It was a quarter-past eight, nearly dark, when we reached Denver, and glad were we to get into the hall of the Windsor Hotel, which was crowded with a mixed multitude--miners, and speculators, and traders, and some travellers like ourselves--a very busy scene indeed. In the hotel were all human comforts nearly; hot and cold baths, and good rooms, and more appliances of civilised existence, for those who could pay for them, than could be found in many hostelries of approved reputation in venerable towns at home; moreover, exuberant offers of help and information. One goes to bed laden with obligations and heavy with the sense of favours which can never be repaid. There was now a _soupçon_ of frost in the air, and notwithstanding the heat which we had endured the greater part of the day, fires were not ungrateful; and as we peered out of our windows over the roofs of the wide-spread houses of the town, we could see the snow on the lofty ranges of hills, watered by the South Platte River and Cherry Creek, which surround the cup in which Denver has been built in obedience to the impulses of the increasing population, which now numbers, I believe, 38,000 souls. There was a bright glare from the gas-lighted streets, sounds of music, and a tumult of life in the town which would have been creditable to an ancient metropolis. In the morning from the hotel windows appeared a beautiful and widespread panorama of the hills we had seen the evening before, peak above peak, none very densely covered perhaps, or presenting continuous snowfields, but extending in billowy sweeps far away to the horizon, all capped with snow, now bathed in a flood of fervent sunshine, the snow lighted up by the peculiar crimson tints common in Alpine regions. There were duties in the way of sight-seeing and exploration of no ordinary nature to be done. First there were interviews and receptions, and the inevitable drive through the place as soon as the ordeal of breakfast was over; and ordeal in some sort it was for the strangers to file in to the public room and take their places at their table, aware that the morning papers had subjected them to exhaustive criticism, which was being verified by those around us. The morning papers too had given some topics for reflection, indications that in the newly created capital of Colorado desperate men, overtaken by the march of law and order, had refused to accept service, and were vindicating their rights as wild western outcasts to take or part with life as of yore, in reckless encounters and deliberate assassinations. There were, perhaps, at that moment some hundreds, if not thousands, out of the population of 37,000 or 38,000 of the city, who belonged to the adventurous classes--sporting-men, betting-men, ring-men, bar-keepers, hell-proprietors, and their satellites, and the scum of the saloons attracted from the great cities of the States for hundreds of miles, by the prey which miners with belts full of gold, half mad with drink,