Our camp was under a very large pine tree, one of the largest in that country.
Five years ago I visited the city of Pueblo again, the first time I had been there since that time.
I imagined I could go right to the spot where our camp was located, and the morning after I arrived there I took a walk on the main business street, which I thought was about where our camp had stood. But search as long as I might, there was nothing to show me a sign of the old landmarks.
I went to the river, thinking that must look the same, but no, even the channel of that had been changed.
Amazed at the change civilization had wrought in obliterating everything that I had thought would be a guide to the old places I sought, I spoke to a police officer and asked him if be could tell me whether a very large tree had stood in that neighborhood or not before that street was laid out.
He answered, "Yes, that tree stood right under that brick building," and he pointed to a large building near where we stood, and he continued. "As long as the tree stood there, it was called 'Freemont's camping ground.'"
That particular spot is no exception, for every place I have visited in late years all through the western country has met with the same change, and the places that I was familiar with in my youth are strange to me now.
The place that is now called the city of Denver I will take for an example. At the time I am speaking of, the year of forty-eight, and for several years later, it was one of the greatest Antelope countries in all the west, and I think I am safe in saying that there were not fifty white men in all what is now called the state of Colorado.
I visited several cities in that state a year ago, and it would be difficult for the people of this time to understand the feeling of surprise that I experienced when I saw what civilization had done to every place I visited.
On the Platte river in the eastern part of the city of Denver where the large machine shops now stand is the spot where the largest bands of Antelope were to be found, and it was there that we used to go to get them every morning as they came down to the river to drink.