as any wonder we had come upon yet, and I know we
felt very complacent and conceited, and better satisfied
with life after we had added it to our list of things
which we had seen and some other people had not.
In a small way we were the same sort of simpletons
as those who climb unnecessarily the perilous peaks
of Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, and derive no pleasure
from it except the reflection that it isn’t
a common experience. But once in a while one
of those parties trips and comes darting down the
long mountain-crags in a sitting posture, making the
crusted snow smoke behind him, flitting from bench
to bench, and from terrace to terrace, jarring the
earth where he strikes, and still glancing and flitting
on again, sticking an iceberg into himself every now
and then, and tearing his clothes, snatching at things
to save himself, taking hold of trees and fetching
them along with him, roots and all, starting little
rocks now and then, then big boulders, then acres
of ice and snow and patches of forest, gathering and
still gathering as he goes, adding and still adding
to his massed and sweeping grandeur as he nears a
three thousand-foot precipice, till at last he waves
his hat magnificently and rides into eternity on the
back of a raging and tossing avalanche!
This is all very fine, but let us not be carried away
by excitement, but ask calmly, how does this person
feel about it in his cooler moments next day, with
six or seven thousand feet of snow and stuff on top
of him?
We crossed the sand hills near the scene of the Indian
mail robbery and massacre of 1856, wherein the driver
and conductor perished, and also all the passengers
but one, it was supposed; but this must have been a
mistake, for at different times afterward on the Pacific
coast I was personally acquainted with a hundred and
thirty-three or four people who were wounded during
that massacre, and barely escaped with their lives.
There was no doubt of the truth of it—I
had it from their own lips. One of these parties
told me that he kept coming across arrow-heads in his
system for nearly seven years after the massacre; and
another of them told me that he was struck so literally
full of arrows that after the Indians were gone and
he could raise up and examine himself, he could not
restrain his tears, for his clothes were completely
ruined.
The most trustworthy tradition avers, however, that
only one man, a person named Babbitt, survived the
massacre, and he was desperately wounded. He
dragged himself on his hands and knee (for one leg
was broken) to a station several miles away.
He did it during portions of two nights, lying concealed
one day and part of another, and for more than forty
hours suffering unimaginable anguish from hunger, thirst
and bodily pain. The Indians robbed the coach
of everything it contained, including quite an amount
of treasure.
CHAPTER IX.
Copyrights
Roughing It from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
