The Truth About America Part 5

CHAPTER V.

Nevada--Utah--Wyoming--Denver--A restless night--Seeking for a ranch--Ranch work--Colorado Springs, the Sanitarium of Western America.

Nevada, east of California, is a wretched waste, and like Arizona, described some pages back, mostly, if not all, desert. True, in both cases, I only saw the parts traversed by the rail, but it is absurd to suppose, were any part otherwise, it would not have been selected for the line. The whole distance across the state is, say, by rail, 350 miles, and certainly 250 of that is a sandy waste. Then came the state of "Utah," famous as the abode of the Mormons, and part of this was also bare sand, but not like Nevada, for where irrigated, as California, it seemed fertile.

This was the last I saw of the American Deserts, and recalling the hundreds of miles of such I had traversed in my two journeys, I wondered greatly at the ignorance of Western nations on this head. It may be so, because, if you look at the map, you will see the parts described by me as desert are far out west, and that few Europeans go there. Of course Americans do, but even with them it is the exception, and quite in keeping with national characteristics to keep it quiet. The day will come that we shall know how many square miles of desert there are in the States. When it does many, not I, will be surprised.

In "Utah" we skirted the north side of the Great Salt Lake, but saw nothing of the Mormons. Salt Lake City, their abode, is perhaps 100 miles south, at the southern end of the lake. The next state we entered was "Wyoming," which differs much from either "Nevada" or "Utah." Here are great rolling plains of gra.s.s, such as hold in Texas, and cattle raising is carried on over the whole state, at least so I was told. It is a large country, about 350 miles long east and west, and 250 broad. The line of Rocky Mountains runs through it, and some of the scenery is superb. As far as abundant food in the shape of gra.s.s goes, Wyoming must be a good ranch locality. But the winters are very severe, and the snow lies a long while on the ground. At such times, of course, cattle have all to be more or less sheltered and fed, which diminishes profits, and great losses are experienced from the extreme cold, which kills many. Here in England we think it very cold if the quicksilver shows 10 (Fahr.) below freezing-point, that is 22. Zero there is not thought cold, and the thermometer varies between that and 35 below zero, for two or three months. Fancy 35 below zero which is 67 below freezing-point! I have experienced similar cold in Norway, and recall how acutely painful it was. The English climate is far from perfect, but in our immunity from extremes of temperature we are blessed.

Tempting, therefore, as the gra.s.sy plains of Wyoming looked in a ranch view after the bare Californian ground, the long snow-sheds we pa.s.sed through told me much, which inquiry confirmed, as regards the cold in winter, and neither my sons nor I cared to stop short there.

I had never seen snow-sheds over rails before. They are simply long wooden tunnels, erected above ground over the line in spots where snow is likely to drift and block it.

The next state we entered was that of our destination, viz. Colorado, and what I saw of it, in the 120 miles we traversed before arriving at the capital, "Denver," I liked well. Gra.s.s and to spare everywhere, well-wooded in parts, some exquisite scenery, and so on.

"This is the country," I said to my sons; "glad you brought me here."

We reached "Denver" in due course, a good-looking town, and put up at an hotel near the rail. After the journey accomplished, about 1700 miles, and sitting up two nights, we were pretty well knocked up, so had a hurried dinner and went to bed. But alas! not to sleep. The creatures that attacked us were _not_ fleas, something worse. I have such a horror of the little black thing, we all have, I need not define it. They were in swarms. We had turned in confidingly, we jumped out of bed horrified and lit the candle. They were in dozens on the whitewashed walls, and running all over the beds. To remain was impossible, but it was too late to seek fresh quarters, and we spent the night on tables and chairs below in the bar!

Next morning I complained to the landlord.

"Never heard of such a thing. You must have brought them with you, I guess."

"What, hundreds of them? Come upstairs and look."

He did so, but he did not give in. "Well, it may be some of them belong to the place, but I guess you brought most of 'em."

He was of the true Yankee type--the worst type on earth. So I cared to say no more, but paid the bill and went elsewhere, finding cleanliness, comfort, and as much courtesy as you look for in America, in the next hotel.

"Denver" is a clean, commodious, and pleasant town enough. There are many of the Yankee type there, but also some very nice people. We spent some days inquiring about ranches, and then made trips out to inspect them. I need not drag the reader with me on these little journeys; we mostly travelled in a light one-horse van, taking our food with us, and, as the weather was charming, camping out at night.

Except in the winter, when it is far too cold, at night in any case, Colorado is just the country for this gipsy life. The atmosphere is wonderfully dry, and there is no danger whatever in sleeping outside without any shelter. This free kind of life has always had a great charm for me, and, except in winter, Colorado is just the place for it.

After some time I found a ranch to suit me. I bought it, the cattle, and everything on it. The former owner and his family were not long ere they left, and then my sons entered on their duties. They understood the work, I did not, but I used to potter about and help in any way I could.

The profits on a ranch are derived by breeding cattle and horses, and selling the surplus stock, also from dairy work. Firstly, as to breeding cattle. The procedure is different in different parts.

Climate princ.i.p.ally regulates it. In Texas, a low lat.i.tude (33), the winters are very mild, and the cattle there are never housed, they wander over the vast plains the year round. In Wyoming, and Montana and Dakota which join it, the cold in winter is intense, and the snow lies long. When the land is snow-bound, cattle, of course, can find no food for themselves, and during such time they have to be sheltered (scarcely housed) and fed. To do this costs money, and it goes without saying that in this respect the warm sites are the better. More, in the cold localities many cattle are lost in hard winters, simply frozen to death. But there is compensation as in most of the actions of nature. The cold localities have better gra.s.s in the summer.

In lat.i.tudes like Texas there is no necessity to grow crops for winter food. In the cold localities much has to be done in this way.

Colorado is between these two extremes, lat.i.tude about 38, nearly the same as San Francisco. But it is far warmer in summer, much colder in winter, than that capital. This is in a great measure due to its being so far inland, and also to the fact that most of the state is high table-land. Thus in Colorado (the snow seldom lies there more than three or four days at a time) the cattle are only sheltered and fed for short periods.

As a rule they calve in the spring. If it is required to increase the stock, only the male two and three years old and any worn out old cows are sold yearly. There is always a market for them; in fact, in spring and summer dealers travel round to the ranches and buy. If the above plan of keeping all the young female stock is followed out, and the mishaps are few, the cattle on a ranch double themselves in three or four years. When the limit a run will carry is attained, all the increase can yearly be sold.

Great numbers of horses are bred on ranches, and it is a question whether these or cattle are the more profitable. Horses are hardier than cattle, stand both heat and cold better. They consequently require less shelter, and also less food in winter, for horses will paw up the snow and find food when cattle cannot do so. They "rustle"

better for themselves, as the Americans forcibly express it.

There are no natural enclosures in ranch countries like hedges, though I see not why, in time, there should not be such. In vast plains, such as are found in Texas, I believe ranches are not fenced in at all, and the cattle wander where they will. But in countries like Colorado, where pretty well every acre has an owner, fences are a necessity. The usual one is a barbed wire-fence. This is thus constructed: at distances of 30 or 40 feet, sometimes more, strong poles, 3 feet in the ground, and say 5 feet above it, are set up.

Three wires, the lowest say 18 inches from the ground, the second and third, a like distance from the first and second, run from pole to pole, and are attached thereto by iron cleets. This alone, however, would not suffice to keep cattle in the enclosures, for they often charge the fences in great numbers at a time, and would thus easily break through. But the wires are studded at every 18 inches with sharp spikes, which soon teach the cattle that they cannot run against them with impunity. This is why it is called a "barbed wire-fence," and it is a very efficacious one.

On the ranch I had purchased (I called it the Water Ranch as it was exceptionally well watered with two streams running through it), the snow never lies long, not usually more than two or three days after a fall; thus it is only during these short intervals the cattle require to be fed, and in a measure sheltered. But this occurs again and again during the winter, and the food necessary has to be provided and grown during the summer months in the shape of Alfalfa (a peculiar and productive American gra.s.s), hay, turnips, and rye.

Besides, as all the food the ranch workers require has to be produced at home, there is thus plenty to do in the kitchen-garden, in growing potatoes and other things. Then there is the poultry-yard. Geese, ducks, and fowls are bred in large numbers, and require much attention. Ranch-men naturally live well, for, besides meat and poultry, there is the produce of the dairy, which, in all its shapes--milk by the bucket, cream _ad libitum_, and b.u.t.ter in abundance--they can revel in. I never was better fed than on the Water Ranch.

The dairy work is very profitable. Either the cream is sent away and sold to b.u.t.ter and cheese factories established for that purpose in ranch localities, or such are manufactured at home, and sent to the market-town for sale. But it will readily be conceived that milking thirty to forty cows, and the dairy-work in all its shapes, gives plenty of work.

I was convinced, after a little experience, that my two sons, alone, could not do all necessary, and as it does not pay to hire labour in the States (wages are so high), and as the cost of the Water Ranch was more than I could afford to give in its entirety to my sons, after my return to England I sold to two young gentlemen the half-interest on the condition that they should at once go out and work there. This they did, and there are thus now four partners with equal interests in the Water Ranch, and working there together.

I think the reader can now, in a measure, appreciate what sort of existence ranch-life is. Early to bed and early to rise, the latter four a.m. in the summer, breakfast at seven, dinner at one, tea at six; work of some kind or the other all day, but not as a rule _hard_ manual work; many interests, absence of care, good food and sound sleep. It is a placid, if not a very intellectual existence; the charms of society, the ameliorating influence of woman, are wanting, but on the principle some hold, though unjustly, that "she" is at the bottom of all calamities, to such, at least, this latter want is not much felt! Civilization, society, has many charms, but their absence is not an unmixed evil. The freedom entailed thereby, the non-existence of social restrictions, are at least advantages ensured.

I _had_ intended to make my home with my sons on the ranch. The roughness of the life in no way disgusted me, for I am accustomed to such, having experienced it in many countries, and in various occupations. But the want of intellectual pursuits, the absence of society, the lack of woman's influence, and the many charms connected therewith, wearied me sadly. In two words I found I was too old for the life, and that I could not, at my age, adapt myself to such great and violent changes. I was happy while there, but I felt it would not do as a continuance, and thus determined, having started my sons and provided for them, to return to Europe.

"Colorado Springs," the great health resort of Western America, is some twenty-five miles only from the Water Ranch. It is, in many respects, an unique Sanitarium, and should therefore be better known than it is to Europeans. Its climatic and soil advantages (the latter no mean factor), as a cure-place for consumption, asthma, bronchitis, and all pulmonary diseases, are perhaps exceptional, for I doubt if any spot on the earth's surface, owing to weather, temperature, elevation, locality, and soil, possesses so dry an air.[8] When we consider how many thousands of young lives, often the flowers of the household flock, here in England alone, succ.u.mb to these maladies, how neither age nor s.e.x is spared, it is surely well that such an exceptional cure-place as Colorado Springs existing should be made known far and wide.

_I_ should be quite incompetent myself, from lack of medical knowledge, to dilate on this point satisfactorily, were it not that during a visit of a week to the place, I made the acquaintance of an English physician there of high repute, Doctor S. Edwin Solly, who went there years ago to seek relief himself from some pulmonary complaint (I forget what), found it, and eventually settled there. He gave me a book descriptive of Colorado Springs and Manitou (the latter is the spot, five miles distant, where the medical springs are), which is in two parts. The first is a prize essay by a Mrs.

Dunbar, a resident at Colorado Springs, and deals with the climatic, social, and scenic conditions of the Sanitarium as set out in the following notice to her work:--

"In the spring of 1883 a prize of one hundred dollars was offered by a committee of the citizens of Colorado Springs and Manitou for the best article upon these two towns as places of residence and health resorts. Numerous articles were presented and several were of marked merit. Rev. Willis Lord, D. D., and Rev. James B. Gregg, the examining committee, adjudged the prize to Mrs. Simeon J. Dunbar, a resident of Colorado Springs for the past two years, and a correspondent of the Boston press. Mrs. Dunbar has sought to prepare such a statement of facts as she would have welcomed (and believes others desire) when she contemplated making a home in the New West; in this endeavour she has been eminently successful. It is believed that this is the most complete, compact and accurate body of practical information in print concerning these two places, which are becoming more popular every year; and that it will be of great and permanent value to all persons seeking a change of climate or proposing to visit or settle in Colorado."

The second part is written by my friend, Doctor Solly, and treats of the place from a medical point of view. I can, therefore, by giving extracts from the said book, state with very good authority all that is necessary to tell, in the author's own words.

But before I do so, I would, in grat.i.tude to the said Doctor Solly and another, say a few words. My sons, previous to joining me in California, had been several times at Colorado Springs, staying with a Mrs. Garstin, an English lady I had known in London, who has now finally taken up her abode there. Her kindness to my poor boys (who were living a hard life, working as common labourers for ranch and farm owners in the neighbourhood, and who, it goes without saying, had no spare cash) was excessive. She was as a mother to them, and being far from rich herself the doing so often entailed personal privations. Both my sons, while with her, fell ill, and at her kind instance Dr. Solly attended them gratis. This was no exceptional case, he is one of those "who do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame." When, therefore, I went from the Water Ranch to Colorado Springs, partly to see the place, partly to get cured of a sprained back which some farm work had entailed, I went straight to Doctor Solly, both for medical aid, and to thank him for his kindness to my boys. I was, indeed, pleased to make his and Mrs. Solly's acquaintance, and they both, thinking I must be dull all alone at the hotel, insisted on my dining with them daily during my stay. The doctor soon put me all right, and I spent a happy week wandering in the neighbourhood, climbing the Rocky Mountains, and enjoying society at his house in the evening. Surely one may dilate, even in print, on the qualities of individuals of the fair s.e.x if it be all praise.

Mrs. Solly is an American lady, and her, among others, I had in my mind when I dilated on the intellectual and broad views, with charitable tendencies, of the best cla.s.s of our transatlantic sisters. With a high order of intellect, and a capacity for appreciation such as is granted to few women, Mrs. Solly was, in two words, one of the most charming companions I have ever met. _On dit_, and the idea is a nice one, that in many married lives the wife strives to, and often attains the husband's level. Sometimes, more rarely, it is the other way, and the woman's intellect soars above the man's, while he may, or may not, try and climb so high. In either case, if even perfect success is not attained, the intercourse between the two benefits the weaker vessel, be that male or female.

But the above theory did not, in either form, hold good in those I wish to portray. Both were highly intellectual, yet were they quite different. Their individuality had not been affected, as far as I could judge, by marriage. Perhaps the companionship begotten thus is the most charming of any in marital life, but it is rare.

Of the daughter I need only say that she was a fit daughter for such parents, and seemed to me to partake of the individual excellences of both, while the English ideas received from the father, the American from the mother, made a very charming diversity in her individual character.

Doctor Solly has an extensive practice in Colorado Springs and the neighbourhood, and is reputed to be, I should think justly, the first medical man there. What he says, therefore, on the advantages of the Sanitarium deserves every attention, the more so that he honestly points out, in more than one place, the individual conditions which are more likely to receive harm than good from a residence on such high, dry table-land.

I will now proceed to make extracts from the combined book of Mrs.

Dunbar and Doctor Solly, and as, in a medical point of view, it explains much, I will first set out the preface to Doctor Solly's work _in extenso_.

"A committee appointed by our citizens having requested the County Medical Society to select one of their number to write an article, for general publication, upon the qualities of this locality as a health-resort, the choice fell upon me, and the following pages have been written to comply with this request. The opinions therein expressed are set forth upon my individual responsibility, and not as being the combined outcome of the views of the County Society at large. I am, however, indebted to my colleagues for several valuable suggestions and points of experience, but with respect to a subject so complicated as Climatic Influences the saw applies '_Tot homines, tot sententiae._' Nine years ago I resigned the practice of medicine in England to try the influence of the Colorado climate upon my health, with satisfactory results, and the opinions and statements here advanced are founded upon my experience and observation as a pract.i.tioner of medicine in this locality for the last nine years.

The article being limited did not permit the publication of clinical records or extended discussion of the many interesting problems referred to, but is put forward as an effort to a.s.sist physicians and their patients in answering the often recurring question of the wisdom of a change to Colorado, from some safe standpoint and not merely from hearsay reports unsupported by evidence or reasonable inference. Viewing this subject of Climate as resting upon a scientific basis, and not alone upon empirical knowledge gained in particular regions, I have followed the plan of first stating the facts and opinions that are generally known or accepted concerning the features and essentials of climates in general, and their influence upon the healthy body; secondly, giving the general features of elevated climates and their effects both in health and disease, and finally, comparing these general effects with the special effects observed in this particular locality. Thus I have endeavoured to show good reason for the faith that is in me, by connecting this fragmentary study of climate with the whole great subject of climatology."

"S. EDWIN SOLLY."

"Colorado Springs, 1883."

Colorado Springs is thus described by Mrs. Dunbar.

"Pike's Peak Range is the most eastern spur of the Rocky Mountains, taking its name from the Peak itself, which rises high above the rest, viz. 14,150 feet above sea level. This eastern sentinel of the vast Rocky Mountain system has its advance-guard directly in front.

Cones, peaks, and great shapeless ma.s.ses of rock, terminating to the south in Cheyenne Mountain, and in the north in a long chain of lower mountains. Twenty-five miles north from base of Pike's Peak, a ridge of hills, 8000 feet high, called the Divide (the water-shed between the Arkansas and Platte river), shoots out into the east for seventy-five miles, its blue-black outline cut sharply on the northern sky. Nearly 100 miles away the sharp eye will detect the outline of the Spanish Peaks almost upon the New Mexico line.

"Out from this semi-circle of hills and mountains stretch the great plains beyond the distant eastern horizon; not suddenly and in one smooth slope, but foothills and small broken mesas end in scattered and irregular bluffs, these gradually blending and losing themselves in the billowy rolling country, which makes up the eastern plains of Colorado.

"On one of these small mesas, close to the foothills and within the first line of bluffs, is situated Colorado Springs, on a level with the summit of Mt. Washington, in New Hampshire, 6000 feet above the sea.

"Neither nature nor art could design and lay out a more finished and beautiful spot for a town. Nature has made the grading perfect for streets and sidewalks, for drainage and for irrigating ditches. The whole town appears perfectly level, but the mesa has just enough descent towards the south and east to take water from the main irrigating ditch as it enters the town from the north-west, and carry it freely throughout the whole city on each side of every street; four of the main streets and avenues have twelve miles of open boxed ditches about two feet wide running in absolutely straight lines. The lawns and gardens are graded and laid out to correspond with the grade of the ditches, from which they are flooded once a week by a box ditch running under the sidewalk.

"The town was founded in 1871 by a colony composed mostly of gentlemen from Philadelphia who were then projecting and building the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad from Denver. The town plat is three miles long and two wide, laid out in blocks four hundred feet square, separated by streets one hundred feet wide, and every third street an avenue one hundred and forty feet wide. These streets and avenues are bordered by rows of flourishing cottonwoods, twenty-five feet apart, that greedily drink the water running over their roots through the spring and summer. The gra.s.s on the sides of these small irrigating ditches is green all summer and sprinkled with bright blossoms, and, with the grateful shade of the cottonwoods, makes pleasant walks through the city, which is full of beautiful homes.