Here is the continuation of the trip.
At 2 o’clock A.M. we got aboard the caboose of a freight train bound for Alta from which point we were to leave on the regular or mixed train at 5:10 A.M. for Alamosa. The distance from Chama to Alta is fourteen miles and part of the way up an increase of 211 feet to the mile and around several curves of twenty degrees each. We were jerked up this ascent at a fearful rate, being short of fuel and the engineer being fearful that he would not have enough to last to the summit. When within a mile of Alta it was discovered that our water was out and so we had to back down (this of course did not require steam) to a water tank 4 miles below, which interesting little process just took us long enough to make – no, just ten minutes too late for the train going east. This would have been bad enough under ordinary circumstances, as it would have thrown us twenty-four hours behind time, but in this case it proved many times worse, for that night we had one of the most terrific snow storms I ever saw, and by next morning the track was covered ten feet deep for nearly twenty miles. We anxiously the next day for a profane son of Belial to do the subject justice, but it proved to be the universal that there were not “cuss” words enough invented up to the present time to supply the demand on this occasion. I should like to get you in a corner and give you the details of my stay at Alta; but as there is no hospital at Rico at present, I forbear. Suffice to say that my couch was the bare floor of the little depot—no that is unfair to the floor, for it was quite elaborately ornamented with tobacco quids and coal dirt. My meals were—well, for breakfast we had sour bread, tough beef, and black coffee; For dinner we had a la sour, meat a la tenacious, and for desert we had bread and meat friedaree with coffee a la ebony, hot; for supper we had a delicate rehashee of bread, astringent,; beef, crop of ’76, and coffee, opaque, followed by nightmare and cholera infantum. Variety is the spice of life and also of dining, but never liking spice we naturally tired, somewhat, of variety. We remained at Alta five days and I left with tears in my eyes at leaving such a pleasant spot.
Tommorrow we will have the Alta enterainment report.
