VIII

CENTRAL CITY AND BLACKHAWK.

CENTRAL CITY,  June 25, 1866.

This place and the adjoining towns of Black Hawk and Nevada are so buried in the wrinkles and crevices of what I have termed the second range of the Rocky Mountains, that I could not fully comprehend their position until last evening, when I went upon the point called Bates Hill, which divides Gregory Gulch from the valley of North Clear Creek. On that station, the maze of mountains and gulches gradually untangled, and the relation of the different mining localities to each other became clear. The South Clear comes down from the snowy range in a southeasterly direction; while Gregory Gulch, rising from it at a general angle of about twenty degrees, extends nearly due west for about three miles, gradually losing itself in minor gulches and ravines among the summits of the mountains.

Black Hawk commences a little below the intersection, and thrusts an arm up either gorge, like the letter Y, except that the left-hand arm has outgrown the other, and flow forms a continuous line of building and business, up Gregory Gulch to Mountain City, which is a connecting link between Black Hawk and Central City. The latter Place continues the line of compact settlement up the bottom of the gulch for a mile further, and almost forms a connection with Nevada City, which occupies the highest Position, near the summit. Black Hawk is exactly eight thousand feet above the sea, and the upper part of Nevada is at least a thousand feet higher.

The view of the intersecting ravines (they can hardly be called valleys, and "gulch" is a mining term) and the steep, ponderous mountains which inclose them, has a certain largeness and breadth of effect, but is by no means picturesque. The timber has been wholly cut away, except upon some of the more distant steeps, where its dark green is streaked with ghastly marks of fire. The great, awkwardly rounded mountains are cut up and down by the lines of paying "lodes," and pitted all over by the holes and heaps of rocks made either by prospectors or to secure claims. Nature seems to be suffering from an attack of confluent small-pox. My experience in California taught me that gold-mining utterly ruins the appearance of a country, and therefore I am not surprised at what I see here. On the contrary, this hideous slashing, tearing, and turning upside down is the surest indication of mineral wealth.

Commencing at Black Hawk, — where the sole pleasant object is the Presbyterian Church, white, tasteful, and charmingly placed on the last step of Bates Hill, above, the chimneys and mills in the uniting ravines, — we mount Gregory Gulch by a rough, winding, dusty road, lined withy crowded wooden buildings: hotels, with pompous names and limited accommodations; drinking saloons, —"lager beer" being a frequent sign; bakeries, log and frame dwelling-houses, idle mills, piles of rusty and useless machinery tumbled by the wayside, and now and then a cottage in the calico style, with all sorts of brackets and carved drop-cornices. In the centre of the gulch rushes a stream of muddy water, sometimes dammed up to broaden the bed and obtain a little more foothold for houses. Beyond the large mill built by ex-General Fitz-John Porter for an unfortunate New York company, who paid a large sum to repeat the experience of the National Government, Black Hawk terminates; but the houses, mills, drinking saloons, and shops continue just the same, and in another half-mile you find yourself in Central City.

This place consists mainly of one street, on the right-hand side of the gulch; the houses on your left, as you ascend, resting on high posts or scaffolding, over the deep bed of the stream. Half-way up there is a single cross-street some three hundred feet in length, where the principal stores are jammed together in an incredibly small space. With one exception, the buildings are frame, dry as tinder at this season; and a fire, starting at the top of the town, with a wind blowing down the ravine, would wipe out the place in half an hour. The whole string of four cities has a curious, rickety, temporary air, with their buildings standing as if on one leg, their big signs and little accommodations, the irregular, wandering, uneven street, and the bald, scarred, and pitted mountains on either side. Everything is odd, grotesque, unusual; but no feature can be called attractive.

I took quarters at the St. Nicholas Hotel, of which I will only say that the board is five dollars per day. The unaccustomed thinness of the air caused me considerable inconvenience at first. I felt a painful giddiness for an hour or two, could scarcely walk twenty steps without halting to take breath, and have had bleeding at the nose for three mornings in succession. This is a common complaint with new-comers, and the old settlers can always recognize such by their bloody pocket-handkerchiefs. The days are hot and rather sultry, but the mornings and evenings are lovely in their freshness, clearness, and the delicious purity of the air. Two things are hardly to be surpassed, — water and sleep. The water is like crystal, icy cold, and so agreeable to the palate that I am tempted to drink it when not thirsty. It is said to contain a slight proportion of alkali, and a common phrase among the people attributes their irregularities to the "thin air and alkali water." The properties of the latter, however, are said to be anaphrodisiac, which is rather an advantage than otherwise, in a new country. As for sleep, I don’t know when I have found it so easy to obtain, or so difficult to relinquish. When I awake in the morning the half-conscious sense that I have been asleep is so luxurious that I immediately sleep again, and each permitted nap is sweeter than the last. The people seem to be remarkably healthy. Incipient disease of the lungs is almost always healed in this high and dry atmosphere, while it is fatal to the more advanced stages. Rheumatism and the mountain-fever are the most usual ailments. There is, at the same time, less tendency to disease, and less recuperative power when a person is once attacked.

In this population of from six to eight thousand souls, one finds representatives of all parts of the United States and Europe. Men of culture and education are plenty, yet not always to be distinguished by their dress or appearance. Society is still agreeably free and unconventional. People are so crowded together, live in so primitive a fashion for the most part, and are, perhaps (many of them), so glad to escape from restraint, that they are more natural, and hence more interesting than in the older States. Owing to the latter cause, no doubt, it is sometimes difficult to recognize the staid New Englander in the sunburnt individual in sombrero and riding-boots, who smokes his pipe, carries his pocket-flask, and tells any amount of rollicking stories. He has simply cast off his assumed shell and is himself; and I must confess I like him all the better.

Last Saturday night, at Black Hawk, at the close of lecture in the pretty church already mentioned, a gentleman came to me and said: "It was a long way from here where we last met." He had a familiar face, but I could not at once detach it from the tens of thousands in my memory. "Do you remember," he asked, "riding into Kautokeino, in Lapland, one cold winter night, in a reindeer sled?" "It is impossible!" I exclaimed, recognizing Herr Berger, the Norwegian merchant, who took me in his house in that Arctic solitude, after twenty hours of frozen travel among the wastes of snow! It was he himself, come all the way from Hammerfest, in latitude 71°, to be, first a soldier in the Union Army, and now a miner in Colorado! He visited me yesterday, and we had a long talk about old times and mutual friends inside of the Arctic Circle. In three years he had lost every characteristic of the hyperborean, except an intense longing for the perpetual daylight of the Arctic summer.

The day before, I was suddenly accosted by a fellow-voyager from China to New York, via St. Helena; who, after enduring the horrors of Southern prisons, has come here to recruit as a mountaineer.

Perhaps the "thin air and alkali water" may account for the rage for owning "claims" and "lodes," which seems to possess all classes of the community. Every man you meet has his pocket full of "specimens." When you are introduced to a stranger he produces a piece of "blossom rock," a "sulphuret," or a "chloride." The landlord of the hotel where you stop confidentially informs you that he owns 25,000 feet —"the richest lode in the country —assays $1300 to the cord, sir!" The clerk is the happy possessor of 10,000 feet; the porter (where there is any) has at least 5000; while the chambermaid boasts of her own "Susanna Lode" or "Bridget Lode." The baker has specimens beside his bread; the dispenser of lager beer looks important and mysterious; the druggist is apt to give you "chlorides" instead of aperients; and the lawyer, who takes his fees in "feet" (money being scarce), dreams of realizing millions after the Pacific Railroad reaches Denver.

I have disgusted several individuals by refusing to buy, but the jargon has already infected my speech, and, after hearing a man at the table ask, — " Is there a pay-streak in that bacon?" I found myself on the point of asking the Waiter to put a little more sulphuret in my coffee. The same waiter afterward said to me: "Pie ‘s played out, sir!" If I had then requested him to "corral the tailings," he would have brought me the fragments from the other plates.

The Colorado dialect, in other respects, is peculiar. A dwelling-house is invariably styled "shebang;" and the word, in many cases, is very appropriate. The Spanish corra1 (always mispronounced correll) has become completely naturalized, and is used as a verb, meaning to catch or collect. A supply of any kind is an "outfit;" a man does not shout, but "lets a yell out of him ;" and one who makes a blunder "cuts open a dog." I cannot recall, at this moment, half the peculiarities of the dialect, but I am learning them as fast as possible, in order to conform to the ways of the country.

Some friends took me over the hill to Quartz Gulch, the other day, in order to try some mountain-brewed ale. After the intense still heat of the air the beverage was very refreshing, and greatly superior in its quality to the lager beer of the mountains. The owner of the brewery lives in a neat log-cabin, the steps whereto are ores of gold and silver, and inside the rough walls an accomplished lady sat down to her piano and played for us some choice compositions.

There is also a theatre here, with performances every night. Mr. Waldron, of California, takes the leading tragic and melodramatic parts, while Mr. Langrish, the manager, is himself a very admirable comedian. A good deal of swearing is introduced into the farces, to please the miners. I went in one evening and found the house crowded. There is a daily paper here, and one in Black Hawk, both well supported, I believe — certainly very well printed. The editorial dialect, to meet the tastes of the people, is of an exceedingly free-and-easy character. A collection of very curious specimens, both of approbation and attack, might easily be made; but I am too fatigued by the thin air to make the attempt to-night.

I must also postpone an account of mining operations and interests until to-morrow.   NEXT