| Show the pro prospector op bector an and d his burro LJ by will C higgins you seem to be a little excited over this stringer of high grade ore I 1 have just discovered in the ithe face of the cliff a few yards from our camp said the prospector to his burro and intimate that in placing my chips on the 00 in the yellow I 1 have busted the dealer at the roulette wheel but I 1 want to tell you I 1 place a great deal more confidence in the ithe huge body of low grade copper exposed in yonder saddle than I 1 do in the picture rock in the cliff upon which you are gazing with so much admi raton on of course twenty years ago I 1 would have placed my roll against such a likely piece of formation for I 1 believe the six inches of ore will widen as depth is attained but now I 1 will give my attention ioa to ane mammoth low grade deposits with the expectation of accomplishing great things in the future leaving the rich stringer to the tenderfoot and pocket hunter twenty years ago this discovery oe 0 mine would have caused a stampede into this section other locations would have been made and without a question of doubt a number of small producers would have been developed the low grade ore bodies up in the saddle being regarded as valueless because no process had been discovered by which they could be profitably worked while good money could be made in mining the rich but small veins surrounding our camp you say continued the that you would rather play roulette than to take a chance at the mining game as it is much more interesting arid and not nearly so laborious while it is lots of fun to see the little ivory ball danoe around around the wheel only to drop into a slot that usually enables the dealer to catherall ga gather therall all of the chips on the board into his gorgeous display of stacks and especially so since mining men now days a seem so eager to spend their time and money in the operation of mines where the metallic values in the ore are so wide ay ly disseminated and so small that a concentration of them all from ten or twelve tons of the material would hardly make a good family gathering but this shows that you have not grown with the times and are still in a class with ithe old mossback moss back miners and prospectors who still cling to 0 o the small but high grade ore deposits when they can find them and who look with scorn on operators who will insist in following a system where it is necessary to handle fifty tons of almost barren rock in order to get no more values than are contained in one ton that the pocket hunters take from their little stringers and gash veins in looking at the little stringer I 1 have hav bound however and after comparing it with the great deposits of hungry looking rock up on the mountain I 1 am strongly in favor of the latter and feel that I 1 have the ace king queen and jack in my hand in this try for a jackpot jack pot and am as sure that I 1 will open it eventually as you are that rhu that old lop eared outlaw out law burro will come LO a see you in we spring for so 0 o many emaio ples of success attending the operation of low grade mines have been chronicled during the past ten or fifteen years that I 1 am almost certain to make good if I 1 put my location monuments and corner stakes on the mineralized ground up by the saddle some half score years ago there was quite an excitement over in mary ellen canyon in the yellow hornet range gold was found there placers existed and silver lead ores abounded the veins were not as small as those to be found around here and a prosperous camp was soon established there were also great mountains of low grade copper bearing material so very low in grade that no one ever thought of their having any intrinsic worth and so they were not even scarcely noticed although acreage fiends covered them ditl locations doing no work scarcely and maintaining title by relocation location re from year to year the camp flourished for a number of years and the mines were productive and remunerative there came a time howver when the ithe decline in silver and lead quotations caused an almost complete shutdown shut down of the mines stagnation followed the camp was almost deserted and the remaining inhabitants were almost dis heartened it was at this dismal period in the camps history that new men with new ideas happened along they bell believed eyed that the wonderfully large depO deposits SILS of low grade ores could be worked at a profit provided the material could be handled ha idled in enormous quantities experimental re anc tion plants were constructed trial debts vere made surface mining was resorted to stearn steam shovels were utilized so that L a 50 ton railto railroad ld car could be loaded within a time limit of five minutes and finally eon con aion were construe con el l I 1 hut it could handle tons of the hungry looking rock overy day railroads were also built to convey ore from the mines to the mills and success crowned the enter prise As for the old camp so nearly abandoned so nearly relegated to the scrap heap it is now one of the most flourishing mining districts in the world one of the most active spots to be found in the ithe mountains thousands of men are employed and its canyons and mountainsides mountain sides present a regular beehive bee hive of industry the low grade mines which have now been worked for over ten years are good for eighty or a hundred years yet they have already pro deuced many millions in dollars and cents and what they will yet output would make mahe one dizzy trying ito calculate they may look lean and hungry but they will still be on the map years after the stringers and fissure veins of the camp have been lonz long abandoned and long forgotten 1 I want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector this infantile fissure in yonder cliff may look alluring to you but if I 1 put any of my chips on this board it will be on the big low grade deposit not on the rich stringer strange on the green and not the yellow and there you are and theu then some |
