Contents 
Front Matter How I Came to Write my Story Who I am My Great Loss My Worldly Wealth Plans for the Future The Gold Fever My Great Disappointment Cured of the Gold Fever My Opportunity How I Might Work My Way Keeping My Bargain At Pueblo A Welcome Time of Rest Outbreak of Gold Fever Opportunity for Money Middleton Agrees With Me Middleton's Proposition Gold Seekers Land Claims Our Ranch Building a Dwelling Corn and Gold Dreams of a Harvest Disappointed Prospectors Returning Evil for Good Striving to Save Our Corn Defending Our Own A Council of War Interview With The Enemy Missouri Miners Make Sport How to Collect The Debt Possession of Cattle Night Before the Battle A War of Words The Prospectors Try to Kill Us A Real Battle A Truce Terms of Peace The Enemy Surrenders The Prospectors Depart The Growth of Our City Farming Or Mining My Share of the Harvest Middleton Goes on a Journey Auraria and Denver Middleton Turns Trader Middleton's Plan A Weighty Problem Middleton's Partner A Change of Homes Arrival At Auraria The Town of Denver We Hire a Shop I Regret Turning Merchant How We Transported Goods Middleton's Advice The Tide of Emigration Finding Goods By the Roadside Gold in Colorado How the Cities Grew A Post Office in Auraria Letters From Home Our Business Flourishes Denver Outstripping Auraria Claim Jumping The Claim Club The Turkey War The Need of Government Union of Denver and Auraria What Others Thought of Us Territory of Colorado Good Citizenship Civil War Breaks Out Need of a Jail Denver in Flames Our Loss By Fire Mrs. Middleton Consoles Us Good Resulting From Evil Middleton's Honesty Rebuilding Denver The Flood Destruction of the Town In Great Peril The City Destroyed Our Lives Are Spared Fears Regarding the Future Uprising of the Indians Begging for Help A Famine Threatens Horrors of an Indian War My Duty at Home Beginning Over Again My Story is Done

Seth of Colorado - James Otis




A Welcome Time of Rest

We had reached the settlement, or perhaps I should say the ruins, of Pueblo shortly before noon, and when the cattle had been fed and I had received my portion of the dinner which Mrs. Middleton prepared in one of the tumbledown shacks, I promised myself a good rest during the remainder of the day.

[Illustration] from Seth of Colorado by James Otis

It was indeed a happy change to be able to stretch one's self at full length on the sun baked sand, knowing that one might lounge idling there four and twenty hours, if he wished, without being forced, at a given signal, to plod off by the side of the patient oxen, directing their way; but, even if one dislikes work, which I did not, idleness soon becomes monotonous and wearisome, and hardly more than two hours had passed when I was eager once more to be up and doing.

Before sunset those who were fascinated by the notion of delving in the earth for gold received tidings which were not to their liking. A company of seven men, who had been prospecting, straggled into the village thoroughly disheartened and inclined to believe that all the stories of wealth taken from the soil were falsehoods.

I heard one of them say that during the past three months they had worked industriously throughout nearly every hour of daylight and failed to find traces of gold. Then I reasoned that the would-be gold seekers of our company, hearing such stories told by men of experience, would give up their dreams and join us in tilling the land, if we chanced to come upon soil that gave promise of richness.

Instead of being turned from their purpose, however, all treated the account given by these returned prospectors as of no value, saying to one another that if the men had gone here or gone there, if they had worked a little harder on a certain day, or done less on another, they might have been successful.