Tales of the Colorado Pioneers. Alice Polk Hill
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cared he for hot water? ’twas a step beside the door,
To scoop of dirt a handful, and to pluck a wisp of grass,
Some skillful passes, lo! each plate would shame a looking-glass!
That’s how he washed the dishes; next he seized each knife and fork,
And found the ground a substitute for rotten-stone and cork.
When, late at night, he stretched himself on skins of buffaloes,
No couch of down held tenant yet who suffered such repose! ”
Entertainments of various kinds were given, and, though in primitive style, were thoroughly enjoyed. Mr. Fred. Salomon’s dinners, as related, '‘took the shine off of everything.” He was considered the most punctiliously polite man in the settlement, a reputation fairly won and well preserved, as the following story will attest. His was a bachelor’s home, with a bona fide ground floor, and furnished with pine table and three-legged stools. On one occasion he gave a dinner to his lady friends, and it was a meal that would have delighted the most fastidious epicure.
After the repast, the ladies, thinking it time to take their leave, requested Mr. Salomon to bring their wraps. Instead of protesting against the brevity of their stay, he instantly complied with their request, saying, “Certainly,
26 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS.
ladies, certainly; I will with the greastest of pleasure.” When the force of his speech dawned upon him he hastened to apologize, at the same time nervously searching for his handkerchief to mop his perspiring brow. It was long before he heard the last of his after-dinner politeness.
I remember hearing him say that the bachelors of ’59 used newspapers for window shades, and as soon as one became a Benedict, the papers were replaced by curtains. If that is the rule to-day, Mr. Salomon still has newspaper window shades.
“There are stranger things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,”
and Fred, may yet retire behind the curtains before his hair is entirely gray—before he comes to dye.
Clothes will wear out, and the pantaloons that were made to do in a pinch were marvels to those who had not become accustomed to the ways and means of the far West.
“Oft were their breeches with old flour sacks mended,
In which more truth than poetry was blended.”
Buckskin was the fashionable material for all new suits. They were whanged together with leather strings by the miners themselves. Mrs. Crull, then a tailoress, had fol¬ lowed the tide of emigration, with the hope of earning her bread at the trade, found her occupation gone, and turned her shingle to read:
CHAPTER IV.
STAMPEDERS.
Many of the new arrivals were mere surface deposits, having come with Utopian ideas in regard to the wealth of the country, expecting to find great nuggets of yellow metal lying around loose, and streams burdened' with liquid silver. These romantic fortune-seekers soon returned East, anathematizing the country and declaring Pike’s Peak to be an unmitigated swindle, and under the inscription, “Pike’s Peak or Bust,” was written, in larger, blacker letters, “Busted, by Thunder.” The plains for six hundred miles were the theatre of a restless, surging wave of humanity. D. C. Oakes had published a pamphlet, describing and lauding the country. It was the means of inducing many to emigrate. He had returned to the States, and was on his way back with a saw-mill, when he met the stampeders. They said he had “sworn deceitfully”—in other words, had told outrageous falsehoods, which they spelled with three letters, and they threatened to hang him and burn his mill. He met them bravely, by stating the fact of his having invested every dollar he was worth in that mill, which ought to be proof conclusive of his faith in the country. They gave him his life, but had the satisfaction of pelting him with execrating epithets. A little farther on he came to a new- made grave, and on the headstone, which was the storm- polished shoulderblade of a buffalo, was written the fol¬ lowing epitaph:
“ Here lies the body of D. C. Oakes,
Killed for aiding the Pike’s Peak hoax.”
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28 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS.
Mr. Oakes has not yet crossed the range, but still lives to tell of being buried in effigy, and says he felt rather shaky, for “ let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly; ” and they are certainly convinced by this time that they were, to put it mildly, egregiously mistaken.
One of these returning pilgrims, a wag in his way, in¬ formed his friends at home that nothing but unpardon¬ able ignorance stood in the way of his making a fortune in those days. If he had only given the subject a thought he would have known, of course, that domestic animals are always scarce in new countries; but he did not think, and it was another and a wiser man who was foresighted enough to bring hither a cat which he had taught to fol¬ low him. The cat easily sold for five dollars, and then it followed its master and was sold again and again, as the story goes. The returned pilgrim always insisted that if he had brought out a load of cats in his emigrant wagon, he would have made his fortune. He also told a story of one of their party who turned back. He was a man of family, and what is commonly termed a “great homebody,” but he had a thirst for wealth, and he, too, started for the new Eldorado. It was not long before he became very homesick, and one day when they arrived in their wagon at a town on the outskirts of civilization, where it was hoped letters from home would be found awaiting them, finding none, the poor man withdrew to a secluded spot and “lifted up his voice and wept,” so loudly that his companions at a distance heard, and hearing, were filled with great alarm. It sounded to them like the voice of some terrible monster of the plains. One of the party, gifted with more bravery than the rest, sug-
SALTING A MINE. 29
gested that it might be a buffalo calf; whereupon they traced the noise to its source, to the relief of all concerned, except the mourner himself. By common consent, the afflicted man was granted permission to leave the organization. “He stood not upon the order of going,” but went at once, and remains at home to the present day, a very contented being, with no desire ever again to roam to the “far ends of the earth.”
The army of “go-backs” grew greater than the advancing host, and they did many a tale unfold, declaring there was not a thimbleful of gold in the country; it was all a delusion and a snare. They warned the brave and bold who pushed forward to beware of the man who had buckskin patches on his pants; he was a thief, a liar and a villain; he was here, there and everywhere, like the Scriptural adversary, “seeking whom he might devour.” Forewarned is forearmed, and the pilgrims harassed their minds devising how they would avoid this scoundrel of the Rockies. “ Lo and behold,” said my informer, “upon our arrival every man in the mountains wore the confounded rogues’ patches.”
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CHAPTER V.
SALTING A MINE FOR HORACE GREELEY.
In May, 1859, a lone prospector pushed his way into the mountains and made a trail to the now famous Central City region, which until then had “slumbered like a sleeping child.”
“And gold he found in ample store.
But not the solid form it wore;
Twas in the rock, where sweat and toil
Must delve it from its mother soil.”
30 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS.
Gregory Gulch was the name given to the new find. It continues to be a great treasure-house of precious