and always fond of excitement, frequently are; and if to these be added the dissolute loafers and broken-down mining speculators, the strength of the army arrayed against the law may be estimated; and the wonder is that among a population armed to the teeth there are not more cases of such violent deeds as we were reading of at breakfast. To the stranger there was no evidence of the existence of these disturbing elements, unless the bearded and booted men with speculation in their eyes, in the hotel passages and halls, belonged to the dangerous, as they certainly did to the mining, classes. As to the resources of the city, although for rapidity of growth its wonders may be eclipsed by those of Leadville, Denver claims a very high place in the catalogue of these marvellous fungi of civilisation, of which the Western States present almost unique examples. There is everything that any one can want to be had for money in the place, and much more than most people need. Paris fashions and millinery are in vogue. There are fine shops, handsome churches, a theatre, breweries, factories, banks, insurance offices. The principal street exhibits pretty young people, who would have no occasion to fear comparison with the _beau monde_ in Eastern or European capitals. The thoroughfares are crowded with vehicles, and spruce carriages and well turned-out horses may be seen in the favourite drive, that has been made over an indifferent road to the base of the Rocky Mountains, which appear to be close at hand, though they are thirteen miles away. But here and there in the well-dressed crowd may be seen a Bohemian _pur sang_, or a miner in his every day clothes, bent on a rig out and a good time of it. The streets, unpaved, dusty, and rugged, are very wide, and bordered with trees, and the houses generally are built of good red brick instead of wood; and there are runnels of water like those one sees in Pretoria and other Dutch towns in South Africa. The roads about the city leave much to be desired; but Rome was not built in a day. There are many ready-made clothing establishments in the main streets, and there is a heavy trade in tinned provisions. Through the Western States, as in South Africa, the débris of provision-tins constitutes a certain and considerable addition to the objects to be seen in the vicinity of every house, and to the mounds of rubbish in the street of every village. How indeed could the first-comers in such regions keep body and soul together without the supplies in such a portable form of the first necessaries of life? Having once run up a town in these remote wastes, the inhabitants are still compelled to make a liberal use of the same sort of food, and mines of tinned iron gradually accumulate around them.