Show the prospector and his burro f you seem to be restless today said the pr prospector 0 to his burro and you remind me of the tenderfoot with a little money in his pocket who starts in to break a faro bank of or put the grand kibo on the roulette wheel to start in he will buy a few chips at the card table which are raked in by the dealer without any seeming effort or fuss and feathers next he tries the wheel makes a small winning and then loses a few dollars then he gives his attention to craps and winds up at the bar with his money all gone and finally goes out to earn a few more dollars with which to try his fortune again his nerve was good you say that may be true and yet his judgment was poor for even in gambling one should stick to one thing until he makes a stake or loses what he has and this makes me think of the regular prospector who flits from camp to camp like a bee from flower to flower the difference being that the bee gathers honey while the prospector generally accumulates nothing more than experience and an assortment sort ment of old clothes which do not improve at all with age the trouble with the prospector continued the prospector is that ho he is afflicted with the wanderlust fever he may find a good thing and yet he will hardly stay with it long enough to prove it up and profit by his discoveries A sensible mining man of my acquaintance has often said that it is more important to develop known ore than it is to scour the country over in the effort to make new discoveries es and I 1 think his position was right for it is often the case that new discoveries after being worked in a desultory way are abandoned even when success seems certain in order to hike out for new fields for new excitements excite ments and thus the promising ground so laboriously secured is neglected and very often falls fails to materialize into anything more than a prospect whereas if properly developed it might easily have been transformed into a producing and paying mine dut but this is usually the way with the prospector and although he has the making of a bonanza at home the fields look greener beyond the sky more rosy and a halo of romance en shrouds the distant mountains and so he keeps on like the wandering jew until old age finds him a hermit in some rough shack in the mountain passes when had he but stuck to one or two of the good things he had found in the past he might in his declining years have money in the bank and a good home to go to you say you want an illustration that your curiosity is aroused and also that you are from missouri well seeing that we have had a hard days jaunt since we started out from podunk springs this morning I 1 dont care if I 1 tell you of a little incident coming to my notice wherein a prospector gave up a fortune because he could not stay in one spot for more than six months at a time this man I 1 speak of discovered the famous white swan mine out in oregon this was a grass root bonanza and was a crackerjack cracker jack in the bargain after its discovery he took another prospector in with him because he did not like to work alone the two took out ten or fifteen t een thousand dollars in the crudest manner before it was decided that a small milling plant was needed to put in the mill they took in two or three more men and for awhile the output was more than a thousand a day but the discoverer of the property began to tire of remaining in one section so long he wanted to get further out into the hills he wanted to trail th the canyons and mountain ranges with a pack burro or two along with him and so he sold out for a song and lit out for the unknown the mine produced big money after this and would have been a big divi bend payer until this day but for the fact that it f fell ell into the hands of a fake promoter who bilked the public ran the property into debt and finally an unusual occurrence landed himself in the penitentiary but the finder of the mine did he succeed you ask none whatever for I 1 saw him less than six months ago in one of the desert mining camps and he was raged and dirty penniless and hungry and glad to borrow six bits from me for a meal and a drink of whist whisky cy 1 I want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector it takes perseverance as well as a good prospect to make a paying mine these days no one must expect that a fortune can be made it if months of labor are not expended in mine development and equipment if a man has a proposition in whick there is a good body of ore he had much better stay and prove it up than to follow the first excitement coming to his notice over the range it is the stand patters who win out in the mining game these days As for me I 1 would rather gather have a good prospect and stay with it than to follow off after every mining excitement cit ement emanating in unknown regions for then I 1 am more certain of making a stake and there you are and then some |