Complete Prose Works

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DENVER IMPRESSIONS

Through the long-lingering half-light of the most superb of evenings
we return'd to Denver, where I staid several days leisurely exploring,
receiving impressions, with which I may as well taper off this
memorandum, itemizing what I saw there. The best was the men,
three-fourths of them large, able, calm, alert, American. And cash!
why they create it here. Out in the smelting works, (the biggest and
most improv'd ones, for the precious metals, in the world,) I saw long
rows of vats, pans, cover'd by bubbling-boiling water, and fill'd with
pure silver, four or five inches thick, many thousand dollars' worth
in a pan. The foreman who was showing me shovel'd it carelessly up
with a little wooden shovel, as one might toss beans. Then large
silver bricks, worth $2000 a brick, dozens of piles, twenty in a pile.
In one place in the mountains, at a mining camp, I had a few days
before seen rough bullion on the ground in the open air, like the
confectioner's pyramids at some swell dinner in New York. (Such a
sweet morsel to roll over with a poor author's pen and ink--and
appropriate to slip in here--that the silver product of Colorado and
Utah, with the gold product of California, New Mexico, Nevada and
Dakota, foots up an addition to the world's coin of considerably over
a hundred millions every year.)

A city, this Denver, well-laid out--Laramie street, and 15th and 16th
and Champa streets, with others, particularly fine--some with tall
storehouses of stone or iron, and windows of plate-glass--all the
streets with little canals of mountain water running along the
sides--plenty of people, "business," modernness--yet not without a
certain racy wild smack, all its own. A place of fast horses, (many
mares with their colts,) and I saw lots of big greyhounds for antelope
hunting. Now and then groups of miners, some just come in, some
starting out, very picturesque.

One of the papers here interview'd me, and reported me as saying
off-hand: "I have lived in or visited all the great cities on the
Atlantic third of the republic--Boston, Brooklyn with its hills, New
Orleans, Baltimore, stately Washington, broad Philadelphia, teeming
Cincinnati and Chicago, and for thirty years in that wonder, wash'd
by hurried and glittering tides, my own New York, not only the New
World's but the world's city--but, newcomer to Denver as I am, and
threading its streets, breathing its air, warm'd by its sunshine, and
having what there is of its human as well as aerial ozone flash'd upon
me now for only three or four days, I am very much like a man feels
sometimes toward certain people he meets with, and warms to, and
hardly knows why. I, too, can hardly tell why, but as I enter'd the
city in the slight haze of a late September afternoon, and have
breath'd its air, and slept well o' nights, and have roam'd or rode
leisurely, and watch'd the comers and goers at the hotels, and
absorb'd the climatic magnetism of this curiously attractive region,
there has steadily grown upon me a feeling of affection for the spot,
which, sudden as it is, has become so definite and strong that I must
put it on record."

So much for my feeling toward the Queen city of the plains and peaks,
where she sits in her delicious rare atmosphere, over 5000 feet above
sea-level, irrigated by mountain streams, one way looking east over
the prairies for a thousand miles, and having the other, westward,
in constant view by day, draped in their violet haze, mountain tops
innumerable. Yes, I fell in love with Denver, and even felt a wish to
spend my declining and dying days there.

I TURN SOUTH AND THEN EAST AGAIN

Leave Denver at 8 A.M. by the Rio Grande RR. going south. Mountains
constantly in sight in the apparently near distance, veil'd slightly,
but still clear and very grand--their cones, colors, sides, distinct
against the sky--hundreds, it seem'd thousands, interminable
necklaces of them, their tops and slopes hazed more or less slightly
in that blue-gray, under the autumn sun, for over a hundred miles--the
most spiritual show of objective Nature I ever beheld, or ever thought
possible. Occasionally the light strengthens, making a contrast of
yellow-tinged silver on one side, with dark and shaded gray on
the other. I took a long look at Pike's peak, and was a little
disappointed. (I suppose I had expected something stunning.) Our view
over plains to the left stretches amply, with corrals here and there,
the frequent cactus and wild sage, and herds of cattle feeding. Thus
about 120 miles to Pueblo. At that town we board the comfortable and
well-equipt Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe RR., now striking east.

UNFULFILLED WANTS--THE ARKANSAS RIVER

I had wanted to go to the Yellowstone river region--wanted specially
to see the National Park, and the geysers and the "hoodoo" or goblin
land of that country; indeed, hesitated a little at Pueblo, the
turning point--wanted to thread the Veta pass--wanted to go over the
Santa Fe trail away southwestward to New Mexico--but turn'd and set
my face eastward--leaving behind me whetting glimpse-tastes of
southeastern Colorado, Pueblo, Bald mountain, the Spanish peaks,
Sangre de Christos, Mile-Shoe-curve (which my veteran friend on the
locomotive told me was "the boss railroad curve of the universe,")
fort Garland on the plains, Veta, and the three great peaks of the
Sierra Blancas. The Arkansas river plays quite a part in the whole
of this region--I see it, or its high-cut rocky northern shore, for
miles, and cross and recross it frequently, as it winds and squirms
like a snake. The plains vary here even more than usual--sometimes
a long sterile stretch of scores of miles--then green, fertile and
grassy, an equal length. Some very large herds of sheep. (One wants
new words in writing about these plains, and all the inland American
West--the terms, _far, large, vast_, &c., are insufficient.)

A SILENT LITTLE FOLLOWER-THE COREOPSIS

Here I must say a word about a little follower, present even now
before my eyes. I have been accompanied on my whole journey from
Barnegat to Pike's peak by a pleasant floricultural friend, or rather
millions of friends--nothing more or less than a hardy little yellow
five-petal'd September and October wild-flower, growing I think
everywhere in the middle and northern United States. I had seen it on
the Hudson and over Long Island, and along the banks of the Delaware
and through New Jersey, (as years ago up the Connecticut, and one
fall by Lake Champlain.) This trip it follow'd me regularly, with its
slender stem and eyes of gold, from Cape May to the Kaw valley, and
so through the canons and to these plains. In Missouri I saw immense
fields all bright with it. Toward western Illinois I woke up one
morning in the sleeper and the first thing when I drew the curtain of
my berth and look'd out was its pretty countenance and bending neck.

_Sept. 25th_.--Early morning--still going east after we leave
Sterling, Kansas, where I stopp'd a day and night. The sun up about
half an hour; nothing can be fresher or more beautiful than this time,
this region. I see quite a field of my yellow flower in full bloom. At
intervals dots of nice two-story houses, as we ride swiftly by. Over
the immense area, flat as a floor, visible for twenty miles in
every direction in the clear air, a prevalence of autumn-drab and
reddish-tawny herbage--sparse stacks of hay and enclosures, breaking
the landscape--as we rumble by, flocks of prairie-hens starting up.
Between Sterling and Florence a fine country. (Remembrances to E. L.,
my old-young soldier friend of war times, and his wife and boy at S.)

THE PRAIRIES AND GREAT PLAINS IN POETRY

(_After traveling Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado_) Grand as
is the thought that doubtless the child is already born who will see
a hundred millions of people, the most prosperous and advanc'd of the
world, inhabiting these Prairies, the great Plains, and the valley of
the Mississippi, I could not help thinking it would be grander still
to see all those inimitable American areas fused in the alembic of
a perfect poem, or other esthetic work, entirely western, fresh and
limitless--altogether our own, without a trace or taste of Europe's
soil, reminiscence, technical letter or spirit. My days and nights, as
I travel here--what an exhilaration!--not the air alone, and the sense
of vastness, but every local sight and feature. Everywhere something
characteristic--the cactuses, pinks, buffalo grass, wild sage--the
receding perspective, and the far circle-line of the horizon all times
of day, especially forenoon--the clear, pure, cool, rarefied nutriment
for the lungs, previously quite unknown--the black patches and streaks
left by surface-conflagrations--the deep-plough'd furrow of the
"fire-guard"--the slanting snow-racks built all along to shield
the railroad from winter drifts--the prairie-dogs and the herds of
antelope--the curious "dry rivers"--occasionally a "dug-out" or
corral--Fort Riley and Fort Wallace--those towns of the northern
plains, (like ships on the sea,) Eagle-Tail, Coyote, Cheyenne,
Agate, Monotony, Kit Carson--with ever the ant-hill and the
buffalo-wallow--ever the herds of cattle and the cow-boys
("cow-punchers") to me a strangely interesting class, bright-eyed
as hawks, with their swarthy complexions and their broad-brimm'd
hats--apparently always on horseback, with loose arms slightly raised
and swinging as they ride.

THE SPANISH PEAKS--EVENING ON THE PLAINS

Between Pueblo and Bent's fort, southward, in a clear afternoon
sun-spell I catch exceptionally good glimpses of the Spanish peaks.
We are in southeastern Colorado--pass immense herds of cattle as our
first-class locomotive rushes us along--two or three times crossing
the Arkansas, which we follow many miles, and of which river I get
fine views, sometimes for quite a distance, its stony, upright, not
very high, palisade banks, and then its muddy flats. We pass Fort
Lyon--lots of adobie houses--limitless pasturage, appropriately
fleck'd with those herds of cattle--in due time the declining sun in
the west--a sky of limpid pearl over all--and so evening on the great
plains. A calm, pensive, boundless landscape--the perpendicular rocks
of the north Arkansas, hued in twilight--a thin line of violet on
the southwestern horizon--the palpable coolness and slight aroma--a
belated cow-boy with some unruly member of his herd--an emigrant wagon
toiling yet a little further, the horses slow and tired--two men,
apparently father and son, jogging along on foot--and around all the
indescribable _chiaroscuro_ and sentiment, (profounder than anything
at sea,) athwart these endless wilds.

AMERICA'S CHARACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE

Speaking generally as to the capacity and sure future destiny of that
plain and prairie area (larger than any European kingdom) it is the
inexhaustible land of wheat, maize, wool, flax, coal, iron, beef and
pork, butter and cheese, apples and grapes--land of ten million virgin
farms--to the eye at present wild and unproductive--yet experts say
that upon it when irrigated may easily be grown enough wheat to feed
the world. Then as to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling,)
while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara falls, the
upper Yellowstone and the like, afford the greatest natural shows, I
am not so sure but the Prairies and the Plains, while less stunning at
first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all
the rest, and make North America's characteristic landscape.

Indeed through the whole of this journey, with all its shows and
varieties, what most impress'd me, and will longest remain with me,
are these same prairies. Day after day, and night after night, to my
eyes, to all my senses--the esthetic one most of all--they silently
and broadly unfolded. Even their simplest statistics are sublime.

EARTH'S MOST IMPORTANT STREAM

The valley of the Mississippi river and its tributaries, (this stream
and its adjuncts involve a big part of the question,) comprehends more
than twelve hundred thousand square miles, the greater part prairies.
It is by far the most important stream on the globe, and would seem
to have been marked out by design, slow-flowing from north to south,
through a dozen climates, all fitted for man's healthy occupancy,
its outlet unfrozen all the year, and its line forming a safe, cheap
continental avenue for commerce and passage from the north temperate
to the torrid zone. Not even the mighty Amazon (though larger in
volume) on its line of east and west--not the Nile in Africa, nor the
Danube in Europe, nor the three great rivers of China, compare with
it. Only the Mediterranean sea has play'd some such part in history,
and all through the past, as the Mississippi is destined to play in
the future. By its demesnes, water'd and welded by its branches, the
Missouri, the Ohio, the Arkansas, the Red, the Yazoo, the St. Francis
and others, it already compacts twenty-five millions of people, not
merely the most peaceful and money-making, but the most restless and
warlike on earth. Its valley, or reach, is rapidly concentrating the
political power of the American Union. One almost thinks it _is_ the
Union--or soon will be. Take it out, with its radiations, and what
would be left? From the car windows through Indiana, Illinois,
Missouri, or stopping some days along the Topeka and Santa Fe road, in
southern Kansas, and indeed wherever I went, hundreds and thousands
of miles through this region, my eyes feasted on primitive and rich
meadows, some of them partially inhabited, but far, immensely far more
untouch'd, unbroken--and much of it more lovely and fertile in its
unplough'd innocence than the fair and valuable fields of New York's,
Pennsylvania's, Maryland's or Virginia's richest farms.

PRAIRIE ANALOGIES--THE TREE QUESTION

The word Prairie is French, and means literally meadow. The cosmical
analogies of our North American plains are the Steppes of Asia, the
Pampas and Llanos of South America, and perhaps the Saharas of Africa.
Some think the plains have been originally lake-beds; others attribute
the absence of forests to the fires that almost annually sweep over
them--(the cause, in vulgar estimation, of Indian summer.) The tree
question will soon become a grave one. Although the Atlantic slope,
the Rocky mountain region, and the southern portion of the Mississippi
valley, are well wooded, there are here stretches of hundreds and
thousands of miles where either not a tree grows, or often useless
destruction has prevail'd; and the matter of the cultivation and
spread of forests may well be press'd upon thinkers who look to the
coming generations of the prairie States.

MISSISSIPPI VALLEY LITERATURE

Lying by one rainy day in Missouri to rest after quite a long
exploration--first trying a big volume I found there of "Milton,
Young, Gray, Beattie and Collins," but giving it up for a bad
job--enjoying however for awhile, as often before, the reading of
Walter Scott's poems, "Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and so
on--I stopp'd and laid down the book, and ponder'd the thought of a
poetry that should in due time express and supply the teeming region I
was in the midst of, and have briefly touch'd upon. One's mind needs
but a moment's deliberation anywhere in the United States to see
clearly enough that all the prevalent book and library poets, either
as imported from Great Britain, or follow'd and _doppel-gang'd_ here,
are foreign to our States, copiously as they are read by us all. But
to fully understand not only how absolutely in opposition to our times
and lands, and how little and cramp'd, and what anachronisms and
absurdities many of their pages are, for American purposes, one must
dwell or travel awhile in Missouri, Kansas and Colorado, and get
rapport with their people and country.

Will the day ever come--no matter how long deferr'd--when those models
and lay-figures from the British islands--and even the precious
traditions of the classics--will be reminiscences, studies only? The
pure breath, primitiveness, boundless prodigality and amplitude,
strange mixture of delicacy and power, of continence, of real and
ideal, and of all original and first-class elements, of these
prairies, the Rocky mountains, and of the Mississippi and Missouri
rivers--will they ever appear in, and in some sort form a standard for
our poetry and art? (I sometimes think that even the ambition of my
friend Joaquin Miller to put them in, and illustrate them, places him
ahead of the whole crowd.)

Not long ago I was down New York bay, on a steamer, watching the
sunset over the dark green heights of Navesink, and viewing all that
inimitable spread of shore, shipping and sea, around Sandy Hook. But
an intervening week or two, and my eyes catch the shadowy outlines of
the Spanish peaks. In the more than two thousand miles between, though
of infinite and paradoxical variety, a curious and absolute fusion is
doubtless steadily annealing, compacting, identifying all. But subtler
and wider and more solid, (to produce such compaction,) than the laws
of the States, or the common ground of Congress, or the Supreme
Court, or the grim welding of our national wars, or the steel ties of
railroads, or all the kneading and fusing processes of our material
and business history, past or present, would in my opinion be a great
throbbing, vital, imaginative work, or series of works, or literature,
in constructing which the Plains, the Prairies, and the Mississippi
river, with the demesnes of its varied and ample valley, should be
the concrete background, and America's humanity, passions, struggles,
hopes, there and now--an _eclaircissement_ as it is and is to be,
on the stage of the New World, of all Time's hitherto drama of war,
romance and evolution--should furnish the lambent fire, the ideal.

AN INTERVIEWER'S ITEM

Oct. 17, '79_.--To-day one of the newspapers of St. Louis prints the
following informal remarks of mine on American, especially Western
literature: "We called on Mr. Whitman yesterday and after a somewhat
desultory conversation abruptly asked him: 'Do you think we are to
have a distinctively American literature?' 'It seems to me,' said
he,'that our work at present is to lay the foundations of a great
nation in products, in agriculture, in commerce, in networks of
intercommunication, and in all that relates to the comforts of vast
masses of men and families, with freedom of speech, ecclesiasticism,
&c. These we have founded and are carrying out on a grander scale
than ever hitherto, and Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas and
Colorado, seem to me to be the seat and field of these very facts and
ideas. Materialistic prosperity in all its varied forms, with those
other points that I mentioned, intercommunication and freedom, are
first to be attended to. When those have their results and get
settled, then a literature worthy of us will begin to be defined. Our
American superiority and vitality are in the bulk of our people, not
in a gentry like the old world. The greatness of our army during the
secession war, was in the rank and file, and so with the nation. Other
lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the
bulk of the people. Our leading men are not of much account and never
have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all
history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art
included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We
will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average
bulk, unprecedentedly great.'"

THE WOMEN OF THE WEST

_Kansas City_.--I am not so well satisfied with what I see of the
women of the prairie cities. I am writing this where I sit leisurely
in a store in Main street, Kansas City, a streaming crowd on the
sidewalks flowing by. The ladies (and the same in Denver) are all
fashionably drest, and have the look of "gentility" in face, manner
and action, but they do _not_ have, either in physique or the
mentality appropriate to them, any high native originality of spirit
or body, (as the men certainly have, appropriate to them.) They are
"intellectual" and fashionable, but dyspeptic-looking and generally
doll-like; their ambition evidently is to copy their eastern sisters.
Something far different and in advance must appear, to tally and
complete the superb masculinity of the west, and maintain and continue
it.

THE SILENT GENERAL

_Sept. 28, '79_.--So General Grant, after circumambiating the
world, has arrived home again, landed in San Francisco yesterday, from
the ship City of Tokio from Japan. What a man he is! what a history!
what an illustration--his life--of the capacities of that American
individuality common to us all. Cynical critics are wondering "what
the people can see in Grant" to make such a hubbub about. They aver
(and it is no doubt true) that he has hardly the average of our day's
literary and scholastic culture, and absolutely no pronounc'd genius
or conventional eminence of any sort. Correct: but he proves how
an average western farmer, mechanic, boatman, carried by tides of
circumstances, perhaps caprices, into a position of incredible
military or civic responsibilities, (history has presented none more
trying, no born monarch's, no mark more shining for attack or envy,)
may steer his way fitly and steadily through them all, carrying the
country and himself with credit year after year--command over a
million armed men--fight more than fifty pitch'd battles--rule
for eight years a land larger than all the kingdoms of Europe
combined--and then, retiring, quietly (with a cigar in his mouth) make
the promenade of the whole world, through its courts and coteries, and
kings and czars and mikados, and splendidest glitters and etiquettes,
as phlegmatically as he ever walk'd the portico of a Missouri hotel
after dinner. I say all this is what people like--and I am sure I like
it. Seems to me it transcends Plutarch. How those old Greeks, indeed,
would have seized on him! A mere plain man--no art, no poetry--only
practical sense, ability to do, or try his best to do, what
devolv'd upon him. A common trader, money-maker, tanner, farmer of
Illinois--general for the republic, in its terrific struggle with
itself, in the war of attempted secession--President following, (a
task of peace, more difficult than the war itself)--nothing heroic,
as the authorities put it--and yet the greatest hero. The gods, the
destinies, seem to have concentrated upon him.

PRESIDENT HAYES'S SPEECHES

_Sept. 30_.--I see President Hayes has come out West, passing quite
informally from point to point, with his wife and a small cortege
of big officers, receiving ovations, and making daily and sometimes
double-daily addresses to the people. To these addresses--all
impromptu, and some would call them ephemeral--I feel to devote a
memorandum. They are shrewd, good-natur'd, face-to-face speeches,
on easy topics not too deep; but they give me some revised ideas of
oratory--of a new, opportune theory and practice of that art,
quite changed from the classic rules, and adapted to our days, our
occasions, to American democracy, and to the swarming populations of
the West. I hear them criticised as wanting in dignity, but to me they
are just what they should be, considering all the circumstances, who
they come from, and who they are address'd to. Underneath, his
objects are to compact and fraternize the States, encourage their
materialistic and industrial development, soothe and expand their
self-poise, and tie all and each with resistless double ties not only
of inter-trade barter, but human comradeship.

From Kansas City I went on to St. Louis, where I remain'd nearly three
months, with my brother T.J.W., and my dear nieces.

ST. LOUIS MEMORANDA

_Oct., Nov., and Dec., '79_.--The points of St. Louis are its
position, its absolute wealth, (the long accumulations of time and
trade, solid riches, probably a higher average thereof than any city,)
the unrivall'd amplitude of its well-laid-out environage of broad
plateaus, for future expansion--and the great State of which it is the
head. It fuses northern and southern qualities, perhaps native and
foreign ones, to perfection, rendezvous the whole stretch of the
Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and its American electricity goes
well with its German phlegm. Fourth, Fifth and Third streets are
store-streets, showy, modern, metropolitan, with hurrying crowds,
vehicles, horse-cars, hubbub, plenty of people, rich goods,
plate-glass windows, iron fronts often five or six stories high. You
can purchase anything in St. Louis (in most of the big western cities
for the matter of that) just as readily and cheaply as in the Atlantic
marts. Often in going about the town you see reminders of old, even
decay'd civilization. The water of the west, in some places, is not
good, but they make it up here by plenty of very fair wine, and
inexhaustible quantities of the best beer in the world. There are
immense establishments for slaughtering beef and pork--and I saw
flocks of sheep, 5000 in a flock. (In Kansas City I had visited a
packing establishment that kills and packs an average of 2500 hogs a
day the whole year round, for export. Another in Atchison, Kansas,
same extent; others nearly equal elsewhere. And just as big ones
here.)