Five years ago I visited the city of Pueblo again, the first time I had
been there since that time.

I imagined I could go right to the spot where our camp was located, and
the morning after I arrived there I took a walk on the main business
street, which I thought was about where our camp had stood. But search
as long as I might, there was nothing to show me a sign of the old
landmarks.

I went to the river, thinking that must look the same, but no, even the
channel of that had been changed.

Amazed at the change civilization had wrought in obliterating everything
that I had thought would be a guide to the old places I sought, I spoke
to a police officer and asked him if be could tell me whether a very
large tree had stood in that neighborhood or not before that street was
laid out.

He answered, "Yes, that tree stood right under that brick building," and
he pointed to a large building near where we stood, and he continued.
"As long as the tree stood there, it was called 'Freemont's camping
ground.'"

That particular spot is no exception, for every place I have visited in
late years all through the western country has met with the same change,
and the places that I was familiar with in my youth are strange to me
now.

The place that is now called the city of Denver I will take for an
example. At the time I am speaking of, the year of forty-eight, and for
several years later, it was one of the greatest Antelope countries in
all the west, and I think I am safe in saying that there were not fifty
white men in all what is now called the state of Colorado.

I visited several cities in that state a year ago, and it would be
difficult for the people of this time to understand the feeling of
surprise that I experienced when I saw what civilization had done to
every place I visited.

On the Platte river in the eastern part of the city of Denver where the
large machine shops now stand is the spot where the largest bands of
Antelope were to be found, and it was there that we used to go to get
them every morning as they came down to the river to drink.

From the site where Amarillo is now we had all the Buffalo meat we
wanted, and when we struck what is now the city of Trinidad, Colorado,
we followed the stream known as and called the "Picket Wire," down to
the Arkansas river, and as we were in the heart of the Buffalo country,
we were not out of the sight of herds of Buffalo all the way down to
that river.

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