Day
after day the waving sky line, and the desolation of a land without form
or color or variety, appalled the hearts of such of us as were
Englishmen, and once in the night as I lay awake I heard a woman weeping
and sobbing, and asking what she had done to come to such a place. Her
husband tried to comfort her in the broad speech of Gloucestershire,
telling her the ground was so rich that one had only to plough it up and
it would grow sunflowers of itself, but she cried for her mother and
their old cottage and the beehives, like a little child. The sadness of
it all overwhelmed me, and I had no heart to think of other matters; the
question of what Mr. Smith could have to do in such a country, and of
what manner of literary research could be carried on in the wilderness,
hardly troubled me. Now and again my situation struck me as peculiar; I
had been engaged as a literary assistant at a handsome salary, and yet
my master was still almost a stranger to me; sometimes he would come to
where I was sitting in the cars and make a few banal remarks about the
country, but for the most part of the journey he sat by himself, not
speaking to any one, and so far as I could judge, deep in his thoughts. It was I think on the fifth day from New York when I received, the
intimation that we should shortly leave the cars; I had been watching
some distant mountains which rose wild and savage before us, and I was
wondering if there were human beings so unhappy as to speak of home in
connection with those piles of lumbered rock, when Mr. Smith touched me
lightly on the shoulder. "You will be glad to be done with, the cars, I
have no doubt, Mr. Wilkins," he said. "You were looking at the
mountains, I think? Well, I hope we shall be there to-night. The train
stops at Reading, and I dare say we shall manage to find our way." A few hours later the brakeman brought the tram to a standstill at the
Reading depot and we got out. I noticed that the town, though of course
built almost entirely of frame-houses, was larger and busier than any we
had passed for the last two days. The depot was crowded, and as the bell
and whistle sounded, I saw that a number of persons were preparing to
leave the cars, while an even greater number were waiting to get on
board. Besides the passengers, there was a pretty dense crowd of people,
some of whom had come to meet or to see off their friends and relatives,
while others were mere loafers. Several of our English fellow passengers
got down at Reading, but the confusion was so great that they were lost
to my sight almost immediately. Mr. Smith beckoned to me to follow him,
and we were soon in the thick of the mass; and the continual ringing of
bells, the hubbub of voices, the shrieking of whistles, and the hiss of
escaping steam, confused my senses, and I wondered dimly as I struggled
after my employer, where we were going, and how we should be able to
find our way through an unknown country. Mr. Smith had put on a
wide-brimmed hat, which he had sloped over his eyes, and as all the men
wore hats of the same pattern, it was with some difficulty that I
distinguished him in the crowd. We got free at last, and he struck down
a side street, and made one or two sharp turns to right and left. It was
getting dusk, and we seemed to be passing through a shy portion of the
town, there were few people about in the ill-lighted streets, and these
few were men of the most unprepossessing pattern. Suddenly we stopped
before a corner house, a man was standing at the door, apparently on the
look-out for some one, and I noticed that he and Smith gave sharp
glances one to the other. "From New York City, I expect, mister?" "From New York!" "All right; they 're ready, and you can have 'em when you choose. I know
my orders, you see, and I mean to run this business through." "Very well, Mr. Evans, that is what we want. Our money is good, you
know. Bring them round." I had stood silent, listening to this dialogue, and wondering what it
meant. Smith began to walk impatiently up and down the street, and the
man Evans was still standing at his door. He had given a sharp whistle,
and I saw him looking me over in a quiet leisurely way, as if to make
sure of my face for another time. I was thinking what all this could
mean, when an ugly, slouching lad came up a side passage, leading two
raw-boned horses. "Get up, Mr. Wilkins, and be quick about it," said Smith. "We ought to
be on our way." We rode off together into the gathering darkness, and before long I
looked back and saw the far plain behind us, with the lights of the town
glimmering faintly; and in front rose the mountains. Smith guided his
horse on the rough track as surely as if he had been riding along
Piccadilly, and I followed him as well as I could. I was weary and
exhausted, and scarcely took note of anything; I felt that the track was
a gradual ascent, and here and there I saw great boulders by the road. The ride made but little impression on me; I have a faint recollection
of passing through a dense black pine forest, where our horses had to
pick their way among the rocks, and I remember the peculiar effect of
the rarefied air as we kept still mounting higher and higher. I think I
must have been half asleep for the latter half of the ride, and it was
with a shock that I heard Smith saying--

"Here we are, Wilkins. This is Blue-Rock Park. You will enjoy the view
to-morrow. To-night we will have something to eat, and then go to bed." A man came out of a rough-looking house and took the horses, and we
found some fried steak and coarse whiskey awaiting us inside. I had come
to a strange place. There were three rooms,--the room in which we had
supper, Smith's room and my own. The deaf old man who did the work slept
in a sort of shed, and when I woke up the next morning and walked out I
found that the house stood in a sort of hollow amongst the mountains;
the clumps of pines and some enormous bluish-gray rocks that stood here
and there between the trees had given the place the name of Blue-Rock
Park. On every side the snow-covered mountains surrounded us, the breath
of the air was as wine, and when I climbed the slope and looked down, I
could see that, so far as any human fellowship was concerned I might as
well have been wrecked on some small island in mid-Pacific. The only
trace of man I could see was the rough log-house where I had slept, and
in my ignorance I did not know that there were similar houses within
comparatively easy distance, as distance is reckoned in the Rockies. But
at the moment, the utter, dreadful loneliness rushed upon me, and the
thought of the great plain and the great sea that parted me from the
world I knew, caught me by the throat, and I wondered if I should die
there in that mountain hollow. It was a terrible instant, and I have not
yet forgotten it. Of course I managed to conquer my horror; I said I
should be all the stronger for the experience, and I made up my mind to
make the best of everything.