Celebrated women travelers in 19th Century by W. H. Davenport Adams - HTML preview

MISS BIRD AND OTHERS.

"The climate of Colorado is the finest in North America; and consumptives, asthmatics, dyspeptics, and sufferers from nervous diseases are here in hundreds and thousands, either trying the 'camp cure' for three or four months, or settling here permanently. People can safely sleep out of doors for six months of the year. The plains are from 4,000 to 6,000 feet high, and some of the settled 'parks,' or mountain valleys, are from 8,000 to 10,000. The air, besides being much rarefied, is very dry; the rainfall is far below the average, dews are rare, and fogs nearly unknown. The sunshine is bright and almost constant, and three-fourths of the days are cloudless."

This is not Eden, but Colorado; yet, seeing it reproduces as nearly as possible what we may suppose to have been the primary characteristics of that first Garden, to us dwellers in a land where mists and fogs are frequent and sunbeams are rare, Miss Bird's description of it reads like an effort of the imagination. Miss Bird traversed a portion of Colorado in 1878, on her way to

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explore the recesses of the Rocky Mountains. Starting from San Francisco, she travelled by railway to Truckee.

Here she hired a horse, and for greater convenience assumed what she styled her "Hawaiian riding dress"—that is, a half-fitting jacket, a skirt reaching to the ankles, and full Turkish trousers gathered into frills, which fell over the boots—"a thoroughly serviceable and feminine costume for mountaineering and other rough travelling in any part of the world." Throwing over these habiliments a dust-cloak, she rode through Truckee, and then followed up the windings of the Truckee river—a loud-tongued, rollicking mountain-stream, flowing between ranges of great castellated and embattled sierras. Through the blue gloom of a pine-forest she gallantly made her way, charmed by the magic of the scenery that opened out before her. "Crested blue-jays darted through the dark pines, squirrels in hundreds scampered through the forest, red dragon-flies flashed like 'living light,' exquisite chipmonks ran across the track, but only a dusty blue legion here and there reminded one of earth's fairer children. Then the river became broad and still, and mirrored in its transparent depths regal pines, straight as an arrow, with rich yellow and green lichen clinging to their stems, and firs and balsam pines filling up the spaces between them. The gorge opened, and this mountain-girdled lake lay before me, with its margin broken up into bays and promontories, most picturesquely clothed by huge sugar-pines."

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From Lake Tabor Miss Bird returned to Truckee, and started on another excursion which brought her within view of the Great Salt Lake and the Mormon town of Ogden, and thence to Cheyenne, in the State of Wyoming. Having thus crossed the mountain-range of the Sierras and descended into the plains, she entered upon the region of the

"boundless prairies—great stretches of verdure, generally level, but elsewhere rolling in long undulations, like the waves of a sea which had fallen asleep." Their monotony is broken by large villages of the so-called prairie dogs, the Wishton-Wish, a kind of marmot, which owes its misleading name to its short, sharp bark. The villages are composed of raised circular orifices, about eighteen inches in diameter, from which a number of inclined passages slope downwards for five or six feet. "Hundreds of these burrows are placed together. On nearly every rim a small furry, reddish-buff beast sat on his hind legs, looking, so far as head went, much like a young seal. These creatures were acting as sentinels, and sunning themselves. As we passed each gave a warning yelp, shook its tail, and, with a ludicrous flourish of his hind legs, dived into its hole. The appearance of hundreds of these creatures, each eighteen inches long, sitting like dogs begging, with their paws down and all turned sunwards, is most grotesque."

At Greeley Miss Bird entered Colorado, which she describes, as we have seen, in such a manner as to suggest that it rivals Dr. Richardson's imaginary

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"Hygeia" in all essential particulars. From Greeley she hastened to Fort Collins, with the grand masses of the Rocky Mountains facing her as she advanced. Still across the boundless sea-like prairie struck the indefatigable traveller, until she came to a sort of tripartite valley, with a majestic crooked cañon, 2,000 feet deep, and watered by a roaring stream, where in a rude log-cabin she abode for several days. Having obtained a horse she rode across the highlands, and striking up the St. Vrain Canyon ascended to Esteo Park, 7,500 feet above the sea-level.

To understand the majesty of the Rocky Mountains, the reader must think of them as a mass of summits, frequently 200 and 250 miles wide, stretching, with scarcely any interruption of continuity, almost from the Arctic Circle to the Straits of Magellan. At the point ascended by Miss Bird their scenery was of the grandest description

—wonderful ascents, wild fantastic views, cool and bowery shades, romantic glens echoing melodiously with the fall of waters. But it is only fair that Miss Bird should be heard on her own account:—

"A tremendous ascent among rocks and pines to a height of 9,000 feet brought us to a passage seven feet wide through a wall of rock, with an abrupt descent of 2,000 feet, and a yet higher ascent beyond. I never saw anything so strange as looking back. It was a single gigantic ridge which we had passed through, standing up knife-like, built up entirely of great brick-shaped masses of bright-red rock, piled one on another by Titans.

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Pitch-pines grew out of these crevices, but there was not a vestige of soil. Beyond, wall beyond wall of similar construction, and range above range, rose into the blue sky. Fifteen miles more over great ridges, along passes dark with shadow, and so narrow that we had to ride in the beds of the streams which had excavated them, round the bases of colossal pyramids of rock crested with pines, up into fair upland 'parks' scarlet in patches with the poison oak, parks so beautifully arranged by nature that I momentarily expected to come upon some stately mansion; but that afternoon, crested blue jays and chipmonks had them all to themselves. Here, in the early morning, deer, bighorn, and the stately elk come down to feed; and there, in the night, prowl and growl the Rocky Mountain lion, the grizzly bear, and the cowardly wolf. There were chasms of immense depth, dark with the indigo gloom of pines, and mountains with snow gleaming on their splintered crests, loveliness to bewilder and grandeur to awe, and still streams and shady pools, and cool depths of shadow; mountains again, dense with pines, among which patches of aspen gleamed like gold; valleys where the yellow cottonwood mingled with the crimson oak, and so, on and on through the lengthening shadows till the track, which in places had been hardly legible, became well defined, and we entered a long gulch with broad swellings of grass belted with pines."[41]

Long's Peak, the "American Matterhorn," 14,700 feet

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high, has seldom been ascended, and Miss Bird is the first woman who has had the courage and resolution to reach its summit. Her party consisted of herself, two youths, the sons of a certain Dr. H., and "Mountain Jim,"

one of the famous scouts of the plain, an expert in Indian border warfare, who acted as guide. The ride at first was one long series of glories and surprises, of peak and glade, of lake and stream, and of mountain upon mountain, culminating in the shivered pinnacles of Long's Peak. And as the sun slowly sank, the pines stood out darkling against the golden sky, the grey peaks took upon their crests a glory of crimson and purple, a luminous mist of changing colours filled every glen, gorge, and canyon, while the echoes softly repeated that peculiar sough or murmur which accompanies the departing day. Our adventurer, with heart touched by the magical beauty and magnificence of the scene, crossed a steep wooded incline into a deep hollow, where, embosomed in the mountain-solitude, slept a lily-covered lake, cradling white, pure blossoms and broad green leaves, and aptly named "The Lake of the Lilies." Calm on its amethyst-coloured waters lay the tremulous shadow of the great dark pine woods.

Thence she and her companions passed again into the leafy wilderness which clothes the mountain side up to a height of about 11,000 feet, cheered, as they climbed slowly upwards on their laborious path, by delightful vistas of "golden atmospheres and rose-lit summits," such as broke upon the dreams of him who created in

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his fancy the Garden of Armida; upward and onward through the dusky shade, which in itself may well impress a quick imagination. It is the silence of the forest that makes its mystery. The only sounds are those of the branches swaying in the breeze, or of a bough crashing to the ground through decay, or the occasional voices of the wandering birds; and these seem but to increase the silence by their inadequateness of contrast. Alone in this profundity of gloom it is difficult for the traveller to resist the sense and feeling of a supernatural Presence, and he comes to understand in what way such eerie legends and grim traditions have grown up about the forest, and why to the early races its still depths seemed haunted by the creatures of another world.

Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep

Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades

Like vaporous shapes half seen;—

and the forest is peopled with the phantoms that are born of Silence and Twilight.

As they ascended they found that the pines grew smaller and more sparse, and the last stragglers wore "a tortured, waning look." The forest threshold was crossed; but yet a little higher a slope of mountain meadow dipped to the south-west, towards a bright stream trickling under ice and icicles; and there, in a grove of the beautiful silver spruce, our travellers resolved to encamp for the night. The trees were small of size, but so exquisitely arranged that one might well

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ask what artist's hand had planted them—scattering them here, grouping them there, and training their shapely spires towards heaven. "Hereafter," says Miss Bird, "when I call up memories of the glorious, the view from this camping-ground will come up. Looking east, gorges opened to the distant plains, there fading into purple-grey.

Mountains with pine-clothed skirts rose in ranges, or, solitary, uplifted their grey summits; while close behind, but nearly 3,000 feet above us, towered the bald white crest of Long's Peak, its huge precipices red with the light of a sun long lost to our eyes. Close to us, in the caverned side of the peak, was snow that, owing to its position, is eternal. Soon the after-glow came on, and before it faded a big half-moon hung out of the heavens, shining through the silver-blue foliage of the pines on the frigid background of snow, and turning the whole into fairyland."

This passage shows—what, indeed, is sufficiently evident in every page of Miss Bird's travel-books—that she possesses, as every traveller ought to possess, the artist's temperament, and that if she cannot transfer the scenes she loves to the canvas, she knows how to reproduce them in words that have the glow of light and life. A sense of the beautiful, and a power of expressing that sense so as to make it felt by others, is the primary and indispensable qualification of the traveller. He must have eyes to see and ears to hear; and that his fellow may be the wiser, better, and happier for his enterprise, he must have the faculty of describing

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what he has seen and heard in language of adequate force and clearness.

With a great fire of pine-logs to protect them against the rigour of the night—for the thermometer marked twelve degrees below freezing-point—our travellers passed the hours of darkness. When the sun rose, they too arose; and it was well to do so, as sunrise from a mountain top is such a spectacle of glory as few eyes have the happiness to look upon. From the chill grey peak above them, with its eternal snows and pathless forests, down to the plains which spread below like a cold and waveless sea, everything underwent a strange and marvellously beautiful transformation; for, as the sun rose above the horizon in all the fulness of its orbed splendour, the grey of the plains flushed into purple, the wan peaks gleamed like rubies, the pines shone like so many columns of gold, and the sky reddened with rose-hues like the blush on a fair face. After breakfast the party resumed their ascent of the mountain, and in due time arrived at the "Notch"—a literal gate of rock—when they found themselves on the knife-like ridge or backbone of Long's Peak, only a few feet wide, covered with huge boulders, and on the other side shelving in a snow-patched precipice of 3,000 feet to a picturesque hollow, brightened by an emerald lake.

"Passing through the 'Notch,'" says Miss Bird, "we looked along the nearly inaccessible side of the peak, composed of boulders and débris of all shapes and sizes,

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through which appeared broad, smooth ribs of reddish-coloured granite, looking as if they upheld the towering rock-mass above. I usually dislike bird's-eye and panoramic views, but, though from a mountain, this was not one.

Serrated ridges, not much lower than that on which we stood, rose, one beyond another, far as that pure atmosphere could carry the vision, broken into awful chasms deep with ice and snow, rising into pinnacles piercing the heavenly blue with their cold, barren grey, on, on for ever, till the most distant range upbore unsullied snow alone. There were fair lakes mirroring the dark pine woods, canyons dark and blue, black with unbroken expanses of pines, snow-slashed pinnacles, wintry heights frowning upon lovely parks, watered and wooded, lying in the lap of summer; North Park floating off into the blue distance, Middle Park closed till another season, the sunny slopes of Esteo Park, and winding down among the mountains the snowy ridge of the Divide (the backbone, or water-shed of the Rocky Mountains), whose bright waters seek both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. There, far below, links of diamonds showed where the grand river takes its rise to seek the mysterious Colorado, with its still unsolved enigma, and lose itself in the waters of the Pacific; and nearer, the snow-born Thompson bursts forth from the ice to begin its journey to the Gulf of Mexico. Nature, rioting in her grandest mood, exclaimed with voices of grandeur, solitude, sublimity, beauty, and infinity, 'Lord, what is man, that Thou art

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mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?'"[42]

At the "Notch" the true character of the enterprise she had undertaken was forcibly brought home to Miss Bird's consciousness. The Peak towered above her, two thousand feet of solid rock, with smooth granite sides, affording scarcely a foothold, and patches of re-frozen snow, presenting no ordinary obstacle to the advance. She was by no means an expert mountaineer, having "neither head nor ankles," and, in reality, she was dragged or hauled up the ascent by the patience, skill, and strength of "Mountain Jim." Up a deep ravine they attained to the passage of the

"Dog's Lift," through which they emerged on a narrow, rugged shelf, broken and uneven, forming a kind of terrace or platform, where they drew breath before attempting the last 500 feet—the terminal peak itself, a smooth cone of pure granite with almost perpendicular sides. The only foothold here was in narrow cracks or on minute projections of the granite. To get a toe in these cracks or on one or other of these scarcely visible projections, while crawling on hands and knees, weary, thirst-tortured, and gasping for breath, this was to climb; but at last the peak was won, and Miss Bird rejoiced in the consciousness of being the first woman who had ever placed her feet on its lofty summit.

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The descent, as far as the "Notch," was not less laborious or painful than the upward effort had been; and when Miss Bird reached their former camping-ground she was thoroughly exhausted with fatigue and thirst. But a night's rest recruited her remarkable energies, and when the morning dawned she was fresh and vigorous as ever, and happy in the memory of her successful enterprise—an enterprise such as few women have ever equalled—and in recollections of the beauty and sublimity of Long's Peak, which cannot fail to be "joys for ever."

The "parks" of which we have spoken are broad, grassy valleys, lying at heights which vary from 6,000 to 11,000

feet. They are the favourite retreats of innumerable animals—wapiti, bighorn, oxen, mountain lions, the great grizzly, the wary beaver, the evil-smelling skunk, the craven wolf, cayote and lynx, to say nothing of lesser breeds, such as marten, wild cat, fox, mink, hare, chipmonk, and squirrel. Their features have been fully described by Lord Dunraven in his picturesque book, "The Great Divide."

Miss Bird's animated pages present so many delightful pictures of mountain scenery that we know not which to choose in illustration of her remarkable descriptive powers. We have already alluded to her faculty of pictorial presentment; it is one in which few of her sex surpass her; she puts a scene before us with as much life and distinctness as a Constable or a Peter Graham, and the reader, who would form a clear and well-defined

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conception of the Rocky Mountains in their picturesque aspects, cannot do better than study her little but delightful book. While reading it one seems to feel the pure, keen, mountain air around one; to see the great peaks rising one above the other like the towers and spires of some vast cathedral of nature; to watch the ever-shifting phantasmagoria of gorgeous colour that rolls over the landscape from sunrise to sunset, and in the hush of the moonlit night disappears before the silver radiance of the nascent orb; to hear the fall of the mountain streams, and to catch the breath of the fragrant wind that comes from the pine-forest loaded with fragrance and freshness and subtle odours.

Traversing Colorado, in the neighbourhood of the Plate River, she tells us that she "rode up one great ascent, where hills were tumbled about confusedly; and suddenly, across the broad ravine, above the sunny grass and the deep-green pines, rose in glowing and shaded red against the glittering blue heaven, a magnificent and unearthly range of mountains, as shapely as could be seen, rising into colossal points, cleft by deep blue ravines, broken up into shark's teeth, with gigantic knobs and pinnacles rising from their inaccessible sides, very fair to look upon—a glowing, heavenly, unforgettable sight, and only four miles off. Mountains they looked not of this earth, but such as one sees in dreams alone, the blessed ranges of 'the land which is very far off.' They were more brilliant than those incredible colours in which painters array

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the fiery hills of Moab and the Desert, and one could not believe them for ever uninhabited, for on them rose, as in the East, the similitude of stately fortresses, not the grey castellated towers of feudal Europe, but gay, massive, Saracenic architecture, the outgrowth of the solid rock. They were vast ranges, apparently of enormous height, their colour indescribable, deepest and reddest near the pine-draped bases, then gradually softening into wonderful tenderness, till the highest summits rose all flushed, and with an illusion of transparency, so that one might believe that they were taking on the hue of sunset. Below these lay broken ravines of fantastic rocks, cleft and canyoned by the river, with a tender unearthly light over all, the apparent warmth of a glowing clime, while I on the north side was in the shadow among the pure unsullied snow.

"'With us the damp, the chill, the gloom;

With them the sunset's rosy bloom.'

"The dimness of earth with me, the light of heaven with them. Here, again, worship seemed the only attitude for a human spirit, and the question was ever present, 'Lord, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?' I rode up and down hills laboriously in snow-drifts, getting off often to ease my faithful Birdie by walking down ice-clad slopes, stopping constantly to feast my eyes upon that changeless glory, always seeing some new ravine, with its depths of colour or miraculous brilliancy of red

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or phantasy of form. Then below, where the trail was locked into a deep canyon, where there was scarcely room for it and the river, there was a beauty of another kind in solemn gloom. There the stream curved and twisted marvellously, widening into shallows, narrowing into deep boiling eddies, with pyramidal firs and the beautiful silver spruce fringing its banks, and often falling across it in artistic grace, the gloom chill and deep, with only now and then a light trickling through the pines upon the cold snow, when, suddenly turning round, I saw behind, as if in the glory of an eternal sunset, those flaming and fantastic peaks. The effect of the combination of winter and summer was singular. The trail rose on the north side the whole time, and the snow lay deep and pure white, while not a wreath of it lay on the south side, where abundant lawns basked in the warm sun."[43]

There is something in the majesty of mountain scenery, in the lofty peaks, the shadowy ravines, and the tremendous precipices; in the glow and light and glory which the sun pours out upon the heights, and the strange gloom and haunted darkness which sleep in the mysterious depths, that deeply impresses the imagination and the thoughts of men, and appeals to that higher, purer nature which too often lies dormant in us. However unmoved we may be by the ordinary sights and

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sounds which fill up the landscapes, we are most of us hushed and breathless among the mountains, mutely acknowledging the manifestations of a Presence and a Power which are not of the earth—earthy. As the rose of dawn blushes on each waving crest in the birth-hour of the day, or the purple splendour invests them in regal robes when the sun goes down, they seem to reveal to us a vision of the other world; those changing lights that fall upon them are surely the passing gleams of wings of angels; those mystic voices that linger among their echoes, what can they be but the divine chords of that glorious harmony which for ever goes up around the "great white throne"?

Let us now glance at one or two of the personal experiences of Miss Bird, who, we need hardly say, carried in her bosom a man's heart, and was never wanting in courage or resolution. Among the Rocky Mountains one sometimes meets with strange companions; and on her ride from Hall's Gulch to Deer Valley Miss Bird was joined by a horseman, who would have made a fine hero of melodrama. A picturesque figure he looked on his good horse, with his long fair curls drooping from under a big slouch hat almost to his waist; a fine beard, good blue eyes, a ruddy complexion, a frank expression of countenance, and a courteous, respectful bearing. He wore a hunter's buckskin suit, ornamented with beads, and a pair of very big brass spurs. His saddle was elaborately ornamented.

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What chiefly drew attention in his equipment was the number of weapons hung about him; he was a small arsenal in himself! Two revolvers and a knife were thrust into his belt, and across his back was slung a carbine; in addition, he had a rifle resting on his saddle, and a pair of pistols in the holsters.

This martial rider was Comanche Bill, whom gossip described as one of the most notorious desperadoes of the Rocky Mountains, and the greatest Indian "exterminator" on the frontier. His father and family had been massacred at Spirit Lake by the hands of Indians, who carried away his sister, a child of eleven. Since then he had mainly devoted himself to the double task of revenging the victims and searching for this missing sister.

Riding from Golden City, a place which every day and every hour gave the lie to its gorgeous name, Miss Bird lost her way on the prairie. A teamster bade her go forward to a place where three tracks would be seen, and then to take the best-travelled one, steering all the time by the north star. Following his directions she came to tracks, but it was then so dark she could see nothing, and soon the darkness so increased that she could not see even her horse's ears, and was lost and benighted. Hour after hour our heroine—for a lady who crosses the Rocky Mountains alone may surely claim the title!—rode onward in the darkness and solitude, the prairie sweeping all around her, and a firmament of frosty stars glittering overhead. At

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intervals might be heard the howl of the prairie wolf, and the occasional lowing of cattle gave her hope of the neighbourhood of man. But there was nothing but the wild and lonely plain, and she felt a keen desire to see a light or hear a voice, the solitude was so oppressive. It was very cold, and a hard frost lay on the ground. At last, however, she heard the bark of a dog, and then the too common sound of a man swearing; she saw a light, and in another minute found herself at a large house eleven miles from Denver, where a hospitable reception cheered the belated traveller.

Here is another and more startling episode, which occurred during her journey from Esteo "Park" to Longmount, a ride of 100 miles on a bitter cold December morning:—

"We all got up before daybreak on Tuesday, and breakfasted at seven.... I took only two pounds of luggage, some raisins, the mail bag, and an additional blanket under my saddle.... The purple sun rose in front. Had I known what made it purple I should certainly have gone no farther. These clouds, the morning mist as I supposed, lifted themselves up rose-lighted, showing the sun's disc as purple as one of the jars in a chemist's window, and having permitted this glimpse of their king, came down again as a dense mist; the wind chopped round, and the mist began to freeze hard. Soon Birdie and myself

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were a mass of acicular crystals; it was a true easterly fog. I galloped on, hoping to get through it, unable to see a yard before me; but it thickened, and I was obliged to subside into a jog-trot. As I rode on, about four miles from the cabin, a human figure, looking gigantic like the spectre of the Brocken, with long hair white as snow, appeared close to me, and at the same moment there was the flash of a pistol close to my ear, and I recognized 'Mountain Jim,' frozen from head to foot, looking a century old with his snowy hair. It was 'ugly' altogether, certainly a

'desperado's' grim jest, and it was best to accept it as such, though I had just cause for displeasure. He stormed and scolded, dragged me off the pony—for my hands and feet were numb with cold—took the bridle, and went off at a rapid stride, so that I had to run to keep them in sight in the darkness, for we were off the road in a thicket of scrub, looking like white branch-coral, I knew not where. Then we came suddenly on his cabin ... and the 'ruffian'

insisted on my going in, and he made a good fire, and heated some coffee, raging all the time.... He took me back to the track; and the interview, which began with a pistol-shot, ended quite pleasantly. It was an eerie ride, one not to be forgotten, though there was no danger."

It would be difficult to point out any deficiency on Miss Bird's part in those qualifications which constitute a great traveller. Physically as well as mentally she seems to have proved herself the equal of men.

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Endurance, courage, promptitude, decision, the capacity for quiet and accurate observation, the ready adaptability to circumstances—she possessed all these high virtues. Her "Ride in the Rocky Mountains" shows what may be accomplished by a brave, strong woman under very difficult conditions. In one respect, perhaps, her sex was an advantage; it appears to have ensured her an uniform courtesy of treatment and cordiality of reception in the most remote places and among the wildest and most reckless men; but it is obvious that in other respects it must frequently have been found an inconvenience and even a danger, had it not been for her true patience, her unfailing good humour, and her indomitable "pluck."

Miss Bird is also the author of a charming book on Hawaii, and a not less charming record of her wanderings in

"Unbeaten Tracks in Japan."

Time was, and not so very long ago, when a visit to the wilds of Patagonia on the part of an English lady would have been regarded as a wonderful achievement. Now-a-days it excites but little comment The interest excited by Lady Florence Dixie's book, "Across Patagonia," was the legitimate interest inspired by her fresh and lively description of "unexplored and untrodden ground," and not the idle curiosity which a sensational achievement sometimes excites. If one lady can make a voyage round the world, why should not another ride across Patagonia?

To our grandmothers a French or

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Italian tour was an event of novelty and importance; but nous avons changé tout cela. It is quite understo