To the Foot of South Pass. 19th August.
With renewed spirit, despite a somewhat hard struggle with the musquetoes, we set out at the respectable hour of 5 45 A.M. We had breakfasted comfortably, and an interesting country lay before us. The mules seemed to share in our gayety. Despite a long ringing, the amiable animals kicked and bit, bucked and backed, till their recalcitrances had almost deposited us in the first ford of the Sweetwater. For this, however, we were amply consoled by the greater misfortunes of our consort, the official wagon. After long luxuriating in the pick of the teams, they were today so thoroughly badly “muled” that they were compelled to apply for our assistance.
We forded the river twice within fifty yards, and we recognized with sensible pleasure a homely-looking magpie (Pica Hudsonica), and a rattlesnake, not inappropriately, considering where we were, crossed the road. Our path lay between two rocky ridges, which gradually closed inward, forming a regular kanyon, quite shutting out the view. On both sides white and micaceous granite towered to the height of 300 or 400 feet, terminating in jagged and pointed peaks, whose partial disruption covered the angle at their base. Arrived at Ford No.5, we began an ascent, and reaching the summit, halted to enjoy the fine back view of the split and crevassed mountains.
A waterless and grassless track of fifteen to sixteen miles led us to a well-known place—the Ice Springs—of which, somewhat unnecessarily, a marvel is made. The ground, which lies on the right of the road, is a long and swampy trough between two waves of land which permit the humidity to drain down, and the grass is discolored, suggesting the presence of alkali. After digging about two feet, ice is found in small fragments. Its presence, even in the hottest seasons, may be readily accounted for by the fact that hereabouts water will freeze in a tent during July, and by the depth to which the wintry frost extends. Upon the same principle, snow gathering in mountain ravines and hollows long outlasts the shallower deposits. A little beyond Ice Springs, on the opposite side of, and about a quarter of a mile distant from the road, lie the Warm Springs, one of the many alkaline pans which lie scattered over the face of the country. From the road nothing is to be seen but a deep cunette full of percolated water.
Beyond the Warm Springs lay a hopeless-looking land, a vast slope, barren and desolate as Nature could well make it. The loose sands and the granite masses of the valley had disappeared; the surface was a thin coat of hard gravelly soil. Some mosses, a scanty yellow grass, and, the dark gray artemisia, now stunted and shrunk, were sparsely scattered about. It had already begun to give way before an even hardier creation, the rabbit-bush and the greasewood. The former, which seems to thrive under the wintry snow, is a favorite food with hares, which abound in this region; the latter (Obione, or Atriplex canescens, the chamizo of the Mexicans) derives its name from the oleaginous matter abundant in its wood, and is always a sign of a poor and sterile soil. Avoiding a steep descent by a shorter road, called “Landers’ Cutoff,” we again came upon the Sweetwater, which was here somewhat broader than below, and lighted upon good grass and underbrush, willow copses, and a fair halting-place. At Ford No. 6 —three followed one another in rapid succession—we found the cattle of a traveling trader scattered over the pasture-grounds, He proved to be an Italian driven from the low country by a band of Sioux, who had slain his Shoshonee wife, and at one time had thought of adding his scalp to his squaw’s. After Ford No. 8, we came upon a camping-ground, usually called in guide-books “River Bank and Stream.” The Sweetwater is here twenty-five feet wide. About three miles beyond it lay the “Foot of Ridge Station,” near a willowy creek, called from its principal inhabitants the Muskrat.[1] The ridge from which it derives its name is a band of stone that will cross the road during to-morrow’s ascent. Being a frontier place, it is a favorite camping-ground with Indians. To-day a war party of Sioux rode in, en route to provide themselves with a few Shoshonee scalps.
We made a decided rise to-day, and stood at least 6000 feet above the level of the sea. The altitude of St. Louis being in round numbers 500 feet, and reckoning the diminution of temperature at 1° F.=100 yards, we are already 19° to 20° F. colder than before. The severity of the atmosphere and the rapid evaporation from the earth cause an increase of frigidity, to which the salts and nitrates upon the surface of the soil, by absorbing the hydrogen of the atmosphere —as is shown by the dampness of the ground and the absence of dust around the Saleratus Lakes-greatly add. Another remark made by every traveler in these regions is the marked influence upon the temperature caused by the presence and the absence of the sun. The day will be sultry and oppressive, and a fire will be required at night. In the morning, about 11 A.M., the thermometer showed 80° Fahrenheit; at 4. P.M., the sky being clouded over, it fell 25°; before dawn, affected by the cold north wind from the snows about the Pass, it stood at 40°.
The lowering firmament threatened rain, of which, however, the thirsty land was disappointed. Moreover, all were agreed that snow was to be expected in another fortnight, if not sooner. Glacial storms occasionally occur in July and August, so that in some years the land may be said to have no summer, In winter the sharpness of the cold is such that it can be kept out only by clothes of the closest texture; the mountain-men, like the Esquimaux, prefer to clothe themselves cap-a-piè in the prepared skins of animals. We were all animated with a nervous desire for travel, but there was the rub. The station-master declared that he had no driver, no authority to forward two wagonsful, and no cattle; consequently, that the last comers must be last served, and wait patiently at Rocky Ridge till they could be sent on. They would find antelopes in plenty, perhaps a grizzly, and plenty of plover, crows, and delicate little ground-squirrels [2] by the burrowful, to “keep their hands in.” We being the first comers, a title to preference rarely disputed in this law-and-rule-abiding land, prudently held ourselves aloof. The Judiciary, however, was sorely “exercised.” Being a “professor,” that is, a serious person, he could not relieve his mind by certain little moyens which naturally occurred to the rest of the party. Many and protracted were the powwows that took place on this momentous occasion. Sometimes our quondam companions—we now looked upon them as friends lost to us—would mysteriously disappear as though the earth had opened and swallowed them, and presently they would return with woe-begone step and the wrinkled brow of care, simulating an ease which they were far from feeling.
The station rather added to than took from our discomfort: it was a terrible unclean hole; milk was not procurable within thirty-five miles; one of the officials was suffering sorely from a stomach-ache; there was no sugar, and the cooking was atrocious. With a stray title-pageless volume of some natural history of America, and another of agricultural reports—in those days, before reform came, these scientific and highly elaborate compositions, neatly printed and expensively got up at the public expense, were apparently distributed to every ranch and station in the line of road—I worked through the long and tedious afternoon. We were not sorry when the night came, but then the floor was knobby, the musquetoes seemed rather to enjoy the cold, and the banks swarmed with ‘‘chinches.”[3] The coyotes and wolves made night vocal with their choruses, and had nearly caused an accident. One of the station-men arose, and, having a bone to pick with the animals for having robbed his beef-barrel, cocked his revolver, and was upon the point of firing, when the object aimed at started up and cried out in the nick of time that he was a federal marshal, not a wolf.
[1] Fiber zibeticus, a beaver-like animal that inhabits the banks of ponds and streams: it has a strong musky odor in summer only, and is greedily eaten by the Indians.
[2] I had no opportunity of observing this clean, pretty, and vivacious little animal, whose chirruping resembles that of a bird; but it appeared to be quite a different species from the common striped and spotted prairie-squirrel (Spermophilus tredecimlineatus), or the chipmonk or chipmuk (S. striatus).
[3] The chinch or chints is the Spanish chinche—the popular word for the Cimex lectularius in the Southern States. In other parts of the United States the English bug is called a bed-bug: without the prefix it is applied to beetles and a variety of Coleopters, as the May-bug, June-bug, golden-bug, etc.