On the wing : rambling notes of a trip to the Pacific

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ON THE WING.

RAMBLING NOTES

TRIP TO THE PACIFIC.

MARY E. BLAKE,

[.•\r. E. H.I
Author of "Poems" "Rambling Talks" etc.., etc..

THIRD EDITION.

BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS.

515

f

COPYRIGHT,

1883,
BY MARY E. BLAKE,

PRINTED BY

JAMES S. ADAMS,
BOSTON, MASS.

INTRODUCTION.

A DEMAND from many quarters, — which a
AA servant of the public has no right to disre-
gard,— and the interest evinced by a wide
circle of readers, when the letters which make up
the larger part of these pages appeared last year
in the Boston Journal, have induced me to offer
them again, revised and enlarged, in this more
permanent form. Partly because I think no book
should ever be published which requires apology
for its contents, and partly because the title of
the little volume sufficiently explains its want
of elaboration, I shall make no excuse for the
casual nature of the following chapters. For
what could be expected of one on the wing, but

bird's-eye views ?

M. E. B.
BOSTON, January, 1883.

96045

NOTE TO THIRD EDITION.

In answering the call for a third edition, the
author desires, for herself and publishers, to offer
sincere thanks for the generous kindness with
which her little book has been received both by

Press and Public.

M. E. B.
BOSTON, 1883.

CONTE NTS.

Chapter. Page.

I. A FIRST FLIGHT; FROM BOSTON TO CHICAGO . i

II. THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT WEST . . . n

J1I. ON THE WAY THROUGH COLORADO . . . .23

IV. THE GARDEN OF THE GODS 33

V. IN THE GRAND CANONS 43

VI. THE BORDER LANDS OF ROMANCE 61

VII. THE CITY OF THE ANGELS 81

VIII. A CALIFORNIA STAGE-RIDE 99

IX. THE VALLEY OF THE GREAT GRIZZLY BEAR . . m

X. A CLIMB THROUGH THE CLOUDS 121

XI. WITHIN THE GOLDEN GATE 135

XII. SOME OF THE WITCHERIES OF CALIFORNIA. . . 145

XIII. ECCENTRICITIES OF CALIFORNIA .... 159

XIV. AMONG THE MINES 169

XV. IN THE CITY OF ZION 185

XVI. HOMEWARD- BOUND ACROSS THE CONTINENT . . 199

XVII. A GLIMPSE OF NIAGARA 209

XVIII. PROS AND CONS ON THE SUBJECT OF EXCURSIONS . 221

ON THE WING.

CHAPTER I.

A FIRST FLIGHT — FROM BOSTON TO CHICAGO.

THE first night in a Wagner " sleeper," en route
for California, is apt to be one of the expe-
riences of life. You have not yet got your
sea-legs on, so to speak ; you have n't fully mastered
the seaman-like roll which is to carry you safely
over the heaving deck of the palace car ; the manage-
ment of your equilibrium bothers, and you are just
sufficiently dazed and tired to be a little miserable
whether or no. When the time comes to enter your
bunk, even if it has a double berth, you lose heart
still more. It looks so straight, and the curtains so
heavy, you bump your poor head getting in and your
poor back getting out ; you are tingling yet with a sort
of sub-acute excitement at the danger and daring of
your rash act in going west on a flying trip through
the dark, and the spasms of home-sickness, which
have been coming and going at intervals all day, begin
to settle into a sober ache of longing. In this strait,
such minor shocks to your sensitiveness as a glimpse
now and again of a gentlemanly young fellow in his
shirt-sleeves, or a lady-like young person in her corset
cover, become rather exhilarating than otherwise, as
proclaiming your release from conventionalities, and as
rubbing off that dust of conservatism which naturally

2 ON THE WING.

clings about any bit of New England society. You
peep out occasionally to see how the rest are getting
on, until nothing is left but the empty, narrow aisle
in the middle, and then at last compose your own
decorous nightcap to sleep. But a sense of responsi-
bility remains with you. Every time through the long
night that the car gives a lurch, you sit up to ponder
its meaning; every time the-whistle sounds you draw
your curtain to know what it means. A vague im-
pression that the engineer needs watching and guid-
ance rests with you, and weights even your short
dreams with personal care. You are not a bit nervous
— just as cool as the very hot atmosphere of the car
will allow one to be — but you prefer getting up every
half-hour to see that things are properly attended to.
Farther up, an easy old traveller sleeps soundly and
loudly ; could habit ever make yoit so selfish ?

Your sleepless disinterestedness pays in the end;
you get so much more for your money. Why, here
last night, in different glimpses, were first an illumi-
nated city- — its flaring lights streaming high into the
misty air like an Aurora ; then a gaunt row of spectral
poplars standing like soldierly ghosts in the white
moonlight ; now a thunderous passage of some flash-
ing meteoric train, and again the shadow of a quiet
town asleep on a hillside ; once we tore through a
tunnel with dismal and awful shriek into the colored
signals and electric brilliancy of a great crossing ; and
once, just as the sky began to change to the faint
opalescence of dawn, there was Cassiopeia, low down
in the north, with each of her five stars aflame like a

ON THE WING. 3

burning torch, looking in at us in a wholly royal man-
ner. And all this thrown in like a side-show at a
circus while you are taking flying leaps through the
darkness at the rate of forty miles an haur ! A sym-
pathising friend who heard all this next morning, con-
soled me by the prediction that I would sleep like a
top to-morrow. But poople who desire to sleep like
tops should always stay to hum — that is not what we
paid our money and came West for.

" How did I get in a Wagner sleeping car? " Well,
that's neither here nor there. If a busy home-body
chooses to pack her trunk one day and go on a Ray-
mond excursion the next, whose business is it? Isn't
it the only way for a busy home-body to go ? If she
stops to consider all the pros and cons, — the baby's
new tooth, the spring house-cleaning, the chances of
coughs and colds, the children's changes for summer,
the general depravity of inanimate things, in fact,
which works such infernal revolutions in a household
when its natural head is absent, — if she waits to think
of these, — the stay-at-home weight will be so over-
whelming in proportion that she could not be pro-
pelled away by anything short of a catapult. She
who hesitates is lost. The only part for a valiant
woman is to buy her ticket, close her eyes, and at one
fell swoop leave all behind her. It was the plunge of
Curtius which saved Rome.

We started on a gray day, teary and dreary like our
feelings, but with occasional bright gleams and fair
promise of a joyous to-morrowr. A railroad car is
never particularly cheery, and is too business-like to

4 ON THE WING.

be picturesque; but by the time you get your wraps
disposed in graceful negligence, your extra bundles
put away, arid the flowers which loving hands have
brought to. breathe their sweet message of fragrant
remembrance disposed to the best advantage, your
particular section manages to put on a home look.
You find, too, that of all other places it is the best for
fraternizing. Strangers in the morning are acquaint-
ances at night and friends by breakfast time.

There is nothing like travel for giving a person
broad views of men and things, and crushing in the
bud puerile enthusiasms. For what other reason can
the man who goes to Europe for two months sit calmly
down on his neighbors for the term of his natural life ?
For what other reason could we, who ordinarily would
rave so loudly and long over the Berkshire Hills, look
at them now with the supercilious, well-bred indiffer-
ence of people on their way to Pike's Peak and the
Rocky Mountains ? A woman who has a proper regard
for her nervous centres cannot afford to begin to gush
a hundred miles from the start, when she has nine
thousand miles of a journey still before her. The
climax would be too terrific. So we crossed the State
line into New York in heroic silence.

But when we began next morning to pass through
the beautiful meadows of Pennsylvania and Ohio,
when the lagging sun came out at noon and found us
still passing fields as level and green as the baize of a
billiard table, when night fell while \ve were seemingly
in the midst of that beautiful, fertile, stoneless reach,
we began to talk in spite of ourselves. Fresh from

ON THE WING. £

the rock-ribbed soil of New England, where only by
mistake a little earth is occasionally found sifted over
the granite foundation, these smooth, flawless stretches
of country are beyond any conception we can form of
them. Even the rich brown soil, covered now with
the faint green of freshly-springing wheat and grain,
was not so novel to our eyes as this wonderful free-
dom from any vestige of stoniness. The brakeman
who heard us commenting so delightedly over this
was evidently nonplussed. " I shed be more s'prised
ef et ivuz rocky," said he; "in these parts cf a man
scoops in a stun that weighs fifty pounds he hauls it
hum an sets it up in his front yard for folks to look
at." Towards noon we passed the tragic bridge of
Ashtabula, looking calm and innocent enough, span-
ning the shallow, brawling stream that danced in the
sunshine below it. A little later on, the red roofs of
the pleasant farm-house, which its dying master so
longed to see, showed themselves beyond the little
station at Mentor. There was a group of peach trees
in full bloom, shining like a pink flush between the
tender green of budding apple trees ; the happy fields
were smiling at the waking touch of growth, but our
hearts went out more in accordance with the sorrow-
ing woman who sat by her solitary fireside, than with
the living springtime.

As we enter Cleveland I find- a disappointment in
store. In common with most sensible people, certain
words have always had a strange power of exciting
me to romance and conjecture. Vinelands and vine-
yards belonged to this catalogue; so when they told

6 ON THE WING.

us we would reach the grape country soon, visions of
sunny, sloping hillsides, with shadows filtering through
broad leaves and graceful tendrils climbing over rustic
arches were in my mind. It was no use for common
sense to say it was not yet summer; common sense
is the slave of imagination, and as such ordered about
without mercy. Imagine then the shock, of acre after
acre of short stakes, thick and clumsy, as if some
enterprising Natick boot manufacturer had planted
shoe-pegs for seed and they had grown up, for that
was all we saw of the vineyards. The vines were not
yet out of bed ; but the city itself is a pleasant one,
and shows its kindly side to strangers in the beautiful
park which skirts the railroad.

Lake Erie was in one of her surly moods after a
long storm, which had riled her naturally placid com-
plexion into muddiness. There was none of the lovely
blue of my beloved old ocean, and even the passing
sails of far-away ships could not make it have the
proper effect. We began after dinner to come across
little log cabins here and there, and girls and women
dowered with that enormous sunbonnet which seems
to be a birthright of the Southern and Western pretty
maid. Two rosy-cheeked poppets on the platform of
a country station we passed, flirting with an awkward
young Hoosier, showed that this sort of inelegant head-
gear can be made as eloquent as a Gainsborough hat,
when the head it covers is young and beautiful.

Still the same level, smiling fields, the rushing train
flying in a straight arrow line through them. There
is very little unpleasant motion. Some drowsy ones

ON THE WING. 7

are dreaming away on improvised pillows ; some are
reading; some visiting neighbors; — it seems as if we
were already so used to the novelty that we have been
here a month instead of a day. At Toledo a sonorous
gong, which I suppose is the sort of guitar the Toledo
blades use in serenading, woos us to supper. The
small boy who bangs it evidently means to earn his
money. We find the usual unusually good meal wait-
ing. On this point the excursionists have made a ten-
strike ; they live on the fat of whatever land in which
they happen to tarry.

It seemed, at first, as if a different atmosphere
should mark our passage across each state line, —
some change of feeling or temperature to mark our
progression between the somewhat finical straight-
"ness of Eastern limitations, and the broad unfinished
mental processes of the West. But though we have
tumbled over six boundaries already, I would never
have known we had left New England, except for the
level country and the queer, slovenly, zigzag fences.
And yet the simple consciousness of distance shadows
our jubilant spirits as the second day begins to darken,
and the thought of home leaves us, like Huldy, —

"All kind o' smily round the lips
An' teary round the lashes."

The porter of our sleeping-car must have moral
designs in keeping us so hot. He either wants to
frighten us into a belief in eternal punishment, or to
frighten us out of it. At five o'clock this morning, when
we awoke in the Chicago depot, it would have done

8 ON THE WING.

for a page of Dante's Inferno. I finished my toilet in
the open outer air, rather than smother within. But
we gave the young African his tip all the same, for
he did it out of kindness.

After one day of walking and riding around Chicago,
our impressions are like a kaleidoscope. So flat a
place was never before known ; it seems as if a spirit-
level had been taken, and even the usual slight curve
of the earth's surface smoothed off. Then they set
out Chicago. But they have large hearts and noble
ideas, these Western people. The stately, broad
avenues go in such magnificently broad lines, straight
as an arrow's flight, from lake to prairie. The beauti-
ful mansions, each set in its square of green lawn,
give a beauty and oddity to the richer part that the
business portion does not carry out. Looking from
the Sherman House, one might really be looking up
State street, except for the extra dinginess which the
soft coal adds to the great buildings. You can almost
feel t\\e smutchiness. Looking down across the busi-
ness portions, the heavy smoke clouds hang like a pall
low down even into the streets. I am afraid it would
spoil a good deal of the pleasure of life here for me.
We have seen wonders and wonders, but who wants
to be bored with details of sight-seeing when they can
come some other time and see for themselves — when
they can roll magnificently through the gas-lit bowels
of the earth with ships sailing above their heads,
or stand in awe and admiration before those four
gigantic engines at the water-works of which one
alone pumps 36,000,000 gallons a day, or see the enor-

ON THE WING. 9

inous stock-yards, or investigate the still more enor-
mous grain-elevators. The place is meant for a race
of giants — and they are giants in energy and large-
heartedness. This is why when one of them grasps
your hand with that firm, Western clasp, you feel
no longer a stranger in a strange city, but a friend
made at home by loving kindness, with a strong
support behind you which will back you for all it is
worth.

We are still in the same world as at home, however.
The troops of pretty girls you left in Washington
street are here walking up Clark street with the same
fluffy hair, big hats, and long satin overcoats. Spring
dresses are not out yet, though we were passing
dandelions and buttercups on the fields for hours
yesterday. Men and women may have a shade of
better color in their faces, but otherwise there is no
change. They talk of " blocks " in describing distances
just as they do in New York, and advertise houses
ufor rent '' instead of to let. They speak with a little
more breadth in their vowels and honest attention to
consonants, wisely thinking that if they were not in-
tended for use the words would have been spelled
without them; otherwise they are bone of our bone
and flesh of our flesh.

The streets on Saturday night are simply swarming.
I think nobody can be left at home, and the wooden
pavements are in the most awful condition, once you
get out of the really busy portion. A ship in a storm
is nothing to the tossing our barouche and poor
bones got yesterday. It is another of the evils of the

10 ON THE WING.

republics that such persons as whoever the man may
be who took the contract for this work and made such
a wretched bungle of it cannot be instantly beheaded,,
as a salutary warning to his kind. Two or three sum-
mary executions would save enough profanity to work
a larger revival than Moody and Sankey's.

CHAPTER II.

THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT WEST.

THE more one sees of Chicago, the more the
difference between it and an Eastern city
impresses itself. To walk the streets on
Sunday and see furniture wagons moving loads of
goods, the doors of hundreds of shops open, while
buying and selling went on, and crowds bent on
evidently temporal business, mingling with decorous
church-goers, was strange enough. But to travel
at night, under the glare of gas and electric lights, to
see theatre doors swarming with pleasure seekers,
brilliantly illuminated stores, immense number of Ger-
mans with their deep-mouthed gutturals, and the open
halls and pleasure gardens, made stronger inroad still
on the hereditary prejudices of descendants of the
Pilgrims. If another conflagration had swept the
place, like Sodom, from the face of the earth, it would
have been to many minds among us only the just
reward of its iniquities. Yet what right have we to
raise our own standard of morals and make every one
else doff his hat in passing? The foundations of
religious belief ought to lie too deep for such passing
winds to shake; and it would take much stronger
proof to convince me that there are not as many saints
in Chicago as in Boston.

12 ON THE WING.

We found a mild flavor of the great fire still in the
air; it will take a new generation to heal the scar.
Events reckon from before or after, relics linger in
private and public places, and the harrowing memories
of ruin and desolation still rankle in many hearts. But
this is sub rosa; outwardly, the brave, lusty city might
be a hundred years old for any trace of ruin or imma-
turity about it. The same magnificence of resource
which shows itself in its 350 acres of stock-yards, in
its forest of elevators, in its miles of new avenues, in
the stupendous rush of its business streets, is behind
everything. It opens the hands and hearts of its-
people to a hospitality as broad as its dimensions; it
puts a fine, impulsive swing into their everyday gait;
it makes a background of reality for the fabulous
stories of wealth and enterprise which are in the air.
You can fully believe that any Chicagoan, as well as
the man pointed out, might have found himself, on re-
tiring from business, with a million and a half more than
he counted on, or that any other might have answered
a friendly sympathizer, with the lordly indifference of

Mr. , who indorsed a note for two millions and

had to pay it : " O, I never look back at that sort of
thing ! " You can fully believe anything of a place
where porter-house steak costs only sixteen cents a
pound ; where strawberries come in March and go in
November ; where the horse cars run without horses ;
where the people have an amount of spiritual elasticity
which enables them to go to church Sunday morning
and to opera Sunday night without destroying their
usual poise, and where the world is so fiat that it seems

ON THE WING. 13

as if Dame Nature had mistaken the crust of the earth
for pastry and rolled it with a rolling-pin.

Remembering the markets of Philadelphia and
Washington, we were somewhat disappointed in those
of Chicago. There was nothing distinctive about
them, as Compared with the luscious piles of fruits
and flowers, the sweet-smelling heaps of freshly-
grated cor oanut, the tempting pats of butter hidden
under gref-n leaves, and the shining white eyes and
black facer, of the turbaned huxters in the spacious
southern quarters. Before you begin to question, you
might be ?,mong any collection of provision dealers,
ruddy-cherked and white-aproned, of your native city,
but as sorn as you hear the price list, you know that
this is another world. One does n't wonder that
prudent housekeepers here hesitate about coming to
Boster. to live.

We need to come West to understand the luxury
of modern travel. The spirit of enterprise is so ram-
p?nt here — the population are so constantly moving,
prospecting, investigating, colonizing, that they lavish
time and skill in eliminating every drawback from
the comfort of railway life. As a natural consequence
their cars are the best in the world. The Pullman is
brighter, roomier, and more convenient than the Wag-
ner. The sections are larger; the mattress and pillows
wider and softer ; the toilet arrangements more plenti-
ful. Add to this that you have acquired a certain
savoir faire — you know what you want and how to
get it; you have learned to go from one end to
the other of the train while at full speed without too

14 ON THE WING.

many false steps. You begin to have a certain home
feeling in the tidy compartment, which is your es-
pecial property, with its mirror between the two broad
windows, its portable table and its silver hooks. The
brightest of mulatto boys waits your beck to bring
a clean, white pillow for your tired. head, to brush
your dusty clothes, to fetch messages, to gather up
any incidental rubbish of orange-peel or peanut shell or
paper scrap. You can write if the mood takes you, or
play games, or read your neighbor's books ; if you
want anything under the sun, from a cambric needle
to a French bonbon, from a postage stamp to an en-
cyclopaedia, there are a score of valises besides your
own to choose from. There are books, magazines,
newspapers, maps, guide-books, and time-tables in be-
wildering array to consult ; there are country depots to
raid upon, and country people to startle, at queer far-
away places ; there are Mayflowers to gather and
strange beetles to impale at prairie watering stations ;
and there are the observations to make that belong to
this new order of things. Each car in the long train
lias its own special recommendation ; one has the
prettiest young girl, one the brightest company, one
the most elaborate finish, and so on. We modestly
plume ourselves on the most picturesque young man
with the most artistic leaning toward the fine arts, and
the nattiest and laziest little porter of the party,
"which namin' no names, no offence can be took."

Owing to these and a thousand other causes, the
third and fourth days of railroad travel are less weary
than the first. There is always something unexpected

ON THE WING. 15

to keep one awake and interested ; a long tract of over-
flowed country, with pale green cottonwoods growing
out of the water in a ravishing bit of aesthetic color-
ing, a forest of delicately-tinted trees, a bank of bril-
liant purple flowers extending for miles along the
track, or the long majestic sweep of some great river,
turbid and furious, with a flight of wild duck winging
their slow way northward. On the Mississippi we
passed a great steamboat — the steamboat of Kit, and
the Octoroon, and Uncle Tom's Cabin — top-heavy to
our sea-used eyes, with a raft of acres of logs float-
ing after it from the upper country. At Joliet we came
upon a crop of rocks for the first time after hundreds
of miles of smooth prairie ; and quarries of stone of
the strangest formation, as if the strata were laid in
masonry. Farther on was a region of coal mines ; at
the mouth of one a miner had just emerged from
underground. He was a solitary and most desolate
figure ; his flannel shirt open from throat to waist, his
heavy eyes lustreless, his face and bare arms as black
as the coal-bed from which he had just risen. As the
train slowly drew up at the tank near by, he stood
motionless, his tired arms crossed over his patient
breast, seemingly beyond being moved to anything
else than weary endurance. It gave me a pang to see
his pathetic figure merge again into the flat landscape.
What right had one part of the world to be butterflies
and the rest grubs ?

But to return to our Pullmans. There was a deli-
cious siesta at early morning when one first woke.
The uncertainty which made the night jerkily anxious

1 6 ON THE WING.

was over; you no longer felt obliged to know what
every twist or jar meant ; your faith in human nature
and the employe's of the railroad returned, and there
were two good hours during which, luxuriantly in-
dolent, you could doze and dream, or lazily watch the
panoramic world whizzing by your window. The
soothing motion, the novelty, the comfort were inde-
scribable ; you could meditate, admire, enjoy by turns.
Your horizon was absolutely free from care. When
it pleased you to get up, you knew that there was
a deft man-of-all-work to change your bed-chamber
into a drawing-room ; your breakfast would be ready
at some clean country station, ordered beforehand
by your advance courier ; every petty hindrance of
looking after or caring for baggage or checks would
be lifted from your shoulders, and there was no draw-
back to the blissful ease of perfect freedom. It
would be ruinous if this lasted too long; so you
rather welcome the sudden jerk that bumps your head
against the marble basin while performing your ablu-
tions, and then tumbles you into an opposite corner —
you feel that it makes you square with fate. To be
too happy might anger the gods.

It was lying this way one morning, looking, as I
thought, toward the west, for the sun had set on that
side the evening before, that I saw a glorious sight.
Little by little, up through the night, came a tint of
loveliest amber climbing above the horizon. Little
by little it changed, deepening into mellow orange,
and creeping high and higher, while flushes of rose-
color ran through it, until at last the entire sky was

ON THE WING. t?

one burning glory of crimson. While I lay breathless,
looking in wonder at such a blaze of reflected light,
the great round sun lifted itself above the world, and
I realized only then that our direction had changed
during the darkness, so that I had really seen day
dawn over the plains of Kansas.

It was about this time we were introduced to the
altogether delightful idea of the dining-car. Clean,
bright, and airy, with snowy linen — the whitest we
had seen since leaving home — with tiny sideboards,
set above the tables, gay with glasses and a bit or
two of Kiota, with a cuisine that would tempt a
gourmet, what a nice bit of variety show it made for
us. From the speck of a kitchen at one end, about
three feet by six, surrounded by ovens, steamers
and stew-pans, came a bill of fare with everything
from green-turtle soup to canvas-back duck, English
snipe, and olives. The cook was a cordon bleu, a real
chef in his honorable profession. How he created
the forty-seven dishes on his bill of fare from such a
mite of a laboratory would puzzle any one but such a
black conjurer as himself. I wouldn't mind putting
a girdle round the earth at any time with such a com-
missariat in front of me.

Kansas City is an absurd jumble of ups and downs.
We thought at first the inhabitants must be aeron-
auts, who went in balloons to reach their dwelling
houses, but on nearer inspection we found goat-paths
leading up the edges of the precipices, and graded
roads reaching around them by wide curves. Look-
ing at it from the standpoint of babies, it would be a

l8 ON THE WING.

dreadful town to live in. A single misstep would roll
any well regulated child from fifty to three hundred
: feet,! according to locality. I wonder all the grown-up
people are not cripples. The business town is on the
flats by the river. It is a place of great activity.
Thirteen railroad lines begin or terminate in it, and
the result is stupendous. That train on your right
will take you to Mexico ; this on your left to Boston;
just across .there is one placarded " For Colorado,
Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, Montana, Oregon and Cali-
fornia," which is a sort of multum in parvo only pos-
sible in a western station.

Kansas itself is a delightful country. All day we
rode between luxuriant fields of winter wheat or
springing corn, interspersed with huge stock-raising
farms, each divided by hedges of osage-orange in the
full -green strength of early summer. We saw, too,
substantial walls of stone — a pretty, cream-colored
stone, that makes a charming contrast with the vegeta-
tion— and neat, New England rail fences. The
slovenly Virginia fence, which is neither strong nor
lovely, seems to be discarded. In these immense
fields, all kinds of mechanical implements, moved by
horse-power, enable one man to do the work of a
'dozen. Such is the luxuriant richness of the loam
that it is absolutely black and seems of inexhaustible
fertility. It could be a granary for the world. In the
towns. one is constantly surprised by the beauty of the
public buildings, the finest cf which is usually the
school-house. Miles and miles away from any vestige
of civilization, beyond this always beautiful cultiva-

ON THE WING. 19

tion, you come upon a commodious two-story farm-
house, with a colony of smaller habitations clustered
near. Across the prairie roads you seldom see a
single horse driven, except for riding ; usually a pair
of fine animals are harnessed to even the smallest
vehicle. Here and there, by the bank of a river, or on
some overhanging cliff, the strange geological foun-
dation of the country shows itself; a geometrically
regular layer of cream-colored stone, two or three feet
in depth, set in a deep bed of clay which the touch of
time has dried into a resemblance of sandstone. In
the distance now and again a beautiful rolling country
fills the horizon, or a fine forest of straight young trees
comes down to the foreground. Sometimes for miles
we follow the course of the river, but ever and always
the great marvel to us is the richness of the soil. It
is a country of which one might truly say, " Tickle
it with a hoe and it laughs into a harvest." I can
see the old New England farmer who sits opposite
growing gray hour by hour as he looks upon this para-
dise of produce lands, and thinks of the rocky hill-
sides at home.

We rode on the engine for an hour one day, thanks
to the kind offices of a friend. Perched snugly on the
fireman's seat, the supple, sturdy monster, scarcely
trembling, except as now and then a fiery breath quiv-
ered through his throttle valves, the dust and cinders
which had been the bane of our lives in the cars
behind, floating entirely out of our atmosphere, we
dashed serenely through thirty miles of space as easily
as if we were passing the sixty minutes in a home

20 ON THE WING.

rocking-chair. (By the way, the happy man who ever
finds a Yankee notion for consuming the dust and
ashes on railway trains will enter into his reward even
in the flesh; blessing, fame and money — I put the
rewards in their proper order of progression — await
him). The wild western dash of speed, the unholy
noise of steam and motion, and the fragile look of the
narrow white track flying before us across the world,
would have alarmed my usually quiet nerves, if I did
not understand my surroundings. The engine was
built at Hinckley & Williams's on Harrison avenue ;
the engineer and his assistant were born, one in
Somerville and the other in Lawrence; my companion
was a slim young Bostonian, who could lead a German
or give you the Ottello Fantasie of Ernst one night
and climb Mont Blanc next morning, so I felt per-
fectly at home. Such a New England crowd would
never go back on me. The gallant fireman, when not
engaged in shoveling coal, explained the country
through which we were passing. "Wouldn't think,
would you, that that wheat Vd be tall enough to hide
a man on horseback next August?" he said. "Its
the truth ; I boxed some up V sent it home last year,
for I'm a eastern man myself. My father stands six
foot two in his stockin's, an7 'twas taller 'n him.
But ef they kin beat us on corn we Ve got the
bulge on them in brains. They got to fall back on
us yit."

Indeed, so far AVC have not been brought in contact
with any really Western people. They all seem to
have drifted here from other places. But they begin

ON THE WING. 21

to have mail-boxes at the stations labeled for "the
East," so that we feel we are at least drawing nearer
the star of empire.

Meantime, we have made up our minds that it is non-
sense to talk of the " tiresomeness " of railway travel.
Think of the tribulations of our grandmothers in going
from New York to Boston! Think of their rough
roads and their jolting, draughty carriages, their cold
comfort and weary days; then compare it with the
indolent, well- warmed, well-lighted entourage of this
royal progress, and imagine yourself a martyr — if
you dare !

CHAPTER III.

ON THE WAY THROUGH COLORADO.

IT is in Missouri that we first come upon Summer
and the mule. This much abused but indispen-
sable animal is a feature henceforth in every land-
scape. Old negroes drive qr lead them along stump-
lined roads ; fat piccaninies shy stones at their patient
noses from the door-yards of lowly wayside cabins;
gay youths, flannel -shirted and wide -belted, snap
long whips as they guide teams drawn . by four or six
animals over the broad prairies. This and the strange
hieroglyphics on the lines of , freight-cars ,we passr
would tell us we were far from home even without ,-the
aid of any other moral eccentricity. We are pointed
out such landmarks as where the cow-boys raided
upon and robbed a train, where Jesse James lies
buried in state in his mother's door-yard, or where .the.
spring floods tore their path of desolation through a
country side. At one place we passed -two young
Indians holding a plough, drawn by four horses, at the
end of a furrow a full mile long across one unbroken
field, set like a picture of Millet against a sunset sky..
The great, bare, desert-like plain of Colorado in .the
parts through which we pass, forms the dreariest con-
trast to the green beauty of Kansas. There is scarcely
any relief to the desolate outlook. The small settle-
ments are of the most primitive description. The soil

24 ON THE WING.

looks baked and caked even in this early spring-time.
A few far-apart clumps of immature, spiritless trees
dot the landscape ; an occasional small stream shows
the prints of countless cattle-hoofs on its muddy banks,
and long reaches of sage-brush and cactus intersperse
the gray country. For heaven's sake, beware of the
cactus ! In the gush and enthusiasm of first acquain-
tance, and as being the only really original thing you
have met since leaving home, you will be tempted at
first to interview it. Take the elder Weller's advice in
regard to widows — " do n't." It looks harmless and
inoffensive enough ; it does not flaunt its thorny ban-
ner in your faces ; it clings lowly and modestly to the
soil and seems to shun observation. But that is all a
dodge to rouse your curiosity. It is, like Bunthorne,
an accursed thing. The most subtly fine cambric
needle is not so delicate as its thread-like spikes;
the most highly tempered steel crowbar is not so
strong. Age cannot wither nor custom stale its in-
finite prickliness ; and a glove of hippopotamus hide
will not save you from its hidden sting. As a speci-
men of Western ingenuity to show how much vicious-
ness can be put into a small parcel it takes the palm;
it is the infernal machine of the vegetable kingdom.

There is only the heavenly air and jocund sunshine
to mitigate the universal blankness. But when we
stop for breakfast at the little station of La Junta
— which you will please pronounce La Hoonta — so
wonderful is the atmosphere, so invigorating each
delicious breath, that it is like drinking nectar, and
one can be content with the simple boon of living.

ON THE WING.

2S

This queer little town, which was scarcely born a year
ago, and is still, so to speak, in long clothes, is an
example of the country's rapidity of growth. Already
masons are at work on blocks of stone buildings ; new
stores on the main avenue are filled with complete
assortments of goods ; neat rows of small wooden
houses mark the direction of a dozen different streets ;
the clean little station dining-room has copies of
Raphael's cherubs and lambrequins of embroidered
towels, and there is pure water from an artesian well.
By the time you have tasted the different compounds
which have been offered under this name since leaving
home, you will understand the full force of this last
clause. Even after a good strong dose of old cochitu-
ate it may be appreciated.

If, in places like this, the store should be only a
shanty, ten feet by twelve, do not let your untrained
Eastern instincts lead you on a wrong trail of con-
tempt. The owner of one of these infinitesimal trading
posts put $550,000 in bank last week after one sale of
cattle from his back country ranches, — the owner of
another could draw a check for quarter cf a million,
and present it to you without letting his business
suffer.

The people look more like the soil than the climate
— long, lean and haggard, — a sort of patient, drag-
gled air about the women — an unkempt hairiness
about the men. It seems as if an ounce of New
England grit would stiffen even back-bones in the
country. At one place we passed in the gloaming,
last evening, the male population had turned out en

26 ON THE WING.

masse at the station, and every individual creature
stood on the platform with the same leg bent at the
same angle, both hands deep in breeches-pocket, pon-
dering, with the same dejected wistfulness through
the smoke of his corn-cob pipe, the volatile spirits of
our party. They were too far gone in hopelessness
even to smile upon us.

On country roads, in small settlements, and around
station-houses, one is constantly meeting the different
characters of the modern Western drama. The
" Jedge " of the Danites squirted tobacco juice with
artistic nicety within a hair's breadth of my head at
Emporia. M'liss looked at us from under her tangled
hair at a cabin door just this side of Las Animas.
" My Partner " walked into the waiting-room at Flor-
ence as if he had mistaken it for the theatre dressing-
room, and Kit with his two "beats" have repeated
themselves until it is fully time to take a. fare well per-
formance. The women nearly all belong to one of
two types : lank, thin-haired, sad-eyed, sun-bonneted
and calico-gowned, while they are still drudges, —
showily dressed, jerky, self-complacent and montagued,
when they wax prosperous and idle.

When the Spanish Peaks first come into sight,
snow-crowned and symmetrical, with a long range be-
hind clothed in that far-away blue mistiness which
ever makes mountains beautiful, one draws a long
breath of surprise and delight. From some unex-
plained atmospheric condition, they have the effect of
rising from a deep blue sea, which is a cure for
home-sick eyes. It is the first glimpse .of the natural

ON THE WING. 27

loveliness of Colorado. Still further, beyond the
Cheyenne Range, the white head of Pike's Peak rises
in the still, luminous air.

There is no object in nature so grandly impres-
sive as a range of snow-clad summits. The dream of
my life had been to see Mont Blanc, — Mont. Blanc
with the blue Swiss lakes asleep at its foot, the fair
Swiss valleys at rest on its bosom, and the wonderful
beauty of the Swiss landscape throwing its soaring
majesty into fullest relief. I wonder now whether,
if Fortune is ever kind enough to let me look upon it,
some thought of the desolate grandeur, of these its
brother monarchs, rising from the awful calm of their
grey plains, will not come like the shadow of a still
more imperial state.

Pueblo, where we stop to change cars for the nar-
row-guage road leading to Denver, is by far the most
characteristic town we have met yet. Any of the
others might with little change be set down in the
early stages of an Eastern settlement, and not be much
out of place ; but here the acres of canvas houses, the
groups of emigrant wagons and prairie schooners cor-
raled under trees or by streams, the quantities of " dug-
outs," where a door surmounted by a bit of thatched
roof gives entrance to a tenement hollowed out of the
hill-side, and . the adobe houses- — built Mexican
fashion, with large doors and windows opening on an
upper balcony — stamp it as belonging to a strange
world. Up vistas opening from, the sandy plains one
sees broad streets flanked by long rows of stone and
brick buildings; three or four railways go zigzaging

28 ON THE WING.

in as many different directions ; the suburbs are full
of large manufacturing interests ; it is swarming with
active business crowds; yet ten minutes — five min-
utes— after you have left, just as five minutes before
reaching it, you cannot believe that anything like
civilization is within a day's ride of the solemn grey
sandy desert, with its clumps of sword-grass and
cactus.

There had been a little dread in looking forward to
the change from the spacious roominess of the Pull-
man to the contracted quarters of the narrower cars ;
but to our great relief we found the ease of the reclin-
ing chairs, which fill the carriages of this road, beyond
anything we had yet used for comfort. One could
sleep, resting horizontally as in a berth, or sit erect, at
will, by simply touching a spring under each seat.
There was another unlooked-for pleasure in the total
absence of dust and ashes during this short ride, that,
added to the pleasant looking forward to a few days'
complete rest at Manitou, made the hours passed in
this way really comfortable.

We had long ago passed the point where self-respect
received any shock from the consciousness of dirty
hands and faces ; we could keep up an air of profound
respectability with grimy smooches mingled despair-
ingly with sunburn and tan on our faces, as if in
mourning for the original virgin white which was once
theirs. We had broadened into the kind of muscular
Christianity which Thoreau believed belonged to true
manhood, and could retain unconsciousness of self and
surroundings under the most desperate straits. This

ON THE WING. 29

is one of the liberal uses of travelling. Anyone can be
charming and natural and vivacious in a Worth cos-
tume and a Queen Anne boudoir : but to be fascinat-
ing, and merry, and altogether lovely in a travel-
stained dress, a crushed hat and a pair of torn gloves,
with soot at the roots of your hair, and patches too
big for beauty-spots over all the visible creature — as
some cf our feminine women managed — that is to be
great indeed !

The quality of accommodations provided in these
far-away wilds has been a constant surprise ; the
fare has been uniformly good, plentiful and well-
cooked. At the strangest stopping-places, where one
would imagine sandwiches and thick coffee to be the
extent of resources, we have found a variety always
abundant and often luxurious. How they manage
such a quantity of fresh supplies would be perplex-
ing, if the number of empty tin cans about each new
settlement did not tell the tale. We are beginning to
believe the tin can, and its contents, the pioneers of
civilization, they make impossibilities possible. Butter
and coffee, two of the tests of good living, have been
almost invariably excellent ; the exceptions, strangely
enough, were where one would least look for lapses.
We have been somewhat sorry not to find more
changes in the bill of fare; one would think that two
or three thousand miles of distance might inspire
some local differences of menu, but steaks and chops,
Saratoga potatoes and broiled kidneys, duck and green
peas, ice cream and apple-charlotte, follow you in pro-
cession from one end of the continent to the other.

30 ON THE WING.

There is not much hardship involved in travelling in
such company; still an occasional bit. of Bohemianism
in the shape of a ragout of prairie dog, a sirloin of
prairie chicken, an olla podrida of cactus and cream,
or a fricassee of horned toads, would be, to say the
least, a novelty. There can be nothing extremely
wrong in any of these, when giddy Paris dines on
horse-flesh and frogs' legs. Shall we pretend to higher
standards than French gourmets ? There is fortune
yet in store for the especial Colorado cuisine.

There was a pleasant little interlude on this same
narrow-gauge road. We were brought to a stand on
a side-track for half an hour while waiting for the
express, which was expressly behind time at this
particular point, to pass, while it was so ordained by
fate that four companies of United States cavalry, en
route for New Mexico and the Indian troubles — going
in fact, over the very line we were to take a fortnight
later — should be halted on the same siding. We learned
a good deal in those thirty minutes of the military feel-
ing in regard to poor Lo. " No good Indian but a
dead one," is the whole case in a nutshell. From
Commander-in-Chief Sherman to his youngest drum-
mer-boy their voice is all for war, and that a war of
extermination. It is plain that there is no other solu-
tion than that of force for the present crisis ; but this
is a poor substitute for a substantial settling of diffi-
culties. There never was and never will be a greater
muddle, than our Government have made over the
Indian question. These men were bright, brave-
looking fellows, young and full of spirit, armed to the

ON THE WING. 31

teeth, with a dash and abandon that would suit a dime
novel hero. A girdle of cartridges in a wide belt
around the waist, a villainous double-bladed knife
almost as broad as a trowel, a Colt's army revolver, a
short musket or rifle — I am not yet well up in mili-
tary tactics — and a clanging sabre; these were the
accoutrements. Add if you please a suit of army
blue, a broad slouched hat and a ferocious moustache,
a glorious swagger and an erect carriage, and there
is your soldier complete. They evidently make light
of their errand, and think that a glimpse of a uniform
is enough any day to cause a stampede among the
Apaches. The pretty girl — pardon, one of the pretty
girls — of the party held a converzazione with a young
corporal which would have passed for a flirtation any-
where else in the world; I don't know the proper
name here on the plains. We gave them a rousing
Eastern cheer, to which the big boy and a few others
added a Harvard " 'rah." And then we sank again
into the easy-chairs, and tired, dirty, but happy, turned
our faces toward "The Garden of the Gods."

CHAPTER IV.

THE GARDEX OF THE GODS.

I DO not wonder that the Indians, with the fine
poetic appreciation which makes so many of
their names eloquent, should have called this
place after the great, mysterious, unknown God whom
they worshiped — Manitou. The sentimental civilized
blunderer, who afterwards modified this by describing
it as a garden, made one of the grand mistakes of a
lifetime. The impression is of something mighty,
unreal and supernatural. Of the gods surely — but
the gods of the Norse Walhalla in some of their
strange outbursts of wild rage or uncouth playfulness.
The beauty-loving divinities of Greece and Rome
could have nothing in common with such sublime
awkwardness. Jove's ambrosial curls must shake in
another Olympia than this. Weird and grotesque,
but solemn and awful at the same time, as if one
stood on the confines of another world, and soon the
veil would be rent which divided them. Words are
worse than useless to attempt such a picture. Per-
haps if one could live in the shadow of its savage
grandeur for months, until his soul were permeated,
language would begin to find itself flowing in proper
channels, but in the first stupor of astonishment one
must only hold his breath. The garden itself, the

34 ON THE WING.

holy of holies as most fancy, is not so overpowering
to me as the vast outlying wildness. To pass in
between massive portals of rock, of brilliant terra
cotta red, and enter on a plain miles in extent, covered
in all directions with magnificent isolated masses of
the same striking color, each lifting itself against the
wonderful blue of a Colorado sky with a sharpness of
outline that would shame the fine cutting of an etch-
ing ; to find the ground under your feet over the whole
immense surface carpeted with the same rich tint,
underlying arabesques of green and gray, where grass
and mosses have crept; to come upon masses of pale
velvety gray gypsum set now and again as if to make
more effective by contrast the deep red which strikes
the dominant chord of the picture ; and always as you
look through or above to catch the stormy billows of
the giant mountain range tossed against the sky, with
the regal snow-crowned massiveness of Pike's Peak
rising over all, is something once seen never to be
forgotten.

Strange, grotesque shapes, mammoth caricatures of
animals, clamber, or crouch, or spring from vantage
points hundreds of feet in air. Here a battlemented
wall is pierced by a round window ; there a cluster of
slender spires lift themselves ; beyond a leaning tower
slants through the blue air, or a cube as large as a
dwelling-house is balanced on a pivot-like point at the
base, as if a child's strength could upset it. " But
nothin' short of a' earthquake could fetch it," says
the " Doc," our driver, a fine specimen of the Western
type, keen, cool and ruddy. Imagine all this scintil-

ON THE WING.

35

lant with color, set under a dazzling sapphire dome,
with the silver stems and delicate frondage of young
cottonwoods in one space, a strong young hemlock
lifting green symmetrical arms from some high rocky
cleft in another, or a miniature forest of dwarfed ever-
greens climbing half way up some craggy pile. This
can be told ; but the massiveness of sky-piled masonry,
the almost infernal mixture of grandeur and gro-
tesqueness, are beyond expression. After the first
few moments of wild exclamation points one sinks
into an awed silence.

By and by, emerging through another colossal gate-
way, and following a narrow road built over some
abandoned Indian trail, one enters upon the confines
of the most romantic, the most unique of all human
abiding places, — Glen Eyrie. Fancy this wonderland
we have been desecrating by trying to describe, as a
vestibule ; then an avenue, winding for a mile under
trees, with a new vista opening at each instant. At
the entrance you pass a little lodge or schoolhouse —
a sonnet in architecture, if one may so express
it — the small but perfect rendering of a harmonious
thought; you cross and recross a rushing, tumbling
mountain brook over a dozen different bridges, some
rustic, some of masonry, but each a gem in design
and fitness ; then at last, after the mind is properly
tuned, as it were, to perfect accord, the full symphony
bursts upon you. In the shadow of the eternal rock,
with the wonderful background of mountain, sur-
rounded by all that art can lend nature, is this
delicious anachronism of a Queen Anne house, in

36 ON THE WING.

sage-green and deep-dull red, with arched balconies
under pointed gables, and carved projections over
mullioned windows, and trellised porches, and stained
glass loopholes, and an avalanche of roofs. It is
bewildering, it is out of place : it is naughty, but it's
so nice. As one of our young men aptly remarked,
" It would be paradise with the right girl."

For a single bit ol rugged grandeur the Ute Pass is
facile princeps. Government has widened and built
up the old Indian trail, and now a narrow wagon-road
clings like a thread half way up the precipitous moun-
tain side, a jagged perpendicular wall below, with a
rapid mountain torrent foaming and fretting at its
foot, a jagged perpendicular wall above, with pointed
splintered edges climbing skyward in one bold sweep.
A castle is perched on one airy height; Gog and
Magog look at each other from two prominent opposite
points ; profiles and grotesque outlines are piled upon
each climbing spur until imagination grows palsied
with the strain. Obliged to follow the broken line of
the mountain, the path curves so as at times almost to
turn upon itself, and looking back as your horse winds
slowly up the zigzag passage, you are lost in wonder
and dismay at the temerity which brought you here.
It was up this trail that the Utes, the original "big
injuns" of the country, used to pass to and from their
reservations beyond the mountain and their happy
hunting-grounds in the plains below. It needs little
fancy to see them laden with spoils of the chase or
painted for the war-path, pas sing in single file through
the sombre ravine which seems theirs by right. At

ON THE WING. 37

different points mineral springs of iron, of sulphur, or
of magnesia, bubble up as if forced from a siphon, each
impregnated with carbonic acid until it effervesces
like soda-water. They are the pleasantest mineral
waters I ever tasted; the usual flavor of "warm
flatirons" being very well masked by the sharpness
of the chemical salts ; and you will never know what
lemonade means, until you have tried it sparkling
with this natural champagne.

At last and entirely, you realize now that you have
reached a border country. The old Pike's Peak and
later Leadville roads, pass in front of the hotel, and
at any moment of the day a cavalcade strange to
Eastern eyes may be seen passing by. It is Buffalo
Bill and his train of Indian scouts, picturesque in
broad sombrero and fringed buckskin leggins ; or a
train of emigrant wagons, household utensils piled
in one, stove-pipes fastened to the sides, women
and children gathered in the others, and a couple of
spare horses, or sometimes a cow, bringing up the
rear. A moment ago a long line of pack mules with
jingling bells trotted past, a wild-looking muleteer in
a high Mexican saddle, on the last, snapping his long
whip with a crack like the report of a rifle ; and just
now a dashing young rider on a beautiful gray mare,
with spurs on the heels of his long boots, and saddle-
bags flapping at each side of his gallant steed, has
flashed up the broad mountain road like a winged
arrow. The people ride magnificently, with great
daring and unconsciousness, with a pose as if they
were part and parcel of the animal they bestride.

38 ON THE WING.

Even young girls fly past with an abandon that
takes one's breath away, slim, erect, with small jockey
hats and plain, well-fitting habits. A pretty girl, I
believe, is never so pretty as when on horseback ; but
I never knew before how much her dress had to do
with her loveliness. The long, sweeping train, cover-
ing the flanks of the flying steed with its graceful,
pennon-like curve, throws the rounded bust and
shapely neck and head into good relief by forming an
admirable pendant, and hides the ungracious bend of
the knee bent over the pommel. Some of our own
pretty maids rode boldly and well, but the awkward-
ness of the short travelling-dress was too much for
even their native grace to conquer, and I was glad to
see them dismount.

The horses are all splendid animals ; the men
would be, if they took as much care of themselves as
of their beasts. The village blacksmith is a real
study : he walks down the long, red road, his broad
trousers tucked into immense cowhides, a wide belt
around his massive waist, a- flapping brim slouched
over his brow, and that swinging, Indian gait, in which
all motion seems to spring from the hips. There is an
air of jaunty elegance about the straight, stalwart
form that is more in keeping with the place than any-
thing else we have seen.

We took two days for a trip to Denver, and from it
to Black Hawk and Central City. The view of the
mountain range which one gets on this route is en-
chantingly beautiful. Toward the end the road crosses
at such an angle that you see a long line of peaks

ON THE WIN<;. 39

reaching nearly a hundred miles across the gray plain,
and lifting snow-capped summits to the sky till they
melt in the far distance. Denver itself is laid out on
a most opulent scale, and must be of immense interest
to business men. It boasts in its new Opera House,
one of the finest theatres in the United States; a
little gorgeous in tone, in accordance with Western
ideas, but really beautiful and of fine finish. When
you see in the windows of the large stores the latest
fashion in plush embroideries and Paris fineries;
when you ride for two mortal hours behind a pair of
swift horses and only pass over one small part of its
large territory ; when you hear statistics of wealth in
banks, mines, smelting works and manufactures that
quite upset your slow New England notions, you will
begin to realize what this wonderful West is. " East,
you talks of things, but here, we does them," said our
driver, with the naive pride of a man who knew which
was the better part. The number of men who had
made their pile, gone into stocks, got cleaned out,
tried again and struck it rich, come back and built a
palace, or a church, or a bank, or a block in Denver,
was enough to make one's hair stand on end. And
this in a place where twenty years ago the redskin and
mountain coyote had it all to themselves.

Think of having to come to this city of the plains
to find the first waiter who ever was known to refuse
a tip ! I will not return good for evil by telling where
he is. In a place which boasts thirty or forty hotels,
some of them with 270 sleeping-rooms, you may take
your choice and find him out. But the rara avis
belongs in Denver, with its other natural curiosities.

40 ON THE WING.

I am tired of saying that this is a wonderful
country, yet nothing else relieves one's over-charged
feelings. A few miles outside the city, going toward
the northwest, is the entrance to Clear Creek Canon,
in which for fifteen or twenty miles the train follows
the bed of a mountain brook, through a narrow wind-
ing opening not much broader than the width of the
rail, at the foot of precipices from 900 to 1,200 feet
high. Each spur overlaps the other so desperately,
that the track actually writhes in convulsions around
the twisted corners. In the entire fifteen miles
there are not two hundred feet of straight line, and
often, sitting in the central compartment of a train
of three cars, we could see the two sturdy puffing
little engines in front and the rear car at the same
time. As if this were not enough to set one's ideas
topsy-turvy, there are a succession of awful tableaux,
where nature seems inspired to her grandest efforts,
and where a frenzied tumult of wild grandeur forces
one to an almost painful climax of attention. The
formation of rock, which tends, all through the parts
of Colorada we have yet seen, toward an appearance
of buttresses and castled crags, runs into a luxuriance
of wild and picturesque forms along the entire route.
Meantime, you are climbing unconsciously at a rate
which brings you three thousand feet higher at the
Black Hawk station than where you started four hours
before, and you finish by an immense Z up the last
•mountain-side, which leaves you in Central City quite
over the heads of the whole lower world. Anything
so wildly trying to the nerves as this last sudden rise

ON THE WING. 41

I never felt before. Mt. Washington was dreadful
as anything could be, but this was a thousand times
worse ; for here there was not even a grooved wheel
to cling to. It was a plain, bare, every-day track,
and a plain, bare, every-day engine, without cogs or
cranks, or any other unusual attachment, to brace up
a poor lone, lorn woman's faith. When we finally
stopped at the little station, it was with a sense of
relief which culminated in one deep-concerted sigh.
I would not have gone down that incline again, for
all the gold in the Bobtail mine over which we were
running. There was something unholy in tempting
Providence so. And if we did lose our rubbers in
climbing down the rocky street through the little
mining camp, on our way to meet the train at the
lower level, whose business is it but our own? At
least we saved peace of mind; and what is temporal
loss to spiritual comfort ?

There were two days of heavenly weather, after our
return to Manitou, and, after that, the deluge. They
told us there was no wet weather in Colorado, except
at certain seasons. It is true; it never rains ; but it
pours — sometimes. O how it pours ! Yet so heavenly
beautiful is the delicious clearness of the atmosphere
that unless we felt or heard it we would absolutely
not have known there was any rain falling, when it
was pouring from above like the sluices of a mill.
The soft and lambent air was as fresh and bright as
sunshine would have made it in other places. Driv-
ing through Colorado Springs one day, that loveliest
village of the plain, with the prairie reaching to the

42 ON THE WING.

horizon on one side, and the climbing mountain range
piercing heaven at the other, we had a fascinating
experience of the swift changes which belong to these
elevated regions. A low cloud of pale luminous gray
hid the soaring peaks from sight, and a shadow rested
on the nearer side so heavily, that it was stained
to deep purple blackness. Suddenly, in one spot,
the whelming clouds drifted apart, and in the jagged
opening a range of snowy tops kissed the blue sky,,
glowing with a burst of color which would gladden
the saddest heart. I do not wonder that H. H. fell in
love with this beautiful place, and lavished the full
wealth of her delightful power in singing its praises.
It would bankrupt a less-gifted nature even to paint
its glories, much less be their interpreter. But we
found the old story true, that no one is a prophet
among his own people. Our hackman could n't point
out her house; he "allowed it was the cottage up
thar^ but didn't know for sure." Another time, sitting
by my window at early morning, while earth seemed
wrapped in the soft haze of dreamland, of a sudden
the curtain of cloud began to roll from the windows
of the deep, intense heaven of blue above it, and the
poetry of sunshine — the sunshine of Colorado —
blazed with golden glory over the world.

CHAPTER V.

IT was during the first day at Manitou that we
made acquaintance with the burros. It is the
nightingale of Colorado ; its range of voice is
limited, consisting indeed of only two notes ; but the
amount of eloquence, the superb quality, the deep
resonance and flexible sinuosity which can be thrown
by this natural musician into such a small compass,
is, like everything else here, tremendous. As he
lopes down the village street, the larboard ear in air
while the starboard droops limply, the long tapir-like
nose quivering with the mighty volume of sound
which is pouring through it, the sloping Chinese eyes
looking at you sideways with the lack-lustre expres-
sion of the race, and an artistic kick thrown in
occasionally to produce the tremolo which adds the
last touch of grace to the singing voice, you are
overwhelmed. When its Scriptural namesake spoke
to Balaam, he was never more surprised.

We had a vague impression that on striking these
high altitudes the ills which flesh is heir to would
vanish; but there is, alas ! no royal road to health.
Even in the upper atmosphere of this rarer, purer
world, there are such things as pull-backs. Aside
from the difficulty of breathing into which the first
plunge dipped most of the party, it seemed for a time

44 ON THE WING.

to disarrange everything connected with throat and
lungs, so that

"Those now coughed who never coughed before,
And those who always coughed now coughed the more."

For a few days it sounded like an out-of-door clinic
for throat diseases. But at the same time there was
an invigoration, a plenary indulgence of oxygen in
every breath, that eased the most profound fatigue in
a few minutes. After a walk or a climb that would
have made your bones ache for days on that beloved
stern and rock-bound coast at home, you would be up
and at it again in an hour's time as fresh as a daisy.
But the tendency to bronchial trouble placed us all at
a disadvantage. The wet weather which came, and
I believe went, with us, most unusual at this time of
year, may have had something to do with it ; but the
altitude was the principal factor. When you live and
move in the clouds around the head of Mt. Washing-
ton, or rather above them, you must expect to pay the
piper. But if we had had only pleasant weather,
would we have known the fascination of those cloud
effects up the billowy mountain sides ? Would we
have seen them under every possible variation, from
thunder to snow, from moonlight to inky blackness ?
When I looked out that last morning, would the old
moon have been sailing her silver boat through the
blue zenith, while pale, rosy flames were springing
from the horizon upward, touching the snowy moun-
tain peaks with the real Alpine glow? Once, in a
ramble to the Cave of the Winds, we were weather-
bound for an hour in a lime-burner's hut by the side

ON THE WING. 45

of the trail, while a furious hail-storm rolled through
the canon, and five minutes after the majestic columns
in the Temple of Isis, a thousand feet above our
heads, were blazing and glowing, as if under some
reflected shower of sunshine. The flying clouds lifted
here and there, from peaks and battlements ; the in-
spired air tingled in every vein ; the heavenly glow
and radiance flashed into your soul, — and ten minutes
after you were in the midst of another swift storm of
hail, or snow, or rain, as if sunshine never belonged
to the world. But little we recked in the safe shelter
of the wayside cabin while the fierce fantasy of
clouds worked its wild way in the narrow gorge above,
and, framed in the ruined lime-kiln opposite, our
picturesque young man, never so killing before, in full
mountain suit of blouse and knickerbocker, stood
like a picture of a blonde Tyrolese jager in the ruined
arch. It was not unusual through these days to have
four alternate storms in the course of a single hour,
with clear skies between ; but, owing to the brilliant
rarity of the atmosphere, we were never sure it was
raining, until we either felt or actually saw it. And
this when it was pouring a ton to the square inch!
Another most strange fact was that the peculiar
formation of the soil prevented any formation of mud,
the roads hardening and deepening in color, till they
looked as if laid in red cement. These were both
novel features to those who were used to the dreary
footing, after a four-days' rain in Boston.

It was here for the first time we saw the magpie, a
large bird in half-mourning, alternate black and white.

46 ON THE WING.

The Colorado blue-bird, an exquisite little creature,
•with a bit of the deep sky meshed in his wings,
favored us several times in the Garden of the Gods;
but we were too early, really, to see or know anything
of the birds of the country.

The Beebee House proved to be one of the
cleanest, tidiest and most home-like we had seen yet.
Its beds were perfection; its rooms clean and tidy;
Us hotel-clerk a model for his kind in amiability and
helpfulness, and its open fireplace, full of blazing logs
in each of the large parlors, cheer and comfort itself.
But it owned a corps of waiters who ought to be
broken in before they were allowed to swing things
in such a brazenly, reckless fashion. They had a
Rocky Mountain style of flinging plates and dishes,
so that one never knew whether they were aimed at
one's head or the table, and a jaunty way of tipping
over full soup-plates and broiled steak, until you were
in tremulous uncertainty as to whether dinner would
be an internal or external application. It was high
art, in its way, because they never actually allowed
anything to slop over, but of a kind which way-worn
travellers could well dispense with.

The men were invariably polite and well-behaved
to a degree that struck one in sharp contrast to their
uncared-for appearance. We never stepped into an
elevator in any house, from the time of leaving
Chicago, without having every hat lifted until we left
it again. A group of rough, unkempt miners would
step into the mud on a bad crossing, in order that
your feet might pass dry-shod ; and the moment they

ON THE WING. 47

were addressed by a woman, their pipes were taken
from the mouth. In Central City, that queer little
above-the-world hole in the clouds, one of our party
entered a small grocery to try and get her muddy
boots cleansed. The proprietor not only provided the
means, but wanted to do all necessary work himself,
and finally left his place uncared for, while he took us
some distance up the street to show where we would
find planks properly laid to avoid the mud. One
somehow hardly looks for this in situations where
the people show themselves so sublimely careless in
small matters.

It was here at Manitou that we saw the original of
that wonder-painting of the Mountain of the Holy
Cross, by 'Thomas Moran. The English gentleman
who has the happiness of owning it had the rare good
taste to understand that everything else in his home
should be subordinate to this exquisite centre-piece,
so that the house is really only the setting for the
picture. The room in which you find it opens from
the outer air, and is made harmoniously beautiful in
every way. At one side a great alcove, lighted at the
top, throws all the sunshine upon the canvas, while
a gem of a conservatory, hung with heavy festoons
of passion-vines, gorgeous in the greatest wealth of
buds and blossoms, in deep-red color, opens from
the opposite corner. The design of the house is of
the English cottage order, surrounded by a lustrous
green lawn, with a rapid -roaring brook tumbling
through and coming to the foreground under a rustic

48 ON THE WING.

bridge. One has only to step from the wonderwork
inside to the wonderwork without, and each is worthy
of the other.

We left this lovely spot with real regret. What a
golden summer one might pass in that happy valley
among its kindly and simple people, if fashion did not
rush in with "the season" to spoil it all. It seems
to have more than its share of the world's blessing.
Such air, such light, such majesty and such sweet-
ness, are more than belong to any one spot. Not
adieu, but au revoir, to the Garden of the Gods !

The moment one leaves Colorado Springs again on
the way to Pueblo, the same dreadfully uninteresting
country, with the poor, tiny houses that seem so bare
of all life's comforts, appears. If people* had souls
enough to appreciate the air and light which are so
lavishly showered upon them, there might be some
mitigation of the poverty of living, kith and kin, in a
bare board shanty of one or two rooms opening di-
rectly on the dry desert of the outer world ; but I am
afraid even this little leaven hardly comes to leaven
the great lump of poverty.

Beyond Pueblo the Arkansas widens into a rather
sluggish, muddy stream, pretty in nothing except its
windings and the delicate freshness of cottonwoods
here and there on its banks, which are always newly
lovely to us. It has, besides, for many miles, a fringe
of fortifications in wonderful perfection, some in per-
fect cap-a-pie fighting order, some ruined and broken,
but altogether one of the most picturesque and com-

ON THE WINQ. 49

plete pieces of nature's workmanship we have met
yet. It seems utterly impossible to believe that the
walls and battlements, which appear of such solid
masonry, should not have been laid with hands, or
that the eye of some human architect did not direct
the soaring grace of those lofty towers, or the solemn
strength of these long lines of ramparts. Every-
where the great gray plains, stretching to right and
left with sombre deadness of color; everywhere the
poor, low houses of adobe or logs, which are part
and parcel of the universal monotony ! The little
dining-stations show in their confusion and bustle the
want of proper understanding of the needs of the
travelling public ; still they furnish plentiful meals
and give a: fair variety. We have been somewhat
spoiled by the lavish luxury of cuisine which the
larger hotels have given us ; but the healthy appetite
which belongs of right to every honest traveller,,
stands us in good stead, and the blessed boon which
we enjoy, of plenty of time, even for toothpicks, makes
the plainest bread and meat enjoyable. At first we
were absurdly conscious of doing an unusual thing
every time we tore off a coupon ; now we are begin-
ning to imagine what a delight it would be if we could
meet every need of life in the same way, by offering a
ticket to buy it off.

Placer is down in our note-books as being the first
spot from which can be seen the Sierra Blanca, the
highest peak in Colorado, and second highest in the
United States. It is also down in my personal mem-
ory for having the following unique and extremely

50 ON THE WING.

Western tradition, as a grace before meat, over the
dining-room door: —

"In God we trust ;
The rest must pay cash.
To trust is to bust, —
To bust is Hell !

( TRUST !

NO J BUST! — BEAR THIS IN MIND!"
/ HELL !

We saw at Canon City, just as the mountains began
to draw together again for the Grand Canon of the
Arkansas, a gang of convicts at work on the road
leading through the valley. The State penitentiary is
located here, and convict labor does much in the
way of building and opening new thoroughfares. A
gaunt figure sat at each end with loaded rifle cocked
and aimed at the group of men between. In another
moment we had whirled between rocky walls which
hid the sinister picture, but its harsh effect lived
longer.

Of the Canon itself, I would rather say not one
word, but bow the head in reverent silence before this
handiwork of the Lord. But for the sake of the dear
eyes at home which may never look upon it, and
which still love to follow the steps that have wandered
so far from them, I must try to speak. Those who
have looked upon its awful grandeur will realize the
powerlessness of description. The railroad runs
through a deep, narrow passage at the base of oppos-
ing and overlapping spurs of mountains, always fol-
lowing the tortuous windings of the stream, which
flows between with the same wild swiftness which

ON THE WING. 51

made Clear Creek Canon so dreadful to weak nerves.
Grown more familiar now, we scarcely notice this
headlong rush as cause for dismay; but we cannot
grow familiar with the massive wildness of the over-
hanging cliffs above. Gradually the sweeping peaks
rise higher ; the rushing river grows deeper and louder;
its color changes to a perfect raw sienna, which makes
a delightful warm tint in the foreground. The soaring
mountains leap more boldly skyward, till they seem to
scale the very ramparts of heaven, cleft through their
centre of everlasting rock by some stupendous power
we can only guess at. Whatever is grandest and
wildest in nature, pours itself with prodigious lavish-
ness above and around, until, as the train thunders
upon a hanging bridge which spans a deep abyss, the
sense of might and awfulness is so heavy on the soul,
that it results in a sense of real physical oppression.
The roaring of the rapids, intensified by precipices
which lift themselves at each side ; the solemn shadow
thrown even at noonday from those mighty ledges ;
the stupendous majesty which sweeps you from all
familiar things and sets you face to face with the
Creator, combine to impress an unearthly feeling of
loneliness and awe which remains stamped with the
memory of the place forever. In the bit of dazzling
blue that showed itself over the high fortress like
crags, so high that eyes, as well as spirit, had to soar
to reach their summits, two immense eagles went
sweeping in airy circles, till they disappeared behind
the topmost peak of all. It was the only sign of life
which would not have been out of harmony with the

52 ON THE WING.

solemnity of the spot. A sombre veiling of firs
covered thfc lower levels of the mountains ; but above,
only the bare, barren rock rose with splintered edges
into pinnacles and domes, stained here and there with
blackness of age, riven by thunder-bolts, or jeweled
with sparkling spray of leaping waterfalls. Even after
passing this culminating point there was no anti-
climax. As the road and river-bed widen, the heights
open here and there, showing still other peaks beyond,
but all yet dark and awful. By-and-by a single tree, or
a group of cottonwoods, throw their fleecy, silver-
stemmed branches like a point of light against the
grim background, or a single snow-powdered peak of
the Sangre de Cristo rises far away. Constantly
changing as the whirling road flies east or west, you
get by instants some new picture, until at last, through
a sudden cleft, the whole beautiful sunny range rises
against the horizon, one rounded, dazzling peak
superbly prominent in the centre, — "clothed in white
samite, mystic, wonderful." Just as this glorious
vision bursts upon your raptured sight, there rushes
down through the centre of a gorge in the rocky
chain, as sombre as blackened trunks of dead trees
and funereal firs can make it, a cascade, a torrent, a
perfect avalanche of tender glowing green, where a
thick belt of young trees have followed the windings
of the mountain-side into the open space below. For
hours there is nothing to break the strain produced
by this immense manifestation of sublimity: you are
obliged to sit in awed and awful silence while it pours
in upon overwrought nerves and brain, without, as

ON THE WING. 53

one of the party aptly remarked, even being able to
dam it for awhile and take a rest.

Two hours after leaving Salida, at the end of this
over-exciting trip, we were hurled into another, which
was, if such a thing could be, even more gloriously
terrible. Up the great Continental Divide,* the rail-
road clambers five thousand feet in a distance of
twenty-eight miles, to Marshall's Pass, bearing you
from the summer lands below, to the region of eternal
ice and snow above. As the crow flies, the distance
travelled to the summit would not be over eight miles ;
the others are taken up in devious twi stings and wind-
ings backward and forward over the mountain. In
the course of the route, you pass over giddy trestles,
on the brink of narrow precipices, by the side of
weighty, overhanging cliffs, or curving edges of black
ravines, rising ever higher and higher, until the sight
of the dizzy, swooping valleys make you catch breath
hard, and you would gladly weigh a thousand tons, so
as to have some effect in balancing the swaying train
which so airily spins above them. It was toward
evening, and we followed the light upward from one
level to another, until just at sunset we emerged on a
scene of such unearthly beauty as those who had the
blessed fortune of seeing, will never forget. Turning

* It may be well here to define some of the terms used in connection
with Western mountain scenery, — Mesa: a high table-land or plain
between mountains; Divide: a mountain chain separating two sets of
table-lands ; the Continental Divide, between the Atlantic and Pacific
slopes; Canon: a passage between mountains, winding through the
lowest level; Pass: a trail built on the mountain-side through a Canon »
Gorge : the wildest and most precipitous part of a Canon.

54 ON THE WING.

a sharp spur of the mountain, we spun over a trestle-
bridge, which took a curve, a climb, and a bound
across a deep gorge all at once ; and on the instant
the sun shone on a line of exquisite peaks melting
away in the dim horizon, their snowy summits trans-
figured with the last rosy flush of dying clay. Far
below, purple night shadows were gathering already
in deep ravines and narrow passes ; while above, the
sky was still opalescent with the faint, clear tints
which make twilight linger so long in this rare atmos-
phere. O, heavenly heights, fair Mountains of the
Snow ! will we ever again look upon anything so won-
derful, until we cross the border-land to the Blessed
Country, and through the gates ajar see rising in the
radiant air the shining hills of Paradise !

In the Veta Pass, which we crossed next day, the
same manifestations of grandeur and majesty repeated
themselves. In each case, nearly a day spent in
crossing the barren plains prepares one for the effect
to be produced, and gives the sharpness of contrast
to the two opposing scenes. A mirage, which lasted
for some hours, gave the idea of blue water at the
base of a mountain-chain on the left, which had an
exquisite effect in the distance. If this country only
had lakes, it would be too dangerously near perfec-
tion. The mule-shoe curve, which sweeps up to the
higher levels on this new trail, is another blood-
curdling experience ; but so sure had we grown by
this time of the security of our running-gear, that we
rode through thirty or forty miles in the cab of the
engine. The effect of coming in this way into the

ON THE WING. 55

mysteries of Toltec Gorge is, to say the least, thrill-
ing. You have something of the glow of an explorer
who discovers for the first time some new and beauti-
ful land. I do not wonder any longer, that, simply
from the love of this excitement, men should be found
willing to brave danger of suffering and death,
uplifted beyond ordinary human endurance for the
sake of the glow which comes when the secret of
some hitherto unknown spot lies unlocked before
them. There is one superb moment here, when the
engine, after poising like a bird on the extreme edge
of a sheer precipice one thousand seven hundred feet
deep, turns with a swift leap and buries itself with a
noise like ten thousand devils in the blackness of a
tunnel, from which it emerges to sweep into the sun-
light, hanging to the face of the cliff on top cf an
awful gorge, whose shattered sides reach the tumbling
river below. In another place it passes what appears
like the ruins of a heathen temple, its gigantic idols
still erect on their pedestals, looking with hideous
grotesqueness at the temerity which found them out.
The formation of this group of rocks is not dissimilar
to that in the Garden of the Gods, except in color.

Our audacity to do and dare grew with what it fed
on ; after riding inside the engine, we tried riding
outside of it. I cannot account for the change which
made this possible in a couple of not usually heroic
women. Perhaps the stupendous boldness which per-
meated Nature, the magnificent dash which entered
into all she planned and did, the very audacity of her
conceptions, may have unconsciously raised our moral

56 ON THE WING-

standard and strung us to a pitch that made us
ready for any adventure. Be this as it may, we rode
on the cow-catcher from the Toltec Gorge down to
Antonita, twenty miles away ; and when you have
ridden on a cow-catcher down a precipitous, m*ighty
mountain-side, through gorges and tunnels, under
ledges and crags, around sweeping curves that spin
dizzily through the air, while ten feet before you all
visible foothold seems to end, and the next bound
will launch you into space, — when you have done this,
you have received your baptism of nre so far as
adventure is concerned. You begin then to believe in
the Eternal Fates ; you can afford for the rest of your
life to make a retrousse* nose at people who have
only known common-place experiences. The thrill of
exultation which this wild flight through the air pro-
duced, especially as night drew on, and only the
meteoric glare of the head-light dissipated the pro-
found shadows through which we passed ; the tremen-
dous force of the power behind us, all noise and
fury, contrasted with the tranquil calm of the night,
serene and beautiful, with one pure evening star
gleaming in the clear sky, made a whirl of emotion
which was nearer intoxication than anything else.
When we finally were taken from our perch and
brought into the lighted car, half dazed and tremulous
from the unconscious strain, it was as I imagine it
must be, after drinking champagne, while exhilaration
has still the upper hand of shakiness. After this,
anything short of shooting up a mountain at an angle
of forty-five degrees will be a mere bagatelle. The

ON THE WINO. 57

future hides what the Yo Semite holds in store ; but
it is no use to tell us it will ever bring forth anything
comparable to that last night in Colorado.

There were some obvious and striking advantages
about this riding on the cow-catcher : you escaped
dust and smoke, while the open air did away with
any unusual sound. There was very little jarring
motion ; much less than even in the sacred seclusion
of the Pullman. Inside the cab it was not so pleasant :
a pandemonium of shrieks and groans, as the dif-
ferent levers regulated steam or motion ; an odious
smell of badly-cooked grease ; a sensation of being
blinded by red-hot sparks and cinders, or roasted to
death by the almost infernal heat ; an insecure seat
on a high wooden stool, with your modest draperies
twisted about you, and a jerky, broken motion like
the trotting of a badly-trained horse, — these combine
against it; but even here the novelty and delight of
the situation easily overcomes them all.

Perhaps it was the mental exhaustion consequent
on such a strain, that made us, like Silas Wegg,
"drop into poetry" that night, at sight of a charming
face among the waiter-girls at the station-hotel, where
we stopped for supper. She was a bright little crea-
ture, and, I trust, will forgive the doggerel, since it
sings the praise of —

THE PRETTY MAID OF ANTONITO.

'Twas in the supper-room at night,

While waiting for a chance to eat O!
We saw the vision of delight,

The pretty maid of Antonito !

58 ON THE WING.

Her eyes were dark and very bright,
As if she came from Spain or Quito, —

Her pearly teeth were small and white,
This bonny maid of Antonito.

Her hair was parted at the side,

Her step was light as a mosquito,
She had a pretty air of pride,

This charming maid of Antonito.

We do not know her rightful name,
Perhaps 'twas Jane, perhaps Pepito —

But still we love her just the same,
The witching maid of Antonito.

If we could pack her in a tin,

Or roll her in a small paquito,
O wouldn't we just scoop her in,

And take her far from Antonito !

She looked so fresh, so pure, so gay,

So red her lips, her smile so sweet O,
We could not tear ourselves away

From that fair maid of Antonito.

But where she goes, or what her state,

If married she or senorita, —
Adois! treat her kindly, Fate!

The pretty maid of Antonito.

We came back through the Veta Pass in the darkest
midnight ever formed ; and just as we were crawling
at a snail's pace up to the highest point, the coupling
between the cars broke. We have grown so used to
terrible risks now, that nothing trivial upsets one \
yet I must confess this spoiled my repose for the
night. To wake at some sudden shock and find that
you are nine thousand three hundred and thirty-five
feet above the sea level and the little house at

ON THE WING. 59

home, and that something connected with the ma-
chinery of your vehicle has gone to pieces, is not
particularly reassuring. When you are conscious
that your inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness depend upon the welding of a
bit of iron, or the strength of a piece of wood, to
hear the crack of doom in either of them is inex-
pressibly chilling, especially when you are up in the
air instead of being on terra firma. The system of
automatic brakes is brought to such perfection, how-
ever, that the train can be stopped, even on the
steepest grade, within a distance of twenty-eight feet ;
and every atom of apparatus connected with cars
or engine is subjected to such anxious and constant
watchfulness that an accident is very seldom heard oL

Everywhere, except when we struck the mountains,
the same barren gray plains, with only cactus and
sage-brush, or sparse bunches of buffalo, grass and
moss, to relieve their monotony. The tiny houses
are built either of unpainted logs or adobe, neither of
which possess any distinctive coloring. Only the
resplendent sky and rich sunshine take the dreariness
away. But whenever, far off, the dim blue heights
were climbing the horizon, or better still, the snowy
peaks shone radiant in the eye of day, there was
joy enough to fill the present and lay up fair store for
the future.

Before climbing the Raton Pass, which separates
Colorado from New Mexico, next morning, we
stopped at Trinidad. On the mountain just in front
of the station, a castle, so perfect as to be astonishing

60 ON THE WING.

even in this country of astonishing rock fantasies,
rears its battlemented walls and round towers as fairly
as if planned by the hand of an architect. A peculiar
effect is produced by a tree growing at one point just
within the massive portal, which has precisely the
shape of a flag raised on a long staff. It looks like a
banner flung to the breeze to show that the royal
family are at home.

Within the last two days we have passed through
and over, five of the grandest and wildest passes in
America. I find that the guide-books speak of that
of La Veta as overlooking the most beautiful valley ;
but, to us, the Grand Canon was supremest, because
of the snow-clad peaks in sight. Those radiant
heights, lifting themselves in the far, serene distance,
have spoiled us for everything else. We found in the
gorges some lovely flowers, like white Christmas
roses, with bunches of mountain larkspur, and a pretty
blossom, half blue, half pink, that ought to be a pet
with French milliners. Along the plains were spikes
of pale cream-color, like a sweet pea in shape, and
golden coreopsis with deep brown hearts ; while at
Las Vegas the hillsides were covered with English
daisies, or something so like the "wee, modest,
crimson-tippet flower," that it would pass for it with
any one but a botanist.

We have grown really attached to Colorado : it is
fascinating in spite of its barrenness, and progressive
in the face of its slowness ; for it is awfully slow.
Even its crack city of Denver is behind the right
Boston time by two good hours.

CHAPTER VI.

THE BORDER LANDS OF ROMANCE.

COMING across the mountains into Raton this
morning, we entered the border land of
modern romance. In those great plains,
through which we have been riding all day, and among
the beautiful mountains lying beyond, the fabulous
gifts of the blind goddess Fortune have been showered
at a rate which has often changed common men, in a
few short )*ears, to princes. A kind friend has just
brought in a story, like Aladdin's lamp, of how
riches poured upon one group of men, poor, unknown,
and in no way gifted beyond the clear-headed Eastern
foresight which grasps possibilities and makes cer-
tainties of them. They bought, almost for nothing,
a whole tract of country here, with which to open a
colonization scheme, and in the course of develop-
ment found gold mines, silver mines, coal mines,
asphalt, platinum, and heaven knows what of mineral
treasure. The land behind and beside these includes
millions of acres for stock-raising, river valleys for
farming, and — hold your breath while you think of
it! — one of the snowy ranges that have snared our
hearts forever. Think of the more than imperial
magnificence of owning one of these connecting links
with heaven ! The president, who is now in Europe

62 ON THE WING.

elaborating his plans, lives royally, not far from the
line of road we travelled to-day, in old Spanish
fashion, with forty horses in his stables; with separate
buildings gathered around inclosed court-yards for
the different uses of his household and gues-ts ; with
the wealth of the Incas, and a gorgeous hospitality
like that of the brilliant but unfortunate Ralston.
And a few years ago this Prince Fortunatus was
cutting grass or herding cattle on the plains, with re-
volvers in his belt to hold at bay marauding Indians,
earning with the sweat of his brow his laborer's pay
of a couple of dollars a day. Was there ever a more
fanciful fairy story, only that this is real life !

Immense flocks of sheep are coming into range
along the railway line now for the first time, so nume-
rous that it seems in the distance as if the great
plains had been piled in spots with thousands on
thousands of round gray rocks. They are most com-
monplace and uninteresting animals it is possible to
conceive, awkward, dust-colored and stupid. Where
do Schreyer and Verboeckhoven get their models?
What different breeds must pose for those soft-eyed,
soft-fleeced mothers, those tender snowy lambs, those
proud-horned patriarchs of the groups they delight in !
They are watched by shepherds ; but neither are they,
by any means, the ideal creatures. Bearded Jike the
pard, mounted like Australian bushwackers, riding
like daredevils, ugly, and I am sorry to say dirty,
they as little resemble the idylic creations of the
French and Italian school as a potato does an apricot.
A certain amount of slovenliness is secretly dear to

ON THE WING. 63

the artistic temperament; even rags and tatters can
be so well " set " as to produce an effect which good
broadcloth could never inspire ; but the brutal, greasy,
honest frowziness of these sheep-herders, has no more
to do with the picturesque, than the sheep they tend.
If such " shepherds watched their flocks by night,"
I wonder if the angel of the Lord would ever have
appeared to them.

Now adobe houses come thick and fast; indeed,
they are the only habitations to be seen, except when
now and again some small town boasts a few un-
painted, one-roomed cottages, as saloons or hotel
buildings. The perfect level of the plains begins to be
broken by undulations and low, scrubby hills, covered
with something very like the savins of New England.
One bit of ground near Galisteo, for five miles or so,
might be put bodily down by the Old Colony Railroad
at Braintree, and the oldest inhabitant would never
know a change had been made. Even the mountains
look like Franconia and the Notch ; but still the
patches of red earth cropping up here and there are
like a continuation of Colorado. By the doors of
wayside cabins, swarth groups of Mexicans, darker
than mulattoes, the women and children with long,
straight, black hair, lounge. We have gotten out of
the work-a-day world into one of leisure. Every one
looks lazy; there would be bustle enough in one
street of the sleepiest Massachusetts village to drive
this whole nation frantic.

And here is Las Vegas — you see how the very
names begin to grow soft and liquid — with its pretty

64 ON THE WING.

hotel, the Montezuma, a cross between the Pemberton
and Nantasket. It is finished inside, with an eye for
the aesthetic that is keener than any we have met
since leaving the Hub. The carpets are as nice a bit
of color as one need crave ; and, from the patterns of
the Kensington embroidered tidies, to the shape of
the cups and saucers, all is as it should be. So is the
service at table, and particularly grateful after the
plate-hurlers of Manitou. There was a piano in the
west parlor; a new baby Steinway, one of the love-
liest instruments ever touched, and there we had one
golden morning. When a violin has breathed into it,
by some witchcraft of soul, such tenderness and
weirdness and sweetness as draw one's spirit out with
every tone that comes from it, and when a piano not
only sustains but inspires it, what better gift of the
gods can the world give us than to sit in the sunshine
and listen.

If you want to know the real luxury of a good
wash, travel three thousand miles across the Conti-
nent, be steeped in dust and smoke and ashes, live in
a trunk and a sleeping-car, let your highest ambition
be to keep your face and hands only decently dirty,
and then get into one of the warm sulphur-baths at
Las Vegas, with a neat handmaid to shampoo your
tired head and make you clean, and neat, and whole-
some. It is the most absolute revel in the world.
You will understand, then,- why Greek and Roman
built baths of rare and costly marbles, and spent
hours each day indulging in gentle dalliance with per-
fumed waters. The popular belief in the country

ON THE WING. 65

round about, is that the baths will cure everything but
consumption, and the atmosphere will cure that, so
there is no chance of dying here, except by accident.

We passed to-day in the Apache Canon, the scene
of a celebrated battle between Mexicans and Con-
federates during the late war, and the ruins of the
earliest church even in this early colony; for we are
now in an old, instead of a new, country. It knew a
more ancient settlement than ours of the east. Here,
nearly a hundred years before the Pilgrim Fathers
stepped upon Plymouth rock, the stately Spanish
cavalier, Alvar Nunez, led his company of knightly
adventurers and Castilian soldiers through the sun-
baked plains in search of hidden treasure. And here
long before, a nation of brave, gentle people lived and
loved, leaving traces in tradition of laws, customs, and
works which sometimes shame the boasted civilization
of the present.

Just as the sun was setting behind a dim line of
distant mountains, we turned across the plain leading
to Santa Fe, and saw the shining dome of the Jesuit's
college, which is the most prominent building in the
place, reflecting the long, level rays. Soon we were
whirling through the wildest maze of tortuous unpaved
streets, lost in whirlwinds of dust, crossing a shallow
ford of running water in the middle of the highway,
and enveloped from head to foot in a mysterious feel-
ing that we have been mixed up with somebody else
and are cases of mistaken identity. On the warm air,
the Angelas is ringing from the church towers; dari.-
eyed, sad-looking women are gliding like shadows .

66 ON THE WING.

under the long, white archways which line the street
on each side ; dogs are barking in wild chorus ;
soldiers lounging in the green plaza; a world of flat-
roofed, blank-walled adobe houses, around and before
us ; supper is waiting in the dining-room of the Palace
Hotel, and we are in the city of the Holy Faith, with
a feeling as if we were cats in a strange garret.

It is Sunday; in front of my window, a garden of
perhaps three acres, surrounded by high walls of
adobe, is divided into checker-like squares by raised
banks of earth about two feet high, in order to keep
the scarce, precious water on the beds when they are
sprinkled. Faint little lines of green show themselves
regularly through the baked-looking earth, where the
very late early vegetables have started, but they are
so faint that they scarcely disturb the deep, brown
color. In one place a small patch of currant bushes
are in full but rather thriftless condition. Along the
side of the wide, dusty rCad, flat-roofed, one-story
houses, all of adobe, still show straight, almost blank
walls, only a heavy gate-like door here and there, or
the closed wooden shutters of a window, breaking the
monotony.

These would seem to be the dreariest cf mortal
dwelling-places, until you notice through one of the
doors, which by ghance has been left open, that the
little houses are each built around an open square,
with a court-yard in the centre, at least in the better
class ; this is planted with trees, shrubbery or flowers,
so that the inner life is better than the outer. A broad
piazza is always in front, enclosed under heavy arches.

ON THE WING. 67

or supported by wooden posts, throwing the sidewalk
into shadow, and making grateful protection from the
sun. Up this covered sidewalk has just trotted a
little donkey with two Mexicans on his back, their feet
almost touching the uneven ground. Down the centre
of the dusty road comes a sound of music, and three
men with fiddles, playing an opera air, appear at the
head of a sad little procession, bringing a dead baby
to the grave. Four little dark-eyed boys hold the bier
on which rests, in a small open box lined with pink
and covered with white lace and flowers, the tiny little
waxen figure, while a man walking at the side, carries
under his arm the ornamented pink cover which is
soon to be fastened down forever. Behind comes a
motley group : most of the women in black skirts,
with the long, graceful, scarf-like shawl thrown over
the head, which seems to be the national costume.
One with a gay bonnet and American umbrella looks
as out of place as the others would in a Boston street.
Grotesque, almost ludicrous, some of our people find
it, but, to me, unutterably touching; for it seems as
if the yearning hearts even in the first dismal pangs
of grief are trying to express outwardly their firm
trust that it is not cause for mourning, but joy, since
"all is well with the child." Indeed, this is the belief
which their Catholic church teaches, and it is beautiful
as Faith and Hope can make it. Heaven grant the
peace and consolation which conviction brings with it,
to the weeping eyes following so longingly the little
pink casket !

Now a couple of Pueblo Indians mounted on mus-

68 ON THE WING.

tangs clash down the place the little funeral procession
has just left. Their rather gaudy rags and gewgaws
float behind them; a couple of muskets swing loosely
at the side; something is gleaming at each belt; they
are talking rapidly with each other as they disap-
pear in a cloud of dust around the nearest corner.
Leaning against the adobe walls, groups of swarthy,
dark-eyed men lounge or lie in the sun, smoking pipes
or cigarettes; at one of the small square windows
opening above their heads, a woman's face, with the
sad, questioning look which belongs to the people, is
looking down. In the street, the shawl about the
head is drawn forward and held with the left hand so
as to cover the mouth entirely, leaving only the eyes
visible. This alone is enough to give an oriental air
to the place ; a long ruffled skirt of either some bright
muslin, or black, like the shawl, completes the cos-
tume. There is nothing distinctive about the men's
dress, except the broad-brimmed, light-colored hat,
which is universal. Just beyond the drowsy street,
the gothic walls of the new cathedral, which is slowly
being built about the half-ruined, centuries old, adobe
building of the early missions, shows its buttresses
and arched windows. Here and there, always between
high clay walls, patches of verdure show a care-
fully-tended bit of ground, while one large, shady
spot, well covered with trees, marks the outline of
Archbishop Almy's celebrated garden. In this, he
has demonstrated, by the careful experimenting of
many years, that almost every variety of vegetation,
from the fruits and flowers of the North to the

ON THE WING. 69

tropical luxuriance of the South, can be grown in
Santa Fe, if irrigation is attended to properly.

A soft summer haze is over everything; even the
dogs are silent, and only the church bells break the
stillness. Far away the faint, blue mountains rise
mistily, piled like clouds, along the horizon; and all
between, save for the few prominent cross-crowned
church buildings, long, low walls of gray-brown or
white adobe, make the flat earth look flatter, until it
melts into the baked plains beyond. Every motion
that meets the eye, except the two dashing Indians, is
lazy and languid, as if hurry had gone out of the
world. Pictures of that indolent dolce far niente,
loafers couched in perfect bliss, are all about, but
they do not look like the seedy beats of our Northern
experience ; they appear to have a certain right to be
lazy. Even the team of twelve oxen crossing the
Plaza looks like a bit of still life. It seems out of
place to be talking and thinking in English. The
soft, musical Spanish, with its graceful gesture and
liquid flow, is more in keeping with the earth we are
in now ; American nasals require too much exertion.

One evening, before leaving the city, we were taken,
through the kindness of one of the American resi-
dents, to see a Mexican dance. The walk through
the dark, crooked streets, stumbling, in utter silence,
over still darker sidewalks under the deep arches, was
so wierd and ghost-like, that it made odd preparation
for a festival scene. The primitive ball, which was a
weekly occurrence, was held in the one long, low
room of an adobe house, which was entered through

70 ON THE WING.

the chamber of the master and mistress. A single
board around the room for seats, a table in the centre
of one side, upon which sat three dark-skinned,
wrinkled fiddlers, some tallow candles in tin fasten-
ings high on the walls, and a small counter at one
end, made up the furnishing of the place. On one
side the men, on the other the women, sat motionless
and voiceless. We, from fear of infringing on the
etiquette of the place, were profoundly silent also, so
that a gathering of deaf mutes could not be quieter.
At last a short, swarth man, rising, crossed the room,
offered his arm to a partner, and still without a word,
took his place upon the floor ; three others followed
his example, so that a set was formed almost in the
position of our quadrilles ; the fiddlers struck up an
odd but well-timed waltz, and the dancers began a
graceful rythmic movement, with so much ease and
such just conception of the swaying measure, as was
surprising. When we remembered the distorted steps
we had often seen danced to the much-abused waltz
at home, it was refreshing to see all the performers
moving with such delicious languor in slow circles, as
if the very spirit of the music were pulsing through
them. There were many pretty figures, always timed
to' the same swaying step, and always performed with
the same gentle gravity. The women, except for
their lovely, dark Spanish eyes, were decidedly homely,
the men little better ; but one beautiful Madonna-faced
creature showed what the type could be when it
reached perfection. The dances all resembled each
other, and, in the intervals, refreshments, in the shape

ON THE WING. 71

of soda and sarsaparilla-waters, with glass dishes of
bright-colored bonbons, were handed around. We
were treated with great kindness, and were much im-
pressed with the quiet dignity and grace of the people,
which seemed so unlike the noisy hilarity of a similar
meeting at home. It was in keeping with the slow,
quiet, grave world around us.

We had at Wallace, three hours after leaving Santa
Fe, our first real introduction to the Indians. They
crowded the hotel and railroad platforms, offering
small lots of very poor turquoise and native pottery
for sale. They always asked three times as much as
they intended to take, and would sell the tin bracelets
on their very dirty arms, or the silver rings in their
very dirty ears, for one or two of the "bits" they
coveted so much. I am not sure that they would not
have sold themselves and their children if the price
was high enough. They were a sharp blow to any-
preconceived idea of Indian nobility; the features,
without being particularly bad, were so wanting in
any sort of animation ; the petty pride in a paint-
streaked face or a gaudy necklace so apparent ; the
dirt so hideous, both of themselves and their filthy,
faded blankets, that one involuntarily shrank from,
contact. But they had good eyes, good teeth, figures
erect as a young sapling, and, where they followed the
traditional costume of their race, a certain pic-
turesqueness not yet quite destroyed. You could
conceive that there might be among them some young
chief worthy to be the friend of Deer Slayer. But as
soon as they attempted Christian habiliments and dis-

72 ON THE WING.

guised themselves in shop-made coats and trousers,
the repulsiveness of their dirty personnel was so
exaggerated, that it overcame everything else. You
were disgusted, and nothing more. Their chief was
a much superior specimen to most of his tribe.

We were in a very perturbed state of mind all that
night, from some accounts we had heard of danger
from the Navajos farther on, and of the dread of the
people of Wallace even of these Pueblos. Their
mild stolidity might be only a cloak for some fiendish
plot ; and when you are in the midst of a country
which is credited with being in a state of uprising,
your nerves toward evening are just in a condition to
be worked ; so, though common sense in the still
small voice of conscience declared the whole thing
impossible, we persisted in imagining a war-whoop in
every steam-whistle, a night attack in every sudden
stop, and instant annihilation lurking in every shadow.
But we woke with our scalps on.

El Paso, looked from the cars like another Santa
Fe', only more caked and baked, if possible, with
mountains like dirt-heaps in the distance. We were
all somewhat out of sorts after the sleepless night
and dreadfully hot morning which followed it, and
the clouds of flying dust and lifeless adobe houses
made us still more hippish. But the ride across into
old Mexico, in spite of dust, in spite of heat, in spite
of bad temper, was one of the most interesting of our
lives. Once you had gotten across the rope ferry
over the Rio Grande, you were in a bit of Moorish
Spain. Before and around you constantly, are narrow,

ON THE WING. 73

dusty streets, bordered by low adobe walls, with an
occasional heavy door opening into an inner court-
yard, bright with tall, blossoming oleanders, rising
from amid green shrubbery around a tinkling foun-
tain. Brown-skinned, bare-armed and bare -legged
figures, in short turic and drawers of white linen,
work among the vines in vineyards surrounded by
high, hot walls ; a train of Mexican supply wagons,
blue-bodied and white-capped, shining in the brilliant
sunshine, each drawn by twelve burros, with bells on
their bridles, driven four abreast by a cloud of broad-
hatted, broad-sashed muleteers, comes up some narrow
lane. We drove along a shady road, arched with
cottonwoods and blossoming locusts ; a swift-flowing
canal ran at one side ; on the other, a hedge of tall-
spiked cactus, each prickly rod tipped with one flaming
blossom of glowing scarlet, like Joseph's rod, which
blossomed at the top. Fields of purple alfalfa, bearded
barley, swaying wheat, acre after acre of vineyard,
stretched on either hand, divided by hedges of osage
orange, or adobe walls surmounted by the flat prairie
cactus we had seen before. A brown, wrinkled hag,
kneeling on the red earth under a mesquite bush by
the side of a small pool, polished a bright brass kettle,
which glowed like some sacred vessel in the service of
the Sun God. A train of small burros came winding
down one of the crooked streets between high walls of
adobe, each with two tiny, half -naked, black imps on
its shaggy back. Aross a field came a shapely young
woman, her bright, dark eyes intensified by a white
scarf thrown over the brow, balancing on her head a

74 ON THE WING.

great earthern jar of water, while two little boys at
her side trotted contentedly on, each bearing two
pails hanging from a primitive yoke resting on the
shoulders. Behind the wooden bars of a grated
window a group of bronzed baby faces looked gravely
out ; under an archway the glowing white walls of a
court-yard showed itself, a hand's-breadth of blue
sky shining above. Once a young girl, with a bril-
liant, dark face, held up a glorious bunch of deep-red
roses as we drove past, and, running after the car-
riage, shyly placed them in my hands, and ran laughing
back to the shelter of the placita.

So it was endlessly : it was the novelty of Santa
Fe intensified tenfold, with a greater compliment of
beauty than Santa Fe' ever possessed. One wanted
to go in and stay for awhile with the grave, courteous,
brown people in the drowsy shade of the arches lead-
ing into some quiet placita, with the Angelus bells
coming in pulsing waves of soft sound through the
sultry air. It seemed as if here, at least, care should
sleep, and the bristling, bustling tumult of life lose
itself in the dolce far niente of summer restfulness.
Fade far away, dreams of ambition ! Melt into thin,
blue air, like the smoke curling slenderly from yon
adobe chimney; what has perplexity, or longing, or
vain desire, or vainer effort, to do with this Land of
the Lotus ? What is life but the calm of passionless -
content, and the culmination — the apotheosis — of
laziness ! And what are we but disembodied spirits,
floating in a languid atmosphere of luxurious content,
at peace with ourselves and the world !

ON THE WING. 75

There was an irresistible fascination over every-
thing. The Scriptural-looking flat roofs, surrounded
by a low parapet, as if the inhabitants were in the
habit of using them for summer bed-rooms, did more
than any one other feature to give an absolutely
foreign air. Men plowing in high-walled fields, used
a plow made of a pointed piece of wood, fitted with
handles, and drove their oxen by a long thong of hide
fastened to the horns. Existence here was under the
most primitive conditions. Perhaps if one could stay
longer, so as to know them well, this small, slight
people might develop an activity which would change
our first impression ; but, so far, the almond-eyed
Chinese, coming in felt shoes and blue pjahma clown
the long arcade on the sunny side of the street, looks
the embodiment of purpose and business, compared
with the Mexicans before and after him. Business,
if it is not a mistake to. speak of business in connec-
tion with affairs here, is conducted in the easiest
way ; the ferry crossing the Rio Grande is a flat-boatr
with two ropes at the sides, fastened to pulleys, which
run over a cable stretched from bank to bank. The
tremendously swift current swings it across ; a couple
cf men with a windlass guide it ; it moves somewhat
cumbrously and very slowly, while those on the bank
stand fretting and fuming, waiting their turn. A
bridge across the narrow stream would do ten times
the work, or a boat with proper machinery, but this is
probably why it is n't in use. It would be the entering
wedge toward hurrying up, and your true Mexican
never hurries. Indeed, he has pretty fairly inoculated

76 ON THE WING.

his American fellow-citizen : they have never quite
become satisfied with the railroad.

I wonder how many of our young people would like
to go housekeeping in one of those adobe houses.
There is one incalculable blessing, — no stairs. If
you want to climb on top of the flat roof over the
single story, you must take a ladder. Through the
door, in the blank clay wall which fronts the street, a
narrow, dark passage, usually whitewashed, leads to
the placita, or square central court-yard, on which all
the rooms open. The parlor has a print or two on
the walls, probably, and a rug or two on the bare,
clean, scrubbed floor; possibly, a table with a few
books, a couple of wicker-chairs, and a white muslin
curtain at the little window. There may be a bowl of
Pueblo pottery or a brilliantly-dyed Indian blanket, or,
a sewing-machine in a corner, but this is unusual and
superfluous luxury. The dining-room has its round
table and a few simple chairs; the kitchen, its fire-
place and mesa ; the bedrooms, dark and cool, their
small, single, white beds, and nothing else. It is not
overwhelming, but it is enough ; and their house-
keepers do not die of nervous prostration.

The system of irrigation is very simple, but exten-
sive. Earthen ditches conduct the water from the
river, from mountain springs, or from artificial reser-
voirs, through the fields, crossing the roads by means
of small wooden conduits, which make abrupt, jerky
elevations every few hundred feet. By damming the
flow of water at one point, it can be turned into any
desired channel, so that every field, no matter how

ON THE WING.

77

large, is completely under control. They pretend that
it is a much safer plan than that of depending on
natural means ; but, for myself, I believe the rain is
the better watering-pot.

This was all on the Mexican side, in El Paso del
Norte, where the three-barred Mexican flag which
should have floated on its tall staff, but did not, pro-
claimed that we were indeed and truth in a strange
land. Of El Paso itself, the Texan city, we have the
most unpleasant memories of the trip thus far. The
day was insufferably hot; we were not prepared for it;
the streets were a foot deep in powdery dust, which
choked unmercifully; we were still lurkingly and
secretly afraid of the Indians and cowboys, about
whom dreadful people were constantly dropping hints
and innuendoes ; we were half sick and wholly tired
from the unwonted temperature ; iced lemonade was
twenty-five cents a glass and oranges four for a dollar,
vso the bitter cup was full. There is no balm in the
Gilead of travelling which will heal so many ills at
once.

But that bit of Mexico, that oasis which only the
rushing, shining river separated from the dust desert
of Texas, with its green groves of locust and cotton-
wood, its hedges of cactus and mesquite, its bushes
of wild roses, its wavy, delicate greenery ! It was all
Morocco. It was only necessary to replace the broad
sombrero with the Moslem fez, and pile the contents
of the wagons on the backs of a caravan of camels.
All sorts of Scriptural and oriental pictures came to
one's mind : the bits of blue sky glowing between

78 ON THE WING.

naked white or brown walls ; the bare-armed laborers
in loose, white jacket and short trousers ; the long,
jingling lines of mules and donkeys creeping lazily up
narrow, sleepy lanes ; even the lustrous eyes and
teeth, and the frequent bit of bright or white drapery,
kept up the illusion. The children were the hand-
somest race 1 ever saw in my life, and the straight,
lithe riders, doffing hats as they passed in token of
salutation, had a graceful deference which even their
haughty brothers of the East could not surpass. The
odds for effectiveness and picturesqueness would of
course be in favor of the Bedouin, with his flowing
mantle and Arab steed ; but somehow or other, though
there is nothing in life less dignified than a mule,
a Mexican can manage to preserve the illusion of
dignity even with this long- eared animal as his
accessory.

The soft-flowing Spanish names of this part of the
world are another source *of novelty to our English
ears, grating yet with the harsh usage they received
in Kansas and the middle West. How can Alamosa,
Antonita, Fra Cristobal, San Diego and Valverde be
anything but lovely? Is a backyard any longer a
backyard when it is a placita? isn't a vulgar shop
removed from all suspicion of vulgarity when it is
changed to la tienda ? and ought not all tables to be
made of ormolu or buhl when they become mesas?
But in spite of even this fine bit of sentiment, we were
all heartily glad to start again on our journey, and see
fade behind us into the grey desert from which it had
risen the wall of the house in El Paso, with its twenty-

ON THE WING. 79

five bullet marks, where four desperadoes had emptied
their revolvers at the sheriff trying to capture them;
and the more sinister marks on the door-post across
the street where the sheriff in turn had killed three of
the men while trying to seize a fourth. Such are the
legends that hang like clouds yet, around the rising
star of the West.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CITY OF THE ANGELS.

THE best specimen we have seen yet of the
traditional Westerner, the man whom Bret
Harte created and the world has taken as a
type, fearless, dashing, yet gentle, was the sheriff of
Santa Fd, who travelled with us for a short time on
his way to Missouri to pick up some criminals. He
had killed in the course of his different terms of ser-
vice, and purely as a matter of business, ten men, and
was reported to be as absolutely unconcerned in the
face of clanger as Billy the Kid, a desperado who,
before he was shot at the age of twenty, had killed
twenty-eight men. Tony carried in his belt a revolver
belonging to this same Billy, and took a modest pride
in showing it and giving its bloody record. He was a
handsome fellow, tall, straight, with fine teeth and
large dark eyes, and a shy, awkward smile, which
made him look more like an innocent countryman out
on a holiday, than the reckless, cool, dare-devil he
was. He showered a handful of garnets on one of
the young people, as if they were common stones,
just as an emperor flings diamonds at Patti, and car-
ried a little package of pretty things to an only sister
he was to see on his way, as tenderly as any kind,
common-place brother might. He spoke of the In-

82 ON THE WING.

dians in terms of such absolute and undisguised
contempt, that we gave the remnants of our fears to
the winds, and were honestly sorry when the big, brave,
gentle barbarian took his leave at Albuquerque.

Nothing can be more desolately dreadful than the
alkali plains of Arizona, unless it be those of Cali-
fornia farther on. The poor, sparse vegetation is cov-
ered with the same gray dust, so that it looks like
the ghastly form of life with the spirit departed, as
one imagines the pallid trees and shadowy shrubs of
Dante's inferno. It is a world that might be inhabited
by disembodied spirits, whose hopeless eyes wandered
aimlessly amid the ghosts of remembered things.
The saddest of all sad places!' Even the mountains,
instead of the titanic spurs and slopes which make
New Mexico and Colorado beautiful, were only giant
dust heaps, tumbled in inextricable confusion, lovely
still, though, with a vague, undefined outline, far-off
against the sky. The air had begun to grow more
hazy; the sky was a paler blue; the enormous cacti,
which look always as if they belonged to some past
age of the world, and should have gone out forever
with the ichthyosaurus and megetharium, lifted their
uncouth ugliness into painful prominence. It is the
most unlovely vegetable creation on earth : fleshly,
prickly, horrible in its stolid, brutal obstinacy; even
its gorgeous flowers do not lessen its repulsiveness.
You are filled with wonder to see so fair a blossom on
so foul a stem ; but that is all : you do not love the
stinging monster that bears it any the more. Covered
with the shining dust of the plains, so that they seem

ON THE WING. 83

to spring like abortions of the earth itself, they are
more than ever repulsive. I hate the cactus : it looks
like the reptile of the vegetable world.

At times one comes upon a perfectly level plain like
a white sea, absolutely unrelieved by anything beyond
billows of sand stretching to the dim mountains on
either hand. At other times, masses of the most
wonderful flowers, great ox-eyed daisies, golden core-
opsis, fine purple verbena, and a lily-shaped, velvety
flower of deep, solid yellow, grew in clusters that
would make a city forester wild with envy. We filled
the car with stacks of these at each stopping-place,
only too glad of some relief from the dreadful, gray
monotony outside. In the very midst of all this, on
what is called the Sulphur Plains, the most beautiful
mirage came and lasted for hours. From a blue sea
the mountains rose, their purple peaks reflected to
perfection in the clear water; while isolated masses,
brown and yellow, full of chrome and umber shadows
like the rocks at Nantasket, lifted themselves between.
I never dreamed before of such an illusion. One
could wonder no longer after this at the hallucination
which tempts caravans and wayworn travellers miles
out of their way, luring them to death and destruc-
tion, to reach the shining waters gleaming so placidly
beyond.

At Fort Yuma we met another tribe of Indians,
better made, physically, than the Pueblos, taller of
stature, more symmetrical, and, except for the hair, a
shade less dirty. One fellow, with a leonine mane,
massive head, and finely marked features, had a

84 ON THE WING.

grotesque resemblance to Rubenstein, especially when
striding across the platform at the depot to offer a
wicker-basket full of live quail for sale, he tossed back
his long locks with a fine fling of the head. The
people seemed aware of their natural advantages and
inclined to display them as much as possible ; so that
while the Pueblo women covered even the ankles with
close wrappings, and held their greasy blankets high
around the neck, the matrons of Yuma folded one
long piece of brilliant calico straightly around the
body, and that was all. It was usually passed under
the arms, but sometimes covered one shoulder. Most
of the braves, wore one striped garment like an under-
vest, and disdained to fret their proud limbs by any
other unnecessary muffling. Some of our people
looked askance at first, and one dear old lady, tugging
at my dress, exclaimed, " Why can V they make those
awful creatures put on more clothes?'' But they
decided at last that this severe simplicity of attire
was one of the monstrous productions of the country,
like the cactus and the sand-plains, and so must be
tolerated.

The current of the Colorado, like that of most
rivers we had passed lately, was exceedingly swift,
and the water, probably on that account, muddy*
Still the effect, except when looking directly down,
was blue and brilliant, full of dancing lights and
pretty, sparkling eddies, which foamed at the foot of
the tall cliffs bounding the sides.

Almost immediately after leaving Yuma, we plunged
into the desert again. Inexpressibly dreary ; the dead

ON THE WING. 85

plain, the tufted pine-apple plants, the gray cactus, the
skeleton bushes ; and always the dim outline of the
mountains on either hand, like giant thunder-clouds,
adding their wrathful, brooding silence to the sullen
scene. It might be Sahara instead of California; yon
far-away moving speck a train of dromedaries, with
caftaned, slow-pacing Musselmans by their sides ; that
tufted palm the edge of an oasis. And here, praised
ba the Fates ! 1 y the brink cf a muddy water-course,
his humped back elevated in a broken arch against
the sky, his patient neck bowed abjectly as he lifts
it to look at the passing train, is a camel: a real,
truly, dust -colored camel ! When our picturesque
young man, with a bright-colored turban wound around
his dusty locks, a Navajo scarf girdling his somewhat
slender waist, opens the door and shouts, "Algiers!
ten minutes for sherbet and pillauf ! " we all smile
absently, as if it might have been, even if it is not.

Suddenly, almost without warning, we have left the
wastes of sand behind, and are whirling between foot-
hills, low and green, almost hemming in the track;
the great shadowy mountains, still as grim and dusty
as ever, stretch beyond; but between us and them
such lovely, smiling valleys, such fields of waving
grain, such yellow sweeps of wild mustard, such an
infinitely beautiful variation of changeful, harmonious
colors ! Now and again a sparkling stream of clear,
running water; a pretty, small house, with its kitchen
gardens stretching in order around the porch; the
spire of a tiny village church ; a camp of Chinese
laborers gathered into a circle of small white tents*

86 ON THE WING.

The change is so instantaneous that you wait, watch-
ing for the desert to return again. *But no ; the lovely,
smiling land only broadens and brightens; vineyards
come, and meadows of purple alfalfa ; the dooryards
of isolated cottages are glowing with enormous ole-
anders and spikes of tall white lilies ; a man walking
on the track, with his hands full of branches of snow-
ball, tosses them into the car windows as if they were
the commonest things in life. And this within half
an hour, after having passed two long, ghostly days
hemmed in by the awful desolation of the gray desert,
with nor sight nor sound of life save at meal-stations
and water-tanks! It is better than the grand trans-
formation scene in a Christmas pantomime.

It seems quite natural to feast at dinner-time on
spring chickens and fresh peas, with a bouquet cf
flowers by each plate; it would seem natural if the
restaurant-waiters floated out in gauzy skirts to the
sound of soft music to attend us. Can this exquisite,
perfumed land be the same, by any law of God or
nature, as the dark and direful place through which
we were journeying before ?

Back again come the old landmarks of civilization,
the patent plows and harrows, the thrifty, home-
like look of neatness about dooryard and well-sweep.
In broad fields, husbandmen are already harvesting
some of their crops, while others are just beginning
to spring into the sunshine. Strange-leaved trees,
the deep slaty-blue of the eucalyptus, the generous,
large-armed shade of the walnut, the gigantic, deeply-
scalloped foliage of the fig, come now and again to

ON THE WING. 87

vary the landscape. The wayside grass grows tall
and thick, headed like bearded barley ; the flowers are
larger; climbing roses festoon the entire fronts of
the little houses, and tangled white honeysuckles rise
like trees into the air. There, a hedge of callas lifts
itself statelily six feet above the garden border; here,
a one-story cottage is covered to the eaves with trail-
ing smilax. We are in constant bewilderment and
ecstasy, until, just as the sun is setting behind the old
belfry of the ancient mission-church of San Gabriel,
and the evening star we have seen so often is rising
with the pale silver bow of the newest of all new moons
by its side, a breath of fragrance unknown before,
an impalpable, fine essence, as of something we have
known in dreams, floats across the still air, and we
know that at last — at last — we have come into the
promised kingdom, and are flying through*the orange
groves of the Land of Flowers.

When we rode out next day from Los Angeles to
the Mission, and, after passing miles of spicy avenues,
stretching right and left in long diverging lines of
glossy, dark-leaved trees, white with blossoms on the
outer edges, and heavy with red-gold clusters of fruit
within, turned into the lane leading to Sierra Madre
Villa, it was too utterly beautiful for anything but
fairyland. A beauty as different from that cf Manitou
as can well be imagined ; warm, voluptuous, languish-
ing beauty ; air faint with odors of millions of sleepy
flowers ; a bewilderment of bloom and brightness ; a
veritable, wild garden, with everything from a timid
New England pink or English violet to the passionate

88 ON THE WING.

depth of a forest of jacqueminots, or the stately,
Juno -like waxiness of a catalpa. Such a riotous
wealth of bloom and fragrance, as if Nature had gone
on a revel, and, tipsy with delight, had spun into
odorous masses of color and light every whim that
crossed her vagabond fancy! Century plants had
truncated columns thirty feet high in the centre;
Marechal Neils and Gold of Ophir roses, blazing scar-
let pomegranate tips, slender Eastern palms with tall,
swaying, fan-like leaves, tangled themselves in a
labyrinth of beauty at every step; and behind, loom-
ing like the shadow of some great veiled fate, the
waiting mountains rose, half hidden by the misty
blue air.

We drove through the most extensive orange groves
and vineyards of the region, and were royally treated.
I wonder vtfiether oranges ever again will taste so
sweet as those great luscious globes ; I know they
never will, foi wnile we were eating them there was
the wonaerrul, half-known world about us, with all its
witchery. Even if I had them at home,

" I could not bring back the sea and the sky —
It sang to the ear; they sang to the eye,"

as Emerson says in one of his loveliest poems.

We are lodged in the dearest and quietest little
house. You pass from the big, bustling, crowded
hotel, through a long corridor into a sunny back street;
you climb a flight of steep, steep steps set in the face
of a wall thirty feet high ; you pass under an arch-
way of cypress into a bit of garden, with heliotrope
bushes higher than your head, banks of geraniums,

ON THE WING. 89

beds of cactus, hedges of roses and jessamine, and
there you find a little atom of a house, with bay-
windows jutting into the flowery wilderness, cool and
shady and altogether delightful. A small bit of para-
dise ; still you know the serpent entered even there,
so it is not out of the way that we should have private
grievance. But worlds would ,not buy me to mention
what.

After a week of Los Angeles, it resolves itself into
a sort of hybrid town, with no absolutely distinct point
about it, except the always wonderful flowers. In the
Spanish quarter, the old adobe houses lose their in-
dividuality by having sloping, instead of flat, roofs,
and the broad streets take entirely away the hot, tropi-
cal effect, which the sun-dried walls had in El Paso
and Santa F^. They look here more like common,
small tenement blocks, not dirty enough to be pic-
turesque, nor clean enough to be decent. The chil-
dren are not so pretty, and the women more slovenly
than those we saw before ; still, with many lovely
faces, the soft, dark eyes always brilliantly beautiful,
with a clear olive tint, and a fine oval in the outline.
The color in a large majority of the people, however,
is quite as black as most negroes ; and the contrast
between the fineness of the sharp, rather thin features,
and decidedly ebon skin, is most marked.

In the main streets, filled with a very Eastern bustle
of traffic, the florid style of architecture, adorned with
a flimsy Western efflorescence of jig-sawing, and fre-
quently recurring balconies on the second story, give
a mongrel aspect to the otherwise home-like street.

90 ON THE WING.

The stores are large and spacious, with whatever we
have been accustomed to look upon as necessary to
comfort and well being in their broad windows ; but
with now and then a bit of something strange to make
one realize the four thousand miles between us and the
sacred intricacies of the clear home city. Outside the
meat shops, hang on lines, thin, long strips of what
appears to be untanned leather, but is in reality
jerked beef drying in the sun. If the whirlwind of
flies gathered about do not take it bodily away it
will probably appear again on some of our Boston
tea tables next winter. Against the doors of vegetable
markets, huge strings of dried peppers, red and hot,
appeal to the quick Spanish temper, as red and hot as
themselves. Festoons of the same lurid vegetable
line the walls of every fruit store, while the broad
plank sidewalks are covered with cartloads of Northern
and Southern fruits. The very finest cherries we ever
saw were in profusion, but dear, while lemons and
oranges of regal size went begging. Artichokes and
cauliflowers seemed to grow on every bush, and there
was no limit to the quantity or variety of vegetables
of all kinds. At the principal stores the contents
appeared to have been turned inside out, so much
was piled outside, while wagons with country produce
stood on street corners. One small, rather shabby,
cross town, New York horse car, ambled through the
middle of the main street, but the people seemed
averse to it, or to the ten-cent fare, and we never saw
many avail themselves of the privilege.

Sometimes in crossing from one principal thorough-

ON THE WING. 91

fare to another, instead of a side street there would be
a flight of steps and a series of long corridors opening
on cool court-yards, with splashing fountains in the
centre, and tall calla lilies looking at themselves in a
circle round the quiet, shadowy basin. It was in this
way that we stumbled once upon the Public Library,
with a pleasant reading-room and well-filled shelves?
We found some illustrated books on Colorado and
California, surveys and travel over the very places we
had just come across, which seemed like a panorama of
our whole journey. Except by some members of our
own party, it did not seem to be as well patronized as
it deserved ; but perhaps this is not the literary season
in California.

Down or up the side streets, the dearest little white
houses, tiny as children's playthings, made to look
like mansions with towers, and bay windows, and
what not, stood each in its own little garden, com-
pletely covered with creeping and clinging vines. The
people are particularly partial to tall cypresses, cut and
trimmed in purely conventional forms into great cones,
or round flower pots, or square cubes, — the most
stilted, unnatural, depressing trees I ever looked at.
These are molded into archways, and set in every con-
ceivable spot on the tiny lawns, almost grotesquely
disproportioned to the size. Why they should choose,,
among the many lovely and gracious forms which so
crowd this bright world, such a contracted, dyspepticr
funereal form of vegetation, only the law of contraries
can answer. Every house has its porch, large or
small, where the family sit and work during the longr

92 ON THE WING.

pleasant afternoons, under a tangle of sweet honey^
suckles and great white roses, that clamber and twist
and leap, like lovers trying to reach their ladies' lat-
tices. And always the strong, sweet perfume of the
orange groves — for lemon blossoms are scentless —
<^>ming and going on the warm air, and making one
desire that all senses might be merged in one, with
the nose of an ancient Roman through which to ex-
ercise it. Simply to breathe that indescribable, deli-
cious, balmly air was happiness-, i. was enough to
make the city, as its beautiful name implies, of the
Angels.

Down in the Chinese section, which looked as dreary
as the spot devoted to social pariahs of any country
must, we walked once toward evening, and invested
some loose change in a little shop covered with hiero-
glyphics, and stuffed with barbaric trifles. Very little
that was new to our blasd eyes after Zinn's Parlors;
the same crepe monsters for pincushions, the same in-
evitable fans and umbrellas and embroidered silks
and carved ivories, but not, I am sorry to say, the
same modesty in regard to prices. One could afford
to pay something extra, however, for buying from a
real John Chinaman with a gorgeous pigtail, a set
of the most perfect teeth ever given a human, and a
most decided opinion on the crooked mazes of Ameri-
can politics. He mildly but decidedly repelled our
sympathy on the veto question, and declared that " the
S'p'eme Court of United States do p'otect yights of
eve'y citizen ; " and when we ventured to remark that
this was the very head and front of their offending, in

ON THE WING. 93

that his people did not become citizens, but made their
money here and took it home to the Flowery Land to
spend, he gave us a look of pitying contempt from his
slanting Chinese eyes and shook his bald head. He
pressed upon us with energy, as much energy as a
Celestial can manage to devote to earthly things, some
little cabalistic boxes of "pent for ladies; vcr goot;
red — vite" — which we finally made out to be a very
fine form of rice-powder of home manufacture, and
presumably pure. Judging from the city streets, they
must have found a tremendous market for this in Los
Angeles, for nearly every white women we met was
plastered unmercifully with rouge and pearl powder.
This appears to be a trait among all southern nations.
We visited, with a special note cf introduction, one
of the very largest orange groves within the city limits,
where over a hundred acres were taken up with fine,
thrifty trees, and warehouses for packing fruit. The
proprietor's house, a one-story, flat-roofed adobe build-
ing, with immensely broad, white piazzas, set in a
pretty, prim flower garden, and running at the back
around three sides of an inner placita, was charmingly
cool ?.rd quiet; a grand piano, with violin and guitar
cases near it, and a pile of music on a small table
near the door, made the deep-windowed parlor in-
viting. A bevy of dear little bright-eyed, deep-tinted
children, who were tumbling and playing in true baby
freedom among the flowers, and racing up and down
the long verandas, brought back certain groups around
the little house at Green Hill that turned me heart-
sick for just a moment. A pleasant, woody smell and

94 ON THE WING.

hammering close by led us to a cooper's shop, where
the boxes \.ere being made to transport piles of fruit,
gathered from the great orchards beyond, and con-*
stantly replenished from loaded wagons. A large
farm-house at cider-making has something of the same
liberality about it ; only that apples, for all their ruddy
and russet skins, can never have the opulent tropical
glow of these huge, luscious spheres. In the midst
of his men the master stood, picking and packing
with the rest, his handsome, dark head and patriarchal
beard strikingly like the Apostle Paul in Raphael's
St. Cecilia. The long, stately rows of trees, rounded
and beautiful, for an orange-tree is one of the most
symmetrical in the whole fauna, stretched far into the
distance, and one drove for hours through perfumed,
shady avenues, in a half drowsy state of bliss, which
resembled semi-intoxication. The lavish kind-hearted-
ness of the people crowded us with stacks of flowers
and heaps of choice fruit wherever we went, so that
our rooms at the hotel looked more like a floral holiday
than an every-day world.

Every quarter of the globe appears to be repre-
sented in this strangely populated city, but principally
Mexico and Ireland. There was evidence of this in
the cathedral where we heard mass ; the priest making
his announcements first in liquid Spanish and after-
wards in a pure, sweet Irish brogue. In the day-
school of the Sisters of Charity, more than twenty-
countries were represented, and the contrast of black,
white and yellow faces was extremely curious. The
gentle but firm rule of these admirable teachers,

ON THE WTNG.

95

showed to advantage in the good results obtained
from such mixed conditions. The children seemed
very happy, and sang one or two English schooLsongs
with pleasant effect. The house is set in an orange-
grove, with a wilderness of flowers immediately about
it. A species of gorgeous red lily, glowing in royal
clusters of six and eight, on top of each tall stem, the
like of which no one had ever seen before, grew here
in profusion, and we came home laden with treasures.

I can hardly fancy any one rising to sublimely great
things in this soft, seducing atmosphere. One needs
more of sting and sharpness from which to work out
the fruits of adversity. But on a calm, sunny day,
when the Coast Range is showing like luminous blue
shadow at the end of the main street, and the nearer
foot-hills are glowing softly in green and gold, when
the air is redolent with perfume and nature garlanded
with flowers, O, if one had only every one she loved
about her, how happy she could be in Los Angeles !

Part of an hour by rail takes one to Santa Monica,
the Nantasket of Southern California, if you can
imagine Nantasket devoid of hurry and bustle and
fun, sobered by the beautiful shadow of the mountain,
changed by the ultra-marine color of the water, and
full always of a thunder of surf which breaks with a
strong under-tow over the beach. A lovely old garden
near by has the finest specimens of geraniums our
people had seen yet, and store galore cf such jessamine
and pomegranites as can only be met here. It was
in another garden, old, too, and exquisite with the
wild, willful grace which only time lends to flowers,

g6 ON THE WING.

that we found fig-trees with the nearly ripe fruit hang-
ing under broad leaves, and small olives just beginning
to form. We found mineral water there also, health-
ful and horrible, so that the beautiful country evidently
has another element of future greatness upon which
to fall back.

Through the principal streets, wide and unpaved,
the country people come driving with a team of stout
horses, and a strong beach wagon well filled with
buxom wife and troop of healthy children. The
women drive as well as the men, with a dash that
seems to belong to the Western climate. All the
trading of the surrounding country is done herer
which accounts in part for the immense number of
stores of every kind in proportion to the houses. The
Chinese have, along with their legitimate occupation
of washing, taken up that of market gardening, and
bring, in hand -carts and small wagons, the early
vegetables used by the town people. There is no
form or variety of these which does not grow to
perfection. Cauliflowers and artichokes, which are
dainties to us, as well as the entire list of early spring
produce, are piled upon the sidewalks or packed in
the small open stores until they are common as
potatoes. It looks a little oddly to see the chamber-
maid with a queue and pair of linen pantaloons, or to
hear the cooks chattering in Chinese patois in that
high-spirited manner which belongs to cooks all over
the world. But they certainly work well, and their
kitchens look neat as new pins. The people have
the real Californian dislike to the race. It is com-

ON THE WING. 97

plained that they are saucy, untruthful, and exceedingly
secretive ; harsh to children and intolerant of any call
at unusual times. I am afraid, however, that the last
tvvo attributes are not confined to Ah Sin or Wah
Lee, in the rose-bowered cuisines of Los Angeles,
but that they are possessed in full force by their
co-laborers of Commonwealth avenue and Beacon
street. It is hardly fair to blame one people for the
sole possession of the little leaven which leavens the
whole lump of humanity. We are still unused to the
prejudices of the country, and a little taken aback by
the contempt shown the Mongolian on all sides. Small
children pull their queues with. mighty jerks in the
street, or jump on the square toes of their wooden
shoes, or fling dust in their faces, with as much un-
concern as if they were brazen images instead of
ordinary flesh and blood ; and any remonstrance on a
stranger's part is taken with a pitying shrug for his
simplicity, and the reassuring formula, "Why, it's
only a Chinaman " ! as if that explained everything.

CHAPTER VIII.

A CALIFORNIAN STAGE-RIDE.

WE left Los Angeles toward sunset, and came
clown the lovely valley between the foot-
hills of the Bernardino Range, while the
shadow of a great storm-cloud hung about the moun-
tain tops. Here and there in rifts the sunshine fell
on yellow fields of wild mustard, and mile after
mile of brilliant scarlet and orange cactus blossoms.
Tall spikes of white yucca lilies, growing on slim,
straight stems like pyramidal clusters of silver cande-
labra, ten or twenty feet high, added greater novelty to
a scene already novel enough, and gave us another
glimpse of the resources of California in flowers.
Long wisps of a brilliant saffron-colored grass or
moss were tangled in the tall sage-bushes, and shone
like flame in the low evening light. Besides all this
was the inexplicable home-feeling of finding ourselves
once more in the cars, vis-a-vis with the old familiar
faces. It is extraordinary how great a change has taken
place in this regard since we left Boston. Then, the
train was the embodiment of discomfort, the neces-
sary evil to be borne for the sake of the good to which
it was leading us. But now, no matter how pleasant
the stopping-place, nor how great its restful luxury,
the cars are emphatically home. In them we fall into

100 ON THE WING.

those easy lines of least resistance, that gossipy free-
dom of a common household, that happy unrestraint
which makes the charm of one's ain fireside. If
familiarity even breeds a little animosity now and
then; it only makes the resemblance greater. What
would home-life be without an occasional love-spat !
So that altogether this evening was one of tranquil
delight — but the morning made up for it.

The traveller who desires to enter the Yosemite
with his natural dispositions undisturbed by angry
passions, and his receptiveness unspoiled by a rank-
ling sense of injustice, had better by all odds tele-
graph beforehand to the starting-point from the rail-
road, and have his place taken on the regular stages.
These accommodate, on the Madera route, just twenty-
two persons daily; the remainder wait over for an-
other clay, if they are sensible ; they take an extra, if
they are fools. An extra, means crowding and discom-
fort; it means poor horses, and few of them ; it means
no relays and all sorts of hitches; it means, finally,
taking two days for one day's journey, and wasting
more whip-lash and misusing more Scriptural language
in the course of forty-eight hours, than was ever ac-
complished in the same time before. If there is any
other discomfort that can be added to the natural list
of weariness, dust, or mud, it is naturally thrown in as
an extra also, but, for a wonder, without additional
charge ; every other item you pay for.

Probably no party ever entered the trail leading to
the valley under more depressing circumstances than
ours. The wretched car porter, moved by that ani-

ON THE WING. IOI

mosity which seems to be the leading principle of his
race, roused us, in the midst of a barren, flat plain,
absolutely devoid of even a semblance of vegetation,
at five, when seven would have done just as well. For
fifty miles we passed only an occasional desolate-
looking settlement of unpainted wooden shanties, and
no other sig.n of life. Human nature naturally rebels
against early rising; the world is at sixes and sevens,
like any other housekeeper before nine o'clock in the
morning. Even the remarkably good breakfast \vc
found ready at the hotel was not able to soothe our
ruffled spirits. Immediately after, we were packed
like sardines into a jerky, narrow, old-fashioned \vagon,
and after creeping ten miles over a plain, with a fume
like a gigantic caterpillar sixty miles long, crawling
into the mountains at one side of it, the driver cooly
informed us that we were to have no change of horses,
and were to sleep at Coarse Gold Gulch that night,
instead of going through to Clark's. The sting of this
injustice rankled in our hearts like a barbed arrow
that every jolt of the springless vehicle drove deep
and deeper. There was no redress possible, which
added insult to injury; and the driver could not be
made to understand how much we ought to be pitied,
which was the final ounce that broke the camel's
back. To one who has a real grievance, there is
nothing so annihilating as to have any one else refuse
to acknowledge it. To cap the climax, the rain, which
we had been laughed at for predicting, began to come
down in torrents; and, according to the summer cus-
tom, every awning and curtain had been stripped from.

UNIVERSITY

ON THE WING.

the carriage some weeks before. Rain on top of a
stage-coach is always bad enough ; but rain sleeting
on unprotected heads and shoulders, whose rightful
umbrellas and waterproofs are packed in trunks hun-
dreds of miles away, because their owners have been
brow-beaten into believing that they won't need
them — aye, there's the rub.

The amount of antagonism the average mind can
engender under such circumstances is simply terrific;
and, under all this dead weight of temper and turbu-
lence, we were trying to see the Yo Semite. And
when the " I told you so" of officious friends came to
mind, as it always does in similar conditions, we were
as near madness as people usually get.

The much-abused driver, who really had no part in
this pretty little quarrel, 'as he was simply obeying
orders, vainly tried to interest us in his patient team:
"Them horses know more'n we think for," said he;,
"they've got their hitches an' feelin's jest like any on
us ; there 's Skylight, that off leader, he 's got sech a
ambition for goin' that he '11 pull the flesh off his
bones when there ain't no need on it. Now there's
Snowflake wouldn't draw a settin' hen off her nest —
Git up, Snowflake ! Durn it, hev more spirit! Chub,
here, she's a queer 'un; you swar' at her and hit her
a clip, an' she jest throws up the sponge ; but chirp
her up a little and sort o' tickle her, this way, an' she
goes for all she 's wuth, every time. Yes 'm, they 've
got to be humored jest like you'n me sometimes, an'
don't you forgit it." I must do the poor man the
tardy justice of saying that he bore our ill-temper

ON THE WING. 103

with the patience of Job, and was much more lenient
than we deserved to find him.

He was a bright, cheery, talkative, small person,
full of pleasant quips and cranks, rich in anecdote,
and determined always to keep the best foot foremost.
It hurt his feelings more than our own, to be obliged
to lash his tired animals, but there was no other mode
of progression possible. He deserved a better "fare,"
than our discontented car-load ; but Christianity, after
eighteen hundred years, has not yet been able to
teach her children how to bear imposition without
storming, and laying on the shoulders of the wrong
man, when they cannot rea'ch the right one, — which
is our excuse for sinning against him.

It was only at evening, when a little bit of paradise
opened before us, in smooth grain fields level as an
English lawn, with a few superb oaks and pines, set
singly like the arrangement of a park, and beautiful
mountains covered with forests sloping gently down
to the edge of a rapid rushing brook, that we became
again reconciled to fate. After a plentiful supper,
with the very best omelet souflee a Chinese cook ever
made, we went out to see a gold and purple sunset
blaze over the western summits and fill the east with
rosy flushes before the tender lingering twilight folded
the broad piazza and small cottage ; and realizing then
that we had been spared twenty-six miles more of
jerking and jolting, we began to allow ourselves to be
sedately happy. The little wooden house was kept by
a German family, with seven or eight fair- haired,
placid-faced children, who seemed to have preserved

104 ON THE WING.

the easy Teutonic formulas of life as perfectly here as
if they were still at home in Deutchland. But it was
not until next night, at Clark's, that we really got into
harmony with the place we were coming to. Under
any other circumstances, it would have been a delight
to go through these lovely spots. The road winds in
a thousand sharp curves around and between the
mountains, fringed with wonderful trees, and at every
moment a fresh vista opens. Exquisite little glades,
green and smooth as a meadow, with groups of shrub-
bery, round and perfect as art could make them, show
at each turn. Delicate fronds of white lilac, frail
and ethereal as frost flowers and fragrant as orange
blossoms, fill the air with delicious perfume; groups
of tall spray-like yellow roses, called for some obscure
reason leather-brush ; clumps of large white dogwood
blossoms, and brilliant clusters of Manzanita, their
vivid maroon velvety stems showing like ribbons
between the fine, small leaves of pale-green ; all these
were arranged as in a pleasant garden, and in most
luxuriant condition.

Between them now and again came a white oak,
the bark ribbed like alligator hide, the magnificent
foliage massed in solid green, or the slender, spray-
like needles of young pines or cedars. The succession
of these lovely vistas and green knolls is as charming
as unexpected, and you realize at last what it is that
has been wanting to the loveliness of the lower coun-
try, in which trees have always been small and few.
Gradually as the day wears on, the character of the
landscape changes. The precipices are wilder and

ON THE WING.

I05

higher; the oaks fewer; enormous pines and cedars,
growing constantly larger, usurp the place cf all other
trees. The undergrowth begins to increase until the
ground is covered with one tangled mass ; wild flowers
disappear; more ruggedness creeps into the beauty;
under-branches of trees begin to grow bare and with-
ered, or are covered with fine, bright, yellowish moss.
For the last five or six hours one passes through the
immense growths of this celebrated country; the trees
towering 120, 150, sometimes 200 feet; overhead a
solid mass of foliage through which flickering sun-
light and dappled shadows fall ; while beneath, like
vast cathedral aisles, the bare, giant trunks, stretch in
every direction. These are the woods which were
God's first temples, and in them still lingers the in-
cense breath of prayer and praise.

Clark's is a lovely spot ; we drove with a last spurt
of our jaded horses and a last rattling crack of the
driver's worn-out whip up to the front door, through a
drove of three thousand sheep and lambs, which their
Chinese herders were trying to force across the
Merced. It had the effect of a ship tossing on a rest-
less sea, and was picturesque after we had passed them.
But I would as soon not return to our muttons. The
pleasant noise of a saw-mill mingles with the rushing
river which turns its wheel, and small logs, as logs go
here, from four to six feet in diameter, wait their turn
in the yard. A pet fawn comes up and slips his
slender nose into your hand, as you walk about in the
delicious air, stretching your legs after the long,
cramped drive ; down the long slope the fresh night

IO6 ON THE WING.

breeze, half inspiration, half lullaby, comes stealing;
the moon climbs across the deep-blue horizon, and we
grow to be conscious that the charm of the place is
upon us. The house is so built that every room, both
above and below stairs, opens on a balcony, which
gives a sense of airiness and freedom not often found
in finer houses. There are great fireplaces in each of
the parlors, full at this time of the year with a glow of
blazing logs. I could not shake off a feeling that we
were near home, among the White Mountains, in the
entrance hall of the Profile House, and that a few
hours might bring us back to the people we loved.

The drive from Clark's was a repetition of the best
points of the day before. We had glorious weather;
a sky like Colorado; an air brilliant and odorous ; a
succession of wonderful gorges and deep ravines,
that kept delight constantly on tiptoe, and a glorious
team of six fine horses, with a roomy stage. We had
a grizzled Scotchman for a driver, canny and kind, —
an old forty-niner, with a get-up like McKee Rankin's
in the play, — who knew the pedigree of every head in
his stock, and had more yarns about the valley legends
than would fill a volume. We listened with great
interest to the account of Cocoanut-John, the "nigh
leader's " rheumatiz, and Billy T. and Emigrant, the
two " Swing's," little peculiarities. It was such a
luxury to have that dreadful whip silent, and not feel
that Bergh should be telegraphed to on account of
the poor worn-out creatures, that our spirits rose to
concert pitch.

The curves and precipices grew swifter and steeper ;

ON THE WING. 107

the beautiful, tall, symmetrical trees, straight as ar-
rows, shot into the air; the swaying stage rocked up
and down dizzy mountain-sides at every gait from a
snail's pace to a mad gallop ; we grew, as usual, un-
conscious of danger, and half inebriated with its
nearness ; for the breaking of a trace, the swerving
of a foot, the slipping of a screw, would launch the
whole equipage into space, like a bolt from a cross-
bow. I cannot tell what mental exhilaration takes
possession of one and puts fear so far away that even
those who are cowards by nature lose sight of it; but
respectable people who get out of barges going up
the twenty-foot slope of Green Hill at home, and
would consider it suicide to drive up a higher eleva-
tion, cling to their seats here like acrobats, and would
like to urge the flying horses faster!

Suddenly across the clear sapphire of the sky a
long, trailing cloud floated like a white feather toward
the zenith ; suddenly, again, another and another came
tumbling upon it, until in less than twenty minutes we
were in the midst of a skurrying mountain-storm of
pelting rain. Beloved people three thousand miles
away who dream of California as a land where the
sun shines without a frown or tear to mar its placid
loveliness for months together, and who are taught to
believe that the wall of the Rocky Mountains inter-
poses a rainless barrier between earth and heaven,
take heed and warning! Bring your rubbers and
your gossamers and your strongest umbrellas ; never
go out without them any more than you would in
England ; turn a deaf ear to the amiable idiots who
tell you anything to the contrary, and make up your

Io8 ON THE WING.

sensible mind, once for all, that though God certainly
might make a mountainous country rain-proof, yet He
certainly never has ; then you won't come to grief or
dampness, and your temper, as well as your travelling
suit, will be unspoiled.

It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. We
had been travelling for nearly three days through a
country of such stupendous wildness and utter deso-
lation as left the soul at once subdued and uplifted.
Except at the two little dining-stations, the sheds
where horses were changed, and a few small settle-
ments on the flats, there had been no sign of human
life or habitation through the entire distance. The
sense of isolation from the outer earth was so pro-
found that it seemed as if weeks had elapsed since
the shrieking engine had torn its way across the plain
at Madera, and left us, untried explorers, at the outer
walls of this new world.

At last, after one final, sharp turn, that took even
our experience by surprise, we came to the bare edge
of a mighty precipice and halted. We were on In-
spiration Point. Around us, the pelting rain still
poured heavily ; above, the black storm-cloud hung in
low folds almost upon the tree tops, but toward the
west, its jagged edges were lifted, and a bit of clear
sky blazed like a sapphire through dull gray. One
shining white cloud floated across this glowing blue,
and through it the afternoon sun poured a flood of
dazzling light into the Valley ! The Valley which was
the end of our dreams and hopes, towards which un-
consciously our hearts had been turning through all
the changes of the long journey, with which we had

ON THE WING. 109

been blindly comparing every scene that approached
sublimity before ! Dropped at our very feet, and
clothed in such fair proportions of majesty and beauty
as made it more a spiritual joy than an earthly loveli-
ness, it rested, silent and set apart, as if human eyes
for the first time beheld it; wrapped in a veil of soft,
purple mist, that made it seem, in spite of its near-
ness, like a vision that would fade while we gazed. In
front, El Capitan, erect and fearless, as became the
warden of the magic world beyond, lifting its barer
white front three thousand feet in one superb perpen-
dicular line from base to summit ; opposite, the soft-
falling, swaying foam of the falls bounding nearly a
thousand feet through the air before it struck the
broken rocks below ; beyond the rounded curves of
the Three Graces, the sweeping line of the South
Dome, and far-away the veiled summit of Cloud's-
Rest, piled with soft, gray shadows. A broken line of
shining water came like a silver thread, showing here

O ' O

and there in the depths of the lovely valley, and
broadened into a small mirrored lake almost at our
feet below. It was — if I have used the same words
before, forgive me — beyond conception and utterance.
The sense of solitude, of peace, and of an inspiration
which sprang from both was so profound as to be
oppressive. Even the most frivolous spirits among
us were struck with sudden calm, as if they stood at
the portals of some divine mystery, and it was with a
feeling almost of relief that we turned away at last,
and went zigzaging down the dreadful slope of the
dizzy mountain to enter in at the gates below.

CHAPTER IX.

THE VALLEY OF THE GREAT GRIZZLY BEAR.

THE last two miles of the descent into the
valley was much the worst bit of trail we
had come to in the whole hundred miles of
staging. The curves were so desperately abrupt
where the Z shaped road turned back upon itself, that
the noses of our leaders were actually over the preci-
pice before they could swing themselves around, and
a faint, sickening dread that the entire team would
follow their noses kept one in a constant state of per-
turbation. But still, as we looked from one side or
the other into the beautiful depths below, the feeling
that it was good to be here overwhelmed every other,,
and it was with a sort of mute admiration that we
drove at last up the winding valley road, under boughs
still wet and shining from the recent storm. Every
stain of dust had been wiped away, and nature was
freshly garlanded to greet us. Behind, deep-muttering
thunder still went on like salvos of artillery echoing
from crag to crag; before, the yellow sunshine sun
poured down, casting long shadows across the grass,
and weaving rainbows through pale mists which were
flying high up in the rocky ramparts. We were in a
narrow cleft, between straight walls of pale, gray stone
which towered thousands of feet above, cutting the

112 ON THE WING.

clear, blue air in myriad forms of domes and spires and
sudden, sharp angles. All sense of proportion is lost
in the immensity of dimension; one becomes stupefied
at last with the blunders made in guessing heights and
distances, and maintains a discreet silence. Glimpses
through the trees, as well as a rushing sound of
waters, proclaim the approach to the Bridal Veil
Falls, and soon the driver halts to allow a nearer view
of the foam-tangled, swaying, snowy cataract, which
bursts like a white fury from the rocks above to the
rocks below. Its muffled roar makes the silence of the
spot only more impressive. The curving road goes
on bending more toward the river, where the rapid
current of the Muscat and its brilliant green color
reminds one of the rapids above Niagara. A bridge
spans the swift stream on the left, where a path leads
toward El Capitan, which looks down still from its
mighty elevation, its giant outline changed now to
that of some waiting Sphinx looking with unseeing
eyes toward the future. At a certain point you are
asked to look at a silhouette of the Wandering Jew
etched on the face of the cliff ; but, as a matter of
fact, any healthy imagination can make scores of such
pictures at every new hundred feet of scarred and
weather-beaten wall. As one point fades, another
opens ; the snowy summit of Cloud's Rest drops out
of sight behind To-coy-ae ; the Three Brothers lift
their heads from under the shadow of the Great
Chief of the Valley ; the Virgin Lung-oo-too-koo-ya
drops her slender pearly tears from her cloud eyrie ;
high on the right the Sentinel disputes your path ;

ON THE WING. 113

while far to the left, his long, bright fleece trailing
behind him, the Large Grizzly Bear himself, the Great
Yo Semite, plunges three thousand feet through the
air in three mad bounds, and dashes himself to pieces
on the rocks beneath. This is the most satisfying of
all the wonderful cataracts of this wonderful valley ;
even its voice is more sonorous and deeper than any
in the entire circuit of the hills. Mingled with its
constant, deep-mouthed roar come irregular detona^
tions like the far-off rattling of musketry, or like the
deep recurrent beat of the ocean against a stormy
coast, when the under-tow beats broken pebbles
about, and the sweeping tide thunders now and again
against the great rocks. Twenty times that first night
after entering the Valley, I was conscious of that
satisfying, omnipresent tone ; and, deliciously tossed
between sleeping and waking, imagined myself at
home in the little house, with a nor'-easter beating the
wild Atlantic into fury before the door.

Meantime, as we still drive on, the beautiful
emerald river is flowing swiftly through cool, moist
meadows by our side, and patches of firs at the
base of our fortress walls begin to fall somewhat in
shadow. We pass the long, low, white cottage and
outbuildings at Cook's, lovely though the spot is, and
go on to H. H.'s little cottage by the river up above,
to a tiny chamber whose window opens directly on
both river and fall. A belt of oaks and alders, shim-
mering all day above the swift stream, is all that
separates you from the lofty peak of Eagle's Rest,
down the front of which tumbles the sweeping water-

114 ON THE WING.

fall. You can sit at your small-paned casement and
drink in its beauty from early morn to dewy eve;
better, still, you can lie in bed at night and see the sil-
ver spangles of moonlight fall in phosphorescent flakes,
as it tosses airily downward. The tree that shades
your narrow balcony has its roots in the stream, and
the eddying, rippling flow fascinates you as a sea-coal
fire would on a winter night. The air is thrilling with
bird notes and fragrant with sweet-briar and wild
jessamine ; there are familiar faces on the weather-
beaten porch of the small cottage opposite ; the world
is brimming over with the fresh beauty of May-time,
and you are in the heart of the Yo Semite, shut out
by its white walls from the tumult and greed and
wickedness. Can life offer anything more? Alas for
contentment ! Could any walls lower than heaven
itself shut out love and longing? We sigh, even
here, for the clinging arms of the blessed babies.

For the first four days after entering the valley, we
took no note of time. It was enough to sit silent and
satisfied, and let the wonderment and glory sink into
our souls, so that through all aftertime, while time
should last for us, there might be some clear, blissful
memory of it left. We simply looked and listened.
Could any one speak in presence of such a preacher ?
But we were moved occasionally beyond the power
of Christian endurance, at sight of the restless, hurry-
ing, foolish people, who, tired and worn with the long
journey to the gates, and untouched by the awful sub-
limity within, were bent upon "doing" the valley.
We grew to hate these words' with such exceeding

ON THE WING. 115

hatred, as made us desire blindly to behead every one
who uttered them.. Wildly rushing from point to point,
up this trail and down that woodpath, here at five in the
morning, and there until six at night, always anxious
and unsatisfied, and tired and footsore, — how we did
pity the foolish virgins who, in grasping for many
things, lost the one only needful ! To see the agony,
so poorly hidden behind a sickly smile, on the middle^
aged faces, unused to this kind of grimacing, that went
ambling or cantering by on the patient steeds eve^
morning ! To listen to the doleful, pathetic account of
nerves and feelings after the same faces, with more
agony and less smile, had come back in the evening.
The heroism of Joan of Arc, the self-sacrifice of Flor-
ence Nightingale, the determination of Catherine of
Russia, and the resignation of the women of Lucknow,
all combined and boiled down, are not a circumstance
to the immolation of any woman over forty, who for
the first time in her life, mounts a horse to scale one of
these mountain peaks. She bears the moral scars of
her victory on her face for days. She is afraid of the
horse, she is afraid of the precipices, she is afraid of
herself ; heaven and. earth seem to be passing away as
she begins to climb, and to have passed altogether
when she begins to descend. Every muscle is wrenched
by the effort to hold back or lean forward ; every
nerve is tortured by the strain of enduring and the
dread of horrors to come ; the poor farce of a guide a
hundred feet off, with four or five horses between,
being of help, if her animal's fore feet slip or hind feet
stumble over the edge of the trail, is so apparent, and

ON THE WING.

the idiocy of her ever having made the attempt so
patent, that she would give the world for the relief of
a good cry if she could only get down and have it out.
And all because fashion prescribes a certain mode of
procedure. You may be gifted with good legs and
honest lungs, a sound heart and clear head, but you
must not use them in climbing. It is not according
to Hoyle. They say that you will be tired and lame
and unstrung for days after. But I, I who speak to
you, do give you my word of honor that you will have
three times the physical weariness and five times the
nervous strain after you have done the same thing on
horseback.

I do not speak from experience ; no, dear madamie.
I speak from observation, which is always a cheaper
and often a wiser teacher. The stories which were
poured into our pitying ears night after night by the
unfortunates who had run the gauntlet were quite
enough to keep any sane woman out of it. We sat
quiet, as I say, for days, until some of the spirit of
the place had entered into us, and then began to walk.
First into the foam and fury at the foot of the Great
Falls, where drenched with spray and wild with exul-
tation, we could be shaken by every falling throb of
the wonderful power before us. Then about the
valley, with a climb here and there for a fern or a leaf
or flower, and a perfect understanding of the times
for lunch and dinner. Then to Mirror Lake, to see
the sun rise over the arch of the rocky wall five thou-
sand feet above, while we followed his reflection in
the cool, placid depths of the water below, and tried

ON THE WING. 117

to imagine we saw the double refraction. Then grown
bolder, with lunch, knapsack and waterproof — and
don't you forget it — strapped on back, to Glacier
Point and down again the same day, shaken, tired, but
supremely happy. So it wrent on. We did not see,
perhaps, for want of time, as many separate views ;
we did not have a guide to tell us the name of every
boulder we tipped over, or every point we glanced at ;
but we learned our lessons by heart, as well as eye-
sight, and those are the teachings remembered longest.
The formation of the valley, inclosed within those
lofty walls which drop apart as if some infinite might
had cleaved them in twain, and in the rent between
set this bit of sylvan beauty, with its stream of living
waters, its deep, fragrant meadows and over-arching
trees, is something stupendous and terrible. Mighty
barriers fill all the horizon, set straightly between
earth and heaven; you can scarcely imagine a world
outside it. The leaping water-falls pouring over the
top of this awful barricade seem as if sprung from,
some mysterious source; it is only when half-way-
skyward, on some dizzy mountain-trail, that one sees
rising beyond the snowy heights which supply those
eternal fountains. But from the floor of the valley
there is no hint of anything beyond or above. The
narrow strip of sky, full hour by hour of changing
cloud effects, paints the grayish-white surface of rock
with as many tints as the moonstone. Sometimes it
is black as night ; sometimes white as snow ; some-
times full of a sinister and awful calm; sometimes
broken into a thousand shifting bits, which almost

Il8 ON THE WING.

seem to move while one looks at them. The place is
a mine of optical illusions. Lean back against the
sheer wall of El Capitan and look upward : you are
the centre of a semi-circular arch, which seems to
project hundreds of feet above and in front of you.
Cross from the middle, the little strip of land between
the base of the mountains, which looks in all and at
most a few hundred yards, and you will walk a mile
before reaching either side. Try, as I said before, to
guess the height of any one of the peaks, or points,
or waterfalls, and you will sit up all night to be
ashamed of your crooked judgment, unless, like me,
you are wise enough to despise statistics. What good
does it do you to know a thing is three thousand or
six thousand feet high, when you have no more idea
than the man in the moon of how high three or six
thousand feet is ? Of course, I could explain by say-
ing it is fifteen or thirty times as high as but no,

I will most positively not drag Bunker Hill monument
again into the Yo Semite Valley : it has been done too
often already. And if I should give you the entire'
table of altitudes set out in fair Arabic numerals, what
better idea would you have of the glory, the grandeur,
the utter wonder, of this entrancing spot? Pictures
have given you some warped impression of its out-
line. Any school-boy in the country will tell you that
it is nine miles long, and from one to two miles
wide ; that its perpendicular walls are nearly a mile
in sheer precipices set around it ; that the moun-
tains surrounding average four or six thousand feet,
and that waterfalls burst in tangled skeins of silver

ON THE WING. I 19

from every crevice of the rock. But neither school-
boy nor school-master can tell you anything more,
until your own eyes bring it home at last to your own
soul, as I sincerely hope they may.

We stopped at Barnard's hotel, if four little cot-
tages, two by the river-side and two opposite amon^
the rocks, can be called by such a dignified title.
The chambers are no bigger than a steamboat state-
room; the ceilings are made of cotton cloth ; the
walls are covered with bright paper, and the floor with
a hand's-breadth of carpet; there is a wholesome
straw-bed and a feather-pillow, plenty of bed-clothes,
and, candor compels me to confess, of mosquitoes.
You can have unlimited water and towels on your
small washstand, and there is a healthy, hard pine
chair, if you desire to sit down. There is no lock on
your door, and no key, if there were one ; the sun
comes by day, and the silent stars- peep at night into
the hallway, with its open doors at front and back, for
the thoroughfare through the house is as open as the
grassy path before it. It is primitive as primitive
can be, therefore in harmony with the wild nature
around it. One sitting-room has been built around
the base of a tree ten feet in diameter, whose top
waves in the sunshine a hundred and fifty feet above
the lowly roof. Whatever fine flavor is needed to
make its homely but plentiful fare palatable, is given
by the wonderful picture of the swift-flowing river,
and the glorious beauty of the great falls outside the
windows of the clean, plain dining-room. By and In-
some vandal will come and buy Mr. Barnard out ;

I2O ON THE WING.

then there will go up a five-story monstrosity of a
fashionable house, with electric bells and set wash-
bowls, hair mattresses and modern airs. And we will
thank our lucky stars that we came in before the
innovations !

We strolled over the plank-walk laid across the
meadows to-night, in a veritable twilight of the gods,
while day faded slowly up the stupendous heights and
the long-lingering shadows crept close, like dusky
lovers, embracing the beautiful valley. Coming back
a little later, we saw the full moon rise five times in
fifteen minutes from behind one peak after another.
And, now, one side of the valley lifts mountainous
walls of ebon blackness into the starlit sky, while the
other is shining as in transfiguration; the falls are
radiant as an avalanche of snow; the river lies like
a sheet of molten silver; while the trees, every leaf
and twig, touched, into microscopic distinctness, are
reflected as in a Claude Lorraine mirror. Serene in
its stern grandeur, with the very soul of solitude at
rest on its lofty battlements, and the cold moonlight
heightening its most awful beauty, it is the picture
I would like to take away in my heart forever of the
Yo Semite.

CHAPTER X.

A CLIMB THROUGH THE CLOUDS.

THE walk to Glacier Point, or rather the climb,
for there are not two consecutive steps of
level ground in the whole of it with one small
exception, was the most brilliant achievement of our
lives. We started early in the morning, an hour be-
fore the sun had got down into the valley, and thus
escaped much of the heat and dust which are so
terrific later. The constantly changing path gave a
succession of exquisite views as we mounted higher
and higher, looking now up, now down the ravine.
One by one, familiar landmarks came in sight ; one
t>y one others, unknown, appeared beyond them, until
the whole mountain canon was before us with one
pale-blue line of summits closing it at either end.
The windings of the Merced showed themselves in all
their curving beauty, cultivated fields looked like
squares on a checker-board, the great herd of horses
m the yard behind the stables dwindled to sizes like
the animals in a child's ark, and the stables themselves
like houses in a toy village. Gradually, behind the
Yosemite Fall, which has always looked before' as if
dropped out of the blue sky, with no tangible earthly
foundation, a range of tumbled peaks began to rise
which looked, later on, as we stood on the highest

122 ON THE WING.

point, like a plateau of mountains stretching out to an
infinite distance. The winding cavalcade of mounted
knights and dames, some brave, some pallid, all a little
anxious, passed us near the end while we were munch-
ing frozen snow from a crevice in the rocks and
enjoying the view from the last turn. I never was so
sincerely thankful for anything, in the course of a
moderately long life, as that I was not on one of those
winged steeds, especially as two or three turned their
stupid heads to look over the precipice, as if they
were meditating suicide. The path was so hard and
steep that I would not at all wonder to see the poor,
tired creatures take this easy way of reaching the
pleasant pastures below, when it comes to going down.
The last few hundred yards are through a grove of
trees, stately and beautiful, with mountain brooks
flowing between, and the unpainted walls of a large
frame house showing like a wrelcome in the distance.
By this time, although you have become somewhat
used to the ascent, and learned the logic of resting
for a moment at every dozen steps, the continued
strain has begun to tell on the faithful calves which
have carried you so nobly, and it is with content deep
and inexpressible that you cross through the dining-
room of the little house and throw yourself into one
of the rocking-chairs on the narrow piazza in front.
Such a delicious resting-place, and such a wonderful
sight !• For you have come, as it were, to the gates
of another country than the one left behind. Here
is once more that loveliest of all earthly things, a
snowy range, stretching on either hand till it fades

ON THE WING. 123

in the distance; here is Cloud's Rest, with a floating
veil of trailing gray across it; here is South Dome
rising in tremendous bold majesty, overtopping every-
thing else in its imposing nearness ; and here is the
beautiful line of the Nevada and Vernal Falls, show-
ing from this elevation like one continuous sweep of
cataract and rapid, as it tumbles between the trees on
its headlong way down the canon. The soft haze
which distance weaves about the farther summits gives
a dreamy effect of immense distance, and intensifies
the expression of wonderful distinctness and clearness
in the nearer atmosphere. Far beyond, to the right,
the most beautiful point of the whole, to which they
have given the name of one who so loved God's world
as to be counted one of its prophets, Mt. Starr King
rises; the Little Yosemite fills the middle distance;
and farthest of all, where the faint, remote peaks melt
into the dim horizon, some one shows you where the
Lost Valley rests. How I would like to stay here a
year and a day until I found it again !

A path to the left through the woods, leads to an
overhanging ledge, something like table-rock at Niag-
ara, but on an immense scale, which commands a
view of the entire valley as it lies like a map three
thousand two hundred feet below. A slight iron

o

balustrade is all that protects the dizzy height ; and
leaning far out and over, we hurl great rocks down
only to see them whirled inward and out of 'sight
before they have fallen half the distance, some under-
current of air scooping them toward the base of the
cliff. A small moving speck, as large as a walnut.

124 ON THE

resolves itself through the glasses into a country team
passing on the river-road, and the pools running up
toward Mirror Lake flash like a necklace of diamonds.
One feels as if in the centre of a great silent world,
with the first hush of creation yet upon it.

Just behind us sat a quartette of young New York
girls, or belles, — every New York young girl is a
belle by right divine, I believe, — who, with the un-
awed instincts of their race, rattled on in the usual
high American key about the merits of their respective
bootmakers. They could not quite ignore the scenery,
nor could they waste all their time in looking at it,
while the preeminence of Louis Ouinze or Louis
Ouatorze, in the matter of French heels, was still
undecided. Their innocent babble, which would have
been exhilarating in any other place, pointed as it was
by punctuation-marks made by the prettiest feet in the
world, and charming little bursts of light-hearted
confidences, seemed just a little out of place in the
broad, serene, magnificent amphitheatre they had
chosen to make a shoe-shop of. But there is no
accounting for tastes. If some people would rather
have French heels and table d'hote on Fifth avenue,
to the wild witchery of nature and the sour bread of
the Valley inns, why, let them. I 'd take the dinner
of herbs and the dusty boots any time.

Looking at the South Dome from this point, its bald
summit lifted 6,200 feet into the air, a sheer precipice
of naked rock on one side for the last thousand feet,
it seems absolutely inaccessible. It has been reached,
however, by means of a rope, which some first daring

ON THE WING. 125

spirit left fastened to a support above, and by steps
cut into the perpendicular cliff, up which the dizzy
climber toils and clings, fastened by other ropes, to
the waist of the guide in front. When we remember
the slight young girl living in the valley below, who-
told so simply last night of having twice accomplished
this wonderful feat, a thrill of positive terror shivers
through us. Daughter of one of the pioneer fami-
lies, living almost from childhood in the shadow of
this awful majesty, it must be that some unknown
strength of love and pride, born of long intimacy with
this wonder world, sustained her slender wrists in that
terrible upward struggle. Ordinary nerves could never
vitalize ordinary muscles to such an extent.

A touching incident which brought the sad tender-
ness of human interest home even to this wild, remote
spot, which looks in its isolation as if set apart from
the happenings of ordinary life, was related by this
same young girl. One of her sisters had an intimate
friend in one of the two, or three neighboring fami-
lies, which, with their own, make up the entire settle-
ment. There existed between these two an uncommon
union of sentiment and feeling; they explored together
the wildest spots, until every inch of the valley had
been made familiar to their eager eyes ; they worked,
studied, and dreamed together, and lived in that un-
selfish devotion so often found between two ardent
girls, and so rarely elsewhere. Gifted beyond their
surroundings, they were the ornament of the little
community, and leaders of every social gathering.
Suddenly, and without seeming cause, one of these

126 ON THE WING.

bright, active, healthy lives, weakened and faded; and
before her fair face had been a month under the snow
of her wintry grave, her friend was laid beside her.
It was, except for an infant lost before, the first time
death had come to the valley, and its shadow was still
upon the stricken hearts of its people when we spoke
with them. In every family within the circle of the
mountain walls, the names of these two dear girls,
coupled as they always were together, was a household
word of love and longing.

We were loth to leave the wonders of this upper
world. Every instant a new surprise met us in some
view lovelier than the last, and we were annoyed to
find that if properly informed below, we could have
arranged to stay all night on the summit and see the
glories of sunset and sunrise from this eyrie in mid
air. It would have been like a new heaven and new
earth freshly created for our ravished eyes, but the
conservative policy of the inn-keepers in the valley had
prevented any knowledge of it, so we were obliged
reluctantly to turn our faces downward. I put the
information here, that later, happier mortals may make
use of it, and think of me when they come into their
kingdom.

We started on the descent, unfortunately, about two
o'clock : the very hottest time of the hottest day of
the year. The trail was four inches deep with soft,
dry dust ; the sun glowed like a carbuncle against the
shining, hot rock into which the path was cut ; the
air blew as if from the fiery depths of tophet; our
Alpen stocks would not catch in the light, fluffy,

ON THE WING. 127

powdery soil; and we tore with giant strides down the
mountain sides, inflamed by turns with heat and
admiration, until we were sights to behold. Anything
so tremendous as this oven-like temperature it had
never been my lot to experience before. The sultriest
August dog-day that ever wrapped New England in
perspiration was a bit of cool comfort compared to it.
Fortunately, there were no lookers-on in Vienna to
see our discomfiture. We did not learn until later
that sunstroke is unknown in this climate, so that we
were tortured by dread as well as discomfort; and
two happier people than those who sat at last by the
tub near the little spring in the valley, ladling the
cool water in handfuls over face and head, it would
be hard to meet.

One of the blessings which sometimes come in the
guise of misfortunes, kept us in the valley some days
longer than we had originally expected, and. left us
grow into a little closer acquaintance. It is madness
to take so severe a trip as that required to get into
the Yosemite, without staying there at least a week.
Two or three days only to bask in the delight of such
a masterpiece of unearthly beauty and then tear one's
self away from it for a possible forever, is too tanta-
lizing for human nature to bear with any sort of
equanimity. Like Niagara, or other places of like
magnificent proportion, it requires time to see things
as they really are. It is impossible for days to believe
that heights are as lofty, within hundreds of feet, as
their actual dimensions. But day by day the stupen-
dous sizes grow while you look at them, and if one

128 ON THE WING.

could only remain long enough to shake off outside
ideas of distance, I really believe the summits of those
white climbing walls, bare and inaccessible, mounting
into the still, blue air, would seem at last to reach
heaven.

We had the one day of a thousand in which to leave
this haunting spot, a day so perfect that its very mem-
ory is bliss. The large dewdrops were still shimmer-
ing on the grass, for the sun rises on the heights
hours before it strikes the narrow path by the river
below, and the shadows linger till late in the morning.
We had a new driver, and a new team, chief of whom
were Strawberries-an '-Cream, and Nicodemus, and the
way, after one last, long, lingering look from Inspira-
tion Point, and climbing the four miles to the summit
beyond, we tore down those mountain passes, was
almost too wild for comfort. We bounded in our
seats like India rubber balls in the hands of an Eastern
juggler ; the wretched people inside were tossed and
tumbled until they were bruised from head to foot ;
but, like the famous ride of Horace Greeley over
some of these same slopes, our coachman was bound
to get us there on time. " Old Dowse," the other
driver, with six horses, was just ahead of us with five
minutes' start; a stern chase is always a long one,
but our man would have broken our necks and his
own twenty times over before he would have been
two minutes behind his "pard" in getting into port.
It is not the first time we needed a special Provi-
dence, and found it, but I trust it may be the last.

We picked a couple of enormous pine cones, six-

ON THE WING. 129 v

teen or eighteen inches long, to take home for the
babies, and would have liked to attempt one of the
snow-plants, those beautiful spires of waxy carmine,
in which leaf, stem and blossom is the same vivid,
intense, transparent color, only that every one assured
us it would be impossible to preserve it. Even if it
were not, it would never be so beautiful again away
from its proper resting-place, so that comforted us.
At Clark's, twenty-five miles away, we made a detour v
to reach the big trees, and spent a memorable after-
noon looking at those freaks of nature. A ball of
twine, which you unwind for ninety or a hundred feet
to measure one Grizzly Giant, makes you believe the
size you can never understand otherwise. The driver
points to a spot a few hundred yards at one side,
where a hand's-breadth seems to have been cut in
another enormous trunk, and tells you that it is
Wawona, through which the coaches drive. It requires
the full force of the solid fact that your twelve-pas-
senger team with its four horses fits easily under the
arch, even with the Big Boy on top, before you begin
to realize that it is possible. To talk of trees thirty
feet in diameter is one thing, to see them another.
The tremendous disproportion between length and
breadth, which makes them even when two hundred
feet in height, look stumpy; the queer, straggling, ugly
foliage, the peculiar color and formation of the three-
foot-thick bark, combine to make them more objects of
curiosity than things of beauty, especially in a country
filled with the exquisite symmetry of the graceful
yellow pine and white oak.
9

130 ON THE WING.

They are named for individuals and states. We took
off our hats with a Harvard " rah " to imposing old
Massachusetts, and did the usual honors of the place
in buying bark and bits of wood. They will do to
trim the little house by the sea.

From Clark's down to the valley fifty miles beyond,
the beautiful wild flowers began again. Such exqui-
site and delicate things I never saw before. There
was one we called the Cashmere Lily for want of a
better name, which had on the inside of its creamy
petals a spot of rich, deep coloring like the figure in
an India shawl. We absolutely revelled in the fra-
grance and exquisite perfection of these lovely un-
known blooms, and for want of better uses, trimmed
our old coach until it looked like a marriage-bell. It
was not until we struck the hot, dusty line of the
lower plain that we really became roused to the dis-
comfort of our situation. In and from the valley there
were no longer those useful bits of printed paper
inside Russia leather covers, to save us from discom-
fort; we had got out of the region where Raymond
coupons took care of us, and were obliged to take
care for ourselves. As a natural consequence we
came to grief. I will not speak of our woes beyond
one earnest appeal to those who will come here after-
ward, to make assurance doubly sure that they are
given a regular seat in a regular stage, not a place on
an extra, nor one that obliges them to ride backward.
They '11 have to fight and they '11 have to struggle, but
they must insist; and for Heaven's sake let them not
believe anybody, anybody, even if they look like dea-

ON THE WING. 131

cons and have their hands on the Bible. Lying is as
natural to California as gold mines. Or rather, we
won't call it lying. The imagination of the people
assumes the same proportions as everything else, and
they make false statements without being conscious
of it.

Such a coach-load of draggled and dirty beings as
alighted at that hot little inn at Madera never filled a
stage before. We were copper-colored as Digger
Indians; we were hot (the thermometer was at 116
degrees); we were hungry; we were filthy; it would
take keen eyes to recognize respectable people in
such a group of tramps. What I have always be-
lieved in regard to human nature, that it is equal
to great things even when it fails in petty troubles,
proved itself here. We conquered in the strife with
weariness, and had, between opera singing, conun-
drums and stories, a jolly day. If we had rested on
our laurels long enough to have realized how miser-
ably unhappy and .unfortunate we were, we would have
died decently rather than have kept up such a strug-
gle ; but New England grit, and a little Irish humor
which always comes in as a forlorn hope, bridged us
over. But if every discomfort had been increased an
hundred-fold, if we had been jolted until our poor
flesh were black and blue from head to foot, if we had
been evaporated by heat until only enough mortal
body was left to hold the soul, if we had been broken
and bruised, pestered and tormented up to the farthest
of human endurance, we would bear it all again will-
ingly, joyfully, eagerly, for one glimpse of that en-

132 ON THE WING.

chanted valley, resting in its supernal beauty amid the
solitude and silence of the everlasting hills. For
aches shall pass, and dust and tribulation, but the
memory of that exceeding loveliness will be part of
our lives through all the days of all the years here-
after. There is really no reason, however, why any-
one not a confirmed invalid should not be able to make
the trip with perfect ease, by simply arranging pro-
perly at first.

The regular coaches are exceedingly roomy and
hung on good springs; both horses and drivers are
used to their work and go at it earnestly ; their roads
are excellently well kept, and clever pieces of engineer-
ing skill ; there are good meals to be had on the way,
and clean, comfortable resting-places; and anyone who
dreads the first seventy-five miles of staging in one
day, can divide it on the Madera route by stopping
over night at Coarse-gold Gulch. If one takes no
extra baggage to make care for themselves and dis-
comfort for everybody else, beyond the indispensable
shawl-strap or hand-satchel ; if a light gossamer water-
proof and rubbers are kept in a convenient pocket,
whence they can be made available at a moment's
notice ; if, above all, they carry with them that happy
disposition to make the best of things and ignore
trifles — without which no one should ever attempt to
travel beyond a horse-car line — they can go to the
Yosemite without any fear of consequences. There
is neither undue fatigue nor dangerous excitement to
be dreaded ; exceeding care has reduced the chances
of accidents to the very smallest proportion ; and the

ON THE WING. 133

beautiful, wonderful way which leads up through the
mountains to the entrance of the valley, fills one with
such ever-increasing delight as makes ordinary weari-
ness unfelt. Especially in May, when the rainy season
is not yet long enough over to make the country dusty
or vegetation parched, and the melting snows on the
mountain tops fill the great waterfalls with a mighty
overflow, while neither great heat nor great cold are
likely to torment the traveller, is the world at its best
for making this excursion. But while the short season
is available, no tourist should ever leave California
without making a desperate effort to avail himself of
the wonder and glory for all future time of seeing the
Yosemite. It is like quitting London before one has
stood within the shadowed aisles of Westminster, or
coming back from Italy without having entered within
the gates of the Eternal City.

We slept in the berths of the palace-car, rather than
in the hot rooms of the hotel — where we got never-
theless an exceedingly good supper — and woke in the
morning twenty miles away, with a delicious cool
breeze blowing through the windows.

Soon the Sacramento began to roll its muddy cur-
rent by the side of the road ; long reaches of over-
flowed meadow-land, with ruminant kine knee-deep in
cool waters, and large, lovely white herons flapping on
slow pinions over the trees, to their nests in the tall
reeds, made the landscape picturesque to our unused
eyes. On the opposite side, far away, Mount Diabla
rose. Yellow lupin blossoms for the first time made
the land beautiful. Indeed, the prevailing color of the

134 ON THE WING.

wild flowers through the whole of California is yellow,
as if the golden treasure below pajnted with its own
tint the delicate petals that lift themselves into the sun-
shine above it. Among their roses, too, the Marechal
Neil and Gold of Ophir transcend all the others in regal
magnificence of size and beauty. We were obliged
to put on warm wraps and shut out the draughts, so
soon does this strange air change. We were nearing
San Francisco.

CHAPTER XI.

WITHIN THE GOLDEN GATE.

THE same immensity which seems to pervade
nature in California, the amplitude of resource
which bears visible fruit in the magnitude
of her people's conceptions and ideas, shows itself
down even to such small affairs as billheads and side-
walk posters. The depot in Oakland, which is really
the San Francisco terminus of the Central Pacific,
coming either from the North or South, is one of these
immense growths. For size, brightness, and airiness,
it is a model structure ; but I think the gigantic car-
toons upon its walls, the massive oil-paintings setting
forth the superior virtues of Domestic sewing-machines
or Clark's cotton, of this haberdasher, or that cigar-
maker, impressed us more than the building itself.
To see such a blooming waste of brilliant color and
gorgeous framing expended on legitimate advertising
rather took one's breath away. We had never seen
its like before, except for the side-shows of a circus.
To the traveller who comes across country by the
direct overland route, and makes his debut, as it
were, here, it must be even more startling, for we
had become by this time accustomed to Calif orniau
idiosyncracies.

I can easily imagine the approach to San Francisco

136 ON THE WING.

across the bay, a most beautiful one at certain seasons
of the year. It is always impressive, as a great city
set on hills and surrounded by water must ever be ;
but when the welcome rains have brought with them
verdure and bloom, so that the lovely world is new-
born to its birthright of fresher loveliness, it must be
a rare sight. When one comes from the desperate
cold of an Eastern winter, and crossing the Rockies
between walls of snow fifteen or twenty feet deep,
comes into this land of flowers, and steams across the
waters of the Pacific to the gates of this golden city,
it must be like entering paradise. Just how, it is more
like purgatory. Although only two months of the dry
season are over, the hills are gray, the streets windy
and forlorn, whirlwinds of dust rush and rise at every
corner, and the first aspect is almost one of desola-
tion. Unconsciously, the Eastern mind makes San
Francisco the representative of California. It absorbs
its interests, it upholds its pride, it is the blossom of
its civilization, just as Rome is of Italy or Paris of
France. Unconsciously, also, people who are not old
travellers measure that part of the world in which
they happen to find themselves, by home standards.
Remembering the glory of June in New-England, its
sweetness, its beauty, its tenderness of unfolding life;
remembering, too, the dreams we have dreamed, and
stories we have heard, of the opulent wealth of this
Western land, the first feeling is one of unreasoning
disappointment. You are ready to be charmed, and
find yourself chilled instead. Although in a vague
way you have heard before that there are such things

ON THE WING. 137

as drawbacks of climate and want of finish, imagina-
tion, working with what it had to feed on in lower
California, has built up a world of its own and resents
the levelling processes of sober fact. It insists on
this being the culminating point.

The city is the most tantalizing of all we have yet
" struck," according to the Western phrase. Its people
regard it with such an absorbing love, and the Eastern-
ers who have lived in it for any time acquire such
devotion for it, that one expects to be fascinated at
the first glance. But one most decidedly is not. All
that you have heard or read of the glorious climate of
California, the poetic imagery that clings about the
Golden Gate, the fabulous stories of wealth and splen-
dor, the songs of Joaquin Miller and the sketches of
Bret Harte, clusters about this spot before you reach
it, as the Mecca of the Forty-niners. But when you
come, tired and dusty from the long overland ride,
across the Oakland ferry, and land at the foot of
Market street, in a world that seems more dusty than
ever; when you see the queer conglomeration of
splendor and smallness in even the principal thorough-
fares ; when your eyes are greeted wherever they turn
by the outlying sand-hills, whose shifting favors are
momently sifted over the entire city, you begin to
hesitate, and she who hesitates is lost. When, added
to this, you find that the gorgeous sunshine of which
you have been told so much does not put in an appear-
ance for three days running; that a fog, thick enough
to f cut in slices and send away by Wells £ Fargo's
omnipresent express, drifts in every day and all day

138 ON THE WING.

long ; that you must wear your winter furs and thickest
flannels in June, while your pretty fluffy muslins and
light ribbons are remanded to the darkness and crush-
ing of the trunk; that your crimps straighten out in
the most deplorable fashion, and you have to put up
an umbrella to save your hat ; that gritty whirlwinds
of sand get into hair, eyes and mouth, till you feel
like a nutmeg-grater, while in spite of all this you are
required to indorse the pretty fiction that the world is
just as it should be, and this ridiculous city the very
choice gem of it, why, it's simply too much.

You rage and storm for awhile ; you sigh over your
best black satin, ruined after a week's promenading;
you sneer at the women in the streets wearing seal-
skin sacques down to their ankles and white summer
hats at the same time; you ridicule the "bits" which
take the place of honest quarter and half dollars ; the
enormous size of everything, from the Palace Hotel
to the sidewalk advertisements ; the planked streets
and universal bay-windows ; the quantity of jig-sawing
which shocks your aesthetic principles by its lavish
out-door application. A few of the bonanza kings are
pointed out, men shown to the world by the fierce
light which beats upon a throne upheld by millions,
and you sneer more than ever. Better the dinner of
herbs a thousand times than such a feast of stalled
ox as this.

But at last, one comparatively fine morning you get
on the dummy to ride up California street, and you
experience a change of heat, swift, sudden and lasting.
The little quiet monster that whisks you up and pulls

ON THE WING. 139

you down the perpendicular hills, with a sudden aerial
flight like an elevator, may have something to do with
your conversion ; the brilliant glow of sunshine falling
on Mt. Diablo and the blue waters ebbing through the
Golden Gate have more. You pass the wonderful
houses with mosques and minarets, with conservatories
and porte-cocheres, with stone garden-walls that cost a
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, with that gorgeous
air of having been built regardless of everything save a
certain mammoth desire for comfort and luxury which
never struck your conservative New England senses
before. You pass other houses, by scores and hun-
dreds, wonderful, too, in a different way, for the air of
brightness and perfume of the glowing little beds of
. flowers around the small tenement, and the general
well-to-do effect it gives the places. You hear that at
Christmas time, when the cold is pinching the soul
through the body by the Eastern sea, the same flowers,
will be blooming in the same gardens, and the air will
be just what it is to-day, and no more ; with the added
luxury of a daily rain to allay the indomitable clust.
You drive out to the pretty park and find that the
strange nondescript pavements let your carriage roll
easily; that the city has a conservatory which palsies
your preconceived ideas of magnificence ; that the
fight between mind and matter is going on indefatiga-
bly and unceasingly, so that every day sees an inch or
two more of sand-waste reclaimed from the desert and
made to blossom like the rose — and so from melting
somewhat along the edges, you begin to thaw entirely.
By-and-by you begin to meet the people, — the heart-

140 ON THE WING.

whole, generous people, who take your hand with a
grip that means something, and put themselves and
their treasures at your feet with a remnant of the
old Spanish courtesy which made the days of Cas-
tilian chivalry so delightful. You find parlors filled
with as perfect and exquisite taste as any of the dear
Queen Anne houses of the Eastern empire ; you find
pictures whose reputation has reached other lands,
and young people refined and well-bred, with what-
ever grace culture can lend to the means which make
culture useful. Over and over again you are sur-
prised and delighted at the difference between interior
and exterior life, as the prickly burr of the chestnut
hides the sweet meat within. It is the old story of
Beauty and the Beast; you have only to wait a little,
and look with kindly, unbiassed eyes, to find the fairy
prince under the coarse husk of many an unprepos-
sessing personnel.

But the perverse climate, which is the bane of the
town at this time of year, puts to flight any desire to
yield entirely to the seductions of the spot. After
the few morning hours, there is a chilliness constantly
in the air, modelled on the worst form of the east
winds which are our bane at home. The fog, which
would be called fine rain in any other place where
good English was spoken, is of almost daily occur-
rence ; and the change between the sunny and shady
side of the street, at the same instant of time, is some-
thing truly western in dimensions. Besides, you don't
believe, and don't want to believe, in a country where
a woman cannot add to her armory of legitimate

ON THE WING. 14!

weapons such telling and trenchant properties as sum-
mer dresses, airy, fresh and elegant. Think of having
no change of base, but fighting it out on a winter
line all summer. What chance is there for a glorious
campaign under such conditions ?

We have had as yet in this first week only a pre-
liminary or bird's-eye view. It will take much longer
time to develop the real state of things here, and how
it compares with those of other places. The trouble
is, in short trips, that one rarely gets beyond the simple
first glance. It is like standing on a mountain side;
distance hides all the lesser inequalities and makes
the world look as if on a dead level. Just as in meet-
ing human acquaintances, all the little individualities
come out afterward.

Once you have driven through the Golden Gate Park
on the way to the Cliff House, and seen the manner
in which the pushing sand-hills toss and tumble up
from the sea, whelming trees and flowers in their way,
you will never again wonder that they have so much
dust in San Francisco ; the surprise will be that they
have so little, for the entire place is built on a sand-
bank. It is almost a miracle to see the masses of
fragrant yellow lupin, which is their first, agent in
reclaiming this shifting waste, striking root and bear-
ing brilliant spikes of blossoms and luxuriant foliage
on so frail a foundation. It looks as if at any moment,
like a scene at a theatre, it might be pushed out of
sight and the wild ocean claim its own again.

This park proves conclusively, like the Archbishop's
garden at Santa F£, what an adequate system of

142 ON THE WING.

watering could do for the rest of the city. It is placed
in the most desperately barren spot of all, where the
yellow sand is blown in huge billows, and threatens to
overflow everything ; yet patience, and time, and pure
water, three of the best things in God's world, and
most easily in every one's reach, have made the spot
in a couple of years green as an emerald and a real
delight to the eyes. We could not help wishing that
some time or other a Crystal Palace, some miniature
edition of their beautiful conservatory, might make
our own Royal Pleasure Garden complete by giving
us a bit of brightness in winter-time. These Califor-
nian people do not need conservatories. The poorest
of them is a nabob in the matter of flowers. Along
the street, men and boys by the dozen offer you huge
bouquets of jacqueminots or great bunches of assorted
flowers for ten cents ; in the bits of gardens outside
every house, there are blossoms the whole year round,
and the passer-by can feast his senses on perfume and
brightness from New Year's day to Christmas. But
here, where for five or six months we have the harsh-
ness of winter outside, with no atom of color to relieve
the gray or white monotone, how more than delicious it
would be to step within transparent walls and welcome
the bloom of summer back again. Now that the
dear little city is stretching her arms upward and
outward in search of jewels to adorn her, why doesn't
some one of her generous children celebrate his
loving remembrance by a perpetual fellowship of
flowers ? It would be better than all the windows in
Memorial Hall.

ON THE WING. 143

The longer one stays here the longer one wants
to stay. By the time a second week is passing, one
begins to see something of the inner life and motive
which causes much of the outer expression. For
instance, the absurdity, as it seems in the first place,
of building these elegant mansions, veritable Chateaux
en Espagne, of wood, is explained by the extreme
difficulty of procuring stone, and still more by the
always present dread of earthquakes. Although the
people profess to laugh at these little climatic outbursts
of fever and ague, there is still deep down in their
hearts a nervous and unexpressed dread of what may
happen. They say, and truly, that lightning kills
more people in one year in the East, than their earth-
quakes have, all massed together, since time immemo-
rial; but that does not get rid of the fact, that any-
time of any year one single tremendous shake may
bring with it a sweeping storm of destruction. Every
one who has ever felt even the slightest shock agrees
in declaring that the helpless horror of the situation
is beyond that caused by any other natural agent;
and even men used to similar manifestations all their
lives, turn pale at each new one. The question of
expense, which seems naturally to be a secondary one
in this land of magnificent fortunes, yet holds for
something, when a palace that has cost half a million,
in its present material, would mount to three millions
in more substantial form: There must be a limit;
and, though the air is thick with fortunes of thousands
and hundreds of fhousands, still millions do not hang
on every bush even in California.

CHAPTER XII.

SOME OF THE WITCHERIES OF CALIFORNIA.

THE three or four days we spent at Monterey,
while still having our headquarters at San
Francisco, made altogether the pleasantest
memory we had of California. The place itself is
hard to classify, because of its exceeding loveliness.
We have nothing at home that approaches the ex-
quisite setting of this exquisite house, a summer hotel
prettier even than the Montezuma at Las Vegas, and
in an adorable spot, so far as nature is concerned.
The pretty, quaint old town lying near by, on the
shore of a quiet harbor, makes an admirable site for
research, amid its adobe houses and ruined missions;
but it is the Del Monte hotel particularly which has
become now an objective point for tourists. The
Pacific, all along this coast, wears constantly that
dazzling sapphire blue which we see at home only at
special times; the sky carries out the same superb
color with a glow and depth of sunshine super-added,
which is almost too brilliant for belief; and a series of
curving beaches of shining, snowy, white sand, are
covered here and there, even down to the water's
edge, by a growth of the most picturesque trees on
this continent. These are a species of flat-topped,
sombre-leaved cypresses, with gnarled and twisted
10

146 ON THE WING.

trunks, bent into all sorts of impossible shapes, making"
the most weird and striking picture, and compensating
in their dense shadows for the glowing beauty of sea
and sky beyond. They are, I believe, unique to this
locality, and remind one constantly of those weird
cedars of the Roman Campagna, which Inness is so
fond of introducing in his Italian pictures. They give
an essentially foreign aspect to this locality. Across
the water, showing in faint purple outline against
the horizon, a beautiful mountain range melts into the
distance, while between skim white-sailed boats, or
dim, shadowy ships glide just indicated on the farthest
edge. Coming nearer the house, one enters a grove
of live oaks and pines intermixed, bent by the fierce
northwesters into the wildest and most frenzied forms,
as if the dryads occupying them had been tortured
by remorse ; under these, winding paths run here and
there, bordered by emerald lawns which near the
house blossom into brilliant flower-beds of the most
magnificent and profuse kind. In one place a cactus
garden shows every variety of these diabolical forms,
fascinating in their repulsiveness as the devil fishes so
many of them resemble, and gorgeous with a tropical
luxuriance of blossoms. A corps of forty gardeners
are busy winter and summer in this beautiful place,
and the results are worthy the labor devoted to it.
Some of the wild gardens, with hedges of foxgloves
ten feet high and every color of the rainbow, and
clusters of roses of such magnificence and regal ampli-
tude, that they look hardly natural, make it seem as
if somewhere within those tangled bowers the sleep-

ON THE WING. 147

ing beauty might still be held in magic thrall, sur-
rounded by her bewitched court. It would have to be
a very royal young prince indeed, who could ever
make up to her for breaking such a delicious slumber.
The house in the midst of this fairyland is worthy
the situation. A mass of towers and deliciously-
planned corners and angles, with broad piazzas and
shaded porches, it rises by terraces of steps from its
enchanted wilderness of flowers like another bit of
enchantment. It is beyond all cavil or comparison
the prettiest bit of architecture, and the most com-
plete in its internal arrangement, we have seen in these
months of varied wandering. The service in the
dining-room is a miracle for swiftness and polite atten-
tion. We had grown so used to plate-hurling and
table-tossing, to waiting an hour for an order, to hav-
ing cold dishes and uncalled-for dishes set clownishly
before us, and to taking them meekly, glad of any-
thing from such imperious bunglers as the ordinary
hotel-waiters of the Western country, that it seemed
like reaching a haven of rest and peace to sit down
and have a well-bred attendant satisfy quietly and
quickly every wish of the heart. Even the Palace
Hotel, with its well-trained corps of assistants and
elaborate cuisine, cannot compete in anything but
waffles with this beloved inn. The Palace waffles are
things to dream of. Within its limited list of luxu-
ries everything is well cooked, and sent to the table
as hot — well, as hot as hot — and that is one of the
first essentials for perfection. The Palace is of such
tremendous proportions that even if a waiter takes

148 ON THE WING.

your portion out of a fiery furnace, it has left all its
glow behind before it reaches you. It is nobody's
fault, and yet your innocent stomach suffers. Within
easy distance, the most beautiful drives imaginable
are to be found, and remarkably good horses and
carriages to reach them. Groves, cliffs, beaches strewn
with the great shells of the Abalone, lined with
gleaming mother-of-pearl, Chinese fishing- villages
with their picturesque collection of huts and people,
ruined walls of adobe and quiet little half-Spanish vil-
lages, are within easy reach. The beautiful Santa
Clara valley, fertile and fair, stretches away to the
north, dotted with such pleasant towns as San Jose,
Memlo Park and other pretty spots, while San Fran-
cisco itself is but three hours and a half away — for
we are learning now to measure distance by minutes
instead of miles.

I wish the dear people who are at the helm of our
different eastern seaside resorts this summer would
take a telegraphic trip here before the house closes,
and carry back a mental inventory of luxuries for next
season's campaign. The idea of Boston people being
outdone by anything so Western as the Pacific coast,
the very jumping-off place of creation! I won't ask
them to take home the warm sea-water tanks under
their crystal roofs, with the esplanade of waving palms
and greenery throwing their soft quivering shadows
on the bathers, for we have not the long Western
purses which can afford to pay $75,000 for such a lux-
urious whim. But the glass-covered piazzas, where
the sun makes summer even out of a winter day,

ON THE WING. 149

with every rude wind shut out, and only sweet sights
and sounds within reach of eyes and ears — that they
might take ; and the tiled fireplaces full of blazing
logs; and the exquisite little rooms with their Turk-
ish rugs, lovely enough to have come this moment out
of Fray's window; and the parlor with its Steinway
grand; and the garden protected by hedges and ram-
parts. Why cannot they make a Monterey by the
Atlantic?

Returning to San Francisco, I must do the people
the simple justice to say that our Eastern notions of
their peculiarities are entirely and unwarrantably ex-
travagant. The nouveaux riches at home have quite
as much vulgarity and shoddiness and loudness, with
a finical narrowness in the way of flaunting their
pretensions in the face and eyes of the populace,
which the larger-hearted and freer-handed Westerner
never acquires. The few houses with which person-
ally I had the pleasure of being familiar were exquisite
in refinement and good taste, with a fine flavor of
heartiness thrown in that is too often wanting in our
more thin-blooded civilization. They were filled with
a generous amplitude of comfort and luxury, both in
furnishing and dimension, that our showy modern
architecture would never admit. They made many of
us doubt whether even in building,

"the reign of good Queen Anne
Was culture's palmiest day."

From hallway to bath-room, from fireplace to frieze,
there was a largeness as attractive as unusual. The
young people who swarm through them, for there is.

iro ON THE WING.

an old world sentiment in favor of large families which'
does credit to the head and heart, were well-educated,
well-bred, and fascinating in that delicate fragrance of
modesty and unassuming simplicity which is to youth
what perfume is to the flower. Within a few years
their home educational institutions have made im-
mense strides. There will soon be small need of
sending boys to Harvard or girls to New York board-
ing-schools. I saw in the large halls of the college
of St. Ignatius, one of the finest sets of apparatus in
chemistry and physics I ever found in any place,
filling class-room after class-room with the best appli-
ances of modern art ; and at the annual exhibition of
one of the private schools, we found a collection of
young girls, who, for talent, for sweetness, and for
perfect simplicity of dress and character, might have
borne away the palm from our darling ones at home.
The increasing tendency to display in our Boston
exhibitions has been a sore blow to many of us now
for years. But how could any girl, with a girl's intui-
tive love for purity and refinement, be near the beloved
woman who is the soul of that San Francisco school,
and not become permeated for life with all good influ-
ences ? One of the dearest wishes of my life would be
fulfilled if my little Happy-Heart could be near her.

It is a sincere pleasure to be able to take home this
remembrance of the city. We have had for years
such a distorted picture of the social relations of the
place in our mind's eye, that this glimpse of its real
condition is comforting. .Not that there is not plenty
of room for improvement ; any city as cosmopolitan

ON THE WING. 15 I

in its tendencies as this, must enclose an immense
mixture of good and evil. But the Eastern humani-
tarians who so zealously ignore the beam in their own
eyes, while pointing out the motes in the moral iris of
San Francisco, had better call on an oculist before
going any farther. It is a pity to spoil such a number
of the pretty little on-dits of polite society by doubting
their veracity ; but I think the day is fast waning that
could give us stories of Mrs. Mackay and others of
her class desiring to buy the Arc cle Triomphe. Even
without that reticence which comes with the habit of
riches, there is too good an understanding of their
own place and dignity to admit of such faux pas now ;
and, as a simple matter of justice, I do n't know why
we should pet our self-made men and women at home,
and sneer at them in San Francisco.

In a place of such magnificent proportions as this,
two weeks or three, is only an aggravation as a limit of
time. The Chinese quarter alone would occupy half
of it, in its bewildering novelty. A stranger's steps
turn as instinctively toward this queer precinct here,
as they would toward the Louvre at Paris. Per-
haps, if I said toward Bon Marche, it would be a
better simile, for candor compels me to admit that
there is quite as much enthusiasm expended on the
cheap bargains as the priceless pictures, by the ma-
jority of people who see " Yurrup." By the time you
have travelled with a detective through the by-ways,
you want to try the highways alone. The strange
little atoms of shops, with their clumsily-piled treas-
ures of crapes, and carvings, and pottery, are like an

152 ON THE WING.

oriental bazaar. They look as if they held nothing;
and, lo ! they contain all that heart can desire. The
most wonderful crapes, the most delicate embroideries,
the most delicious monsters in china and bronze, come
out, as if by magic, from the walls, the floor, or the
ceiling. China, bamboo, curios and fantastics, per-
fumes and paints, nothing seems impossible to get in
these dark little dens, if you are only ready to pay.
And when you have paid, then never lose sight of
your bundle until it is safe in your possession. They
have a habit of forgetfulness, an absent-minded way
of dropping two or three small articles out of your
purchases and letting it escape their recollection,
which is trying to one of business habits. But make
a note of the items, and don't let it elude your re-
tentive memory, and you can floor the almond-eyed
Celestial every time. And never give by any chance
more than two-thirds of the price first asked. The
more you succeed in shaving a Chinaman, the more
respect he has for your race ; so you owe it to civil-
ization to uphold its standard.

If you ever find yourself in one of the streets which
belong to this people, turn in at the first chop-house
you meet ; climb one or two flights of stairs, until you
come to the uppermost rooms: choose a stool of
carved ebony from the pile at one side ; sit down at a
small round table of polished teak wood and look
about you. There will probably be lanterns of a
gorgeousness you never before dreamed of hanging
from the roof, and screens and banners brilliant and
dazzling on the walls ; there will be glass cases filled

ON THE WING. 153

with impossible figures, and glowing flowers here and
there ; there will be a crowd of chattering Chinese,
some Mandarins with the precious red button on top
of the small silk cap, some immensely effective in
brocaded trousers of a richness that makes your un-
accustomed eyes weak, and some common people like
yourself. Take all this in, and then ask for tea. Ye
gods ! such tea ! such nectar as you will never know
again. They put a pinch of dry leaves into a tiny
cup ; they pour boiling water in and cover with a little
saucer; in a moment they pour off this effusion into
still tinier cups like those of a child's tea-set; they
offer you sugar if you desire, but no milk, and every
few moments your copper-colored Ganymede comes
with a kettle of his own tint and pours on more water;
yet the last cup is better than the first. With it they
give you little decorated saucers of preserved ginger, of
baked almonds, of limes conserved in sugar, of fanciful
cakes made of nut-paste covered with brilliant frosting,
of strange-looking rice squares, and last, but not least,
a pair of chop-sticks, which, if you are a wise woman,
you will not try to tackle. The airy and easy way in
which your convives use them may deceive you, but
don't attempt to copy; be original, and let them
severely alone ; and for all this dissipation you will
pay two bits, the value of which you probably know
by this time, but for fear that you don't, I will whisper
— twenty-five cents.

You will go to the Chinese theatre, of course, but
you will not stay there. Of all the grotesque, dis-
cordant, bombastic, infernal, inhuman tortures the

154 ON THE WING.

barbaric mind ever conceived, this is foremost. No
wonder an ordinary play lasts six months in the pre-
sentation, when between every word an actor speaks
there is a pause to allow the orchestra of three to
clash cymbals, and roll drums, and squeak a two-
stringed fiddle with a triangle hanging from it. The
orator wades through part of his sentence in this man-
ner, swaggers behind the stage to rest, comes out at
the other side, takes up the broken thread of his
discourse, gets tired, goes in again, and so on, ad
nauseam. As among the ancient Greeks, women are
not allowed upon the stage, young men filling their
parts, with brilliantly-painted cheeks, gorgeously em-
broidered silken robes, and the most harrowing, un-
natural, shrieking falsetto voices imaginable. As a
sort of protest of race, I suppose, men in the audi-
ence wore their hats, while every one in the women's
gallery went bareheaded, with hair dressed after the
fashion with which pictures have long made us familiar.
The hideously dreadful noise of brass and tin never
ceases, except for a second at a time, and the patient,
sad-eyed crowd, sitting quiet and motionless, filling
every inch of floor and gallery, look on with grave
satisfaction. There is no applause and no animation,
but an absorbed interest in what is going on, which
must be a comfort to the shrieking actors if the pan-
demonium about allows them to notice it. Ten minutes
were all our \veak tympani could bear; but here the
motionless crowd sat for hours without any feeling
but delight. In spite of the most painful attention to
look and gesture, in order to get, if possible, an ink-

ON THE WING. 155

ling of the plot, we were obliged to give up in despair.
Every sentence was delivered with the same terrific
force and exaggeration of action, so that the declama-
tion was one dead level of noise and fury.

The opium dens and gambling saloons we left alone*
Seeing men make brutes or fools of themselves did
not enter into our ideas of a holiday ; but those who
investigated thought them of interest. The water
trips to Saucelito, San Rafael and San Quentin, gave us
beautiful glimpses of what seemed the most beautiful
harbor in the world. The water had always the same
deep green color, that looked unreal to eyes accus-
tomed to the blue Atlantic; the rounded, wooded
islands and promontories made a succession of de-
lightful views ; the city climbing its terraced sand-
hills was always in sight as a bit of life, and the
mountain ranges melting in the distance made the
farther shore beautiful, with its white villages nestling
in the shadow of the hills.

Then there were the Twin Peaks and the Cliff
House, the Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, the
Diamond Palace and the Shot Tower, the Fire Patrol
and Ichi Ban. The cable roads themselves, are enough
attraction for any one city. We saw them in Chicago,
but without being at all impressed. To see a car and
dummy going on a level plain was so like common
railroading that even the absence of steam failed
to make it unusual. But here, where they go rushing
up and tumbling down the frightfully steep sand-hills,
which, like perpendicular terraces, surround the city
on almost every side, they become one of the wonders

156 ON THE WING.

of the world. A single lever-like handle projecting
perpendicularly from the centre of an open car is the
only visible machinery. A jerk to this side or that,
propels two cars up the side of the steepest ascent,
or stops it in the midst of an incline that leaves one
almost in mid-air. I find copied in the Big Boy's
diary a Chinaman's description of this motive power,
which is so concisely vivid, that I copy it here, in
spite of its slight Western flavor of profanity, which
is as natural to this soil as its monstrous squash and
gigantic beets, and almost as innocent : " No pushee !
no pullee ! go like hellee," was the gentle barbarian's
formula, and it is the simple truth. It is very like
witchcraft, and the unfortunate creature who invented
it would have been burned at the stake by any
respectable deacon in Salem, if he had only lived
there two hundred or so years ago. But the times
change, and we with them. Now we put money in
our wise men's purses, and send them to Congress,
when they achieve some new triumph of diabolical
art. In spite of the cold, cold winds, in spite of the
whirling sand and pelting fog, the outside seats on the
dummy, which is not unlike our open car, are always
full, even when the covered car behind is empty.
There seems to be a fascination about them, though
*I can well believe what a medical man says, that con-
sumption and lung diseases have increased largely
since their advent. It would be too dangerous a
pastime for dear Boston, even if it were feasible there.
The infinite length of the business streets is crowded
with shops of all kinds, not of quite such tremendous

ON THE WING. 157

proportions as our representative Eastern houses
assume, but of immense resources. In a small jewel
shop on Montgomery street, we saw the proprietor
showing a party some regal ornaments, a feather of
diamonds for the hair, worth $14,000, and a close
necklace at $40,000. One would imagine, from the
lavish number of precious stones at each hand's turn
on the street, that every one dabbles in stocks and
puts his great profits into diamonds for his wife and
daughter; for, of course, they all make great profits, or
they would n't keep on dabbling.

If private and public report is to be believed, almost
every one in the country, without regard to age, sex,
or position, does more or less in the way of irregular
stock-broking. The lady speculates with her pin-
money ; the servant, with her wages ; the business
man, with his income ; the mechanic, with his hard-
earned dollars; the bootblack, with the "bits" he
makes on his "shines." The air is full of legends of
the tremendous fortunes made by some chance turn of
the wheel, now and again ; a feverish anxiety to be in
the lists, with the chance of some time or other bear-
ing off a prize, possesses the community, and makes
the market from which unprincipled men gather their
harvest. The very uncertainty attending speculation
becomes one of the elements of fascination, and only
heightens the excitement of the chase. They bear
disappointment as an Englishman bears defeat, —
never know when they are beaten, and are ready to go
into the struggle again, hammer and tongs, as soon as
they recover breath. They may be "dead-broke,"

158 ON THE WING.

" cleaned-out," " busted " ; but they are never too far
gone to stake their next dollar on the chance of
" striking it rich this time." They are wonderful
people. Other men would go mad over so many dis-
appointments, but the good Californian thrives on it.
They believe in "luck," as honestly as the Irish
believe in fairies ; and, in the deepest depths of pecu-
niary difficulty, when the fair bubble which dazzled
them before has melted into thin air, they follow some
new chimera, certain that this time, at least, Fortune,
which has been "down" on them so long, will smile,
and crown them with her golden laurels.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ECCENTRICITIES OF CALIFORNIA.

Tthe stranger who enters the California about
San Francisco, at this time of the year, it is a
world of wonders ; everything goes by con-
traries. One comes to the city to get cold, and goes to
the country to get warm. The fields which are seen
from the summits of the Twin Peaks, lying barren and
bleak in the July sunshine, are clad in verdure .and
filled with lavish profusion of growth in midwinter.
Farmers send their cattle to pasture in January, while
they herd them in barns and feed on hay or grain
in June. The usual sequences of life seem to be
thoroughly upset, and one is constantly amazed at the
series of surprises. Even on the vexed Chinese ques-
tion there is an absolute opposition between fact and
sentiment. Hatred of the Chinese is the one point
on which all Calif ornians, good, bad or indifferent,
agree. There is no doubt or cavil in the Western
mind when one asks an opinion in this regard. Abso-
lute distrust or dislike colors all their dealings, and
they speak with bitter scorn of the Eastern people,
who, knowing nothing of the curse fastened upon
them, still dare to talk and legislate in favor of its
continuance. It is in vain to point out what in-
estimable help the Chinese have given, and are giving,

160 ON THE WING.

in public works which white labor could never accom-
plish, in building railroads or canals, and in scores of
other ways; that simply counts for nothing. They
are looked upon with an aversion, compared with
which all other antagonisms of race seem paltry. It
is a war of religious prejudice as well as political
difference. In the palmiest days of abolition tumult,
the negro was never so wofully under the ban, as these
helots of the far East are now on the western coast of
America; yet, in spite of all this fury of scorn, in
spite of this intense hatred which hardly stoops to
reason with an inquirer, in spite of clamor and dis-
affection, they continue to employ the people they
revile, and by so doing give them, day by day, stronger
foothold in their towns and cities. They hold indig-
nation meetings to prove that the Chinese laundrymen
are driving out home labor ; that the Chinese kitchen-
gardens have undermined an industry which in other
states supports thousands of citizens and their fami-
lies in prosperity; that the Chinese habits of over-
crowding, and their phenomenal simplicity of diet,
enable them to force all other laborers from the
market by the infinitesimal amount upon which they
can support life, — and there the matter ends. The
very people who cry out most loudly, the very lower
class who are being driven to the wall by this tre-
mendous competition, employ Chinese washerwomen
because they do their work for quarter the price;
buy Chinese-raised vegetables because they can get
them for a cent less in the pound ; purchase under-
clothes of Chinese peddlers, and tea at Chinese ware-

ON THE WING. l6l

houses for the same short-sighted reason. Rich men
rent houses to the authorities of the Six Companies,
knowing that they are to be used in open disregard
of law and order, crowded to repulsiveness, swarmed
with humanity, until the number in each tenement
is beyond belief. The law makes edicts to insure a
certain amount of air and light to every adult within
the city walls, and then closes its eyes, while twenty
thousand Chinese live in quarters that would not
shelter two thousand white people. The simple en-
forcement of the act regulating the number of cubic
feet of air required for each person within the city,
would drive three-quarters of the race to-morrow out-
side the limits of legislation. They could not begin
to pay ordinary rates of rent, unless they charged or-
dinary rates for labor ; and once they place themselves
on an even footing in regard to expense, their doom is
sealed. This namby-pamby trifling with a question
concerning which they pretend such alarm, is not in
keeping with the usual clear-headed, energetic action
of Western people ; it makes one suspect some hidden
reason for tolerating a pet grievance for the sake of
railing at it. If San Francisco really believes what it
says about the danger of harboring this race, why do
they not use the simple, legitimate means at their dis-
posal ? I cannot conceive Boston or New York, with
a similar belief, tolerating any such internecine policy
for a day; and I cannot conceive Californians in
earnest in their cry of "the Chinese must go," when
they take so little pains to protect themselves. To
take all the Chinaman has to give, and then curse him

l62 ON THE WING.

for letting it be taken, is rather a superficial way of
settling a difficulty.

In a city where people with one or two millions
seem to be as common as those with as many hundred
thousands in other corporations, and where local pride
and affection run so high, it is a pity some large,
generous, rational plan cannot be devised for irrigation,
and properly carried out. With plenty of water to lay
the dust in the streets and cover the shifting sand-hills
beyond with verdure, the first immense stride would
l-e made in improvement. With shade trees lining
those beautiful wide avenues, and filling in the open
corner spaces which come so often where three streets
meet, San Francisco would be a joy to look at in sum-
mer time, just as all agree it is in winter. If, in
addition to this, the swift-climbing hills which rise
from the water on every side were laid out in terraces,
I think it would be one of the most beautiful cities in
the new world. The exquisite bay, with its islands
and dusky background of foot-hills climbing and fading
all around the horizon ; the fine outline of Mt. Diablo,
as it shows in the distance; the ever-present beauty
of flowers adding its graciousness to out-door life, and
the pleasant impression of comfort which so many
pretty small houses make, interspersed with palatial
larger ones, give all the requisites for great beauty.
It has everything needful but water. Out in the
suburbs, the country is green as a garden, where
windmills are employed extensively to irrigate from
artesian wells or from ditches brought down from the
mountains beyond. I counted from the car-window, as

ON THE WING. 1 63

we stopped for a moment one day at Valencia street,
thirty-six of these enormous whirligigs turning slowly
in the languid air, and giving a Dutch aspect to the
whole country-side they were in, with its small houses
and beautifully cared-for market gardens.

If we were older travellers, who could take the
goods the gods provide, and never pause to think of
any other ; or, if we had come fresh from the inclem-
ency of a New England winter, there would be more
wonderment and more love for this golden land which
puzzles while it pleases us. It would be like the
beginning of new life. We would see only the beauty
and such little stings as sharper air or an every-day
fog-bank would be trifles beneath notice. But now
one has all the memories of the loveliness at home to
contend with. We know that balmy air and singing
birds, daisies and buttercups, the universal freshness
of youthful nature, are abroad on the hills and fields
of June, so that the sharp atmosphere and clinging
mist, the dust and imperfection here, is more than ever
trying. Especially when in conservatories, one comes
across, as we did yesterday, a handful of long, spind-
ling, straggling daisies, set in a gorgeous flower-pot,
tended with care, and looking delicate as things
tended with care usually are, and one remembers
the affluent fields of regal gold and white margue-
rites on the sunny slopes of Green Hill, is one
struck with the inconsistencies of nature. All the
luxury of wild lupin, in long spikes of blue and
yellow, growing through the meadows, will never
equal in beauty the wild rose hedges, the clover tops

164 ON THE WING.

and daisies, of the fragrant fields that lie beside the
Atlantic.

The climate of San Francisco is essentially its
own, however. Ten miles away in any direction, you
escape the direful, daily winds, the dust and dis-
comfort. Cross the ferry to Oakland, sail down to
Saucelito or San Rafael, take the roads leading in any
direction toward the interior, and you reach shelter
before you are gone an hour. After ten miles, you
begin to feel warm ; after twenty, you are in summer
again, especially if there be water near. On the way
to Sacramento, the river-bed widens into broad, shal-
low meadows, filled with cattle standing knee-deep in
the placid waters, and crossed now and then by flights
of birds, or made picturesque by tall white herons,
standing immovable amid the sedge, as if just out of a
Japanese picture. Sacramento itself, lying in the
midst of these moist green fields, may easily be, as
we understand it was, unhealthy ; but at the same
time the abundance of shade and width of the fine,
regular streets, make it particularly refreshing to
look at. A pretty fashion is a wide upper balcony
built out from the second story of houses and stores,
shading the sidewalk below, and fringed with flowers
or trailing plants above. It gives a half foreign look
to a purely American town; so do the numberless
pretty small cottages, set in gardens, bright always
with bewildering flowers, roses eight inches across,
walls of white honeysuckle and stacks of oleanders.
I never saw in any other place such a variety of shade
trees as in this city. Locusts with long, fragrant,

ON THE WING. 165

drooping blossoms, elms, white oaks, pines, eucalyptusr
even fig and orange-trees, were all to be found, over-
arching the clean plank sidewalks ; while in the gar-
dens, our New England orchard trees, covered with
bloom and fruit, brought a fragrance of home that made
them still sweeter. We happened on a poor season to
test the resources of the country in fruit, however.
We listen to melting stories of the deliciousness of
this or that dainty, to moving pictures of baskets full
of toothsomeness for a quarter, that would cost a poor
man's fortune at home, and we groan, tortured by
unavailing longing; for we believe every word we
hear. Some peculiarity of the climate makes one not
only ready, but anxious to swallow the biggest state-
ments. A kind of moral inflation takes possession of
one. You may not see grapes as big as walnuts, in
bunches as large as a camel's hump, but you know
they are there, just as surely. Anything, everything
is possible. Apricots were just beginning to come in,
but were yet of poor quality ; peaches were small and
hard ; apples only good for sauce ; strawberries, from
some peculiarity of weather, plentiful but sour, and
wanting the delicious aroma 'of our native berry; it
was too early for figs and pomegranates, and too late
for oranges, so that only the always wonderful cher-
ries answered our preconceived ideas of California
fruit. The vegetables left nothing to be desired. It
should be the paradise of poor men ; for the climate
does not require the use of much meat, and every
form of succulent and delicious vegetable product
literally overflows the markets and produce shops.

1 66 ON THE WING.

The Grahamites, and other sects that believe the
eating of flesh harmful, ought to colonize Eldorado.
They would certainly have every opportunity for prac-
ticing their pet precepts.

We found all things except fluids sold by the pound,
which is a much more rational rule of measurement
than quarts and pecks. One knows in this way the
amount one is buying and paying for, which one cer-
tainly does not rive times out of ten, by our dry meas-
ure. Who has not at some time or other of her life
looked in awe and admiration at the amount of spinach
or the number of large potatoes which go to make up a
green-grocer's bushel ? By weight, one gets an abso-
lute quantity, while by measure one purchases different
degrees of uncertainty, according to the state of the
market.

We found, too, an utter ignorance of the small coins
called cents, two cents, and nickels. A certain large-
mindedness of the inhabitants gets into the eyes and
prevents them from seeing anything smaller than a
"bit" or ten cents. The rest they call "chicken
feed." The newsboys offer you two papers for a bit,
so as to overcome the degrading necessity of receiving
five cents for one ; the boot-black puts on his boss
shine for a bit, except in some few low-toned quarters
frequented by impecuniosity ; the entire legion of side-
walk hucksters and perambulating showmen of striking
bargains, put their wares upon the basis of a bit, and
mount from that into the golden heights of the eagle.
I am not sure whether bills are tabooed from some
idea that the national banks are becoming insolvent,

OX THE WIXO. 167

but we never saw a note during our stay in that won-
derful country. All large change was paid in gold,
and small in silver, which added weight to our pockets
if it did nothing else. Perhaps that is why there are
so many heavy men there.

On the whole we heartily liked San Francisco in
spite of its dreadful climate. The generous amplitude
of its dimensions, the generous kindness of its people,
the immense strides it seems capable of making once
its feet turn in the right direction, its barbaric gor-
geousness of adornment, its superb contempt for small
coin of any sort, the fascination of its " dummies " as
they breathlessly whirl you up the outrageous little
hills — all these and many other reasons force you to
love it in spite of discomfort. If we had only come
upon it in winter, how at once and forever we would
have been its fascinated slaves like the many thousands
of bewitched travellers it has won already. But they
must take more care of their sewerage. There is too
much typhoid malaria now for solid comfort. And
after seeing what the lack of rain can do in that won-
derfully endowed country, can it be possible that any
of us will ever rail at the blessed summer storms at
home again ? May my right hand lose its cunning and
may I be anathema, if spoiled pleasure or crumpled
finery ever draw one word of lamentation or reproach
from me, though the rain should flatten out my best
Sunday hat half a dozen times in the course of this
present season. For how much worse off we would
be without it.

If every person leaving San Francisco for the East

1 68 ON THE WING.

is obliged to measure off the quantity of red tape we
saw at the ticket office yesterday, in signing and coun-
tersigning and witnessing, I wonder they do not give
up the unequal contest in disgust. The one railroad
which by right divine governs the Pacific coast seems
to make the most of its prerogatives ; but it is a ques-
tion whether throwing so many barriers in the way of
buying a passage is any material aid to business.
Perhaps it is on that principle of human nature which
makes perverse longing dwell most fondly on what is
hardest to get. We never more fully appreciated the
value of being excursionists, than when the little red
book was handed over, signed, sealed, and delivered
again, in a twinkling, and wre walked off, free as air,
while the herd of regular passengers stood, ruminant
and glum, waiting each his slow turn. Fancy an
Eastern populace waiting in that way for the privilege
of being allowed to pay a railroad fare !

CHAPTER XIV.

AMONG THE MINES.

ONE who goes to California and returns without
having seen anything of its mining interests,
has lost unknowingly the key which solves
many of the problems of society there. The romance,
as well as the reality of the history of the State, is
bound up in its gold mines. The discoveries which
in '49 pushed the then almost unknown territory into
a prominence unique in the annals of civilization,
have been going on in greater or less degree ever
since, so that the California of to-day throughout its
whole extent is still honeycombed with those deposits
of golden sand which made it the Pactolus of the
world. We do not hear any longer of the wild fever
of excitement which seized men in those earlier days,
when home, friends, health arid even life were thrown
away like straws before the fair winds which were
supposed to lead to fortune ; a certain reticence that
comes with years and experience, and a fixed method
which takes the place of the old-time haphazard ways,
have allowed a semi-obscurity to gather over what is
still as active an interest there as manufactures are to
New England, or wheat fields to Nebraska. The wild
gambling of the stock exchange, with its insincere

170 ON THE WING.

manipulation of insecure property, is one thing, while
the earnest business which returns honest profits on
honest investments through the length and breadth of
the land, is another. What we have been taught to
look upon as the most chimerical and rabid specula-
tion into which fortune-seekers can enter, becomes,
west of the Rocky Mountains, the simple natural
business of the land. Around it, in the small mining
camps, grow up the different industries which make a
people prosperous and a country powerful. One never
realizes the power of gold so fully as here, in the land
which is its, by birthright. Let but the yellow dust
show itself on hill, or plain, or wild mountain canon,
in bare desert or fertile valley, and instantly from
solitude and silence the dead world wakes to excite-
ment of life. People gather, houses spring up, mills,
stores, schools, churches rise, as if called by a fairy
wand, and sun themselves in the light of prosperity.
By-and-by, when the supply of ore is exhausted, the
thriving settlement, like a body from which the soul
has departed, dissolves, and is gone almost as quickly
as it came, unless, meantime, it has developed other
resources. The pick a*nd shovel travel away in search
of other hidden treasure ; only the devastated moun-
tain-side and deserted " camp " remain to tell that
man ever dwelt there.

Nothing in the West is more sadly strange to
Eastern eyes than one of these ruined settlements.
It gives one a ghostly, unsettled feeling, to drive
through the village street, with its rows of closed
cottages on either hand, grass growing over the door-

ON THE WING. 171

steps, wild vines hiding the dim windows, and small
gardens overgrown with the sturdy weeds, which
fasten like squatters upon the lost heritage of in-
dustry. Here and there, a single inhabited house
makes the rest doubly desolate by contrast. An air
of mystery and desolation, which never belongs even
to the wildest or most remote regions where nature
alone holds sway, rests about these silent dwellings.
Something of peace and fitness goes forever from a
place which man has once used and then discarded,
and no length of time ever completely brings it back
again. The most isolated spot on which the eye can
rest, so long as it is left alone to the sweet influences
of the natural order, does not impress one with the
same sense of loneliness which a place once human-
ized and made conscious of man's presence retains
forever after. I remember one day, while driving;
through a certain deserted village, noting one particu-
lar little cottage, built with more care than its silent
neighbors, that must some time have been a cozy home
for some small household. A porch, with a four-paned
window in each side, and a broad seat below them,
jutted out into a little garden, in which two tall clumps
of calla-lilies and a glowing bush of red geraniums
held their own yet against nettles and mountain
sorrell. On the threshold before the open door, two
tiny, brown lizards lay basking in the afternoon
warmth, the gleam in their bright jewel-like eyes alone
showing that they were alive. A long ray of sunshine
flickered across the floor and died within the open
fireplace in the chimney opposite, and the two small-

172 ON THE WING.

paiied casements were covered with dusty curtains of
cobwebs. Outside, amid a heap of useless remnants
of household utensils, a rude wooden baby-carriage,
broken and weather-stained, made the picture doubly
pathetic. It seemed as if, indeed,

" Life and thought had gone away

Side by side,

Leaving door and window wide ;
— Careless tenants they! "

It was as we rode into the foot-hills beyond the
valley of the Sacramento, to see a little of the mining
phase of California life while it was still at its best,
and to visit one or two prosperous mines, in order that
we might bring back some definite idea of what makes
vital interest for so many, that we first saw these sad,
neglected little camps. For sixty or eighty miles
after leaving the city, the railroad passes through fields
of wheat, stretching out of sight and covering the
land at this season of the year with the lovely pale
gold of ripened grain. Immense machines for reaping
and threshing moved at intervals through the billowy,
yellow expanse, so that one man accomplished the
work of a dozen. Where steam was required, the
wheat-straw, after winnowing, was used for fuel ; other-
wise it was plowed into the earth again to act as a
fertilizer for the next crop, or used instead of hay for
fodder. The fruitful soil gives back twro harvests in
one year, always presuming that water is supplied, for
dame nature is a thirsty queen even in this lavish
country. Leaving the line of the railroad, we drove
for six or eight miles, this being the width of the

ON THE WING. 173

fertile belt in the valley, through a repetition of these
harvest scenes, before beginning to ascend the foot-
hills ; then up a gradual rise through a rolling country
full of green glades and wooded hillsides, that was
more beautiful, so far as simple landscape loveliness
goes, than anything we had yet seen in California.
There was nothing of the grandeur or vastness which
made the road into the Yosemite wonderful ; but
such deep dells, and fair, sloping meadows, such
curving heights and graceful back-ground of rounded
summits climbing into the clear, pale sky, such a
wealth of beautiful trees spreading grateful shade
over the hot road, and stretching in stately groves
far up to the horizon, we had not met before. We
made the journey in a private carriage behind a team
of the small but powerful horses which are so com-
mon here. I wonder no longer at the old grandees of
England, who used to make the tour of the European
continent after this delightful fashion. Next to walk-
ing, it gives the most lingering, loving look at the
beautiful world through which you pass, and one
exquisite scene merges into another by gentle gra-
dations instead of the sudden whirling from post to
pillar of the railroad car. Given fair weather and a
pair of good horses, with a driver who knows what
he is about, and there is no such absolute luxury as
this mode of sight-seeing. But it would require a
Croesus to be able to afford it, so we must wait for the
millenium before it comes to pass that we can indulge
in it. The winding road curved up hill and down
dale ; waving grain fields faded into the distance

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

OF

ON THE WING.

,£41. 1 r

behind, and spicy undergrowth ot small pines and
hemlocks crept nearer in the foreground. The brush
was alive with quail, which ran across the road and
into their haunts by dozens. Jack-rabbits scampered
from their warrens, or sat with long ears quivering
almost within reach of the whip-lash, if one could be
wicked enough to use it. Now and again a small
flock of the same dirty, draggled sheep we had met
so often, (how wofully unpicturesque sheep are in real
life) or a smaller flock still of the white, silky, long-
haired goats, browsed on a pasture near the road, but
there was no sign of house or human being. Once
a group of Chinese teamsters, driving half-a-dozen
market wagons, stopped us to inquire eagerly concern-
ing a law which had been passed a day or two before,
restricting the use of water in hydraulic mining. The
long-contested battle between farmers and miners,
as to control of water privileges, had just received
fresh impetus from some judicial decision in favor of
the former; and, as all the interests of this portion
of the country depended upon the mines, there was
naturally great excitement. " If the mines are n't
allowed to run, you '11 all have to skip out, Johnnie,
my boy," said our friend. " O yes ! But mine gotta
workee allee samee ! " answered the practical heathen,
with a shake of the head that set his long pigtail
dangling like a drunken pendulum. It was no use to
try to shake his faith in the future of the country.

Here, as elsewhere, the Chinese are hewers of wood
and drawers of water. Whatever is too hard or too
heavy for white men's bone and muscle, falls to the

ON THE WING. 175

lot of these helots of the west. Their patience, their
endurance, and their most frugal habits, enable them to
live and thrive where the most prudent pale-face would
starve miserably. They make vegetables grow in the
midst of barren plains ; they wash riches out of the
refuse " tailings " of the gold flumes ; they pit their
stolid capacity for labor against the brains and higher
intelligence of their employers, and always win their
point of making money. Every Chinaman who does
not die, or make so large a fortune that he becomes
imbued with the Americanism of wanting to make
more, returns to his own country, within a few years,
master of the five hundred dollars, which assures him
a competence for life. We met them in forty different,
situations, — always busy, always smiling, and always
apparently content. It made us almost desire that we
might be allowed to tackle this extremely Eastern
question at home, to see the deftness, the swiftness,
and the astonishing capacity those engaged in house-
work showed. A little such healthy competition might
stimulate the jaded energies of our present household
brigade to real earnestness in fulfilling their duties.
At present, I believe no place in the world claiming
a high degree of civilization suffers more from the
tyranny or stupidity of untrained service, than the New
England states. To do the minimum of labor at the
maximum of price, seems to be of late years the
watchword of the order ; and an honest pride in fur-
thering the best interests of the employer is one of the
lost arts in their kingdom. There are jewels among
them, to be sure, but jewels never come in mass ; and

176 ON THE WING.

the ordinary house servant, one of the rank and file,
in an ordinary family, is apt to cause nearly as much
expenditure of moral force as she saves in physical
exertion. The Chinamen have not been educated to
this point yet. The instinct of centuries of submission
makes them willing to work, so long as any work re-
mains to be performed. Some peculiar race develop-
ment renders them exact to minuteness in reproducing
what has been shown or explained ; and great personal
neatness, which is one of the last things with which
they are popularly credited, make them very valuable
parts of domestic machinery, so far as material well-
being is concerned. The moral aspect of the question
I do not enter upon at all ; it would need closer study
and longer acquaintance to dare offer an opinion on
that point.

But to return to the road through the foot-hills.
The little mountain streams we passed were thick and
muddy. Here and there a level place was covered with
a smooth, shining deposit of yellowish clay. These
were the "slickens " which farmers declare are ruining
their prospects by destroying the fertilizing power of
the water. The pure streams, after being brought in
di.tches and subjected to the uses of the miners, come
down to them so impregnated with fine sand and
debris, that they are useless for irrigation. It is to
reach some fair settlement of this vexed question as to
who owns the water that this long litigation has gone
on from year to year, and seems to-day as far from
final adjustment as ever. The only decision must
be in some form of compromise. Either side has-

ON THE WING. 177

rights that can never be entirely set aside. Meantime
each party goes its own way, irrespective of judge
and jury.

The little mining camp we entered just at sunset,
in the green hollow of the hills, with its one strag-
gling street galloping down one steep side, and all
the public-spirited buildings of the place hemming it
closely in, was one of the prettiest villages we ever
looked at. Even the rival grocery stores, each with
its partisan groups of lounging miners enjoying their
evening smoke, wore a look of interest to us. The
roof of each broad piazza extended nearly across the
road, and. made unique porte-cocheres for the service
of man and beast. The two little churches faced
each other across the dusty street; the two hotels
glared into each other's windows ; the most home-like
small cottages we had seen out of New England nestled
in their bright gardens, half hidden behind vines of
gigantic roses, or climbing honeysuckle, and screened
by clumps of red and white oleanders as large as small
trees. In one place the stream through the great ditch
which furnished water-power for the mines, was carried
under the road with a deep sound like a cataract;
otherwise all was still. It was as different from the
harsh ideai our fancies had made of the baseness and
blankness of a mining camp as can well be imagined,
and we found the inner life of the houses as pleasant
as their outer seeming. There were whorls of Japan-
ese fans on the walls, and fluttering muslin curtains
on the windows ; there were pictures and easy-chairs
and rugs ; there were recent books and the Eastern

12

1/8 ON THE WING.

magazines, so that, except for the big summer kitchen,
with its folding walls, which could make it at will either
an open shed or a cozy room, there was nothing to re-
mind one of the great continent between us and home.

The next few days among the mines were real ex-
periences. One of the celebrated blue gravel banks,
two hundred feet high, was being washed to powder by
a gigantic stream of water directed at will against its
surface by a pipe with nozzles ten inches in diameter,
through which the stream tore with such fury and
force that everything crumbled before it. Masses
weighing tons were crumbled into atoms in this way,
and swept down the long flumes and sluices, dropping,
meantime, their precious burden of yellow dust to
amalgamate with the quicksilver spread below. The
water which did all this was brought in a continuous
ditch, thirty-seven miles long, from its source in the
lofty mountains of the upper country, sometimes
bridged across ravines, sometimes tunnelled through
hillsides, and watched along its entire length by a
gang of overseers who patrolled its banks so many
times every twenty-four hours.

At stated times the stream is turned off, the wooden
flumes cleaned of their contents, the quicksilver
evaporated in immense ovens and condensed again in
retorts for future use, while the precious, sordid,
blessed, wicked metal, the

" Gold, gold, gold, gold !
Bright and heavy, hard and cold,"

is run off into molds and sent off to be coined into
that power which is able to do so much good — and so

ON THE WING. 179

little. At first our unused eyes found gold in every-
thing that glittered; but we learned soon that the
real article had much less shimmer and shine about it.
It was not the first time, nor unfortunately the last,
that base metals have put on the false semblance of
preciousness and deceived ignorance, while real worth
remained undiscovered near by. But we soon trained
our perceptions and now, if you want judges of the
richness ot blue gravel peppered all over with fine,
dull spots, which hold within them such a heritage of
power for good or evil, we are ready to be called
in as experts.

In this hydraulic mining, the men employed have
many advantages. They are in the free air and sun-
shine; the work is all above ground, where the fair
face of the world still smiles upon them. There is
something inspiring in this search after the treasure
which nature had hidden away so carefully in her
river-beds, washed down from the eternal mountains
thousands and thousands of years ago. One would
like to go at it one's self, and wrest from the bald,
towering cliff above, the secret hoard which makes
every foot of it precious. One would like to change
places for awhile with any of those great long-booted,
red-shirted fellows, hairy and brawny, who stand so
superbly in the midst of the roaring, rushing stream,
guiding its course and helping its work. It looks like
pleasant and healthful, if hard, labor, with nothing
dark or ugly about it, except the " slickens " which go
sweeping down to flood the bright meadows beyond.
We would like to have seen one of the blasts that

l8o ON THE WING

from time to time tear the perpendicular walls of the
old river-bed asunder with a charge of thirty or fifty
thousand pounds of gunpowder, so that the whole
visible hillside quivers, as if in the throes of an earth-
quake, and breaks in an avalanche of dust and broken
fragments on the plain below. Eye-witnesses of some
such former events gave us graphic descriptions in
the patois of the country of the fury and force, "the
all-fired cussedness of the way the thing lit out."
Losing such opportunities for sight-seeing is one of
the unhallowed consequences of living, as we do, too
close to sunrise.

But the quartz mining which we saw a day or two
after, with its thunder of infernal machinery stamping
and crushing the rock fed to it, with its fourteen
hundred foot shaft leading men down to the bowels
of the earth, to work, cramped for room, panting for
air, one small candle only making a spot of light in
the dreadful darkness, how different the toil for gold
looked in this ! Even in the beginning, before it is yet
refined or purified, before it has become the medium
for buying, and selling, and bartering, and bargaining,
how much hardship and suffering it causes already !
No wonder the Spartans made their criminals wear
gems and gold, in order to dissuade honest people
from love of the base, bright baubles. Standing
at the entrance to the dark chasm below, while the
president explained how many millions in how many
years had been paid out to complacent stockholders,
one could only think of the inscription which Dante
placed over the entrance to his Inferno. No doubt if

ON. THE WING. iSl

the superintendent and his regiment of subalterns
could have read my musings, they would have laughed
with scorn at the bare idea of any one being de-
pressed, in the shaft-house of a flourishing gold mine,
with plenty of ore in sight. But I would almost rather
never know where the treasure came from; there's
too much "bubble, bubble, toil and trouble," from the
very commencement. It was a relief to hear that
accidents are extremely rare, and that the men are
perfectly satisfied with their work. They are well
paid, able to live comfortably, and the life acquires in
time a great fascination for them.

The amount of dividends paid in a quiet way by
such mines as this, unknown to fame and the stock-
board, owned by a few prosperous individuals, and
only familiar to the region in which they are placed, is
simply astonishing. This quartz mine, of which we
have spoken last, is an example. Bought for a trifle
in 1865 by eight or ten men, and worked ever since, it
has missed but five times in paying a large monthly
dividend on the original shares, while putting up at
the same time stamp-mills, refining and leaching works,
and giving employment directly to several hundred
men. One can scarcely estimate the number they
employ indirectly. A business that buys eighty thou-
sand cords of wood yearly for private use, reaches out
so far that it is hard to gather it all together.

On the way between these two successful mines,
we passed many others, some moderately prosperous,
some just " striking it ; " others, alas ! like the Luck
of Roaring Camp, after the luck had left it, stranded

182 ON THE WING.

and forsaken. But the pretty valley towns, full of
bright, comfortable homes, with the general air of
cheeriness which comes with prosperity, were suf-
ficient guarantee that all the golden days were not yet
over in California. Many of them, like that of Grass
Valley, were particularly delightful spots for tired eyes
to rest on. Nestled in the bosom of the ever-beautiful
hills, the pointed roofs of its pretty cottages, only
seen here and there, amid the wealth of embowering
greenery, lavish in flowers and fragrance, with a sturdy
backbone of thriving business streets, a whole staff of
churches, a regiment of bright homes, and — thank
heaven ! — only a corporal's guard of liquor shops, it
was charming enough to make one desire to stay in it.
As a rule, in the west, the saloons outnumber all the
other business places put together. We lunched at
an unpretending hotel on the main street, which, for
coolness, cleanliness and comfort, with its pretty inner
court full of roses and climbing vines, made a most
refreshing contrast to many more showy houses. It
was kept by a Boston man, who had married a tidy
Eastern woman ; indeed, we begin to doubt whether
there are any real westerners at all in this cosmo-
politan country. Such towns as this are doubly
welcome, after the sad, bare settlements of the South-
western States, which made life look too hard to be
borne by the average man or woman. The people,
like all we have met in California, were exceedingly
warm-heated, eager to offer any little kindness, even
when we stopped only to ask a question. The dialect
was peculiar, a little of Bret Harte, but not very much

ON THE WING. 183

of him, mildly suggesting itself everywhere. They
" allowed " that a certain man " lit out " from a certain
place, and another "fit" a fire in the woods all night;
and their slang was exceedingly piquant. But we did
not come upon any chivalresque gambler, ready to kill
a man and take off his hat to a woman at the same
time, so that, on the whole, mining must have degen-
erated since Harte's time.

CHAPTER XV.

IN THE CITY OF ZION.

WE were most agreeably disappointed in the
Nevada desert and alkali plains. After
the unearthly desolation of the south, they
wore a look more subdued than oppressive. At this
time of the year, the delicate green of sage-brush,
with the pale gray of the white sage, which covers so
much of the territory, made a soft mass of neutral
tint set in high relief by the dusky, far-away moun-
tains, stretching on both sides across the entire
country. The dazzling white of alkali fields showed
itself here and there like hoar frost. Something of
the delicious breadth and freedom which is found by
the sea, moves one here also in the immense outlook
which stretches away to the horizon. The Humboldt
River played hide-and-seek through the valley along
almost its entire length; now and again streaks or
rifts of snow on some soaring summit gave picturesque
effect to the entire range in sight, or frowning pali-
sades straightly set in narrow gorges shut out for a
little while the rest of the world. Little whirlwinds of
fine dust were constantly rising, like inverted cones,
and after keeping up a few moments of incessant
whirling, blowing themselves into thin mist in the
bright air. There was great grandeur in the vastness

l86 ON THE WING.

and monotony of the scene, but nothing haunting or
depressing, as in the ghostly outlook of the southern
country ; so that the day spent in crossing the desert,
to which we looked forward with such dread, was
really anything but tiresome ; and the night before
reaching Utah, whether from some unexplained excel-
lence of the sleeping-berths, or some unknown influence
of the beautiful brilliant atmosphere, which reminded
us so much of Colorado, was the very best and most
refreshing we had passed since leaving home. The
air, like that of Manitou, seems absolutely to scintil-
late with light and purity. One draws long breaths,
and inspires exhilaration. The stories of returning
miners, which have heretofore been regarded as absurd
western exaggerations, of refuse meat and offal drying
up, instead of putrifying or tainting, become easy
of belief. In spite of its barrenness, its lack of trees
and verdure, its surface of sand and rock, its dread-
fully severe winters and uncomfortable summers, the
radiant atmosphere and glowing sky go far to com-
pensate for all shortcomings. When we woke, next
day, at early morning, and saw in the light of the
dawning Sabbath the deep-blue of the great Salt Lake
sweeping toward the snowy Wahsatch mountains,
while the great, gray plain lay asleep in the shadow,
and the mountain tips were rosy with the flush of
coming dawn, it seemed for the moment like the
embodiment of rest and peace ; yet, travellers who
have frequently crossed this waste, declare that at
other seasons the dreariness and dust of this part
of the route are intolerable. Our exceptional good

ON THE WING. l8/

fortune brought us through without even a touch
of ennui.

Perhaps because this unlooked-for pleasure in find-
ing the desert attractive had made us expect too much,
perhaps because unconsciously the blight in its moral
atmosphere had chilled our physical perception, we
did not find Salt Lake City as interesting as we an-
ticipated. This was the more strange because the
valley in which it lies is so exceedingly beautiful,
enclosed within a framework of exquisitely outlined
hills, with the deep, shining waters of the great lake
on one side, and the green, smiling fields and waving:
trees of a fruitful country on the other side. It is
like a lovely vision, a pastoral idyl, after the severe
prose of the plains, which stretch beyond its moun-
tain walls. Full of vivid color, rich in the promise of
spring-time, eloquent of that peace and content which
a beautiful landscape always breathes, it was a gracious
sight, and unconsciously prepared one to be pleased
with what came after. The small houses and farms
had an air of great thrift and neatness, the herds and
stock grazing here and there were unusually sleek and
comfortable. In the city, the great width of streets,
and their long lines of locust and poplar-trees, gave a
certain stateliness to even the humblest locality, and
the people as well as the children looked so com-
fortably cared-for that there was nothing to find fault
with ; but there was, even about their best institutions,
as well as in the deportment of its population, such a
glaring contempt for the beauties and amenities of
life, that it grated on one after the first glance ; the

l88 ON THE WING.

well-being seemed so entirely temporal, and so far
apart from any corresponding spiritual perception.

The disdain in which they appear to hold preten-
tious dwellings and polite manners, was not the fine
feeling of those who know the greater value of higher
things, but the grosser instincts of carelessness in
those who have never yet reached even the best ap-
preciation of lower ones. There is no truth in a
religion which tramples the purest and noblest instincts
of womanhood under foot ; there can be no stability
in it. It is too dreadful a state of things for hope to
live through, or wretchedness to endure; and in spite
of my best desire to see the contrary, the faces of the
men and women about showed but differing repetitions
of the same unwholesome story. The few sensitive
ones looked unhappy; the many coarser, indifferent.
In all the sea of faces at service in the immense
tabernacle, these were the two prevailing types ; only
a few were free from it, and these were either mothers
holding little babies, and happy in the care, or youths
of either sex too young to understand their abnormal
position. Even among the presiding elders there was
no subtle magnetism of devotion or refinement. The
poorest meeting-house of a New England village
would show among its deacons better heads and more
spiritual countenances than this stronghold of Mor-
monism could summon from the whole range of its
best class, to represent the hierarchy of its church.
The Latter-Day Saints, which is the title they claim
officially, show neither in face nor bearing the qualities
which we usually consider as belongings of those who

ON THE WING. 189

live in the odor of sanctity. There is neither calm
patience, sweet benignity, deep thought, soaring aspira-
tion, nor loving kindness, to be found in the looks
of these typical men. In their place, shrewdness,
obstinacy, and a complacent arrogance, strike the be-
holder with any but spiritual reflections — qualities
much more likely to be canonized by the Mammon of
Unrighteousness than the God of humility and peace.

The thought of the social ulcer 'which preys upon
society, embittered every practical aspect of this
country to us. It, and it alone, made the clear air
dim, the bright water running in the roadside ditches
muddy, the pleasant shadow of waving trees dark and
intolerable. The condition of things which allows it
to be possible in a presumably Christian country, to
point out the Amelia Palace as the residence of its
ruler's "favorite wife," explains its own weakness and
wickedness. The divine mandate which raises woman
to the sublime dignity of wife and mother has nothing
in common with such degrading comparisons.

Many of the clean, neat little houses (for the large,
Gentile fashion of taking up much ground for dwelling-
places seemed to have stopped outside the valley, and
the homes were all small and tidy), had the piazza
divided by a centre railing; and one wife and her
children sat on one side, while the other little group
occupied the other. Even where this outward sign of
division was emitted, we learned that some distinction
of place wras made between the different members of
one family within the dwellings. It wras customary,
or not unusual, to have one mistress and her depend-

190 ON THE WING.

ents in the city house, and another at the country
ranche, so that the master would meet some part of
his multiplied wife wherever he turned. The one-
armed driver who took us through the town had two
wives and eighteen children. One would think he
would need both arms for such a regiment ; but he
seemed quite equal to the situation, and said with a
leer, which in Christian countries would not be con-
sidered consistent with matrimony, that he was "about
ready for number three now." It was the ugliest
commentary we heard on "the institution," and by
a Mormon.

It looked peaceful and proper enough ; but our un-
ruly imaginations put riot, and bitterness, and dreadful
thoughts enough in the souls behind those stolid,
heavy faces to make a moral tornado. We 'tortured
ourselves more during those two or three days in this
stronghold of the Saints, as they call themselves, with
a defiant pride which looks gigantic by the side of
their assumed humility, than in all the hairbreadth
'scapes and positive dangers of the trip put together.
It was so impossible to connect those common-
place looking people and their commonplace ambitions
and works, with the hell-upon-earth which the reigning
condition of things would create in our own bosoms,
that it made us feel as if we were trying to reap the
whirlwind. No doubt we did grevious injustice to
many a peaceful Gentile, by imagining him one of the
polygamous band, and hating him accordingly, while
we wasted yearning sympathy over this or that good,
honest woman, the one wife of her one husband, — for

ON THE WING. 191

Salt Lake City is no longer peopled by Mormons alone.
A large and thriving portion of the population live
their own lives and follow their own religion, with-
out fear of avenging angel or thug-like Danite. Many
of the prettiest houses in the best situations be-
long now to this colony, and the number increases
day by day. So long, however, as the church co-
operative system continues to exist, I cannot see that
it leaves great scope for large business transactions
outside.

As far as material prosperity goes, it requires very
little time to become convinced that the political
economy of the Saints is a success. Under the cloak
of religion, the church follows its believers to the
home, to the store, to the office, and retains a helping,
as well as a grasping hand, in every affair of life. As
a consequence, there is none of the squalor, none of
the uncared-for distress, which is so harrowing in
other cities. Every one looks well fed ; every one is
decently clothed ; there is even a feeling of relief in
escaping suddenly and completely from the velvet and
diamond fever which seems to have prostrated every
other womankind of the Western country. There is
an honest simplicity which allows people to live in
accordance with primitive rulings ; they are not brought
up against some rock of etiquette or conventionality
at every turn of the rudder. There is a wholesome
disregard of gloves and fashions ; the cotton and
woolen overskirts of six years ago, and even further
back, sit cheek-by-jowl with the cotton and wool over-
skirts of the latest Harper's Bazar. Most of the

192 ON THE WING.

finery worn in the Tabernacle was as evidently of
home production as the Tabernacle itself, and no man
or woman seemed to feel the reproach or incongruity
of companionship with finer feathers. I say seemed ;
for, in spite of the startlingly self-complacent and bril-
liantly ungrammatical report of a missionary brother
just returned from preaching the " new gospel of
faith " to the heathens of West Tennessee, we caught
many a furtive glance at the exceedingly modest
toggery of our own party, trying to detect whether
kilt-pleatings or box-plaits were most in favor with the
wicked world's people, or if we tied our pullbacks
quite as tightly as in eighteen hundred and eighty-one.
The mothers, sitting here and there through the con-
gregation, bared their breasts and nursed their infants
with most absolute unconcern of neighborhood ; the
children, scattered broadcast through the immense
edifice, clattered through the aisles as if they were
sidewalks, dipped tin cups of water from the open
barrels just inside the Temple doors, laughed a little
and cried a good deal, after the manner of children
cooped up in a place of worship all the world over.
When communion time came, there was little to
remind one of the sanctity of a religious ceremony in
the hastily broken bits of bread passed around in
plated baskets, and eaten with as much unconcern as
a peanut by every man, woman and child in the entire
edifice. I remember being very much impressed once
by a general love-feast of this kind in the Cathedral of
Notre Dame at Montreal ; but there was not an atom
of reverence or devotion about the rite as adminis-

ON THE WING. 193

tered in the Mormon Church. The people, taken as
a whole, were the poorest representative body 1 ever
saw gathered ; a heavy air of vulgar satisfaction in the
men and a weary unconcern, in spite of the simple life
and delightful atmosphere, in the women. In the
Temple, as in the street, one of the usual facts in
polygamy was further verified. The man of the house
sat or walked with the youngest wife, while the others
took post-graduate places. I remember one evening
walking a long distance behind a surly man, who was
beaming, as much as he could beam, on a rather
homely-dressed woman, while he threw back an occa-
sional command to "get along," or "hurry up," to
an older person struggling with a cross three-year-old
boy, who walked submissively behind. They listened
in the church to the religious exercise with decorum,
but without the slightest particle of interest or evi-
dence of interior spirit. It looked as if any one of
them might say, with Tennyson's North Country
Farmer listening to his preacher: —

( ' An I niver knawed whot a mean'd, but I thowt a ad summut to sday,
An I thowt a said whot a owt to 'a said an I corned awaay."

The classes from which, in the main, Mormonism
receives its recruits, would partly explain this lack of
animation or interest. Probably, no set of people in
the world are more material, or on a lower mental
plane, than the operatives of large English manufac-
turing towns, the miners of Wales, and the laborers
in small German farming villages. It is largely to
these overburdened lives, in which existence resolves
13

194 ON THE WING.

itself into a constant struggle to snatch food from the
jaws of want, that the preachers of this new religion
come with a gospel more of the body than the spirit ;
with promise of lighter toil, better wages and in-
creased comfort ; with the vexed question of polygamy
left adroitly in the background for future discussion,
and only the broad, easy tenets of doctrine offered for
dull brains to ponder over. Unless report is more
than ever a liar, a majority of the " converts " to this
creed become aware of its most remarkable dogma,
after they are within the limits of Utah. Once there,
the wise laws regarding labor and expense, the system
, of tithes, the patriarchal government, the amplitude of
ease which comes to almost every individual, half
hampers them by implied obligations, half blinds their
naturally obtuse religious sense, and makes them
ready to adopt any code which is laid down for their
observance. But it is no use to tell any woman, that
custom or prejudice, or even the uplifting of martyr-
dom, can make the sharing of her home rights and
her heart's longings, peaceful, or happy, or healthful,
for any other woman under the sun.

In spite of the pamphlets for sale in the lobby of
the hotel, which gave letter after letter from leading
wives and mothers of the kingdom, proclaiming their
entire satisfaction with, and approbation of, the pecu-
liar tenets of their chosen religion, and the peace and
harmony in which they live with the three, five, or
seven other consorts of their beloved husbands, there
is a strong and invincible conviction that they are
speaking for a purpose. Their faces tell a truer story.

ON THE WING. 195

The well-to-do aspect of the city is enhanced by its
beautiful situation. Every house, without exception,
has its bit of ground laid out according to the owner's
taste, so that instead of the inevitable tenement blocks
in other cities, one walks here through streets lined
with gardens and grateful with shade. The new
buildings going up for religious purposes within the
enclosure of the present Tabernacle, promise to be
more imposing in style and finish than anything yet
attempted in the city. Some few residences of the
wealthier Gentile merchants, or the more prominent
religious officials, are sufficiently elegant to be notice-
able here, but hardly to make a show in other cities of
the same proportions. The private houses belonging
of old to Brigham Young, were remarkable for nothing
but a certain aggressiveness of size, and had more the
aspect of buildings connected with a community than
with family life. We were a little amused on entering
one of the recitation-rooms of the catechism-classes,
to hear a body of small people repeating answers and
texts in concert with more respect for the sound than
the sense of their lessons. They were reciting the
Sermon on the Mount, as we came in, going over and
over again in unison each section, until it was learned
by rote. That it was by rote, a lusty youngster just
in front proved to his own satisfaction and ours by
shouting out, each time, " Blessed are they that
mourn, for they shall be comfortable ; " while the
teacher, unheeding, allowed him to shout away. It
was the old contest between the letter and the spirit.

I wonder very much, that, with the clear streams

196 ON THE WING.

of water running at either side of their streets, the
people do not utilize part of it to moisten the intoler-
able dust, which is overpowering at certain seasons.
It shows a want of foresight not in keeping with such
practical tendencies. Every evening in summer a
train runs up the narrow-gauge road to several
watering-places on the road, and both Mormon and
Gentile avail themselves of the privilege of bathing
and seeing sunset on the lake. The evening we were
there was memorable for a glory of color that made
all previous memories of sunsets dim. Low on the
horizon, between a sapphire sea and sapphire sky, a
mass of gray clouds changed in a few instants to
flaming islands burning on an amber ocean; the ter-
raced hills on the right changed their dull, sage-green
to a pale, luminous emerald; one solitary peak just
under the deeply-glowing sky wrapped itself from base
to summit, in a royal robe of purple ; while across
the water, toward the east, the snowy points of the
Wahsatch Range caught a rosy flush from the re-
flected light behind them, as if the spirit of morning,
instead of evening, was spreading radiant pinions over
the world. There was the utmost incongruity between
this superb, yet harmonious, scene, and the crowd of
noisy bathers, full of rough fun, who bobbed, and
squirmed, and floated like corks on the densely salt
water. It was impossible to sink ; one could sit as in
an arm-chair on the calm sea ; there was no danger of
being drowned, but a fair certainty of being pickled,
so we wisely refrained from buying experience at such
a price.

ON THE WING. 197

The hotels of the city, though fairly comfortable,
do not show the same care for the accommodation of
guests as those to which we had been accustomed.
One who was not there at the exact supper hour, had
to Wait the convenience of cook and waiter for even a
cup of tea and a boiled egg. Any of the little luxuries
of the bill of fare were utterly out of the question
for late comers. We left in the early morning, so
early that we had slops for tea, cold potatoes, cold
eggs, and cold victuals generally. It was the worst
meal we had on the trip, and the poorest service.
Nothing was hot but our tempers : they were boiling.
If their object was " to speed the parting guest," they
succeeded admirably; we would not have waited longer
for a kingdom. Besides, our faces were fairly turned
eastward ; and once one gets on the home-stretch,
after a long and changeful journey of this kind, all the
blandishments of the stranger could not compensate
for any added delay that would keep us from the dear
hands already stretched in welcome. We were made
glad, too, by a rain, a real, fine, down-pouring rain,
acknowledged by the world, and welcomed as a blessed
thing. For so long we had had no rain at all, or else
had been obliged to smuggle it in under so many
disguises, such as mist or fog, or some undefined
quantity, as if it were a thing to be ashamed of,
that we took genuine pTide in the dripping, warm,
delicious moisture : it was like the first breath of home.
The beautiful valley, as we passed through it again on
our way to Ogden, was lovelier than ever. . It seemed
as if, leaving the city, we left an incubus behind which

198 ON THE WING*

had unconsciously been weighing upon us. Between
the mountains on one hand, and the lake on the other,
each instant brought a new point of loveliness to view;
and one realized that here, as in the old hymn of our
childhood,

" Every prospect pleases.
And only man is vile."

CHAPTER XVI.

HOMEWARD-BOUND ACKOSS THE COXTIXKXT.

THE fine scenery through Weber and Echo
canons lost something of its effect on us from
the anti-climax of seeing it, after the more
magnificent wildness of the Colorado gorges, just as
the Nevada desert seemed tame after the fierce deso-
lation of the Southern saharas. If considerations of
climate and weather made it possible — as unfortu-
nately they do not — to reverse the order of travel, and
coming first, as is usual, across the northern route, to
finish sight-seeing with the Denver and Rio Grande
Railway, the natural progression of wonders would be
better retained. A succession of the most admirable
points of view are crowded on this small line, which,
in connection with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe', crosses and recrosses with a network of tracks
the whole Southwestern country. It was a little odd
to find ourselves in the native haunts of this latter
road, which had been familiar to most of us before as
the irrepressible acrobat of the stock-board, with a
mania for bounding and tumbling, and find that it had a
local habitation as well as a name. May its dividends
never be less, for the sake of the sincere pleasure it
gave us !

There is no portion of Western travel, however,

200 ON THE WING.

which does not possess its own special charm to one
who knows how to look for it. We had heard the
great plains of Wyoming spoken of as decidedly un-
interesting, but we found them quite the reverse.
There is great impressiveness about these immense
level reaches, covered with roving flocks and herds,
narrowed here and there by lowering buttes of bright,
red rock, or high-piled basaltic columns, but, for the
most part, vast, silent, and solitary. Through all
these uninhabited plains, both north and south, full of
the strange majesty of desolation, the harmonies of
David's symphonic poem, " The Desert," which the
Boylston Club had given just before we left home,
rang in my ears like a solemn invocation. The per-
sistence of the low C, which underlies the entire first
movement, and gives such solemnity to the composi-
tion,' seemed particularly appropriate to express the
magnitude and isolation of these stupendous mono-
tones. We rode in front of the engine thirty or forty
miles one day. through the brilliant atmosphere, which,
probably, belongs to every region of plateaux elevated
so high above sea level, until the swiftness of motion
and heavenly air produced an exhilaration never to be
forgotten. Life may hold more inspiring moments, but
we are content for the present to rest here ; although a
precarious seat on a cow-catcher seems to have as
little moral connection with inspiration as it would
be possible to bring about. But mind does not any
longer depend on matter. It was only in old days that
the muse required to pose on a pedestal ; now she sits
in any easy-chair and uses a type-writer.

ON THE WING. 2OI

We were surprised at the invariably good meals
which followed us through this route at such distances
from any depot of supplies ; and wherever, at any of
the small stations along the line, an attempt had been
made at irrigation, either by ditches bringing streams
from the far-away mountains, or by means of wells,
the lavish abundance of vegetation in flowers, trees
and produce made the world beautiful for a little
space, showing that both soil and climate were there,
if only patience and prudence, like the rod of Moses,
tapped and bade the living waters leap forth.

Fine specimens of quartz crystals, petrified wood
and moss agates, were for sale at the wayside inns.
At Green River, along with these, were a few wild
animals, caged and lonesome, showing their dislike of
being mewed up in their rough dens, just as well as if
they were part of Barnum's menagerie. It looked
doubly unkind to see them captive in the very heart of
this primitive nature, which was mother and nurse
of all wild things. If it is a measure of safety to
capture coyote and grizzly, well and good ; but kill
them kindly at once, and never let them beat their
lives out in dull, brutish rage against the bars. It
was at this same station that a very good specimen of
Western humor, coarse but trenchant, was handed
about in the shape of a set of rules and regulations
belonging to the two-story wooden hotel at which we
took supper. Quotations from it had been posted
here and there in the offices of public-houses, even in
the Valley ; but this was the first time the entire
document was forced on our attention. The office-

2O2 ON THE WING.

clerk is described in the bill as one who "has been
carefully selected to please everybody ; can play draw-
poker, match worsted at the village store, shake for
drinks at any hour of the day or night, play billiards,
waltz, dance the German, make a fourth at euchre,
flirt with any young lady and not mind being cut dead
"when pa comes down," put forty people in the best
room of the house when the hotel is full, attend to the
enunciator, and answer questions in Greek, Choctaw,
Irish, or any other polite language at the same mo-
ment, without turning a hair." The evident enjoyment
with which this combination of Mercury and Gany-
mede distributed his caustic parody among our people
gave us a feeling that the sarcasm was meant to be
personal. Can it be possible that there are ever
persons from the East who make ridiculous demands
of Western innkeepers ? I really wonder !

The forty or fifty miles of snow-sheds through which
the railroad passes during the first part of the home-
ward journey, are another novelty. Such constant,
unpremeditated plunges into obscurity, without rhyme
or reason to give warning of their approach, would
addle the brain of most people, but we are all so clear-
headed ! Trains of emigrant wagons pass many times
a day, each with its troop of led horses, its populous
colony of little children, and escort of sunburned,
bearded men, looking with patient eyes to the still
farther west toward which they journey. I did not
realize before that so many settlers move themselves
and their belongings in this way, at this late date. It
looked pleasant and comfortable enough in the clear,

ON THE WING. 203

bright weather; but how the women and children
must suffer in the wild storms which sometimes devas-
tate this region ! Flocks of antelopes were almost
constantly in sight, bounding over the plains, not so
graceful or pretty a creature as the tall, antlered deer
we passed in going and coming from the Yo Semite,
but still pleasant objects to look at.

It was somewhere here, on the way to Cheyenne,
that we took on board an Indian scout, one of those
who guided the government forces at the time of the
Meeker excitement. We braved the lurid atmosphere
of the smoking-car for a couple of hours one evening,
in order to listen to the viva voce stories of this un-
tutored hero. I am bound to confess that the real
Indian scout is a very poor grub, when compared with
the fine butterfly who takes his name sometimes in city
shows. Your natural article is a plain, inoffensive-
looking man enough, exhaling a strong flavor of to-
bacco, reticent of speech, a little awkward of manner,
and dressed in the ready-made, ill-fitting suit of the
poor man in all climates. There is very little fire in
his eyes or voice ; his hair is short, his beard un-
shaven, his gestures awkward, as if he needed the
excitement of activity to make him self-forgetful. He
gives you his plain, horrible facts in the simplest
language, which is still more graphic than the stage
eloquence of his rival ; he does not call the Indians
names ; he hates them too much to waste words on
them ; he acknowledges they have been ill-treated, but
agrees with every other Westerner that "they got to
be stamped out." He is as unassuming and neutral-

204 ON THE WING.

/

tinted as any day-laborer, with not even a stray gleam
of the eye to tell you that over and over again he has
looked into the face of almost certain death, and never
left the shadow blanch his own. We were disap-
pointed at first, as any women of taste would be,
remembering the splendid chevelure and flowing mous-
tache of Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack, the defiant
swagger of the fine animals, their broad-sashed waists
and fringed leggings, their wide Gainsboro' sombreros
and brilliancy of blanket and daring. The memory of
those stately heroes, riding arms akimbo, and eyes in
a fine frenzy rolling, up and down the city streets, at
the head of their war-painted braves, was still fresh in
our mind, and put the modest nearer view out of
focus. To see one such creature as that was balm
to the spirit ; you felt that " One blast upon his bugle-
horn was worth ten thousand men," and that, somehow
or other, the small, quiet, modest fellow before you
had cheated you of something ; but, like a woman of
taste, also, you changed your mind before you had
talked an hour, and believed that if there was any
cheating it was on the other side of the house.

We could hardly be sufficiently grateful for the
weather which followed us, making every day a new
benison. At the dinner-station they told us of a hail-
storm a week ago, which broke every window on one
side of the train, and at Cheyenne we found that a
rain-spout yesterday — which is the same storm as
the "cloud-burst" of Nevada — nearly devastated the
country. Between and among perils of many kinds
our large party skim or glide with only the best of

ON THE WING. 205

good fortunes, and day after day gives us a new reason
to be thankful.

One could almost tell when the boundary lines are
passed by the great change in the outlook in different
territories. Gray sage-brush in narrow valleys or
wide plains in Nevada, the mountains far away and
dark, with the same dusty look as in New Mexico, hut
sometimes closing suddenly in abrupt palisades, like
those of the Hudson river, only of more decided
basaltic formation. In Utah, the ranges drawn to-
gether in narrow canons of great beauty; in Wyoming,
the vast extent of high table lands, seven or eight
thousand feet above sea level, a natural grazing ground
for numberless cattle. What subtle madness causes-
a stampede among these creatures and forces them
to cross the track before an advancing train, nobody
knows. But the whistle shrills constantly to warn
them, and then the engine slows to avoid running over
the stupid creatures, who won't be warned. I am
disgusted with cows. Their methods are too feminine,
especially when it comes to crossings. Have not I
seen the same unaccountable hesitancy, the same spas-
modic jerkiness of approach and retreat, and finally,
the same wild rush in the very jaws of destruction in
the civilized streets of my native city? Alas! have I
not done it myself? And how hard it is to see one of
the pet weaknesses of your sex emphasized by a four-
footed bungler of the same persuasion. The moun-
tains seem to grow lower as we reach our highest
grade, and shortly after passing Sherman they dis-
appear entirely, as the road goes down the opposite

206 ON THE WING.

slope of the Rockies toward the beautiful grain fields
of Nebraska. These are like Kansas, without the
hedges which made such noticeably lovely divisions,
without, also, the large, comfortable farm-houses which
have been replaced in all our journeyings since by the
poor,, bare shanties of new settlements. The appear-
ance of a desperately barren social life which these
little settlements present is depressing even in the
midst of the beautiful world surrounding them. There
was some kind of harmony between their blankness
and the desert places in which they were set in other
localities, but here the bleak, liarsh look forces itself
to the front. There is also a noticeable lack of
wild flowers, after the lavish beauty of the south in
this respect.

The situation of Omaha and Council Bluffs, twin
cities on opposite sides of the Missouri, is delight-
ful. Broad, green meadows, surpassingly fresh and
brilliant, stretch up to bold cliffs on one side and tree-
crowned hills on the other. Nestling in the rich foliage
which lovingly overshadow them, the pretty, pros-
perous homes of the young towns put on an attractive-
ness Western homes too often want. Nothing can
be more meagre and cheerless than these, as a rule.
One can easily believe their occupants comfortable,
but not so easily happy. The aspect of content or
cheerfulness which flowers and shade add to the house
they surround is almost entirely absent. It would be
an insult to the perceptions of the Western people to
doubt that the fault will be remedied, when means
of irrigation become more easily available. Here at

ON THE WING. 2C/

Omaha, as indeed largely through the whole of Ne-
braska, nature has done everything for her children.
iThe luxuriant trees could not be more beautiful amid
the palaces of kings than around these homes of the
people. The great, muddy, whirling river, which
divides -the cities, with its uprooted snags, and Broken
trees sticking in its shallows, hardly impresses one as
being capable of such magnificent outbursts of rage,
as sometimes seize it at earlier and later seasons ; and
it is with real incredulity we hear of last year's up-
rising, when it filled a space four miles wide with
rushing waters. Like Thomas of old, it requires that
we should be shown the places where the wounds
were before we believed ; then we understood, as never
before, what spring floods must mean to the inhabi-
tants of river countries.

Iowa is a relief; still more beautiful than Kansas,
more undulation, more trees, more exquisite cultiva-
tion ; frequent towns, and between them, for days,
hardly an inch of unreclaimed land ; the cottages
improving in the look of thrift and industry, and an
ease of surrounding which speaks of a life less harshly
devoted to the hard grind of labor.

Rock Island is another lovely spot, as it rises like
an emerald set in moonstones from the gray shining
of the Mississippi, which sweeps "grandly by just at
this point. Illinois does not entirely carry out the
promise of Iowa in cultivation ; the farms toward the
east, though broad and green, show less evidence of
care. But clover fields begin to appear, the dear,
homely red blossoms which we have not seen before

208 ON THE WING.

this year, except for one tiny patch in Salt Lake
Valley. How honest and good it looks ! Towns and
villages come thick and fast now, and here and there
broad fields, with furrows miles long, stretching away
like the strings of some enormous harp. The cattle
stand- knee-deep in shining pools, and little rivers
begin to cross the track. The color of the green
through this entire state is superb ; it is at once deli-
cate and brilliant to a degree we never knew before.

Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, each runs up the gamut
of delightsomeness, as we speed through it with the
dear refrain of " Home, home ! " beating time to every
turn of the wheels bearing us on. The water, which
has been so terribly off color, clears itself from even a
taint of suspicion; the beloved, familiar wild flowers,
buttercup and daisy, wild rose and convolvulus,
chickory and yarrow, creep into fields and hedges.
We forgive even the ugly Virginia rail-fence where it
wobbles across lots, and the immense distance be-
hind us so foreshortens the bit of travel yet to come,
that when we change cars at Buffalo to run up to
Niagara Falls for a short time, it seems like an after-
noon frolic, and that we will be at home for tea.
After nine thousand miles, who is going to count two
or three hundred ? Yet I have known the day when a
trip to New York looked of such magnitude, that it
took my mind a fortnight to prepare to grasp it, and
no doubt the same time will come again ; for, as the
deacon said to Widow Bedott, "we are all sech poor
critters ! "

CHAPTER XVII.

A GLIMPSE AT NIAGARA.

IT is always experimental to test a youthful mem-
ory, by bringing it face to face with the same
scene twenty years after. The sorcery of time
is no black art: it softens harsh experiences and
brightens dull ; it throws more light upon sunny spots,
and deepens obscurity over dark ones, until at last
they fade from sight altogether, and only happiness is
left in bold relief. It was this consciousness that .
threw a chill over the thought of seeing Niagara
again; Niagara, the one glowing picture of the outer
world, which had crossed the horizon of a young girl's
home-life to remain for nearly a score of years its
highest ideal of beauty and grandeur. It is hard to
have an old love made light of, even to increase the
glory of a new; if the surpassing wonderments of the
last two months should overshadow this, and make it
hereafter take only a second place, how would my
steadfast mind ever accustom itself to the change ?

o

This was the dread which exercised me during the
short ride from Buffalo to Suspension Bridge ; this
was the dread which floated away with the first glance
at the rushing river; for is not "a thing of beauty a
joy forever?" Was there not the old enthusiasm,
the old delight, waiting to snare us in whirling rapids.

210 ON THE WING.

in majestic fall, in the wild commotion of whirlpools
below? Was there not the same wonderful green,
like no other bit of color in the wide world, in the
curve of the horse-shoe ; the same sublimely direct
force in the straight plunge of the American side ?
The little quaking tower was gone from its perilous
position on the upper edge of the cataract; but the
deeply-fretted tumult of waters about the Three Sis-
ters and the lovely shores of Goat Island, was still
the same. Surging mountains of spray, rising like a
soul after resurrection from the abyssmal leap of the
river; symphonies of sound and color in the deep
thunder of its roar, the changing emerald of its waters ;
there they were, all and more than all my fancy painted
them. Aye, even to make the illusion perfect and
cause my sober pulses to beat with the fervid rage of
twenty years syne, was there not the same irrepressible
hackman, bullying of manner, monstrous of charge, a
Shylock as of old in search of shekels, and ready as
ever for his pound of flesh? Even the aegis spread
about us by Raymond's coupons, which had carried
us victoriously through the battle-fields of monop-
olists in so many campaigns, was useless here. One
man bullied us first and abused us afterward ; but I
am proud to record that we were proof against both,
and that he did n't make enough out of us to buy salt
for his porridge — if the wretch ever eats any.

The policy of building another suspension bridge
near the falls, at the same great height as the old one,
and making it wide enough for only one carriage at a
time to pass, so that the line desiring to go must wait

ON THE WING. 211

for the opposing line to come across, at the expense
of much time and temper, seemed very strange to us.
Possibly, like most international policies, it was neces-
sarily conservative, and conservatism is always narrow.
American enterprise at both ends of the line would
never have tolerated such halting movement. Ameri-
can enterprise would have done well to curb its vault-
ing spirit, however, before it builded those warehouses
and used the falls for water-power, to help its worship
of the almighty dollar. We could easily have borne
a little more conservatism there. One can understand
the action of Ruskin and his followers in petitioning
Parliament to refuse a charter for railroads through
the English lake region, when brought face to face
with the sacrilege here. For there are certain spots
that, by reason of reverent association or divine right
of majestic beauty, should be set apart forever from
the insolence of commonplace association. But there
will always be a class ready to oppose this feeling
as sentimental — to put a lager beer saloon in Shaks-
peare's house, a toll-gate and turnpike on the way to
Mont Blanc, and a concert hall in the vestibule of
Saint Peter's, by way of working pecuniary profit
from the hold these places possess over the imagina-
tion of susceptible people.

It is easier to go sight-seeing now at Niagara than
it used to be. Queer double-barrelled inclined planes,
which shoot cars up and down from the river bed,
take the place of the old steep scramble over the pre-
cipitous walls of the bank. It did not seem quite
such fun as the other, but it left you with more breath

212 ON THE WING.

and less flurry to revel in that glorious fury of waters
which lashes itself into foam and passion within its
pent-up channel. There was greater fascination in
watching this wonderful tangle of malachite, where
green ran through all the shades from white to black,
than in looking at the calmer grandeur of the majestic
falls themselves farther up. There was something
more in accord with the petulance of human passion
about one, while the terrible calmness of Divine rage
sobered the other. We had a matchless day in which
to see this other wonder of the world — a sky and
atmosphere that might have been taken from Colorado
for depth and purity. It appeared to me still that the
Clifton House, on the Canadian side, had much the
advantage in situation, and an appearance of retire-
ment more in harmony with the awful beauty of the
scene before it. If one could have a little more time
for that deliberation and rest, which ought to be part
of the delight in any such place as this, it would cer-
tainly be here that one would choose to spend it. The
world ought not to push too near the gates of any
such paradise. This is what makes the bustle of the
little American town distasteful, with its petty traffic,
its hurry, its busy streets and modern houses. There
is something sacrilegious in going out of the back
door and into the byways, as it were, to look at what
is really the life-spring of the place. On the British
side you are brought first, and as a matter of course,
face to face with its chief est glory. But in the Ameri-
can quarter it is on the piazza which fronts the village
street that the guests sit to watch omnibuses from

ON THE WING. 213

incoming trains, to ogle village beauties, to note the
modest business going on in village stores. There is
nothing to tell that you are within a thousand miles
of the great cataract, the echo of whose name fills
the world. One cannot but feel that the isolation
of the Yosemite ought to be here also, the reverent
approach which prepares the soul to be in tune with
its surroundings. Pilgrim schoon and scallop shell,
which were signs of old of the true believer on his
way to the shrine of his devotion, have given way
now to express trains and fast boats advertised to
make the through trip in a certain number of hours.
We must make our pilgrimages in a hurry, or we
can 't make them at all. I am not sure, however, that
we do not lose something of more value than even time
and money in the bustle. To rush as fast as steam
will carry you into the heart of the stronghold, to
rattle up to the front door of the International and
out of the back door, with only the narrow limit of
Goat Island as a gateway, before you are precipitated
into the holy of holies, this is not in keeping with
eternal fitness. I am beginning to think they do
things better in the West, where you must pay for
your whistle — and how much paying has to do with
appreciation ! But it must be that constant motion
has clouded a usually clear head ; after the agony we
suffered getting into that Valley of Paradise in Cali-
fornia, am I actually grumbling at reaching Heaven
too easily here ? And growling over vulgar traffic and
. village stores, when we bought thereby spar ornaments

214 ON THE WING.

and Indian bead work, to add to Santa F£ filigree
and Pueblo pottery in the already over-full trunks ?
Surely, " Frailty, thy name is woman."

Sunset on Lake Erie was another picture of glowing
beauty to hang on the walls of memory; the ruddy
glow of the western sky and the path of flame it made
across the water would have delighted the soul of
Turner, but no other man would ever have dared
handle it. A cloud of myriads of gnats or midges,
which followed us from Suspension Bridge back to
Buffalo, somewhat obscured its radiance at the time.
How large a pleasure the sting of an atom of volatile
mischief such as this can spoil for one !

We woke the next morning — the last morning —
near Albany, in a scene of such exquisite pastoral
loveliness as one can only get by the Hudson on a
June morning. The low, rounded hills were covered
with trees and verdure ; the meadows were fresh
as an English lawn ; the beautiful bright water of
the brooks and creeks sparkling and flashing in the
sunshine, made the memory of the muddy Western
streams like a bad nightmare. What ease and com-
fort about the pretty houses ; what home-like thrift
about the small farms ; what nestling peace surround-
ing the church-crowned villages. Ah ! let them say
what they will about the newer world toward the
setting sun ! There is more room there, and chance
for prosperity, more material for brawn and muscle,
more money-making and hoarding up of riches, broader
lands and softer climates : but here, here in New York

ON THE WING. 215

and Massachusetts, is the place, after all, for the white
man to live in. " For is the life not more than food,
and the body more than raiment."

What matters the smaller purse, if the happier spirit
goes with it? And, in all honesty, I must declare,
that, except for the very poor, whom life pinches in
these crowded eastern settlements, life is an easier
problem here than amid the bare, laborious experi-
ences of the farther country. Toil is too solely the
arbiter of destiny there ; help of congenial companion-
ship, little aids to educating the mind and elevating
the spirit, the thousand nameless and unnoted charms
which an older civilization spreads so lavishly about
us, that we only heed when we are deprived of them,
even the small conveniences which have become so
much a matter of course with us, that we take them as
we do the free air of heaven, without recognition or
gratitude ; all these are things to be dreamed of and
longed for, but not possessed.

I fancy that life in those Western wilds must press
more hardly on the woman than the man. It is always
so where the rudeness of nature still holds the upper
hand. A man's mind is taken up with many projects ;
he is out in the free air under the beautiful sky; the
rougher experience which comes to him rouses a
manly strength of antagonism which is part of every
honest character; there are novel and exciting hap-
penings every day ; but a woman's horizon is usually
bounded by her immediate surroundings, and where
there is little to enlarge or enliven this, she is apt to

2l6 ON THE WING.

sink into that condition of apathetic dejection which
marks the bondage of labor everywhere. The towns
and cities are of course very much better off; yet I
think that if people generally made up their minds
to live in the east, as they are obliged to in the west,
to dwell in simple houses, eat coarse food, forego
mental training, social advantages, personal comfort,
amusements and society, there would not be a tithe of
the difference there is now in the yearly account of
profit and loss.

Even luxury in those distant territories cannot at-
tain the enjoyments, temporal and spiritual, which are
as much parts of our usual moderate life here as sun-
light. (That is a bad simile ; there is n't much sunlight
left in to spoil the carpets of our comfortable New
England homes ; I should have chosen some other
universal but despised gift of God.)

In climate even I am inclined to think we have the
best of it. For delicate people, in whom great changes
of temperature produce gradations in healthfulness,
there can be no question as to the propriety of going
where the world swings always between two or three
degrees, and the equal air keeps the even tenor of its
way through all seasons. But for persons born with-
out special ailment, I cannot help feeling that the wide
range of countries which know both winter and sum-
mer is healthiest as well as happiest. There are
virtues of mind and body, notably those of vigor and
endurance, which seem to require the struggle with
cold or inclemency to develop. Any one who has

ON THE WING. 217

ever felt the invigorating heartiness of a walk on a
cold day, and the strength with which brain, as well
as body, works under the fine inspiration of a keen,
clear atmosphere, knows that the more seductive
sweetness of summer never brings an equal incentive.
The climate which offers the recurrence of these
differing experiences ought to be richer far in material
for nerve, muscle and brain, than that which is con-
fined within narrower limits. Even home affections
grow stronger v/hen they are nursed by the fireside.
It would be unfair to judge East and West by the
same standard to-day : both advantage and disadvan-
tage are too unequally balanced ; but whenever the
time comes to make comparison possible, I am ready
to prophesy that the more changeful seasons will have
the highest place.

It was worth going away from home if we brought
back nothing else than this content with the dear old
spot to which we belonged ; and coming through
western Massachusetts through that long June day,
fresh from the delights of the shining world beyond,
which we had enjoyed so thoroughly, we realized with
new delight, as the swift miles flew past, that for
human nature's best development, there was nothing
wanting in the country about us. Back came the
beloved daisies, foaming in white billows across green
meadows, and the fragrance of dull, red clover ; back
the dear rock-ribbed fields, with their mellow toning
of sorrel in brown and terra-cotta; back the precise
1'ttle market-gardens and the thriving towns which

m

2 iS ON THE WING.

made them profitable. Even the mills and manufac-
tories looked as if the corporations who built them
had some apology for a soul, as the lines of clean,
little houses crept up under the shelter of the one big
building, like a brood of chickens under the wing of a
mother hen. How palatial they looked after the one
or two-room board-shanty, opening directly from the
gray desert of the plains ! And the comparative moral
cleanliness in the lessening quota of saloons and
drinking- dens, if smaller material number is any indi-
cation, numerous enough, heaven knows ! yet, but
not with the infernal preponderance of Western cus-
tom, where it looked as if every half-dozen men must
own a private bar-room. I know that many intelligent
people stoutly deny that there is any greater propor-
tion of intemperance beyond the Rockies than here
at home, and so far as cases of actual drunkeness go,
they may be able to uphold the statement by genuine
statistics. But that does not change the absolute
fact of the universality of the custom of drinking.
A thousand ingenious reasons are offered for this :
the difficulty of procuring good water, the peculiari-
ties of climate, the life of greater hardship and
exposure, the heterogeneous conditions of society*
and even the large-hearted generosity of a people
who like to show their friendliness in even such
small matters as "setting up drinks for the crowd."
No doubt all these have weight, yet none of them
make good excuse for an improper and dangerous
custom.

ON THE WING. 219

And now, as the afternoon sun drops lower, what
fair city is this that rises in the east, throned like a
queen above the silver Charles, many-towered and
pinnacled, with clustering roof and taper spire ? How
proud she looks, yet modest, as one too sure of her
innate nobility to need adventitious aid to impress
others. Look at the aesthetic simplicity of her pose
on the single hill, which is all the mistaken kindness
of her children has left of the three mountains which
were her birthright. Behold the stately avenues that
stretch by bridge and road, radiating her lavish favors
in every direction ; look at the spreading suburbs that
crowd beyond her gates, more beautiful than the parks
and pleasure-grounds of her less favored sisters. See
where she sits, small but precious, her pretty feet in
the blue waters that love to dally about them ; her
pretty head, in its brave gilt cap, as near the clouds
as she can manage to get it ; her arms full of what-
ever is rarest and dearest and best. For does n't
she hold the " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " and
Bunker Hill, Faneuil Hall and Harvard College?
Do not the fiery eloquence of Phillips, the songs of
Longfellow, the philosophy of Fisk, the glory of the
Great Organ, and the native lair of culture, belong
with her ? Ah ! why should we not " tell truth and
shame the devil " — does n't she bring to us the babies
and the family doctor ?

To the portion of the pleasant company who have
made the long journey together — for some still hold
their heads to other stars and some yet lingerty the

22O ON THE WING.

way — I would rather say au revoir than adieu, wish-
ing to each of them, meantime, "gluck auf," in the
formula of another good-natured wanderer, " Here 's
to your good health and your families ! May you live
long and prosper." I reserve for another chapter what
I desire to say on the general subject of excursions.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PROS AND CONS ON THE SUBJECT OF EXCURSIONS,

IT is a significant though much neglected fact, that
both the Greeks and Romans made their spirit
of wisdom a goddess. Astute as they were,
they understood thoroughly that no masculine divinity
could have possessed the staying power of holding
back trom conclusions before all his premises were
before him. Only a woman could have the clear
eyes to see the truth where it was hidden, and the
clear head to retard her judgment until she had un-
earthed the whole of it. If this theory disagrees with
later opinion on the subject, it would not surprise me;
men have had too much to do with the world of late
years to get a fair show for woman without a fight for
it. But I would simply like to point them to the truth
that it was Pallas Athena who sprang from the brain
of Jove, a full-statured, well-armored, solid, intellectual
fact, and the Greeks knew what they were about when
they worshipped her. This is why, out of loyalty to
my sex and an idea, I have waited to the end before
hazarding any incomplete conclusions ; a rash, mis-
guided man, spoiled by a long course of political bias
for ever being able to look judicially at anything,
would have swamped you with contradictory opinions
a dozen times in the record of these three months.

222 ON THE WING.

I confess to having had a strong bias against excur-
sions in the outset. The disadvantages of such modes
of travelling are apparent on the outside. There is
the planning of a trip by some person or persons
unknown, whereby your time is absolutely disposed of,
and no chance allowed for exercising your own predi-
lections as to hurry or loitering. You are wound up,
so to speak, at the start, to go for a certain number of
days or weeks or months ; you know beforehand where
you will turn up at a certain hour, just as well as you
know the ultimate end of the letter you put in the
post-office. Besides, you are one of a crowd ; you are
not an individual, endowed, as the catechism hath it,
"with understanding and free will," but an atom, to
be pushed or hindered in common with the mass to
which you belong. This to a sensitive nature, counts
for a great deal ; for though personality is in a measure
lost, there is a publicity given to all one's movements,
which has the effect of making one feel notorious, and
notoriety even of a pleasant kind is distasteful to
many. You feel labeled and ticketed like your trunk
and shawl; or you feel as if you were going to feel
so, which amounts to the same thing so far as you are
concerned.

But here the drawbacks end ; and the advantages,
which overbalance them a hundred fold, but which,
being weightier, do not rise so easily to the surface,
begin to claim recognition. By becoming one of
a Raymond excursion party — for I will speak only
of what I know — you are enabled to start on your
pleasure jaunt with the first grand requisite for true

ON THE WING. 223

enjoyment: a mind absolutely free from care about
your destination or your belongings. Your special
section of your special car is always ready for you ;
no matter how roads change or trains are made up ;
you hold the same relative position to the end, and
see the same friendly faces near. This gives a home
feeling that no haphazard arrangement of neighbors
could offer, and makes itself felt as a real boon before
the devious journey is well begun. You have no
thought of the morrow ; wiser heads than yours are
arranging your rooms at the next stopping-place, see-
ing to the transfer of your luggage, planning your
rides and drives with congenial company, so that when
you enter the carriage and drive to your hotel you find
your own trunk in your own apartment, as if it had
grown there. Any one who has ever experienced the
delays and annoyances of even an ordinary journey in
a new direction, by reason of hackmen and checks,
hotel porters and clerks, will appreciate what this
means. The long route of travel is subdivided into a
succession of short trips, with a few days or nights'
rest between each ; in every new city, prominent points
of interest are grouped together and brought to your
notice ; whatever is worth seeing is thrown open to
you without any of the usual formalities of introduc-
tion ; you are lodged always at the best houses ; and,
although it is impossible for every one in so large a
number to have the very best room on the very best
floor of each house, you will find your accommodation
quite as good as the average. It is often very much
above this ; for, whereas, when alone, some sudden

224 ON fHE

influx of travel may so fill your chosen hotel as to leave
for you only a closet or a cot-bed, as one of a party,
arranged for beforehand, you are always sure of com-
fortable quarters. At meal-stations, in out-of-the-way
plates, especially through the newer settlements, you
are invariably better cared for than the ordinary trav-
eller; for the keeper of a restaurant, certain of a posi-
tive large number, makes generous preparation, where,
for the insecure patronage of usual trains, he could not
run the risk. You travel almost entirely by special
train, which gives more time for refreshment, and does
away with many petty trials, both of delay and huny.
A lady is enabled to visit places usually out of a
woman's reach, and with no need of personal escort,
since the management takes unusual care of all those
who have no especial protector. Taken as a whole,
your travelling companions are of a far more select
class than would fall to your lot in "e very-day journey-
ing. To prove this, you have only to walk through the
cars of any regular train, which may from time to time
come in connection with your own. Little courtesies,
in the shape of special time-tables, cards or pamphlets
of information regarding new routes, the personal at-
tendance from point to point of superintendents of
new roads, and scores of other helpful and reassuring
attentions, keep one at ease through the long journey.
And you are not obliged to be on terms of absolute
intimacy with, every one whose name you find on
your pretty souvenir programme. People will choose
their own particular friends, and will take you or leave
you, just as they see fit, and you will exercise a similar

ON THE WING. 225

right. There will be the pleasant, good feeling of a
community assimilated by the same desires and same
ends, but that is all. You know in the outset the
exact amount of expense to be incurred, and can leave
what margin for other spending you choose; and,
unless you are one of the few dowered with plenty of
money, and the still fewer rich in plenty of time, with
a good head for planning, and a magnificent genius in
the way of executive ability, there is no way on earth
by which you can make a pleasure trip so happily.

You will find always, without any doubt, a few pro-
fessional grumblers, "people who would find fault
with heaven because their halo did not fit," as our
picturesque young man once put it, who will try to
torture you, while they make themselves happy by
growling out odious comparisons and sowing spiteful
innuendoes. They will try to make you believe that
the excursionists are sent to third-class hotels for
third-rate accommodations ; that they are snubbed by
porters and sneered at by waiters ; that they travel
under a cloud, and, as it were, on sufferance. But
use your own eyes and ears; exercise your own intel-
ligence, and prove whether this is so. It is an unfor-
tunate fact in natural history that the manners of the
animal ma'n become still more animal in certain situa-
tions, and that Western hotel and car service form
part of these. But you suffer no more than your
neighbor, the regular traveller. There was a Pullman
porter on the return trip who used to fling inoffending
pillows about with a fine scorn, intended to show that
he was meant for better things than making up berths
15

226 ON THE WING.

in sleeping-cars, but his reign of terror poured alike
over the just and the unjust. For the rest, here in an
excursion, as well as in every other situation of life,
you will find yourself treated very much as you
deserve. If you are selfish, imperious and domineer-
ing, rude to your fellow-servant, and inflated with the
importance of the sordid, little-souled Ego, who can
stoop to be ungenerous or impolite to an inferior,
then you will be thoroughly hated and genuinely
snubbed, and take my compliments with it; but if you
keep a civil tongue in your head and a kindly thought
in your heart for those who are ministering to your
pleasure or convenience ; if you mingle a little human-
ity with your every-day manners, and have a remnant,
at least, of that true dignity which is above being
wounded by every pin-prick, you will go on healthily
and happily, and find the world what you make it. A
Raymond excursionist has no coupon which absolves
him from the ordinary courtesies of life.

As concerns the means of travel, they are the best
we are capable of yet, though I am surprised to find
the best so bad. In all the years that have elapsed
since the invention of palace and sleeping-cars, it is
discouraging to think so few improvements have been
made in them. There is the same atrocious ventila-
tion, especially at night, when it is Hobson's choice
whether you will suffocate for want of air, or be
smothered by coal dust. There are the same infernal
curtains, hot, heavy and dusty, sealing the sarcophagus
of a berth hermetically, whereas the lightest and thin-
nest muslin drapery would answer all purposes of

ON THE WING. 227

concealment and give one a chance-breath for life
besides. Stupidity cannot go further than in the con-
tinuance of these dreadful woolen draperies, in place
of a light, penetrable screening of wire gauze, or some-
thing equally clean and porous. To say they are
necessary evils, is absurd on the face of it; if Yankee
ingenuity cannot meet the question of draughts by
any other means than choking the individual to put
him out of danger of catching cold, it is certainly
wanting in its old-time gumption. There is the same
incomplete toilet arrangement, so wofully inadequate
to the number of aspirants for cleanliness ; and the
same unkind distinction between masculine and femi-
nine races, by which the men have twice as much
accommodation as the women. This, I am told, is
because twice or three times the number of men travel
as of women ; but, in that case, could not some
clivison be made by which women alone, or with
escorts, could have one car on each train, and have in
that car at least equal rights with their husbands or
brothers ? There would always be more trouble in
the lady's car; for the very fact of their being less
used to journeying makes them less able to be me-
thodical, and more apt, I am sorry to say, to be incon-
siderate to each other. I have seen one inoffensive
looking little woman stay thirty minutes bathing, and
arranging her hair and dress, while eleven others
waited their turn, and the breakfast-station was less
than an hour off. But such incomprehensible stupidity
does not alter the fact that we ought to have at least
equal washing facilities. What is a man's toilet while

228 ON THE WING.

travelling, whether or no, but a splutter and splash, a
scrub with a towel, and a momentary tussle with a
hair-brush ; a tug at a shoulder-brace and a jerk at a
collar, a twitch at a neck-tie and wrestle with a sleeve-
button, a slap at a vest and dash at a coat, — and there
he is, looking as if he stepped out of a band-box.
But a woman ! think of the back-hair and front-hair,
the frizzes and bangs, the underskirts and overskirts
and draperies, the mysteries of the nail toilet, the
artful artlessnesses of neck trimmings, the many-
buttoned boots, the crinoline and pull-backs ; think of
the slow and laborious progress toward final perfec-
tion, of her dainty deftness and exquisite nicety, and
think of it all in a closet three feet square in a train
going thirty miles an hour, with a dozen anxious and
aimless ones waiting outside and making audible
comments on her slowness ! O, it is easy to see that
the sleeping-car is a masculine invention ! In order
of excellence, the Pullman comes easily first; it is-
roomier, brighter and fresher; its pillows are larger,
and there is some resting-place for the poor, tired
porter. The Silver palace cars come next ; they are
nearly as good as the Pullman ; the Wagner comes last
of all, and a long way behind. People who do not
travel farther than Chicago have the very poorest ap-
pointments ; the Wagner has a monopoly of the East.
As the requisites for a California journey, the less
one burdens one's self with the better. There are
certain essentials and a few ameliorations which it
would be well to keep in mind. One wants at almost
any season of the year a strong, plain, comfortable

ON THE WING. 229

travelling-dress, short and easy, of some close-grained
woolen material, as absolutely free from trimming as
is consistent with good taste. Trimmings mean dust,
and dust soon means dirt and frowsiness. Gray, with
some decided bit of color about the collar and sleeves,
is best, for gray alone is unbecoming to most people ;
peacock-blue is both serviceable and pretty; light
browns are admissible, but dark colors, almost with-
out exception, show the wear and tear of travel sooner
than others. If a second travelling-dress could be
taken to provide against emergencies, it would be
always well; better, if it is thinner than the first, so
that oppressively hot weather might find it available.
An ulster is the most convenient outer wrap, for it
protects the dress and leaves the arms free, and a
gossamer waterproof can be kept in one of its pockets.
The underclothes should be all of gray, light both in
shade and texture ; nothing is so wearing as a heavy
weight of clothing borne on hips and shoulders, in
addition to other fatigue. This much of change, with
a pair of easy boots, or slippers for the cars, should
be kept among the hand-luggage in a stout strap. The
toilet arrangements, with a light woolen wrapper or
sacque, for night wear, can go in a satchel. The
trunk can be packed to suit one's self, always remem-
bering that there is no need of an overplus of
changes, as soiled clothes can be laundried at every
city where there is a two-days' rest ; and one best
dress, or two at most, makes ample allowance for a
three-months' stay. One wants a dress-hat and mantle
for state occasions ; any kind of simple, becoming

230 ON THE WING.

head-gear for travelling ; a long tissue veil of silk and
wool, which will probably be worn, to the exclusion of
everything else about head and neck, in the cars, as
a protection from dust and ashes, through most of
the journey ; a pair of stout boots for rough or stormy
walking, and as many pairs of long-wristed gloves as
your purse will allow. There is nothing like a rail-
road trip for using up gloves. By the way, I must
not forget the purse itself, and you must not forget to
put money in it. There are a thousand and one little
calls not down on the bills, and not absolutely neces-
sary, but which are sure to come, nevertheless.

A man's needs I cannot speak about so decidedly;
whatever sort of trousers will bear wear and tear and
look none the worse for it; whatever kind of coat and
vest will remain always respectable in the face of insult
and injury; whatever manner of suit, in short, will
admit of being grimed by soot and ashes, wet by rain,
crumpled by sitting up or lying down, and played the
mischief with generally, yet always be neat and tidy;
that is the kind of stuff they need, whether they buy it
at Oak Hall or Randidge's. But I know they want
colored shirts, lightly tinted, either wool or cambric,
and some loose sailor ties, and as many boots as their
female cousins, and two or three hats to be blown
away over the plains or in San Francisco harbor.
That is the favorite amusement. The Big Boy says
they need also a suit of Pjammas, whatever that
dreadful sounding article may be.

They need beside, both men and women, plenty of
good humor and a fair share of health, a quiet con-

ON THE WING. 231

science and a little leaven of consideration. Having
which graces, which God has graciously placed within
reach of every human, I can wish them no better gift
to set them off, than a Russia-leather bound book
of coupons for a Raymond excursion to Colorado and
California.

INDEX.

Page.

Alkali Plains 185

An Adobe House .......... 76

Apaclie Canon .......... 65

A Ride in the Engine 19

Arizona Desert 82

A Woman's Judgment ........ 221

Bathing in Salt Lake 196

Big Trees — Mariposa Grove 129

Boston 219

Burros, The ........... 43

Cable-roads and "Dummies" .155

Cactus, The 24

California Desert '84

Cattle on Plains ' 205

Chicago 8

Chinese Laborers 174

Chinese Quarter 151

Chinese Question 159

Chinese Tea-house 152

Chinese Theatre . . . . . . . . . -153

Circular, Western Hotel 201

Clark's 105

Clear Creek Canon 40

Coarse Gold Gulch 103

Colorado . 23

Colorado Springs 41

Comparison between East and West . . . . . . 215

Contrasts in Scenery ......... 205

Council Bluffs 206

Cow-catcher, Riding on the . . 55

Currency . . . . . . . . . . . 166

Denver 38

Deserted Mining Camps ...... . . 170

Dining-Car 17

234 INDEX.

Page,

Disadvantages of Excursions . 222

Echo Canon ........... 199

El Paso 72

Emigrant Wagons .......... 202

Excursions, Advantages of 222

First Experience in a Sleeper i

Foot-Hills I73

Fort Yuma 83

Fruit in California ......... 165

Garden of the Gods 34

Glacier Point ........... 121

Grand Canon of the Arkansas 50

Grass Valley .182

Green River 201

Habits of Drinking . ^ 218

Hotel del Monte . . . . . . . . . .145

Hydraulic Mining 178

Inspiration Point .......... 108

Iowa . 207

Irrigation in California 162

Kansas 18

Kansas City 17

Las Vegas 63

Los Angeles 87

Manitou 33

Marshall's Pass 53

Mexican Dance 69

Mining Interests 169

Missouri 23

Monterey 145

Montezuma, The 63

Motto in a Dining-room ......... 50

Mormons, The :88

Nebraska 206

Niagara 209

Ohio 14

Omaha 206

Orange Groves 93

Outfit for California trip 228

Placer 49

INDEX. 235

Page.

Pretty Maid of Antonito ........ 57

Pueblo ............ 27

Pueblo Indians 71

Pullman Cars 13-17

Quartz Mining .......... 180

Raton 61

Rock Island ........... 207

Royal Gorge . . . . . . , . . . .51

Sacramento 164

Salt Lake City 187

Santa Fe 65

Santa Monica . . 95

Scout, Indian 203

Sheep and Shepherds 62

Sierra Madre Villa . 87

Sleeping Cars 226

Smartsville 177

Snow-sheds ........... 202

Society in San Francisco 149

Southern California 85

Speculation, The fever of . . . . . . . 157

Tabernacle at Salt Lake, The j92

Toilet Accommodations in Sleepers . . . . . . 227

Toltec Gorge 55

Trinidad ............ 59

United States Soldiers 30

Veta Pass 54

Vineyards in April .......... 5

Western Massachusetts 217

Western Sheriff, A 8r

Wheat Valleys near Sacramento . . . . . . . 172

Why Wisdom was a Goddess 221

Wyoming Grazing Plains ........ 200

Yosemite, Stage-Ride into the joo

Yosemite, Valley of the in

RAYMOND'S

VACATION

EXCURSIONS.

All Travelling Expenses Insluded.

'""TOURIST PARTIES are organized at different seasons of the year
for pleasure travel, under personal conchictorship, to various parts
of the country. Our Spring and early Summer tours through

COLORADO, NEW MEXICO, ARIZONA,
CALIFORNIA, UTAH, ETC.,

have met with great favor; as have also our Summer and Autumn
trips to the

WHITE MOUNTAINS,
LAKE MEMPHREMAGOG, CANADA,

THE THOUSAND ISLANDS,

NIAGARA FALLS, SARATOGA, LAKE GEORGE,

and other famous places of resort, and our Winter trips to
WASHINGTON

and elsewhere. A six months' trip to CALIFORNIA, with a stay of five
months at the HOTEL DEL MONTE, MONTKREV, CAL., was a very pop-
ular feature o( the winter and spring season of 1882-3.

These tours are so arranged that they secure FIRST CLASS ACCOMMO-
DATIONS, both while journeying from place to p ace and at hotel>, and
many SI-ECIAL ADVANTAGES, while the cost is much less than is incurred
in ordinary travelling. Members of our tourist parties are relieved
<wfjol':y from the ordinary c ires, responsibilities and vexations of travel.

All the principal tours referred to above will be repeated in the coming
year, and in addition, several NOVEL AND ATTRACTIVE EXCURSIONS
TO NEW POINTS t>p INTEKEST, the details of which cannot yet be
announced, wM be arranged.

Persons desirms of receiving our descriptive circulars (especially of
the new trips) as they are issued from time to time, are requested to
furnish th^ir names, and post office or home addresses.

W. RAYMOND. I. A. WHITCOMB.

Descriptive circulars, tickets, and all required information may be
obtained of

W. RAYMOND,

240 Washington St., Boston, Mass.

LEE & SHEPARD'S BOOKS OF TRAVEL.

EUROPEAN BREEZES. By MARGERY DEANE. Giit top, $1.50.
Being chapters of travel through Germany, Austria, Hungary and
Switzerland, covering places not usually visited by Americans in
making "The Grand Tour of the Continent," by the accomplished
writer of " Newport Breezes."

A SUMMER IN THE AZORES, with a glimpse of Madeira.
By C. ALICE BAKER. Little Classic style. Gilt edges, $1.25.

OVER THE OCEAN ; or, Sights and Scenes in Foreign Lands.
By CURTIS GUILD, of "The Boston Commercial Bulletin. " $2.50.

ABRpAD AGAIN; or, Fresh Forays in Foreign Fields. Uniform
with " Over the Ocean." By the same author. $2.50.

AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. By Miss ADELINE TRAFTON,
author of " His Inheritance/' " Katherine Earle," etc. Illus. $1.50.

BEATEN PATHS; or, A Woman's Vacation in Europe. By
ELLA W. THOMPSON. $1.50.

A THOUSAND MILES' WALK ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA,
Over the Pampas and the Andes. By NATHANIEL H. BISHOP.
New Edition. Illustrated. $2.50. (Ingress.)

VOYAGE OF THE PAPER CANOE. A Geographical Journey of
Twenty-five Hundred Miles from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico.
By NATHANIEL H. BISHOI'. With numerous illustrations and maps
specially prepared for this work. $2.50.

FOUR MONTHS IN A SNEAK-BOX. A Boat Voyage of Twen-
ty-six Hundred Miles down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and
along the Gulf of Mexico. By NATHANIEL H. BISHOP. With nu-
merous maps and illustrations. $2.50.

CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. Being the adventures of a Natu-
ralist Bird-hunting in the West India Islands. By FRED A. OBER.
With maps and illustrations. $2 50

OUR BOYS IN INDIA. The wanderings of two young Americans
in Hinrlostan, with their exciting Adventures in the Sacred Rivers
and Wild Mountains. By HARRY W. FRENCH, The India Traveller
and popular Author and Lecturer. With 145 illustrations. Size
7 x 9l/2 inches.- With emblematic covers of Oriental design, $1.75.

DRIFTING ROUND THE WORLD: A Boy's Adventures by
Sea and Land. By CAHT. CHARLES W. HALL, author of "Adrift
in the Ice-fields," "The Great Bonanza," etc. With numerous illus-
trations. Size 7 x 9V2 inches. Handsome cover, $2.75.

YOUNG AMERICANS IN JAPAN ; or, The Adventures of the
Jewett Family and their Friend Oto Nambo. By EDWARD
GREEY. With 170 full-page and letter-press illustrations. Size
7 x g1^ inches. Illuminated cover, $1-75.

THE WONDERFUL CITY OF TOKIO ; or, The further
Adventures of the Jewett Family and their Friend Oto
Nambo. By EDWARD GREEY, author of "The Golden Lotus,"
etc With 169 illustrations. Size, 7 x 9% inches, with cover in gold
and colors, designed by the author. Price, $1.75-

Sold by all booksellers, and by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price.

LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, ----- Boston.

DENVER & RIO GRANDE

IR, .A. I TJ

REACHING THE

LEADING PLEASURE RESORTS and SCENIC ATTRACTIONS

COLORADO,

NEW MEXICO,

and UTAH,

AND CROSSING THE

Main Ranges of the Rocky Mountains Eight Times,

FORMS

THE UNEQUALED TOURIST ROUTE

OF THE WORLD.

Connecting the Trunk Lines at Denver and Pueblo with the Central

Paoific Railroad at Ogden, it offers a new and

most attractive highway for

TRANSCONTINENTAL TRAVEL

SIXTEEN HUNDRED MILES OF MOUNTAIN RAILWAY,

WELL BUILT, ELEGANTLY EQUIPPED, and CAREFULLY MANAGED,

Note. — This system is traversed extensively by Raymond & Whit-
comb's Colorado and California Excursion Parties.

flglp* For information, rates and itineraries, address

D. C. DODGE, F. C. NIMS,

Gen. Manager , Gen. Pass, and Ticket A gent t

DENVER, COLO-

A HAPPY THOUGHT!

IF YOU ARE GOING WEST TAKE THE

& Santa Fe E. R.

It is the Only Line Open to the Pacific Coast

At all times of the year, and runs through the richest Agricultural, Mining,
Fruit-Growing and Stock-Raising Country in America.

IT IS THE MOST DIRECT LINE
TO KANSAS, the Banner Agricultural State of the Union. Kansas hav

in» won the First Prize on her products at the Atlanta World's Fair.
TO COLORADO, the "Silver State." Colorado "carries the flag,"

as the largest silver-producing State in the Union. The A., T. &

S. F. R. R. is the shortest route.
TO NEW MEXICO, the "Old Curiosity Shop" of America. New

Mexico's mineral wealth is undoubtedly as great as that of Colorado,

though not so well developed yet. All the better chance for you,

yonn.e man, ' Go West.'
TO 'ARIZONA. New Mexico and Arizona will rank together in the

history of the future. Both are rich in gold, silver, coal and other

minerals; both are well adapted to agriculture, fruit-growing and

stock-raising.
TO OLD MEXICO. Here is an Empire of vast but undeveloped

resources, opened by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. R. to the

enterprise of the Northern Republic.
TO CALIFORNIA. Every mile of the road from the Missouri River

to San Francisco is full of interest. Most attractive tourist trip on

the continent.

THE HOT SPRINGS OF NEW MEXICO

ARE REACHED VIA THE

Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. R.

FARE FROM ATCHISON OR KANSAS CITY TO

LAS VEGAS HOT SPRINGS AND RETURN,

ONLY S43.8O.

The HOTELS and BATH HOUSES at this Celebrated Resort are
Unsurpassed in the World.

For Rates, Maps, Time Tables, and other information, call on or address
W. L. MALCOLM, S. W. MANNING,

Gen"1 1 Eastern Agent , Neiu England Agent,

419 Broadway, NEW YORK. 197 Washington St., BOSTON, MASS.

W. F. WHITE, J. L. TRUSLOW,

General Passenger Agent, Gen1 1 Travelling Passenger Agent,

TOPEKA, KANSAS.

" Then came the jolly sommer, being dight

In a thin silken cassock, colored greene,
That was unlyned all, to be more light."

AT this season of the year, the tourist takes up his maps and books
**• and lays out his journeyings during the summer days. Of course,
he does not miss upon his atlas that thread of iron, the

IsM & Facile E'y,

commencing at Chicago, and terminating at Kansas City, Leavenworth,
Atchison and Council Bluffs, with other threads reaching to Minneapolis
and St. Paul ; and as he studies closely, he finds that he would go where
the air is cool and clear, lakes like crystal lying beneath the heavens, and
forest groves which woo to their cool shades, or yet if he believes that
" mountains are the beginning and end of all natural scenery," he wttl, of
course, wander to Colorado and California. But if in either direction, the
best, most comfortable, picturesque, safest and surest way to travel is via

"THE GREAT ROCK ISLAND ROUTE,"

which sells EXCURSION TICKETS, good from May ist to October

3lSt, tO MlNNETONKA, MINNEAPOLIS, ST. PAUL, DENVER, PUEBLO,

COLORADO SPRINGS and SAN FRANCISCO, the points from which sight-
seers start for their pilgrimages to the noted resorts of our wonderland.
The equipment of this great Railway consists of

Magnificent Day Coaches, Morton Reclining-Chair Cars,

Pullman Palace Sleeping-Cars, and our

own Famous Dining-Cars.

Tickets for sale at all Coupon Ticket Offices in the United States and
Canada.
Get our maps, Time-tables and Folders.

E. ST. JOHN,

General Ticket and Pass. Agent.
R. R. CABLE,

Vice Pres. and General Manager-

"HOTEL DEL MONTE/'

MONTEREY, CAL.,

IS ONE OF

OPEN ALL THE YEAR ROUND.
Only 3% Hours by Rail from San Francisco.

'"THE "DEL MONTE" is handsomely furnished throughout, and
has all the modern improvements of hot and cold water, gas, etc.
It is picturesquely situated in a grove of 126 acres of oak, pine, spruce
and cypress trees, and is within a quarter of a mile of the beach, which
is unrivalled for bathing purposes.

PARKS AND DRIVES.

SEVEN THOUSAND ACRES OF LAND have also been re-
served, especially as an adjunct to the "HOTEL DEL MONTE," and
through which have been constructed TWENTY-FIVE MILES of splendid
macadamized roadway, skirting the ocean shore and passing through
extensive forests of spruce, pine and cypress trees.

BEAUTIFUL DRIVES to Cypress Point, Carmel Mission, Point
Lobos, Pacific Grove Retreat, and other places of great interest.

SEA BATHING.

THE BATHING FACILITIES at this place are unsurpassed,
having a MAGNIFICENT BEACH of pure white sand for surf bathing.

WARM AND SWIMMING BATHS.

THE BATH HOUSE contains SPACIOUS SWIMMING TANKS (150
x 50 feet) for warm salt water plunge and swimming baths, with ELEGANT
ROOMS connecting for Individual Baths, with douche and shower facilities.

TERMS FOR BOARD.

By the Day, $3.00. By the Week, $17.50.

Parlors from $1.00 to $2.50 per day extra.

Children, $10.50 per week (provided they eat in children's dining-
room ; otherwise, full rates).

SPECIAL ACCOMMODATIONS FOR BRIDAL PARTIES.

GEO. SCHONEWALD, Manager.

96045