It appears that he was able to show cause, and got off with banish-
ment. '
All these little governments came to an end on the passage of a
Civil and Criminal Code by the first Territorial Legislature, in the
winter of 1861-'62 ; but this code legalized all acts of previous govern-
ments, "not plainly contrary to justice or the common law/' It was
enacted that all the district recorders' books should be filed in the
office of the county recorder, and be presumptive proof, the burden
of proving the contrary to rest on the challenger ; and that all decis-
ions of former courts were to be valid " when both parties made ap-
pearance or had notice according to such rules as were then in force,
whether by law or accepted custom.'' The change from local to terri-
torial law appears to have been made without a ripple of disturbance, •
and all disputed claims of any prominence have risen under the pres-
ent laws. Thus is seen in miniature the course of civil aggregation :
first, the individual man yields to the local organization, then the local
is slowly merged in the general. Government is seen to be, not a pos-
itive good, but only a choice of the lesser evil. Man yields a portion
of his natural rights in order to preserve the rest ; he supports the
claims of others because he must ask support from them. Thus, too,
is manifested the inherent capacity of the Anglo-Saxon for civil organ-
ization; and those who maintain that government necessarily had its
origin in revelation, might profitably study the many proofs to the
contrary in the settlement of the Far West.
Colorado became a Territory in 1861, remained such fifteen years,
and after four desperate efforts, at last succeeded in becoming a State,
just in time to aid in the election of a centennial president. Denver,
political and financial capital of the new State, is also the starting
point for most places of interest. Thence by way of the Narrow-
guage, fifty miles westward, and all the way up-hill, lands us in the
Digitized by
Google
THE CENTENNIAL STATE. 479
mining region, where we will delay for a more specific description, the
reader to look on while the writer climbs and talks.
The lowlander, whom business or a love of novelty and wild
scenery leads to climb one of the mountains around Georgetown, find«
material for continual astonishment in the changes which unfold along
Ills upward way. The white spots seen from below, enlarge to gray
faces on the rocky cliffs, often hundreds of feet perpendicular ; the
darker shades, which seem from the valley mere breaks on the view,
open to immense gorges, down which pour torrents of almost ice-cold
water from the .^now-fed lakes on the summit, and the green plats
which pleased the eye as distant masses of shrubbery or thickets of
fiage-brush, swell mi near approach to magnificent forests of mountain
pine. The thin <lyke of yellow-gray rock, which seems to cap the
summit with rectangular blocks, apparently smooth enough to have
been set and polished by human hands, swells out slowly as he climbs,
till at last it towers hundreds of feet above the general summit^ level,
a solid battlement of weather-beaten granite or trap rock, sometimes
in monstrous cubes, but oftener in broken and sermted pinnacles like
saw-teeth, fully justifying the Spanish appellation of Sieivra (a saw).
From the streets of Georgetown the gulches which divide the spurs
into separate mining districts are barely visible; the face of the
mountain between the more abrupt cliffs is tolerably smooth, and ex-
cept the slope towards the valley it seems that one might drive a
wheeled carriage along its side, or that a stone once started would
roll into the city. Once on tliat slope, however, and the marks are
found to be gulches often a hundred feet in depth; and instead of the
fiice of one mountain we appear to have a hundred narrow " hog-
backs,'' in the sides of which are openings into the rock and tunnel
workings invisible from below.
Our party of seven sets out early, for our first ascent of GriflBth
Mountain will occupy half a day, and the first stage is up the face of
a bare rock, eight hundred feet high, and barely broken enough to
afford a foot-path ; thence by a more gentle trail along the foot of a
granite cliff, which rises three hundred feet almost perpendicularly.
And yet every yard on its front has been tried with the pick or
sounded with the hammer, to see if it contained mineral; for in just
such places have been found some of the richest mines of the district.
A peculiar stain on the rock attracted attention. Men were let down
fix)m above to " prospect,'' a crevice was found with " blossom " rock,
and often a platform anchored to the cliff till a more permanent foot-
ing could be blasted out. The celebrated Stevens' Mine was reached
Digitized by
Google
ILDS.
by a rope ladder for months
after being opened for work,
and even now the workmen
cling to a guide rope as they
*^o up the trail, and the ore
is sent down by a tramway.
Yet its richness pays for tfie
trouble.
A few hundred feet along
this rock-hewn path bring
us to the half-way gulch and
a beautiful spring. Dow^n
this rock flume runs one of
those brawling brooks which
lire the delight of poets and
artists; and yet the mouth
of the gulch, only half a
mile below, is but a dry bed.
Of all the streams that rise
far up in the Rocky Mount-
ains, not one in ten reaches
any valley or joins another
stream ; and all the streams
of all this slope combined
do not furnish the Platte
water enough to last it a
hundred miles from the
mountains. Here we rest
and refresh, tighten straps,
and then climb out of the
gulch and enter on a series
of more gentle slopes, alter-
nating pine groves and grass
plats. This way and that,
in zigzag paths, we toil up-
ward, often leaning on our
staves and resting every
hundred yards or so, for at
this point our breath begins
to come short, and if any
way delicate, we feel that
Digitized by
Google
THE CENTENNIAL STATE, 481
fluttering of the heart and beating in the temples which result from
an attenuated atmosphere. Here is the original home of the mount-
ain sheep. On these grassy knolls they kept fat from August till
January, and when Georgetown was first settled they were slaughtered
here by hundreds. This mountain bunch-grass and the finer grass on
the higher slopes furnished them abundant feed till covered by the
deep snows of January and February, as the snows are light here
before that time. When the snow melted in April and May, all the
sweetness left the grass, and the big-horn "lived on his fat'' till June
or July again. Black-tailed deer, too, were plenty, and occasionally
a grizzly bear made the solitudes lively; now these animals are rarely
seen this side of the summit, though sheep horns can be picked up
frequently, and adorn the front of many a miner's cabin.
We toil slowly up over these knolls for an hour, at each turn the
summit seeming just before us. The grassy region passed, we enter on
the more rocky belt near the summit, and now mines are abundant
and miners' cabins appear on every hand, sometimes built on a narrow
flat, worked on the face of the slope, and again anchored with iron
supports upon some projecting rock. At intervals we encounter pack
trains coming down with ore, the little Mexican burros (donkeys)
carrying immense rawhide panniers filled with the minerals, and near
the summit encounter a party, consisting of one gentleman and three
ladies, cautiously descending from the Highland Park. We see at a
glance that they are Eastern people, as the resident ladies generally
ride burros, sitting astride a sort of modified pack-saddle, but these
have ponies and the Eastern side-saddle. The trail looks terrible, but
horsemen sometimes get down this way, by walking in the worst
places^
It is three hours since we left the valley, and we stand at last on
the edge of the tolerably level summit, but across a sort of meadow is
the foot of the last rocky ridge, which still towers from five to fifteen
hundred feet above us. But this serrated battlement is not contin-
uous on these sub-ranges, which are mere spurs of the Rocky Mount-
ains; it stands out rather in detached peaks, leaving between them
large sections of the summit level, over which a vehicle might be
driven without diflSculty. Every miner's cabin is the house of a
friend, and in the nearest we find some hot cofiee to moisten our cold
lunch ; then climb to the highest point, and with a good field-glass
proceed to take views over a circuit of a hundred miles. Gray's and
Torrey's peaks glisten through the clear air, seeming no mom
than two or three miles away. To the north and soutk of them ex-
31
Digitized by
Google
482 WESTERN WILDS.
tends the main dividing range of the Rocky Mountains, now spotted
dull gray and dazzling white by alternations of bare rock and gulches
filled with snow. But the day, though beautiful and mild, is too hazy
for us to see the Holy Cross. This is formed by two enormous rifts
in the mountain side near the summit, crossing each other at right
angles, and never bare of snow. The two white lines form an exact
Greek cross, which glitters in the sunlight of a bright day, being
thrown into bold relief by the dark gray fece of the mountain.
From our standpoint we look down a thousand feet upon summits,
which, from Georgetown, seem so high as almost to be lost in the
clouds. But the greatest sight is to the eastward. For a hundred
miles out from the base of the mountains the plains seem to rise, and
the blue line which marks the visible horizon appears just on a level
with our eyes. But the plains there are at least seven thousand feet
lower than our location. This phenomenon I have often observed
from commanding positions in the mountains, and can understand the
statement of aeronauts, that as they rise the region directly und^r them
seems to sink slowly into a basin, while the surrounding country re*
mains on a level with them.
The area we can thus survey with one quick glance now conlains
at least fift;een thousand miners and twice as many citizens and agri-
culturists. Sixteen years ago the site of central Georgetown was an
immense beaver dam, the largest in this part of the Rocky Mount-
ains, and known to trappers and Indians all over the country. Even
now, on some of the lowest lots in town, the effects of beaver work
can be seen ; and the rich, mucky soil on the common shows that it
was the bed of their pond for long series of years. The first pros-
pectors who pitched their tent on Clear Creek amused themselves on
many a moonlight evening by watching the beavers play. Then the
mountain sheep crowded these glades in hundreds, and for months the
early settlers had no ojther meat. The black-tailed deer came in about
the season when mutton was scarce. The brown bear, and more
rarely the grizzly, lived in the timber below us. Even now traces of
these animals are met with frequently among the hills. Then, instead
of the miner^s cabin, or the mouth of shaft or tunnel, one might have
seen the unscarred face of nature ; and in place of pack-trains laden
with ore, or miners toiling up the steep trails, a band of Utes moving
through the mountain passes, and sallying out upon the plains to at-
tack their hereditary enemies, the Sioux and Arapahoes. Surely there
was as much beauty in these scenes then as now. And yet how sel-
dom the white men who saw this country, cultivated and intelligent as
Digitized by
Google
THE CENTENNIAL STATE. 483
some of them were, speak of its sublime scenery. Their narratives are
fall, however, of allusions to scenes of blood and danger, to frowning
precipices, where one misstep was destruction, and to lonely gorges
where ambushed savages might let fly upon the unwary traveler a
shower of arrows. Only security and a touch of civilization enable
us to appreciate wild beauty and grandeur. Small is the pleasure one
can take in the brawling brook, when, stooping to taste its ice-cold
waters, he is liable to get an arrow in his back ; in the wondrous
cation walls, where every turn may reveal an enemy; in the sweep of
the bald eagle, where the next occupation of that eagle may be in
picking the meat from his bones, or in the antics of the " noble red
man '^ when that (supposed) nobility is his only security for life.
The richest mineral region is on the mountains west and south-west
of Georgetown. First is the Silver Plume group. There the Pay
Rock has an eighteen-incb vein of ore, zinc blende, very rich in silver.
Down hill therefrom is the celebrated group including the Dives, Dun-
kirk and Pelican. These locations are stuck in so thick that the pat-
ents overlap each other in all directions, and a completed map of all
the claims looks like a picture of a pile of boards thrown at random on
the ground, and half covering each other. Out of a little plat, per-
haps half a mile long and a quarter wide, has come $10,000,000 worth
of ore. The Dives alone shipped $640,000 worth in forty days ; and,
pending certain legal proceedings, $90,000 worth was shipped between
midnight Saturday and midnight Sunday. [An attachment can not be
levied in Colorado on Sunday.] Besides paying enormous dividends,
several of these mines keep two or three good lawyers in pay, and
support expensive lawsuits. I am afraid to say how much actual cash
has been paid out on the Dives-Pelican suit. The lowest guess here
is $100,000, but it is probable a great deal has changed hands very
quietly, and without knowledge of the public.
Two hundred feet below is the Baxter, famous for its wire silver, of
which I have seen specimens that looked like a " witch-ball," or mass
of tangled hair turned to pure silver. Of course there is not much
of that sort of stufl*, and where it appears on the face of rich rock
it looks as if it had stewed out of the stone and curled from intense
heat. Most of it is found in bunches lining the inside of little pock-
ets in the stone, and projecting from a streaked rock we used to call
in Utah " polygamy lime rock." To discover a mine in that neigbor-
hood was nothing ; the great trouble was to sink a shaft down to
where the ore was concentrated, and then put up the machinery neces-
sary to work it. Some of these mines originally sold for a trifle, corn-
Digitized by
Google
484 WESTERN WILDS.
paratively; then the buyers had to spend $40,000 in development,
since when they have paid for themselves a dozen times over. The
Pelican Mine extends directly across Cherokee Gulch and on to
Sherman Mountain. A little beyond are the Maine, Coldstream,
Phoenix, Scotia and Captain Wells, merely different claims along the
same vein, all very rich, and supposed to be a continuation of the
same ore-channel as the Pelican-Dives. Half a mile or more along
the steep face of Sherman Mountain, barely passable by a foot trail,
brings us to Brown Gulch, and beyond it Brown Mountain. Directly
across the gulch are several valuable mines. Near the top are the
Hercules and Seven-thirty. After innumerable lawsuits and fights,
the killing of one man and wounding of two others, the claimants of
these two locations compromised interests, and sold both for f 180,000.
Now, u^ider the name of East Row, it is paying handsomely. Down
the hill-side, and also crossing the gulch, is the Brown Mine, which
has paid for itself half a dozen times over. Still lower — in feet, only
three or four hundred feet above Clear Creek — is the celebrated Ter-
rible, probably the best managed mine in the district, though fer from
being the richest. It was bought of the locators by a company in
Cornwall, England, for $500,000, and yields f 150,000 annually, va-
rying but little from one year to another.
Successful mining in Colorado is of necessity deep mining. Bare,
indeed, are the cases in which good pay rock is reached at less than a
hundred feet, and in many mines the best is not reached under four or
five hundred feet. As a rule, the larger the vein is the farther it is down
to where all the ore in it is concentrated into one rich seam ; for the
force which made the seam of ore seems to have been weakened or dis-
sipated as it drew near the surface, and a seam three feet thick at a
depth of three huodred feet will ofl«n be scattered in twenty little ir-
regular strings toward the surface. The Dives is by no means a
large lode, but they sunk on it two hundred feet before they found
the ore concentrated in one seam. The ore body may aptly be com-
pared to a tree, which, as it rises, continually divides and subdivides,
running out at last to twigs ; so the ore-seam scatters until, at the sur-
face, the prospector finds a hundred little lines or stems of mineral
scattered over a wide space. Hence it is that silver mining here re-
quires both nerve and patience, for it takes time to get down to the
ore in this hard rock, where " three shifts'' make but six or seven feet
a week.
The curiosities of mining are almost endless. Here and there on
the edge of rich ore-seams little accretions of almost pure silver have
Digitized by
Google
THE CENTENNIAL 8TA TK 485
run together, like " leaf lard/' as it were, and, according to its purity,
or the chemicals mixed in it, such " nibs " are known as chloride, horn
silver, ruby silver, azurite or tetrahedrite. A change of one-tenth of
one per cent, in the chemical will sometimes change entirely the color
and texture of the ore. " Black-jack,^' or zinc blende, is a very troub-
lesome combination. Chunks of it are 'found, which assay five hun-w
dred ounces of silver per ton, but its reduction is very difficult and
expensive. Azurite is a combination of silver with blue carbonates of
copper, and yields all the way from three hundred to a thousand
ounces of silver per ton Every year lower grade ores can be profita-
bly worked, with the improvement in methods and cheapening of
transportation. WTien this district was opened, in 1864, ore must
yield a hundred ounces per ton to be worth working; now thirty-
ounce ore can be profitably treated. The laws as to title in silver
mines are now pretty well settled; but no law that Congress or
Territorial Legislature could pass has prevented men who stayed on
the ground from getting title to thousands of "feet" in mine^. The
laws also say something about the preemptor being of voting age ; but
by " unwritten law" any able-bodied lad of sixteen and upward, who
can do the required work, can preempt sufficiently to sell out to an
adult, who can perfect the title. A shrewd lawyer, of course, might
pick fiaws in the inchoate title; but it would be unhealthy to do so if
the boy had any friends. A territorial law, passed in 1874, gives title
in width also ; allowing seventy-five feet on each side of a claim for
working purposes. But each county is allowed to limit this by popu-
lar vote, and most counties do. Thus it will be seen that original lo-
cation, preemption and sale, and each successive transfer, being re-
corded in the old district records, now legalized as part of the county
records, these titles are just as susceptible of proof as those of a
&rm.
Over the sub-range which bounds Georgetown on the north-west,
through a lofty region of forests, parks and mountain meads, and over
another more gentle range, brings us to North Clear Creek Cafion,
where gold was first discovered. The gold placers have long since
yielded in prominence to silver lodes. On the old Gregory claim is
now part of Central City, the historic town of Colorado.* There
sprung up a rattling "city" of logs and rough-sawed plank during
the week that Horace Greeley was inspecting the mines in 1859 ; and
there, for a time, was the territorial capital, until the sudden and
amazing growth of Denver overshadowed all the mountain towns, and
absorbed all the Federal fat things. Mining in the old Gregory dis-
Digitized by
Google
486 WESTERN WILDS.
triot has long since passed out of the era of romantic uncertainty and
excitement to that of regular work and legitimate investment. An-
other day's journey to the northward, over the eastern slope of the
* mountains, and through a region rich with scenic interest, brings us
to Caribou, Nederland, and all that rich region at the head of Bowl-
der Creek. Caribou, ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, on
a gentle slope, and in the midst of a dense pine forest, was the most
delightful of new mining towns when I visited it in August, 1874.
Of course that part of Colorado which drains eastward is much the
best known and developed, but beyond the main range are many new
and promising mining camps, chief among them the San Juan Dis-
trict, which seems to lie across the very center of the great upheaval
that, perhaps, made the mines. In every district are ten times as many
locations as will ever be developed, and ten thousand hopes that will
never be realized; for, despite his plain surroundings, the miner is the
most romantic and imaginative of men. But his is a singularly unro-
mantic work. It implies cold, dirt and wet, possibility of sudden
death, probability of severe injury, soon or late, and certainty of sore
trial and frequent disappointments. The history of a silver mine in-
cludes these stages : prospecting, locating, 0})ening, developing and
working — and at every step in development the chances of final failure
are many. Thus it has been well and truly said that mining is a lot-
tery, but it should still be remembered that this applies only to finding
and developing mines. Once it has depth sufficient to prove it, and
has opened into a regular vein, a mine is as certain as any property in
the world. But on the surface, where the prospector makes his loca-
tion according to the " indications," there is no science that enables
him to judge what it will prove on depth. That he must learn by
digging, and many are the alternations of hope and fear as he goes
down. First a little " pocket " of rich isulphurets raises his hopes to
fever heat, then comes a " cap " of barren rock, and down they go to
zero ; next, perhaps, he finds the vein widening, with here and there a
" nib" of chloride, azurite or ruby silver, and straightway his spirits
mount as on eagle's wings; again he encounters a " pinch " or " cap,"
and hope almost dies out ere he gets through it. Sometimes he fol-
lows a " pinching vein," scarcely thicker than a knife-blade, for many
a week, at an expense of fifteen dollars a foot, hoping that it will lead
him to the main vein. At last, at the depth of one hundred feet or
more, his varying crevice either opens into the main vein and rewards
him a thousand fold for all his toil, or, as it does in nine cases out of
ten, it ends in barren rock, beyond which there is no thoroughfare,
Digitized by
Google
THE CENTENNIAL STATE. 487
proving it to be a dip, spur^ dropper, gash vein or any one of the
thousand things which mislead the miner. Not one location in twenty
is ever pushed to the depth of a hundred feet ; of those so pushed not
more than one in ten proves a valuable mine, and even of tolerably
valuable mines not one in twenty proves a Caribou, Pelican, Dives
or a Comstock. But if every location were as valuable as the owner
thinks it to be when he first starts down on it, silver would soon
cease to be a precious metal. We might manufacture it into door-
hinges.
As a rule only the developed and proved mines are bought by East-
em companies, but in the great speculative era of 1864-66, Colorado
was literally sold out to New York capitalists, who took stock in the
future with amazing readiness. Thirty-eight companies were organ-
ized, with an aggregate capital of $24,000,000 ! And this when all
the mines in the Territory were not worth the half of that sum.
Hundreds of mere "prospect holes" were purchased at high figures,
and mills were erected to work the ore before the buyers knew of
what kind it was, or whether there was one ton or a million. The
era of mad speculation has given place to that of practical mining,
and Colorado has advanced to an annual yield in ore and bullion of
from $12,000,000 to $15,000,000.
Colorado is divided nearly down the center by the main chain of
the Rocky Mountains — or, in miner^s phrase, " saddle-backed across
the range." West of the summit not one acre in a thousand is fit for
any thing but grazing. As depressions in the summit appear the great
parks, a curious and attractive feature of Colorado. As summer re-
treats and grazing grounds, they will ultimately be of great value.
The slope eastward from the mountains is the pasture land of the new