Although the town only began to be built in 1853 it was already a bustling, thriving little place. I wrote in my journal: “Being the centre of a rich agricultural and mineral district it does a brisk trade, and as the prosperity of Colorado is developing itself with giant strides Denver City is likely to continue its rapid growth.” I fancy that I might have worded my prophecy more strongly. We found the town in a fever of excitement. President Grant with his wife and daughter had arrived and there was to be a grand reception in the evening at the house of Governor McCook, where the President was staying. But the great attraction was the advent of a number of Indians who had come in from their “reservation” to see the great Father. Their chief, old George Washington, as he called himself, was a small, thick-set old man, with a most villainous expression, heightened by dabs of blue, red, and yellow paint, which gave quite a fiendish look to his cruel mouth and cunning little bear’s eyes. Long, straight elf-locks of coarse black hair parted in the middle, and the parting painted vermilion, fell over his shoulders. He wore a chimney-pot hat, decorated with red and yellow streamers, a short blue coat with military buttons; necklaces and other ornaments of coloured beads; two revolvers; leather trousers with tassels all down the sides; such was the noble savage of Fenimore Cooper, the modern representative of Uncas and Chingachgook, as I saw him. His crew were as ugly and evil-looking as their chief. Some carried bows and arrows in leathern quivers slung at their backs; not one was without a revolver. Looking at their stunted, shapeless bodies, it was hard to say whether they were men or women—“bucks or squaws” as an American would put it. When we came upon them in one of the chief streets they were bartering furs. The man in the shop said they were quite harmless. “Harmless, yes,” said a bystander; “so’s snakes when their teeth is drawn. But I kinder guess it’s the sort of harmless you don’t want to be too near when you ain’t got a six-shooter about you.” * * * * *