GHTING THE ELEMENTS.

The miners at Minturne Creek had a hard time of it, and their life was
monotonous enough after they had settled down to work in earnest.

Winter came--the stern hard winter that can only be experienced to the
full in the northern regions of the Far West, backed up seemingly by all
the powers of nature--to try and cramp the energies of the party, and
arrest their labours; but, neither the severity of the weather, nor the
languor which the excessive frigidity of the atmosphere produced--
although it sent them to sleep of a night after their day's toil,
without the necessity of an opiate--were sufficient to deter them from
their purpose.

Winter passed by, and still they worked on steadily, notwithstanding
that as yet they had met with no substantial success to encourage them,
hoping, however, that they had surmounted the gravest part of their
undertaking. Spring arrived, and their hopes of an easy season of it
were demolished in an instant; for the snow melted on the hills, and the
ice melted in the valley, and the iron bands of the river were broken,
causing a foaming torrent to dash through the gulch--a torrent that
swelled each hour with the fresh accretions of water from the higher
rocks, and, spreading wide in the valley, threatened to annihilate the
whole party, as well as the results of their handiwork during the past
months of bitter toil.

The very elements warred against them; but, under the noble example of
their indomitable leader, whom nothing appeared to dishearten, they
braved the elements, and were not discouraged.

The torrent grew into a flood, tossing huge rocks about as if they were
corks, and swelled and foamed around the dam they laboriously raised
when the floods began, to protect the shaft; but they fought the newly
created flood with its own weapons, hurling buttresses at it to support
their artificial embankment, in return for its rocks, and pointing the
very weapons of the enemy against itself.

They had not to contend with water alone.

The winds, let loose apparently by the thawing of the huge glaciers by
which they were confined in the cavernous recesses of the mountain
peaks, stormed down into the valley, there meeting other and
antagonistic currents of air coming up the canon--and met and fought,
relentless giants that they were, on the neutral ground of the miners'
camp, tearing off the iron sheets of their house, and sending them
flying away on the wings of