120 Reminiscences of 



away from the Indian camp, and at daylight, seeing 

 no traces of his enemies, made haste in the direction 

 of the Overland road, knowing from the rising sun the 

 general direction toward it, resulting in his secured 

 escape. His naked feet were bleeding from the prickly 

 pear plants he had travelled over, and altogether he 

 was a sorry-looking object. We left him at the next 

 station. 



Although somewhat weak in the first days out in 

 staging I pulled up pretty well before the arrival at 

 Denver, after the six hundred miles of passage. Den- 

 ver was then a somewhat dilapidated town of a few 

 thousand people, and as we drew in at the Planters 

 Hotel a rather unpromising wooden building we had 

 a delegation of citizens there to inspect the new arri- 

 vals, as one of the prominent events of the day. It 

 was at Denver, in the small stream running through 

 the town, that gold was first discovered a few years 

 before, and which led on to the finding of the mineral 

 veins in the mountains above. The population of the 

 Territory at the time was estimated at from twenty- 

 five to thirty thousand, of which a large proportion 

 was scattered about in the mining districts. 



Our arrival was heralded in the following morning 

 paper, and I was amused at finding myself designated 

 as a prominent professor of mineralogy sent out from 

 the East by important financial interests to invest in 

 the unrivalled mineral wealth of the region. This 

 beset me with numerous calls during the few days I 

 remained in town from embryotic millionaires, who 

 carefully unfolded packages of mineral ores for my in- 

 spection, with intimations that I could glut myself with 

 boundless deposits of golden ores in the mountains 



