to an extent little imagined in the east; but the streams themselves are bordered by broad valleys, rich and fertile, that as a rule need only irrigation to produce luxuriantly. In some seasons they do not require even this, as their proximity to the mountains affords them rains enough. Still, no farmer is safe there without his system of acequias or water-ditches, to irrigate if necessary; and we found these everywhere constructed, if not in use, where settlements had been made. In all of these valleys we already had scattered ranches—some of them very large—and raised wheat, barley, corn, oats, etc. in considerable quantities. Colorado had formerly imported all her grain and flour from the Missouri, at an enormous cost; but latterly she had drawn large supplies from these fertile valleys, and in '66 considered herself about self-sustaining. Not more than one-tenth, or less, of her arable land here, however, seemed to be under cultivation, and agriculture even then was of the rudest and simplest. The ranchmen were mainly Americans or Germans, but the labor was all performed by Mexican peons, subjected for generations to but one remove from slavery. It was the threshing season, and in many places we saw them treading out their wheat and barley by mules, with a Greaser on the back of each, lazily whiffing his cigarrito, while his donkey dozed around. Elsewhere, their threshing done, we saw them winnowing their grain by hand, as the breeze chanced along. We did not see or hear of a threshing-machine or a fanning-mill in the whole region there, and doubt if there was one. The Mexicans do not comprehend these nineteenth century new-fangled notions, and will have none of them. They prefer by far their old-time dolce far niente. Festina lente is their national maxim, and your thorough-bred peon would choose a broncho rather than a locomotive any day. And naturally enough, the American settlers here, we found, were mostly from the south, and during the war had been none too ardent for the Union.
Most of the farms here were large in size, and in crossing the Greenhorn we passed through a noble ranch, twelve miles wide by eighteen long, owned by a Mr. Zan Hincklin. In '65 he sold his crop of grain for eighty thousand dollars, and in '66 expected to do even better. He had on hand a thousand horses, three thousand head of cattle, and six thousand sheep, all of which he grazed the year round. He lived very plainly, in a rude adobe hut, that we should think hardly fit for a canal-laborer east; but was as hospitable and generous as a prince. We had scarcely gone into camp, on the banks of the rippling Greenhorn, before he sent us over butter, eggs, and vegetables, and bade us welcome to his heart and home. He acquired his great estate by marrying one of the half-breed daughters of the celebrated John Brent, who used to hunt and trap all through this region, and who lived so long among the Indians that he became himself half Red-Skin. He died possessed of vast tracts of land here, acquired chiefly through trading with the Indians, but his children it appeared, as a rule, had turned out poorly. One of his sons had returned to Indian life, joining a wandering tribe, and others still hung about the settlements, of small account to anybody.
From the Arkansas, the country gradually but constantly ascends, until you strike the mountains again at the foot of Sangre del Christo Pass. Here you follow up a dashing rivulet, that courses away to the Huerfano, and advantage is taken of a depression in the main ridge to cross into San Luis Park. We camped the night before in a sheltered nook among the foot-hills, surrounded on three sides by gnarled piñon trees, while the fourth opened on a little plateau sloping down to a noisy brook, that afforded water and grass in abundance. The next morning we breakfasted early, and were off up the Pass soon after sunrise. The morning air was nipping, and as we advanced we found the mists rolling down the mountains, and so off over the Plains eastward. The teams being a little slow that morning in packing up and getting off, some of us concluded to walk on; but we had not proceeded far, before some one suggested this might be dangerous, as Indians were reported about, and our arms were all behind in the ambulances. Halting, therefore, for the rest to come up, two of us then secured our Spencers and six-shooters, and mounting one a horse and the other a mule pushed on ahead again. The ascent, though gentle, we found nevertheless very constant, and gradually the ambulances dropped much behind. The road led over a shelving plateau, and up a pretty sharp hill, and then plunged by a rapid descent into a little valley again. Here we met several men, with a drove of indifferent cattle and sheep, en route from Culebra to Denver and a market. Climbing out of this valley, we struck a sharp ascent, that led southward along and up the ridge, and then turning west by south struck straight across the summit. As we raised the summit, a keen, fierce wind met us from the west, and soon set our teeth to chattering in unison with it. On the tip-top we found a contractor's train, en route to Fort Garland with supplies, doubling up ox-teams and doing its "level best" to forge slowly ahead. The summit or ridge, the tip-top of the Rocky Mountains—the very backbone of America here—we found only a few hundred yards across; and then we came out on the western slope, with all the glories of the San Luis Park nestling at our feet, or uprising gorgeously before us. Below, the Park lay wrapped in a dreamy haze, with the Sangre del Christo creek flashing onward through it; above, peak on peak—huge, snow-white, and sublime—rimmed it round, as with a crown. Over all, hung one of those blue and faultless skies, for which the Rocky Mountains are so world-famous, with the sun sweeping majestically through it, while God himself seemed ready to speak on every side. This was to the west. Turning to the east, the view there seemed, if possible, even more grand and sublime. Peak and ridge, plateau and foot-hill, stretched away beneath us; in the distance the brace of Spanish Peaks, two bold "buttes" passed the day before, shot up abruptly six thousand feet into the sky, from the dead level of the Plains around them; while beyond and around to the dim horizon, east, north, and south, for hundreds of miles, outstretched the illimitable Plains. The elevation of the Pass is given, as about ten thousand feet above the sea. At our feet, the fog was breaking up and rolling off eastward in sullen masses, which the morning sun gilded with glory, or here and there pierced through and through down to the earth beneath. Soon it passed away into airy clouds, careering along the sky, and presently vanished altogether. And then the Plains! The Plains! How their immense outstretch absorbed and overwhelmed the eye! It was not the ocean, but something much grander and vaster, than even the ocean seems. If you could view the sea from the same altitude, doubtless the impression would be much the same. But what is the loftiest mast-head, compared with the summit of Sangre del Christo? The grandeur and sublimity of the scene awed one into silence, as if in the presence of Deity himself, and the great and holy thoughts of that hour well repaid us for all our toil and fatigue. Say what we may, there is something gracious and ennobling in such mountain scenery, which men can illy dispense with. How it deepens and widens one's feelings! How it broadens and uplifts one's thoughts! How it strengthens—emboldens—one's manhood! What Switzerland is to Europe, and New England to the Atlantic States, this and more, the whole Rocky Mountain region will yet become to America.
Descending the mountains westward, a ride of a mile or two brought us to a spring, where a Mexican was taking his noon-day meal of tortillas, while his inevitable mule was cropping the grass near by. H. dismounted and scooped up a drink with his hands, Indian fashion, but I was not yet thirsty enough for that. A mile or two farther, still descending, brought us to the head of Sangre del Christo creek, a dashing rivulet fed by snow streams, that runs thence to the Rio Grande. A winding defile or cañon, of steady though not very rapid descent, affords a bed-way down the Pass and out into the San Luis Park, and down this the wild little creek shoots very serpentinely. It crosses the road no less than twenty-six times in ten miles, and constantly reminds you of the famous Yankee fence, which was made up of such crooked rails, that when the pigs crept through it they never exactly knew whether they were inside or out! We jogged leisurely down the creek, until we judged we were some six or seven miles from the summit, and perhaps half way down the mountain, when we halted for the teams to come up. The wind blew sharply up the Pass still, though it was now much after noon, and we found the shelter of a neighboring ravine very welcome. Here we unsaddled our animals, and turned them loose to graze. They fed up and down the ravine, cropping the rich herbage there, but would never stray over a hundred yards or so away, when they would turn and graze back to us again. On such mountain trips saddle-animals become attached to their riders, and will seldom leave of their own accord. So, also, they are unerring sentinels, and always announce the approach of Indians or others with a neigh or bray. Building a royal fire with the dry fir-trees there, we next spread our saddle-blankets on the ground, and then with our saddles under our heads, and our feet Indian-fashion to the fire, smoked and talked until the rest arrived. About two p. m. I noticed Kate (my mule) stop grazing and snuff the air, very inquiringly;