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lateral shaft, running into the face of a low bluff for the distance of thirty or forty yards, and laid with a wooden tramway, upon which were several small cars, still in good order. The coal was instantly recognizable as tertiary, and must have been among the latest lignite formations of that period. The nearest browncoal layers are, I believe, generally referred to the miocene. This I think subsequent to the miocene. The vein was distributed through a bed of friable, bituminous shales and clay. Both the coal and the shales contained perfect impressions of still contemporary plants. We found numerous specimens of leaves from both the common varieties of cottonwood and the swamp-willow; also of an entire plant belonging to the bulrushes. The coal deposit seemed surrounded by the shales mentioned, both above and below. It burns with a brisk flame and fragrant oily smoke, like the English soft coal, but has much less body, and consumes to ashes without coking. We saw enough of it, and heard sufficiently of other like discoveries near by, to be sure that this mineral is abundant about Denver, and may be profitably mined for domestic purposes.

I think it not at all improbable that petroleum will yet be discovered in the Plains of Colorado. Its origin is not yet among the certainties of science; but the only certain fact about it, that it is a result of vegetable decomposition under pressure, makes us look for it in the underdrainage of all such beds as that near Denver. It seems to play the part of molasses to the sugar of coal, comprising the carbon particles which could not be caught out of solution, and brought within the cohesion of the solid form. The underlying calcareous formations of the chalk

and tertiary exist everywhere over the Plains, in basins which form the most natural reservoirs for a petroleum deposit, and are often sufficiently indurated to retain it,

On the way back to Denver, we found growing on one of the sand-hills a running verbena entirely new to both of us; in form exactly resembling the scarlet variety of our gardens, but bearing profuse blossoms of a brilliant blue tint, which would have thrown into ecstasies any of those florists who have spent such effort to produce it artificially. We dug up several of the plants, and, the rain favoring, kept sufficient soil about the roots to transplant them successfully in Mr. Pierce's garden on our return.

The day before we left Denver, we had an opportunity to witness one of those periodic incursions of the Arrapahoe tribe of Indians, which led a new-come Irishman to ask on one occasion "whether that was the reason why Americans called the season Indian summer." In Denver nobody says "Arrapahoe." The wag who first misquoted "Lo the poor Indian" has perpetuated himself in Denver by the fact that Indians there are always called "the Lo Family." "How are you, Lo (or Mr. Lo)?" is the familiar address of a copper-colored warrior. Of a sudden, just about midday, the Messrs., Mistresses, Masters, and Misses Lo swarmed in the streets of Denver, with as little preface as seventeen-year locusts. They might have come out of holes in the ground. Some of the men had magnificent buffalo-robes, elegantly worked and stained on the inside; others had robes of wolf-skin; and I saw a number of fine blankets. But the majority of the tribe were half naked, and in a condition of squalid filth. One of the squaws en

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tered a grocery store with a baby bound to her back, and a greasy blanket over all. In her hand she held some pieces of deer-skin work for barter. Her eye wandered with a savage restlessness over the shelves, and fell to an open barrel of brown sugar. An Arrapahoe can no more resist sugar than a wasp. Mrs. Lo uttered a guttural of exultation, thrust the deer-skin into the grocer's hands, whipped the baby out of his pouch in a jiffy, cast her blanket on the floor, and after throwing into the middle of it all the sugar she could scoop before the grocer cried, "Hold!" tied it up composedly by the corners, hung it over one arm and her offspring over the other, marching out of the store with all the dignity of Penthesilea, and considerably fewer clothes than that royal Amazon wore on public occasions; in other words, nothing but a breech-cloth.

Towards nightfall might occasionally be seen a stalwart brave stalking out of the town towards the encampment, metaphorically speaking with his hands in his pockets, and a high-bred insolence in his carriage, followed by a trail of wives laden with babies and the day's shopping of the family. I was about to utter a sneer at the cruelty of savage life, when a question occurred to me whether women still carry the heaviest burdens in our own civilized society. Here is Mrs. Lo stumbling under twenty pounds of sugar and young Indian; but I have known white wives who had loads to carry for their lords something heavier and far less sweet.

On the 23d of June, two of us resumed our journey toward California, by the Overland wagon. The other two stayed behind to visit friends who had introduced Eastern farming to a well timbered tract

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