Show the prospector 1311 and his burro it by will C higgins you are making as great a disturbance as a lawn mower in distress said the prospector to his burro and one would think from the trouble signals you are hanging out that you were finding gravel and cobble stones mixed in with your barley but if I 1 were you I 1 would use care and caution in sorting them out of your feed as we are in a placer mining region and you are as likely as not to find a gold nugget or two holding friendly relations with the pebbles and gravel you are complaining pla ining so bitterly about and some of which you have probably swallowed by this time As a matter of fact if you were not so dear to my heart and so valuable to me at times I 1 would be tempted to sacrifice you youa on the altar of my greed in order that I 1 might dissect your breadbasket in the hope that I 1 might find the price of a good camping outfit concealed therein in the form of flour gold coarse gold and stickpin stick pin nuggets you say continued the prospector that you are now sure that I 1 am a candidate for a lunatic asylum and that the suspicion became positive proof when I 1 made the suggestion that a gold mine might find existence in the stomach of a burro and that if I 1 make any more bad breaks of this character you will be obliged to sever connections with me as it is within the realm of possibility that I 1 might take a fiendish notion at any time to perform a surgical oper operation atlon on you in the vain hope that you had inadvertently concealed within your anatomy a million dollar nugget rut but none whatever for you areas are as safe with me as lopez was in the utah apex mine besides I 1 am no executioner and have no search and seizure warrant in my possession what I 1 was thinking about however was the common report of the finding of coarse gold and nuggets in the craws of chickens geese and ducks and as a burro will eat almost anything from a wash rag to a stick of dynamite I 1 would not be surprised to find that you had been ancon ly high grading and that you were intrinsically worth more than your humble appearance would indicate but recurring to the statement that gold had often been found in the digestive organs of several distinctive breeds of fowls reminds me of a fortunate incident that injected itself into one of my prospecting excursions several years ago when I 1 was out in the dusenberry range at the time I 1 had made my camp in a very inviting little canyon that was surrounded by heavy forests of giant pines and the underbrush was thick so that prospecting was somewhat difficult for a week I 1 had been looking for a quartz ledge believed to exist somewhere in that locality but had been unsuccessful and had about determined to quit that part of the country for other fields before going however I 1 decided to take a day off and hunt for pine hens early in the morning I 1 started out and I 1 scouted around until noon without so much as seeing a feather I 1 was then up near the head of the divide and looking down on the other side I 1 discovered a wide swale that seemed to be the upper terminal of another canyon the place looked good to me and so I 1 made a beeline bee line for the attractive spot and had hardly reached its outer boundaries before I 1 flushed a flock of pine hens that were as fat as butter and in prime condition within an hour I 1 had bagged a dozen of them which I 1 carefully dressed before starting back for my camp they were so juicy and tender that I 1 wondered what they could eat to make them appear almost as enchanting as a pretty girl in a slit skirt and so I 1 made an examination of the craw of one of them imagine my surprise when upon making a panning of the contents of the craw I 1 found several pieces of coarse gold the same experiment was made upon the digestive apparatus of the other hens and in each instance gold was in evidence then I 1 forgot all about hunting and began prospecting around for gold diggings within an hour I 1 had found an old channel with bedrock only two feet below the surface above bedrock there was a foot of gravel that went about fifty cents to the pan and the gold was coarse and evidently had not traveled very far in an hours panning I 1 had taken out about 5 in the yellow metal and one of the nuggets was as large as a pea it was late when I 1 reached camp that night but I 1 was up bright and early in the morning and by noon had moved all of my belongings to my new discovery after making several locations I 1 began cutting timber to tc be used in the construction of sluice boxes and before the end of a week I 1 had dammed the little creek and had a head of water that answered every purpose for successful placer mining inside of three months I 1 had cleaned up nearly and then I 1 closed down for the winter the next year I 1 banked about from my by rather primitive operations by this time I 1 was getting weary of staying so long in one place and the wanderlust grew and fa tended so within me that one day when I 1 was offered a fair price for my diggings I 1 let them go and started out in search of the goddess of fortune who had long been beckoning me from over the range 1 I want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector it does look silly and preposterous to think of prospecting in the craw of a chicken but one cannot always tell in what strange places and formations he will eventually discover a gold mine and there you are and then some |