Spaniard, you
should know--a pure Castilian whose ancestor was some old hidalgo with
as long an array of names and titles as has the Czar of All the Russias
himself. Though he now lives in a forsaken-looking adobe hut with dirt
floor and roof of sticks and turf that serves only to defile the
raindrops that trickle through its many gaps--though his sallow wife
and ill-favored children huddle round him or cook the scanty meal upon
the mud oven in a corner of the room--he is yet a Spaniard, and glories
in it. The tall, raw-boned man, straight as a young cottonwood, whose
long black hair floats out from beneath his hat as he rides into town
from his ranch down the river, may be a half-breed who has figured in a
score of Indian fights, and enjoys the proud distinction of having
killed his man. There is the hungry-looking prospector, waiting with
ill-disguised impatience till he can "cross the Range" and follow again,
as he has done year after year, the exciting chase after the
ever-receding mirage--the visions of fabulous wealth always going to be,
but never quite, attained. The time-honored symbol of Hope must, we
think, give place to a more forcible representation furnished by the
peculiar genius of our times; for is not our modern Rocky-Mountain
prospector the complete embodiment of that sublime grace? His is a hope
that even reverses the proverb, for no amount of deferring is able to
make him heartsick, but rather seems to spur him on to more earnest
endeavor. Has he toiled the summer long, endured every privation,
encountered inconceivable perils, only to find himself at its close
poorer than when he began? Reluctantly he leaves the mountain-side where
the drifting snows have begun to gather, but seemingly as light-hearted
as when he came, for his unshaken hope bridges the winter and feeds upon
the limitless possibilities of the future. Full of wonderful stories are
these same hope-sustained prospectors--tales that are bright with the
glitter of silver and gold. Not a single one of them who has not
discovered "leads" of wonderful richness or "placers" where the sands
were yellow with gold; but by some mischance the prize always slipped
out of his grasp, and left him poor in all but hope. And in truth so
fascinating becomes the occupation that men who in other respects seem
cool and phlegmatic will desert an almost assured success to join the
horde rushing toward some unexplored district, impelled by the
ever-flying rumor