Show the prospector and his burro J A N il f 14 spring weather is upon us and I 1 am beginning to experience that tired feeling said the prospector to his burro of course the season of the year has no bearing on your feelings for you are like some individuals I 1 know who were born tired and who have been that way ever since you are tired when I 1 put the pack saddle on you in the morning you have the same war cry at noon and at night and the only time you are not complaining is when you are asleep but in your way you have been a faithful friend and companion to me and I 1 should not make too much of your infirmities which were inherited just the same as some men are born criminals while others never could do a mean thing from a high sense of honor and principle 1 I said that I 1 had that tired feeling of course the weather has something to dp do with this but I 1 believe that the looks of this mining property in this isolated region has depressed me as much as anything else for here we find where money has been wasted been thrown to the birds as it were and I 1 am satisfied that many confident and trusting stockholders have made investments in this proposition for which they will never get any returns and not even the satisfaction of kno knowing win t that the development of the property has been in bungling hands in the charge of a man who had wonderful ideas as to his own ab ability i lity but who was no more fit to manage the opening of a mine than a ten year old kid and some kids that I 1 know of in the mining camps of the west are pretty well up lip in ing ore let me tell you and dont you forget it you and I 1 passed through this country a year or eighteen months ago and every man was talking of the wonderful possibilities of the yellow jacket group it was a sure winner and a shipment of hit high gli grade ore was to be made to the market at an early date the superintendent talked big things 0 but it has since been shown that this man was accorn accountable table for every heavy windstorm v visiting this section for he blew furnished him wit with h so much the company everything needed and he was full blooded when it came to making out orders for supplies and equipment I 1 will not say that he did not work hard for he did sometimes but the trouble with h him m was that his work never seemed to count for much excepting in the matter of killing time and piling up expenses he might have had an eye for ore but he never neve r used it As a matter of fact ore seemed to be a secondary matter with him as much so as a spring mattrass would be with you and he was like the tramp who was not afraid of work and could lay down and sleep by the side of it with this superintendent according to my way of sizing up the situation the finding and shipping of ore was not the prime object in mine development and to place the property on a paying basis was not a proposition which appealed to him to any startling degree instead his every effort seemed to be to get as far away from the ore as possible and the tunnels he drove the drifts he ran and the pot holes he sank were not on the veins on the ore but as far away in the country rock as he could coula get did he make a success sT you ask none whatever and after two years of this kind of development the company called a halt and now this property which really is possessed of excellent merit is idle and the camp is deserted 1 I want to tell you old long ears continued the prospector the sight of this property not only gives me that tired feeling but it also gives me a pain enough money has been spent here to make a producing mine for the ore is here but it has all been thrown away because of the lack of practical knowledge and good sense on the part of the superintendent who should have been shoveling hay instead of trying to prove insane theories at the expense of confiding stockholders yes I 1 am tired but not to such a deree degree de t ree that I 1 will not leave this camp within the next twenty four hours for now it is deserted and dead and no place for a live prospector and an honest burro to stay in |