The town was an eddy catching odd bits of driftwood such as only the frontier ever knew.

Queer characters were everywhere, wrecks of dissipation, derelicts of the East, seeking nothing save oblivion.
Everything was primitive--passion and pleasure ruled.

To spend easily made money noisily, brazenly, was the ideal.

From dawn to dawn the search after joy continued.

The bagnios and dance halls were ablaze; the bar-rooms crowded with hilarious or quarrelsome humanity, the gambling tables alive with excitement.