The Puntacooset Colony, Chapters I-III [pp. 1-15]

THE
OVERLAND
M O NTH LY.
DEVOTED TO
THE DE VEL OPMENT OF THE CO UNTR Y.
VOL. IX. (SECOND SERIES.)-JANUARY, I887. —No. 49.
THE PUNTACOOSET COLONY.
Upon the first day of September, eighteen hundred and forty-nine, Gila Canion was
a pleasant little sequestered mountain nook,
as yet unvisited by foreign footsteps and untouched by any hand excepting that of generous, unspoiling nature. At the one side,
the rocks rose somewhat steeply, with almost level summit, though here and there
broken into craggy and picturesque outline,
and, like a fortifying wall, seemed to shut
out the scene in that direction from all
human communication. At the other side
with less appropriate adaptation to tie valley's designation, the ground sloped gently
away in a broad rolling expanse, dotted here
and there with single oaks or smaller trees in
groups,and giving fair prospect of rich herbage
in the intervening open, sunlit spaces. At
either extremity of the prospect stood dark
groups of giant pines, shutting out with their
towering masses of interlaced branches great
segments of the eastern and western skies;
and in the centre ran along with gentle murmur, a little silvery stream —the mere initial
and harmless thread of what, when swollen
deep and turbid with the thaw of spring, became a roaring and impetuous torrent.
No life was to be seen within the cafton
at any time excepting that of congregated
birds and insects, or where some little frightened brown hare would now and then scamper wildly across from thicket to thicket, or
where at night the dusky forms of equally
timid coyotes would sit complacent in the
bright moonlight, and utter their unmelodious echoes. Once in a while there might
chance to appear a circle of rudely constructed huts, while for a day or two, a score
of Digger Indians made their encampment;
but these poor vagabonds of the soil seldom
remained there for any length of time, being
llttle attuned to the natural beauties of the
place, and preferring other more cherished
localities, where acorns and pine burs were
to be found in thicker profusion.
Upon the first day of the ensuing month,
the whole location swarmed with restless and
excited men, not fewer than a thousand active adventurers having been there collected.
The pretty little stream, so long and pleasantly undisturbed in its peaceful and forgotten flow, had become smaller and more
threadlike still, and its natural brightness
all defiled; for a dam had been rudely
thrown across it a furlong or so above, and a
shallow trench hollowed out on one side,
VOL. IX.-1. (Copyright, 1886, by OVERLAND MONTHLY CO. All Rights Reserved.
Commercial Publishing Company, Printers.