Through all this region there is also the evidence of energy and force of another kind. One sees the deserted huts of the gold-hunters, who prospected, it may be in vain, or made their "pile and cleared out." There is a terrible fascination in this eager hunt for wealth, and those who hunt all their lives, often get least, and die in misery. I was once in Victor, the next town to Cripple Creek, and while there, heard, in the most casual way, that Tom Brennan, I think that was his name, had been found in the mountains, dead, by his own hand. His luck was gone, starvation stared him in the face, and, old, and hopeless, in his lone misery, he sought death, alone. When one sees, away up on some apparently inaccessible height, an indication of fresh earth, and a black aperture at the top of it, and realizes that in that spot, some one, or it may be more, are digging and delving for a wealth that may never come, the thought is inevitable of possible ruined hopes, or of sudden wealth, as Fortune may frown or smile. But here, as well as everywhere, and in all relations of life, the poet's words come true, "The many fail, the one succeeds." It is well for us, however, that failures, which may be possible, never daunt us from effort, and the search, for that which the soul longs for. We picture to ourselves success ever. Failure, like death, too often comes, unannounced. It is the spirit of daring and adventure which still peoples the lonely mines on the mountain-sides; which fills the mining towns on their highest crests, and which keeps the miners busy, whether on their highest heights, or in the closeness of their deepest depths. While on my way, a gentleman met me on the train, and pressed me to stop over at Leadville, promising that he would take me down the deepest gold mine in the place. I could not stay, even for that approach to the presence of all-powerful gold. I am sure that the underground view of Leadville would be better than that which the sun looks upon. It is not an inviting-looking place. It lies on the great top surges of the mountains, having all the bleakness of a plain, and the rarefied atmosphere of the mountain summit, which it really is. It is always a weird thing to look at the scenes of early mining days in Leadville, when the fame of the fabulous wealth therein, entered into men's brains, with an intoxication, like that of some Oriental drug. California Gulch looks like the dried bed of a mountain torrent. What must it have been when every inch of it was staked out in claims, and men, by men, close together, but widely separate in their interests, shovelled up the dirt, and peered with eager gaze therein for the yellow gold.