The Sun.
London, England, 1869-09-24 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FR, I PAY EVENING, S

COLORADO,

(From the Anglo-American Tinic.3.)
No. ITI.

Denver, the " City of the Plains," is the metro-
polis of Colorado, though not the State capital.
Three years ago when Hepworth Dixon was there,
he thus described it:—" Denver is a city of 4,000
people, with ten or twelve streets laid out, with two
hotels, a bank, a theatre, half a dozen chapels,
fifty gambling-houses, and a hundred grog-shops.
As you wander about these hot and dirty streets
you seem to be walking in a city of demons." Mr.
Whitney, writing later, says that Denver contains
from 7,000 to 8,000 people:; its regularly laid out
streets are lined by blocks of brick houses, with
seven churches, two seminaries and other common
schools, one theatre, three daily newspapers, and
one weekly, a national and other banking houses,
as well as a Mint. It has several large hotels and
restaurants, where everything can be supplied in
abundance, cheap, and of good quality. Professor
Whitney is now at the head of an exploring party
in Colorado, and with him is the well-known au-
thor, Samuel Bowles, whose late work on the Far
West is believed to be the fullest and best yet pub-
lished. Denver is 580 miles west of Omaha, and
586 east of Salt Lake City. Its first house was
built in 1857, but was deserted in 1859. Under
the name of St. Charles it again rose in 1858, and
the following year the Leavenworth and Pike's
Peak Express Company drove to it their first coach.
Its situation is pleasant on a gently sloping plain,
facing the Platte River, spanned by three bridges,
near where it issues from the mountains, the city be-
ing some 13 miles from the foot of the hills, and it is
probable that it now contains upwards of 12,000
inhabitants. At a glance it takes in 200 miles
of snowy mountains, including Long's and Pike's
Peaks, eastward the prairies stretch around the
horizon, intersected by grey lines of roads and th e
green threads of timber along the streams. The
Platte can be traced for 70 miles, and the Spanish
Peaks of New Mexico arise to the view in the south
over 100 miles distant, as seen from the summits be-
hind Denver, numerous lakes being grouped or dotted
about. For 90 miles the road runs North of Den-
ver, towards Bridger's Pass, seeking an opening
along the giant wall to the left. One pass taken
by Fremont, in 1845, penetrates the hills south of
Denver, through the gorge of the Arkansas, passing
over the range at an elevation of 9,200 feet, and
turning round the South Park down the valley of
the Roaring Fork crosses the Grand River and
passes on to Utah. The road Mr. Hepworth
Dixon and other authors followed, skirts, but
did not enter, the great Alpine scenery of Colorado,
the red tint of which induced the Spaniards to give
it this name. Long's Peak is 40 miles to the north
of the town, its summit covered with snow, and its
base thickly wooded with pine. Sixty miles south of
Denver, towards Pike's Peak, over a track of 20
miles, stand natural monuments of stone, upright
shafts of rock, assuming fantastic forms, some
crowning summits like immense castles, but most
in size and shape like grave stones and monuments,
studding the ground over hundreds of acres, which,
in the midst of pine groves, give the same effect as
a well-shaded cemetery. Near Colorado city, at
the font of Pike's Peak, they culminate in one im-
mense gateway of solid rock, known as the en-
trance to the garden of the gods. Directly west of
Denver the range is broken by the gorge of a stream
(a branch of the Platte) through which a road is
carried toEmpire City well within the mountains, 49
miles distant from Denver; a daily coach, carrying
passengers for $lO each runs between these cities,
connecting also Golden City, which lies at the en-
trance of the Canon. Up another gorge from this
valley is Central City. Both these towns aro well
within the Alpine range, and separated from each

other by about 15 miles. Within 7 miles of Empire
City is Georgetown ; these and numerous other
settlements being mere mining locations. George-
town is at the foot of the Republican Mountain
though 9,000 feet above the sea level, while the
summit of the mountain is 12,000. The George-
town Miner is published there, and Mr. Barnard, its

editor, reports the progress of mining operations.
The yield of silver from Georgetown alone will ex-
ceed that of last year by 150 per cent., and the new
machines being introduced for concentrating ore
before smelting will probably increase the estimate.
The mines of Empire City are gold, with easily
worked veins of from 3 to 12 feet thick. The
" Conqueror" has a shaft sunk 225 feet, and the
ore is so soft that it is spaded up. The ores are

pyrites of iron, with some copper and a large
amount of sulphur and sulphate of copper, the gold
being very fine, of which the miners estimate that
they often get from 80 to 90 per cent. assayed at .850
to .880 fine. Twenty-five miles north of Empire City,
as well as at Black Hawk and. Nevada, are these
lodes, and a vast country of the same auriferous
kind is found to the south of Empire City, stretch-
ing from 20 to 100 miles. Scattered over the Alpine
region are mining camps, which continue to grow
and extend, notwithstanding the difficulty of tran-
sport. The value per ton of ore is seldom below
£3O. In Gilpin county, of which Central City is
the capital, there are 150 quartz mills, which pro-
duce annually about £2,000,000 sterling of precious
metals, the other mills and gulch mines in the Ter-
ritory raising the total to about £3,000,000. The
value of the gold actually contained in the ores
reduced is estimated at fully £20,000,000 sterling ;
therefore the loss by working through an imperfect
process is estimated at £17,000,000 ! Mr. Bowles
considers that by the process of crushing the ore
into fine powder, as is usual in Colorado, and then
washing it on copper plates coated with quicksilver,
that but 25 per cent. of the precious metal is obtained,
the other three-fourths being lost in the tailings or
refuse. From the bottom of Fossil Canon, near
Curtis Grove, White River, to a height of 1,000
feet, five miles in length, a deposit of petroleum coal
has been found, in lustre, fracture, and smell equal-
ling that from the Albertine of New Brunswick.
The vein is in an enormous bed of sandstone, be-
neath which are petroleum shales, one bed of which
resembles cannelite, and would, it is thought, yield
50 gallons of oil to the ton. It was traced for 25
miles in one direction, and was seen at points GO
miles apart in another, and is thought to extend
over the whole distance. Ihe tertiary beds of Co-
lorado are as rich in fuel and gas-producing mate-
rial as any ether coal region, but it is probable that
the petroleum now in the shales and petroleum coals
came originally from the oil-bearing coral beds of
much older formations. Professor C. C. Perry, at
the meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science just held at Salem, Mas-
sachusetts, read a paper on the flora of this region :
" The woody bolt of comferons trees began at an ave-
rage elevation of 0,000 feet. Its densest growth was at
between 7,000 and 9,000 feet elevation, and its termina-
tion was at an average height of 11,300 feet. The growth
was most dense and varied where there was tho greatest and
most regularamount of aqueous preoipitation.At still higher
elevations the actual limit of tree growth was determined
by conditions of temperature which satisfactori:y explained
the peculiar features of vegetation there met with. This
belt of trees terminated with singular abruptness. The
probable explanation was that this timber lino marked
the extreme point of minimum winter temperature be-
low which no phenogamous vegetation could exist. After
alluding to the meteorological conditions of the region, the
paper went on to point out the peculiar dwarfed tree
growth scattered occasionally above the timber line. It
was on the most open exposures above, that the Alpine
flora was most diversified and attractive, presenting from
June to September a succession of colours most attractive
to the eye of the naturalist. Out of 142 species 56 were
exclusively confined to these Alpine exposures. The
usual characteristics of Alpine plants were a dWarfed habit
of growth, late period of flowering, and early seeding,
the forms being exclusively perennial. Of the 34 natu-
ral orders in the• Alpine flora 31 belong to Phenoga-
mous plants, the remaining three were of the higher
order of Cryptogams." Of tho latter, ferns were repre-
sented by a single species not exclusively Alpine (Crypto-
gramia acrostichoides). Mosses were more numerously re-
presented, but still comparatively rare. Lichens were
most abundant and afforded the greatest number of species.
Tho superficial extent of these bare Alpine exposures •in
Colorado Territory had been ronghly estimated at from
1,200 to 1,500 square miles. After a brief allusion to the
fauna of the region, the paper stated that when accessible
it would doubtless afford a favourite resort for sun.mer
pasturage, and eventually yield choice dairy products,
equalling these of the Swiss Alps, and produce delicate
fibrous tissues rivalling those of the looms of Cashmere.
As a summer resort it was unexcelled in the purity of its
atmosphere, the clearness of its streams, and its picturesque
and extended views. The paper concluded with some
topographical details and with a list of Alpine plants*"