A Ladys Life in the Rocky Mountains | Page 4

Other streets were piled with
sacks of flour, left out all night, owing to the security from rain at this
season. I pass hastily over the early part of the journey, the crossing the
bay in a fog as chill as November, the number of "lunch baskets,"
which gave the car the look of conveying a great picnic party, the last
view of the Pacific, on which I had looked for nearly a year, the fierce
sunshine and brilliant sky inland, the look of long RAINLESSNESS,

which one may not call drought, the valleys with sides crimson with the
poison oak, the dusty vineyards, with great purple clusters thick among
the leaves, and between the vines great dusty melons lying on the dusty
earth. From off the boundless harvest fields the grain was carried in
June, and it is now stacked in sacks along the track, awaiting freightage.
California is a "land flowing with milk and honey." The barns are
bursting with fullness. In the dusty orchards the apple and pear
branches are supported, that they may not break down under the weight
of fruit; melons, tomatoes, and squashes of gigantic size lie almost
unheeded on the ground; fat cattle, gorged almost to repletion, shade
themselves under the oaks; superb "red" horses shine, not with
grooming, but with condition; and thriving farms everywhere show on
what a solid basis the prosperity of the "Golden State" is founded. Very
uninviting, however rich, was the blazing Sacramento Valley, and very
repulsive the city of Sacramento, which, at a distance of 125 miles from
the Pacific, has an elevation of only thirty feet. The mercury stood at
103 degrees in the shade, and the fine white dust was stifling. In the
late afternoon we began the ascent of the Sierras, whose sawlike points
had been in sight for many miles. The dusty fertility was all left behind,
the country became rocky and gravelly, and deeply scored by streams
bearing the muddy wash of the mountain gold mines down to the
muddier Sacramento. There were long broken ridges and deep ravines,
the ridges becoming longer, the ravines deeper, the pines thicker and
larger, as we ascended into a cool atmosphere of exquisite purity, and
before 6 P.M. the last traces of cultivation and the last hardwood trees
were left behind.[1]
[1] In consequence of the unobserved omission of a date to my letters
having been pointed out to me, I take this opportunity of stating that I
traveled in Colorado in the autumn and early winter of 1873, on my
way to England from the Sandwich Islands. The letters are a faithful
picture of the country and state of society as it then was; but friends
who have returned from the West within the last six months tell me that
things are rapidly changing, that the frame house is replacing the log
cabin, and that the footprints of elk and bighorn may be sought for in
vain on the dewy slopes of Estes Park. I. L. B. (Author's note to the
third edition, January 16, 1880.)

At Colfax, a station at a height of 2,400 feet, I got out and walked the
length of the train. First came two great gaudy engines, the Grizzly
Bear and the White Fox, with their respective tenders loaded with logs
of wood, the engines with great, solitary, reflecting lamps in front
above the cow guards, a quantity of polished brass-work, comfortable
glass houses, and well-stuffed seats for the engine-drivers. The engines
and tenders were succeeded by a baggage car, the latter loaded with
bullion and valuable parcels, and in charge of two "express agents."
Each of these cars is forty-five feet long. Then came two cars loaded
with peaches and grapes; then two "silver palace" cars, each sixty feet
long; then a smoking car, at that time occupied mainly by Chinamen;
and then five ordinary passenger cars, with platforms like all the others,
making altogether a train about 700 feet in length. The platforms of the
four front cars were clustered over with Digger Indians, with their
squaws, children, and gear. They are perfect savages, without any
aptitude for even aboriginal civilization, and are altogether the most
degraded of the ill-fated tribes which are dying out before the white
races. They were all very diminutive, five feet one inch being, I should
think, about the average height, with flat noses, wide mouths, and black
hair, cut straight above the eyes and hanging lank and long at the back
and sides. The squaws wore their hair thickly plastered with pitch, and
a broad band of the same across their noses and cheeks. They carried
their infants on their backs, strapped to boards. The clothing of both
sexes was a ragged, dirty combination of coarse woolen cloth and hide,
the moccasins being