The effect of these charcoal makers is very plain as we climb up the devious track through the hills of California gulch to Leadville.
THE JIG DRILL.
The trees were cut which once stood dense over the whole of the gulch, and then every vestige of brushwood, grass,—everything was burned away, so that the ash-strewn soil and the charred stumps alone remain of the former verdancy. Into this oddly desolate tract the town has pushed itself without altering it much for the better. The outer suburbs of a town are seldom pleasing, and Leadville is no exception. The burned stumps, thick as the original forest, give a general black aspect to the whole scene. Fences are few, and amount to the merest pretense of enclosures, more than an unbarked pole or two, strung along the boundary, being rare. The streets are mere spaces, for there is no difference at all between the outside and the inside of the fence. The public highway finds itself as best it can among the stumps, and the householder rarely bothers himself to pull one out of his front yard.
This is not mere rough neglect, and, in the center of town, of course does not exist. It shows that the citizens, as a rule, do not care to make fine their surroundings, because they have not come to stay. They are a generation of pilgrims, even though, under endless protest, they may linger, or be held here, all their lives, and be buried in the stony little graveyard, under the yellow fumes of the smelters down the creek, at the last. Inside, though, the houses glow with pretty things and abound in luxuries. Here, men combat the outward roughness and resolve that they will be comfortable in compensation for the inclemency outside.
And so we come to Leadville, the “Camp of the Carbonates.”