Round the World | Page 3

Cattle Raisers' Association, offering heavy rewards
for offenders against these rules, and the Cheyenne Herald is filled
with advertisements of the various "marks" adopted by different owners.
Large profits have been made in the trade--the best assurance that it
will grow--but from all I can gather it seems doubtful whether the
experiment of exporting cattle alive will succeed.
We saw numerous herds of antelope to-day, but they graze among the
cattle, and are altogether too finely civilized to meet our idea of
"chasing the antelope over the plain;" one might as well chase a sheep.
As night approaches we get higher and higher up the far-famed Rocky
Mountains, and before dark reach the most elevated point, at Sherman,
eight thousand feet above tide. But our preconceived notions of the

Rocky Mountains, derived from pictures of Fremont _à la_ Napoleon
crossing the Alps, have received a rude shock; we only climb high
plains--not a tree, nor a peak, nor a ravine; when at the top we are but
on level ground--a brown prairie, "only this, and nothing more."
* * * * *
TUESDAY, October 22.
Desolation! In the great desert! It extends southward to Mexico and
northward to British Columbia, and is five hundred miles in width.
Rivers traverse it only to lose themselves in its sands, there being no
known outlet for the waters of this vast basin. What caverns must exist
below capable of receiving them! and whither do they finally go?
At the station we begin to meet a mixture of Chinese and
Indians--Shoshones, Piutes, and Winnemuccas. The Chinamen are at
work on the line, and appear to be very expert. At Ogden we get some
honey grapes--the sweetest I ever tasted. It is midnight before we are
out of the desert.
We are up early to see the Sierras. My first glimpse was of a ravine
resembling very much the Alleghany Gap below Bennington--going to
bed in a desert and awaking to such a view was a delightful surprise
indeed. We are now running down the western slope two hundred and
twenty-five miles from San Francisco, with mines on both sides, and
numerous flumes which tell of busy times. Halloa! what's this? Dutch
Flat. Shades of Bret Harte, true child of genius, what a pity you ever
forsook these scenes to dwindle in the foreign air of the Atlantic coast!
A whispering pine of the Sierras transplanted to Fifth Avenue! How
could it grow? Although it shows some faint signs of life, how sickly
are the leaves! As for fruit, there is none. America had in Bret Harte its
most distinctively national poet. His reputation in Europe proved his
originality. The fact is, American poets have been only English "with a
difference." Tennyson might have written the "Psalm of Life,"
Browning "Thanatopsis," but who could have written "Her Letter," or
"Flynn of Virginia," or "Jim," or "Chiquita"? An American, flesh and
bone, and none other. If the East would only discard him, as Edinburgh
society did his greater prototype, he might be forced to return to his
"native heath" in poverty, and rise again as the first truly American poet.
But poets, and indeed great artists as a class, seem to yield their best
only under pressure. The grape must be crushed if we would have wine.

Give a poet "society" at his feet and he sings no more, or sings as
Tennyson has been singing of late years--fit strains to prepare us for the
disgrace he has brought upon the poet's calling. Poor, weak, silly old
man! Forgive him, however, for what he has done when truly the poet.
He was noble then and didn't know it; now he is a sham noble and
knows it. Punishment enough that he stands no more upon the mountain
heights o'ertopping the petty ambitions of English life,
"With his garlands And his singing robes about him."
His poet's robes, alas! are gone. Room, now, for the masquerader
disguised as a British peer! Place, next the last great vulgar brewer or
unprincipled political trimmer in that motley assembly, the House of
Lords!
The weather is superb, the sky cloudless; the train stops to allow us to
see the celebrated Cape Horn; the railroad skirts the edge of the
mountain, and we stand upon a precipice two thousand feet high,
smaller mountains enclosing the plain below, and the American River
running at our feet. It is very fine, indeed, but the grandeur between
Pack Saddle and San Francisco, with the exception of the entrance to
Weber Cañon and a few miles in the vicinity, is all here; as a whole, the
scenery on the Pacific Railroad is disappointing to one familiar with the
Alleghanies.
At Colfax, two hundred miles from San Francisco, we stop for
breakfast and have our first experience of