The country had been a place of terror; but the town was in its way even more depressing.
Down that long valley there was at least a certain gloomy grandeur in the huge fires and tbe clouds of drifting smoke, while the strength and industry of man found fitting monuments in the hills which he had spilled by the side of his monstrous excavations.
But the town showed a dead level of mean ugliness and squalor.
The broad street was churned up by the traffic into a horrible rutted paste of muddy snow.
The sidewalks were narrow and uneven.
The numerous gas-lamps served only to show more clearly a long line of wooden houses, each with its veranda facing the street, unkempt and dirty.
As they approached the centre of the town the scene was brightened by a row of well-lit stores, and even more by a cluster of saloons and gaming houses, in which the miners spent their hard-earned but generous wages.
"That's the Union House," said the guide, pointing to one saloon which rose almost to the dignity of being a hotel. "Jack McGinty is the boss there."
"What sort of a man is he?" McMurdo asked.
"What! have you never heard of the boss?"