[Illustration:  General view of Pueblo, Colorado, looking north-west—­pike’s peak in the distance.]

A motley throng compose the inhabitants of Pueblo.  The dark-hued Mexican, his round face shaded by the inevitable sombrero, figures conspicuously.  But if you value his favor and your future peace of mind have a care how you allude to his nationality.  He is a Spaniard, you should know—­a pure Castilian whose ancestor was some old hidalgo with as long an array of names and titles as has the Czar of All the Russias himself.  Though he now lives in a forsaken-looking adobe hut with dirt floor and roof of sticks and turf that serves only to defile the raindrops that trickle through its many gaps—­though his sallow wife and ill-favored children huddle round him or cook the scanty meal upon the mud oven in a corner of the room—­he is yet a Spaniard, and glories in it.  The tall, raw-boned man, straight as a young cottonwood, whose long black hair floats out from beneath his hat as he rides into town from his ranch down the river, may be a half-breed who has figured in a score of Indian fights, and enjoys the proud distinction of having killed his man.  There is the hungry-looking prospector, waiting with ill-disguised impatience till he can “cross the Range” and follow again, as he has done year after year, the exciting chase after the ever-receding mirage—­the visions of fabulous wealth always going to be, but never quite, attained.  The time-honored symbol of Hope must, we think, give place to a more forcible representation furnished by the peculiar genius of our times; for is not our modern Rocky-Mountain prospector the complete embodiment of that sublime grace?  His is a hope that even reverses the proverb, for no amount of deferring is able to make him heartsick, but rather seems to spur him on to more earnest endeavor.  Has he toiled the summer long, endured every privation, encountered inconceivable perils, only to find himself at its close poorer than when he began?  Reluctantly he leaves the mountain-side where the drifting snows have begun to gather, but seemingly as light-hearted as when he came, for his unshaken hope bridges the winter and feeds upon the limitless possibilities of the future.  Full of wonderful stories are these same hope-sustained prospectors—­tales that are bright with the glitter of silver and gold.  Not a single one of them who has not discovered “leads” of wonderful richness or “placers” where the sands were yellow with gold; but by some mischance the prize always slipped out of his grasp, and left him poor in all but hope.  And in truth so fascinating becomes the occupation that men who in other respects seem cool and phlegmatic will desert an almost assured success to join the horde rushing toward some unexplored district, impelled by the ever-flying rumors of untold wealth just brought to light.  The golden goal this season is the great Gunnison Country; and soon trains of burros, packed with pick and shovel, tent and provisions, will be climbing the Range.