Various - Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880.

Perhaps these thoughts were occupying our minds as we climbed the bluffs for a visit to this incipient Pittsburg. The equipage did no credit to the financial status of the iron company, as it consisted of a superannuated express-wagon drawn by a dyspeptic white horse which the boy who officiated as driver found no difficulty in restraining. Two gentlemen in charge of the constructions, their visitor and two kegs of nails comprised this precious load. The day was cloudless and fine, albeit a Colorado "zephyr" was blowing, and the party, with perhaps the single exception of the horse, felt in fine spirits. The jolly superintendent, who both in face and mien reminded one of the typical German nobleman, was overflowing with story, joke and witty repartee. The site of the works was reached in the course of time. Excavations were in progress for the blast-furnace and accessory buildings, and developed a strange formation. The entire mesa seems built up of boulders packed together with a sort of alkali clay, dry and hard as stone, and looking, as our distingué guide remarked, as though not a drop of water had penetrated five feet from the surface since the time of the Flood. Two blast-furnaces, each with a capacity of five hundred tons, will be speedily built, to be followed by rail-mills, a Bessemer steel-plant and all the accessories of vast iron-and steel-works. With the patronage of several thousand miles of railway already assured, and its duplication in the near future apparently beyond doubt, the success of this daring frontier enterprise seems far removed from the domain of conjecture.

All this was glowingly set forth by the courtly superintendent, who, though but three months in the country, is already at heart a Coloradan. That there are some things about frontier life which he likes better than others he is free to admit. Among the few matters he would have otherwise he gives the first place to the tough "range" or "snow-fed" beef upon which the dwellers in this favored land must needs subsist. "I heard a story once," said he, "about a young man, a tenderfoot, who, after long wondering what made the beef so fearfully tough, at length arrived at the solution, as he thought, and that quite by accident. He was riding out with a friend, an old resident, when they chanced to come upon a bunch of cattle. The young man's attention seemed to be attracted, and as the idea began to dawn upon him he faced his companion, and, pointing to an animal which bore the brand "B.C. 45," savagely exclaimed, 'Look there! How can you expect those antediluvians to be anything but tough? Why don't you kill your cattle before they get two or three times as old as Methuselah?'"

We took a long ride that afternoon under a peerless sky, with blue mountain-ranges on one hand, whose ridges, covered with snow, seemed like folds of satin, and on the other the great billowy Plains, bare and brown and smooth as a carpet. The white horse, relieved of the kegs of nails, really performed prodigies of travel, all the more appreciated because unexpected. A stone-quarry for which we were searching was not found, but a teamster was, who, while everything solemnly stood still and waited, and amid the agonies of an indescribable stutter, finally managed to enlighten us somewhat as to its whereabouts. These adventures served to put us in excellent humor, so that when the road was found barricaded by a barbed wire fence, it only served to give one of the party an opportunity to air his views upon the subject—to argue, in fact, that the barbed wire fence had been an important factor in building up the agricultural greatness of the West. "For what inducements," he exclaims, "does the top rail of such a fence offer to the contemplative farmer? None, sir! His traditional laziness has been broken up, and great material prosperity is the result."

Whatever causes have operated to produce the effect, certain it is that the West is eminently prosperous to-day. Everywhere are seen growth, enterprise and an aggressiveness that stops at no obstacles. Immigration is pouring into Colorado alone at the rate of several thousands per week. The government lands are being rapidly taken up, and the stable industries of stock-raising and farming correspondingly extended. Manufacturing, too, is acquiring a foothold, and many of the necessaries of life, which now must be obtained in the East, will soon be produced at home. The mountains are revealing untold treasures of silver and gold, and the possibilities which may lie hid in the yet unexplored regions act as a stimulus to crowds of hopeful prospectors. But while Colorado is receiving her full share of the influx, a tide seems to be setting in toward the old empire of the Aztecs, and flowing through the natural gateway, our old Rocky-Mountain outpost. It is beginning to be found out that the legends of fabulous wealth which have come down to us from the olden time have much of truth in them, and mines that were worked successively by Franciscan monks, Pueblo Indians, Jesuit priests and Mexicans, and had suffered filling up and obliteration with every change of proprietorship, are now being reopened; and that, too, under a new dispensation which will ensure prosperity to the enterprise. Spaniard and priest have long since abandoned their claim to the rich possessions, and their doubtful sway, ever upon the verge of revolution and offering no incentive to enterprise, has given place to one of a different character. Under the protection of beneficent and fostering laws this oldest portion of our Union may now be expected to reveal its wealth of resources to energy and intelligent labor. And it may confidently be predicted that American enterprise will not halt till it has built up the waste places of our land, and in this case literally made the desert to blossom as the rose. Thus gloriously does our new civilization reclaim the errors of the past, building upon ancient ruins the enlightened institutions of to-day, and grafting fresh vigor upon effete races and nationalities. And now, at last, the Spanish Peaks, those mighty ancient sentinels whose twin spires, like eyes, have watched the slow rise and fall of stately but tottering dynasties in the long ago, are to look out upon a different scene—a new race come in the might of its freedom and with almost the glory of a conquering host to redeem a waiting land from the outcome of centuries of avaricious and bigoted misrule, and even from the thraldom of decay.

From the day on which Adam knew that the date of Jerrem's trial was fixed all the hope which the sight of Eve had rekindled was again completely extinguished, and, refusing every attempt at consolation, he threw himself into an abyss of despair a hundred-fold more dark and bitter than before. The thought that he, captain and leader as he had been, should stand in court confronted by his comrades and neighbors (for Adam, ignorant of the disasters which had overtaken them, believed half Polperro to be on their way to London), and there swear away Jerrem's life and turn informer, was something too terrible to be dwelt on with even outward tranquillity, and, abandoning everything which had hitherto sustained him, he gave himself up to all the terrors of remorse and despair. It was in vain for Reuben to reason or for Eve to plead: so long as they could suggest no means by which this dreaded ordeal could be averted Adam was deaf to all hope of consolation. There was but one subject which interested him, and only on one subject could he be got to speak, and that was the chances there still remained of Jerrem's life being spared; and to furnish him with some food for this hope, Eve began to loiter at the gates, talk to the warders and the turnkeys, and mingle with the many groups who on some business or pretext were always assembled about the yard or stood idling in the various passages with which the prison was intersected.