate soldiers, rooming together and "running" together, generally on the best of terms. The farmers adjacent to town are of the old Southern type, none of them very wealthy, but all social, communicative and glad to see improvement in the country, no matter by whom. Many with whom I have conversed complain of the taxes, though no heavier than citizens of many Northern States have paid all their lives, and say they will sell part of their land for tax money as soon as they have a good offer. On the whole, both from the testimony of old settlers and new-comers, I think there is a first-rate chance in this vicinity for prospective immigrants. II. NORTHERN TEXAS. FROM Denison I journeyed leisurely southward theough a very fertile region in Grayson and Collin counties. The soil is like that of the Illinois prairies, black and deep, with an occasional mixture of sand. I should judge that one-fifth of country was enclosed and partially under cultivation. Corn ï~~THE GREAT COTTON REGION. was two or three inches high, and wheat rather more advanced: but the air was still cool enough to make a little fire in the evening desirable. Farmers all tell the same story: "Monsus late, cold spring; wust since I've been in Texas. Cawn got up three inches high; then was cut down by a big frost; then we had two weeks 'o fine growin' weather, follered by rain an' another frost; now the cawn's doin' well agin, an' we've had the rain, an' the air's a leetle like light frost, but I hope not." We cross many bright, swiftly running streams, and the country alternates strips of prairie and timber-about twice as much of the former as the latter. All the improvements worth noting are on the prairie, but a "free-nigger patch," with demoralized log-hut, occasionally appears in the low wooded bottoms, where that class mostly live. Inquiring of a philosophical native why this was thus, he replied: Wall, they don't care for the breeze like we. Reckon they want to bleach out. You Northern folks are mistaken about that. 'Tain't the heat that burns dark; it's the wind, a-stoppin' the sweat. Folks that live in doors, or in the timber, an sweat free, are whiter than up North. Find as fair girls in Galveston as ever you saw." I had not thought of this, but believe there is something in it. Whether the colored American will by operation of this principle, eventually become a white man, is another question. In the center of Grayson County we pass through Sherman, a fine old Texan town, and the metropolis of this part of the State before Denison was built. It claims a population of 4000, which I think from its size not much of an exaggeration. Our course from there is down Main Trinity, at an average distance of five or ten miles from the stream, and crossing all its tributaries; so the country appears exceedingly well watered and fertile. The great timbered regions of the State lie east of Trinity, and it is estimated that at least onehalf of Eastern Texas is still covered with its primeval forests. At McKinney, in Collin county, we begin to enter the region where cotton is a staple. Governor Throckmorton, who has lived in this region more than twenty years, says that the district of two hundred miles square, with this county for its ï~~GENERAL HEALTHFULNESS. 789 northern boundary, "if stimulated to the highest extent of its productive qualities, could be made to yield a larger amount of cotton in the aggregate than is now produced in all the cotton growing regions of the United States." The statement is not an extravagant one. Not more than one acre in ten of the area spoken of is now inclosed; and of that inclosed the smallest part is devoted to cotton; yet the product is already important. In the year 1870 the entire State had only 2,964,836 acres of land under cultivation, yet the cotton crop amounted to 350,628 bales. Thirty thousand square miles suitable to the production of cotton still remain in a state of nature. Of the general healthfulness of Northern Texas I think there can be no doubt. There is little or no stagnant water, and no inalaria-producing swamps. The general level is high, the country gently undulating and crossed by many swiftly running streams. The native Texans, as a rule, are tall and slightly angular men, sometimes inclined to be swarthy; but it is, a rare thing to hear any one cough. On the other hand, the low valleys of the Brazos, Red River, Trinity, and other large streams can not be considered healthful for Northern men. From observation and native evidence, I am convinced that malarial diseases prevail near these streams very much in the same proportion they do in the immediate valley of the Wabash. But in respct to the heat I am agreeably disappointed. Except in the heaviest timber the summer temperature is no more oppressive than at the North. But for all that, an English resident states that he has received a letter from a countryman, who asks whether it is really a fact, as he hears, that "in Texas they must work at night on account of the heat of the day, and the flying snakes which have a special liking to bite Englishmen!" Thence through Ellis and Navarro Counties the country is of the same general description as far as Corsicana, where I stop for two days. Navarro and Corsicana, husband and wife, were noted and wealthy Mexicans who ruled over this region and owned the best part of it forty years ago. They welcomed American immigrants gladly, and thereby soon lost their sover ï~~790 THE WILD TURKEY. eignty; then sold their lands and retired from business; the county is named for the husband, and the town for the wife. I had found a warm climate at last, or the season had settled since I started, for the evening heat was a little oppressive; all the crops were "in a forward state," the grass a foot high'on the black sandy land, and lively Nature putting in her best licks. As I, strolled out after supper into the post oak grove east of town, Sand noted the changes of scenery and vegetation from that I had seen a few days before, I heard suddenly from the depth of the woods the long, quavering cry of the wild turkey. It was repeated again and again, but each time growing longer and more unlike any sound made by the turkey, till by almost imperceptible degrees it changed to the cooing of a dove; then it broke suddenly idto the lively rattling tones of the brown thrush, and again slowly died away to the melancholy cry of Sthe cat bird, from which, after a few preliminary tweets and flourishes it turned to a strain which might pass for an imitation, with lengthy dwelling on the vowel sounds, of the melancholy repeat: "I'm dre-e-e-aming now of Halli-e-e, Swe-e-et Hallie, swe-e-et Halli-ee." Again the sounds became longer and longer, to a mere wail, which ended in a quick chuckle and turned again to the soft cooing of the dove. It was the Texas mocking bird. They abound at this season in all the groves along the Trinity, and I am told that flocks of the birds known to the Northern summer pass the winter there. An excursion into the country showed that that county is about on the line where corn and wheat begin to yield to the extensive cultivation of cotton, but all three are produced side by side. Not more than one-fifth of the land in that vicinity is inclosed and improved, and vast tracks are for sale in every direction at from three to twelve dollars per acre, according to quality and nearness to the railroad. The planters say that three-fourths of a bale per acre has often been produced, but they seldom estimate that way, not counting the land as a very important item. They say "so many bales to the hand," and ï~~STYLE OF LIVING. 791 consider eight or ten bales for each worker a fair average. Putting this and that together, I judge that one man can tend twelve acres in cotton. They expect it to be worth at least seventy dollars per b)ale this year at the depot; but this, I suppose, is only a conjecture at this early period. From these figures I think they should be better fixed than they are; for I regret to notice that the style of living does not indicate an approach to luxury. There are no dairies; very little milk or butter is produced, and many of the farmers have neither on their tables, which looks queer for a "great cattle country." Farm houses are all of an open, roomy sort, mostly with porches on three sides, indicating that they are a shelter against heat rather than cold. The local -ways and manners, the general style of living and treatment of strangers do not differ particularly from those of our country districts in Indiana. There is a remarkable similarity in the condition of the people; nobody is very rich or very poor, and, as far as I can learn, there is but one grade of society among whites. But the negroes in many quarters are shockingly poor. They are even more lazy than the whites, and have not the education to make up for a lack of industry, or make a little work go a great ways. Five years persistent and intelligent labor would make them owners of half the land in the country; for it is for sale, and the holders generally would "as soon sell to a nigger as anybody." Those who were so distressed at the prospect of" social equality" have had all their scare for nothing; for the negro would scarcely go into white society, or live with the whites, if he were invited three times a day-no more than a very poor, ignorant and ragged white man in Ohio would go into the society of the wealthy and intelligent. That sense of personal shame, the dregs of self-respect, effectually settles such things without the need of law or specific regulation. Fleas are the curse of Corsicana. The little sand piles about town are full of them; it is one of the tests of gentlemanly breeding to "knock their hold loose" gracefully, and the citizens have a regular science of devising ways and means to c..eep their houses clear of them. But the great law of compen ï~~792 THE IMMENSE SIZE OF TEXAS. sation comes in there as elsewhere-or rather the Darwinian law of "natural selection and survival of the fittest." Those who are peculiarly fitted by nature to withstand fleas, flourish and increase; others emigrate or die: hence a new race peculiarly fitted to their surroundings; and any accomplished native can rout a flea with such inimitable grace that the historian can only admire without attempting to describe. But the State generally is not so troubled. Other undesirables are the tarantula and centipede, both very rare. " The former is certainly a much slandered reptile in the popular accounts at the North, for every one here says that it is comparatively harmless, and no one ever heard of a death from its bite. The centipede's sting is more venomous; it never strikes unless hurt or disturbed, but its venom causes the flesh to rot from the afflicted part, leaving the muscles bare. But all unite in saying they never knew it to cause death. I am, therefore, inclined to pass as fabulous, the statement a "returned volunteer" once gave me of this creature: "An insect, sir, that runs like lightnin', and spits a juice that'll knock your eye out at a rod off; hit's got a diamond eye, a back like a hairy spider, and a belly like a tobacker worm, with a thousand an' forty-four legs; each leg has four stingers, and every stinger carries second death." III. CENTRAL TEXAS. I AM amazed at the bigness of this country. I have traveled nearly three hundred miles across it, at the narrowest place, and am still a few hours' ride from the border. People talk quite familiarly of "neighboring towns" one or two hundred miles away. I thought I could see most that was worth seeing in a brief excursion, but I give it up. Texas can not be seen in less than a month. Stretching over ten degrees of latitude, and from the 16th to the 30th degrees of longitude west from Washington, it is evident that the State can not be described as a whole-or in general terms. Everything said about Texas, ï~~CLIMATE OF CENTRAL TEXAS. 793 whether good or bad, is true-if applied to the appropriate section. It reaches to within one-half degree of as far south as does Florida; while its northern boundary is nearly continuous with the northern line of Tennessee. But its climate and productions are not determined by latitude alone. The entire State consists of one great slope-or, perhaps more properly, a series of narrow plateaus, each breaking gently to the next lower-from near the foot of the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. On the eastern border this slope is nearly due south, and on the extreme south nearly due east; but in fourfifths of the State it is southeast. From the high, bare plains of the Northwest, and from the windeaves of the Rocky Moun-. tains, the "blue northers" sweep down over the Llano Estacado and treeless plains of Young and Bexar Districts, and greatly modify the climate to a much lower latitude. But down the streams the increasing timber lessens their force; the climate is singularly equable for the width of three or four counties, and then the heat increases rapidly till you again get within range of the tempering breezes from the Gulf. But the local records where I have lately been tell a pretty fair story. The thermometer never ranges quite as high as in latitudes a long way north. In Houston the climate seems nearly perfection. For twenty years the thermometer has never been above ninety-five degrees. At one time, in the coldest weather, it sank to ten degrees above zero, but rarely goes lower than twenty degrees. The average of the "heated term," one day with another, is there recorded at eighty-four degrees. There has never been a case of sunstroke at Houston. Only half a dozen are recorded at Galveston. Necessarily, over such an area as I have outlined, we find every product of the Temperate Zone, and many of the Torrid. In popular language here, I find that Texas is considered in four grand divisions. Eastern Texas includes the country from the Sabine to the Trinity River; Central Texas, that from the Trinity to the Colorado; Northern Texas means the two or three tiers of counties nearest Red River, and all of Young Territory; and Western Texas the whole region from the Colorado to the Rio ï~~794 PRODUCTS--PASTURE ALL THE YEAR. Grande, including the "stock region," especially so-called. By a glance at the map it will be seen that my route from Red River, via the Houston and Texas Central, was nearly down the centre of Central Texas. Changing from medium to broad gauge at Corsicana, the train bore us nearly straight south, slowly leaving the valley of the Trinity and bearing across the high country to the Brazos. The country appears of the same general character all the way; high, gently undulating, about one-fifth in timber, alternating "black lands" and sandy loam, and possibly one acre in ten under fence. All the rest is open for common pasture, though most of it belongs to private owners, and is for sale at from two to eight dollars per acre. Father Nugent, of Manchester, England, made a thorough examination of all Central Texas two years ago, in the interests of a large body of English, and here is part of his report: "The northern and middle counties of Texas yield wheat, corn, and all kinds of small grain in abundance on lands equally adapted to cotton, giving a bale of 500 pounds to the acre. These cotton lands, which are not to be surpassed in the world, are capable of yielding all kinds of fruits and vegetables. Many of the Western States afford good pasturage, and yield grass in abundance during the summer months, but Texas has the advantage of affording perennial pasturage without taxing the farmer with the heavy labor and expense of preparing food in the summer for his cattle and sheep, and then dealing it out to them in winter. The right of pasturage in the Western States has to be paid for, while in Texas it is free to all. It need not surprise our Manchester friend to hear that, during our recent tour in Texas, we came in contact with many men, now possessing immense properties and filling high social positions, who, not many years ago, arrived in that State without a single dollar. Their labor was their only capital, and in the Lone Star State it is the best foundation of wealth. Here is one of a hundred examples of a poor man becoming rich without a copper. Twenty-five years ago an Irishman engaged with a stock-raiser. There was no money to be given, but he ï~~HORACE GREELEY'S DESCRIPTION OF TEXAS. 795 was to be boarded and found in everything, and in the place of wages he was to receive one cow and a calf each month. Now hlie is worth $100,000 in cash, and sends to market each year from fifteen to twenty thousand head of cattle. Many a poor sailor, tired of the perils of the deep, has taken refuge in Texas, and by energy and perseverance has climbed to the topmost round of the ladder. Here is one, who was formerly a man before the mast, who has now six steamers on the Rio Grande, 80,000 head of cattle, 25,000 head of horse stock, 12,000 sheep, and 150,000 acres of land, and last year invested $29,000 in the Jackson and New Orleans Railroad. Horace Greeley paid Texas a visit the last week in May of this year, and christened it the ' Land of Promise.' After describing the richness of the soil and the easy conditions upon which it may be obtained, he says: ' As yet the mineral wealth of Texas sleeps undisturbed and useless. She has iron enough to divide the earth by railroads into squares ten miles across, but no ton of it was ever smelted. She has at least five thousand square miles of coal (probably much more), but no ton of it was ever dug for sale. She has gypsum enough to plgster the continent annually for a century, but it lies cquiet and valueless---a waste of earthcovered stone. She has more land good for wheat than Minnesota, yet imports nearly all her flour. She has millions of acres of excellent timber, yet builds mainly of pine from Louisiana and Florida. She sends to Ohio for her hams and to New York for her butter, and would import berries and fruit if her people had not learned, while they were unattainable, to do without them. If ten thousand Northern farmers would settle just below Houston and devote themselves to supplying that city and Galveston with fresh milk, butter, strawberries, raspberries, peaches, grapes, etc., they might charge double the prices and get rich faster than so many cultivators ever did before. They would have to make their own ice, but that is not difficult; they might have to teach the Texas Central Railroad Company how to run a milk-train fifty miles, but that need not exhaust their energies. The pasture-land, fenced, might cost them ten dollars an acre just around a railroad ï~~796 SOUTHERN TEXAS. depot and a junction; their cows might be picked at $15 per head, and they would soon sell hay enough at 200 per cent. profit to defray the cost of feeding and housing their stock."' From two trips through Central Texas, I consider the foregoing a very fair exhibit. Our road continued a general southward course to Hempstead in the valley of the Brazos, whence we bore nearly straight southeast to Houston. IV. SOUTHERN TEXAS. WHEN I entered Houston, I thought that certainly the most beautiful place in Texas. There had been a twenty-four hours' rain, and at 9 A. M. the sun shone out clear; the orange groves, magnolias, and shade trees looked their richest green, and Houston presented to the newly arrived Northerner a most enchanting appearance. That city, the original Capital of Texas, is at the head of Buffalo Bayou, a long projection of Galveston Bay, but for some days there had been quite a current owing to late and heavy rains. Three steamers were anchored in the narrow channel, arid half a dozen or more alligators, about six feet long, were sunning themselves on the drift-wood. The view there was not lovely, but back in the city, and on the level tract in every direction around, it wgs all the tourist could desire. Attending Baptist Sabbath-school, and Presbyterian Church, I found about three dozen persons at each, whence I argued that the Houstonians are not piously inclined, or that a bright Sunday had greater charms outdoors than an orthodox sermon within. Monday morning I was early awakened by a few shots, and rose to find some of the patriotic citizens celebrating the thirtyseventh anniversary of the battle of San Jacinto. I was evidently in an extreme Southern latitude at last. Pictures of Lee and Stonewall Jackson adorned the places of resort; the boys whistled "Bonnie Blue Flag" and "Dixie," and two of my neighbors at the breakfast table had an animated conversa ï~~LANDS WITHOUT FENCES. 797 tion about the "doin's o' them d-d thieves up at Austin "-a polite reference to the present Legislature. By midday it might have been called hot; the water still standing in the flat places about town sent up a cloud of steam, and the weatherwise observed that we should "have a regular norther "-recognized us Nature's regular plan in this country for settling the weather. Some fifty negroes were rolling freight on the levee, and about seven hundred more lounging around town, while the whites seemed rather more busy and generally employed than in most places in Texas. All the dwellings in Houston have a delightfully home-like look, with wide porches around three sides, and almost hidden in dark green groves. The "mixed train" for Galveston left at half-past 2, and consumed four hours in going the fifty miles. In addition to the regular peanut fiend, and generous man of five dollar jewels in " two bit" candy boxes, we encountered numerous little darkies selling gorgeous tropical flowers, conspicuous among them the immense magnolia buds, which open to the full flower in a few hours after being gathered. The road runs nearly straight southeast, apparently over a perfectly level plain, sloping so gently down to the Gulf that the eye can not perceive the decline. For a mile or two from Houston we run through a heavy grove, then out into an open prairie, and for ten miles see not a house or rod of fence. Thousands of acres of the finest land in the State are still unfenced, the native sod unbroken; and between Houston and Galveston one does not see fifty houses. All the citizens tell me that my former estimate, of one-third of this division of country fenced and improved, is entirely too high, and that in no part of the State, except possibly in the southeast corner, is more than a fifth or a tenth of it inclosed. In the Valley of the Brazos and Trinity, where the soil is of inexhaustible fertility, for two hundred miles less than one-tenth of it is under cultivation. But the immediate valleys of these streams are not healthfuid for Northern men. Herds of Texas cattle are seen in every direction from our train, and grazing appears to be the only use made of this fertile prairie extending for thirty miles from the ï~~798 GALVESTON. coast. Nearing the shore we find a few houses, surrounded by little farms devoted to fruit, vegetables and poultry for the Galveston market, but nothing to indicate the vicinity of a great city. Passing these we enter open country again, and flat marshy land of little value extends some five miles from the Gulf. On the low, sandy shore, we pass the ruins of an old Confederate earthwork, erected to defend the railroad from Yankee gunboats, which made many efforts to get into the bay between the city and the mainland. Thence we enter on a trestle work, which - continues for a mile and nine-tenths, carrying the railroad over to Galveston Island. There we find beautiful gardens and orchards, fields of corn now three feet high, and vegetation generally about as far advanced as in late June in Ohio. From the depot the omnibus rolled along the shell road as smoothly - as if upon glass, while an accommodating gentleman, learning that I was a stranger, pointed out all objects of interest as we passed, giving me a rapid history of each. At the Exchange, some distance from the business part of town, and the favored home of tourists, I find already a number of visitors who have sought the Gulf shore for health and pleasure. I am pleased with Galveston. It seems to me the location can not be excelled for comfort. An island of hard white sand, thirty miles long, and from one to four broad, rises evenly on every side from the salt surf; nowhere more than ten or twenty feet above high tide, the location has just slope enough for convenient drainage. The streets run with the cardinal points, and are lined on both sides with heavy shade trees. Except in' the center of town and the business front on the north side, and known as the Strand, the houses are surrounded by oranges, oleanders and other Southern trees and flowers, the neat, white dwellings rising from this dark green and leafy mass. All day the Gulf breeze sweeps inland through the broad streets, and after an hour or two of sultry calm the land breeze blows outward all night. In the morning there is another warm calm of an hour or two, then the ocean breeze comes again. One would think it ought to be the healthiest place in America. ï~~GENERAL LONG8TREET'S RESPONSIBILITY. 799 But there are drawbacks. About once in five years the yellow fever visits the place. The last time the city was almost entirely abandoned. Already the papers and physicians are arguing pro and con the momentous question, " bill it come this year?" Late arrivals report it as very bad at Rio Janeiro, and slowly advancing along the "Spanish main." We reached Galveston on a gala day, and starting out for an evening study of the place, I found every public resort thronged, and bands of music discoursing lively airs. All firemen and militia were out, in varied red, blue and gold, and a thousand or more negroes thronged the streets "happy as clams at high tide." San Jacinto's anniversary was the occasion of all this pother, and in speeches, songs and dialogues I heard the whole history of Texas fought over again. Through all their singing, speaking and self-glorification one thing deserves especial mention: I did not hear, or hear of, a single sentence which could be construed as disloyal or specially hostile to the North or the Federal Union. There was unbounded praise of everything and everybody Texan, but all the speakers either carefully avoided any reference to unpleasant topics, or had so fully come into harmony with the new regime that they did not even feel discontented. But the next evening we had something nearer to the old Southern style. One General Pendleton, an intimate personal friend of General Lee, and now raising funds for his monument, delivered a lecture on the "Life and Character" of that hero. It is considered, by the Republicans there, an expositAion of the most extreme Southern opinion, and if that be true, it ought to be published at the North as an evidence of wonderful improvement. The General advanced two startling propositions. The first was that Longstreet was solely responsible for the disastrous defeat at Gettysburg; that he disobeyed the explicit orders of General Lee, and by wilful slowness and want of harmony, threw "the masterly combinations of the General commanding into confusion, and gave time to Meade to mass an impregnable force in front." And the second charge is like unto it: "In the wilderness, where Hood had made so happy a diversion in favor of Lee's overworked twelve thousand, had ï~~800 RIDE ON THE BEACH. Longstreet been up, as he should have been, with the Texans, who belonged to his corps, it is undeniable that Grant's repulse would have been changed to a rout, and he forced back to the defenses at Washington." Thus, according to General Pendleton, Longstreet is'solely responsible for two of the greatest disasters (to the South) of the war. "Important, if true." But, unfortunately, the only witnesses who could have given us certainty on this point are dead, and we must feel a suspicion that there is a strong effort just now to make Longstreet as much of a scapegoat as possible. The lecturer abused General Grant a little, but in general was highly eulogistic of the Northern troops. It wouldn't be policy, you see, to deny the possession of bravery to those the General was fighting, for that sort of detraction has an awkward back-action about it. The braver the enemy, the braver are we who withstood them. From a three hours' ride on the beach I returned quite in love with Galveston. Between the highest and lowest tidemark is a firm, wide expanse, some two hundred yards wide, extending around the head of the island and down the southern side for thirty miles. The heaviest carriage wheel barely marks it, the foot of a horse scarcely dents it; sloping gently to the water's edge, washed occasionally by the highest tide, and always swept by a gentle wind, it is certainly the most beautiful drive on our coast. From 4 P. r. till dark, there is the place to see the beauty, wealth and fashion of Galveston. Instead of a winter resort, as I had supposed, this is becoming rather a midsummer resort. Old settlers from Virginia and Kentucky tell me they visit those States in the spring or autumn, but make it a point to spend midsummer here, for coolness. I have run down ten degrees of latitude in ten days, from late winter to early summer, and begin to feel the effects of such a change. But in the open halls and on the wide porches of the Exchange here, with the Gulf breeze by day and the outward breeze by night, I am fast getting my constitution accustomed to a deal of rest, and like the lotus-eaters of Homer's fabled isle, having tasted the delights of an ocean beach in the tropics, nothing but compulsion will take me away. ï~~HOUSTON. 801 V. TRIP TO AUSTIN. FROM Galveston to Austin the railroad runs through the very heart of Texas, connecting the two most important cities. Along this line, if anywhere, we should expect extensive improvements, continuous cultivated farms and a regular succession of settlements. In fact, less than one-fifth of the country is enclosed, and in every county tens of thousands of acres of the greatest fertility are still in the native sod. After leaving the low sandy land near the Gulf we traverse a strip some thirty miles wide, with less than one family to the square mile, on an average. $razoria County, lying just west of the road, and surrounding the mouth of the Brazos River, extending inland seventy miles from the Gulf and crossed by half a dozen fine streams, is acknowledged to be the finest sugar region in the State, yet not more than one acre in six is under cultivation. Hon. C. B. Sabin, representative from that county, informs me that it is considered in Texas one of the oldest and best settled counties. Matagorda, around the mouth of the Colorado, and Galveston, extending sixty miles inland from Galveston Island, the two other counties in Mr. Sabin's district, are even more thinly settled than Brazoria; and it is a very moderate estimate to say that in these three counties there is still room for fifty thousand planters. Harris county, next on our route, where I stopped for a day, seems to me more thickly settled than the others, and contains Houston, the second city in the State. Here more railroads intersect than at any other point in the State---the Galveston line running southeast to that city, the Brazoria road southward into the county of that name, the San Antonio road westward to Colorado County, and northeastward as far as the Trinity River, the Houston & Northern northward into Anderson county, and the Texas Central to Red River, with a branch from Hempstead to this place. With all these lines, and more projected, and claiming, by reason of Buffalo Bayou, to be at the 51 ï~~802 HARBOR OF GALVESTON. head of navigation, Houstonians naturally expect that to be something of a place. There, too, I learn the important fact that Galveston will be without a harbor in a few years, as the bay between the island and the mainland is steadily filling up. There is some difference of opinion even at Galveston on that point. All admit that where there was "thirty feet of water in front of the city when it was laid off, there is now but twelve;" but from this basis they proceed to very opposite conclusions. The mass of the citizens unite in asking Congress to make an appropriation for clearing the harbor, and modestly insist that an expenditure of" one or two million dollars will insure the best harbor in the world for the next fifty years, if not forever." But a respectable minority maintain that a great mistake was made in the first place in locating the city on the island; that it ought to have been put on Bolivar point, nearly straight north, on the mainland, where the water retains its depth or increases. At the head of this party is "Old Doc" Jones, familiarly so called, the oldest settler of Galveston, and a survivor of" the glorious revolution of 1836." Although he was one of those who laid out Galveston, he now maintains that the island city should only be kept as a place for residences, and that the commercial city should be removed as above; and, in a conversation with me on the subject, stated that he should go to Washington to oppose the harbor appropriation. I have wandered from my description of the counties on our route. The last was Harris, and there again one would naturally expect a thickly settled country. But in six hours' drive from Houston one may find thousands of acres of first-rate land unoccupied, and for sale at from $5 to $10 per acre. "Too much land in Texas," is the universal answer to my queries on what seems to me a strange state of facts. In other Western States one usually finds the settlements very thick on the eastern boundary, and falling off suddenly at the border, so that a day's ride will take one out of civilization to primeval wildness. But in Texas the "border" is all over the State, except possibly in the southeastern corner the settlements and farms are nowhere coterminous; and in all that part of the State east of longitude ï~~PEACH TIt EES. 803 970, there are about as many people in any one section of twenty miles square as in another. All things considered, one section is about as good as another; all are equally free from Indians; society, law and order are about equally established in all, and the pursuits of the original Texans, a minimum of farming to a maximum of hunting and herding, require considerable areas of open land between the farms. But a new era has now set in; cattle raising as the exclusive occupation is confined to the Western District, and all Texas is now calling for immigrants. Soon after passing west of Austin, I am told, the uniform distribution of settlements ceases; there are vast areas of wild land, and the sparse inhabitants are collected at a few accessible points. Soon after crossing the Brazos, from Austin County into Washington, I found an old Arizona acquaintance-the cactus, of the species that would, I think, be called the prickly pear in the East. We were evidently entering a somewhat dryer country. The testimony of settlers is that crops fail in that region no oftener than elsewhere, but a different style of cultivation is required---deep plowing, rolling the land and planting early. There have been two heavy frosts this year, both cutting the corn badly; but the third growth is already well under way, giving the few fields quite a pleasant shade of living green. About the border of Bastrop and Travis counties a young Texan directed my attention to the distant plain, asking: "Do you see our peach groves?" "Indeed!" I answered. "Are those peach trees?" "Certainly; you'll find thousands of them growing all over the country without a fence. Cattle never touch 'em." We were now right among the "peach trees," at least they looked exactly like them, and I was proceeding to make a note of so remarkable a circumstance and ask for further information, when a general laugh announced that I had been "sold." They were mezquit trees. They grow in patches on the highest and dryest lands, and at a little distance present the exact appearance of an old peach orchard. Cattle certainly "never touch 'em," for at the joining of each twig is found a little gray thorn, as ï~~804 THE CAPITOL. THE CAPITOL. long and sharp as a needle. I had an ugly experience with one bush back of the Capitol before I had been in Austin a day. From the center of Travis County the road traverses a beautiful country down to Austin, which appears from afar like a scattered collection of neat white cottages, embowered in groves and grassplats. Once in town the place is found to be like ancient Rome, built upon seven hills, a slope, and a level plain. The cityward bluff of the Colorado rises almost perpendicular for thirty feet or more from the water's edge, thence a beautiful plain extends for some two hundred rods northward, and rises by a gentle grade to several beautiful knolls-the same that I have called "hills" above, though none are high enough to deserve that name. On the crest of the central one, which slopes evenly toward all the cardinal points, stands the Capitol; north of it are other public buildings, all around and for two miles further north are the finest private residences, while the city proper, of trade and crowded streets, extends from the Capitol down to the river., Except the main street due south from the Capitol, and a few of the nearest cross streets, the city appears like an extension of retired country seats. At three or four places only is the steep bluff graded down to give a passage to the river; but north of town is a more gentle slope, and a broad sandbar. On the opposite side is a range of heavily timbered hills, and all around, far as the eye can see, and twenty miles further, extends a gently rolling country, alternating strips of fertile prairie with pretty little groves. The commissioners who selected this site for the Capitol deserved well of their country; but they looked a long way ahead; for it was then (1839) "far up country," on the Indian border, and even now this may be considered the western limit of connected settlement. But they had faith in the future, and with prophetic eye forsaw a possible Reavis, hence selected the most available spot near the geographical center. In 1841 several men were killed by Indians within the corporate limits of the city, and Castro, a Lepan chief, was regularly hired by the infant government to scout north and west and keep off the Comanches. The growth of the city has been slow and regular. ï~~GOV. E. J. DAVIS. 805 Of manufactures, there are none worthy of note, except the two ice factories. One uses ether, the other aqua-ammonia, and together they turn out a thousand pounds daily of perfectly pure ice, which sells at three cents per pound. The city rests upon successive strata of soft limestone, which "crops out" on all the slopes; the Capitol, all the other public and many private buildings are constructed of it, and the "macadamized streets" simply consist of the same with overlying dirt worn off, or carted off to the gardens. Of course my first duty was to call upon the Chief Executive, Governor E. J. Davis, and hear his side of the administrative question, having heard the other side at Galveston. I saw in the Governor a tall man of medium build, with rather light hair, (absent on top of his head, about as far back as "veneration,") with mustache and beard full, not long, and lighter than his hair; but whether his eyes be blue, or "light gray changeable," I cannot tell after several attempts. There is about his chin and eye something that reminds me vaguely and not pleasantlyof Brigham Young-indicating a man a little too fond of power, or somewhat determined in having his own way in everything. This may be an error, but I wouldn't like to be in his power if I had offended him. Across the hall I found the Adjutant General, in whom I recognized my old friend Captain Frank Britton, formerly of the Twenty-fifth Indiana Volunteers, and later of Evansville, Indiana. He left that city about the time I did, early in 1868, and after five years I am proud to find him in honor and position among the "Lone Star Staters." Evansville is a good city to emigrate from. Most of the young men who leave there manage to live out West without being sent home to their friends. As we talked two negro men and one woman arrived from Hill County, with a terrible tale of outrage. Their cabin had been attacked on the evening of the 18th, and one of them captured. He was hanged by the neck till nearly dead to make him tell where his brother was, who had been charged with some petty crime. They let him down, and supposing him too far ï~~806 MOST OF THE REPORTED OUTRAGES IN TEXAS UNTRUE. gone to travel, guarded him but carelessly. He escaped that night, and lay in the brush till joined by his mother and the other negro, when they journeyed here to see the Governor. So ran their story. But it did not seem that anything could be done about it, as the legislature had just repealed the State Police law, on which the Governor relied. This reminded me that I must go on with my inquiry into State affairs, for which purpose especially I had come to Austin. VI. GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY. IT is not very important to the prospective immigrant whether a State is ruled by Democrats or Republicans; but it is important whether the laws are equable, just, and promptly enforced; whether life and property are reasonably secure. The Government, which preserves these and touches the liberty of the citizen at the fewest points, is the best government, no matter what form it may assume. My opinion of Texas is made up from a month's experience, a careful examination of the records, and interviews with the best posted men of all shades of opinion; and I may sum it up in three postulates: 1. There is no special hostility to Northern men, late Union Soldiers, or Republicans. 2. Not one in ten of the reported crimes resulted from political strife or hatred; they were largely from old and longstanding neighborhood fends, which hold their ground longer and grow more bitter in a fixed population like that of the South, than in the moving population of the Central North. 3. There is still a slight feeling of hostility to the Freedmen in a few sections; but much less than a few years ago, and growing less constantly. The State had considerable lawlessness for a few years after the war, which was vigorously suppressed; but out of that suppression grew other evils, which in turn are being redressed. A brief history of the administration of the present Governor, ï~~HISTORY OF THE ADMINISTRATION. 807 E. J. Davis, will give the reader a fair idea of the existing condition. Taken as a whole, it has undoubtedly been a success. Even his enemies acknowledge that the " administration measures," so-called, worked great good for a time, but his friends are compelled to admit that the same means were soon after used to carry out the most outrageous tyranny. It is the old story over again: a condition of strife and social disorder leads to the placing of inlmense power in one man's hands; but when the disorder is passed, the ruler has grown too fond of his power to part with it without a struggle, and employs it to crush opposition. The people seek refuge from anarchy in a sort of legal despotism, and are driven by despotism into worse confounding anarchy. The first election (after reconstruction) in 1869, the Democrats allowed to go by default; two Republicans were candidates, and Davis was elected, and took the office in April, 1870. The condition of the State was deplorable. Before the war, it had not been as bad as reported, though quite bad enough. For instance, in 1860, with a population of 650,000, Texas had a total of 121 homicides; while New York, with 3,000,000 people, had but 37. There was a steady and rapid increase of crime until 1869, the first year of the new regime, for which there are full returns, when the State had no less than 1200 homicides! It is true, there was some increase of crime everywhere just after the war; but in Texas it was five times as great as even in New York City. In this state of facts, the leading Republicans brought forward what are sometimes called the "Five Administration Measures:" The militia law, the State police law, the concealed weapon law, and the school and immigration laws. The first authorized the Governor to suspend the habeas corpus at his discretion, to order militia from any part of the State to another part, and to arm any portion of the population in any disturbed neighborhood. The police law organized a small body of mounted men, to be continually under pay of the State, and ready to go to any section. They were, in fact, about the same as a standing army for the State; but never numbered three ï~~808 FIRMNESS AND BRAVERY; hundred men. The third law of the list forbade the carrying of deadly weapons, whether concealed or not, except in the counties west of the Colorado, and on the northwestern border. These were certainly "allopathic remedies," but the heroic treatment exactly fitted the case, and succeeded better than the most sanguine had anticipated. The Governor exercised great judgment in the appointment of officers, making no distinction between Union and Confederate, where there was reasonable proof of devotion to law and order. A majority of the privates, I think, were men who had been in the Confederate service. In particular, one Captain McNally (of the same rank in the Southern army) deserves special mention for bravery and energy. When sent into one of the upper counties to guard the Court during trial of a man for shooting a negro, a dozen men, who had served under his command in the war, camne to him and said, "Captain, for God's sake, leave this place. We are bound to take that man from the police; but you we know to be a brave Texan, and we don't want to hurt you." The Captain replied, and it was a noble thing to say under the circumstances: "Boys, do you remember the day in '61, we were drawn up in line, held up our hands to God, and took an oath to support the Confederacy? You've seen me in many a fight, and you know how I kept it. Now, I've taken another solemn oath to support this Government, and I'm going to do it, too. You know me, don't interfere with me." He and his four men of the State police were attacked while in charge of the prisoner; the Captain received three severe wounds, and all his men were disabled. One of the police being shot in the cheek and neck, plugged up the hole with the fore finger of his left hand, while he emptied two pistols with his right, then drew his knife and came to close quarters. They succeeded in getting the prisoner to the penitentiary, where he served his term. The moral effect of these things was tremendous. Eight hundred murderers and desperadoes fled the State in a body. The laws were for awhile strictly enforced; there was a hanging in every other county; except on the Mexican frontier, and in ï~~A DEFAULTER. 809 the extreme west, life and property were rather more secure than in most border States. These repressive measures were supported by many of the Democrats-those holding considerable property, even members of the present Legislature, who have been active for their repeal, have been to the Governor with appeals for troops to be sent to their counties. Meanwhile, in 1871, the Democrats carried the State, and by that time the evil features of these laws became apparent. They began to be perverted to mere instruments to maintain the party supremacy. The next year, 1872, matters grew much worse. The police were used in Galveston and other places in that district to break up meetings of Democrats and Liberal Republicans, without the shadow of justification. In one case in that city, a mass meeting was ordered to disperse by the Chief of Police as soon as the first speaker rose, and before even a cheer was uttered. Some of the facts of this nature narrated to me would be incredible, were it not that they are proved by unimpeachable witnesses. Those to whom such immense power had been intrusted, could not refrain from using it in their own interests. Meanwhile, the State Treasurer, George W. Honey, Radical Republican, elected in 1869, had fallen under the displeasure of Governor Davis, who charged him with being a defaulter. In May, 1872, Mr. Honey, who is a Methodist Episcopal clergyman, went to New York to attend the Quadrennial Conference, purposing to be absent several weeks. Soon after his departure, the Governor declared that his absence was a forfeiture of the office, and on the 27th of May sent AdjutantGeneral Davidson, with a "posse of armed police, and took forcible possession of the office. The chief clerk was quick enough to turn the key in the combination lock before the soldiers entered, when he and all the rest were forcibly ejected. The Governor then appointed a commission of editors and leading merchants to take charge of the oflice, and count the funds; but they could not open the safe, as the clerk, who alone knew the combination, kept out of sight. Mr. Honey hastened home as soon as he heard of these pro ï~~810 CONFLICTING OPERATIONS. ceedings, and the Commission applied to the Supreme Court for a mandatory writ, which was granted, commanding him to open the safe or be sent to the common jail, "until his case can be heard upon its merits." He consented, on condition that the editors should be removed from the Commission, and certain bankers, whom he named, be substituted; which compromise, after some legal sparring, was accepted. The safe was opened, the money counted, and, instead of a defalcation, the report gave $69,000 more than the Comptroller's books called for! Of course, this was an error of the Commission, which was fully pointed out and explained by Mr. Honey. Pending this count, the conspirators had gotten up fifteen indictments against Mr. Honey, f6r embezzling various sums from $15 to $200, all of which fell with the report. The Governor appointed another to take the place of Honey, who brought a writ of quo warranto. This would have been tried before Judge Richardson, of the Austin District, who, however, was thought to be rather too upright for the end desired. Accordingly, he was sent to another district, under a strange provision of the Texas Constitution, and in his stead was brought one Judge Oliver-who, by the way, has since resigned to avoid impeachment on very serious charges. He ruled out Mr. Honey, who appealed to the Supreme Court, where the matter rests. There can be no doubt what the final decision will be, as the law is too plain to be disregarded; but it is thought that in order to smooth over matters and mend the breach between the Governor on one side and the Treasurer and Comptroller on the other, they will put off the decision till the last of their respective terms. Bear in mind, that all these proceedings are in defiance of the plainest provisions of the Constitution; that the Treasurer and other State officials can only be removed or suspended by impeachment, like the Governor, and the monstrous "irregularity" is apparent. It would be a comedy if it were not so near to a tragedy. The election of 1872 was carried by the Democrats, by an overwhelming majority. In the House of Representatives they have three-fourths, and in the Senate only lack three or four ï~~THE SITUATION OF AFFAIRS. 811 of having two-thirds. They had, at my visit, been in session between three and four months, laboriously working to repeal the laws of the last (Republican) Legislature. The regular proceedings was to pass an act, send it to the Governor, get it back with a veto message, and then put in a few days bringing over the requisite number of Republican Senators to pass it over the veto. Hence it was rather slow work. A week had passed since they repealed the State police and militia laws, and many were apprehensive of a renewal of lawlessness. The Governor gave me this statement of the situation: "I think if it had been left to a vote of the people, they would have retained those laws by a large majority. Without them the condition would have been intolerable. Very few of the homicides resulted from political feeling. Many of them were from old feuds, which broke out in a general period of lawlessness. The condition in Central Texas is now much better than in border States generally. There will be some increase of crime for a little while, but the great immigration of a better class will make the country peaceful." Two of the State police-Brown and Ferguson-had been shot all to pieces in Tarrant County, a few days before. They had acted as detectives, and broke up the Ku-Klux lodges there. The law against carrying arms is stringently enforced yet, which accounts somewhat for the peaceful appearance I took note of at the railroad towns. Hon. C. B. Sabin, Representative from Galveston, who has been in Texas for twenty-six years, gives me his opinion thus: "There have been private grievances from these severe laws, but the general outcome was good. Reconstruction was well managed in Texas, though property interests did not assert themselves at first. From 1865 to 1870, every man you met had a pistol or a knife, often both. Now, private arms are rarely seen. It was not political, but a general feeling of insecurity throughout the State. Nobody had any confidence that the law could right him. I am a Radical Republican, but I can not perceive that there is any feeling against Northern men." I was sitting in a vacant seat by Mr. Sabin, in the Represen ï~~812 TEXAS OFFICIALS "POOR STICKS." tatives' Hall, when the conversation was interrupted by a huge black man behind us rising to speak. It was Hon. "Shack" (S. R.) Roberts, of Harrison County. His speech was in opposition to a resolution forbidding any member to leave the hall without consent of the Speaker, and was replete with humor and sarcasm, causing great laughter and applause. He is a Methodist preacher, very black, and uses the broadest "plantation-darkey" English. The six colored members of the House and two in the Senate add a pleasing variety. The members generally are rather a superior body of men, and would compare quite favorably with those of Indiana or Ohio. (After that comparison, further description would be "risky.") I was introduced to the Honorable "Shack," and after giving his testimony to the improved condition of affairs generally, he added: "The Methodists have done wonders for our people in edication, and we're a doing more. Our church at home-the A. M. E.-has just 'stablished the Wiley University at Marshall, Texas-named after Bishop Wiley. We bought two hundred acres in i mile an' a half of the court-house, afore the town started up so with the railroad, an' now we're sellin' it off fast in buildin' lots at from fifty to two hundred dollars a lot, savin' just twenty acres in the middle for the university. We'll soon have it running, and it will be free to both sexes, 'thout regard to color or previous condition." The Texan black, it will be seen, is tolerant. Governor Davis' career in Texas has naturally given him great influence with the Adminstration at Washington, which I am afraid has been badly used; for if universal testimony proves anything, the Federal appointees in Texas are a set of "poor sticks." The result of official tyranny was, that the German element and Liberal Republicans revolted in a body, and the Democrats now have the State beyond a peradventure. The interests of all property holders are for law and order, and in all that part of Texas east of the Colorado, life and property are as secure as in the Western States generally. ï~~MINERALS. 813 VII. MINERALS OF TEXAS. THE entire State, consisting of one continuous slope from northwest to southeast, all the rivers running in the latter direction, it follows that as we go northwest we get into a higher and more broken country. Practically, little difference is observable until we are two-thirds of the way across the State, when we enter upon the lower splurs of the mountains and the high lands adjacent to the "Staked Plain." In that region minerals of all kinds have been found, some in great abundance. Quite an excitement was in progress during my visit over the discovery of gold in one of the upper Counties. I append the report of a practical observer: "God, in his generosity, seems to have given a share of all of his best gifts to Texas. It is the vestibule of rich Mexico, and the Texas and Pacific Railway may be called the key; all that is now needed is a firm, bold American hand to open the door to the countless treasures so long kept from the world at large, and as yet scarcely touched by civilization, and only partially known to science. There are no such riches near the termini or in the neighborhood of any of the other transcontinental routes. But before we reach Mexico, let us look at the minerals of Texas itself, most of which are in the direct line of the Texas and Pacific Railway. The iron of Burnet, Llano, Lampasas, Mason and McCulloch is of four species--magnetic, spaltic, specular, and hematic; much of it adapted to' steel. I have already spoken of the ore at Kelley's works, near Jefferson. They claim to have discovered a superior anthracite in several counties, and have sent specimens to the General Land Office at Washington. The copper of Texas depends on no hypothesis, but is a fact. I saw specimens of almost pure ore. Wichita, where my German friend goes with his colony of four hundred Saxons, abounds in this metal. The lead and silver of El Paso, Presidio, Bandera, and Llano counties are proved to exist in large quantities. Gold has been found in. limited quantities in ï~~814 EXTENSIVE QUARRIES. the same region. There are a dozen salt works in the State. The average yield of the works at Coffee's Saline, in Llano County, is five hundred bushels, to be easily increased by intelligent labor to two thousand bushels. The salt lakes on the coast, however, supply the greatest amount. "There is no gypsum field in the world surpassing in extent that of Texas. It is found almost everywhere on the waters of Red River, extending into Staked Plains, and through the cretaceous formations of the State. That of saccharoidal character predominates, but thin, transparent plates of selenite in crystals are common in various parts of the State. "Large deposits of potters' and fire clays, adapted to the manufacture of pottery, in Eastern, Northern, and Southern Texas, marls and other fertilizers, mineral oils and pigments; feldspar in the granite veins, associated with garnets and tourmaline of various colors; mica, in transparency and size of plates equal to that of New Hampshire, in Llano, Burnet, and Mason counties; extensive quarries of marble and roofing slate and grindstone in San Saba, Burnet, and Llano counties; soapstones and abestos in Llano county, with a large class of metallic substances usually present in highly metalliferous regions-such as alum, cobalt, nickel, manganese, arsenicabound, the description of which would occupy more space than can be spared in the present issue. They are generally found in combination with each other or associated with other metals, which, though at present of little economic value, will no doubt grow in consequence with the increase of population in the State and progress of the useful arts, until eventually, under the mutual effects of cheapened labor and enlarged means of transportation, they become the means of immense wealth." VIII. WESTERN TEXAS. NINETY miles west southwest of Austin, by the stage road, is the old Mexican town of San Antonio; the vicinity has been ï~~WESTERN TEXAS--THE GREAT GRAZING REGION. 815 settled nearly a hundred years, and is the "historic ground" of Texas. There are the old cathedrals and convents, the old Spanish walls and fortifications, which give the beholder a feeling as if in the Old World; and near by is the classic Alamo, which takes rank as the Thermopyhe of the Texas Revolution. For nearly a century the Mexicans had made this a grazing ground, and three-fourths of it is now used by the American and native herders. In area it is immense. Its principal water courses are the Colorado, Guadalupe, San Antonio, Nueces, and Rio Grande, with such smaller but perfectly lovely little rivers, as the San Marcus, Comal, Blanco, Medina, San Saba, Rio Llano, and Rio Frio; besides a great many other still lesser ones too numerous to name here. This part of Texas is peculiarly the home of the honest, hardy, money-making ranchero. Here his cattle and his flocks can graze upon a "thousand hills," with "none to molest or make afraid." While there are many other portions of Texas in which stock-raising can be made very profitable, there are none at all in which all the advantages are so admirably combined as in Western Texas. The central portion of Western Texas, is regarded as the best sheep country in the State. It is a broken, high rolling country, supplied with an abundance of rocks and clear rippling streams and excellent grass. The sheep are very fat, grow magnificent fleeces, and owing to the mild climate the herders are very successful in raising the lambs, the percentage of loss being almost nothing. Except in the southern part, most of Western Texas is too dry for agriculture to be a certain resource without irrigation; but by reports of engineers, a considerable portion of the land can be watered by acecquiae from the numerous rivers. But by far the largest portion will remain a grazing ground for all time. East of the Neuces, Western Texas abounds in fine water power along the head waters of the San Antonio, the Guadalupe and the Colorado. There is, perhaps, no part of the world ï~~816 HISTORICAL. where permanent water power can be obtained at so small expense for all kind of machinery required in mechanical and manufacturing pursuits. The want of capital and the unsettled condition of the country for many years past, have prevented the proper use of this great natural advantage, but the time is not many years distant when cotton and woolen factories will be established in that part of the State, where the raw material can be had at the lowest price and without the cost of transportation. IX." HISTORICAL. SOUTHERN TEXAS has had Spanish settlements since within a hundred years after the Cortez Conquest; and a hundred years ago there were many Mexican herdsmen in the counties on the Rio Grande. Early in the present century, some Anglo-Americans entered the southeastern part of the State; quite an emigration from New Orleans and other Gulf Cities followed, and by 1835 it is estimated that the now-Mexican population had reached 50,000. They are now glorified in annual "San Jacinto Days" as a noble army of patriots, braves, and incorruptibles; but I am afraid the majority would not know themselves in that character if they could come back and hear the orations. It seems to have been a settled thing with them that they were to revolt against Mexican ruleas soon as they grew strong enough; and the ruling Mexicans, no doubt, furnished them abundant excuse. Texas and Coahuila had been united under one government, and passed, by the Revolution of 1824, from being part of a Spanish viceroyalty to a "Sovereign State of the Republic of Mexico." This union, alike between the States and the Republic, proved to be an unhappy one. There was little in common between the inhabitants of Coahuila and the Anglo-Americans of Texas. So great was the national dissimilarity that even judicious compromises, early and graciously made, nor reciprocal forbearance generously practiced, would long have preserved ï~~BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO. 817 the hollow truce between these divided States. No line of policy could have been pursued that would have been acceptable to both, nor long have maintained amicable relations between the colonists and those who had inherited the prejudices and intolerance of a European parent. As early as 1826 an attempt was made in the Department of Nacogdoches to establish a Texan Republic, under the name of Fredonia. Though unsuccessful, it attracted the jealous eye of the Supreme Government, who believed that a modified system of terror was essential to the welfare of the country, and under the ostensible pretext of securing the revenues, gradually introduced troops and garrisoned posts, but whose real object was to overawe the Anglo-American colonists, whose increasing power and prosperity inspired envy and alarm. The violent decree of Bustamente, in 1830, created profound dissatisfaction, and fired the colonists with the sentiment of resistance. It resulted in the first military collision, which, under fresh causes, were periodically renewed, until 1835, when a deep sense of the necessity of a permanent separation from the National Government seems to have penetrated alike all classes and conditions of society. A declaration of independence was followed by a sharp and vigorous campaign; this terminated on the 21st of April, 1836, in the "glorious battle of San Jacinto." The Texans, closely pursued, had fallen back across the Colorado and Brazos, and made a last stand on a field which lights the historic page of the infant republic with the blaze of victory. The morning sun of the 21st of April, 1836, shone on the comparatively powerful forces of Santa Anna as they descended the right bank of Buffalo Bayou to conquest and victory; but his evening beam beheld the Mexican army beaten and flying, and the President himself a prisoner in the hands of the AngloTexans. The battle of San Jacinto was fierce and short, and may be regarded as one of the decisive battles of the word. It determined forever the independence of the Republic. But Santa Anna, when he had secured his liberty, refused to observe the treaty made when he was a prisoner; and the war 52 ï~~818 THE ALAMO. continued in a feeble, irregular way for several years. In this revolution occured the notable affair of the Alamo, the most heroic sacrifice by a few brave men that is recorded in our history. When the Mexican army of invasion crossed the Rio Grande, Colonels Travis, Bowie, and Crockett, with a few determined men, took possession of the Alamo fort, and after being surrounded by' the Mexican army refused all offers of capitulation, determined by selling their own lives dearly to delay Santa Anna until the Texan Govenment could raise an army and put the country in a condition of defense. "Soon after midnight on the 6th of March, 1836, the Mexican army, commanded by Santa Anna in person, surrounded the fort for the purpose of taking it by storm, cost what it might. Long before daylight the Mexicans advanced towards the Alamo, amidst the discharge of musketry and cannon. Twice repulsed in their attempt to scale the wall, they were impelled to the assault by the exertions of their officers, until, borne on by the pressure from behind, they mounted the walls, and, in the expressive language of an eye witness, ' tumbled over like sheep.' Then commenced the last struggle of the garrison. Travis received a shot, and fell, as he stood on the walls cheering on his men. When he dropped, a Mexican officer rushed forward to dispatch him. Sunmmoning up all his powers for a final effort, Travis met his assailant with a thrust of his sword, and both expired together. The brave defenders of the fort, overborne by multitudes and unalble, in the throng, to load their firearms, continued the combat with the butt end of their rifles until only seven were left, and these were refused quarter. Major Evans was shot while in the act of firing a train, to blow up the magazine, by order of Travis. Bowie, who had been confined several days by sickness, was butchered in his bed, and his remains savagely mutilated. Among the slain there was one who, surrounded by a heap of the fallen enemy, displayed even in death the freshness of the hunter's aspect, and whose eccentricities, real or reputed, have familiarized England with his name--David Crockett, of Tennessee--a character such as could only have been produced and perfected within the limits of his own country. ï~~MQOE8 ROSE. 819 " The rudest form of sepulture was denied to the brave defenders of the Alamo. Their bodies were stripped, thrown into a heap and burned, after being subjected to brutal indignities. The obstinate resistance of the garrison, and the heavy price which they exacted for the surrender of their lives, had exasperated the Mexicans to a pitdh of ranoorous fury, at which all considerations of decency and humanity were forgotten."Kennedy's History of Texas.1 The strength of the garrison was about one hundred and fifty, and in the History of the Revolution, the Mexican los is set down at fifteen hundred. It was long supposed that none of the garrison escaped; but long after the war one Moses Rose confessed that he had refused at the last minute to share his comrades' fate. He climbed the wall, got down outside into a ditch, reached the chappural and, being disguised as a Mexican and speaking the language. fluently, escaped. He gave the following account of his last hours in the Alamo: About two hours before sunset, on the third day of March, 1836, the bombardment suddenly ceased, and the enemy withdrew an unusual distance. Taking advantage of that opportunity, Col. Travis paraded all of his effective men in a single file; and, taking his position in -front of the center, he stood for some moments, apparently speechless from emotion. Then, nerving himself for the occasion, he addressed them, closing as follows: " Then we must die I Our speedy dissolution is a fixed and inevitable fact. Our business is, not to make a fruitless effort to save our lives, but to choose the manner of our death. But three modes are presented to us. Let us choose that by which we may best serve our country. Shallt we surrender, and be deliberately shot, without taking the life of a single enemy? Shall we try to cut our way out through the Mexican ranks, and be butchered before we can kill twenty of our adversaries? I am opposed to either method; for, in either case, we could but lose our lives, without benefiting our friends at home-our fathers and mothers, our brothers and sisters, our wives and ï~~82O NO SURRENDER. little ones. The Mexican army is strong enough to march through the country, and exterminate its inhabitants, and our countrymen are not able to oppose them in open field. My choice, then, is to remain in this fort, to resist every assault, and to sell our lives as dearly as possible. "Then let us band together as brothers, and vow to die together. Let us resolve to withstand our adversaries to the last; and, at each advance, to kill as many of them as possible. And when, at last, they shall storm our fortress, let us kill them as they come! kill them as they scale our wall! kill them as they leap within! kill them as they raise their weapons, and as they use them! kill them as they kill our companions! and continue to kill them as long as one of us shall remain alive! " By this policy, I trust that we shall so weaken our enemies that our countrymen at home can meet them on fair terms, cut them up, expel them from the country, and thus establish their own independence, and secure prosperity and happiness to our families and our country. And, be assured, our memory will be gratefully cherished by posterity, till all history shall be erased, and all noble deeds shall be forgotten. "But I leave every man to his own choice. Should any man prefer to surrender, and be tied and shot, or to attempt an escape through the Mexican ranks, and be killed before he can run a hundred yards, he is at liberty to do so. "My own choice is to stay in this fort, and die for my country, fighting as long as breath shall remain in my body. This will I do, even if you leave me alone. Do as you think best-but no man can die with me without affording me comfort in the moment of death." Col. Travis then drew his sword, and with its point traced a line upon the ground, extending from the right to the left of the file. Then, resuming his position in front of the center, he said, "I now want every man who is determined to stay here and die with me, to come across this line. Who will be first? March!" The first respondent was Tapley Holland, who leaped the ï~~DAVID CROCKETT. 821 line at a bound, exclaiming, "I am ready to die for my country!" His example was instantly followed by every man in the file, with the exception of Rose. Manifest enthusiasm was universal and tremendous. Every sick man that could walk arose from his bunk, and tottered across the line. Col. Bowie, who could not leave his bed, said, "Boys, I am not able to come to you, but I wish some of you would be so kind as to remove my cot over there." Four men instantly ran to the cot, and, each lifting a corner, carried it across the line. Then every sick man that could not walk made the same request, and had his bunk removed in like manner. Rose, too, was deeply affectedt, but differently from his companions. He stood till every man but himself had crossed the line. A consciousness of the real situation overpowered him. He sank upon the ground, covered his face, and yielded to his own reflections. For a time he was unconscious of what was transpiring around him. A bright idea came to his relief; he spoke the Mexican dialect very fluently, and could he once get safely out of the fort, he might easily pass for a Mexican and effect an escape. Thus encouraged, he suddenly aroused as if from sleep. He looked over the area of the fort; every sick man's berth was at its wonted place; every effective soldier was at his post, as if awaiting orders; he felt as if dreaming. He directed a searching glance at the cot of Col. Bowie. There lay his gallant friend. Col. David Crockett was leaning over the cot, conversing with its occupant in an undertone. After a few seconds, Bowie looked at Rose and said, "You seem not to be willing to die with us, Rose." ".No," said Rose, "I am not prepared to die, and shall not do so if I can avoid it." Then Crockett also looked at him, and said, "You may as well conclude to die with us, old man, for escape is impossible." Rose made no reply, but looked uip at the top of the wall. "I have often done worse than to climb that wall," thought he. Suiting the action to the thought, he sprang up, seized his wallet of unwashed clothes, and ascended the wall. Standing ï~~822 GENERAL VIEWS. on its top, he looked down within to take a last view of his dying friends. They were all now in motion, but what they were doing he heeded not. Overpowered by his feelings, he looked away and saw them no more. Looking down without, he was amazed at the scene of' death that met his gaze. From the wall to a considerable distance beyond the ground was literally covered with slaughtered Mexicans and pools of blood. He viewed this horrid scene but a moment. He threw down his wallet and leaped after it; hlie alighted on his feet, but the momentum of the spring threw him sprawling upon his stomach in a puddle of blood. After several seconds he recovered his breath; he arose and took up his wallet; it had fallen open, and several garments had rolled out upon the blood. He hurriedly thrust them back, without trying to cleanse them of the coagulated blood which adhered to them. Then, throwing the wallet across his shoulders, he hurried away. X. GENERAL VIEWS. TEXAS is a rich State, inhabited by poor people; a sovereign State, that must ask permission of New York to build a railroad; with seven million cattle, and without milk or butter, except as the latter is imported; with so much good land, that it makes all the owners poor to hold it; with a climate so mild, that an ordinary stimulating breeze is called a "blue norther;" with such a bewildering mass of native wealth, that people suffer in deciding what to do, and so many sources of enjoyment that the people have not the energy to enjoy anything except laziness. Instead of subjecting nature, man seems to be subjected by nature in the larger part of Texas. With all this natural wealth, why are the people generally poor? This is a conundrum that is hard to answer. There has been too much sameness of production for one thing: all stock raising in the upper counties, and no manufactures. The ï~~FINAL. 823 climate invites to ease and repose, and the people are too contented. A man with ten thousand cattle upon the range, is content to live on corn bread and boiled beef, sit on a hickory "shakeup" chair, sleep on shucks, live in a board or log "shantie," chew "homemade" tobacco, and spit through the cracks. "An undeveloped empire," hackneyed comparison for the whole West, is literal truth applied to Texas. With nearly three hundred thousand square miles, two-thirds of which is fertile, it certainly has room for all the surplus population of the Southern and border Western States for half a century. And they are coming fast.- Railroad men and others, who are in a position to know, estimate that the immigration to the State at present varies from two to four thousand a month. The population increased but slowly till 1850, when it was 212,592; thence rapidly till 1860, when it was 604,215, and again more slowly till 1870, when it was returned at 818,579. It is now supposed to b)e about a million and a quarter. An area more than five times as large as the State of Ohio, with a higher average of fertility, and a climate suitable for corn, cotton, tobacco and a dozen fruits, is literally begging for inhabitants. Four-fifths of the State is healthful for northern men, and lands are comparatively cheap, even in the older portions. The State has three through lines of rail, and expects soon to have the Southern Pacific. All things considered, the result of my observations has been to improve my opinion of Texas as a place of settlement. THE END. ï~~3558-18B ï~~ ï~~ ï~~ ï~~ ï~~%I t a-dD- c/ "".3 A kin (Isa -Lr6S 4 ï~~1 1111 8I 41