On The Wings Of The Wind
:
All Around The Moon
Leaving M'Connell and a few other Cambridge men to take charge of the
Great Telescope, Marston and Belfast in little more than an hour after
the receipt of the exciting dispatch, were scudding down the slopes of
Long's Peak by the only possible route--the inclined railroad. This
mode of travelling, however, highly satisfactory as far as it went,
ceased altogether at the mountain foot, at the point where the Dale
River
ormed a junction with Cache la Poudre Creek. But Marston, having
already mapped out the whole journey with some care and forethought, was
ready for almost every emergency. Instinctively feeling that the first
act of the Baltimore Gun Club would be to send a Committee to San
Francisco to investigate matters, he had determined to meet this
deputation on the route, and his only trouble now was to determine at
what point he would be most likely to catch them. His great start, he
knew perfectly well, could not put him more than a day in advance of
them: they having the advantage of a railroad nearly all the way, whilst
himself and Belfast could not help losing much time in struggling
through ravines, canyons, mountain precipices, and densely tangled
forests, not to mention the possibility of a brush or two with prowling
Indians, before they could strike the line of the Pacific Railroad,
along which he knew the Club men to be approaching. After a few hours
rest at La Porte, a little settlement lately started in the valley,
early in the morning they took the stage that passed through from Denver
to Cheyenne, a town at that time hardly a year old but already
flourishing, with a busy population of several thousand inhabitants.
Losing not a moment at Cheyenne, where they arrived much sooner than
they had anticipated, they took places in Wells, Fargo and Co.'s
Overland Stage Mail bound east, and were soon flying towards Julesburg
at the rate of twelve miles an hour. Here Marston was anxious to meet
the Club men, as at this point the Pacific Railroad divided into two
branches--one bearing north, the other south of the Great Salt Lake
--and he feared they might take the wrong one.
But he arrived in Julesburg fully 10 hours before the Committee, so that
himself and Belfast had not only ample time to rest a little after their
rapid flight from Long's Peak, but also to make every possible
preparation for the terrible journey of more than fifteen hundred miles
that still lay before them.
This journey, undertaken at a most unseasonable period of the year, and
over one of the most terrible deserts in the world, would require a
volume for itself. Constantly presenting the sharpest points of contrast
between the most savage features of wild barbaric nature on the one
hand, and the most touching traits of the sweetest humanity on the
other, the story of our Club men's adventures, if only well told, could
hardly fail to be highly interesting. But instead of a volume, we can
give it only a chapter, and that a short one.
From Julesburg, the last station on the eastern end of the Pacific
Railroad, to Cisco, the last station on its western end, the distance is
probably about fifteen hundred miles, about as far as Constantinople is
from London, or Moscow from Paris. This enormous stretch of country had
to be travelled all the way by, at the best, a six horse stage tearing
along night and day at a uniform rate, road or no road, of ten miles an
hour. But this was the least of the trouble. Bands of hostile Indians
were a constant source of watchfulness and trouble, against which even a
most liberal stock of rifles and revolvers were not always a
reassurance. Whirlwinds of dust often overwhelmed the travellers so
completely that they could hardly tell day from night, whilst blasts of
icy chill, sweeping down from the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains,
often made them imagine themselves in the midst of the horrors of an
Arctic winter.
The predominant scenery gave no pleasure to the eye or exhilaration to
the mind. It was of the dreariest description. Days and days passed with
hardly a house to be seen, or a tree or a blade of grass. I might even
add, or a mountain or a river, for the one was too often a heap of
agglomerated sand and clay cut into unsightly chasms by the rain, and
the other generally degenerated into a mere stagnant swamp, its
shallowness and dryness increasing regularly with its length. The only
houses were log ranches, called Relays, hardly visible in their sandy
surroundings, and separate from each other by a mean distance of ten
miles. The only trees were either stunted cedars, so far apart, as to be
often denominated Lone Trees; and, besides wormwood, the only plant was
the sage plant, about two feet high, gray, dry, crisp, and emitting a
sharp pungent odor by no means pleasant.
In fact, Barbican and his companions had seen nothing drearier or
savager in the dreariest and savagest of lunar landscapes than the
scenes occasionally presented to Marston and his friends in their
headlong journey on the track of the great Pacific Railroad. Here,
bowlders, high, square, straight and plumb as an immense hotel, blocked
up your way; there, lay an endless level, flat as the palm of your hand,
over which your eye might roam in vain in search of something green like
a meadow, yellow like a cornfield, or black like ploughed ground--a mere
boundless waste of dirty white from the stunted wormwood, often rendered
misty with the clouds of smarting alkali dust.
Occasionally, however, this savage scenery decidedly changed its
character. Now, a lovely glen would smile before our travellers,
traversed by tinkling streams, waving with sweet grasses, dotted with
little groves, alive with hares, antelopes, and even elks, but
apparently never yet trodden by the foot of man. Now, our Club men felt
like travelling on clouds, as they careered along the great plateau
west of the Black Hills, fully 8,000 feet above the level of the sea,
though even there the grass was as green and fresh as if it grew in some
sequestered valley of Pennsylvania. Again,
"In this untravelled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever as they moved,"
they would find themselves in an immense, tawny, treeless plain,
outlined by mountains so distant as to resemble fantastic cloud piles.
Here for days they would have to skirt the coasts of a Lake, vast,
unruffled, unrippled, apparently of metallic consistency, from whose
sapphire depths rose pyramidal islands to a height of fully three
thousand feet above the surface.
In a few days all would change. No more sand wastes, salt water flats,
or clouds of blinding alkali dust. The travellers' road, at the foot of
black precipitous cliffs, would wind along the brink of a roaring
torrent, whose devious course would lead them into the heart of the
Sierras, where misty peaks solemnly sentinelled the nestling vales still
smiling in genial summer verdure. Across these they were often whirled
through immense forests of varied character, here dense enough to
obscure the track, there swaying in the sweet sunlight and vocal with
joyous birds of bright and gorgeous plumage. Then tropical vegetation
would completely hide the trail, crystal lakes would obstruct it,
cascades shooting down from perpendicular rocks would obliterate it,
mountain passes barricaded by basaltic columns would render it
uncertain, and on one occasion it was completely covered up by a fall of
snow to a depth of more than twenty feet.
But nothing could oppose serious delay to our travellers. Their motto
was ever "onward!" and what they lost in one hour by some mishap they
endeavored to recover on the next by redoubled speed. They felt that
they would be no friends of Barbican's if they were discouraged by
impossibilities. Besides, what would have been real impossibilities at
another time, several concurrent circumstances now rendered
comparatively easy.
The surveys, the gradings, the cuttings, and the other preliminary
labors in the great Pacific Railroad, gave them incalculable aid.
Horses, help, carriages, provisions were always in abundance. Their
object being well known, they had the best wishes of every hand on the
road. People remained up for them all hours of the night, no matter at
what station they were expected. The warmest and most comfortable of
meals were always ready for them, for which no charge would be taken on
any account. In Utah, a deputation of Mormons galloped alongside them
for forty miles to help them over some points of the road that had been
often found difficult. The season was the finest known for many years.
In short, as an old Californian said as he saw them shooting over the
rickety bridge that crossed the Bear River at Corinne: "they had
everything in their favor--luck as well as pluck!"
The rate at which they performed this terrible ride across the
Continent and the progress they made each day, some readers may consider
worthy of a few more items for the sake of future reference. Discarding
the ordinary overland mail stage as altogether too slow for their
purpose, they hired at Julesburg a strong, well built carriage, large
enough to hold them all comfortably; but this they had to replace twice
before they came to their journey's end. Their team always consisted of
the best six horses that could be found, and their driver was the famous
Hank Monk of California, who, happening to be in Julesburg about that
time, volunteered to see them safely landed in Cisco on the summit of
the Sierra Nevada. They were enabled to change horses as near as
possible every hour, by telegraphing ahead in the morning, during the
day, and often far into the hours of night.
Starting from Julesburg early in the morning of the 17th, their first
resting place for a few hours at night was Granite Canyon, twenty miles
west of Cheyenne, and just at the foot of the pass over the Black Hills.
On the 18th, night-fall found them entering St. Mary's, at the further
end of the pass between Rattle Snake Hills and Elk Mountain. It was
after 5 o'clock and already dark on the 19th, when the travellers,
hurrying with all speed through the gloomy gorge of slate formation
leading to the banks of the Green River, found the ford too deep to be
ventured before morning. The 20th was a clear cold day very favorable
for brisk locomotion, and the bright sun had not quite disappeared
behind the Wahsatch Mountains when the Club men, having crossed the
Bear River, began to leave the lofty plateau of the Rocky Mountains by
the great inclined plane marked by the lines of the Echo and the Weber
Rivers on their way to the valley of the Great American Desert.
Quitting Castle Rock early on the morning of the 21st, they soon came in
sight of the Great Salt Lake, along the northern shores of which they
sped all day, taking shelter after night-fall at Terrace, in a miserable
log cabin surrounded by piles of drifting sand. The 22d was a terrible
day. The sand was blinding, the alkali dust choking, the ride for five
or six hours was up considerable grade; still they had accomplished
their 150 miles before resting for the night at Elko, even at this
period a flourishing little village on the banks of the Humboldt. After
another smothering ride on the 23d, they rested, at Winnemucca, another
flourishing village, situated at the precise point in the desert where
the Little Humboldt joins Humboldt River, without, however, making the
channel fuller or wider. The 24th was decidedly the hardest day, their
course lying through the worst part of the terrible Nevada desert. But a
glimpse of the Sierras looming in the western horizon gave them courage
and strength enough to reach Wadsworth, at their foot, a little before
midnight. Our travellers had now but one day's journey more to make
before reaching the railroad at Cisco, but, this being a very steep
ascent nearly all the way up, each mile cost almost twice as much time
and exertion.
At last, late in the evening of Christmas Day, amidst the most
enthusiastic cheers of all the inhabitants of Cisco, who welcomed them
with a splendid pine brand procession, Marston and his friends,
thoroughly used up, feet swelled, limbs bruised, bones aching, stomachs
seasick, eyes bleared, ears ringing, and brains on fire for want of
rest, took their places in the State Car waiting for them, and started
without a moment's delay for Sacramento, about a hundred miles distant.
How delicious was the change to our poor travellers! Washed, refreshed,
and lying at full length on luxurious sofas, their sensations, as the
locomotive spun them down the ringing grooves of the steep Sierras, can
be more easily imagined than described. They were all fast asleep when
the train entered Sacramento, but the Mayor and the other city
authorities who had waited up to receive them, had them carried
carefully, so as not to disturb their slumbers, on board the Yo
Semite, a fine steamer belonging to the California Navigation Company,
which landed them safely at San Francisco about noon on the 26th, after
accomplishing the extraordinary winter journey of 1500 miles over land
in little more than nine days, only about 200 miles being done by steam.
Half-past two P.M. found our travellers bathed, dressed, shaved, dined,
and ready to receive company in the grand parlor of the Occidental
Hotel. Captain Bloomsbury was the first to call.
Marston hobbled eagerly towards him and asked:
"What have you done towards fishing them up, Captain?"
"A good deal, Mr. Marston; indeed almost everything is ready."
"Is that really the case, Captain?" asked all, very agreeably surprised.
"Yes, gentlemen, I am most happy to state that I am quite in earnest."
"Can we start to-morrow?" asked General Morgan. "We have not a moment to
spare, you know."
"We can start at noon to-morrow at latest," replied the Captain, "if the
foundry men do a little extra work to-night."
"We must start this very day, Captain Bloomsbury," cried Marston
resolutely; "Barbican has been lying two weeks and thirteen hours in the
depths of the Pacific! If he is still alive, no thanks to Marston! He
must by this time have given me up! The grappling irons must be got on
board at once, Captain, and let us start this evening!"
At half-past four that very evening, a shot from the Fort and a lowering
of the Stars and Stripes from its flagstaff saluted the Susquehanna,
as she steamed proudly out of the Golden Gate at the lively rate of
fifteen knots an hour.