The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1877-08-14
TO THE BLACK HILLS.
A Miehigander's Experienee.-The PrOba-
BILE Mineral Riches of the Country.

Correspondence of the Detroit Free Press.l
CHEYENNE WYo., Aug, 9th, 1877.
Citizen of Detroit you are wearied,
you are overworked, or think you are;
you have money and it is fashionable to
make summer tour and you must 60
why to Newport, to Saratoga, to Rye
Beach and Quebec? All that route is
beaten, blase, worn out, common,
vulgar. You can find nobody there but
fashionable, frivolous, stupid men, and
silly, vain women. Let us go to the
West-the Great West-let us cross
the Mississippi, let us pass over the
Big Muddy, let us climb slowly up the
beautiful Valley of the Platte, from
Omaha to Cheyenne, ascending slowly
through beautiful young villages, ham
let's, farms, where just now, only, in
1869 was the home of the Pawnee and
Sioux, until we reach an elevation of
| 1000 feet above the sea, where the air
is as pure as that which floats around
the throne of God, where you may in
hale it as you would the aroma of
Champagne; and it will make you
drunk with joy when you may feast
your eyes on the snow covered caps of
the Medicine Bow, and catch the first
view OF the Black Hills of Dakota.
There you may listenall dayan nightto
the music of the mountain streams as
they leap first from crag to crag, and
| then creep at last like beautiful rivers
of silver along the plains Of Laramie,
the Platte Valleys, or the dark and
cool caIlons that lead away down the
Cheyenne, the Big Horn and the tribu-
taries of the Missouri. You are fond
of painting, or pretend to be so. Where
can you find such coloring, such PEN
CLING as God puts on yonder sky, as
the sun comes up from the prairies like
a sunrise in the tropics? And how,
and where, and in what gallery of
earth, can you behold such gorgeous
beauty, such impressive sublimity, as
sunset among the Rocky Mountains or
the Sierras of California? What music,
what symphony compares with the
signing of the northwest winds amidst
the lofty pines and cedars of the Black
Hills, and in what part of New Eng
land can you bathe in such cool and
beautiful waters as gush forth and
swell the banks of the Spearfish, the
Green River and the Colorado? If
| there be sermons in stones, music in
streams and religion in every thing,
and you want to make yourself better
men, and women, where on earth can
you see God in the storm and hear him
in the winds as in one of his majestic
thunder storms among the Black Hills,
| the Wasatch Mountains or the OQuinah
Ranges? Lo, the poor Sioux, demon
as he is, brave as he is, quails and
trembles as shock after shock of
heavens great artillery flashes and re-
verberates among the mountains, max
ing the very Sierra Nevada tremble and
shake like frightened woman. But
you want money, your sole desire is to
become rich. Your railways, with their
stocks and bonds are shrunk and
shivlled all up like over done bacon.
If your property is worth to-day not
one-half it cost in 1874, if your mort
cages don't pay interest and you cannot
collect it, if your bank stock gives no
dividends because your discounts were
made to men to cannot pay, and bank.
ruptcy fills the calendar day by day of
your courts, &C then to the mountains,
where God has sowed gold dust in all
the hills and valleys, where mountains
of iron rise up, where mountains of salt
pure and clear, await the blast of the
miner, and cheap transportation,
where silver and lead and copper and
sulphur are scattered broadcast all
through that Great West, and where
the millions of your starving, idle,
rowing tramps might find occupation
and compensation if these great inter-
ests were only opened and developed as
they ought to be. Let Congress at its
next session fix the tariff of freight and
passenger transportation from San
Francisco to Omaha at as low rate as
over the Michigan Central and New
York Central Railroads, and in two
years every pound of salt, sulphur, iron,
lead, silver and gold required by our
people can and will be produced at
home. Let silver be remonetized as it
ought to be, and the mints of the Unit
ed States can be supplied wholly from
the mines of Utah, Montana, Idaho,
Nevada, Dakota and Wyoming, while
these territories will furnish a full
supply Of all agricultural products.
Open up cheap transportation over the
Union Pacific and Central Pacific Rail
roads; complete the Northern Pacific,
and Scott's Southern Road on the thirty
second parallel las ought to be done)
and in two years we can supply our
selves "and all the rest of mankind''
with everything that any people on
earth may use or need. But to the
Black Hills whence we started on our
Western tour.
Reaching Cheyenne, thriving, cool
and pleasant town only forty miles this
side of the crest Of the continent, we
embark in old fashioned Concord
coaches, drawn by four and six splendid
horse teams, in superb condition, and
managed by mountain drivers, like
''Old Hank' who drove Horace Gree
ley to Sacramento; and away you 60, at
the rate of six miles each hour, over
Chug creek, Hat creek, Cool creek and
in Just forty-eight hours you are in the
Black Hills, either at Custer, Dead
wood, Spearfish or any other mining
camp. That ride, rough in some places,
sandy here and there, sharpens your
appetite, will make you sleep well, and
will show you some of the grandest
scenery the sun e'er shown upon. Val
leys sweeping away miles, bright and
green with sparkling waters-moun-
tains covered with groves of giant pines
hundred feet to the limb. All would
| fp, ha hrc nd