In the spring and summer of 1880 I took a long and exhaustive trip
across our continent, and completely lost the common dread of emigration
that was then being talked about. There was room enough for fifty new
nations between Omaha and Cheyenne, room for more still between Cheyenne
and Ogden, from Salt Lake City to Sacramento.

An unpretentious youth, Carey by name, whom I had known in Philadelphia,
went West in '67. I found him in Cheyenne a leading citizen. He had
been District Attorney, then judge of one of the courts, owned a city
block, a cattle ranch, and was worth about $500,000. There wasn't room
enough for him in Philadelphia. Senator Hill of Colorado told me, while
in Denver, about a man who came out there from the East to be a miner.
He began digging under a tree because it was shady. People passed by and
laughed at him. He kept on digging. After a while he sent a waggon load
of the dust to be assayed, and there was $9,000 worth of metal in it. He
retired with a fortune.

A man with $3,000 and good health could have gone West in 1880, invested
it in cattle, and made a fortune. San Francisco was only forty-five
years old then, Denver thirty-five, Leadville sixteen, Kansas City
thirty-five. They looked a hundred at least. Leadville was then a place
of palatial hotels, elegant churches, boulevards and streets. The West
was just aching to show how fast it could build cities. Leadville was
the most lied about. It was reported that I explored Leadville till long
after midnight, looking at its wickedness. I didn't. All the exploring I
did in Leadville was in about six minutes, from the wide open doors of
the gambling houses on two of the main streets; but the next day it was
telegraphed all over the United States. There were more telephones in
Leadville in 1880 than in any other city in the United States, to its
population. Some of the best people of Brooklyn and New York lived