A COUNTRY THAT WANTS MORE MEN AND WOMEN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 435, 12 August 1881, Page 5

A COUNTRY THAT WANTS MORE MEN AND WOMEN.

(Correspondence of the Pilot.) Denver, June 6, 1881. Colorado, to use the local phrase, is " booming right along." She has had a Spartan youth, and now, in the year of her majority, Fortune seems to hail gifts upon the rising State. Some Denver magnates, discussing the question of taking up the world's fair project, abandoned by New York, a Senator seconded the motion with the truly Coloradan remark that " failure belongs east of the Mississipi, not west." All men, and a few women, partake of the divine afflatus in this latitude, talking poetry, prophecy, or nonsense, according to circumstances. It is difficult to speak the exact truth concerning this country ; it changes so quickly, its developments are so surprising 3 , that the " Arabian Nights" seems a sober hook of reference beside its history. One thing is certainly true, that all men wanting work can find it at present ; but have you no women " back East " ? Ever since those stormy days when one of the first Governors wrote home in trepidation, that he had to preserve order among a population of " thirty thousand, all males /" excess of men has been the social problem of Colorado. Laws are at present contemplated in some districts to prohibit the importation of any more bachelors ; a better plan might be to encourage the emigration of families, which may yet be dscided on. Denver has plenty of human sharks, " confidence men," gamblers etc.. all lying in wait for fools with more money than they can take care of, but people without bad habits are not in much danger here. Judge Lynch attended to the case of " Billy Le Roy," the stage robbeT, last week, and the example promises to be salutary. The victory of Miss Pinneo, of Colorado, over Miss Curtis of Kansas, in a twenty-mile race, was the latest vindication of the boast that Colorado can do anything." More than twelve thousand persons witnessed the race, and every animal in Denver was pressed into service to carry sight-seers to the fair ground where it took place. It is worth while to walk down Fifteenth street, and compare it with the past, which is yet so short a time ago. Bishop Machebceuf 's little garden, with its wild loses, is there as it was in '64, when it formed the outpost of civilization in that quarter. All else is changed. I have seen Fifteenth street when its corner groups talked of the' bodies of men, women, and children, brought in gashed by Arapahoe knives, wnen school children whispered of Morgan, the horsethief, and his confederates, swinging on the Cherry Creek Bridge ; when the Utes rode along it, yelling their scalp-song over a solitary Sioux scalp, and when long trains of Mexican ox-teams, bringing lumber from the Divide, blocked the streets, and made Spanish the temporary language of the town. There where the high brick wall hides the convent grounds, we children, unconscious of their significance watched the sacred dance of the Aztecs and the pantomime of Montezuma's flight. Even now on certain Sundays, you can see it crossed by serge-clad nunsanda longfileof white veiled communicants. For the rest, it has become ordinary enough, and yet, if you do not object to a little gossip, we may find objects of interest in our walk. Near the church a well-preserved old lady alights from her carriage. She is the daughter of an old French family, and her cominc; to Denver has the charm of romance. la the French-American city of her birth, a gentleman whose name is a title of honour on the frontier sought her hand, but she married another. After nearly twenty years of wandering her first lover returned to find her widowed, and at once renewed his offer, which was accepted. You see that intrusive old Eros make 3an appearance everywhere. There walks, careless of style, a genuine old settler, an Irishman who crossed the plains on foot, as captain of an ox-team, and is now the owner of many town houses, blocks, and valuable property throughout the State, of all kinds, saving mines. Besides him is another, a " bonanza king," whose mighty and mascular form shows to little advantage in city costume. Bare-armed in the mines, he would be a Hercules. There are two men discussing sheep raising ; one's ancestors came in the Mayflower, the other's with Cortez. A man passes them whom old settlers greet with curt avoidance ; new ones hasten to take the hand stained with a murder which only escaped punishment through the workings of a secret society. Many go by of whom we need say nothing, for various reasons. But here comes a charming lady daughter of an Australian city, but adopted in America. If you speak with her, she will make you laugh in ten minutes ; if you visit her she will show you jewels bought in Ceylon, South Sea curiosities, and her own paintings. There walks a dark-eyed young Viginian beauty proudly indifferent to admiration, in company with an elegant New York lady, of whom Colorado girls say she is a fortune angler. That gentleman who rides by, sitting his horse so straight and well is en old soldier, who can show you, if he will, his sketch book full of war pictures taken on the spot. Those two we have just passed are apostles of the gospel of culture, friends to-day, bitter enemies to-morrow, men with neither honour, conscience, nor common honesty, but gifted with more or less talent. Are such as these to be our representatives ? Spirit of the West forbid it ! It is pleasanter to rest one's eyes on this priest, with his face worn like that of a monk in an old picture, and his dark Italian eyes —eves sobre tierra (above the earth), as a Mexican described them. If one took the trouble to note them, the street expressions heard would be equally varied and original, but they would not all do for print. On a corner a knot of men are taking " mine" with much excitement. " I don't wai.t to shoot the wrong man, but" — the rest of the young man's sentence is lost. It is not likely any one will be killed however ; so we may pass on. Bloodthirsty talk betrays the " tenderfoot," who does not yet know that common sense and a civil tongue are the best weapons in a strange country. c Denver ia only seen to perfection from a carriage. The love pf

horses is inborn in the Coloradan, and the roads are fine, smooth, hard, and leTel as a floor. Late in Mayor early in June the trees are leafy, the gardens, watered by spouting hose, seem Oriental in their freshness and shade, and the air is delightful. You catch glimpses of blue mountains through long avenues of green, or from the heighta, see the grand semi-circle outlined against the brilliant sky, its sharp peaks, snow-crested, and crossed occasionally by pale volumes of smoke rolling upward from the great smelters of Argo. M.A.