Helen Hunt Jackson

“ Up to within an eighth of a mile of Garland City, there is no trace of human habitation. Knowing that the city must be near, you look in all directions for a glimpse of it; the hills ahead of you rise sharply across your way. ”

“ When they reached Pueblo nothing could be heard of the box; she made up her mind that it was lost, and pushed on with Tommy to Los Animas, where she went to work in a hotel for twenty dollars a month, and Tommy found a place as sheep-herder for fifteen dollars a month. Putting their wages together they soon got a little money ahead, enough to enable them to journey into the San Juan country to Lake City. The higher into the mountains they went, the stronger Tommy grew. He would climb the hills like a goat, and delighted in the wild out-door life ”

“ From one track, running along the edge of a precipice, you look up to another which you are presently to reach; it lies high on the mountain-side, four hundred feet above your head, yet it looks hardly more than a stone's throw across the ravine between. The curve by which you are to climb up this hill is a thirty-degree curve. To the non-professional mind it will perhaps give a clearer idea of the curve to say that it is shaped like a mule-shoe—a much narrower shoe than a horse-shoe. The famous horse-shoe curve on the Pennsylvania Railroad is broad and easy in comparison with this. ”

“ One of the most picturesque sights which the traveler in southern Colorado, during the past two or three years, has seen has been the groups of white-topped wagons creeping westward toward the passes of this range; sometimes thirty or forty together, each wagon drawn by ten, fifteen or even twenty mules; the slow-moving processions look like caravan lines in a desert; two, three, four weeks on the road, carrying in people by households; carrying in food, and bringing out silver by the ton ”

“ Louder and louder sounded the chorus of the hammers as we drew near the center of the "city"; more and more the bustle thickened; great ox-teams, swaying unwieldily about, drawing logs and planks; backing up steep places; all sorts of vehicles driving at reckless speed up and down; men carrying doors; men walking along inside of window sashes,—the easiest way to carry them; men shoveling; men wheeling wheelbarrows; not a man standing still; not a man with empty hands; every man picking up something, and running to put it down somewhere else, as in a play, and all the while, "clink! ”

“ This sort of thing does not go on for many years before a railroad comes to the rescue. Engineering triumphs where brute force merely evades; the steam-engine has stronger lungs than mules or men; and the journey which was counted by weeks is made in hours. Such a feat as this, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad (narrow gauge) is now performing in Colorado. ”

“ Chairs? Oh no. What do you want of a chair in a bedroom which has a bed in it? Wash-stands? One tin basin out in the unfinished room. Towels? Uncertain.
The little triangular space walled off by the sail-cloth was a sixth bedroom, quite private and exclusive, and the big pile of beds on the dining-room floor was to be made up into seven bedrooms more between the tables after everybody had finished supper.
Luckily for us we found a friend here—a man who has been from the beginning one of Colorado's chief pioneers, and who is never, even in the wildest wilderness, without resources of comfort. ”

“ Hundreds of white tents gleamed out among them: tents with poles; tents made by spreading sail-cloth over the tops of bushes; round tents; square tents; big tents; little tents; and for every tent a camp fire; hundreds of white-topped wagons also, at rest for the night, their great poles propped up by sticks, and their mules and drivers lying and standing in picturesque groups around them. ”

“ Every man became dramatic from the unconscious absorption in his every action. Even the animals seemed playing parts in a spectacle. There were three old sows out with their broods in search of early breakfast, and they wore an expression of alertness and dispatch such as I never before saw in their kind. ”

“ Good water is very scarce in Garland City, as it is, alas, in so many places in Colorado, and an enterprising Irishman is fast lining his pockets by bringing down water from a spring in the hill, north of the town, and selling it for twenty-five cents a barrel. ”

“ How movable a thing is one's standard of comfort! A two-roomed pine shanty, board walls, board floors, board ceilings, board partitions not reaching to the roof, looked to us that night like a palace. ”

“ The wagon rattled along very fast, and the bear raced back and forth on his shelf and shook his chain. Nobody seemed to take any notice of the strange sight; not a man turned his head. One would not have thought wagons with black bears dancing on platforms behind them could have been common sights even in Garland City.
These are only a few of the shifting street scenes I watched that morning. After a time I left my door-step and strolled about in the suburbs of this baby "city." The suburbs were as suburbs always are, more interesting than the thoroughfares ”

“ From Lake City Grandma and Tommy went back to Los Animas, where they made a comfortable living,—Tommy by "hauling" with his wagon and horses, and Grandma by taking in washing.
"We was doing first rate," she said with an expression of something as near regret as her face was capable of, "an' I wish we'd never come away; but Tommy he got in with old man Molan; old man Molan's an old miner; he's a first rate miner they say, too, ef he wa'n't so old—he's going on seventy now; he's mined all over California 'n' made a heap of money in his turn; but he's always fooled it away. ”

“ If we only had a church here, I wouldn't mind about any thing; they say there isn't any Sunday in Colorado, but I tell them God's here the same 's everywhere; and folks that wants to keep Sunday 'll keep Sunday wherever they be; but churches is a help. Hev ye got good churches to the Springs?"
"Oh yes, Grandma," I said, "more than we know what to do with. There are nine different churches there; each man can go to the kind he likes best." ”

“ In Veta they had stayed for a month or two; then they had followed the advancing railroad to Wagon Creek, and now to its present terminus, Garland City.
"They do say there wont be any town here, for more 'n a year or so," she said, looking anxiously at me; "that they're going on way down to the Rio Grande River. But some seems to think there'll always be enough to keep a town going here. I suppose we shall go wherever old man Molan goes, though. Tommy's so took up with him; an' I don't know 's I care; he's a good old man, if he wa'n't so crazy about mining; he's to work building now ”

“ To-day there are one hundred and five, and in a week more there will be two hundred; each man is building his own home, and working night and day to get it done ahead of his neighbor. There are four saw-mills going constantly, but they can't turn out lumber half fast enough Everybody has to be content with a board at a time. ”

“ It seems 's if the snow kep' us warm, 'twa'n't real winter, ye see, if it had been we'd ha' died there all in a heap, froze to death sure. Well, there we had to stay down in that cañon two weeks, a lacking two days, before we could get out. It wa'n't deep with snow all the time, but when the snow went, there was such mud-holes, there couldn't nobody travel, but the first week it snowed pretty much all the time. ”