It is more like a circus-tent, which has sprung up overnight and which may be removed on the morrow, than a town, and you cannot but feel that the people about you are a part of the show. A great shaft of rock that rises hundreds of feet above the lower town gives the little village at its base an absurdly pushing, impudent air, and the silence of the mountains around from ten to fourteen thousand feet high, makes the confusion of hammers and the cries of the drivers swearing at their mules in the mud and even the random blasts from the mines futile and ridiculous. It is more strange and fantastic at night, when it appears to one looking down from half-way up the mountain like a camp of gypsies at the foot of a cañon. On the raw pine fronts shine electric lights in red and blue globes, mixing with the hot, smoky glare rising from the saloons and gambling-houses, and striking upward far enough to show the signs of The Holy Moses Saloon, The Theatre Comique, The Keno, and The Little Delmonico against the face of the great rock at their back doors, but only suggesting the greater mass of it which towers majestically above, hidden somewhere in the night. It is as incongruous as an excursion boat covered with colored lights, and banging out popular airs at the base of the Palisades. [Illustration: HOW LAND IS CLAIMED FOR BUILDING--PLANKS NAILED TOGETHER AND RESTING ON FOUR STUMPS] The town of Creede is in what is known as the King Solomon district; it is three hundred and twenty miles from Denver, and lies directly in the pathway of the Great Divide. Why it was not discovered sooner, why, indeed, there is one square foot of land in Colorado containing silver not yet discovered, is something which the Eastern mind cannot grasp. Colorado is a State, not a country, and in that State the mines of Leadville, Aspen, Ouray, Clear Creek County, Telluride, Boulder, Silverton, and Cripple Creek, have yielded up in the last year forty million dollars. If the State has done that much, it can do more; and I could not understand why any one in Colorado should remain contentedly at home selling ribbons when there must be other mines to be had for the finding. A prospector is, after all, very much like a tramp, but with a knowledge of minerals, a pick, rations, a purpose, and--hope. We know how many tramps we have in the East; imagine, then, all of these, instead of wandering lazily and purposelessly from farm-house to farm-house, stopping instead to hammer at a bit of rock, or stooping to pick up every loose piece they find. One would think that with a regular army like this searching everywhere in Colorado no one acre of it would by this time have remained unclaimed. But this new town of Creede, once known only as Willow Gap, was discovered but twenty months ago, and it was not until December last that the railway reached it, and, as I have said, there is not a station there yet.