Across the Great Divide; and how the Man Gring showed me the Garments of the Ellewomen
AFTER much dallying1 and more climbing we came to a pass like all the Bolan Passes in the world, and the Black Ca?on of the Gunnison called they it. We had been climbing for very many hours, and attained3 a modest elevation4 of some seven or eight thousand feet above the sea, when we entered a gorge5, remote from the sun, where the rocks were two thousand feet sheer, and where a rock-splintered river roared and howled ten feet below a track which seemed to have been built on the simple principle of dropping miscellaneous dirt into the river and pinning a few rails a-top. There was a glory and a wonder and a mystery about that mad ride which I felt keenly (you will find it properly dressed up in the guide-books), until I had to offer prayers for the safety of the train. There was no hope of seeing the track two hundred yards ahead. We seemed to be running into the bowels6 of the earth at the invitation of an irresponsible stream. Then the solid rock would open and disclose a curve of awful twistfulness. Then the driver put on all steam, and we would go round that curve on one wheel chiefly, the Gunnison River gnashing its teeth below. The cars overhung the edge of the water, and if a single one of the rails had chosen to spread, nothing in the wide world could have saved us from drowning. I knew we should damage something in the end — the sombre horrors of the gorge, the rush of the jade-green water below, and the cheerful tales told by the conductor made me certain of the catastrophe7.
We had just cleared the Black Canon and another gorge, and were sailing out into open country nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, when we came most suddenly round a corner upon a causeway across a waste water — half dam and half quarry-pool. The locomotive gave one wild ‘Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!’ but it was too late. He was a beautiful bull, and goodness only knows why he had chosen the track for a constitutional with his wife. She was flung to the left, but the cowcatcher caught him, and turning him round, heaved him shoulder-deep into the pool. The expression of blank, blind bewilderment on his bovine8, jovine face was wonderful to behold9. He was not angry. I don’t think he was even scared, though he must have flown ten yards through the air. All he wanted to know was: ‘Will somebody have the goodness to tell a respectable old gentleman what in the world, or out of it, has occurred?’ And five minutes later the stream that had been snapping at our heels in the gorges10 split itself into a dozen silver threads on a breezy upland, and became an innocent trout11 beck, and we halted at a half-dead city, the name of which does not remain with me. It had originally been built on the crest12 of a wave of prosperity. Once ten thousand people had walked its street; but the boom had collapsed13. The great brick houses and the factories were empty. The population lived in little timber shanties14 on the fringes of the deserted15 town. There were some railway workshops and things, and the hotel (whose pavement formed the platform of the station) contained one hundred and more rooms — empty. The place, in its half-inhabitedness, was more desolate16 than Amber17 or Chitor. But a man said: ‘Trout — six pounds — two miles away,’ and the Sorrowful Man and myself went in search of ’em. The town was ringed by a circle of hills all alive with little thunder-storms that broke across the soft green of the plain in wisps and washes of smoke and amber.
To our tiny party associated himself a lawyer from Chicago. We forgathered on the question of flies, but I didn’t expect to meet Elijah Pogram in the flesh. He delivered orations18 on the future of England and America, and of the Great Federation19 that the years will bring forth20 when America and England will belt the globe with their linked hands. According to the notions of the British, he made an ass2 of himself, but for all his highfalutin he talked sense. I might knock through England on a four months’ tour and not find a man capable of putting into words the passionate21 patriotism22 that possessed23 the little Chicago lawyer. And he was a man with points, for he offered me three days’ shooting in Illinois, if I would step out of my path a little. I might travel for ten years up and down England ere I found a man who would give a complete stranger so much as a sandwich, and for twenty ere I squeezed as much enthusiasm out of a Britisher. He and I talked politics and trout-flies all one sultry day as we wandered up and down the shallows of the stream aforesaid. Little fish are sweet. I spent two hours whipping a ripple24 for a fish that I knew was there, and in the pasture-scented dusk caught a three-pounder on a ragged25 old brown hackle and landed him after ten minutes’ excited argument. He was a beauty. If ever any man works the Western trout-streams, he would do well to bring out with him the dingiest26 flies he possesses. The natives laugh at the tiny English hooks, but they hold; and duns and drabs and sober greys seem to tickle27 the aesthetic28 tastes of the trout. For salmon29 (but don’t say that I told you) use the spoon — gold on one side, silver on the other. It is as killing30 as is a similar article with fish of another calibre. The natives seem to use much too coarse tackle.
It was a search for a small boy who should know the river that revealed to me a new phase of life — slack, slovenly31, and shiftless, but very interesting. There was a family in a packing-case hut on the outskirts32 of the town. They had seen the city when it was on the boom and made pretence33 of being the metropolis34 of the Rockies; and when the boom was over, they did not go. She was affable, but deeply coated with dirt; he was grim and grimy, and the little children were simply caked with filth35 of various descriptions. But they lived in a certain sort of squalid luxury, six or eight of them in two rooms; and they enjoyed the local society. It was their eight-year-old son whom I tried to take out with me, but he had been catching36 trout all his life and ‘guessed he didn’t feel like coming,’ though I proffered37 him six shillings for what ought to have been a day’s pleasuring. ‘I’ll stay with Maw,’ he said, and from that attitude I could not move him. Maw didn’t attempt to argue with him. ‘If he says he won’t come, he won’t,’ she said, as though he were one of the elemental forces of nature instead of a spankable brat38; and ‘Paw,’ lounging by the stove, refused to interfere39. Maw told me that she had been a school-teacher in her not-so-distant youth, but did not tell me what I was dying to know — how she arrived at this mucky tenement40 at the back of beyond, and why. Though preserving the prettinesses of her New England speech, she had come to regard washing as a luxury. Paw chewed tobacco and spat41 from time to time. Yet, when he opened his mouth for other purposes, he spoke42 like a well-educated man. There was a story there, but I couldn’t get at it.
Next day the Man with the Sorrow and myself and a few others began the real ascent43 of the Rockies; up to that time our climbing didn’t count. The train ran violently up a steep place and was taken to pieces. Five cars were hitched44 on to two locomotives, and two cars to one locomotive. This seemed to be a kind and thoughtful act, but I was idiot enough to go forward and watch the coupling-on of the two rear cars in which C?sar and his fortunes were to travel. Some one had lost or eaten the regularly ordained45 coupling, and a man picked up from the tailboard of the engine a single iron link about as thick as a fetter-link watch-chain, and ‘guessed it would do.’ Get hauled up a Simla cliff by the hook of a lady’s parasol if you wish to appreciate my sentiments when the cars moved uphill and the link drew tight. Miles away and two thousand feet above our heads rose the shoulder of a hill epauletted with the long line of a snow-tunnel. The first section of the cars crawled a quarter of a mile ahead of us, the track snaked and looped behind, and there was a black drop to the left. So we went up and up and up till the thin air grew thinner and the chunk-chunk-chunk of the labouring locomotive was answered by the oppressed beating of the exhausted46 heart. Through the chequered light and shade of the snow-tunnels (horrible caverns47 of rude timbering) we ground our way, halting now and again to allow a downtrain to pass. One monster of forty mineral-cars slid past, scarce held by four locomotives, their brakes screaming and chortling in chorus; and in the end, after a glimpse at half America spread mapwise leagues below us, we halted at the head of the longest snow-tunnel of all, on the crest of the divide, between ten and eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea. The locomotive wished to draw breath, and the passengers to gather the flowers that nodded impertinently through the chinks of the boarding. A lady passenger’s nose began to bleed, and other ladies threw themselves down on the seats and gasped48 with the gasping49 train, while a wind as keen as a knife-edge rioted down the grimy tunnel.
Then, despatching a pilot-engine to clear the way, we began the downward portion of the journey with every available brake on, and frequent shrieks50, till after some hours we reached the level plain, and later the city of Denver, where the Man with the Sorrow went his way and left me to journey on to Omaha alone, after one hasty glance at Denver. The pulse of that town was too like the rushing mighty51 wind in the Rocky Mountain tunnel. It made me tired because complete strangers desired me to do something to mines which were in mountains, and to purchase building blocks upon inaccessible52 cliffs; and once, a woman urged that I should supply her with strong drinks. I had almost forgotten that such attacks were possible in any land, for the outward and visible signs of public morality in American towns are generally safe-guarded. For that I respect this people. Omaha, Nebraska, was but a halting-place on the road to Chicago, but it revealed to me horrors that I would not willingly have missed. The city to casual investigation53 seemed to be populated entirely54 by Germans, Poles, Slavs, Hungarians, Croats, Magyars, and all the scum of the Eastern European States, but it must have been laid out by Americans. No other people would cut the traffic of a main street with two streams of railway lines, each some eight or nine tracks wide, and cheerfully drive tram-cars across the metals. Every now and again they have horrible railway-crossing accidents at Omaha, but nobody seems to think of building an overhead-bridge. That would interfere with the vested interests of the undertakers.
Be blessed to hear some details of one of that class.
There was a shop the like of which I had never seen before: its windows were filled with dresscoats for men, and dresses for women. But the studs of the shirts were made of stamped cloth upon the shirt front, and there were no trousers to those coats — nothing but a sweep of cheap black cloth falling like an abbé’s frock. In the doorway55 sat a young man reading Pollock’s Course of Time, and by that I knew that he was an undertaker. His name was Gring, which is a beautiful name, and I talked to him on the mysteries of his Craft. He was an enthusiast56 and an artist. I told him how corpses57 were burnt in India. Said he: ‘We’re vastly superior. We hold — that is to say, embalm58 — our dead. So!’ Whereupon he produced the horrible weapons of his trade, and most practically showed me how you ‘held’ a man back from that corruption59 which is his birthright. ‘And I wish I could live a few generations just to see how my people keep. But I’m sure it’s all right. Nothing can touch ’em after I’ve embalmed60 ’em.’ Then he displayed one of those ghastly dress-suits, and when I laid a shuddering61 hand upon it, behold it crumpled62 to nothing, for the white linen63 was sewn on to the black cloth and there was no back to it! That was the horror. The garment was a shell. ‘We dress a man in that,’ said Gring, laying it out tastily on the counter. ‘As you see here, our caskets have a plate-glass window in front’ (Oh me, but that window in the coffin64 was fitted with plush like a brougham window!), ‘and you don’t see anything below the level of the man’s waistcoat. Consequently . . .’ He unrolled the terrible cheap black cloth that falls down over the stark65 feet, and I jumped back. ‘Of course a man can be dressed in his own clothes if he likes, but these are the regular things: and for women look at this!’ He took up the body of a high-necked dinnerdress in subdued66 lilac, slashed67 and puffed68 and bedevilled with black, but, like the dress-suit, backless, and below the waist turning to shroud69. ‘That’s for an old maid. But for young girls we give white with imitation pearls round the neck. That looks very pretty through the window of the casket — you see there’s a cushion for the head — with flowers banked all round.’ Can you imagine anything more awful than to take your last rest as much of a dead fraud as ever you were a living lie — to go into the darkness one half of you shaved, trimmed and dressed for an evening party, while the other half — the half that your friends cannot see — is enwrapped in a flapping black sheet?
I know a little about burial customs in various places in the world, and I tried hard to make Mr., Gring comprehend dimly the awful heathendom that he was responsible for — the grotesquerie — the giggling70 horror of it all. But he couldn’t see it. Even when he showed me a little boy’s last suit, he couldn’t see it. He said it was quite right to embalm and trick out and hypocritically bedizen the poor innocent dead in their superior cushioned and pillowed caskets with the window in front.
Bury me cased in canvas like a fishing-rod, in the deep sea; burn me on a back-water of the Hughli with damp wood and no oil; pin me under a Pullman car and let the lighted stove do its worst; sizzle me with a fallen electric wire or whelm me in the sludge of a broken river dam; but may I never go down to the Pit grinning out of a plate-glass window, in a backless dress-coat, and the front half of a black stuff dressing-gown; not though I were ‘held’ against the ravage71 of the grave for ever and ever. Amen!
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1
dallying
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| v.随随便便地对待( dally的现在分词 )；不很认真地考虑；浪费时间；调情 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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gorge
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| n.咽喉，胃，暴食，山峡；v.塞饱，狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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bowels
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| n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处 | |
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catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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bovine
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| adj.牛的；n.牛 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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gorges
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| n.山峡，峡谷( gorge的名词复数 )；咽喉v.（用食物把自己）塞饱，填饱( gorge的第三人称单数 )；作呕 | |
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trout
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| n.鳟鱼；鲑鱼(属) | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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shanties
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| n.简陋的小木屋( shanty的名词复数 )；铁皮棚屋；船工号子；船歌 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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orations
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| n.（正式仪式中的）演说，演讲( oration的名词复数 ) | |
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federation
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| n.同盟，联邦，联合，联盟，联合会 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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dingiest
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| adj.暗淡的，乏味的( dingy的最高级 )；肮脏的 | |
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tickle
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| v.搔痒，胳肢；使高兴；发痒；n.搔痒，发痒 | |
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aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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salmon
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| n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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slovenly
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| adj.懒散的，不整齐的，邋遢的 | |
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outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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filth
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| n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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proffered
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| v.提供，贡献，提出( proffer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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brat
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| n.孩子；顽童 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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tenement
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| n.公寓；房屋 | |
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spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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hitched
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| （免费）搭乘他人之车( hitch的过去式和过去分词 )； 搭便车； 攀上； 跃上 | |
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ordained
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| v.任命（某人）为牧师( ordain的过去式和过去分词 )；授予（某人）圣职；（上帝、法律等）命令；判定 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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caverns
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| 大山洞，大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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49
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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50
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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enthusiast
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| n.热心人，热衷者 | |
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corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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embalm
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| v.保存（尸体）不腐 | |
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corruption
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| n.腐败，堕落，贪污 | |
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embalmed
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| adj.用防腐药物保存（尸体）的v.保存（尸体）不腐( embalm的过去式和过去分词 )；使不被遗忘；使充满香气 | |
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shuddering
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| v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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slashed
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| v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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puffed
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| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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shroud
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| n.裹尸布，寿衣；罩，幕；vt.覆盖，隐藏 | |
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70
giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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71
ravage
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| vt.使...荒废，破坏...；n.破坏，掠夺，荒废 | |
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