180 SADDLE AND CAMP 



swept. Chairs were a glory yet to come. Town 

 lots and log houses were bartered for revolvers, 

 or sold for ten or twenty dollars." That was 

 Denver only fifty years ago! 



It is not difficult, then, for one visiting this 

 great modern city to-day, with its 213,000 in- 

 habitants and its many tributary cities and 

 towns, to appreciate the causes of diminution 

 of Colorado's game, for wild game and a dense 

 population cannot co-exist. At the time of which 

 Richardson wrote antelope were numerous in 

 the vicinity of Denver, and herds of them 

 flecked the plains to the eastward, and the ad- 

 jacent mountains were abundantly stocked with 

 deer and other big game animals. There are 

 some antelope still not far away, and on the 

 same plains one may see them now and again 

 from the window of a railway coach. They are 

 few and scattered, though, protected by a per- 

 petual closed season against hunting, we are as- 

 sured that a gradual increase is taking place. 



Colorado, however, still retains wide, unset- 

 tled areas. It is a big State and naturally con- 

 tains much territory that cannot readily be 

 adapted to settlement. The game region of 

 northwestern Colorado is one of these regions, 

 and because it is naturally better suited than 

 other unsettled regions of the State to a consid- 



