Kitabı oku: «In to the Yukon», sayfa 9
SIXTEENTH LETTER
SAN FRANCISCO AND SALT LAKE CITY
Salt Lake City, Utah, October 14, 1903.
We left San Francisco on the “Overland Limited” train, taking the ten o’clock boat across the bay to Oakland and there entering our car. It was a lovely morning; the sky, blue, without a cloud; the sun, brilliant, and not so hot as at Los Angeles. The city, as we receded from it, lay spread before us, stretching several miles along the water and quite covering the range of hills upon which it is built. Many great ships were at the quays, many were anchored out in the blue waters awaiting their turn to take on cargo, and among these several battleships and cruisers of our navy and one big monitor. Above the city hung a huge black pall of smoke, for soft coal – very soft – and thick asphaltic oil are the only fuels on this coast. We had come to San Francisco by night, and marveled at the myriad of electric lights that illumined it; we now left it by day, and yet more fully realized its metropolitan and commercial greatness.
The ride, this time, was not along the northern breadth of the Sacramento Valley, but by the older route through the longer settled country to the south of it. Still many immense wheatfields, hundreds of sheep browsing among the stubble, and yet more of the orchards of almonds, prunes, apricots, figs and peaches. A monstrous fruit garden, for more than one hundred miles; and everywhere fruit was drying in the sun, spread out in acres of small trays.
At Sacramento, we crossed the river on a long iron bridge, and noted the many steamboats along the wharves – the river is navigable thus far for steamboats – boats about the size of our Kanawha packets, and flows with a swift current.
After leaving San Francisco, we began that long ascent, which at last should carry us over the passes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains some 6,000 feet above the sea. The grades are easy, though persistent, the track sweeping around mountain bases and along deep valleys in wide ascending curves. All the day, till evening, we were creeping up, up, up, following one long ridge and then another, the distant snow summits always before us and seemingly never much nearer than at first. The lower slopes were, like the Sacramento Valley, everywhere covered with well-kept orchards, and everywhere we noted the universal irrigation ditches of running water, constantly present beside us or traversing our way.
As we climbed higher we began to see evidences of present and past placer mining, many of the mountain-sides being scarred and riven by the monitor-thrown jets of water.
Just as the shadows began to fall aslant the higher valleys, we commenced that long and irksome journeying through the snowsheds that, for so many miles, are necessary on this road. Coming over the Canadian Pacific, we met few snowsheds through the Rockies, and not more than two or three of them in the Selkirks, but here they buried us early and held on until long after the fall of night.
This road, you know, was originally the Central Pacific, remaining so until swallowed by its stronger rival of the south, the Southern Pacific, which now owns and operates it.
As we rode along, I could not help recalling its early history, the daring of its projectors, Huntington, Crocker, Stanford and Hopkins, and how it never could or would have been built at all but for the aid of the thousands of Chinese who, under their Irish bosses, finally constructed it.
This morning, when we awoke, we had long passed Reno in Nevada, and were flying down the Sierras’ eastern slopes through the alkali deserts of the interior basin, and all day long we have been crossing these plains of sand and sage brush and eternal alkali. We read of things, and think we are informed, but only when we see the world face to face do we begin to comprehend it. Only to-day have I learned to comprehend that Desert and Death are one.
On the Canadian Pacific Railway we had beheld the great Columbia River plunge between the facing cañon cliffs of the Rocky Mountains and the Selkirks where they almost touch, the very apex of that vast interior arid basin that stretches thence all across the United States and on into Mexico. At Yakima, in Washington State, we had crossed the Cascade range and found the arid valley made to bloom and blossom into a perpetual garden by means of the melting snows that there fed the Yakima River and adjacent streams. Now we were again descending from the crests of the Sierra Nevadas, down into this same vast basin where no Columbia cuts it through and no Yakima irrigates its limitless and solitary aridness. For more than three hundred miles have we now been traversing this expanse of parched and naked waste. No water, no life, no bird, no beast, no man. Two thousand miles and more it stretches north and south, from Canada into Mexico. Five hundred and forty miles is its narrowest width. We beheld a spur of it the other evening when we crossed the edge of the Mojave desert in Southern California; we should have traversed it two days or more if we had taken the Southern Pacific route through Arizona. As wide in its narrowest part as from Charleston to New York, or to Chicago! What courage and what temerity did those early pioneers possess who first ventured to cross it with their lumbering prairie-schooners or on their grass-fed bronchos from the Eastern plains! And how many there were who perished in the attempt! Yet water will change even these blasted wastes, and, at the one or two stations where artesian wells have been successfully sunk, we saw high-grown trees and verdant gardens.
Late in the afternoon we began to approach high, barren hills and mountain spurs, all brown and sere, save the sage brush. No cactus or even yucca here, and after climbing and crossing a long, dry ridge, we found ourselves descending into flat, sandy reaches, that bore even no shrubs or plants whatsoever, save a dead and somber sedgy grass in sparse, feeble bunches, and while the land looked wet we saw no water. Then far to the southeast glimmered a silver streak, so faint that it seemed no more than mist, and the streak grew and broadened and gleamed until we knew it to be, in fact, Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Later, we came yet nearer to it for a few miles, and then lost sight of it again. But the face of the land had changed. We saw cattle among the sage brush; cattle browsing on the sweet, dry grass that grows close under the sage-brush shadow on the better soils. Then we came to an occasional mud dugout hut and sometimes a wooden shack, and the country grew greener, grass – buffalo bunch grass – became triumphant over the sage brush, and then, right in the midst of a waste of sere yellowness, was an emerald meadow of alfalfa and a man driving two stout horses hitched to a mowing-machine cutting it, two women raking it and tossing it. We were in the land of Mormondom, and beheld their works. Now, the whole country became green, irrigating ditches everywhere, substantial farmhouses, large, well-built barns and outhouses, and miles of thrifty Lombardy poplars, marking the roadways and the boundaries of the fields.
At Ogden, where we were three hours late, our sleeper was taken off the through train to Cheyenne and attached to the express for Salt Lake City. We made no further stops, but, for an hour, whirled through a green, fruitful, patiently-tilled landscape, whose fertility and productiveness delighted eye and brain. Many orchards, large, comfortable farmsteads; wide meadows, green and abundant, as in Holland, with cattle and horses feeding upon them; stubble wheatfields, with flocks of sheep; great beet fields and kitchen gardens in full crops; and water – water in a thousand ditches everywhere! Big farm wagons, drawn by large, strong horses, we saw upon the highways; and farmers, in well-found vehicles, returning from the city to their homes.
Then, far away, towering above all else, loomed a group of gray spires, like the distant view of the dominating pinnacles of the minsters and cathedrals of England and of France, and of Cologne. They were the spires of the great towers of the Mormon temple, that strange, imposing and splendid creation of the brain of Brigham Young.
It was dusk when we reached the city. Electric lights were twinkling along the wide streets as we drove to our hotel. We have not yet seen the city, except for a short stroll under the glaring lights. But already it has made an indelible impression on our minds. Only two cities upon this continent – cities of magnitude – have ever been created and laid out, by systematic forethought, before being entered and occupied by men. One, Washington, laid out according to a comprehensive and well-digested plan; the other, Salt Lake City, the creation – as all else here – of Brigham Young.
The streets of Salt Lake City are all as wide as Pennsylvania Avenue. The blocks, of ten acres each, immense. But these streets – the chief ones are perfectly asphalted; running water flows in every side gutter; great trees, long ago planted, shade every wide sidewalk; the electric tram-cars run on tracks along the middle of the thoroughfare; and the two wide roadways, on either side, are quite free from interfering wires and poles. Many great blocks of fine buildings now rise along the business sections, and the stores present as sumptuous displays of goods and fabrics as anything we have seen in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York. The town bears the marks of a great city. Great in its plan, great in its development, great in its destiny. Truly, a capital fit for the seat of power of the potent and comprehending Mormon church.
All the morning we have been viewing concrete, practical Mormondom, and the sight has been most instructive. High above the buildings of the city tower the imposing spires and pinnacles of the Temple, the most immense ecclesiastical structure on the North American continent. Thirty years was it in building, all of native granite, and costing more than four millions of dollars. It stands in the central square of the city, surrounded by a high adobe wall, and a Gentile may view only the exterior.
Then we visited the famous Tabernacle beneath whose turtle-shaped roof 10,000 worshipers may sit, and whose acoustic properties are unrivaled in the world. You can hear a whisper and a pin drop two hundred feet away. In it is the immense organ possessing five hundred and twenty stops, which, like the two great structures, was conceived and constructed by the genius and patience of the Mormon architects. We were shown about the grounds of the ecclesiastical enclosure – though not permitted to enter the Temple – by a courteous-mannered lady whose black eyes fired with religious enthusiasm as she explained the great buildings. “My son is a missionary in Japan, giving his life to the Lord. He preaches in Japanese, and is translating our holy books into the Japanese tongue,” she said, turning to an intelligent Japanese tourist who was of our party.
We also bought some Mormon literature in the fine, modern sky-scraper buildings of the Deseret News, and the bright young man, selling us the books, showed us with evident pride the stores of elegantly printed and bound volumes, all done here in Salt Lake City. They print their books in every modern tongue, and their missionaries distribute them all over the world.
Later, we viewed the fine college buildings where higher education is given to the Mormon youth. We also saw the famous “Lion House,” over whose portal lies a sleeping lion, once the offices of Brigham Young, now occupied by the ecclesiastical managers of the church. And also we viewed the “Beehive House,” where once Brigham dwelt; the Tithing House, where is received and stored the ecclesiastical tithe tax of ten per cent. of all crops raised and moneys earned by the devoted Mormon believers; and the great bank run in connection with it.
All these evidences of practical, organized, devoted religious world zeal have we beheld gathered and centrally grouped in the great city founded and raised by these curious yet capable religious delusionists.
I asked about Mormonism of a Gentile stranger from another State, and he replied in deferential tones: “No man in his senses now throws stones at the Mormons; they are among the most industrious, most thrifty and most respected people of the West.”
To wander along and through the residence section of the city is also a thing to surprise. Street after street of fine private dwellings, each mansion standing in its own garden, upon its own lawn. Many of them very modern, and many of them far exceeding in cost and imposing elegance any residence Charleston, West Virginia, can yet boast – equal to the most sumptuous homes of Pittsburg and St. Louis – and most of them owned and lived in by cultivated families of the Mormon cult. And how the zeal and faith and religious ardor of this strange sect even now to-day burns in the atmosphere of this their Holy City! It is the same spirit that we met in Holy Moscow, Russia’s sacred capital – but more enlightened, more practical.
And Mormonism is already a political as well as religious power in the West. In Idaho, in Colorado, in Nevada, in Arizona, the Mormon vote is to be considered and even catered to. In Alberta, the Mormon settlement is said to be the most prosperous in the province. In Mexico, the Mormon settlements, their astonishing productivity and fertility, are already teaching the wonder-struck Mexican what irrigated agriculture may do. And as I beheld this and the evident success of a religious sect which mixes fanatical zeal with astute practical management, I asked myself what is the real secret of their accomplishment and their power! Is it the theory and practice of polygamy. Did or does polygamy have anything to do with the unquestioned success and prosperity of the Mormon people? I think not. Polygamy has been merely an incident, and the disappearance of polygamy has in nowise lessened the formidable growth of Mormon power. The secret, I think, is the secret of the amazing growth and spread of early Christianity, the putting into actual practice the Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of man – with them the brotherhood of the Mormon man in particular. Once a Latter-day Saint, and all other Saints are ready to lend you a hand, and the organized and ably administered mechanism of the church lends the new Saint a hand as well, and those hands once extended are never withdrawn except for powerful and well-merited cause. The Mormon farmer feels that back of his success is the ever helpful and protecting eye of his church in material as well as spiritual things. The Gentile farmer may succeed or may fail, and who cares; but the Mormon must succeed. If he do not himself possess the innate power and force of character and judgment to get on, then men will guide and aid him who do possess that power, and so he gets on even in spite of himself. In a certain sense, the Mormons practice the doctrine of collective socialism, and that collective unity is the secret, I think, of their wonderful accomplishment.
The creed of the brotherhood of man, and of man within the Christian pale, has been the secret of Christianity wherever it has won success. The failure to heed it and obey it is the cause of failure to every religious movement that has come to naught. And so long as the Mormon Church adheres to this fundamental principle, just so long will it continue to be a power, and a power of increasing weight.
And this cardinal principle is also the secret of their missionaries’ success. All over the world they are, in every State of the Union, in nigh every land, and they serve without recompense, without pay even, as did the early missionaries of the Christian Church.
There is and always has been a good deal of cleverness in the leadership of the Mormon Church. It is an old adage that “The blood of her martyrs is the seed of the church,” and the Mormon leaders have comprehended this from the start. Not only have they cultivated the Christian socialism of the early church, but they have also never fled from, but they rather have greatly profited by, a real good case of martyrdom. The buffets and kicks of the Gentile world have helped, have been essential in welding the Mormon believers into that political, religious and social solidarity so much sought by the leaders. They were driven from New York, from Ohio, from Missouri, then from Nauvoo. They have been shot, stoned, murdered by scores. They have been imprisoned and harried by the federal laws (very justly, perhaps). But the effect of all this has been only to make them stand together all the closer.
Just now the attack upon Senator Smoot is profiting them immensely. He sits by and smiles. He has only one wife. He is no more oath-bound to his own church than is every Roman or Greek Archbishop vowed to his. A matter of conscience only. The effort to oust him will probably fail, but it’s a good thing for the church to have him hammered. The more martyrs, the fewer backsliders. The faithful line up, stand pat, the church grows.
On the streets of Salt Lake City we have noted the very few vehicles of fashion anywhere to be seen, and, on the other hand, the many substantial farm wagons which generally seem to be driven by a woman accompanied by one or more children, more usually a half-grown boy. The men would seem to be working on the farms, while the women come into town with the loads of produce. The faces, too, of these women were generally intelligent and contented.
In our own country we frequently hear the Mormons denounced as polygamists. In Utah and the neighboring States you hear nothing about polygamy, and, upon inquiry, I was told that while once this tenet of the church had been urged and practiced, yet that under modern social conditions, which have come in with the railways, the younger Mormon of to-day finds that one woman is all that he can take care of, and shows no disposition to load himself up with the burden of half a dozen. To my observation, the strength and danger of Mormonism is not in polygamy, but rather in their social and political solidarity, the Mormon president of the church wielding political influence over his followers similar to, although in nowise so vast as, that of the Roman Pope.
Be these things as they may, it is at any rate worth while for a modern Gentile to visit this center of the Mormon power, and gather from ocular evidence of its vital, living, forceful presence such lessons as he may.
This afternoon we took a little railway and journeyed twelve miles to Saltair, the Atlantic City or Virginia Beach of this metropolis, and there we bathed in the supersaturated brine. I could swim on it, not in it, so buoyant was the water, and my chief difficulty was to keep my head out and my feet in. The lake is sixty miles wide by ninety miles long, with several islands of high, barren hills. A few boats ply on it. No fish can live in it, and the chief use of it is to evaporate its waters for supply of salt. After dipping in it we came out quite encrusted with a white film of intense salt.
To-night we go on to Denver, through the cañon of the Grand River.
SEVENTEENTH LETTER
A BRONCHO-BUSTING MATCH
Glenwood Springs, October 16, 1903.
We left Salt Lake City by the express last night over the Denver & Rio Grande Railway, starting three hours late. When we awoke, we were coming up the canyon of the Green River, one of the head streams of the Colorado, and had passed through the barren volcanic lava wastes of the Colorado Desert during the night. The Green River flows between sheer, naked volcanic rock masses, not very high, but jagged, no green thing growing upon them. But the scanty bottom lands were often green with alfalfa meadows and well-kept peach and apple orchards, the result of irrigation.
From the valley of the Green River we crossed, passing through many deep cuts and tunnels, to the Grand River, the eastern fork of the Colorado, and followed up this stream all day. Very much the same sort of country as before. The bare, ragged, verdureless cliffs and rock masses, dry and plantless, only the red and yellow coloring of sandstone relieving the monotony, and everywhere upon the scant bottom lands the greenness and agriculture of irrigation. The aspen and maples, all a bright yellow, but not so splendid a golden hue as the forests of the valley of the Yukon.
Just before coming to Glenwood Springs, about noon, I had wandered beyond my sleeper into the smoking-car, thinking to have a view of the sort of men who got in and out at the way stations, and, seating myself in a vacant place, picked up a conversation with my neighbor. Imagine my surprise when I found him to be a fellow West Virginian, from Clarksburg, taking a little summer trip in the West, himself a Mr. Bassel, nephew of the well-known lawyer, John Bassel, of upper State fame. He was going to stop off at Glenwood Springs to see one of Colorado’s most popular sports, a “broncho-busting” match, where were to be gathered some of the most eminent masters of the art in the State. I consulted my time-tables, ascertained that we might spend the afternoon there and yet reach Denver the next morning, and when the train pulled into the station, we were among the expectant throng who there detrained.
The little town was all astir. A pile of Mexican saddles lay on the platform, and a crowd of big, brawny men in wide felt hats, leathern cowboy leggings and clanking spurs, were shouldering these, their belongings, and moving up into the town.
The streets were full of people come in from the surrounding highlands, where, high up on the “mesas” or plateaus above the valleys, lie some of the finest cattle ranges in the State. Big, raw-boned, strong-chinned men they were, bronzed with the sun and marked with a vigor bespeaking life in the open air. The ladies, too, were out in force, well dressed, not much color in their cheeks, but, like the men, possessing clean-cut, clear-eyed faces. And up and down the wide streets were continually galloping brawny riders, evidently arriving from their distant ranches.
The crowd stuck to the sidewalk and seemed expectant. We did not know just what was going to happen, but stuck to the sidewalk, too, and well for us it was that we did so. There were rumors of a parade. A number of ranch maidens, riding restive bronchos, some sitting gracefully astride, drew their horses to one side. The crowd was silent. We were silent, too. Just then a cloud of dust and a clatter of hoofs came swirling and echoing down the street. A troop of horses! They were running like mad. They were bridleless, riderless; they were wild horses escaped. They ran like things possessed. No, not all were riderless, for behind them, urged by silent riders, each man with swinging lasso, came as many cowboys hot on the chase. Had the wild horses broken loose? Could they ever be headed off? We wondered. Was the fun for the day all vanished by the accident? Not so, we found. This was part of the game. Every broncho buster, if he would take part in the tests of ridership, must first catch a wild horse, that later an opponent should master. And the way those lassos swung and reached and dropped over the fleeing bronchos was in itself a sight worth stopping to see. Then, as each rider came out of the dust and distance leading the wild-eyed, terrified beast by his unerring lasso, great was the acclaim given him by the hitherto silent multitude. Every loose horse was caught before he had run half a mile, and thus haltered – the lariat around the neck – was led to the corral near the big meadow, where the man who should ride most perfectly would win the longed-for prize – a champion’s belt and a purse of gold.
Many famous men were met there to win the trophy – the most coveted honor a Coloradan or any ranchman may possess.
There was Marshall Nuckolds, of Rifle City, swarthy and black as an Indian, who had won more than one trophy in hard-fought contests – his square jaw meaning mastery of any four-footed thing that bucks. There was Red Grimsby, long, and lank and lithe as a Comanche, with a blue eye that tames a horse and man alike. There was big, loose-limbed Arizona Moore, a new man in Glenwood, but preceded by his fame. He it was who won that cowboy race in Cheyenne, not long since, when his horse fell, and he underneath – dead, the shuddering audience thought him – and who shook himself loose, re-mounted his horse and won the race amidst the mad cheers of every mortal being on the course. He rode a fiery black mustang, and was dressed in gorgeous white Angora goat’s hair leggins, a blue shirt, a handkerchief about his neck. Handy Harry Bunn, of Divide Creek, was there too, a dapper little pile of bone and sinew, whom broncho, buck as he might, never yet had thrown. And Freddy Conners, solid and silent, and renowned among the boys on the ranches all ’round about. And the two Thompson brothers, of Aspen, home boys, the youngest, Dick, the pride of Grand River, for hadn’t he won the $100 saddle in the big match at Aspen last year, and then carried off the purse of gold at Rifle City on the Fourth of last July! Slim and clean-muscled, and quick as a flash he was, with a piercing black eye. The crowd on the streets were all betting on Dick, and Dick was watching Arizona Moore like a hawk. The honors probably lay between the two.
The big meadow in the midst of the mile track was the place. H – sat in the grandstand, my field-glasses in hand. I was invited to the judges’ stand, and even allowed with my kodak out in the field among the judges who sat on their horses and followed the riders, taking points.
Swarthy Nuckolds was the first man. He came out into the meadow carrying his own saddle and rope and bridle. To him had fallen a wiry bay, four-year old, never yet touched by man. First the horse was led out with a lasso halter around its neck, then, when it came to a standstill, Nuckolds, with the softness of a cat, slipped up and passed a rope halter over its head, which he made cleverly into a bitless bridle, then he stealthily, and before the horse knew it, hoodwinked it with a leather band, and then when the horse could not see his motions, he gently, oh, so gently, laid the big Mexican saddle on its back, and had it double girt fast before the horse knew what had happened. Then he waved his hand, the hoodwink was pulled off by two assistants, and instantly he was in the saddle astride the astonished beast. For a moment the horse stood wild-eyed, sweating with terror – and then, and then – up it went like a bent hook, its head between its legs, its tail down, its legs all in a bunch, and down it came, stiff-kneed, taut as iron, and then up again, and so by leaps and bounds across the wide field and back again right through the scrambling crowd. All the while Nuckolds rising and falling in perfect unison with the mad motions of the terrified horse – his hat gone, his black hair flying, his great whip and heavy spurs goading the animal into subjection. At last he rode it on a trot, mastered, subjugated, cowed, up to the judges’ stand. The horse stood quietly, trembling, sweating, wet as though having swum Grand River. Wild were the yells that greeted Nuckolds. He had but added to a reputation already made.
“Grimsby next,” was the command. His horse was a short-backed, spindle-tailed sorrel, with a sort of a vicious gait that boded a bad temper and stubborn mind. Again the halter was deftly put on and made into a bitless bridle, the hoodwink slipped on, the saddle gently placed, and man and horse were furiously rushing, bucking, leaping, rearing across the meadow, and right straight at the high board and wire fence. The horse, if it couldn’t throw him, would jam and scrape him off if it ever reached that merciless mass of pine and barbed wire. Could Grimsby turn him, and without a bit? Great riding that was, and greater steering, for just before the seeming inevitable crash, the horse swerved, turned and was bucking across and then around the field again. Grimsby never failed to meet every wild movement, and sat in the saddle as though in a rocking-chair. The horse, at last conquered, stood quiet as a lamb, and the cheers for the sturdy rider quite equaled the plaudits given his raven-maned predecessor.
Now the crowd had its blood up. Two native champions had proved their grit, what could the Arizonian do against such as these? “He’s too big and awkward,” said one onlooker. “He’s not the cut for a King buster,” grunted another. “The h – l he ain’t. Ain’t he the man who won that Cheyenne race after his horse fell on him?” exclaimed one who knew, and the scoffers became silent.
Arizona Moore strode clumsily under the weight of his big saddle, but his black eye shone clear and masterful, and I felt he was sure enough a man. His horse was a dark blood bay, well knit, clean limbed, short-barreled, full mane and tail, a fighter with the grit of a horse that dies before it yields. I stood quite near with my camera. It was difficult to get the rope bridle on, it was more difficult to put on the hoodwink, it was nigh impossible to set and cinch the saddle. But Moore did it all, easily, deftly, quietly. The hoodwink dropped, and instantly the slouchy, awkward stranger was riding that furious, leaping, cavorting, bucking, lunging creature as though horse and man were one. I have never beheld such riding. He sat to his saddle and every muscle and sinew kept perfect time to the fiery, furious movements of the horse. And he plied his whip and used his spurs and laughed with glee, as though he were on the velvet cushions of a Pullman car. The horse was stronger, more active, more violent than the two before. It whirled ’round and ’round until you were dizzy looking. It went up all in a bunch, it came down spread out, it came down with stiff legs, it reared, it plunged, it ran for the fence. Nothing could mar the joy of the rider nor stir that even, easy, tenacious seat. “You’ve beat ’em all.” “Nor can the others beat you,” roared the crowd, as he rode the conquered animal on a gentle trot up to the judges’ stand and leisurely dismounted. It was the greatest horsemanship I have ever seen, nor shall I again see the like for many a day.
