Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1877 — The Black Hills—The Situation of Affairs at Deadwood. [ARTICLE]

The Black Hills—The Situation of Affairs at Deadwood.

The Chicago Tribune, of a recent date, publishes the following extract from a private letter, dated Deadwood, May 14, to a gentleman in Chicago: I arrived in this city on the 11th inst.; was on the road twenty-one days out of Cheyenne. I came in by the new road (mud up to your neck). I paid six cents per pound for my weight and baggage, with the understanding that I was to ride all the way; but, alas! I soon discovered my mistake; I had to walk all the way—--360 miles. Board is fifteen dollars per week, and hard to get at that; day-board alone is ten dollars per week. The town is crowded with men out of work and out of money. The truth of the matter is, too many are coming here for the Hills to support. Wages”range from four to seven dollars per "day for those that are able to get work. Tobacco, chewing, is one dollar per pound; smoking, about one dollar and a quarter per pound; cigars, common, fifteen cents; ordinary, twenty-five cents apiece. Flour, twenty-eight dollars per hundred, or fifty-six dollars per barrel. How is that for high ? Potatoes', fifteen cents per pound. Everything is sold by the pound here. One man has got up a corner on flour, and has run it up from eighteen to twenty-eight dollars per hundred in the last three days. Whisky is twenty-five cents pef drink, and very poor stuff at that. This is one of the most lively towns that that the country has ever had; that is what the miners here all say. Hardly’ 1 a night passes but what there are half a dozen fights right in the main street of the town. My "advice to people in the States who intend to come here to mine, is to stay where they are, for there are.five men for every position here. They will have to put up with a great deal of hardships and privation in their overland trip from Cheyenne to Deadwood —860 miles. I speak from experience, and, therefore, ought to know. You can make the trip by stage from Cheyenne to Deadwoood iu about six days; fare, fifty dollars; meals on the way, eighteen dollars, making about seventy dollars for the through trip. I came in a train of covered wagons for about thirty dollars; but it took metwen-tv-one days to get here. Freight from Cheyenne here is three cents per pound. A dime or a nickel is never Used in this country; almost everything is twenty-five cents. The money in circulation is golddust and silver coin. Taere are two daily papers here—the Pioneer and the Times; in size they are about twice as large as an ordinary theater programme. There are seven breweries, two cuarcoal-pite, three brick yards and several saw-mills, that I know of; also two theaters. —When a man goes round the house sighing and wishing himself dead, you needn’t trouble to put the bottle of opium away. He wculdn’t touch it for worlds. If he should be suddenly attacked by colic you would hear him screaming out for a doctor at the top of his voice.