Frontier Civilization.

An Evening Scene in a Cheyenne Gambling “Hell.”

Gambling in Cheyenne, so far from being an amusement or recreation merely, rises to the dignity of a legitimate occupation—the pursuit of nine-tenths of the population, both permanent and transient. There are twenty gambling saloons in this diminutive town, the proprietors of which pay yearly licenses of six hundred dollars for each table and as every room averages half a dozen green-baize covers, the revenues to the country are by no means trifling. One of the largest of these "hells" is the Bella Union, on Main Street, and the artist of the Leslie Overland Trip visiting it both by daylight and gaslight, found subjects enough for his busy pencil in its regular habitues. The large rooms always full and always orderly; each man is too busy with his calculations and too wrought up with the intense strain of the occasion to indulge in any playful ebullitions or suggestions of a "free fight." Round the long green tables are grouped such picturesque and savage figures as only a frontier town can show—the stalwart scout, in his fringed suit of buckskin, weather-stained and soiled; the long-booted miner, the lank greaser, with his swarthy face and glittering eyes; and here and there perhaps a woman pulling up her little pile at gold and silver. One women, at least is a permanent institution at the Bella Union, presiding with orderly gravity over the lansquenet table. There are tables for faro, rouge-et-noir, roulette, and vingt-et-un and over each, for the accommodation of patrons, is hung a framed copy of the rules of the game, the limit of the checks, etc., varied occasionally by a big ornamentally lettered "Welcome," or some playful motto immensely suggestive to Cheyenne eyes, if not to those of the passing visitor.

"Every man in town gambles," the proprietor informed our artist, with perfect coolness. “All sporting characters here, sir!” and, in the same breath goes on to deplore the heavy burden of his licenses, and lament, with an air of injured virtue, the difficulties ever in the way of the seeker after an honest livelihood.

Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, November 3, 1877.