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Show GOLD. 19 WOOD CAKVING. no time or worsted to waste in making deformed cats and dogs; but their husbands' garments were models of "crazy patchwork," and they practiced "wood carving" twice a day, at the morning and evening camp-fires. There were no "Mother Hubbard " gowns in those days. " Picture," said Judge Stone, in his address to the Barnacles, "a pioneer woman in a ' Mother Hubbard ' gown, sailing around a windy camp-fire, or climbing in and out of the hind end of a prairie schooner! No; our pioneer women had no such 'loose habits.'" Unfeigned joy filled the hearts of the weary and travel-worn pilgrims when, with eager, wistful gaze they descried in the distance the everlasting watch-towers of the continent, that marked the gold fields they were seeking. They pitched their tents under the Cottonwood trees on the west side of Cherry creek, near its junction with the Platte, about twelve miles from the base of the Rocky mountains, and called the settlement Auraria-after an unimportant mining-town in Georgia-with the belief, that in the mountains they would soon make their "pile" and return to their homes to live forever afterwards in affluence. For not one of the many thousands who came cherished a thought of building a permanent home here. Apropos is the story of the Dutchman who was hanged for stealing. (Hanging was the punishment for all deviltry in those days.) Before adjusting the noose he was |
