332 GRASSHOPPERS MIRACULOUSLY DESTROYED. [1865. 'galvanized' Yankees; were faithful prompt and well-disciplined.

As we reached one station our driver enjoined the waiting hostlers:

'Gents, we are four hours behind and want to make up the time. We must change these teams in three minutes by the watch.'

At the last telegraph office before the end of our journey, the operator said to Mr. Colfax and his party:

'The Denver people are making preparations to give you fellows a grand reception.'

In four days and a half from Atchison we reached Denver. Scourged by war and fire and blood, the city has grown up through great tribulation. Repeatedly, hostile Indians have cut off communication with the States for months at a time.

The early settlers erected excellent brick and frame buildings on the dry bed of Cherry creek; and for two or three years it remained quite innocent of water. But at midnight, on the nineteenth of May, 1864, without any warning, a great storm on the plains changed the creek from a sand-bed to a deluge. An immense torrent came plunging down, sweeping away every building like gossamer Not a vestige remained. Not a relic was ever found even of the six printing presses of the News office, or the great iron safe which contained the archives of the city. Several lives were lost. The next morning the creek-bed was again dry; but real estate there, in great demand before, has not since possessed any marketable value.

For two or three early seasons the crops in the valleys were utterly destroyed by grasshoppers. These plagues of the frontier seem to visit all new States. Again and again they passed through Utah like hungry armies, eating every green thing. At last enormous flocks of birds came upon their track and devoured the grasshoppers themselves, which never afterward troubled the Mormons. The Saints thought the deliverance a special interposition of Providence on behalf of their prophet and the Lord's chosen people. Colorado had no Brigham; but this year the grasshoppers were harmless, and we found the valley abounding in flourishing ranches-the universal term for farms. Ranch, or

1865.] RANCH EGGS VERSUS STATES EGGS.

333

domestic productions, from their superior freshness, are greatly preferred to those brought from the States. A Coloradoan at one of the New York hotels, finding a bad egg at breakfast, said to the waiter:

'Take away these confounded States eggs, and bring me some ranch eggs!'

Colorado agriculture was already successful and there were some grain fields of five and six hundred acres. The next year (1866) careful computation showed that seventy thousand acres were planted; and home crops supplied the population of the Territory with every farm product except corn.

In some departments of business high prices still prevailed. Six or seven daily newspapers were published. Subscription price of the dailies: twenty-five dollars per annum, or seventy-five cents per week by carrier; weeklies, eight dollars per annum. Single copies, twenty-five cents. Advertisements, two dollars per square of ten lines, for each insertion.

At my last visit, five years before, Civilization had barely extended to these wilds the tips of her gracious fingers. Now Denver boasted a population of five thousand, and many imposing buildings. The hotel bills-of-fare did not differ materially from those in New York or Chicago. Single building lots had commanded twelve thousand dollars. One firm had sold half a million dollars worth of goods in eight months.

With fresh memories of the log-cabins, plank tables, tin cups and plates, and fatal whisky of 1859, I did not readily recover from my surprise on seeing libraries and pictures, rich carpets and pianos, silver and wine-on meeting families with the habits, dress and surroundings of the older States. Keenly we enjoyed the pleasant hospitalities of society among the quickened intelligences and warmed hearts of the frontier. Western emigration makes men larger and riper, more liberal and more fraternal.

The mountain view from the city impressed me as more grand and beautiful than ever. Bayard Taylor knows no external picture of the Alps, which can be placed beside it;' and in average hight the Alps are surpassed by the Rocky Mountains.

On the way to the mines we crossed Clear creek, which tearing down from the range will afford excellent water-power when the

334

LESSON OF MOUNTAIN SCENERY. [1865.

We

manufacturer's bit shall be placed in its foaming mouth. entered the mountains at Golden Gate, by the first stage-coach which had ever penetrated to the old Gregory Diggings. Thousands of acres, which at my first visit had been covered with stately pines, were now utterly bare. The wood had been consumed for fuel in Denver, and by the mountain quartz mills.

After climbing for hours, reaching the summit of a high ridge

ward to the Snowy Range, its rich purple streaked with dazzling white, and one of its peaks draped in soft transparent haze.

With profound truth and suggestiveness, Holmes asks if all the tongues of the world can tell how thrushes sing and lilacs smell! The one lesson of this mountain scenery is the utter poverty of language. Not even the wonderful delineations of Bierstadt and Church convey more than a hint of its beauty and grandeur.

The most exquisite combinations and contrasts of color intermingle. Over vast fire-swept expanses, blackened armless trunks of trees stand weird and ghastly; while beyond rise ridges of

1865.] GREGORY DIGGINGS AT SIX YEARS OLD. 335

smooth greensward, or peaks and walls of rugged rock. Through the valleys, little streams lashed into snowy whiteness foam down stony beds, their grassy banks fragrant with the breath of honeysuckle and violet, sweet with the meek bluebell, dark with the purple larkspur, or bright with the flaming glory of the sunflower. Winding up North Clear creek we began to pass great quartz mills. Near the old Gregory Diggings we reached the mining settlements of Black Hawk and Central, which thread the narrow valley for three miles, in quaint, crooked, contracted streets-like those of a Swiss hamlet-shut in on both sides by steep, bare mountains. Wood and granite quartz mills, old log-cabins of '59, shops, stables, school-houses, drinking-saloons, handsome brick blocks, newspaper and express offices, side by side crowd each other in the tortuous thoroughfares, while the creek, muddy and turbid from washing out the quartz, tumbles among them. Picturesque cream-colored and stone-colored cottages perch in little niches of rugged hills; and a neat Gothic church overlooks the whole.

Lodes real and supposititious have been staked and worked all over the mountains. During 1864 the fees of the recorder of one mining district, amounted to twenty thousand dollars above office expenses. Lodes are traced by the outcroppings or 'blossom,' a faint line of decaying quartz along the surface. The number of feet along the 'lead' which a claim may embrace, is decided by the miners, and varies greatly in different States.

Most of the inhabitants were engaged in legitimate business; but as in all gold regions there were many loafers, chiefly divided into two classes. Of the lower, locally known as 'bummers,' it was said that when two citizens approached a bar, and one asked his friend-not if he would drink, for that is superfluous west of the Missouri, but what he would drink, seventeen immediately stepped up and remarked that they would take sugar in theirs! The more respectable class, speculating in claims or mining stocks, talked volubly about the rights of the working people, and of themselves as 'honest miners.'

During our visit there was a hot excitement, very characteristic of a gold country, over a contested claim. A suit was pending between two rival companies, and the chief justice of the Territory granted an injunction restricting one from

336

A CURIOUS CLAIM CONTROVERSY.

[1865. further work upon their shaft, but permitting Fitz John Porter of army memory, who represented the other, to go on with his shaft. Angry at this seemingly unjust discrimination, the hostile company placed an injunction upon Porter, quite as effective and considerably more offensive. There was a draught from one excavation into the other; so they built a fire upon their own premises and Porter found a column of smoke from burning

AN HONEST MINER.

sulphur rising through his shaft, which made it impossible to enter it. An attachment was placed upon his opponents for this curious contempt of court; but they kept up the smoke. Both parties were bitter and armed with shot-guns. The whole community was divided into adherents of one side or the other, and the contest involved much political feeling. With the usual frontier mildness, threats of killing were freely made; but the affair was finally adjusted without bloodshed.

The history of Colorado illustrates the uncertainties of mining. Gold-bearing quartz opened very richly; and during the first wild excitement, nearly twenty millions of dollars of eastern capital were invested. One company sold six hundred thousand dollars worth of stock at par for cash, over the counter of its New York office in a single day; and at the close of business hours was compelled to call in the police to clear the room of eager purchasers. 'Children cried for it.' Thus quartz mills with an aggregate of two thousand stamps were sent out, and mines opened. But at a certain depth the character of the veins changed. The gold was associated with pyrites of iron, and could not be separated by any known process. From that day to this Colorado mining has been practically suspended, but the gold is there;