[Albert S. Evans, In Whirlwind Valley, The Overland Monthly, February 1869]

 

1869.]              IN WHIRLWIND VALLEY.                 111

 

IN WHIRLWIND VALLEY.

 

            ON the morning of Monday, November 9th, 1868, we looked forth from the door of the comfortable bed-room car in the camp train of the Central Pacific Railroad, in Lander County, Nevada, four hundred and twenty miles east of Sacramento, and eighteen miles east of Argenti. It was a clear, frosty winter morning, and the scene before us was romantic and stirring in the extreme—such a scene as we may not look upon again on the American continent. Eastward, the upper valley of the Humboldt—a broad, level prairie — stretched away to a point where the bald, rugged, snowcapped mountain chains from the north and south, abutting sharply on the river like lesser pillars of Hercules, form the magnificent Pass, made forever hideous by the abominable appellation of the Beaowawe Gate. To the northeastward beyond the Gate, the Humboldt Mountains, with jagged outlines, clad in winter costume, loomed like gigantic Arctic icebergs, white, cold and sharp against the deep blue sky. Parallel lines of treeless mountains, red, rock-ribbed, barren and naked, save where Winter had in mercy thrown over them his mantle of snow to hide their natural deformity, bordered on either side the valley, stretching away to the westward for a hundred miles or more. Behind us the long lines of the railroad track and telegraph stretched out to the bank of the Sacramento more than four hundred miles away. Around us was the advancing and triumphant Army of Civilization; before us the dim, mysterious heart of the North American continent, toward which the track was crawling like a mighty serpent even while we slept.

            Before us, far up the valley, and for many miles beyond the gate, curled the blue smoke from the camp-fires of the thousand Chinese laborers—the real pathfinders of empire here—engaged in grading the track. On either side stretched long lines of horses and mules drawing heavy wagons freighted with materials and supplies for the road and the laborers ahead. Behind us came train after train loaded with iron and timber, and swarming with blue-coated Asiatics, the rear-guard of the army, engaged in finishing up the work the vanguard had begun. Orderlies and foremen of gangs were galloping back and forth on the prairie, carrying orders to those under them, or receiving them from the commander of the forces, the Superintendent of Construction. The track had been pushed forward three-fourths of a mile that morning before we arose, and a swarm of men were then constructing a permanent bridge of stout, square timbers, just brought from the Sierra Nevada, three hundred miles away, across a deep bayou or arm of the Humboldt still further on—a work which they would complete long before noon. A tall Shoshone Indian, wrapped in his tattered blanket, stood looking on in solemn silence, as the workmen added joint to joint on the lengthening iron track, and unwound coil after coil of the telegraph wire, affixing it to the insulators, lifting the tall crosses upright and planting their feet firmly in the soil—his soil and the soil of his ancestors, for ages past.

            Did he see in the advancing army of white and yellow faces, the brace of iron bars and the lengthening line of wire, over which the lightning was to pass on the errand of civilization, the proof

112                  IN WHIRLWIND VALLEY.                 [Feb.

of the greatness of Uncle Sam, and  hopelessness of any further effort to stem the tide which is sweeping away the last remnant of his race ? Was he musing on the history of the past, and bitterly contrasting it with the present and so much of the future as shall be shared by him and his ? Was he dreaming of the Happy Hunting Grounds beyond the western horizon, where his race shall rove amid green fields and broad forests, steal stock, and scalp their enemies in peace, with no white man to molest them in their innocent amusements, or make them afraid ; or was he debating the question, whether  it was best for him to start at once for White Pine, and chance it, or wait until spring ? What, in short, were his thoughts ?  

            Guileless reader, trust me that I know him better than the young ladies who have studied him only in Cooper's novels. " Lo " is a practical man to the extent of the capacity which God has given him. He was calculating the amount of barley he could probably pick out of the dirt after the mules had done feeding, and keeping his weather-eye open for any old clothes which might be cast off by the owners and left by the wayside when the train moved on. Breakfast over, saddle-horses were led up for us, and we mounted and galloped away to the southeastward on a trip to the great Volcano Springs, in Whirlwind Valley, which had been graphically described to us by a Spanish lady, who had visited them on the day previous. The sun, rising over the snowy mountain-tops, poured his flood of light down from an unclouded sky upon the broad, brown valley. The ugly deformity of the sage-brush which covered the ground, and the nakedness of the straggling tufts of bunch grass, were concealed beneath a coating of bright hoar-frost, which sparkled in the sunlight like one vast spray of diamonds in silver settings. Rose-hued and coralline glowed the snow-fields on the upper mountains; soft as the velvet cheek of the plum, seemed the rugged outlines of the bare, red hills, as the sunlight filtered through the dim, blue haze, which, rising from the river and the thousand camp-fires along its banks, filled all the lower air and beautified the whole desert landscape. The mountain air, keen with the touch of coming winter, sent the blood coursing through our veins with accelerated speed, creating an exhilaration of spirit, such as creaming champagne or sparkling Moselle never yet produced.

            Our horses, accustomed to the country, bounded forward at a steady gallop, heedless of rocks, sage-brush, and the narrow arroyos, which at short intervals crossed the trail, never stumbling or hesitating for a moment, and evidently enjoying the trip as heartily as ourselves. A covey of sage-hens rose from the grass and flew away unharmed; we had no guns to kill or frighten them with.  A wolf sprang out of a clump of bushes, gave a quick, short cry, and turned to see what audacious intruder upon his domains had disturbed his morning slumbers. With a shout we charged upon him at the height of our horses' speed, and gave him a race of a mile or more ; but the wolf came out a little ahead at the end, and we did not make game of him.

            Turning around Shoshone Point, we emerged into open ground, and the Whirlwind Valley stretched away before us to the southward, skirted by bare, red hills on either side for miles.  Across the valley, some six miles to the southeastward, half-way up the western slope of a hill, perhaps six hundred feet in height, we saw a long table-land or mesa, white upon the top, and with long ribbon-like streaks of blue and white running down from thence to the plain below. This had been designated as the locality of the Volcano Springs ;

1869.]              IN WHIRLWIND VALLEY.                113

but beyond the discolorations mentioned, there was nothing to attract the attention of the traveller, and one might pass the point a dozen times without being made aware of their existence. "There she blows ! " exclaimed my companion, after we had ridden on in sight of the place for some minutes. Looking up I saw a long jet of white steam shoot far up into the air from the top of the mesa. Another and another followed, and in a few minutes a dozen or more were rising from different parts of the hillside, and one or two from the plain at its foot. Half an hour's gallop brought us to the foot of the hill. Some time before we reached it we heard a noise as of many steam engines working away in some huge factory, and as we forced our horses up the steep acclivity over ground which resounded beneath their tread, hollow and cavernous, we heard other sounds emanating from the deep bosom of the mountain. Dismounting, we hitched our panting, half-frightened horses to a huge, honey-combed rock, and approached the opening in the earth from which the steam was escaping. The orifice might have been ten inches in diameter, and from it poured a stream of scalding water, clear as crystal, while a column of steam rose forty or fifty feet into the air. The whole mesa appeared to be composed of lime, soda and sulphur deposits, the gradual accretion of years, and was blistering with a fierce heat from the undying fires below. It was as if we were walking over the surface of a fresh-burned lime-kiln on which rain had just been falling. The orifice was round, and had the appearance of having been artificially lined with coarse white porcelain. It was higher than the hill around it—showing clearly that it was gradually rising steadily from below by the accumulation of its own deposits, as a brick chimney increases in height as brick after brick is added to it by the mason. A kind of basin, several feet in width, surrounded the orifice, and in this basin were many curious lime formations, some resembling coral—others, round and polished as if by the wheel of the lapidary—others still, polished on one side, and on the other presenting the appearance of a basket of wax-flowers. We went on to another and still larger spring. There was a low, humming sound accompanying the action of the first ; the second worked exactly like a steam pump, with a steady, regular stroke—the water being thrown out not in a continuous stream, but in jets corresponding with the regular strokes of the piston. As we stood over it, we could hardly divest ourselves of the impression that we were standing above a well-regulated steam engine in full operation, as, in fact, we were. We timed the pulsations with our watches, and counted just one hundred in a minute. From many small orifices, some not larger around than one's finger, all around us steam was escaping, and the whole mesa seemed a mere crust, perforated like a cullender. We stamped with our boot-heels on the crumbling shell, and broke it through in one place. Below we found a mass of soft, coarse, granulated matter—red, white, and yellow, resembling in appearance rice-pudding, well intermixed with red-wine sauce, blistering hot, as if fresh from the oven, and emitting a nauseating odor of which a few sniffs were all-sufficient. We dug down into the mass with our hands, as long as we could stand the heat, and found it growing softer in proportion to its depth.

            Passing on to the southward over a small divide, we saw a number of springs which had been running at intervals during the night, but were then inactive ; long ribbons of ice, running out from them over the side of the mesa and down into the plain three hundred feet below, where all the water sinks and disappears. Others, projecting in some cases three or four feet above the sur-

114      IN WHIRLWIND VALLEY.                 [Feb.

face of the hill, appeared to have completely choked themselves up with their own deposits, and ceased to operate entirely, the water finding an escape elsewhere.

            Looking southward along the height extending over half a mile of space, we saw dozens of these hot-water volcanoes—if we may be permitted the expression—in full operation, and an immense number of others quiet for the moment, but bearing evidence of being in working order, and liable to resume operations at any moment. The largest of those quiet at the moment had an orifice as large as a sugar hogshead, and was filled to the surface with clear, sparkling water. The sun was now well up in the heavens, and the air, especially where affected by the clouds of steam, warm enough to make the temptation to indulge in a tepid bath almost irresistible. The water in the basin, though not boiling, was not quite cold enough for bathing purposes, and we concluded to wander on a little farther and wait for it to cool. In the basin of another spring we found what appeared to be a large branch of the most delicate white coral, and determined to secure it. With two sticks cut from the hillside above, we fished it out at last, only to find, to our intense disgust, that it was merely a piece of sage-brush, which had fallen or been thrown into the water, and had become coated all over with the fine white lime deposits, not a trace of the vegetable fibre being left exposed to tell the true character of the curious object. Another formation of similar appearance promised better, and we fished that out also ; it proved to be the ragged fragment of a blue woollen blanket, coated in like manner, and regarding it as a great curiosity in its way, we carried it off with us when leaving the place. But what became of the man who wore the blanket ? That question worried us. Had we dug deeper we might have found a marble statue which would have answered the question. Finding at last a shallow pool of water, which had run down from a spring then quiet, we sat down, and stripping our heated feet gave them a soaking while we waited for the cooling of that in the basin of the great spring above us, and looked around on the strange scene about us.

            There appeared to be at least one hundred of the larger springs which were more or less active daily, and hundreds of smaller openings in the hillside from whence steam and nauseating gases escaped. The hill, against the side of which the mesa on which the springs are located has been raised up, rises above this mesa or bench some three hundred feet quite abruptly, and further back to the eastward were peaks some hundreds of feet higher still. Red igneous rock, lying in layers pitching westward toward the valley, crops out on the whole face of the hill, and lava mixed with broken quartzite and vitrified rock strews the whole plain below. It appears as if these springs had originally flowed from the edge of the plain at the foot of the hill some three hundred feet below, where they now find vent, and had built up the whole mesa from their own deposits little by little ; the pipes by which the water escapes growing longer and longer day by day as the altitude of the hill increased. Possibly there may have been a volcanic crater at this point, and the cold water, from between the layers of rock in the hill above, pouring down into it and coming into contact with the fire or heated rock may produce the steam, which, having no other means of escape, throws all the water above it out through the long pipes to the surface, the action being repeated in quick succession as long as the supply of water continues. This theory is plausible enough, but how about the cessation of action for fifteen minutes and hours in duration ? And what about the origin of the lime, soda

1869.]             IN WHIRLWIND VALLEY.                 115

and sulphur deposited in such vast quantities by the sparkling water ? The springs may, after all, owe their origin to chemical action entirely. One theory may be just as good as another, and probably is so.

            While we were sitting with our feet in the tepid water, discussing the question of the formation of the place, a low, droning, moaning sound came up from the deep bosom of the hill, followed by a sharp "clap ! clap ! clap ! " as if a pair of giant hands had been struck together three times with force, then, with a tremendous swash, a torrent of scalding water flew into the air, scattering in all directions from the great spring in which we had just been proposing to bathe, and poured in a stream ten feet wide down the hill. Had we remained by the side of that spring a few minutes longer, the chances are that some subsequent visitor would have discovered two beautiful statues, each the impersonation of manly beauty, and long discussions would doubtless have ensued in art circles as to the nationality of the sculptor—to whose immortal genius the world was indebted for such masterly conceptions, such matchless execution, etc., etc. It pleases us to have been able to save the world from doubt on that point. The torrent poured out incessantly for perhaps fifteen minutes, then began to subside. A low, gurgling sound came up as from the throat of a dying Cyclops, the water fell still lower ; then came a long death-rattle ; there was a perceptible shudder extending along the mesa for many rods ; then all was still.

            We went back to where our horses had been left, and prepared to leave the accursed region. A pool of clear water which had been thoroughly cooled, attracted our attention, and we took a drink. Just at that moment it occurred to us that the lime deposits quickly covered everything with which the water came in contact—that we might become porcelain lined, and forever incapable of enjoying the pleasures of taste and touch. What would signify a champagne lunch, or a claret punch with strawberries in it, to a man in that fix ? This idea and the minerals in combination contained in the water acting together, induced us to suddenly put it—the water—back where we found it, and we felt more like leaving than before.

            Leading our impatient horses down the steep hillside to the plain, we mounted and galloped away. Looking back without the fear of the fate of Lot's wife on our mind, from a distance of a mile or more, we saw that the springs along the whole hillside and in the plain at its foot, which had been acting independently thus far, were all apparently in operation at once, and a great cloud of steam was swaying and swirling in the wind, which had sprung up from the southward. Half an hour later we looked back again, and no steam at all was visible. Looking forward into the valley of the Humboldt, we saw the line of tracklayers miles advanced up toward Beaowawe Gate, and the camp-train moving forward to a new position. Another link had been added to the great chain ; the hands stretching out from the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific had approached one degree nearer the point at which they shall ultimately unite in friendly grasp. The cinders, ashes and smouldering embers of the burned-up world, of the dead Past, were behind us ; before us the life, action, energy of the living Present—the abundant promise of a glorious Future.