WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 345 



and sift) the ashes of the corpse, in vain quest of the rumoured 

 gold! 



Here is another instance : 



Virginia City now a well-organised centre of mining wealth 

 in a Western Territory was only in its golden infancy then. 

 Its inhabitants up to a certain day of which we shall tell were 

 lively exemplars of the theory that no impetus works so 

 violently towards the commission of crime as the greed begotten 

 of wealth dug from the ground. Placer-mining has probably 

 been linked more closely with blood and robbery than any 

 occupation in the world save freebooting on the high seas. 

 The turning up of solid gold money at once, for is not the 

 yellow ore as good as the very coin of the realm ? would seem 

 to have an effect on the instincts of man that no other appeal 

 to his grosser and wickeder senses can equal. Small wonder 

 then that, without the restraining influence of either laws or 

 penalties, evil comes madly to the surface, and a community is 

 terrorised and outraged till it can stand it no longer, but rises 

 to put things straight with a strong and merciless hand. 



In such a society as that of a young mining-camp will be 

 found every class of character, every grade of intellect, and 

 every form of manhood. The more sterling spirits are sure to 

 come to the front ; and from their initiative grows up the 

 steadier future that shall develop the lawless camp into the 

 prosperous city. Colonel Sanders was one of these men. A 

 lawyer by education, he had, like most others, become a soldier 

 by force of circumstances, and when the war of brotherhood was 

 over, he, too, like the others, turned again to civil occupation. 

 But the campaign had unfitted him for an immediate return to 

 office drudgery. Love of excitement and the habit of outdoor 

 life bade him off to the mines ; and forthwith he found himself 

 shoulder to shoulder with a rough and motley crew all digging, 

 washing, and sifting the soil for very life. On the outskirts of 

 the workers hung a still " tougher " element gangs and indi- 

 viduals who, while ostensibly turning the earth for themselves, 

 made their chief business the jumping of others' claims, the 



