The Mineral Fountains Were Sparkling In
Their Basins And Sending Up Their Full Perennial Jets But The
Snow-Clad, Pine-Skirted Mountains Frowned And Darkened Over The
Ute Pass As I Entered It To Ascend It For Twenty Miles.
A narrow
pass it is, with barely room for the torrent and the wagon road
which has been blasted out of its steep sides.
All the time I
was in sight of the Fountain River, brighter than any stream,
because it tumbles over rose-red granite, rocky or disintegrated,
a truly fair stream, cutting and forcing its way through hard
rocks, under arches of alabaster ice, through fringes of
crystalline ice, thumping with a hollow sound in cavernous
recesses cold and dark, or leaping in foam from heights with rush
and swish; always bright and riotous, never pausing in still
pools to rest, dashing through gates of rock, pine hung, pine
bridged, pine buried; twinkling and laughing in the sunshine,
or frowning in "dowie dens" in the blue pine gloom. And there,
for a mile or two in a sheltered spot, owing to the more southern
latitude, the everlasting northern pine met the trees of other
climates. There were dwarf oaks, willows, hazel, and spruce; the
white cedar and the trailing juniper jostled each other for a
precarious foothold; the majestic redwood tree of the Pacific met
the exquisite balsam pine of the Atlantic slopes, and among them
all the pale gold foliage of the large aspen trembled (as the
legend goes) in endless remorse. And above them towered the
toothy peaks of the glittering mountains, rising in pure white
against the sunny blue. Grand! glorious! sublime! but not
lovable. I would give all for the luxurious redundance of one
Hilo gulch, or for one day of those soft dreamy "skies whose
very tears are balm."
Bergens Park
Up ever! the road being blasted out of the red rock which often
overhung it, the canyon only from fifteen to twenty feet wide,
the thunder of the Fountain, which is crossed eight times, nearly
deafening. Sometimes the sun struck the road, and then it was
absolutely hot; then one entered unsunned gorges where the snow
lay deep, and the crowded pines made dark twilight, and the river
roared under ice bridges fringed by icicles. At last the Pass
opened out upon a sunlit upland park, where there was a forge,
and with Birdie's shoe put on, and some shoe nails in my purse, I
rode on cheerfully, getting food for us both at a ranch belonging
to some very pleasant people, who, like all Western folk, when
they are not taciturn, asked a legion of questions. There I met
a Colonel Kittridge, who said that he believed his valley, twelve
miles off the track, to be the loveliest valley in Colorado, and
invited me to his house. Leaving the road, I went up a long
ascent deep in snow, but as it did not seem to be the way, I tied
up the pony, and walked on to a cabin at some distance, which I
had hardly reached when I found her trotting like a dog by my
side, pulling my sleeve and laying her soft gray nose on my
shoulder.
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