A Ladys Life in the Rocky Mountains | Page 5

unornamented. They were all hideous and filthy,
and swarming with vermin. The men carried short bows and arrows,
one of them, who appeared to be the chief, having a lynx's skin for a
quiver. A few had fishing tackle, but the bystanders said that they lived
almost entirely upon grasshoppers. They were a most impressive
incongruity in the midst of the tokens of an omnipotent civilization.
The light of the sinking sun from that time glorified the Sierras, and as
the dew fell, aromatic odors made the still air sweet. On a single track,
sometimes carried on a narrow ledge excavated from the mountain side
by men lowered from the top in baskets, overhanging ravines from
2,000 to 3,000 feet deep, the monster train SNAKED its way upwards,
stopping sometimes in front of a few frame houses, at others where

nothing was to be seen but a log cabin with a few Chinamen hanging
about it, but where trails on the sides of the ravines pointed to a gold
country above and below. So sharp and frequent are the curves on some
parts of the ascent, that on looking out of the window one could seldom
see more than a part of the train at once. At Cape Horn, where the track
curves round the ledge of a precipice 2,500 feet in depth, it is correct to
be frightened, and a fashion of holding the breath and shutting the eyes
prevails, but my fears were reserved for the crossing of a trestle bridge
over a very deep chasm, which is itself approached by a sharp curve.
This bridge appeared to be overlapped by the cars so as to produce the
effect of looking down directly into a wild gulch, with a torrent raging
along it at an immense depth below. Shivering in the keen, frosty air
near the summit pass of the Sierras, we entered the "snow-sheds,"
wooden galleries, which for about fifty miles shut out all the splendid
views of the region, as given in dioramas, not even allowing a glimpse
of "the Gem of the Sierras," the lovely Donner Lake. One of these
sheds is twenty-seven miles long. In a few hours the mercury had fallen
from 103 degrees to 29 degrees, and we had ascended 6,987 feet in 105
miles! After passing through the sheds, we had several grand views of a
pine forest on fire before reaching Truckee at 11 P.M. having traveled
258 miles. Truckee, the center of the "lumbering region" of the Sierras,
is usually spoken of as "a rough mountain town," and Mr. W. had told
me that all the roughs of the district congregated there, that there were
nightly pistol affrays in bar-rooms, etc., but as he admitted that a lady
was sure of respect, and Mr. G. strongly advised me to stay and see the
lakes, I got out, much dazed, and very stupid with sleep, envying the
people in the sleeping car, who were already unconscious on their
luxurious couches. The cars drew up in a street--if street that could be
called which was only a wide, cleared space, intersected by rails, with
here and there a stump, and great piles of sawn logs bulking big in the
moonlight, and a number of irregular clap-board, steep-roofed houses,
many of them with open fronts, glaring with light and crowded with
men. We had pulled up at the door of a rough Western hotel, with a
partially open front, being a bar-room crowded with men drinking and
smoking, and the space between it and the cars was a moving mass of
loafers and passengers. On the tracks, engines, tolling heavy bells, were
mightily moving, the glare from their cyclopean eyes dulling the light

of a forest which was burning fitfully on a mountain side; and on open
spaces great fires of pine logs were burning cheerily, with groups of
men round them. A band was playing noisily, and the unholy sound of
tom-toms was not far off. Mountains--the Sierras of many a fireside
dream--seemed to wall in the town, and great pines stood out, sharp and
clear cut, against a sky in which a moon and stars were shining frostily.
It was a sharp frost at that great height, and when an "irrepressible
rigger," who seemed to represent the hotel establishment, deposited me
and my carpetbag in a room which answered for "the parlor," I was
glad to find some remains of pine knots still alight in the stove. A man
came in and said that when the cars were gone he would try to get me a
room, but they were so full that it would be a very poor one. The crowd
was solely masculine. It was then 11:30 P.M., and I had not had a meal
since 6 A.M.; but when