Show THE prospector AND HIS BURRO i by will C higgins it seems to me ine said the prospector to his burro as if this would be an ideal place in which to spend a few weeks for mineral blossom is in evidence almost everywhere and there is plenty of good water here and sufficient timber for fuel and other purposes the formation is promising also and if I 1 can find a strong fissure carrying an ore body I 1 believe it will be both continuous and permanent there is no telling however how long an ore shoot will hold out it may be of good size for awhile and one will think he has the world by the tail on a downhill down hill pull when perchance it will pinch out to almost nothing or to a mere stringer just good enough to coax one along and which when followed leads to nothing that will pay to mine in such a case the prospector invariably goes broke unless he has a purse as long as a yard stick and let me tell you the prospector will then have to return to work at days wages until he has earned enough to make another grubstake and this is very discouraging some ten years ago continued the prospector 1 I was out in the vi mey range when I 1 found a ledge that was as promising in appearance as a hoover beefsteak and I 1 felt that I 1 was on the road to fortune once again the region I 1 was in was somewhat isolated ana anat quite inaccessible it was well mineralized and the mother lode I 1 discovered would have made any old prospector grin with satisfaction it was in a formation and the fissure was a strong one and well defined the ground was covered with rich float caused by er erosion oslon while at my camping place there was a fine little spring and considerable timber was scattered around after pitching my tent and making everything comfortable around camp I 1 began the driving of a tunnel on the vein which was about three feet in width the quartz occurring on both walls with a rotten gangue in the center the quartz seams were about six inches in width and carried free gold in abundance the whole thing looked good to me and I 1 felt that I 1 could take out a good shipment inside of a month or I 1 thought I 1 might construct a small milling plant at the spring in case I 1 found some exceptionally high grade ore and so I 1 worked with a vim and was as busy as a cat on a tin roof feeling sure that I 1 was on the road to success and that before the coming of winter I 1 would have out elou enough h ore to buy the little ranch down in the valley near the mouth of honeysuckle gulch that I 1 had admired so much for the first two or three weeks everything went on even better than I 1 had anticipated and I 1 had quite a respectable pile of ore piled up near the dump when my tunnel was in twenty five or thirty feet the gouge in the center of the vein began to widen and before I 1 had gone ten fe feet etmore more the quartz seams along the walls had narrowed down until they were hardly more than two inches thick still I 1 was not very much discouraged believing that the pay shoot would widen again as work progressed my hopes gradually diminished however as the quartz dwindled down to a mere seam and although I 1 continued the tunnel on for another feet I 1 found nothing but a series of mere seams and these finally petered out entirely for two weeks more I 1 prospected the surface in the hopes of finding a continuous body of ore and although the entire surface of the mountain was literally cover edwit h small fissures I 1 was unable to find where the ore body made if it made at all and was finally forced to the conclusion that the whole mountain was literally covered with small of small fissuring and stringers and that a million expended in prospecting and developing would result in nothing more than the cutting of a series of gash veins carrying high values in spots but not in commercial quantity of course I 1 was mightily discouraged and when I 1 had made up my mind that there was nothing there for me I 1 broke camp and started for a practically unexplored region over in the next range that night I 1 camped in near the head of a box canyon where there was but little encouragement for a prospector according to surface indications and I 1 felt pretty grumpy when I 1 made down my bed and prepared for the night and your mother who was with me was not in a very cheerful mood as she missed the little spring and the fresh grass growing along its border we both were feeling rather blue and I 1 was regretting the hard work I 1 had expended on granite mountain I 1 expected to continue my journey at daybreak in the morning and so made but slight preparation for camping for the night I 1 had to construct a rude crude C fireplace fire place however and so began to gather together some of the boulders scattered around one of these seemed to be heavily embedded in the surrounding soil and to knock it loose I 1 finally got my pick after several blows the boulder was splintered ini stead of being dislodged from its resting I 1 place and then it was that I 1 discovered that it was no boulder at all but the outcrop of a blind vein that showed nowhere else on oil the surface that the ore was rich I 1 could see even in the dim twilight and when I 1 finally rolled up in my blankets it was with a mind greatly at ease as to future probabilities in the morning I 1 was up before daylight and after a hastily prepared breakfast I 1 began prospecting my new find and believe me it was a dandy the getting larger and larger as I 1 sank into it at five feet it was two feet in width and at ten it was all of five from wall to wall and before the week was out I 1 had stripped it along its course for twenty feet or more disclosing the fact that it was continuous and that the ore carried excellent values in both gold and silver I 1 will not weary you with the details of the development work that followed or of how I 1 finally found a buyer for my newfound new found bonanza at a price that enabled me to buy the little ranch down in the valley and to stock it with prize win ning cattle 1 I want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector one cannot always tell by appearances just where a mine is to be found it is often that surface indications are misleading and that ore is sometimes to be found where there is no more of a showing to be seen than in the bottom of an old lake bed and there you are and then some |