Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 1.djvu/149

1859] the Boston Journal. They came in one of the express stages, and had met with a singular and perilous accident. In driving through a herd of buffaloes, the animals, probably maddened at the sight of the red color of the coach, had attacked and upset it. Greeley had received a severe cut below his right knee, crippling him for several weeks, and both journalists were bruised all over. They found quarters in the Denver House, the only “hotel” in Denver, that had been got ready for the reception of guests just before their arrival.

This establishment was about sixty feet long and thirty wide. Its four sides consisted of rough-hewn logs. It had a slanting, skeleton roof covered with canvas. In the interior were neither floors, nor ceilings, nor walls, nor solid partitions to divide the space; but canvas nailed on frames served to set it off for different purposes to the height of seven feet. The front part was occupied by a bar for the sale of strong drinks only, and a dozen gambling-tables, at which various games were conducted by experts in the profession. Several individuals who had been hanging about the towns, and whom I had taken to be men of means awaiting their chances for a respectable use of their money, appeared in this part. Next to the bar-room came another space, enclosed by canvas partitions, where the meals were served. Immediately behind it, six apartments for sleeping-purposes, divided only by the same light material, were set off on each side of a passage. Outside, at the end of the building, the kitchen, presided over by a white male cook, was carried on under canvas. There was no furniture but the gambling- and other tables and benches and chairs, made out of rough boards. Bedsteads were provided of the same material, without mattress or pillows, and also tin wash-basins, which the guests themselves filled out of barrels of water standing in the passageway, and emptied, after use, on the dirt floor.

Altogether, that hotel was a unique institution, and, of course, without comfort or quiet. In the absence of