VI Motmtain Jim s End 173 



glaciers is a great loss from a picturesque stand- 

 point.' 



The Doctor had two patients, at least, while he 

 was staying in Colorado in 1874. One of them 

 was his brother Charles, whom he found, to his 

 great surprise, in an hotel in Denver, suffering from 

 a severe attack of pleurisy, the other was the wild 

 man of the woods mentioned in the last letter 

 This gentleman, whose real name was Nugent, but 

 who was popularly known as ' Rocky Mountain Jim,' 

 was one of the notorious and the most picturesque 

 of all the Western desperadoes, truly a man as wild 

 and as strange and as full of contradictions as the 

 most Bourbon-inspired novelist ever dreamt of ! An 

 extremely interesting account of him is given by 

 Miss Isabella Bird in her charming book, A Lady's 

 Life in the Rocky Mountains. He was a Canadian 

 — a man of considerable natural ability who had 

 received a good education, but for some reason he 

 found it expedient to leave his native land and to go 

 to the Western States, where, after a time, he became 

 * one of the most famous Indian scouts of the plains, 

 distinguishing himself by some of the most daring 

 deeds on record, and some of the bloodiest crimes,' 

 and was wont, according to his own account, ' to ride 

 through the camps in his scout's dress with a red 

 scarf round his waist, and sixteen golden curls, 

 eighteen inches long, hanging over his shoulders.' 

 At a later period of his life he joined a gang of 



