DENVER

I could not make out whether the superiority of the Deer Valley settlers extended beyond material things, but a teamster I met in the evening said it “made him more of a man to spend a night in such a house.”  In Colorado whisky is significant of all evil and violence, and is the cause of most of the shooting affrays in the mining camps, There are few moderate drinkers; it is seldom taken except to excess.  The great local question in the Territory, and just now the great electoral issue, is drink or no drink, and some of the papers are openly advocating a prohibitive liquor law.  Some of the districts, such as Greeley, in which liquor is prohibited are without crime, and in several of the stock-raising and agricultural regions through which I have traveled where it is practically excluded the doors are never locked, and the miners leave their silver bricks in their wagons unprotected at night.  People say that on coming from the Eastern States they hardly realize at first the security in which they live.  There is no danger and no fear.  But the truth of the proverbial saying, “There is no God west of the Missouri,” is everywhere manifest.  The “almighty dollar” is the true divinity, and its worship is universal.  “Smartness” is the quality thought most of.  The boy who “gets on” by cheating at his lessons is praised for being a “smart boy,” and his satisfied parents foretell that he will make a “smart man.”  A man who overreaches his neighbor, but who does it so cleverly that the law cannot take hold of him, wins an envied reputation as a “smart man,” and stories of this species of smartness are told admiringly round every stove.  Smartness is but the initial stages of swindling, and the clever swindler who evades or defies the weak and often corruptly administered laws of the States excites unmeasured admiration among the masses.

I left Deer Valley at ten the next morning on a glorious day, with rich atmospheric coloring, had to spend three hours sitting on a barrel in a forge after I had ridden twelve miles, waiting while twenty-four oxen were shod, and then rode on twenty-three miles through streams and canyons of great beauty till I reached a grocery store, where I had to share a room with a large family and three teamsters; and being almost suffocated by the curtain partition, got up at four, before any one was stirring, saddled Birdie, and rode away in the darkness, leaving my money on the table!  It was a short eighteen miles’ ride to Denver down the Turkey Creek Canyon, which contains some magnificent scenery, and then the road ascends and hangs on the ledge of a precipice 600 feet in depth, such a narrow road that on meeting a wagon I had to dismount for fear of hurting my feet with the wheels, From thence there was a wonderful view through the rolling Foot Hills and over the gray-brown plains to Denver.  Not a tree or shrub was to be seen, everything was rioting in summer heat and drought, while behind lay the last grand canyon of the mountains, dark with pines and cool with snow.  I left the track and took a short cut over the prairie to Denver, passing through an encampment of the Ute Indians about 500 strong, a disorderly and dirty huddle of lodges, ponies, men, squaws, children, skins, bones, and raw meat.

The Americans will never solve the Indian problem till the Indian is extinct.  They have treated them after a fashion which has intensified their treachery and “devilry” as enemies, and as friends reduces them to a degraded pauperism, devoid of the very first elements of civilization.  The only difference between the savage and the civilized Indian is that the latter carries firearms and gets drunk on whisky.  The Indian Agency has been a sink of fraud and corruption; it is said that barely thirty per cent of the allowance ever reaches those for whom it is voted; and the complaints of shoddy blankets, damaged flour, and worthless firearms are universal.  “To get rid of the Injuns” is the phrase used everywhere.  Even their “reservations” do not escape seizure practically; for if gold “breaks out” on them they are “rushed,” and their possessors are either compelled to accept land farther west or are shot off and driven off.  One of the surest agents in their destruction is vitriolised whisky.  An attempt has recently been made to cleanse the Augean stable of the Indian Department, but it has met with signal failure, the usual result in America of every effort to purify the official atmosphere.  Americans specially love superlatives.  The phrases “biggest in the world,” “finest in the world,” are on all lips.  Unless the President is a strong man they will soon come to boast that their government is composed of the “biggest scoundrels” in the world.

As I rode into Denver and away from the mountains the view became glorious, as range above range crowned with snow came into sight.  I was sure that three glistening peaks seventy miles north were the peerless shapeliness of Long’s Peak, the king of the Rocky Mountains, and the “mountain fever” returned so severely that I grudged every hour spent on the dry, hot plains.  The range looked lovelier and sublimer than when I first saw it from Greeley, all spiritualised in the wonderful atmosphere.  I went direct to Evans’ house, where I found a hearty welcome, as they had been anxious about my safety, and Evans almost at once arrived from Estes Park with three elk, one grizzly, and one bighorn in his wagon.  Regarding a place and life one likes (in spite of all lessons) one is sure to think, “Tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant ;” and all through my tour I had thought of returning to Estes Park and finding everything just as it was.  Evans brought the unwelcomed news that the goodly fellowship was broken up.  The Dewys and Mr. Waller were in Denver, and the house was dismantled, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards alone remaining, who were, however, expecting me back.  Saturday, though like a blazing summer day, was wonderful in its beauty, and after sunset the after glow was richer and redder than I have ever seen it, but the heavy crimson betokened severe heat, which came on yesterday, and was hardly bearable.  I attended service twice at the Episcopal Church, where the service was beautifully read and sung; but in a city in which men preponderate the congregation was mainly composed of women, who fluttered their fans in a truly distracting way.  except for the churchgoing there were few perceptible signs of Sunday in Denver, which was full of rowdies from the mountain mining camps.  You can hardly imagine the delight of joining in those grand old prayers after so long a deprivation.  The “Te Deum” sounded heavenly in its magnificence; but the heat was so tremendous that it was hard to “warstle” through the day.  They say that they have similar outbreaks of solar fury all through the winter.

I.L.B.