Show the prospector I 1 and his burro this old dump looks very ancient to me said the prospector to his burro although you are inclined to the belief that it represents your idea of a bobtail bob tail flush your ideas however would not wear well in polite society and that is why 1 I keep you out in the hills and even here I 1 am obliged to hold you in the background when an eastern capitalist comes out to look at my claims for you would be sure to butt into our conversation with the advice to him to copper the ace or to hold a jack up his sleeve this of course would queer any deal I 1 had on for my man might be a sunday school teacher or the pillar of some big congregation in new york and your queer talk would sure make him rather leary of me but as to your comparison of this old dump with a bobtail bob tail flush there is no resemblance whatever and this shows that you would not be a success if sent out into the hills in search of old mill tailings that could be worked reworked re at a profit not on your whiskers and yet that is what I 1 am now doing and I 1 believe that this old sorry looking heap which looks more like the work of pre his mount builders than an old dump of ore is chock full of the yellow metal a surmise that I 1 will prove to my satisfaction before we return to our camp way down the canyon 1 I see continued the prospector that you have but a vague conception of the wealth contained in an old mill dump and especially so when it represents the work of mining men of half a century ago when milling methods were crude and when the millman mill man was considered lucky if he was able to recover 50 per cent of the ore values you need not imagine that we are the first to get into this district none whatever As a matter of fact there was mining and milling going on in this section long before you frolicked by your mo mothers side and imagined you came of thoroughbred stock you felt so good and it was many years also before I 1 ran tunnels in a sandbank sand bank in my fathers yard and was all swelled up with the thought that I 1 was a full fledged miner however it is an undeniable fact that the old mining dumps and tailings pits throughout these isolated districts offer opportunities for the recovery of gold which should appeal more forcibly to the mining men of this day and age and this reminds me of an experience I 1 had with an old dump some ten or fifteen years ago when you were still an unknown quantity at that time I 1 was prospecting alone with your mother as my only companion in a stretch of country reaching from the colorado river in arizona over into southeastern nevada in this section considerable mining had been engaged in many years before for every now and then I 1 would stumble onto the remains of an old old stamp mills of crude and out of date construction and even big boulders hollowed out in which free milling gold ore had been ground by hand sometimes I 1 would find evidences of old mines mere surface workings from which came the gold bearing quartz with which these ancient reduction works had been fed and one day I 1 stumbled onto a camp of more than ordinary size so old that even its existence had been forgotten by the oldest settler in that region the rude buildings had gone to decay of the mill nothing was left but five iron stamps and about the only visible indication of the activity which had once prevailed there was a huge tailings dump covering about half of a city block and which was overgrown with sage brush and cactus plants nearby was a huge spring whose source was about feet above the dump I 1 liked the looks of the place and decided to camp there a few days at one point in the stream I 1 put an old gunny sack so as to make a dam so that I 1 could take my annual bath with comfort and pleasure just above the gunny sack I 1 threw in forty or fifty shovels full of the old dump but the water went through this as if it had been so much sugar and when I 1 took the sack out to keep it from being washed away I 1 found to my amazement that it had caught about an ounce of free gold this gave me an idea and I 1 at once began the construction of some sluice boxes and riffles fiffles rif fles then I 1 began placer aning in earnest I 1 had a good head of water and a good fall for the tailings the first day I 1 cleaned up nearly from the rif fles and this was my average daily run for two or three weeks when my grub gave out and I 1 was obliged to hike out for the nearest camp for supplies your mother hated to go for she was stuck on the spring and found good grazing in the grassy plot below the dump after a weeks rest at st thomas I 1 started out to return r to my placer diggings at bonnel lis ills ferry I 1 camped for a few days and started out again but I 1 had not gone more than ten or fifteen miles before heavy rains set in and a water spout swept over the country taking in about a mile in width that carried away everything in its path but I 1 was buoyed up with the hope that my old dump had escaped its fury such was not the case however and when I 1 arrived at the old camp nothing was left but the spring and this had changed its course nothing remained of the old dump and my chance for a fortune had gone glimmering still I 1 was not discouraged and found two or three other small dumps in the neighborhood from which I 1 took a few thousand dollars 1 I want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector this western country is full of opportunities for the man who really wants to do something and who will make the effort there are hundreds of old mines which have not been properly or extensively worked there are old dumps which are full of mineral there are ancient tailing pits which can be sluiced at a big profit and there are promising prospects which could be transformed into producing and paying mines with but little effort here is wealth for everyone with the exception of the feeble minded man who cannot tell an old dump from a bobtail bob tail tall flush and there you are and then some |