CHAPTER XI. 



More Denver The Indian Scare Preparations My Camp The Effects of 

 Fear Panama The Eailroad Journey to Colon A Fright The 

 Sensitive Plant A Pointer. 



DENVER has seen many vicissitudes and strange occur- 

 rences. I was there during what was known and long 

 talked of as " The Indian Scare," being then encamped only 

 two miles below town, upon the south bank of the Platte 

 river. 



For some time all kinds of alarming rumours concerning 

 the Indians had been circulating. The newspapers had been 

 full of accounts of the " Minnesota massacre," and the mind 

 of the public was altogether in a morbid state about Indian 

 dangers. Denver was past its first stage of existence. It 

 was full of storekeepers, eastern emigrants, Jew dealers, and 

 freshly-arrived Europeans people knowing nothing about 

 the savages or what they were or were not capable of under- 

 taking, and as frightened of them as small children are of 

 bogies. 



A Kansas City " bull-train," lately come in, had passed an 

 encampment of over six hundred tents.- Four or five of the 



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