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Show 448 WESTERN WILDS. The tourist who would see a buffalo in his natural state must not long delay. Denver had wonderfully improved within two years; but the chronic " hard times " had visited it with fearful severity. There had been a decline in real estate of at least forty per cent., and not long after a still further decline occurred. The excursionists from the East were sixty per cent, less numerous than in 1873. Watering places lan-guished and hotel- keepers looked sick. But if there is trade in Col-orado, Denver must take toll therefrom: for it has the location. Take half a wagon- wheel ; imagine each of the spokes a pass, leading up south- west or north- west, through the mountains to some mining region, and you will have a tolerable idea of Denver and its tribu-taries. From this place as a center, railroads or first- class turnpikes lead up to Georgetown, Central City, Blackhawk, Boulder, Leadville, and a dozen mountain towns of less note. The city is on the slope at the junction of Cherry Creek and the Platte River. Both are mere rivulets usually, but they occasionally get up in a way that's rather frightful. In 1864 a freshet took away nearly all the town as it then stood, and the people afterwards built a little farther up the slope. The city was on first view an agreeable surprise to me. I had heard so often and so long, in Salt Lake City, that that was the only really beautiful town in the mountains that it had become a part of my creed, as a man will sometimes absorb with-out question what he hears reiterated for years. But many people would prefer Denver, on the score of beauty alone. The advantage of Salt Lake City is that it is twice as old, and its shade trees and shrubbery have had more time to grow. But in Denver we find bright irrigating streams, fine gardens, shade trees, grass plats and many elegant residences. In the last respect this far exceeds Salt Lake. But the noticeable point of difference is in churches, school-houses and daily papers. In the two former Denver will compare favorably with any Eastern city of its size, and in the last exceed most of them. A hundred little matters illustrate, in a marked de-gree, the difference between this progressive, homogeneous people and that of the Mormon capital. At the Post- office, of an evening, one finds almost the population of an average Western city, and has to take his turn after long waiting. At Salt Lake I never saw a crowd at the delivery large enough to be troublesome. This office gives out three times as much mail as that at Salt Lake. Here are a people who read and write, think and question, deliberate, examine and come to a conclusion: there a people who open their mouths and swal- |