Before ever he had set
foot in it, McMurdo the turbulent had become a character in
Vermissa.
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 the 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.
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