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




Dreams of a Harvest

Time and again did those gold-frenzied dreamers laugh us to scorn because we were content to spend our energies building log shanties when we might be handling pick and shovel, and more than once did Mr. Middleton say grimly to me

"Let them laugh! We shall see who has the best of it when autumn comes. The more there are of them, the greater will be the demand for food, and if corn is worth ten cents a pound now, it will surely bring fifteen by wintertime, for some of those fellows, who are counting on taking something from the earth instead of putting anything into it by the way of seed, are likely to go hungry."

[Illustration] from Seth of Colorado by James Otis

How carefully we watched over the corn as it came up, and how astonished we were by the rapidity and luxuriance of its growth! Never before had I seen corn shoot up at such an amazing rate, and I was more than ever convinced that the wealth of this land of Colorado lay in the hands of the farmer rather than under the shovel of the miner.

We dug ditch after ditch, bringing water down across the land which Mr. Middleton had staked out as his own, until every single square yard of it was irrigated as it should be, and well were we rewarded for the labor, wearisome and severe though it was, by seeing the green stalks springing minute by minute, higher and higher, and stouter and stouter. We had in all six acres covered with the waving grain, and giving promise of a yield even more valuable than that from the rich lodes of the Chicago Bar mine.