Rumors of impending troubles with the Indians thickened as we advanced. The settlers and stage-people said the Indians appeared but little on the road, which was a sure sign that a storm was brewing. Further they said the tribes had had a grand pow-wow recently on the Smoky Hill and the Republican, in which they had agreed to bury the hatchet and make common cause against the pale-faces. Subsequently, later in the autumn, they did attack some stations on the Smoky Hill route, and a stage or two on the Platte route; but we reached Denver unmolested. East of Julesburg, at Baker's ranch, we passed an encampment of Sioux, perhaps two or three hundred, papooses and all, in cone-shaped wigwams, evidently the original of our army "Sibley." While changing horses, we strolled into several of their wigwams, and found them full of braves, squat upon their hams, intently engaged in playing cards. In Indian pantomime, they warmly invited us to participate, but we were obliged to decline the distinguished honor. The squaws were mostly at work on moccasins or blankets, and their tawny little papooses (stark naked, except a breech-cloth) were either practising with bows and arrows, or "lying around loose." The entire party seemed utterly poverty-stricken, even to their ponies and dogs, and, generally, about as wretched as human beings could well be. Their main provisions seemed to be rusty army-rations, which had recently been issued to them at one of our neighboring posts, and without these they would have been practically destitute. Dirty, squalid, indecent, and half-starving, they seemed but little removed above the brute creation, and gave a terrible shock to all preconceived ideas about the "Noble Red Man," if we had any. They were the first real savages—pure and simple—we had met, and our poetry and romance, born of Cooper and Longfellow, shivered at the spectacle. Some miles farther on, we encountered two young "bucks," gaily attired in blankets, beads, feathers, etc., jogging along on their ponies to the camp at Baker's. They had given a big scare to a poor German we overtook—a blacksmith, travelling alone from station to station, in a light two-mule buggy, to shoe the Company's horses. The appearance of our coach, however, made him feel his scalp more secure, and falling in behind he followed us up for miles, singing at the top of his voice "Annie, dear Annie of the vale!" Our stage was full inside and out, and we were all well-armed—in fact, fairly bristled with repeating-rifles and revolvers—and had we been attacked no doubt would have given a good account of ourselves. Our experiences up to Denver, however, inclined us to be somewhat skeptical on the Indian question, and our subsequent observations did not greatly change this. The whole region, indeed, seemed to be over-sensitive on the subject. The air was everywhere thick with rumors, that one by one disappeared as we advanced, and we hardly knew which to wonder at the more—the veracity or credulity of the Plains. In fact, that prince of romancers, Baron Munchausen, seemed to preside over the country, or the people to be his lineal descendants, almost everywhere.
CHAPTER V.
DENVER AND THE MINES.
We reached Denver Sept. 5th, and remained there several days. Approaching by the South Platte, you catch sight of the town a mile or two away, when crossing a "divide," and are surprised at its size and importance. Ten years before, there was not an inhabitant there; but now she claimed seven thousand or more, and boasted with reason, of two hundred and fifty houses erected that year. Moreover, the new buildings were chiefly of brick or stone, while the old ones were log or frame. At the junction of the South Platte and Cherry Creek her streets are well-laid out, mostly at right-angles, and for suburbs she has the boundless Plains. Apparently on a plateau, she is nevertheless really a mountain city; for at St. Louis you are only three hundred feet above the sea, at Omaha nine hundred feet, while at Denver you have got up imperceptibly to four thousand feet above the sea, or higher than our average Alleghanies. Her climate is pure and dry, without rain or frost for many months in the year—the paradise of consumptives—and for scenery, she has the ever-glorious Rocky Mountains. Already she had six churches, two seminaries, two daily papers, a banking-house with a business of twelve millions a year, a U. S. Mint, a theatre, and hotels and saloons unnumbered, though these last it was thought were diminishing. Until recently, gambling-hells had also flourished openly on her streets, with their usual concomitants of drunkenness and affrays. But some months before, a Judge Gale—backed by a strong public opinion—had taken hold of the gamblers, and squelched them effectually. Like other "peculiar institutions," they died hard, raising large sums of money to prolong their evil life—threatening some men and bribing, or trying to bribe, others; but Judge Lynch came to the support of Judge Gale, with the counter-threat of "a cottonwood limb and a rope," and so gamblers ceased to rule in Denver. The happy change was freely commented on, and now that it had come, people wondered why they had endured the blacklegs so long. Denver was now evidently aspiring to better things—to "sweeter manners, purer laws." Her merchants and bankers were building themselves homes, sending east for their families, and settling down, as if to stay. Though not so law-abiding and Sabbath-loving, as our eastern cities, yet her churches were well-attended; and her Episcopal Bishop (Randall), we found scouring the country with all the earnestness and zeal of an old-time missionary, or Methodist itinerant. Band and gown, stole and chasuble, and other ritualistic millenary, he affected but little; but he preached Christ and Him crucified with a tenderness and power, that touched all hearts, and Colorado already had come to love and honor him. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you," was his text for as sound and appropriate a discourse the Sabbath we were in Denver, as we had heard in a long while. Every sentence struck home, like a rapier or a bullet, at some sin most prevalent in Colorado, and Denver might well "make a note of it." Subsequently we heard of him in the mines and among the mountains, preaching in quartz-mills and by the roadside—wherever he could gather a handful of hearers—always engaged in the Master's work, and always leaving a deep impression behind him.
Denver, with water and coal both near, yet had neither water nor gas works then, and scarcely a tree or shrub growing anywhere. Numerous trees had been planted, and much shrubbery; but the long and rainless summers had proven too much for them. The winter before, a company had been chartered to bring water from the mountains, for irrigating and other purposes, and they already had one ditch completed—three or four feet wide, by one or two deep—and were projecting others. This one irrigated several farms, turned a grist-mill or two, and then, with a branch to the fair-grounds, emptied into the Platte. But Denver must have such ditches, all around and through her, if she wants trees and shrubbery and then she may have streets and suburbs unsurpassed anywhere. Salt Lake, we afterwards found, had done this; and Denver will, when she has once been well scourged by fire. Then she was powerless against the fire-fiend, and a large conflagration well under way would have swept the town.[4]
Though the largest town in Colorado, and of commanding influence