.OTk1.NjQ2NDQ

46 from its being the terminus of the wagon road and the starting point from which you could go to the Blue or Arkansas river diggings. Tarryall had some prentensions to be called a town they had the plot all staked out into lots there was about forty houses erected and ten more in course of construction the ranches seemed to have a full stock of groceries and provisions and doing a pretty smart businefs. It was a pretty lively town there was a large tent big enough for to contain Dan Roe? "Big Show" with all kinds of gambling apparatus there and a large crowd always present pursuing the delusive phantom Another place you could see a Mexican leading fifteen or twenty jacks and bawling out at the top of his voice for some freight to carry over to the different gulches. Miners were to be met here in crowds rough looking as if they had lived in those mountains for twenty years some were coming to town to spend their pile of dust and others were you could tell it from their looks disapointed and were going in search of new diggings the latter were by far the greater number and their personal appearance was in most cases wretched in the extreme. I think gold seeking is the most uncertain and precarious businefs in the world a man is tempted and risks so much that he would not do in following other pursuits. If he has a claim in a remote place far away from any place where he could purchase provisions he will be tempted to stay working on that claim from day to day until his last mouthfull of provisions is exhausted then without anything to eat he will undertake a journey of twenty or thirty miles over mountains covered with snow and sometimes by paths unknown to him depending on luck only to keep him from starvation. Your real gold hunter is the most carelefs fellow in existance he thinks of gold sleeping and waking and new reported discoveries will excite his imagination and carry him off even at midnight to secure a claim without making any provision for the difficulties and dangers of the way