men swearing, the women crying, and picking prickly pears out of parts indicated-a lively, if not a soothing, scene to snatch one's self away from on a bright morning in beautiful "May.")

Wood may be mentioned as a natural curiosity in Greeley, and so is coal, thought to be handy in a successful prosecution of culinary and other domestic affairs. To be sure there is an abundance of wood in the mountains just back of Greeley. The people call it just back, being only forty miles away. But why the colonists don't get more of it and keep supplied, we are unable to conceive, unless it be that they can't borrow teams of neighbors and have no neighbors to borrow of; and to tote wood on one's back forty miles is no slouch of a job. "President Meeker, 'General' Cameron, Judge' Hanna, and the balance of the 'trustees' might say, when they read this brief description of their colony, that we cut it thick; but they are interested witnesses, and we are not, Judging from what our eyes have seen and our ears have heard, we should give it as our opinion that Greeley, in respect to peacefulness, harmony and sweet contentment, is not a model burg; albeit the 'President,' the 'General' and the 'Judge' would have the world believe exactly the opposite. The fact that all the original colonists who had money enough to do so, have quit Greeley in contempt, and that the balance would gladly shake Greeley dust from their sandals to-morrow, proves of course conclusively to every mind that nobody has been disappointed, no strangers taken in, none disgusted, but that all is love, confidence, peace, contentment and harmony at Greeley.

"Because labor finds no employment; because there is no capital amongst the colonists; because no crops of any description (except prickly pears) can be produced at Greeley for the next three years-if indeed anything but prickly pears and prairie dogs' holes can ever be raised; because there is no wood, nor coal, nor lumber, nor anything else but disappointed men and weeping women and squalling young'uns, there, or anywhere about there-notwithstanding these things prove nothing against the future magnitude of the embryo capital of Colorado. But until this happy period arrives, the honest President Meeker tells his colonists that they must all go a keeping boarders (!) but suppose that they have all gone doing so, though we can't quite see where the boarders are to come from, we leave Greeley for the present, repeating the advice to the uneasy, restless readers of The Republic, that if they can't stay where they are, but must go somewhere else, don't ever dream of such a wild and foolish thing as striking out for the great colony of Greeley, Colorado Territory.''

In those days the Denver press was ready to come to the rescue i

case of an attack on the management of the colony, and in this instance the editor of The News "sat down" on Hobbs in a way that it was thought his insolence deserved. The people of Denver, who had voted half a million bonds to the Denver Pacific, were interested in the sale of its lands, and colonial schemes were supposed to hasten this desired object. Hence the many fine flattering things said about us, especially in the News, are to be taken with a grain of allowance. The time was coming when the Denver press could say bitter enough things about us. But this was when we had got down to a straightforward business way of doing things, and had set our faces against "booming" up the country to stimulate an unnatural immigration.

Of course, upon the face of it read to-day, we can see the gross exaggeration and misrepresentation of Hobbs. Indeed he so far outstripped the truth that he did the colony management more good than harm. Still, there was much fire smouldering beneath so much smoke. The fact is that about fifty of those who came, returned; while a few went out into the surrounding country, especially into the mountains above La Porte. Those who stayed did so, for the most part, not because they were without funds to take them back, as has been frequently asserted, but because, when they looked carefully over the situation, they saw a chance of ultimate success. There were a few, no doubt, who would have returned right away after coming here, but they constituted but a small portion of those remaining. This charge has been brought up lately in quarters where better ought to be known. The great bulk of those who came here in those early days were well to do, and could have returned at any time. Those who were ablebodied and willing to work, got employment at good wages, helping to survey, dig ditches, build houses, etc. Some of the young men that appeared to be without means and who worked steadily, are now men of wealth, living on fine, well cultivated farms.

Colonists leaving home with the understanding that 70,000 acres had been purchased, were naturally indignant and blamed the management. If they left their homes with the expectation that there would be 160 acres on an average for each, it was not their fault. It has been said that many expected to get that quantity of land for $150, abutting town. I never saw such a person. But it was naturally expected that this area could be had by going out a few miles. When it was seen that less than 12,000 acres had been purchased, the whole situation was changed; and if some, so deceived into coming here, shook the dust off their feet and bid good-bye to Greeley forever, it was not they who were guilty of bad faith, but the men whose false representations had brought them here.

This was the condition of affairs when the writer arrived on the 12th of May. On the same train was A. E. Searles, a lawyer from Aurora, Illinois, and some others, mostly business men from the same State. These men were highly offended with the state of affairs, and went to work to organize an opposition to the management. This led to a series of mass meetings, at which affairs were discussed in no amicable spirit. However, Cameron was usually the master of the situation, and behaved with admirable temper. Still the general demand was, that we should have a statement of what had been done, how much land had been bought, what it had cost, how it was to be divided, what was the general policy, and this led to the circular before mentioned.

Besides all this, Mr. Meeker was not here, and wrote us (the members of the colony) not a word of explanation. He was in correspondence with the other two managers, but we had no information of the nature of this correspondence or his attitude in the situation. All was in the hands of two men wholly unknown to more than ninety-nine out of a hundred of the men on the ground. Nor were the personal appearance and demeanor of these two gentlemen such as to win immediate confidence. The General looked a good deal like a seedy, cast-off, played-out, third-rate politician, while West had the air of a sharper. The blandness of the one told as unfavorably against him as the brusqueness of the other. In the absence of other testimony as to the character of these gentlemen, we were forced to judge by appearances, and may be we did not "judge righteous judgment."

It has been quite generally said, and is, I suppose, nearly unniversally believed, that the colony would have broken up before the end of two months but for General Cameron. Mr. West, president of the day at the Fourth of July meeting, 1885, on introducing General Cameron, said:

"While I would not for one moment detract from the reputation of any man, yet I wish to say that it is my opinion that to General R. A. Cameron more than any man, we are indebted for the existence of the Union Colony to-day." The above was quite generally applauded. The writer most profoundly differs from the above view. He was here when the troubles commenced, and arrived on the 12th day of May; and Mr. Meeker was here in the course of about three weeks after. was during this time that the colony would have broken up, if at all, and was prevented from doing so, by General Cameron, if at all; since after the coming of N. C. Meeker, he was president and at the head of affairs. During these three weeks some fifty dissatisfied persons left. Would the rest who stayed after Mr. Meeker came, have left if

It

he had been here earlier? The very reason, as I know, why many stayed who would have gone sooner, was because Mr. Meeker was expected to come soon; and had it been known that for any cause he was not coming back, it would have been a most fatal blow to the colony. I do not think it would then have broken up, for the colonists that had come here to stay and build up a town and settlement, if in their judgment the circumstances were favorable to success, would have taken hold of affairs and put them in shape, and put the right men at the head, if in their judgment they were not. This, in fact, they did do. Those who did stay, had not come to break up the colony. On the contrary they were bound to see that this was not done. It has always appeared to the writer that the management of the first few months brought on all the trouble upon itself, by allowing the false reports to go out about the quantity of land purchased, and trying to keep the new organization a secret, and dealing doubly, as we have seen it did, in trying to make it appear that affairs were being run one way when it was transparent they were being run another. The fact was, the management undertook to run affairs in one way and were forced to run them in another. It tried to ignore the people at large, and select certain favorites; and it was forced to recede. The people taught the managers that they were its servants. Open, candid, outspoken dealing, trusting fully all the people with the situation, would have prevented all the trouble.

Mr. West, in saying that he was opposed to the attempt to keep the incorporation of Union Colony a secret, condemns those who adopted that policy; and it appears to me that that man was General Cameron. Knowing as I do, Mr. Meeker, I feel certain that such a thing could not have originated with him. He was blunt and outspoken to a fault. It appears to me that any man, with common sense, must see that a thing that is unacceptable in itself is not made any more palatable by an endeavor to keep it concealed, when the thing is discovered; and I do not understand how these men could imagine that it could remain undiscovered. The business required that it be discovered sooner or later. It may be said that it was intended to break it slowly to a few of those who could be trusted. And this is what was done, and with the usual result-all soon knew it. And those who were not trusted felt that they were suspected, underrated, and hence revolted. The new organization was fought against, principally because the locating committee took all the power in its own hands for more than a year, not only making themselves trustees, but, in the certificate, stating that the trustees make all the by-laws; when, according to the statute, they could have allowed the stockholders to make these. They

appointed, as we have seen, an executive council of twelve as a blind, when they could have left this for the people to elect, as it insisted on doing and did, in spite of the by-laws of the trustees. All this on the part of the people was not revolutionary or destructive, but simply democratic and salutary.

It may, however, be said that for quite other reasons than what may be called political ones, the colony would have broken up but for General Cameron. This was the general distrust of the capabilities of the soil. The appearances were against the soil; and, what is worse, the old settlers believed and generally told us that the upper bench land was not good for anything for farming. We have seen that this was B. H. Eaton's opinion, and that he thought that we were likely to break up in two or three years. But Cameron believed in the fertility of the soil only, in common with the other two members of the committee. The question is, whether, if Meeker had been here instead of Cameron, we would have been less likely to believe the representations of the former than the latter. To most of us Mr. Meeker, from his writings, was a paragon of perfection in agricultural knowledge. It is no matter if afterwards we got disenchanted. We found that he could write better about farming than farm. But it took us some time to learn this; and the fact that Mr. Meeker had made this selection, was for us of far more importance than all the exaggerated extravagant statements made by a man who was not supposed to know anything on the subject. To sober, critical minds these extreme statements of the General seemed to prove the unsoundness of his judgment and the flightiness of his imagination. There might be a few weak persons led away by his fancies, but most men preferred to trust their own judgment and observation. Many went way because they had not faith in the capabilities of the soil, others thought it was worth while to wait, and try and see. The few trials that were made the first summer were convincing, of a fair degree of fertility, but did not come up to the extravagant reports published in The Rocky Mountain News and the Star of Empire.

In fine it may be said, that while Mr. Meeker was not the best sort of a man to manage men and conciliate them to a bad policy, and that he was incapable of such flights of imagination about the glorious opportunities as was the vice-president, still, it always has been my candid opinion that, since the colony got along with him quite well for some nine years as its president, it could have got along if he had been here during these two months in place of Cameron. I think the General would have made a better missionary to the Indians than Mr. Meeker; that is, he would not have pressed things to such an