talked of and written about, but not overestimated; they are helpful and invigorating for the invalid, and a source of gratification, if not a novelty, to the pleasure seeker. The Indians hold them in great veneration; this of itself is a recommendation, for, as a rule, the Ute has no liking for water. The Doctor labored under the impression that I needed a bath; a hot bath, and said so unequivocally; besides, not to take a bath, even if the bath took your hide, would be a violation of the sacred rule of the place, and subject one to the charge of eccentricity. I do not fancy eccentric people nor enthusiastic folk; beside, every acquaintance I might meet would be sure to exclaim with marked astonishment: “What! didn’t take a bath!” The thing would become monotonous. I consented to take the bath.
The Doctor went ahead like one accustomed to the treatment. It was night; the place was provided with a single lamp that made the darkness unearthly; the fumes of the sulphur were strong and suggestive; I looked down into the steaming pool with the trepidation that must come over a sinner in the heat of an orthodox revival. The Doctor waded out like a minister at the ordinance of baptism, and called to me to “come down.” I said I was coming. I went. The steps were very firm, clean and provided with a strong rail, but I didn’t hurry. I put one foot in and took it out right away; when I found it was not raw I put it back, and concluded as the Doctor was not yet parboiled I might put in the other foot; but I did not go in a foot at a time, only about an inch. Then I asked the Doctor what church he belonged to, and started to go out when he said he was a Methodist. I sat down on the steps, inhaled the sulphur and looked at him floundering round in that pool like a school of porpoises out at sea. He told me to try it again. I said I was sleepy and wanted to go to bed. Then he said it would make my hair grow, and I told him I didn’t want any hair, that I had had it pulled out on purpose before I was married. Then he said it would make me fat; I told him I was dieting to take off superfluous flesh. Then he said he would tell what he insinuated was generally suspected, that I was afraid of water; I told him I didn’t care. Finally he swore that if I did not get off that perch and come down into the bath, he’d destroy the commissaries and refuse to show me any of the trout-pools in the Park. I was inspired to say I’d try it again; he had been there five minutes at least and was not cooked, and if he could stand it that long with his religious training, I thought I might venture on as many seconds. But I made haste slowly, got in by degrees and laid down. Then the Doctor got under the “shower bath,” where the water tumbles, six feet or more in a great stream, into the pool; he wanted me to try that. But I told him I was very well satisfied where I was, and that I did not approve of shower baths, any way; then I went on to explain to him the deleterious effects of too much bathing, and of shower baths in particular. I talked to him as well as I could for ten minutes, sitting the while upon the bottom of the pool with the water up to my chin; but he would not be convinced. I think the situation and the noise of the water-fall may have detracted somewhat from the force of my argument. The Doctor said it was time to get out, but having become warmed up on the subject, I deemed this a mere evasion, and told him not to hurry; that I could convince him of the correctness of my theory inside a half hour. He said he had no doubt of it if I remained where I was for that length of time. He had, to some extent, won my confidence; by his combined advice and threats he had enabled me to realize an ideal, and at the same time be in the fashion, and this not in the days of miracles. When I got out of that bath I felt as I have heard men say they felt after a hard day’s work. I took my blankets, laid on the ground and slept the sleep of godliness. Some of those fellows whose consciences are demoralized had better try this medicine instead of opium; it is at least a safer narcotic. One can go to bed with better assurance that in a day or so a servant will not be peering over the transom and finding a subject for the coroner. It is more satisfactory, too, in such emergencies, in that it removes the doubts of friends, if one has any, as well as of the public, as to “the cause,” and entitles one to Christian burial.
Awakened the next day by that invaluable servant to us all shining in my face, I reminded the Doctor of his promise concerning the trout pools. So we were up betimes, had breakfast, the horses saddled, and with creels capable of fourteen pounds each, and a stock of tackle sufficient to start a store, we were off across the Grand, and over the hills for the anticipated pleasure down stream, to a place where the Doctor was sure no one had been. The horses of tourists and amateur fishermen usually buck and raise the devil when starting out on such a jaunt, and I was disappointed that the Doctor’s animal did not bow his back, go up, and come down stiff-legged. I like to see a horse buck when somebody else is on him, and I like to hear the man pray, if he is able, when he feels the ground and glances round to see who is laughing at him. An even-tempered gentleman like the Doctor would have afforded an enviable example of Christian fortitude under such circumstances—his horse did not buck, but led the way over the hills as quietly as a cow going out to pasture.
We kept away from the river, traveled over high ground, and through an upland of black sage brush that would rival the mesa between Pueblo and Cañon. We followed an Indian trail, and followed it so long that I began to inquire when we were to reach my much coveted destination. The Doctor called my attention to a belt of timber some distance ahead, and said we were “going up there.” I asked him if he expected that trout roosted like sage hens, and informed him that if such had been his experience, it had not been mine, and that I was going to find water. He told me to do as I pleased, so I struck off toward the Grand—I like to be independent sometimes. My horse went scrambling through the thick sage brush, catching his toes in the roots and threatening to throw me over his head every few minutes, until finally he stopped at the bank of the river. It was fifty feet, at least, down to the water. I looked up stream half a mile, then down to the belt of timber, and that same bank presented itself at an aggravating angle of about ninety degrees. I don’t like Indians, nor any of their belongings, as a general rule, but I went cheerfully back to that trail, and quietly followed in the Doctor’s wake. When I caught up, the Doctor said in a mild sort of way that it was generally safe to keep on the trail. We walked our horses to the timber and into it, the Doctor in the lead. We got about half way round the mountain with a thousand or fifteen hundred feet of earth, rocks and trees below us, and as many above, when the Doctor discovered a “cut-off.” He led the way for a few rods, when a tree about three feet in diameter barred further progress in that direction. We could not turn round, nor could we go on, so we got off, and persuaded the horses to climb perpendicularly fifty feet up to the trail. I was satisfied in my mind that the Doctor was more than ever convinced of the safety of keeping on the trail, but he did not say so to me.
We kept on to Williams’ Fork, and picketed our horses about half a mile from the month. The Doctor then proposed that we “hoof it” over more hills. I began to be disgusted, but was away from home and at the mercy of this new-fangled fisherman. I didn’t know an Indian trail from a cow path, and was as likely to get into one as the other. A trail, like the road of a civilized brother, leads to some place, but a cow path——. I puffed on behind, up a high ridge of rocks, and as soon as I could get the breath, told the Doctor I was obliged to him. We stood upon a Grand Cañon in miniature. I want to describe it, but I can’t. After dreaming over it awhile, the Doctor told me an incident in his experience concerning the ledge where we had precarious foothold, looking down into the seething waters several hundred feet below. The Doctor, Wm. H. Beard, the artist, Bayard Taylor and a prospector and mining man came over the trail a few years before on horseback, the Doctor in the lead, then the prospector, and, finally, the artist and the great traveler bringing up the rear. When the prospector passed the narrow ledge, barely sufficient in width to allow a horseman to squeeze along, where one has to hang, as it were, like a fly on a wall, he became conscious that his saddle girths needed tightening. With the recklessness peculiar to his craft, he slipped off his mule, and was engaged in the necessary adjustment of his belly-band when Beard reached the narrow ledge and had to stop. The first intimation the Doctor had of anything wrong came in the way of an emphatic adjuration, that might have been heard half a mile, for the blessed prospector to get out of that. The Doctor said he was glad the artist was not given to profanity, though he said a great deal to the miner that the Doctor could not understand; it did not sound like English nor Dutch, nor any language the Doctor had ever heard, but hurled at the head of the miner from a two-foot trail hanging over five or six hundred feet of perpendicular granite, it seemed to have an accelerating effect. The miner led his mule to more convenient quarters without finishing his task, and the artist followed, not in