near and yet out of reach would make me nearly crazy. Denver is at
present the terminus of the Kansas Pacific Railroad. It has a line
connecting it with the Union Pacific Railroad at Cheyenne, and by means
of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, open for about 200 miles, it is
expecting to reach into Mexico. It has also had the enterprise, by
means of another narrow-gauge railroad, to push its way right up into
the mining districts near Gray's Peak. The number of "saloons" in the
streets impresses one, and everywhere one meets the characteristic
loafers of a frontier town, who find it hard even for a few days or
hours to submit to the restraints of civilization, as hard as I did to
ride sidewise to Governor Hunt's office. To Denver men go to spend the
savings of months of hard work in the maddest dissipation, and there
such characters as "Comanche Bill," "Buffalo Bill," "Wild Bill," and
"Mountain Jim," go on the spree, and find the kind of notoriety they
seek.

A large number of Indians added to the harlequin appearance of the
Denver streets the day I was there. They belonged to the Ute tribe,
through which I had to pass, and Governor Hunt introduced me to a
fine-looking young chief, very well dressed in beaded hide, and bespoke
his courtesy for me if I needed it. The Indian stores and fur stores
and fur depots interested me most. The crowds in the streets, perhaps
owing to the snow on the ground, were almost solely masculine. I only
saw five women the whole day. There were men in every rig: hunters and
trappers in buckskin clothing; men of the Plains with belts and
revolvers, in great blue cloaks, relics of the war; teamsters in
leathern suits; horsemen in fur coats and caps and buffalo-hide boots
with the hair outside, and camping blankets behind their huge Mexican
saddles; Broadway dandies in light kid gloves; rich English sporting
tourists, clean, comely, and supercilious looking; and hundreds of
Indians on their small ponies, the men wearing buckskin suits sewn with
beads, and red blankets, with faces painted vermilion and hair hanging
lank and straight, and squaws much bundled up, riding astride with furs
over their saddles.

Town tired and confused me, and in spite of Mrs. Evans's kind
hospitality, I was glad when a man brought Birdie at nine yesterday
morning. He said she was a little demon, she had done nothing but
buck, and had bucked him off on the bridge! I found that he had put a
curb on her,