Its Chief Center Is The
Rough Mining Town Of Fairplay, But There Are Rumors Of Great
Mineral Wealth In Various Quarters.
The region has been
"rushed," and mining camps have risen at Alma and elsewhere, so
lawless and brutal that vigilance committees are forming as a
matter of necessity.
South Park is closed, or nearly so, by snow
during an ordinary winter; and just now the great freight wagons
are carrying up the last supplies of the season, and taking down
women and other temporary inhabitants. A great many people come
up here in the summer. The rarefied air produces great
oppression on the lungs, accompanied with bleeding. It is said
that you can tell a new arrival by seeing him go about holding a
blood-stained handkerchief to his mouth. But I came down upon it
from regions of ice and snow; and as the snow which had fallen on
it had all disappeared by evaporation and drifting, it looked to
me quite lowland and livable, though lonely and indescribably
mournful, "a silent sea," suggestive of "the muffled oar." I
cantered across the narrow end of it, delighted to have got
through the snow; and when I struck the "Denver stage road" I
supposed that all the difficulties of mountain travel were at an
end, but this has not turned out to be exactly the case.
A horseman shortly joined me and rode with me, got me a fresh
horse, and accompanied me for ten miles. He was a picturesque
figure and rode a very good horse.
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