The Indians of the Pike's Peak Region: Including an Account of the Battle of Sand Creek, and of Occurrences in El Paso County, Colorado, during the War with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, in 1864 and 1868Howbert, Irving
History
The Indians of the Pike's Peak Region: Including an Account of the Battle of Sand Creek, and of Occurrences in El Paso County, Colorado, during the War with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, in 1864 and 1868
Howbert, Irving
El Paso County, Colo. -- History; Indians of North America -- Colorado; Sand Creek Massacre, Colo., 1864
And there are other scenes adjoining this that demand a passing
notice. A few miles from the springs, and running parallel
with the eastern base of the mountain range, several hundred
yards removed from it, a wall of coarse, red granite towers
to a varied height of from fifty to three hundred feet. This
wall is formed of an immense strata planted vertically. This
mural tier is isolated and occupies its prairie site in silent
majesty, as if to guard the approach to the stupendous monuments
of Nature's handiwork, that form the background, disclosing
itself to the beholder for a distance of over thirty miles.
Lieut. John C. Frémont, who visited the springs in 1843, while on his
second expedition, was just as enthusiastic about them. He says:
On the morning of the 16th of July we resumed our journey.
Our direction was up the Boiling Springs River, it being my
intention to visit the celebrated springs from which the river
takes its name, and which are on its upper waters at the foot
of Pike's Peak.
Our animals fared well while we were on this stream, there
being everywhere a great abundance of grass. Beautiful clusters
of flowering plants were numerous, and wild currants, nearly
ripe, were abundant. On the afternoon of the 17th, we entered
among the broken ridges at the foot of the mountain, where
the river made several forks.
Leaving the camp to follow slowly, I rode ahead in the
afternoon, in search of the springs. In the meantime, the
clouds, which had been gathering all the afternoon over the
mountains, began to roll down their sides, and a storm so
violent burst upon me that it appeared I had entered the store
house of the thunder storms. I continued, however, to ride
along up the river until about sunset, and was beginning to
be doubtful of finding the springs before the next day, when
I came suddenly upon a large, smooth rock about twenty feet in
diameter, where the water from several springs was bubbling and
boiling up in the midst of a white encrustation, with which it
had covered a portion of the rock. As it did not correspond
with the description given me by the hunters, I did not stop
to taste the water, but dismounting, walked a little way up
the river, and passing through a narrow thicket of shrubbery
bordering the stream, stepped directly upon a huge, white rock
at the foot of which the river, already becoming a torrent,
foamed along, broken by a small fall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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