It is a fact, probably new to some of my readers: that the wild sunflower is the characteristic weed of Utah, and that the seeds of the plant supply the undiscriminating Red Man with an oil-cake which may agreeably vary a diet of grasshoppers and rattlesnakes, but has not intrinsically any flavour to recommend it. So South Kensington must not rush away with the idea that the noble savage who has the Crow for his "totem," feeds upon the blossoms of the vegetable they worship. It is the prosaic oil-cake that the Pi-ute eats. But all I heard got mixed up eventually into a general idea that every man in the place who had not committed a murder was a millionaire, and all those who had not lost their lives had lost a fortune. The mines, too, got gradually sorted up into two kinds--those that had "five million now in sight, sir," or those whose "bottoms had fallen out." But one fact that pleased me particularly was the "Anti-Vigilance" Committee of Leadville. Every one knows that a "Vigilance Committee" consists of a certain number of volunteer guardians of the peace, who call (with a rope) upon strangers visiting their neighbourhood and offer them the choice of being hanged at once for the offences they purpose committing or of going elsewhere to commit them. The strangers, as it transpires in the morning, sometimes choose one course and sometimes the other. This is all very right and proper, and conduces to a general good understanding. But in Leadville, the citizens started an anti-vigilance committee and so the Vigilance Committee sent in their resignations to themselves--and accepted them. I do not think I ever heard of a fact so appalling in its significance. But the humour of it is that the Anti-Vigilance Committee managed somehow to keep the peace in Leadville as it had never been kept before. It reminded me of an incident of the Afghan war. A certain tribe of hill-men persisted in killing the couriers who carried the post from one British camp to the other, and the generals were nearly at their wits' end for means of communication, when the murderers sent in word offering to carry the post themselves--and did so, faithfully! It was in Leadville also that lived the barber who, going forth one night, was met by two men who told him peremptorily to take his hands out of his pockets, as they intended to take out all the rest. But he had nothing in his pockets except two Derringers, so he pulled his hands out and shot the two men dead where they stood. Next morning the citizens of Leadville placed the barber in a triumphal chair, and carried him round the town as a bright example to the public, presented him with a gold watch and chain as a testimonial of their esteem for his courage--and then escorted him the first stage out of the town, advising him never to return.