A Sportsman 123 



privations and sufferings experienced by the first set- 

 tlers were widely circulated through the United States. 

 The long passage, exceeding six hundred miles, from 

 the last settlements of the Eastern States to the moun- 

 tains of Colorado, over a sweeping plain, denuded of 

 timber and yielding only a precarious supply of food 

 to man, necessitated the taking of supplies sufficient 

 for the through passage. This passage, when taken 

 with mules or oxen, required from thirty to sixty days, 

 and was often indefinitely prolonged by bad weather 

 or by the loss of animals. In such cases which were 

 not infrequent and in others when the amount of 

 provisions taken was inadequate for the ordinary 

 passage, much want existed, and for a period extend- 

 ing a considerable length over the early days of Colo- 

 rado there was a great scarcity of food in the mining 

 regions, and often the worn-out emigrant from the 

 plains arrived to find a condition of affairs but little 

 better than he had known upon the road. 



There were also great difficulties met with in work- 

 ing the refractory minerals found when the mines were 

 sunk below the surface ores; these, though vastly 

 richer than the decomposed ore above them, would not 

 yield the precious metal by the simple and rude pro- 

 cess found so profitable when applied to disintegrated 

 or alluvial deposits. 



But the great evils which discouraged emigration 

 more than any others were those entailed by the In- 

 dian wars, which raged during the years 1864 and 

 1865. The different tribes of Indians upon the plains, 

 who saw the regions they had so long considered ex- 

 clusively their own continually invaded by emigrants, 

 were not slow to resent a real or fancied injury, and 



