 Letter 9, Part 1 of A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains. This is a LibriVox recording. Our LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Byrd. Part 1 of Letter 9. Estes Park, Colorado. This afternoon, as I was reading in my cabin, little Sam Edwards ran in, saying, Mountain Jim wants to speak to you. This brought to my mind images of infinite worry, gauche servants, please-mams, contra-tall, and the habit growing out of our elaborate and uselessly conventional life of magnifying the importance of similar trifles. Then things came up, with the tyranny they exercised. I really need nothing more than this log cabin offers. But elsewhere one must have a house, and servants, and burdens, and worries. Not that one may be hospitable and comfortable, but for the thick clay in the shape of things which one has accumulated. My log-house takes me about five minutes to do, and you could eat off the floor, and it needs no lock as it contains nothing worth stealing. But Mountain Jim was waiting while I made these reflections to ask us to take a ride, and he, Mr. and Mrs. Dewey, and I, had a delightful stroll through colored foliage, and then, when they were fatigued, I changed my horse for his beautiful mare, and we galloped and raced in the beautiful twilight, in the intoxicating, frosty air. Mrs. Dewey wishes you could have seen us as we galloped down the pass, the fearful-looking ruffian on my heavy wagon-horse, and I, on his bare wooden saddle, from which beaver, mink, and martin-tails, and pieces of skin were hanging raggedly, with one spur and feet not in the stirrups, the mare looking so aristocratic, and I so beggarly. Mr. Nugent is what is called Splendid Company. With a sort of breezy mountain recklessness in everything, he passes remarkably acute judgments on men and events, on women also. He has pathos, poetry, and humor, and intense love of nature, strong vanity in certain directions, an obvious desire to act and speak in character, and sustain his reputation as a desperado, a considerable acquaintance with literature, a wonderful verbal memory, opinions on every person and subject, a chivalrous respect for women in his manner, which makes it all the more amusing when he suddenly turns round upon one with some graceful railery, a great power of fascination and a singular love of children. The children of this house run to him, and when he sits down they climb on his broad shoulders and play with his curls. They say in the house that no one who has been here thinks anyone worth speaking to after gym, but I think that this is probably an opinion which time would alter. Somehow he is kept always before the public of Colorado, for one can hardly take up a newspaper without finding a paragraph about him, a contribution by him, or a fragment of his biography. Ruffian, as he looks, the first word he speaks, to a lady at least, places him on a level with educated gentlemen, and his conversation is brilliant, and full of the light and fitfulness of genius. Yet, on the whole, he is the most painful spectacle. His magnificent head shows so plainly the better possibilities which might have been his. His life, in spite of a certain dazzle which belongs to it, is a ruined and wasted one, and one asks, what of good can the future have in store for one who has for so long chosen evil? Beginning of Footnote September of the next year answered the question by laying him down in a dishonored grave with a rifle bullet in his brain. End of Footnote Shall I ever get away? We were to have had a grand cattle hunt yesterday, beginning at 6.30, but the horses were all lost. Often out of fifty horses all that are worth anything are marauding, and a day is lost in hunting for them in the canyons. However, before daylight this morning Evans called through my door. Miss Bird, I say we've got to drive cattle fifteen miles. I wish you'd lend a hand. There's not enough of us. I'll give you a good horse. The scene of the drive is at a height of seventy-five hundred feet, watered by two rapid rivers. On all sides mountains rise to an altitude of from eleven thousand to fifteen thousand feet. Their skirts shaggy with pitch pine forest and scarred by deep canyons, wooded and boulder-strewn, opening upon the mountain pasture previously mentioned. Two thousand head of half-wild Texan cattle are scattered in herds throughout the canyons, living on more or less suspicious terms with grizzly and brown bears, mountain lions, elk, mountain sheep, spotted deer, wolves, lynxes, wildcats, beavers, minks, skunks, chipmunks, eagles, rattlesnakes, and all the other two-legged, four-legged, vertebrate and invertebrate inhabitants of this lonely and romantic region. On the whole they show a tendency rather to the habits of wild than of domestic cattle. They march to water in Indian file, with the bulls leading, and when threatened take strategic advantage of ridgey ground, slinking warily along in the hollows, the bulls acting as sentinels, and bringing up the rear in case of an attack from dogs. Cows have to be regularly broken in for milking, being as wild as buffaloes in their unbroken state, but owing to the comparative dryness of the grasses and the system of allowing the calf to have the milk during the daytime, a dairy of two hundred cows does not produce as much butter as a Devonshire dairy of fifty. Some necessary cruelty is involved in the Stockman's business, however humane he may be. The system is one of terrorism, and from the time that the calf is bullied into the branding pen and the hot iron burns into his shrinking flesh, to the day when the fatted ox is driven down from the boundless pastures to be slaughtered in Chicago, the fear and dread of men are upon him. The herds are apt to penetrate the savage canyons which come down from the snowy range, when they incur a risk of being snowed up and starved, and it is necessary now and then to hunt them out and drive them down to the park. On this occasion the hole were driven down for a muster and for the purpose of branding the calves. After a six-thirty breakfast this morning we started, the party being composed of my host, a hunter from the snowy range, two Stockman from the Plains, one of whom rode a violent buck-jumper, and was said by his comrade to be the best rider in North America and myself. We were all mounted on Mexican saddles, rode as the custom is with light snaffle bridles, leather guards over our feet and broad wooden stirrups, and each carried his lunch in a pouch slung on the lassoing horn of his saddle. Four big badly trained dogs accompanied us. It was a ride of nearly thirty miles and of many hours, one of the most splendid I ever took. We never got off our horses except to tighten the girths. We ate our lunch with our bridles knotted over our saddle-horns, started over the level at full gallop, leaped over trunks of trees, dashed madly down hillsides, rugged with rocks or strewn with great stones, forwarded deep rapid streams, saw lovely legs and views of surpassing magnificence, startled a herd of elk with uncouth heads and monstrous antlers, and in the chase, which for some time was unsuccessful, rode to the very base of Longs Peak, over fourteen thousand feet high, where the bright waters of one of the affluence of the flat burst from the eternal snows through a canyon of indescribable majesty. The sun was hot, but at a height of over eight thousand feet the air was crisp and frosty, and the enjoyment of riding a good horse under such exhilarating circumstances was extreme. In one wild part of the ride we had to come down a steep hill, thickly wooded with pitchfines, and to leap over the fallen timber and steer between the dead and living trees to avoid being snagged, or bringing down a heavy dead branch by an unwary touch. Emerging from this we caught sight of a thousand Texan cattle feeding in a valley below. The leaders sent us, and taking fright, began to move off in the direction of the open park, while we were about a mile from and above them. Head them off, boys, our leaders shouted, all aboard, hark away, and with something of the high tally-ho in the morning, away we all went at a hand-gallop downhill. I could not hold my excited animal, downhill, uphill, leaping over rocks and timber, faster every moment the pace grew, and still the leaders shouted, Go it, boys, and the horses dashed on at racing speed, passing and repassing each other. Till my small but beautiful bay was keeping pace with the immense strides of the great buck-jumper ridden by the finest rider in North America, and I was dizzyed and breathless by the pace at which we were going. A shorter time than it takes to tell it brought us close to and abreast of the surge of cattle. The bovine waves were a grand sight, huge bulls shaped like buffaloes, bellowed and roared, and with great oxen and cows with yearling calves galloped like racers, and we galloped alongside of them, and shortly headed them, and at no time were placed as sentinels across the mouth of the valley. It seemed like infantry awaiting the shock of Calvary as we stood as still as our excited horses would allow. I almost quailed as the surge came on, but when it got close to us my comrades hooded fearfully and we dashed forward with the dogs, and with bellowing, roaring, and thunder of hooves the wave receded as it came. I rode up to our leader, who received me with much laughter. He said I was a good cattleman, and that he had forgotten that a lady was of the party till he saw me come leaping over the timber and driving with the others. It was not for two hours after this that the real business of driving began, and I was obliged to change my thoroughbred for a well-trained cattle-horse, a bronco, which would double like a hare and go over any ground. I had not expected to work like a vicero, but so it was, and my Hawaiian experience was very useful. We hunted the various canyons, and known camps, driving the herds out of them, and until we had secured eight hundred fifty head in the corral some hours afterwards we scarcely saw each other to speak to. Our first difficulty was with a herd which got into some swampy ground, when a cow, which afterwards gave me an infinity of trouble, remained at bay for nearly an hour, tossing the dog three times and resisting all efforts to dislodge her. She had a large yearling calf with her, and Evans told me that the attachment of a cow to her first calf is sometimes so great that she will kill her second that the first may have the milk. I got a herd of over a hundred out of a canyon by myself, and drove them down to the river with the aid of one badly broken dog, which gave me more trouble than the cattle. The getting over was most troublesome. A few took the water readily and went across, but others smelt it, and then doubling back ran in various directions. While some attacked the dog as he was swimming, and others, after crossing, headed back in search of some favourite companions which had been left behind, and one specially vicious cow attacked my horse over and over again. It took an hour and a half of time and much patience to gather them all on the other side. It was getting late in the day, and a snowstorm was impending, before I was joined by the other drivers and herds, and as the former had diminished to three, with only three dogs, it was very difficult to keep the cattle together. You drive them as gently as possible, so as not to frighten or excite them, riding first on one side, then on the other, to guide them, and if they deliberately go in a wrong direction you gallop in front and head them off. Beginning of Footnote In several visits to America I have observed that the Americans are far in advance of us and our colonial kinsmen in their treatment of horses and other animals. This was very apparent with regard to this Texan herd. There were no stock whips, no needless worrying of the animals in the excitement of sport. Any dog seizing a bullock by his tail or heels would have been called off and punished, and quietness and gentleness were the rule. The horses were ridden without whips and with spurs so blunt that they could not hurt even a human skin, and were ruled by the voice and a slight pressure on the light snaffle bridle. This is the usual plan, even where as in Colorado the horses are Broncos and inherit any eradicable vice. I never yet saw a horse bullied into submission in the United States. End of Footnote The great excitement is when one breaks away from the herd and gallops madly up and down hill, and you gallop after him anywhere, over and among rocks and trees, doubling when he doubles, and heading him till you get him back again. The bulls were quite easily managed, but the cows with calves, old or young, were most troublesome. By accident I rode between one cow and her calf in a narrow place, and the cow rushed at me and was just getting her big horns under the horse when he reared and spun dexterously aside. This kind of thing happened continually. There was one very handsome red cow which became quite mad. She had a calf with her nearly her own size and thought everyone its enemy, and though its horns were well developed and it was quite able to take care of itself, she insisted on protecting it from all fancy dangers. One of the dogs, a young foolish thing, seeing that the cow was excited, took a foolish pleasure in barking at her, and she was eventually quite infuriated. She turned to bathe forty times at least, tore up the ground with her horns, tossed the great hunting dogs, tossed and killed the calves of two other cows, and finally became so dangerous to the rest of the herd that just as the drive was ending, Evans drew his revolver and shot her. And the calf for which she had fought so blindly lamented her piteously. She rushed at me several times, mad with rage, but these trained cattle horses keep perfectly cool, and nearly without will on my part, mine jumped aside at the right moment and foiled the assailant. Just at dusk we reached the corral, an anchor of grass enclosed by stout post and rail fences seven feet high, and by much patience and some subtlety lodged the whole herd within its shelter, without a blow, a shout, or even a crack of a whip, wild as the cattle were. It was fearfully cold. We galloped the last mile and a half in four and a half minutes, reached the cabin just as snow began to fall, and found strong, hot tea ready. October eighteenth Snowbound for three days. I could not write yesterday, it was so awful. People gave up all occupation and talked of nothing but the storm. The hunters all kept by the great fire in the living room, only going out to bring in logs and clear the snow from the door and windows. I never spent a more fearful night than two nights ago, alone in my cabin in the storm, with the roof lifting, the mud cracking and coming off, and the fine snow hissing through the chinks between the logs. While splittings and breaking of dead branches, wind rung and snow laden, went on incessantly, with screechings, howlings, thunder and lightning, and many unfamiliar sounds besides. After snowing fiercely all day, another foot of it fell in the early night, and after drifting against my door blocked me effectually in. About midnight the mercury fell to zero, and soon after a gale rose which lasted for ten hours. My window frame is swelled and shuts apparently hermetically, and my bed is six feet from it. I had gone to sleep with six blankets on, and a heavy sheet over my face. Between two and three I awoke by the cabin, being shifted from underneath by the wind, and the sheet was frozen to my lips. I put out my hands, and the bed was thickly covered with fine snow. Getting up to investigate matters, I found the floor some inches deep in parts in fine snow, and a gust of fine needle-like snow stung my face. The bucket of water was solid ice. I lay in bed freezing till sunrise, when some of the men came to see if I was alive, and to dig me out. They brought a can of hot water which turned to ice before I could use it. I dressed, standing in snow, and my brushes, boots, and etc. were covered with snow. When I ran to the house, not a mountain or anything else could be seen, and the snow on one side was drifted higher than the roof. The air, as high as one could see, was one white, stinging smoke of snowdrift, a terrific sight. In the living room the snow was driving through the chinks, and Mrs. Dewey was shoveling it from the floor. Mr. Dewey's beard was hoary with frost in a room with a fire all night. Evans was lying ill, with his bed covered with snow. Returning from my cabin after breakfast, loaded with occupations for the day, I was lifted off my feet and deposited in a drift, and all my things, writing book, and letter included, were carried in different directions. Some, including a valuable photograph, are irrecoverable. The writing book was found some hours afterwards, under three feet of snow. There are tracks of bears and deers close to the house, but no one can hunt in this gale, and the drift is blinding. We have been slightly overcrowded in our one room. Chess, music, and wist have been resorted to. One hunter, for very ennui, has devoted himself to keeping my ink from freezing. We all sat in great cloaks and coats, and kept up an enormous fire, with the pitch running out of the logs. The isolation is extreme, for we are literally snowed up, and the other settler in the park and mountain gem are both at Denver. Late in the evening the storm ceased. In some places the ground is bare of snow, while in others all irregularities are leveled, and the drifts are forty feet deep. Nature is grand under this new aspect. The cold is awful. The high wind with the mercury at zero would skin any part exposed to it. October 19th Evans offers me six dollars a week if I will stay into the winter and do the cooking after Mrs. Edwards leaves. I think I should like playing at being a hired girl if it were not for the bread-making. But it would suit me better to ride after cattle. The men don't like bucking as it is called in the wilds, that is, doing for themselves. They washed and ironed their clothes yesterday, and there was an incongruity about the last performance. I really think, though for the fifteenth time, that I shall leave tomorrow. The cold has moderated, the sky is bluer than ever, the snow is evaporating, and a hunter who has joined us today says that there are no drifts on the trail which one cannot get through. End of Letter 9, Part 1 Letter 9, Part 2 of A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains This is a LibriVox recording. Our LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Byrd Part 2 of Letter 9 Longmount, Colorado, October 20 The Island Valley of Avalon is left, but how shall I finally tear myself from its freedom and enchantments? I see Long's snowy peak rising into the night sky, and no and long after the magnificence of the blue hollow at its base. We were to have left at eight, but the horses were lost, so it was nine-thirty before we started, the we being the musical young French-Canadian and myself. I have a bay Indian pony, Bertie, a little beauty, with legs of iron, fast, enduring, gentle, and wise, and with luggage for some weeks including a black silk dress behind my saddle, I am tolerably independent. It was a most glorious ride. We passed through the gates of rock, through gorges where the unsung snow lay deep under the lemon-colored aspens, caught glimpses of far-off, snow-clad giants rising into a sky of deep, sad blue. Lunched above the foothills at a cabin where two brothers and a hired man were keeping bog, where everything was so trim, clean, and ornamental that one did not miss a woman. Crossed a deep backwater on a narrow beaver dam, because the log bridge was broken down, and emerged from the brilliantly colored canyon of the St. Brain, just at dusk upon the featureless prairies when we had some trouble in finding Longmount in the dark. A hospitable welcome awaited me at this inn, and an English friend came in and kept the evening with me. Great Platt Canyon, October 23. My letters on this tour will, I fear, be very dull, for after riding all day, looking after my pony, getting supper, hearing about various roots, and the pastoral, agricultural, mining, and hunting gossip of the neighborhood, I am so sleepy and wholesomely tired that I can hardly write. I left Longmount pretty early on Tuesday morning, the day being sad, with a blink of an impending snowstorm in the air. The evening before I was introduced to a man who had been a colonel in the rebel army, who made a most unfavorable impression upon me, and it was a great annoyance to me when he presented himself on horseback to guide me over the most intricate part of the journey. Solitude is infinitely preferable to uncongeniality, and is bliss when compared with repulsiveness, so I was thoroughly glad when I got rid of my escort and set out upon the prairie alone. It is a dreary ride of thirty miles over the low brown plains to Denver, very little settled, and with trails going in all directions. My sailing orders were steer south and keep to the best beaten track, and it seemed like embarking on the ocean without a compass. The rolling brown waves on which you see a horse a mile and a half off impress one strangely, and at noon the sky darkened up for another storm. The mountains swept down in blackness to the plains, and the higher peaks took on a ghastly grimness horrid to behold. It was first very cold, then very hot, and finally settled down to a fierce East Windy cold, difficult to endure. It was free and breezy, however, and my horse was companionable. Sometimes herds of cattle were browsing on the sun-cured grass, then herds of horses. Occasionally I met a horseman with a rifle lying across his saddle, or a wagon of the ordinary sort, but oftener I saw a wagon with a white tilt of the kind known as a prairie schooner. Laboring across the grass or a train of them accompanied by herds, mules, and horsemen, bearing immigrants and their household goods in dreary exodus from the western states to the much-vaunted prairies of Colorado. The host and hostess of one of these wagons invited me to join their midday meal. I provided tea, which they had not tasted for four weeks, and they, hominy. They had been three months on the journey from Illinois, and their oxen were so lean and weak, that they expected to be another month in reaching Wet Mountain Valley. They had buried a child en route, had lost several oxen, and were rather out of heart. Owing to their long isolation and the monotony of the march, they had lost count of events, and seemed like people of another planet. They wanted me to join them, but their rate of travel was too slow, so we parted with mutual expressions of goodwill. And as their white tilt went whole down, in the distance on the lonely prairie sea, I felt sadder than I often feel on taking leave of old acquaintances. That night they must have been nearly frozen, camping out in the deep snow in the fierce wind. I met afterwards two thousand lean Texan cattle, herded by three wild-looking men on horseback, followed by two wagons containing women, children, and rifles. They had traveled one thousand miles. Then I saw two prairie wolves, like jackals, with gray fur, cowardly creatures, which fled from me with long leaps. The windy cold became intense, and for the next eleven miles I rode a race with the coming storm. At the top of every prairie roll I expected to see Denver, but it was not till nearly five that from a considerable height I looked down upon the great city of the plains, the metropolis of the territories. There the great braggart city lay spread out, brown and treeless, upon the brown and treeless plain, which seemed to nourish nothing but warm wood and the Spanish bayonet. The shallow plat shriveled into a narrow stream, with a shingly bed six times too large for it, and fringed by shriveled cottonwood. Wound along by Denver, and two miles up its course I saw a great sandstorm, which in a few minutes covered the city, blotting it out with a dense brown cloud. Then with gust of wind the snowstorm began, and I had to trust entirely to Bertie's sagacity for finding Evans shanty. She had been there once before only, but carried me direct to it over rough ground and trenches. Gleefully Mrs. Evans and the children ran out to welcome the pet pony, and I was received most hospitably, and made warm and comfortable, though the house consists only of a kitchen and two bed closets. My budget of news from the park had to be brought out constantly, and I wondered how much I had to tell. It was past eleven when we breakfasted the next morning. It was cloudless and an intense frost, with six inches of snow on the ground, and everybody thought it too cold to get up and light the fire. I had intended to leave Bertie at Denver, but ex-governor Hunt and Mr. Byers of the Rocky Mountain News both advised me to travel on horseback rather than by train and stage, telling me that I should be quite safe, and ex-governor Hunt drew out a route for me and gave me a circular letter to the settlers among it. Denver is no longer the Denver of Hepworth-Dixon. A shooting affray in the street is as rare as in Liverpool, and one no longer sees men dangling to the lamppost when one looks out in the morning. It is a busy place, the Entrepot, and distributing point for any mince district, with good shops, some factories, fair hotels, and the usual deformities and refinements of civilization. Peltry shops abound, and sportsmen, hunter, minor, teamster, immigrant, can be completely rigged out at fifty different stores. At Denver, people who come from the East to try the camp cure, now so fashionable, get their outfit of wagon, driver, horses, tent, bedding, and stove, and start for the mountains. Asmatic people are there in such numbers as to warrant the holding of an asthmatic convention, a patience cured and benefited. Numbers of invalids who cannot bear the rough life of the mountain fill its hotels and boarding houses, and others who have been partially restored by a summer of camping out go into the city in the winter to complete the cure. It stands at a height of five thousand feet, on an enormous plane, and has a most glorious view of the rocky range. I should hate even to spend a week there. The sight of those glories so near and yet out of reach would make me nearly crazy. Denver is at present the terminus of the Kansas Pacific Railroad. It has a line connecting it with the Union Pacific Railroad at Cheyenne, and by means of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, open for about two hundred miles, it is expecting to reach into Mexico. It has also had the enterprise, by means of another narrow gauge railroad, to push its way right up into the mining districts near Grace Peak. The number of saloons in the streets impresses one, and every one meets the characteristic loafers of a frontier town, who find it hard even for a few days or hours to submit to the restraints of civilization. As hard as I did to ride sidewise to ex-governor Hunt's office. To Denver men go to spend the savings of months of hard work in the maddest dissipation, and there such characters as Comanche Bill, Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill, and Mountain Jim go on the spree and find the kind of notoriety they seek. A large number of Indians added to the harlequin appearance of the Denver streets the day I was there. They belonged to the Ute tribe, through which I had to pass, and ex-governor Hunt introduced me to a fine-looking young chief, very well dressed and beaded hide, and bespoke his courtesy for me if I needed it. The Indian stores and fur stores and fur depots interested me most. The crowds in the streets, perhaps owing to the snow on the ground, were almost solely masculine. I only saw five women the whole day. There were men in every rig, hunters and trappers in buckskin clothing, men of the plains with belts and revolvers, in great blue cloaks, relics of the war, tempsters in leather suits, horsemen in fur coats and caps and buffalo hide boots with the hair outside, and camping blankets behind their huge Mexican saddles, Broadway dandies and light kid gloves, rich English sporting tourists, clean, comely and supercilious looking, and hundreds of Indians on their small ponies, the men wearing buckskin suits sewn with beads, and red blankets with faces painted for million, and hair hanging lank and straight, and squaws much bundled up, writing a stride with furs over their saddles. Town tired and confused me, and in spite of Mrs. Evans kind hospitality, I was glad when a man brought birdie at nine yesterday morning. He said she was a little demon. She had done nothing but buck and had bucked him off on the bridge. I found that he had put a curb on her, and whenever she dislikes anything she resents it by bucking. I rode sidewise, till I was well through the town, long enough to produce a severe pain in my spine, which was not relieved for some time, even after I had changed my position. It was a lovely Indian summer day, so warm that the snow on the ground looked an incongruity. I rode over the plains for some time, then gradually reaching the rolling country along the base of the mountains, and a stream with cottonwoods along it, and settler's houses about every half mile. I passed and met wagons frequently, and picked up a muff containing a purse with five hundred dollars in it, which I afterwards had the great pleasure of restoring to the owner. Several times I crossed the narrow track of the quaint little Rio Grande Railroad, so that it was a very cheerful ride. Ranch, Plum Creek, October 24th You must understand that in Colorado travel, unless on the main road and in the larger settlements, there are neither hotels nor taverns, and that it is the custom for the settlers to receive travelers, charging them at the usual hotel rate for accommodation. It is a very satisfactory arrangement. However, at Ranch, my first halting-place, the host was unwilling to receive people in this way. I afterwards found, or I certainly should not have presented my credentials at the door of a large frame house, with large barns and a generally prosperous look. The host, who opened the door, looked repellent, but his wife, a very agreeable, lady-like-looking woman, said that they could give me a bed on a sofa. The house was the most pretentious I have yet seen, being papered and carpeted, and there were two hired girls. There was a lady there from Laramie, who kindly offered to receive me into her room, a very tall, elegant person, remarkable as being the first woman who had settled in the Rocky Mountains. She had been trying the camp cure for three months, and was then on her way home. She had a wagon with beds, tent, tent floor, cooking stove, and every camp luxury, a light buggy, a man to manage everything, and a most superior hired girl. She was consumptive and frail in strength, but a very attractive person, and her stories of the perils and limitations of her early life at Fort Laramie were very interesting. Still I wearied as I had arrived early in the afternoon, and could not out of the lightness retire and write to you. At meals the three hired men and two hired girls eat with the family. I soon found that there was a screw loose in the house, and was glad to leave early the next morning, although it was obvious that a storm was coming on. I saw the toy car of the Rio Grande Railroad whirl past, all cushioned and warmed, and rather wished I were in it, and not out among the snow on the bleak hillside. I only got on four miles when the storm came on so badly that I got into a kitchen where eleven wretched travelers were taking shelter, with the snow melting on them and dripping on the floor. I had learned the art of being agreeable so well at the Chalmers, and practiced it so successfully during the two hours I was there, by pairing potatoes and making scones. That when I left, though the host kept an accommodation house for travelers, they would take nothing from my entertainment, because they said I was such good company. The storm moderated a little, and at one I saddled birdie, and rode four more miles, crossing a frozen creek, the ice of which broke and let the pony through, to her great alarm. I cannot describe my feelings on this ride, produced by the utter loneliness, the silence and dumbness of all things. The snow falling quietly without wind, the obliterated mountains, the darkness, the intense cold, and the unusual and appalling aspect of nature. All life was in a shroud, all work and travel suspended. There was not a footmark or wheel mark, there was nothing to be afraid of, and though I can exactly say that I enjoyed the ride, yet there was the pleasant feeling of gaining health every hour. When the snow darkness began to deepen towards evening, the track became quite illegible, and when I found myself at this romantically situated cabin, I was thankful to find that they could give me shelter. The scene was a solemn one, and reminded me of a description in Whittier's snowbound. All the stock came round the cabin with mute appeals for shelter, sheep-dogs got in and would not be kicked out, men went out muffled up and came back shivering and shaking the snow from their feet. The churn was put by the stove. Later on a most pleasant settler on his way to Denver came in, his wagon having been snow-blocked two miles off, where he had been obliged to leave it and bring his horses on here. The grey mare, had a stentorian voice, smoked a clay pipe which she passed to her children, raged at English people, derided the courtesy of English manners, and considered that, please, thank you, and the like were all bosh when life was so short and busy. And still the snow fell softly, and the air and earth were silent. End of Letter 9 Letter 10. Part 1 of A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Byrd. Part 1 of Letter 10 Colorado Springs, October 28 It is difficult to make this anything of a letter. I have been writing for a whole week, seeing wonders and greatly enjoying the singular adventurousness of novelty of my tour. But ten hours or more, daily spent in the saddle, in this rarefied, intoxicating air, disposes one to sleep rather than to write in the evening, and is far from conducive to mental brilliancy. The observing faculties are developed, and the reflective lie dormant. That night on which I last rode was the coldest I have yet felt. I pulled the rag carpet from the floor and covered myself with it, but could not get warm. The sun rose gloriously on a shrouded earth. Barns, road, shrubs, fences, river, lake, all lay under the glittering snow. It was light and powdery and sparkled like diamonds. Not a breath of wind stirred. There was not a sound. I had to wait till a passing horseman had broken the track, but soon after I set off into the new, shining world. I soon lost the horseman's footmarks that kept on near the road by means of the innumerable footprints of birds and ground squirrels, which all went in one direction. After riding for an hour, I was obliged to get off and walk for another. For the snow bawled in Verdi's feet to such an extent that she could hardly keep up, even without my weight on her, and my pick was not strong enough to remove it. Turning off the road to ask for a chisel, I came upon the cabin of the people whose muff I had picked up a few days before, and they received me very warmly. Gave me a tumbler of cream and made some strong coffee. They were old country folk, and I stayed too long with them. After leaving them, I rode twelve miles, but it was bad traveling, from the bawling of the snow and the difficulty of finding the track. There was a fearful loneliness about it. The track was untrodden, and I saw neither man nor beast. The sky became densely clouded, and the outlook was awful. The great divide of the Arkansas was in front, looming vaguely through a heavy snow cloud, and snow began to fall. Not in powder, but in heavy flakes. Finding that there would be risk in trying to ride till nightfall, in the early afternoon I left the road and went two miles into the hills by an untrodden path. Where there were gates to open, and a rapid steep-sided creek to cross, and at the entrance to a most fantastic gorge I came upon an elegant frame-house belonging to Mr. Perry, a millionaire, to whom I had an introduction which I did not hesitate to present, as it was weather in which a traveller might almost ask for shelter without one. Mr. Perry was away, but his daughter, a very bright-looking, elegantly dressed girl, invited me to dine and remain. They had stewed venison and various luxuries on the table, which was tasteful and refined, and an adroit-colored table-maid waited, one of five attached negro servants who had been their slaves before the war. After dinner, though snow was slowly falling, a gentleman-cousin took me a ride to show me the beauties of Pleasant Park, which takes rank among the finest scenery of Colorado, and in good weather is very easy of access. It did look very grand as we entered it by a narrow pass guarded by two buttes, or isolated upright masses of rock, bright red, and about three hundred feet in height. The pines were very large, and the narrow canyons which came down on the park gloomily magnificent. It is remarkable also from a quantity of monumental rocks, from fifty to three hundred feet in height, bright vermilion, green, buff, orange, and sometimes all combined. They are gay-tinting a contrast to the disastrous-looking snow and the somber pines. Bear Canyon, a gorge of singular majesty, comes down on the park, and we cross the Bear Creek at the foot of this on the ice, which gave way, and both our horses broke through into pretty deep and very cold water. And shortly afterwards, Bertie put her foot into a prairie dog's hole, which was concealed by the snow, and on recovering herself fell three times on her nose. I thought of Bishop Wilberforce's fatal accident from a smaller stumble, and felt sure that he would have kept his seat had he been mounted, as I was, on a Mexican saddle. It was too threatening for a long ride, and on returning I passed into a region of vivacious descriptions of Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor, Turkey, Russia, and other countries, in which Miss Perry had traveled with her family for three years. Perry's Park is one of the great cattle-raising ranches in Colorado. This, the youngest state in the Union, a territory until quite recently, has an area of about sixty-eight million acres, a great portion of which, though rich in mineral wealth, is worthless, either for stock or arable farming. And the other, or eastern part, is so dry that crops can only be grown profitably where irrigation is possible. This region is watered by the South Fork of the Platte and its affluence, and though, subject to the grasshopper pest, it produces wheat of the finest quality, the yield varying according to the mode of cultivation, from eighteen to thirty bushels per acre. The necessity of irrigation, however, will always bar the way to an indefinite extension of the area of arable farms. The prospects of cattle-raising seem at present practically unlimited. In eighteen seventy-six, Colorado had three hundred ninety thousand seven hundred twenty-eight, valued at two pound thirteen shillings per head, about half of which were imported as young beasts from Texas. The climate is so fine, and the pastures so ample, that shelter and hand-feeding are never resorted to except in the case of imported breeding stock from the eastern states, which sometimes in severe winters need to be fed in sheds for a short time. Mr. Perry devotes himself mainly to the breeding of graded shorthorn bulls, which he sells when young, for six pounds per head. The cattle run at large upon the prairies, each animal being branded. They need no herding, and are usually only mustard, counted, and the increase branded in the summer. In the fall, when three or four years old, they are sold lean or intolerable condition to dealers who take them by rail to Chicago or elsewhere, where the fattest lots are slaughtered for tenning or for consumption in the eastern cities. While the leaner are sold to farmers for feeding up during the winter, some of the wealthier stockmen take their best lots to Chicago themselves. The Colorado cattle are either pure Texan or Spanish, or crosses between the Texan and graded short horns. They are nearly all very inferior animals, being bony and ragged. The herds mix on the vast plains at Will. Along the Arkansas Valley, eighty thousand roam about with the freedom of buffaloes, and of this number about sixteen thousand are exported every fall. Where cattle are killed for use in the mining districts, their average price is three cents per pound. In the summer thousands of yearlings are driven up from Texas, branded, and turned loose on the prairies, and are not molested again till they are sent east at three or four years old. These pure Texans, the old Spanish breed, weigh from nine hundred to one thousand pounds, and the crossed Colorado cattle from one thousand to twelve hundred pounds. The cattle king of the state is Mr. Elif, of South Platte, who owns nine ranches with runs of fifteen thousand acres, and thirty five thousand cattle. He is improving his stock, and indeed the opening of the dead meat trade with this country is giving a great impetus to the government of the breed of cattle, among all the larger and richer stock owners. For this enormous herd, forty men are employed in summer, about twelve in winter, and two hundred horses. In the rare case of a severe and protracted snowstorm, the cattle get a little hay. Owners of six thousand, eight thousand, and ten thousand head of cattle are quite common in Colorado. Sheep are now raised in the state to the extent of half a million, and a chronic feud prevails between the sheep men and the cattle men. Sheep-raising is said to be a very profitable business, but its risks and losses are greater, owing to storms, while the outlay for labor, dipping materials and so forth, is considerably larger, and owing to the comparative inability of sheep to scratch away the snow from the grass, hay has to be provided to meet the emergency of very severe snowstorms. The flocks are made up mostly of pure and graded Mexicans, but though some flocks which have been graded carefully for some years show considerable merit, the average sheep is a leggy, ragged beast. Weather mutton, four and five years old, is sold when there is any demand for it, but except at Sharpios in Denver I never saw mutton on any table, public or private, and wool is the great source of profit, the old ewes being allowed to die off. The best flocks yield an average of seven pounds. The shearing season, which begins in early June, lasts about six weeks. Shears get six and a half cents ahead for inferior sheep, and seven and a half cents for the better quality, and a good hand shears from sixty to eighty in a day. It is not likely that sheep-raising will attain anything of the prominence which cattle-raising is likely to assume. The potato beetle scare is not of much account in the country of potato beetle. The farmers seem much depressed about the magnitude and persistency of the grasshopper pest, which finds their fields in the morning as the garden of Eden, and leaves them at night a desolate wilderness. It was so odd and novel to have a beautiful bedroom, hot water, and other luxuries. The snow began to fall in good earnest at six in the evening, and fell all night, accompanied by intense frost, so that in the morning there were eight inches of it glittering in the sun. Miss P. gave me a pair of minsocks to draw on over my boots, and I set out tolerably early, and broke my own way for two miles. Then a single wagon had passed, making a legible track for thirty miles. Otherwise the snow was pathless. The sky was absolutely cloudless, and as I made the longest scent of the Arkansas divide, the mountains, gashed by deep canyons, came sweeping down to the valley on my right, and on my left the foothills were crowned with colored, fantastic rocks like castles. Everything was buried under a glittering shroud of snow. The babble of the streams was bound by fetters of ice. No branches creaked in the still air. No birds sang. No one passed or met me. There were no cabins near or far. The only sound was the crunch of the snow under Bertie's feet. We came to a river over which some logs were laid with some young trees across them. Bertie put one foot on this, then drew it back, and put another on, then smelt the bridge noisily. Persuasions were useless. She only smelt, snorted, held back, and turned her cunning head and looked at me. It was useless to argue the point with so sagacious a beast. To the right of the bridge the ice was much broken, and we forded the river there. But as it was deep enough to come up to her body, and was icy cold to my feet, I wondered at her preference. Afterwards I heard that the bridge was dangerous. She is the queen of ponies, and is very gentle, though she has not only wild horse blood, but is herself the wild horse. She is always cheerful and hungry, never tired, looks intelligently at everything, and her legs are like rocks. Her one trick is that when the saddle is put on, she swells herself to a very large size, so that if any one not accustomed to her saddles her, I soon find the girth three or four inches too large. When I saddle her a gentle slap on her side, or any slight part which makes her cease to hold her breath, puts it all right. She is quite a companion, and bathing her back, sponging her nostrils, and seeing her fed after my day's ride is always my first care. At last I reached a log cabin, where I got a feed for us both, and further directions. The rest of the day's ride was awful enough. The snow was thirteen inches deep, and grew deeper as I ascended in silence and loneliness. But just as the sun sank behind a snowy peak, I reached the top of the divide, 7,975 feet above the sea level. There an unspeakable solitude lay a frozen lake. Owls hooted among the pines. The trail was obscure. The country was not settled. The mercury was nine degrees below zero. My feet had lost all sensation, and one of them was frozen to the wooden stirrup. I found that owing to the depth of the snow, I had only ridden fifteen miles in eight and a half hours, and must look about for a place to sleep in. The eastern sky was unlike anything I ever saw before. It had been chrysopase when it turned to aquamarine, and that to the bright full green of an emerald. Unless I am colorblind, this is true. Then suddenly the whole changed, and flushed with the pure, bright, rose color of the afterglow. Bertie was sliding at every step, and I was nearly paralyzed with the cold when I reached a cabin which had been mentioned to me. But they said that seventeen snowbound men were lying on the floor, and they advised me to ride half a mile farther, which I did, and reached the house of a German from Iseno, with a sweet young wife and a venerable mother-in-law. Though the house was very poor, it was made attractive by ornaments, and the simple, loving, German ways gave it a sweet home atmosphere. My room was reached by a ladder, but I had it to myself, and had the luxury of a basin to wash in. Under the kindly treatment of the two women, my feet came to themselves, but with an amount of pain that almost deserved the name of torture. The next morning was gray and sour, but brightened and warmed as the day went on. After riding twelve miles I got bread and milk for myself and a feed for Bertie at a large house where there were eight borders, each one looking nearer the grave than the other, and on remounting was directed to leave the main road and diverge through Monument Park, a ride of twelve miles among fantastic rocks. But I lost my way and came to an end of all tracks in a wild canyon. Returning about six miles I took another track and rode about eight miles without seeing a creature. I then came to strange gorges with wonderful upright rocks of all shapes and colors, and turning through a gate of rock came upon what I knew must be Glen Eyrie, as wild and romantic a glen as imagination ever pictured. The track then passed down a valley close under some ghastly peaks, wild, cold, awe-inspiring scenery. After fording a creek several times I came upon a decayed-looking cluster of houses, bearing the arrogant name of Colorado City, and two miles farther on, from the top of one of the foothill ridges, I saw the bleak-looking, scattered houses of the ambitious watering-place of Colorado Springs, the goal of my journey of a hundred fifty miles. I got off, put on a long skirt, and rode sidewise, though the settlement scarcely looked like a place where any deference to prejudices was necessary. A queer embryo-looking place it is, out on the bare plains, yet it is rising and likely to rise, and has some big hotels much resorted to. It has a fine view of the mountains, especially of Pike's Peak, but the celebrated springs are at Manitow, three miles off, in really fine scenery. To me no place could be more unattractive than Colorado Springs for its utter treelessness. I found the blanks living in a small room which served for parlor, bedroom, and kitchen, and combined the comforts of all. It is inhabited also by two prairie dogs, a kitten, and a deer-hound. It was truly home-like. Mrs. Blank walked with me to the boarding-house where I slept, and we sat some time in the parlor talking with the landlady. Opposite to me there was a door wide open into a bedroom, and on a bed opposite to the door a very sick-looking young man was half lying, half sitting, fully dressed, supported by another, and a very sick-looking young man, much resembling him, passed in and out occasionally, or leaned on the chimney-piece in an attitude of extreme dejection. Soon the door was half closed, and someone came to it, saying rapidly, Shields, quick, a candle! And then there were movings about in the room. All this time the seven or eight people in the room in which I was were talking, laughing, and playing backgammon, and none laughed louder than the landlady, who was sitting where she saw that mysterious door as plainly as I did. All this time and during the movings in the room I saw two large white feet sticking up at the end of the bed. I watched and watched, hoping those feet would move, but they did not, and somehow, to my thinking, they grew stiffer and wider. And then my horrible suspicion deepened, and while we were sitting there a human spirit untended and desolate had passed forth into the night. Then a man came out with a bundle of clothes, and then the sick young man groaning and sobbing, and then a third, who said to me, with some feeling, that the man who had just died was the sick young man's only brother. And still the landlady laughed and talked, and afterwards said to me, It turns the house upside down when they just come here and die. We shall be half the night laying him out. I could not sleep for the bitter cold and the sounds of the sobs and groans of the bereaved brother. The next day the landlady, in a fashionably made black dress, was bustling about, proud of the prospective arrival of a handsome coffin. I went into the parlor to get a needle, and the door of that room was open, and children were running in and out, and the landlady who was sweeping there called cheerily to me to come in for the needle, and there, to my horror, not even covered with a facecloth and with the sun blazing in through the unblinded window, laid that thing of terror, a corpse, on some chairs which were not even placed straight. It was buried in the afternoon, and from the looks of the brother who continued to sob and moan, his end cannot be far off. The blanks say that many go to the springs in the last stage of consumption, thinking that the Colorado climate will cure them, without money enough to pay for even the courses bored. We talked most of that day, and I equipped myself with arctics and warm gloves for the mountain tour which has been planned for me, and I gave Bertie the Sabbath she was entitled to on Tuesday, for I found, on arriving at the springs, that the day I crossed the Arkansas divide was Sunday, though I did not know it. Several friends of Miss Kingsley called on me. She is much remembered and beloved. This is not an expensive tour. We cost about ten shillings a day, and the five days which I have spent en route from Denver have cost something less than the fare for the few hours journey by the cars. There are no real difficulties. It is a splendid life for health and enjoyment. All my luggage being in a pack, and my conveyance being a horse, we can go anywhere where we can get food and shelter. End of Letter 10, Part 1 Letter 10, Part 2 of A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Byrd. Part 2 of Letter 10 Great Gorge of the Manitou October 29th This is a highly picturesque place, with several springs, still and ever-vessing, the virtues of which were well known to the Indians. Near it are places, the names of which are familiar to everyone, the Garden of the Gods, Glen Eyrie, Pikes Peak, Monument Park, and the Ute Pass. It has two or three immense hotels, and a few houses picturesquely situated. It is thronged by thousands of people in the summer who come to drink the waters, try the camp-cure, and make mountain excursions. But it is all quiet now, and there are only a few lingerers at this immense hotel. There is a rushing torrent in a valley, with mountains covered with snow and rising to a height of nearly 15,000 feet overhanging it. It is grand and awful, and has a strange, solemn beauty like death. And the snowy mountains are pierced by the torrent, which has excavated the Ute Pass, by which, tomorrow, I hope to go into the higher regions. But all may be lost for want of a horseshoe-nail. One of Bertie's shoes is loose, and not a nail to be got here, or can be got till I have ridden for ten miles up the pass. Bertie amuses everyone with her funny ways. She always follows me closely, and today got quite into a house and pushed the parlor door open. She walks after me with her head laid on my shoulder, licking my face and teasing me for sugar. And sometimes, when anyone else takes hold of her, she rears and kicks. And the vicious Bronco soul comes into her eyes. Her face is cunning and pretty, and she makes a funny, blarneying noise when I go up to her. The men at all the stables make a fuss with her, and call her pet. She gallops up and down hill, and never stumbles even on the roughest ground, or requires even a touch with a whip. The weather is again perfect, with a cloudless sky and a hot sun, and the snow is all off the plains and lower valleys. After lunch, the blanks, in a buggy, an eye on Bertie, left Colorado Springs, crossing the mesa, a high hill with a tabletop, with a view of extraordinary laminated rocks, leaves of rock a bright vermilion color, against a background of snowy mountains, surmounted by Pike's Peak. Then we plunged into Cavernous Glen, Irie, with its fantastic needles of colored rock, and were entertained at General Palmer's baronial mansion, a perfect Irie, the fine hall filled with buffalo, elk, and deer heads, skins of wild animals, stuffed birds, bear robes, and numerous Indian and other weapons and trophies. Then, through a gate of huge red rocks, we passed into the valley, called fantastically Garden of the Gods, in which, were I a divinity, I certainly would not choose to dwell. Many places in this neighborhood are also vulgarized by grotesque names. From this we passed into a ravine, down which the Fountain River rushed, and there I left my friends with regret, and rode into this chill and solemn gorge, from which the mountains, reddening in the sunset, are only seen afar off. I put birdie up at a stable, and as there was no place to put myself up, but this huge hotel, I came here to have a last taste of luxury. They charge six dollars a day in the season, but it is now half price, and instead of four hundred fashionable guests there are only fifteen, most of whom are speaking in the weak, rapid accents of consumption, and are coughing their hearts out. There are seven medicinal springs. It is strange to have the luxuries of life in my room. It will be only the fourth night in Colorado that I have slept on anything better than hay or straw. I am glad that there are so few ends. As it is, I get a good deal of insight into the homes and modes of living of the settlers. Bergens Park, October 31st. This cabin was so dark, and I so sleepy last night that I could not write, but the frost during the night has been very severe, and I am detained until the bright hot sun melts the ice and renders traveling safe. I left the Great Manitou at ten yesterday. Birdie, who was loose in the stable, came trotting down the middle of it when she saw me, for her sugar and biscuits. No nails could be got, and her shoe was hanging by two, which doomed me to a footspace and a dismal clink of a loose shoe for three hours. There was not a cloud on the bright blue sky the whole day, and though it froze hard in the shade, it was summer heat in the sun. The mineral fountains were sparkling in their basins and sending up their full perennial jets. But the snow-clad pine-skirted mountains frowned and darkened over the Ute Pass, as I entered it to ascend it for twenty miles. A narrow pass it is, with barely room for the torrent and the wagon road, which has been blasted out of its steep sides. All the time I was inside of the Fountain River, brighter than any stream, because it tumbles over rose-red granite, rocky or disintegrated, a truly fair stream. Cutting and forcing its way through hard rocks, under arches of alabaster ice, through fringes of crystalline ice, thumping with a hollow sound in cavernous recesses, cold and dark, or leaping in foam from heights with rush and swish, always bright and riotous, never pausing in still pools to rest, dashing through gates of rock, pine-hung, pine-bridged, pine-buried, twinkling and laughing in the sunshine, or frowning in dowdy dens in the blue pine gloom, and there for a mile or two in a sheltered spot, owing to the more southern latitude, the everlasting northern pine met the trees of other climates. There were dwarf oaks, willows, hazel and spruce. The white cedar and the trailing juniper jostles each other for a precarious foothold. The majestic redwood tree of the Pacific met the exquisite bossam pine of the Atlantic slopes, and among them all the pale gold foliage of the large aspen trembled, as the legend goes in endless remorse. And above them towered the toothy peaks of the glittering mountains, rising in pure white against the sunny blue. Grand, glorious, sublime, but not lovable. I would give all for the luxurious redundance of one helo-gulch, or for one day of those soft, dreamy skies whose fairy tears are balm. Bergen's Park Up, ever, the road being blasted out of the red rock which often overhung it, the canyon only from fifteen to twenty feet wide, the thunder of the fountain, which has crossed eight times nearly deafening. Sometimes the sun struck the road, and then it was absolutely hot. Then one entered unsung gorges where the snow lay deep, and the crowded pines made dark twilight, and the river roared under ice bridges, fringed with icicles. At last the pass opened out upon a sunlit upland park, where there was a forge, and with birdie's shoe put on, and some shoenails in my purse, I rode on cheerfully, getting food for us both at a ranch belonging to some very pleasant people, who like all Western folk, when they are not taciturn, asked a legion of questions. There I met a Colonel Kittridge, who said that he believed his valley, twelve miles off the track, to be the loveliest valley in Colorado, and invited me to his house. Leaving the road I went up along a scent deep in snow, but as it did not seem to be the way, I tied up the pony and walked on to a cabin at some distance, which I had hardly reached when I found her trotting like a dog by my side, pulling my sleeve and laying her soft gray nose on my shoulder. Does it all mean sugar? We had eight miles farther to go, most of the way through a forest, which I always disliked when alone, from the fear of being frightened by something which may appear from behind a tree. I saw a beautiful white fox, several skunks, some chipmunks and gray squirrels, owls, crows, and crested blue jays. As the sun was getting low, I reached Bergen's Park, which was to put me out of conceit with Estes Park. Never! It is long and featureless, and its immediate surroundings are mean. It reminded me in itself of some dismal Highland Strath, Glenshee, possibly. I looked at it with special interest, as it was the place at which Miss Kingsley had suggested that I might remain. The evening was glorious and the distant views were very fine. A stream, fringed with cottonwood, runs through the park. Low ranges come down upon it. The south end is completely closed up, but at a considerable distance by the great mass of Pike's Peak, while far beyond the other end are peaks and towers, wonderful in blue and violet in the lovely evening. And beyond these, sharply defined against the clear green sky was the serrated ridge of the snowy range, said to be two hundred miles away. Bergen's Park had been bought by Dr. Bell of London, but its present occupant is Mr. Thornton, an English gentleman who has a worthy married Englishman as his manager. Mr. Thornton is building and proposes to build other cabins with the intention of making the park a resort for strangers. I thought of the blue hollow lying solitary at the foot of Long's Peak and rejoiced that I had happened onto it. The cabin is long, low, mud-roofed, and very dark. The middle place is full of raw meat, fowls, and gear. One end, almost dark, contains the cooking stove, milk, crockery, a long dill table, two benches, and some wooden stools. The other end houses the English manager or partner, his wife, and three children, another cooking stove, gear of all kinds, and sacks of beans and flowers. They put up a sheet for a partition and made me a shakedown on the gravel floor of this room. Ten hired men sat down to meals with us. It was all very rough, dark, and comfortless. But Mr. T., who is not only a gentleman by birth, but an M.A. of Cambridge, seems to like it. Much in this way, a little smoother if a lady is in the case. Every man must begin life here. Seven large dogs, three of them with cats upon their backs, are usually warming themselves by the fire. Twin Rock, South Fork of the Platte, November 1st. I did not leave Mr. Thornton's till ten because of the sliveriness. I rode four miles along a back trail and then was so tired that I stayed for two hours at a ranch where I heard, to my dismay, that I must ride twenty-four miles farther before I could find any place to sleep at. I did not enjoy yesterday's ride. I was both tired and rheumatic, and Bertie was not so sprightly as usual. After starting again, I came on a hideous place of which I had not heard before. Haydn's Divide, one of the great backbones of the region. A weary expanse of deep snow eleven miles across and fearfully lonely. I saw nothing the whole way but a mule, lately dead, lying by the road. I was very nervous somehow and, towards evening, I had lost the road. For I came upon wild pine forest with huge masses of rock from one hundred to seven hundred feet high, cast here and there among them. Beyond these, pine-sprinkled grass hills, these, in their turn, were bounded by interminable ranges, ghastly in the lurid evening, with the Spanish peaks quite clear and the colossal summit of Mount Lincoln, the king of the rocky mountains, distinctly visible, though seventy miles away. It seemed awful to be alone on that ghastly ridge surrounded by interminable mountains in the deep snow, knowing that a party of thirty had been lost here a month ago. Just at nightfall the descent of a steep hill took me out of the forest and upon a clean log cabin where finding that the proper halting-place was two miles farther on, I remained. A truly pleasing, superior-looking woman placed me in a rocking chair, would not let me help her otherwise than by rocking the cradle and made me feel at home. The room, though it serves them and their two children for kitchen, parlor, and bedroom, is the pattern of brightness, cleanliness, and comfort. At supper there were canned raspberries, rolls, butter, tea, venison, and fried rabbit, and at seven I went to bed in the room with a thick feather bed on a mattress, sheets, ruffled pillow slips, and a pile of warm, white blankets. I slept for eleven hours. They discouraged me much about the root which Governor Hunt had projected for me. They think that it is impassable, owing to the snow and that another storm is brewing. Hall's Gulch. November 6. I have ridden a hundred fifty miles since I wrote Last. On leaving Twin Rock on Saturday I had a short day's ride to Colonel Kittrich's Cabin at Oil Creek where I spent a quiet Sunday with agreeable people. The ride was all through parks and gorges and among pine-clothed hills about nine thousand feet high with Pike's Peak always in sight. I have developed much sagacity in finding a trail or I should not be able to make use of such directions as these. Keep along a Gulch four or five miles till you get Pike's Peak on your left. Then follow some wheel marks till you get to some timber and keep to the north till you come to a creek where you'll find a great many elk tracks. Then go to your right and cross the creek three times. Then you'll see a red rock to your left, etc., etc. The Cays Cabin was very small and lonely and the life seemed a hard grind to find a woman. There were snow flurries after I arrived but the first Sunday of November was as bright and warm as June and the atmosphere had resumed as exquisite purity. Three peaks of Pike's Peak are seen from Oil Creek above the nearer hills and by them they tell the time. We had been in the evening shadows for half an hour before those peaks ceased to be transparent gold. On leaving Colonel Kittrich's camp I dismounted as I had often done before to lower a bar and on looking ground Bertie was gone. I spent an hour in trying to catch her but she had taken an ugly fit and would not let me go near her and I was getting tired and vexed when two passing trappers on mules circumvented and caught her. I rode the twelve miles back to Twin Rock and then went on I must explain that every mile I have traveled since leaving Colorado Springs has taken me farther and higher into the mountains. That afternoon I rode through lawn-like upland parks with a great snow mass of Pike's Peak behind and in front mountains bathed in rich atmospheric coloring of blue and violet all very fine but threatening to become monotonous and abruptly to the left and crossed a broad, swift mountain river the headwaters of the flat. There I found the ranch to which I had been recommended the quarters of a great hunter named Link which much resembled a good country inn. There was a pleasant friendly woman but the men were all away a thing I always regret as it gives me half an hour's work at the horse before I can write to you. I had hardly come in to the farm and lady whom I met at Manitou with three gentlemen arrived and we were as sociable as people could be we had a splendid though rude supper while Mrs. Link was serving us and urging her good things upon us she was orating on the greediness of English people saying that you would think they traveled through the country only to gratify their pallets and addressed me asking me if I had not observed it I am nearly always taken for a dain or a swede never for an English woman so I often hear a good deal of outspoken criticism In the evening Mr. Link returned and there was a most vehement discussion between him an old hunter a miner and the tempster who brought my pack asked to the route by which I should ride through the mountains for the next three or four days because at that point there was a wagon road and it was renewed with increased violence the next morning so that if my nerves had not been of steel I should have been appalled the old hunter acrimoniously said he must speak the truth the miner was directing me over a track where for 25 miles there was not a house and where if snow came on I should never be heard of again the miner said he must speak the truth there was no life heat of snow and no trail the tempster said that the only road possible for a horse was so and so and advised me to take the wagon road into South Park which I was determined not to do Mr. Link said he was the oldest hunter and settler in the district and he could not cross any of the trails in snow and so they went on at last they partially agreed on a route to the Rocky Mountains the old hunter said with two feet of snow upon it but a hunter had hauled an elk over part of it at any rate the upshot of the hole you shall have in my next letter ILB end of letter 10 letter 11 of a lady's life in the Rocky Mountains this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org a lady's life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Byrd letter 11 it was another cloudless morning one of the many here on which one awakes early refreshed and ready to enjoy the fatigue of another day in our sunless misty climate you do not know the influence which persistent fine weather exercises on the spirits I have been ten months in almost perpetual sunshine and now a single cloudy day makes me feel quite depressed I did not leave till 9.30 because of the slipperiness and shortly after starting turned off into the wilderness on a very dim trail soon seeing a man riding a mile ahead I rode on and overtook him and we rode eight miles together which was convenient to me as without him I should several times have lost the trail altogether then his fine American horse on which he had only ridden two days broke down while my mad bad Bronco on which I had been traveling for a fortnight cantered lightly over the snow he was the only traveler I saw in a day of nearly 12 hours I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of that ride I concentrated all my content of locality for truly the track was a difficult one I sometimes thought it deserved the bad name given to it at links for the most part it keeps inside of Terriall Creek one of the large affluence of the plate and is walled in on both sides by mountains which are sometimes so close together as to leave only the narrowest canyon between them had others breaking wide apart till after winding and climbing down for 25 miles it lands one on a barren rock girdled park watered by a rapid affordable stream as broad as the ooze at Huntington snow fed and ice fringed the park bordered by fantastic rocky hills snow covered and brightened only by a dwarf growth of the beautiful silver spruce I have not seen anything hitherto so thoroughly wild and unlike the rest of these parts up one great ascent where hills were tumbled about confusedly and suddenly across the broad ravine rising above the sunny grass and the deep green pines rose in glowing and shaded red against the glittering blue heaven a magnificent and unearthly range of mountains as shapely as could be seen rising into colossal points cleft by deep blue ravines broken up into sharks teeth with gigantic knobs and accessible sides very fair to look upon a glowing heavenly unforgettable sight and only four miles off mountains they looked not of this earth but such as one season dreams alone the blessed ranges of the land which is very far off they were more brilliant than those incredible colors in which painters array the fiery hills of Moab and the desert and one could not believe them rose as in the east the similitude of stately fortresses not the grey castellated towers of feudal Europe but gay massive Saracenic architecture the outgrowth of the solid rock they were vast ranges apparently of enormous height their color indescribable deepest and reddest near the pine draped bases then gradually softening into wonderful tenderness the highest summits rose all flushed and with an illusion of transparency so that one might believe that they were taking on the hue of sunset below them lay broken ravines of fantastic rocks cleft and canyoned by the river with the tender unearthly light over all the apparent warmth of a glowing climb while I on the north side was in the shadow among the pure unsullied snow with us the damp the gloom with them the sun sets rosy bloom the dimness of earth with me the light of heaven with them here again worship seemed the only attitude for a human spirit and the question was ever present Lord what is man that thou art mindful of him or the son of man that thou visitest him I rode up and down hills laboriously in snow drifts and to ease my faithful birdie by walking down ice clad slopes stopping constantly to feast my eyes upon that changeless glory always seeing some new ravine with its depths of color or miraculous brilliancy of red or fantasy of form then below where the trail was locked into a deep canyon where there was scarcely room for it and the river there was a beauty of another kind in solemn gloom twisted marvelously widening into shallows narrowing into deep boiling eddies with pyramidal furs and the beautiful silver spruce fringing its banks and often falling across it in artistic grace the gloom chill and deep with only now and then a light trickling through the pines upon the cold snow when suddenly turning round I saw behind as if in the glory of an eternal sunset the effect of the combination of winter and summer was singular the trail ran on the north side the whole time and the snow lay deep and pure white while not a wreath of it lay on the south side where abundant lawns basked in the warm sun the pitch pine with its monotonous and somewhat rigid form had disappeared the white pine became scarce both being displayed by the slim spires and silvery green of the miniature silver spruce valley and canyon were passed the flaming ranges were left behind the upper altitudes became grim and mysterious I crossed a lake on the ice and then came on a park surrounded by barren contorted hills overtop by snow mountains there in some brushwood we crossed a deepest stream on the ice which gave way and the fearful cold of the water all these streams become bigger as you draw nearer to their source and shortly the trail disappeared in a broad rapid river which we forwarded twice the trail was very difficult to recover it ascended ever in frost and snow amid scanty timber dwarfed by cold and twisted by storms amid solitudes such as one reads of in the high Alps there were no sounds to be heard but the crackle of ice and snow the pitiful howling of wolves and the hoot of owls the sun to me had long set the peaks which had blushed were pale and sad the twilight deepened into green but still excelsior there were no happy homes with light of household fires above the spectral mountains lifted their cold summits as darkness came on I began to fear that I had confused the cabin to which I had been directed with the rocks to confess the truth I was cold for my boots and stockings had frozen on my feet and I was hungry too having eaten nothing but raisins for fourteen hours after riding thirty miles I saw a light a little away from the track and found it to be the cabin of the daughter of the pleasant people with whom I had spent the previous night her husband had gone to the plains yet she, with two infant children was living there in perfect security two peddlers who were peddling their way down from the mines came in for a night shelter soon after I arrived ill-looking fellows enough they admired Bertie in a suspicious fashion and offered to swap their pack course for her I went out the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning to see that the pony was safe for they were very important to me I had before been offered a hundred fifty dollars for her I was obliged to sleep with the mother and children and the peddlers occupied a room within hours it was hot and airless the cabin was papered with the phrenological journal and in the morning I opened my eyes on the very best portrait of Dr. Candlish I ever saw and grieved truly that I should never see that massive brow and fantastic face again Mrs. Link was an educated and very intelligent young woman the peddlers were Irish Yankees and the way in which they traded was as amusing as Sam Slick they not only wanted to swap my pony but to trade my watch they trade their souls I know they displayed their wares for an hour with much dexterous flattery and persuasiveness but Mrs. Link was untemptable and I was only tempted into buying a handkerchief to keep the sun off there was another dispute about my route it was the most critical day of my journey if a snowstorm came on I might be detained in the mountains for many weeks but if I got through the snow and reached the Denver Wagon Road no detention would signify much the peddlers insisted that I could not get through for the road was not broken Mrs. L thought I could and advised me to try to get away more than half of the day was far from enjoyable the morning was magnificent but the light too dazzling the sun too fierce as soon as I got out I felt as if I should drop off the horse my large handkerchief kept the sun from my neck but the fierce heat caused soul and sense brain and eye to reel I never saw or felt the like of it I was at a height of 12,000 feet where of course the air was highly rarefied and the snow was so pure and dazzling that I was obliged to keep my eyes shut as much as possible to avoid snow blindness the sky was a different and terribly fierce color and when I caught a glimpse of the sun he was white and unwinking like a line ball light yet threw off wicked scintillations I suffered so from nausea exhaustion and pains from head to foot that I felt as if I must lie down in the snow it may have been partly to the early stage of Syroch or mountain sickness we plotted on for four hours snow all around and nothing else to be seen but an ocean of glistening peaks against the sky of infuriated blue how I found my way I shall never know for the only marks on the snow were the original footprints of a man and I had no means of knowing whether they led in the direction I ought to take earlier before the snow became so deep I passed the last great haunt of the magnificent mountain bison but unfortunately saw nothing but horns and bones two months ago Mr. Link succeeded in separating a calf from the herd and has partially domesticated it it is a very ugly thing at seven months old with a thick beard and a short thick dark mane on its heavy shoulders it makes a loud grunt like a pig it can outrun their fastest horse and it sometimes leaps over the high fence of the corral and takes all the milk of the five cows the snow grew seriously deep birdie fell 30 times I am sure she seemed unable to keep up at all so I was obliged to get off and stumble along in her foot marks by that time my spirit for overcoming difficulties had somewhat returned for I saw a lie of country which I knew must contain South Park and we had got under cover of a hill which kept off the sun the trail had ceased it was only one of those hunters tracks which continually misled one the getting through the snow was awful work I think we accomplished a mile in something over two hours the snow was two feet eight inches deep and once we went down in a drift the surface of which was rippled like sea sand birdie up to her back and I up to my shoulders at last we got through and I beheld with some sadness the goal of my journey the great divide the snowy range and between me and it South Park a rolling prairie 75 miles long and over 10,000 feet high treeless, bounded by mountains and so rich in sun cured hay that one might find fancy that all the herds of Colorado could find pasture there it's chief center is the rough mining town a fair play but there are rumors of great mineral wealth in various quarters the region has been rushed and mining camps have risen at Alma and elsewhere so lawless and brutal that vigilance committees are forming as a matter of necessity South Park is closed or nearly so by snow during the ordinary winter and just now the great freight wagons are carrying up the last supplies of the season and taking down women and other temporary inhabitants a great many people come up here in the summer the rarefied air produces great water with bleeding it is said that you can tell a new arrival by seeing him go about holding a blood-stained handkerchief to his mouth but I came down upon it from regions of ice and snow and the snow which had fallen on it had all disappeared by evaporation and drifting it looked to me quite lowland and livable though lonely and indescribably mournful a silent sea suggestive of the muffled ore I cantered across the narrow end of it delighted to have got through the snow and when I struck the Denver stage road I suppose that all the difficulties of mountain travel were at an end but this has not turned out to be exactly the case a horseman shortly joined me and rode with me got me a fresh horse and accompanied me for ten miles he was a picturesque figure and rode a very good horse he wore a big slouch hat from under which a number of fair curls hung nearly to his waist his beard was fair his eyes blue and his complexion ruddy there was nothing sinister in his expression and his manner was respectful and frank he was dressed in a hunter's buckskin suit ornamented with beads and wore a pair of exceptionally big brass spurs his saddle was very highly ornamented what was unusual what weapons he carried besides a rifle later crossed his saddle and a pair of pistols in the holsters he carried two revolvers and a knife in his belt and a car being slung behind him I found him what is termed good company he told me a great deal about the country and its wild animals with some hunting adventures and a great deal about Indians and their cruelty and treachery all this time we were ascending the continental divide by what I think is termed the Breckenridge Pass on a fairly good wagon road we stopped at a cabin where the woman seemed to know my companion and in addition to bread and milk produced some venison steaks we rode on again and reached the crest of the divide and saw snow-borne streams starting within a quarter of a mile from each other one for the Colorado and the Pacific another for the Platte and the Atlantic here I wished the hunter good-bye and reluctantly turned northeast it was not wise to go up the divide at all and it was necessary to do it in haste on my way down I spoke to the woman at whose cabin I had dined and she said I am sure you found Comanche Bill a real gentleman and I then knew that if she gave me correct information my companion was one of the most notorious desperados of the Reiki Mountains and the greatest Indian exterminator on the frontier a man whose father and family fell in a massacre at Spirit Lake by the hands of Indians who carried away his sister then a child of eleven his life has since been mainly devoted to a search for this child and to killing Indians wherever he can find them after riding twenty miles which made the distance for that day fifty I remounted Bertie to ride six miles farther to a house which had been mentioned to me as a stopping place the road ascended to a height of eleven thousand feet and from thence I looked my last at the lonely uplifted prairie sea Denver stage road the worst, rudest, dismalest dark road I have ever yet traveled on nothing but a winding ravine the Platt Canyon Pine crowded and pine darkened walled in on both sides for six miles by pine skirted mountains twelve thousand feet high along this abyss for fifty miles there are said to be only five houses and were it not for minors going down and freight wagons going up the solitude would be awful as it was I did not see a creature it was for when I left South Park and between those mountain walls and under the pines it soon became quite dark a darkness which could be felt the snow which had melted in the sun had refrozen and was one sheet of smooth ice Bertie slipped so alarmingly that I got off and walked but then neither of us could keep our feet and in the darkness she seemed so likely to fall upon me I took out of my pack the man's socks which had been given me at Perry's Park and drew them on over her four feet an expedient which for a time succeeded admirably and which I commend to all travelers similarly circumstance it was unutterably dark and all these operations had to be performed by the sense of touch only I remounted allowed her to take her own way as I could not even see her ears my legs slipped badly we contrived to get along through the narrowest part of the canyon with a tumbling river close to the road the pines were very dense and sighed and creaked mournfully in the severe frost and there were other eerie noises not easy to explain at last when the socks were nearly worn out I saw the blaze of a campfire with two hunters sitting by it on the hillside in the village something which looked like buildings we got across the river partly on ice and partly by fording and I found that this was the place where in spite of its somewhat dubious reputation I had been told that I could put up a man came out in the sapient and good-natured stage of intoxication and the door being opened I was confronted by a rough bar and a smoking blazing kerosene lamp without a chimney it was the worst place I have put up at as to food, lodging and general character an old and very dirty like cabin not chinked with one dingy room used for cooking and feeding in which a miner was lying very ill of fever then a large roofless shed with a canvas side which is to be an addition and then the bar they accounted for the disorder by the building operations for the English lady written of in the Denver News and for once I was glad that my fame had preceded me as it seemed to secure me against being quietly put out of the way a horrible meal was served dirty, greasy, disgusting a celebrated hunter Bob Craig came in to supper with a young man in tow whom in spite of his rough hunters or miner's dress I at once recognized as an English gentleman it was their campfire which I had seen on the hillside this gentleman was lording it in true caricature fashion with a Lord Dunn dreary drawl and a general execration of everything while I sat in the chimney corner speculating on the reason why many of the upper class of my countrymen high toners as they are called out here make themselves so ludicrously absurd they neither know how to hold their tongues or to carry their personal pretensions an American is naturally assumptive an Englishman personally so he took no notice of me till something passed which showed him I was English when his manner at once changed into courtesy and his drawl was shortened by a half he took paints to let me know that he was an officer in the guards of good family on four months leave which he was spending in slaying buffalo and elk and also that he had a profound contempt for everything American I cannot think why Englishmen put on these broad, mouthing tones and give so many personal details they retired to their camp and the landlord having passed into the sodden, sleepy stage of drunkenness his wife asked if I should be afraid to sleep in the large canvas sited unsealed, doorless shed as they could not move the sick minor so I slept there on a shake down with the stars winking overhead through the roof and the mercury showing 30 degrees of frost I never told you that I once gave an unwary promise that I would not travel alone in Colorado unarmed and that in consequence I left Estes Park with a sharps revolver loaded with ball cartridge in my pocket which has been the plague of my life it's bright, ominous barrel peeped out in quiet Denver shops children pulled it out to play with or when my writing dress hung up with it in the pocket pulled the hole from the peg to the floor and I cannot conceive of any circumstances in which I could feel it right to make any use of it or in which it could do me any possible good last night however I took it out, cleaned and oiled it and laid it under my pillow resolving to keep awake all night I slept as soon as I lay down and never woke till the bright morning sun shone through the roof making me ridicule my own fears and abjure pistols forever ILB End of Letter 11