Cheyenne was passing from the camp to the substantial town stage and lumber was needed for building purposes. The North and Middle Park regions were virgin forests, untouched by the woodman's ax, and the earth and its precious store of gold hardly scratched by prospectors. There were no mines, no ranchmen, nothing but nature undisturbed; lakes of sweet, cold water, groves of white pines and other trees, wild and untenanted except by blacktail deer, bear, cougar and other animals. The Greeley colony, however, had been established many miles to the east in the valley of the Poudre. This was the first great American irrigating project and a few settlers had begun to till the soil. Beyond Fort Collins and Livermore the country was as new as an unexplored country could be. Trout leaped at play along the narrow but fast-running streams, and if a sportsman had ever cast his lines in these places he must have been a red man or some daring white hunter who preceded the stage of development now under way and who left no record of his doings. It took several weeks to chop and dig a road through this wilderness and set up in an open space a couple of sawmill outfits we had with us. Then it required a couple of months of chopping, hauling and sawing of logs, and loading of the green and heavy lumber upon our Murphy wagons. The lumber was unloaded in Cheyenne a month later; some of it was quite dry, but in much smaller quantities than would have been delivered had the owners been willing to wait for it to dry where cut. But Cheyenne was in a hurry, and the boomers couldn't wait, consequently many of the green joists in the new buildings shrunk and there were several collapses. CHAPTER XIV THE INDIAN AND THE TROUSERS. When the first clothing was issued to the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at Red Cloud Agency the scene was better than a circus. If I am not mistaken Carl Schurz was secretary of the interior, and after a conference with some of the big chiefs it was decided to attempt to abolish the breech-clout. The "Great Father" at Washington, represented by members of Congress and some of the Pennsylvania Quakers and others, discovered that Uncle Sam had a warehouse full of discarded or out of date army coats and trousers, and it was decided to give these to certain tribes of Indians as part payment for lands that were needed for white settlement.