Two hunters toiling up a cliff
Of the blue Colorado range,
Paus'd for a moment to survey
The landscape, wild and strange;
Far off, a chain of mountains dim
Along the horizon crept,
While groves and valleys soft below
In tranquil beauty slept.

Near by El Conquistador rose,
Its steep sides dark with tufted woods,
Its peaks wind-swept and lightning-scarr'd,
All seam'd and rent with torrent floods.
And here a little mountain vale
Its natural garden fair outspread;
Fair with its grass, its trees, its bloom,
And the bright, blue heavens o'erhead.

And here the careless foot upturn'd
A skull, a jagged, rusty knife.
Were these the sole memorials
Of some foul, murtherous strife —
Sole relics of a tragedy
That stain'd these grasses green;
These mouldering bones that here have lain
For years, unknown, unseen?
Was it the red man or the white,
Hunter or miner, Indian brave,
That perish'd in this lonely spot,
Dead, and denied a grave?

Or, haply, 'twas some tender maid,
Some Indian squaw, some emigrant,
Sailing across Atlantic seas,
To die in this sequester'd haunt.
But who this mystery may solve,
The story of these bones unfold!
Ah, never! till the last Great Day,
When all earth's secrets shall be told.

Ah, many who seek this Western clime
Were outlaw'd men from foreign shore;
Men steep'd to the very lips in crime,
With heart of iron and hand of gore.
They blast the rock, they dig the mine,
They sift the sands where nuggets shine,
And ever in savage midnight fray
Are prompt with the bloody blade to slay.