Show the prospector jector I 1 wd and his burro J by will C higgins 1 I notice said the prospector to his burro that you take but little stock in this section of the district and that you have no use for mineral deposits unless they occur as fissures and contacts having a dip that is almost vertical it seems strange to me that you have been observant enough to detect the difference between a ledge of ore and a 10 stamp mill and I 1 feel like giving you full credit for your seeming intelligence while your opinion in the premises coincides with that of the vast majority of mining men many of whom would have nothing to do with a blanket vein even if they knew that they could make a barrel of money out of it but what gets my iny goat whiskers and all is to fathom the ad version some mining men have for bedded veins as it should make no difference whether an has a perpendicular or horizontal pitch so long as the values are there in paying quantities and then too who can tell but what a blanket vein will finally turn and go down or that possibly it may be cut by a blind fissure and form a zone of enrichment rich ment at the juncture of the two that will hold the treasure of the bank of england nearly all coal mines are of the blanket vein type and yet you never hear of their owners kicking and wishing that the measures would go down As a matter of fact it is easier to work a blanket ve vein in and much less costly than mining by shaft and unless the deposit is located near the the blanket vein can top of a mountain be followed for thousands of fe feet et to much fl fissure s perpendicular better advantage than a could be followed into the bowels of the earth an equal distance the prospector continued you say should hold bold in that con census of opinion mining affairs as well as in banking commercial pursuits and in courting and that the man who breaks out from the beaten paths away from the are arc lights and beyond of the police is likely to the regular beat bea t mountain lion or fall into an bump into a open sewer all of which shows that you have no initiative of your own and are content to let others do your thinking just as thousands of other two legged animals are doing in every walk of life but as for me if i find something that looks good to me I 1 am going to grab it even if it lacks the brand of public favor you say you see no point to this discussion and wish I 1 would talk about something more pleasant and profitable such as equal suffrage for the downtrodden down trodden burro or the outlook for the barley crop which has some meaning for you but none whatever for I 1 am going to prove to you that blanket veins have been greatly maligned and discredited and that they have the right to put on airs frills and curls just as much as the fissures and the contacts which give it out that they are going down to china before making their reappearance appearance re before an admiring public some isome few years ago while prospecting out in the golden cup range I 1 f fell ell in with a mine owner who was working a fine blanket vein it was some four feet thick and ran about 20 a ton in its gold content the ore was free and the mine was easily worked hardly any timbering was needed and good ore was to be found everywhere indeed there seemed to be a mountain of it and it looked to me to be a bonanza the owner put in a little 5 stamp mill and was much more than paying operating and development expenses every little while some expert would come out and look at the mine he liked the appearance of the vein the quality of the ore and the location but then it go down and so he would pass it up as a freak not having 1 ng the brains to realize the fact that it made no difference whether the vein went down for a mile or gamboled gam off horizontally for five or six thousand feet nor did ale he take into consideration the fact that it was much cheaper to mine by tunnel and drift than it was to follow the fissure or contact to great depths by means of shafts equipped with expensive hoisting works the man owning the blanket mine in the golden cup range however was not a whit discouraged because his property had been turned down by capitalists and went on with his work as contended and happy as a tra trade de rate engaged in its regular nocturnal occupation one day a change occurred in one of his drifts and almost before he knew it he had crossed a blind fissure that was six feet W wide ide between well defined walls while the quartz at the contact ran up into the hundreds in its gold content it was some days before the news but inside of a of the discovery leaked out week experts and mine examiners swarmed and squadrons and in in flocks regiments as ticks on the plentiful buyers were as sagebrush in the spring the mine owner and could not be however was a wise guy enticed into disposing of his bonanza which even without the discovery of the fissure was well worth a million of any blodys money instead of selling he added to the capacity of his milling plant and is now taking down the long green in such quantity that he will soon make rockefeller look like a novice in money making 1 I want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector dont you become imbued with the mistaken idea that gold good gentle and polite when found in a horizontal vein or that it cannot hold up its head in the society of the yellow metal that has been delved from the center of the earth I 1 am always li hunting linting for the precious metal and you can bet your sweet life that I 1 dont shy off when I 1 find a big blanket vein that is chuck full of the wall street metal and there you are and then some ay n |