The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-02-18
The Kid-gloyed Gold-flelds

lie lSAO0TIOOC Will seek In vain the
thrills of story and drama in the Ne
vada desert
There seems no longer any border
land of civilization. The realist hunt
ing Tor ideas and color must fare far
and wide from even the jumping off
place in the new gold country, where
scores of booming and boom commune
tiles have mushroomed forth upon the
sand-plats and hitherto untrodden al
kali within the past lustrum.
The awakening is rude. Disillusions
crowd upon one another's heels from
the moment of your arrival. As far as
the railroads are concerned you have
reached the Ultima Thule. Southwark
there is vast unpeopled waste-un-
peopled If you put out of the reckon
ing the widely scattered little shack
towns where the gold hunters are dig
ging with a fine frenzy for the ore Ma
ture locked deep in subterranean bikes
of rock below the sunbaked. naked,
unwatered desert.
The magination draws Wholesome
lurid-pictures while you ride a day
and a half the night beyond the benign
pale of growing things. There is in
pirat in this rugged scenery where
sage-brush must struggle desperately
to exist in sparse and Vagrant clumps,
where the clayniverous (the word is of
Western Scoinage) jack-rabbit and go
pher can find no suStenance, and VIII ere
no insect breeds in the poisoned dust.
Therefore it is abruptly disconcert-
ing to descend from a weather-beateR
Pullman (only the very derelict of has
been palace cars are permitted to roll
over the desert) into the dazzling glare
of eletric lamps; to feel the air vibrate
with the burr and mutter and racket of
motors, and to find the station throng-
ed with chauffeurs in leather livery and
hungry-eyed cabmen. This aspect of
the latter-day worlds advance is a keen
disappointment.
Why did you ever read Bret Harte
and the other favorites who wrote OF
dismal little camps where men with
pasts toiled wolfshly at the gold
digging?
There was spice in roughing it then.
There was romance. there was danger.
Enthusiasm found vent in ShOOtingS-
up. The whiskey would burn a hole
through a horse-hide boot. Treasure
was carried in belts. Men slept with
rifles in their hands and shot proving
wolves at the tent-fap. A human wolf
showed his teeth only once and then
bit the dust Revolver hilts and gun
butts were notched. The tenderfoot
danced the artillery Quickstep. If
temperate he was made to drink fusel-
oil while the muzzle of a villainous
weapon tickled his ear.
Whee-whoop! Those were the
days.
But now! Shades of the forty-nin-
ers! In the modern gold quest you
must have a veritable city for an out
fit: an electrified, telephone-connected
town. complete from bath-tub to tour
ing cara portable city that can be
rushed up over night. And you must
transport your city hundreds of miles
over the alkali desert and set it down
where the stunted ioshua-tree with It's
deformed tentacles has stood lonely Wig
ii for centuries. Then you may dig
amid congenial and resourceful sur
roundings.
Lament, oh tender stranger from the
highly civilized Eastern Statesi The
DAYS of the storied Bad Lands are
Amy gun-fighters left?" is the husky
query of the literary miner. Our cir
cuIa ton demands something short and
full of action"
Yes. indeed. More than several
survive both here in Nevada and IN
There are gun-hghters,
too. which are very short and full OF
action. So there are occasionally on
Rroa dway. often on the Bowery, and
now and then in domestic Harlem.
has no monopoly. But there
are no fussy policemen, and the camp
daily makes only a paragraph OF then'
tucked away under an ad. which reaos
som ethfng like this (this was an act
nal advertisement printed in the Golo>
field Sun last September) "Wanteo'
:, niano-player Must be good dish
washer. Last performer had a mean
temper and quit very suddenly. Apply
Glad Hand Saloon Harper
weekly.