BERGENS PARK

This cabin was so dark, and I so sleepy last night, that I could not write; but the frost during the night has been very severe, and I am detained until the bright, hot sun melts the ice and renders traveling safe.  I left the great Manitou at ten yesterday.  Birdie, who was loose in the stable, came trotting down the middle of it when she saw me for her sugar and biscuits No nails could be got, and her shoe was hanging by two, which doomed me to a foot’s-pace and the dismal clink of a loose shoe for three hours.  There was not a cloud on the bright blue sky the whole day, and though it froze hard in the shade, it was summer-heat in the sun.  The mineral fountains were sparkling in their basins are sending up their full perennial jets; but the snow-clad, pine-skirted mountains frowned and darkened over the Ute Pass as I entered it to ascend it for twenty miles.  A narrow pass it is, with barely room for the torrent and the wagon road which has been blasted out of its steep sides.  All the time I was in sight of the Fountain river, brighter than any stream, because it tumbles over rose-red granite, rocky or disintegrated, a truly fair stream, cutting and forcing its way through hard rocks, under arches of alabaster ice, through fringes of crystalline ice, thumping with a hollow sound in cavernous recesses cold and dark, or leaping in foam from heights with rush and swish; always bright and riotous, never pausing in still pools to rest, dashing through gates of rock, pine-hung, pine-bridged, pine-buried; twinkling and laughing in the sunshine, or frowning in “dowie dens” in the blue pine gloom.  And there, for a mile or two in a sheltered spot, owing to the more southern latitude, the everlasting northern pine met the trees of other climates.  There were dwarf oaks, willows, hazel, and spruce; the white cedar and the trailing juniper jostled each other for a precarious foothold; the majestic redwood-tree of the Pacific met the exquisite balsam-pine of the Atlantic slopes, and among them all the pale gold foliage of the large aspen trembled (as the legend goes) in endless remorse.  And above them towered the toothy peaks of the glittering mountains, rising in pure white against the sunny blue grand! glorious! sublime! but not lovable.  I would give all for the luxurious redundance of one Hilo gulch, or for one day of those soft dreamy “skies whose very tears are balm.”

Up ever! the road being blasted out of the red rock which often overhung it, the canyon only from fifteen to twenty feet wide, the thunder of the Fountain, which is crossed eight times,  nearly deafening.  Sometimes the sun struck the road, and then it was absolutely hot; then one entered unsunned gorges where the snow lay deep, and the crowded pines made dark twilight, and the river roared under ice bridges fringed by icicles.  At last the Pass opened out upon a sunlit upland Park, where there was a forge, and with Birdie’s shoe put on, and some shoenails in my purse, I rode on cheerfully, getting food for us both at a ranch belonging to some very pleasant people, who, like all Western folk, when they are not taciturn, asked a legion of questions.  There I met a Colonel Kittridge, who said that he believed his valley, twelve miles off the track, to be the loveliest valley in Colorado, and invited me to his house.  Leaving the road, I went up a long ascent deep in snow, but as it did not seem to be the way, I tied up the pony, and walked on to a cabin at some distance, which I had hardly reached when I found her trotting like a dog by my side, pulling my sleeve and laying her soft gray nose on my shoulder.  Does it all mean sugar?  We had eight miles farther to go-most of the way through a forest, which I always dislike when alone, from the fear of being frightened by something which may appear from behind a tree.  I saw a beautiful white fox, several skunks, some chipmunks and gray squirrels, owls, crows, and crested blue-jays.  As the sun was getting low I reached Bergens Park, which was to put me out of conceit with Estes Park.  Never!  It is long and featureless, and its immediate surroundings are mean.  It reminded me in itself of some dismal Highland strath — Glenshee, possibly.  I looked at it with special interest, as it was the place at which Miss Kingsley had suggested that I might remain.  The evening was glorious, and the distant views were very fine.  A stream fringed with cotton-wood runs through the Park; low ranges come down upon it.  The south end is completely closed up, but at a considerable distance, by the great mass of Pike’s Peak, while far beyond the other end are peaks and towers, wonderful in blue and violet in the lovely evening, and beyond these, sharply defined against the clear green sky, was the serrated ridge of the Snowy Range, said to be 200 miles away.  Bergens Park has been bought by Dr.  Bell, of London, but its present occupant is Mr. Thornton, an English gentleman, who has a worthy married Englishman as his manager.  Mr. Thornton is building a good house, and purposes to build other cabins, with the intention of making the Park a resort for strangers.  I thought of the blue hollow lying solitary at the foot of Long’s Peak, and rejoiced that I had “happened into it.”

The cabin is long, low, mud-roofed, and very dark.  The middle place is full of raw meat, fowls, and gear.  One end, almost dark, contains the cooking-stove, milk, crockery, a long deal table, two benches, and some wooden stools; the other end houses the English manager or partner, his wife, and three children, another cooking-stove, gear of all kinds, and sacks of beans and flour.  They put up a sheet for a partition, and made me a shake-down on the gravel floor of this room.  Ten hired men sat down to meals with us.  It was all very rough, dark, and comfortless, but Mr. T., who is not only a gentleman by birth, but an M.A.  of Cambridge, seems to like it.  Much in this way (a little smoother if a lady is in the case) every man must begin life here.  Seven large dogs-three of them with cats upon their backs-are usually w arming themselves at the fire.

I.L.B.