17th August. To the Valley of the Sweetwater.
The morning was bright and clear, cool and pleasant. The last night’s abstinence had told upon our squeamishness: we managed to secure a fowl, and with its aid we overcame our repugnance to the massive slices of eggless bacon. At 6 30 A.M. we hitched up, crossed the rickety bridge at a slow pace, and proceeded for the first time to ascend the left bank of the Platte. The valley was grassy; the eternal sage, however, haunted us; the grouse ran before us, and the prairie-dogs squatted upon their house-tops, enjoying the genial morning rays. After ten miles of severe ups and downs, which, by-the-by, nearly brought our consort, the official’s wagon, to grief, we halted for a few minutes at an old-established trading-post called “Red Buttes.”[1] The feature from which it derives its name lies on the right bank of, and about five miles distant from the river, which here cuts its way through a ridge. These bluffs are a fine bold formation, escarpments of ruddy argillaceous sandstones and shells, which dip toward the west: they are the eastern wall of the mass that hems in the stream, and rear high above it their conical heads and fantastic figures. The ranch was on the margin of a cold, clear spring, of which we vainly attempted to drink. The banks were white, as though by hoar-frost, with nitrate and carbonate of soda efflorescing from the dark mould. Near Red Buttes the water is said to have a chalybeate flavor, but of that we were unable to judge.
Having allowed the squaws and half-breeds a few minutes to gaze, we resumed our way, taking off our caps in token of adieu to old Father Platte, our companion for many a weary mile. We had traced his course upward, through its various phases and vicissitudes, from the dignity and portliness of his later career as a full-grown river to his small and humble youth as a mountain rivulet, and—-interest, either in man or stream, often results from the trouble we take about them—I looked upon him for the last time with a feeling akin to regret. Moreover, we had been warned that from the crossing of the North Platte to the Sweetwater all is a dry, and dreary, and desolate waste.
On the way we met a mounted Indian, armed with a rifle, and habited in the most grotesque costume. “Jack”—he was recognized by the driver—wore a suit of buckskin, and a fool’s cap made out of an old blanket; with a pair of ass-ear appendages that hung backward viciously like a mule’s; his mouth grinned from ear to ear, and his eyes were protected by glass and wire goggles, which gave them the appearance of being mounted on stalks like a crustacean’s. He followed us for some distance, honoring us by riding close to the carriage, in hopes of a little black-mail; but we were not generous, and we afterward heard something which made us glad that we had not been tempted to liberality. He was followed by an ill-favored squaw, dressed in a kind of cotton gown, remarkable only for the shoulders being considerably narrower than the waist. She sat her bare nag cavalierly, and eyed us as we passed with that peculiarly unpleasant glance which plain women are so fond of bestowing.
After eighteen miles’ drive we descended a steep hill, and were shown the Devil’s Backbone. It is a jagged, broken ridge of huge sandstone boulders, tilted up edgeways, and running in a line over the crest of a long roll of land: the tout ensemble looks like the vertebræ of some great sea-serpent or other long crawling animal; and, on a nearer view, the several pieces resolve themselves into sphinxes, veiled nuns, Lot’s pillars, and other freakish objects. I may here remark that the aut Cæsar aut diabolus of the medieval European antiquary, when accounting for the architecture of strange places, is in the Far West consigned without partnership to the genius loci, the fiend who, here as in Europe, has monopolized all the finest features of scenery. We shall pass successively the Devil’s Gate, the Devil’s Post-office, and the Devil’s Hole—in fact, we shall not be thoroughly rid of his satanic majesty’s appurtenances till Monte Diablo, the highest of the Californian coast-range, dips slowly and unwillingly behind the Pacific’s tepid wave.
We nooned at Willow Springs, a little doggery boasting of a shed and a bunk, but no corral; and we soothed, with a drink of our whisky, the excited feelings of the rancheros. The poor fellows had been plundered of their bread and dried meat by some petty thief, who had burrowed under the wall, and they sorely suspected our goggled friend, Jack the Arapaho. Master Jack's hair might have found itself suspended near the fireplace if he had then been within rifle-shot; as it was, the two victims could only indulge in consolatory threats about wreaking their vengeance upon the first “doggond red-bellied crittur” whom good fortune might send in their way. The water was unusually good at Willow Springs; unfortunately, however, there was nothing else.
At 2 30 P.M. we resumed our way through the yellow-flowered rabbit-bush — it not a little resembled wild mustard —and a thick sage-heath, which was here and there spangled with the bright blossoms of the wilderness. After about twenty miles we passed, to the west of the road, a curious feature, to which the Mormon exodists first, on dit, gave the name of Saleratus Lake.[2] It lies to the west of the road, and is only one of a chain of alkaline waters and springs whose fetor, without exaggeration, taints the land. Cattle drinking of the fluid are nearly sure to die; even those that eat of the herbe salée, or salt grass growing upon its borders, and known by its reddish-yellow and sometimes bluish tinge, will suffer from a disease called the “Alkali,” which not unfrequently kills them. The appearance of the Saleratus Lake startles the traveler who, in the full blaze of midday upon this arid waste, where mirage mocks him at every turn, suddenly sees outstretched before his eyes a kind of Wenham Lake solidly over-frozen. The illusion is so perfect that I was completely deceived, nor could the loud guffaws of the driver bring me at once to the conclusion that seeing in this case is not believing. On a near inspection, the icy surface turns out to be a dust of carbonate of soda, concealing beneath it masses of the same material, washed out of the adjacent soil, and solidified by evaporation. The Latter-Day Saints were charmed with their trouvaille, and laid in stores of the fetid alkaline matter, as though it had been manna, for their bread and pastry. It is still transported westward, and declared to be purer than the saleratus of the shops. Near the lake is a deserted ranch, which once enjoyed the title of “ Sweetwater Station.”
Four miles beyond this “Waterless Lake”—Bahr bila Ma as the Bedouin would call it—we arrived at Rock Independence, and felt ourselves in a new region, totally distinct from the clay formation of the mauvaises terres over which we have traveled for the last five days. Again I was startled by its surprising likeness to the scenery of Eastern Africa: a sketch of Jiwe la Mkoa, the Round Rock in eastern Unyamwezi,[3] would be mistaken, even by those who had seen both, for this grand échantillon of the Rocky Mountains. It crops out of an open plain, not far from the river bed, in dome shape wholly isolated, about 1000 feet in length by 400—500 in breadth; it is 60 to 100 feet in height,[4] and in circumference 1 1/2 to 2 miles. Except upon the summit, where it has been weathered into a feldspathic soil, it is bare and bald; a scanty growth of shrubs protrudes, however, from its poll. The material of the stern-looking dome is granite, in enormous slabs and boulders, cracked, flaked, seared, and cloven, as if by igneous pressure from below. The prevailing tradition in the West is, that the mass derived its name from the fact that Colonel Frémont there delivered an Independence-day oration; but read a little farther. It is easily ascended at the northern side and the southeastern corner, and many climb its rugged flanks for a peculiarly Anglo-American purpose—Smith and Brown have held high jinks here. In Colonel Frémont’s time (1842), every where within six or eight feet of the ground, where the surface is sufficiently smooth, and in some places sixty or eighty feet above, the rock was inscribed with the names of travelers. Hence the Indians have named it Timpe Nabor, or the Painted Rock, corresponding with the Sinaitic “Wady Mukattab.” In the present day, though much of the writing has been washed away by rain, 40,000—50,000 souls are calculated to have left their dates and marks from the coping of the wall to the loose stones below this huge sign-post. There is, however, some reason in the proceeding; it does not in these lands begin and end with the silly purpose, as among climbers of the Pyramids, and fouilleurs of the sarcophagi of Apis, to bequeath one’s few poor letters to a little athanasia. Prairie travelers and emigrants expect to be followed by their friends, and leave, in their vermilion outfit, or their white house-paint, or their brownish-black tar—a useful article for wagons—a homely but hearty word of love or direction upon any conspicuous object. Even a bull or a buffalo’s skull, which, lying upon the road, will attract attention, is made to do duty at this Poste Restante.
I will here take the liberty of digressing a little, with the charitable purpose of admiring the serious turn with which the United States explorers perform their explorations.
Colonel Frémont [5] thus calls to mind the earnest deeds of a bygone day. "One George Weymouth was sent out to Maine by the Earl of Southampton, Lord Arundel, and others, and in the narrative of their discoveries he says, ‘The next day we ascended in our pinnace that part of the river which lies more to the westward, carrying with us a cross—a thing never omitted by any Christian traveler—which we erected at the ultimate end of our route.’ This was in the year 1605, and in 1842 I obeyed the feeling of early travelers, and left the impressions of the cross deeply engraved on the vast rock, one thousand miles beyond the Mississippi, to which discoverers have given the national name of Rock Independence.”
Captain Stansbury [6] is not less scrupulous upon the subject of traveling proprieties. One of his entries is couched as follows: “Sunday, June 10, barometer 28°82, thermometer 70°. The camp rested: it had been determined, from the commencement of the expedition, to devote this day, whenever practicable, to its legitimate purpose, as an interval of rest for man and beast. I here beg to record, as the result of my experience, derived not only from the present journey, but from the observations of many years spent in the performance of similar duties, that, as a mere matter of pecuniary consideration, apart from all higher obligations, it is
wise to keep the Sabbath.”
Lieutenant W.F. Lynch, United States Navy, who in 1857 commanded the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea, [7] and published a narrative not deficient in interest, thus describes his proceedings at El Meshra, the bathing-place of the Christian pilgrims:
“This ground is consecrated by tradition as the place where the Israelites passed over with the ark of the covenant, and where the blessed Savior was baptized by John. Feeling that it would be desecration to moor the boats at a place so sacred, we passed it, and with some difficulty found a landing below.
“My first act was to bathe in the consecrated stream, thanking God, first, for the precious favor of being permitted to visit such a spot; and, secondly, for his protecting care throughout our perilous passage. For a long time after I sat upon the bank, my mind oppressed with awe, as I mused upon the great and wondrous events which had here occurred.” In strange contrast with these passages stands the characteristic prophecy, “The time is coming —the beginning is come now—when the whole worthless list of kings, with all their myrmidons, will be swept from their places, and made to bear a part in the toils and sufferings of the great human family,” etc., etc.
I would not willingly make light in others of certain finer sentiments—veneration, for instance, and conscientiousness—which Nature has perhaps debarred me from overenjoying; nor is it in my mind to console myself for the privation by debasing the gift in those gifted with it. But—the but, I fear, will, unlike “if,” be any thing rather than a great peacemaker in this case—there are feelings which, when strongly felt, when they well from the bottom of the heart, man conceals in the privacy of his own bosom: and which, if published to the world, are apt to remind the world that it has heard of a form of speech, as well as of argument, ranking under the category of ad captandum vulqus.
About a mile beyond Independence Rock we forded the Sweetwater. We had crossed the divide between this stream and the Platte, and were now to ascend our fourth river valley, the three others being the Missouri, the Big Blue, and the Nebraska. The Canadian voyageurs have translated the name Sweetwater from the Indian Pina Pa; -but the term is here more applicable in a metaphorical than in a literal point of view. The water of the lower bed is rather hard than otherwise, and some travelers have detected brackishness in it, yet the banks are free from the saline hoar, which deters the thirstiest from touching many streams on this line. The Sweetwater, in its calmer course, is a perfect Naiad of the mountains; presently it will be an Undine hurried by that terrible Anagké, to which Jove himself must bend his omniscient head, into the grisly marital embrace of the gloomy old Platte. Passing pleasant, after the surly ungenial silence of the Shallow River, is the merry prattle with which she answers the whisperings of those fickle flatterers, the winds, before that wedding-day when silence shall become her doom. There is a something in the Sweetwater which appeals to the feelings of rugged men: even the drivers and the station-keepers speak of “her” with a bearish affection.
After fording the swift Pina Pa, at that point about seventy feet wide and deep to the axles, we ran along its valley about six miles, and reached at 9 15 P.M.the muddy station kept by M. Plante, the usual Canadian. En route we had passed by the Devil’s Gate, one of the great curiosities of this line of travel. It is the beau ideal of a kanyon, our portal opening upon the threshold of the Rocky Mountains: I can compare its form from afar only with the Bréche de Roland in the Pyrenees. The main pass of Aden magnified twenty fold is something of the same kind, but the simile is too unsavory. The height of the gorge is from 300 to 400 feet perpendicular, and on the south side threatening to fall: it has already done so in parts, as the masses which cumber the stream-bed show. The breadth varies from a minimum of 40 to a maximum of 105 feet, where the fissure yawns out, and the total length of the cleft is about 250 yards. The material of the walls is a gray granite, traversed by dikes of trap; and the rock in which the deep narrow crevasse has been made runs right through the extreme southern shoulder of a ridge, which bears appropriately enough the name of “Rattlesnake Hills.” Through this wild gorge the bright stream frets and forces her way, singing, unlike Liris, with a feminine untaciturnity, that awakes the echoes of the pent-up channel—tumbling and gurgling, dashing and foaming over the snags, blocks, and boulders, which, fallen from the cliffs above, obstruct the way, and bedewing the cedars and bright shrubs which fringe the ragged staples of the gate. Why she should not have promenaded gently and quietly round, instead of through, this grisly barrier of rock, goodness only knows: however, willful and womanlike, she has set her heart upon an apparent impossibility, and, as usual with her sex under the circumstances, she has had her way. Sermons in stones—I would humbly suggest to my gender.
Procrastination once more stole my chance; I had reserved myself for sketching the Devil’s Gate from the southwest, but the station proved too distant to convey a just idea of it. For the truest representation of the gate, the curious reader will refer to the artistic work of Mr. Frederick Piercy;[8] that published in Captain Marcy’s “List of Itineraries” is like any thing but the Devil’s Gate; even the rough lithograph in Colonel Frémont’s report is more truthful.
We supped badly as mankind well could at the cabaret, where a very plain young person, and no neat-handed Phyllis withal, supplied us with a cock whose toughness claimed for it the honors of grandpaternity. Chickens and eggs there were none; butcher's meat, of course, was unknown, and our hosts ignored the name of tea; their salt was a kind of saleratus, and their sugar at least half Indian-meal. When asked about fish, they said that the Sweetwater contained nothing but suckers,[9] and that these, though good eating, can not be caught with a hook. They are a queer lot, these French Canadians, who have “located” themselves in the Far West. Travelers who have hunted with them speak highly of them as a patient, submissive, and obedient race, inured to privations, and gifted with the reckless abandon—no despicable quality in prairie traveling—of the old Gascon adventurer; armed and ever vigilant, hardy, handy, and hearty children of Nature, combining with the sagacity and the instinctive qualities all the superstitions of the Indians; enduring as mountain goats; satisfied with a diet of wild meat, happiest when it could be followed by a cup of strong milkless coffee, a “chasse café” and a “brule-gueule;” invariably and contagiously merry; generous as courageous; handsome, active, and athletic; sashed, knived, and dressed in buckskin, to the envy of every Indian “brave,” and the admiration of every Indian belle, upon whom, if the adventurer’s heart had not fallen into the snares of the more attractive half-breed, he would spend what remained of his $10 a month, after coffee, alcohol, and tobacco had been extravagantly paid for, in presents of the gaudiest trash. Such is the voyageur of books: I can only speak of him as I found him, a lazy dog, somewhat shy and proud, much addicted to loafing and to keeping cabarets, because, as the old phrase is, the cabarets keep him -in idleness too. Probably his good qualities lie below the surface: those who hide a farthing rush-light under a bushel can hardly expect us, in this railway age, to take the trouble of finding it. I will answer, however, for the fact, that the bad points are painfully prominent. By virtue of speaking French and knowing something of Canada, I obtained some buffalo robes, and after a look at the supper, which had all the effect of a copious feed, I found a kind of out-house, and smoked till sleep weighed down my eyelids.
[1] The French word is extensively used in the Rocky Mountains and Oregon, “where,” says Colonel Frémont (“Expedition to the Rocky Mountains,” p. 145), “it is naturalized, and which, if desirable to render into English, there is no word which would be its precise equivalent. It is applied to the detached hills and ridges which rise abruptly and reach too high to be called hills or ridges, and are not high enough” —he might have added, are not massive enough—“to be called mountains. Knob, as applied in the Western States, is their most descriptive term in English; but no translation or periphrasis would preserve the identity of these picturesque landmarks.”
[2] According to Dr. L. D. Gale (Appendix F. to Captain Stansbury’s “Expedition to the Great Salt Lake”), who tested specimens of this saleratus, “it is composed of the sesquicarbonate of soda, mixed with the sulphate of soda and chloride of soda, and is one of the native salts called Trona, found in the Northern Lakes, in Hungary, Africa, and other countries.” :
“Three grammes of this salt in dry powder, cleared of its earthy impurities, gave carbonic acid 0-9030 of a gramme, which would indicate 1°73239 grammes of the sesquicarbonate. The other salts were found to be the muriate and sulphate of soda: the proportions were not determined.”
[3] I crave the reader’s pardon for referring him to my own publications; but the only account of this Round Rock which has hitherto been published is to be found in the “Lake Regions of Central Africa,” chap. viil.
[4] Colonel Frémont gives its dimensions as 650 yards long and 40 feet high.
[5] Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, p. 72.
[6] Stansbury’s Expedition, ch. i., p. 22.
[7] Chap. iii, Authorized Edition. Sampson Low, Son, and Co., 47 Ludgate Hill, 1859.
[8] Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake City.
[9] A common fish of the genus Labio, of which there are many species—chub, mullet, barbel, horned dace, etc.: they are found in almost all the lakes and rivers of North America,