HARPER'S WEEKLY

IN THE CRIPPLE CREEK GOLD-FIELDS.

BY CARL SNYDER.

There is irony hid in this, of the brackish sort that men call fate. Forty years ago this same peak, which the traveller in a palace-car now watches for when he rises in the morning from a night's flight over the desert from Chicago, was sought by other eyes lit by the same dreams of gold.
Only the men who came in '59 did not travel by lightning express, nor dine on truffles and pâtés while whirled along at forty miles an hour.
They crawled wearily over the waterless plain in white canvas-covered emigrant wagons, stopping sometimes to rest and recover strength, and sometimes to leave their bones bleaching by the way, so that the trail might be more distinct and memorable for those who came after. Their wagons, as a rule, bore the legend, quaint, and, as it seemed, oddly humorous,

"PIKES PEAK—OR BUST!"

Perhaps you recall the picture. Also another, its companion. "Busted!" which had its own touch of "derision and disaster."

But the Pikes Peak excitement of '59 proved as barren and fruitless as the burning plains it had tempted so many to cross. Those who had come from over the desert pressed on to other fields, or turned back, or starved quietly and died. And all the while, hardly ten miles away as the crow flies, and barely hidden by the grass roots, lay in measureless quantities the precious rock they sought.
The generation that followed used these deeply cleft and undulating uplands for a cattle range, meagre and grudging as it must have been. The herds roamed over the hills, and sometimes a prospector ventured that way, and then one found gold, and told others.
Then a financial measure which moneyed men of the East obtained at the hands of Congress fell as a great blight upon the chief industry of the State, turning many adrift, and from thoughts of silver the men of Colorado turned again to thoughts of gold.

They listened to the tales that were wafted down the mountain-sides from Cripple Creek, and many prospected and wrought, and finally developed one of the richest gold-fields on this continent, if not in the world. And this, in a way less tedious than some others, is the history of Cripple Creek from heroic times down to a recent day.
Barely five years ago was the first location made. The next year there was a slight inrush of prospectors, and the principal mines of the district were located. And then there was a still greater rush, and finally a long and bitter strike, which the ingenious newspaper correspondents looked at in the light of a "war."
And by-and-by, in July, 1894, the railroad came, and big shipments began, and the future of the camp was assured. Those who doubted that a great gold district could be found beneath a cow pasture came at last to see that their precedents and their geology were of no avail here; and even sagacious experts, who visited the mines and went away looking wise, found that they too were no better off in guessing at what these rolling hill-sides contained than a carpenter or a steam-fitter, who. from sheer ignorance, had made a location and suddenly found himself a multi-millionaire.

FREMONT, DECEMBER, 1891—CRIPPLE CREEK.

Now this, if you please, for a single camp that is barely four years old, is a marvellous record. Probably there never was anything like it in the history of lode mining. Of course, back in the fifties, when it was possible to pick up great nuggets on the placer grounds of that State, California produced in single years very much greater quantities of gold than this. But it is not likely that the bonanza days of placer mining in California will ever be seen again. And the fault one has to find with the Colorado "boomers," who mostly have mines or lots for sale, is that they are not content to let the very wonderful truth alone.

Nor does there seem any present indication that the rapid increase in Cripple Creek's production has reached a limit. The first large shipment from the camp was in December, '91, when a car of ore to the value of about one thousand dollars was sent out. The next year the shipments amounted to $600,000. And the year following to nearly two millions, and last year to about three millions and a half. You will see, therefore, that in a single year the output has nearly doubled.

What it will be next year no one can do more than make a sort of a random guess. Mr. D. H. Moffat and Mr. J. J. Hager-man, two of the heaviest mine-owners in the district, and gentlemen of wealth and standing, gave me figures of not less than ten millions, and probably not much more than twelve millions. Of course this is very far again from the optimistic articles you may read in the newspapers of Denver and Colorado Springs—very far from the twenty or thirty millions they talk of. But if it docs no more than this, Cripple Creek will still be, for anything I know of, far in the lead of any other mining camp which has been known in this country.

BUENA VISTA MINE AND PIKES PEAK—WILSON CREEK.

You may drive in a surrey all over the district, and not only visit every mine it contains, but view, as you ride along, some of the most inspiring scenery to be found anywhere in the grandly scenic regions of the West. You may, if you choose to miss a beautiful ride through the mountains, leave Denver at night in a Pullman and wake in the morning at Cripple Creek. At Denver you are a mile above the sea-level, and here you are almost a mile above Denver. Very close to the sky then do you seem when in your surrey you climb to the top of Battle Mountain or Gold Hill, another thousand feet or so above the camp. You are almost on the roof of the continent. Pikes Peak is only three or four thousand feet above you, and for more than a hundred miles you may look away, past range after range of low-lying hills, which in the East would be called mountains, far away across the valley of the Arkansas to the Sangre de Cristo range, whose jagged and ice-edged sky-line serrates the distant fringe of the horizon. You turn, and the broad plains which lie at the mountain's feet loom in view, and stretch out beyond the sight distantly to the courses of the rivers which flow to the Gulf. Mount Pisgah and Mount Rhyolite seem mere bald knobs thrust up out of the vast and tumbled expanse which rolls away toward Leadville. The Royal Gorge, of the Arkansas, is just down there in the far depths of the wide valley. In the opposite direction, if a long spur of Pikes Peak were not in the way, you might look down to the Garden of the Gods, not more than fifteen miles away; while off to the northwest, twenty-five miles or so, you see a little peak which stands as the geographical centre of Colorado. Alike from its ease of access and its famous surroundings, Cripple Creek is an attractive spot for the tourist, and I do not doubt that many thousands will come.
And if they come simply as tourists the trip will be worth their while.

The ride about the "golden circle" takes you from the town of Cripple Creek, through Anaconda and several little hamlets stuck oddly in the gulches or on the side of a hill, to Victor, and then back Did other little camps and Alt-man. The largest of the mines thus far developed are not located at the town which bears the district's name, but at Victor, four or five miles away. The latter is a pretty little village that lies snugly at the foot of Battle Mountain, and above it, along the hill-side, are the gaunt red shaft-houses of the Independence Mine and of the Portland group.

I do not know just what there is in a gold-mine that seems to lend itself so easily to romance. But the story of either of these two great properties, which are really one so far as the ore-chute is concerned, would afford the background for many a beguiling tale. Marvellous to report, both of these mines are owned by the men who found them. The locator of the Independence Mine was W. S. Stratton—"Old Man Stratton," as he is called, though he is old only in so far as the hard life of a prospector makes any man of forty seem sixty or more.

If the story of how Cripple Creek itself lay neglected for a generation and a half, almost at the feet of the men who sought its treasures, has not given you an idea of how elusive are the coveted veins of gold-bearing ore, attend to the story of "Old Man Stratton's" search:

More than twenty years ago he came to Colorado, even then imbued with the notion that he would find a goldmine. "I go much on impressions," he says. By winter he followed his trade as a carpenter, earning enough to spend his summers in the mountains. He earned his own grub-stake. I believe that years ago, down in the San Juan country, he really found gold, or had an interest with those who had found it. But his partners cheated him of his share, and with this bitter experience "Old Man Stratton " vowed never to have a partner again. Years passed. Still he searched. More years still—his hair grew gray. But no gold. Then came the Cripple Creek excitement. He was among the first to enter the new camp. He made locations. They seemed to prove worthless. Understand, by-the-way, that, covered with grass as are the hills of the district, there was hardly an outcrop of ore anywhere to be found. The bottom of the creeks would wash gold any day, but where it came from was another matter. The best that any one could do was to strike a pick at random on the hill-side and take such luck as came. One morning—the Fourth of July, it happened—" Old Man Stratton " picked out a new spot that, somehow impressed him as one that might prove a " strike." In honor of the day he called it the "Independence," and when he got back his assays from the rock it bore he was dumfounded to find that it ran more than three hundred dollars a ton.
Gold at last! After twenty years!

For a long time, though, it seemed difficult to establish just where the vein lay, and men less tenacious might have abandoned the claim; but the "Old Man" stood by it, and one day the vein opened, and the beautiful golden ore lay there in such quantities as to outrun the imagination. Even then the owner of the Independence had no idea of the vast riches he possessed. So one day when he was offered $150,000 for the mine, with $10,000 down for a bond, he was glad enough to accept. But the panic came, and the purchase was never made. It was with the $10,000 which he thus received that Stratton was able to go on and develop his mine and make clear that he was now rich beyond the dreams of poets. As for himself, he says: "I never had an idea I should be so rich. What I did dream of was to find a little mine on which I could put up a little mill and gain therefrom enough to keep me out of want for the rest of my days."

As a matter of bare fact this lucky man has now so much money that he does not know what to do with it. He does not like to trust it to banks—too much of it at least—and investments he does not look upon with a favoring eye. So, instead of making his mine the great pro-

A PIONEER MERCHANT AT CRIPPLE CREEK.

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What an odd millionaire!

If you climb up Battle Mountain, above the Independence, you will come upon another group of red shaft-houses and gray ore dumps, and this is the Portland.
Clear at the top of the hill, if you happen to win his good graces, Jimmy Burns, as he is still called, will show you a little patch of ground which he and his partner, Jimmy Doyle, located when there seemed hardly a square inch on the whole mountain that was not plastered with claims.
It was about seventy-five feet in width and three hundred feet long, and might have contained a sixth of an acre of around. Prom this little acorn did the great Portland grow. It was on this patch that the ore vein was found which so many were searching for. Forty-seven lawsuits have been fought for the possession of this bit of earth.
Men with millions have intrigued and witnesses have been bought, and have told wonderful stories, and dark plots have failed, and still these two Irishmen held their ground. Not always with the force of the law. In mining camps, when claim-jumpers appear there is a rough and rugged justice, where Winchesters sometimes replace courts and judges. Many are the stories told of the fight for the possession of the Portland, and one of these Burns tells himself. He bad returned home one day and found his shaft in the possession of six or seven "jumpers." Hot and impetuous Irishman that he is, he rushed excitedly into his cabin, and seizing his rifle, ran back to the shaft, and levelling it at the intruders, exclaimed', with a volley of terse
expletives befitting the occasion, "Now you get out!"

Now, facing a determined and belligerent Irishman, defending his sole possession on this earth with a Winchester, would not be, I fancy, a comfortable thing. The intruders grumbled, but Burns was insistent, and down the hill he drove them, at first slowly, and then on a run— with an empty Winchester! For in the excitement of the moment, true to his Hibernian ancestry, he had neglected to load his gun.

This same Portland mine has afforded an illuminating example of the uncertain value of expert opinion. When it had been demonstrated that the mine was, to say the least, exceedingly rich, it was bonded by New York parties for a purchase at $200,000. Then the experts came and spent many days in examination, and reported $37,000 worth of ore "in sight." And went away looking wise. The month after the bond expired the owners of the Portland took from its depths over $40,000 in ore, and since that time it has produced over $2,000,000. It is now stocked for $3,000,000, and the market value of the stock is twice this. It pays $60,000 a month in dividends, or about 25 per cent, per annum on its capitalized value. Both the Independence and the Portland have been developed practically without a dollar of outside capital. In other words, they have been developed with the money that has been taken out of the mines themselves. And since this is true of a number of other mines within this same "golden circle," it has come about that Cripple Creek has been called a "poor man's camp." In many instances the ore bodies lie very close to the surface, and have been so rich from the very beginning that the prospector has had no need to spend weary months searching for capital with which to make his prospect into a mine. Thus it happened, too, when the great strike—"the war" —was on, many owners became disgusted and readily leased their possessions to the miners themselves. So that many of the best properties have been worked in this way, and some of them are under lease to this day.

But the reader is not to imagine that Cripple Creek abounds in these seductive tales of men who were prospectors yesterday and millionaires to-day. Truth to tell, such stories are rare. And there are many others of another sort. The first prospector to locate a mine in Cripple Creek was Bob Womack. He is still plain "Bob," and not a millionaire. He sold his claim for what he thought was $300. He really got about fifty. The same year one-third of this mine—the El Paso—sold for $35,-000, and now perhaps the property is worth half a million. And Womack, as he tells the story, adds, "And the men who've got it now don't even say, 'Have a cigar, Bob?'" Which comment would spoil.

Then, again, if you go up by the Last Dollar Mine you may see a sad-eyed man driving a spavined team behind an ore cart. The Last Dollar might sell now for three or four hundred thousand, and this man, Jerry Winchell by name, located it. He owed a "grub-stake" of forty dollars or so at the grocery, and there was no money to pay, and the claim went in satisfaction. The men who owned the grocery got something like five hundred dollars for it, and the man who bought from them sold for $75,000. And now it is stocked for a large sum, and producing many thousand dollars' worth of gold each month.

Nor is it to be supposed that all the mines of the district represent bonanzas. In truth, the number that have been worked to any sort of success is very small. In several instances, too, mines which have been good producers have "pinched out," as the phrase runs. And then it has taken all that has been won, and often immensely more, to get back the ore bodies. In a large proportion of instances they are never won back.

All this serves to indicate that even in the best of camps there is little certainty and immense risk. But a knowledge of these things has no more deterrent effect upon the craze for speculation than the oft-repeated stories of the clever manipulations of "Sugar," and "Whiskey," and "Tobacco," and other Wall Street gambles have upon the lambs who wish to guess at the next fluctuation of these stocks. Already, in order to satisfy the thirst for stock-gambling, a dozen exchanges have been organized in Colorado alone, and hundreds of companies are in the field, and thousands of brokers—at least so it seems. Everybody speculates, from those who can afford to those who cannot. The young lady who waits on your table at the little Cripple Creek hotel leans over your shoulder to ask if you think that "C. K. & N." is a good buy. And she tells you of how one of the other girls made a lucky guess last week and is " $80 to the good."

Of course this is a very fine thing for the stock-brokers, and among these you meet with many a surprise. There is the young lawyer whom you used to know back East, who departed suddenly owing to some peculiar interpretation of a trust confided to him. And the handsome and gentlemanly gambler whom you used to know back in Kansas City—a sort of a John Oakhurst in his way; and many others who somehow failed to get on in the East, but who turn up here with prosperous-looking offices and a well-fed air. Of course I do not mean to say that all the stock-brokers of Denver and Colorado Springs are made up of this sort, but it is nevertheless true that there are many unjailed scoundrels in the list—men who lie awake nights plotting and scheming as to how they may win the hardly garnered little fortunes of the schoolteachers and the type-writers and others, whose brains are whirling with visions of sudden wealth.

And, of course, in consequence of the excitement there has been a great rush to Cripple Creek. It began less than three years ago, and now it is estimated that in this little mountain district, which covers an area considerably less than Manhattan Island, there are twenty-five to thirty-five thousand people. Perhaps twenty-five hundred of these are actually employed in the mines, and some fifteen hundred more are scattered about the district, digging little black holes in the hill-side here and there, at random, in the vague hope that they may chance upon a vein. It is a curious sight, and as you drive down the mountain-side about duskfall and see these patient hard-muscled men still striking their weary picks into the irresponsive and enigmatical earth, you sometimes wonder what there is in the life of a prospector which leads so many men to go out from among their fellows, and climb over the hills, searching year after year, and year after year finding nothing.

You fail to understand the matter entirely if you never have happened to watch one of this strange race of men examining a particularly fine specimen of ore. To the uninstructed eye, save perchance where it shows a gleam of dull gold, one bit of this gray rock is as uninteresting as any other. But an old prospector will take the specimen up and his eyes will light with a curious enthusiasm, and you will hear him say, quite slowly, and very reverently, toward the rock, "God Almighty! look at that!" For such things as this are to him the most interesting things in the world.

For the rest, the population of the district is made up of traders and shopkeepers and speculators and real-estate agents, and that vaguely floating remnant which affords you the usual wonderment as to how they contrive to exist. The little town of Cripple Creek has eight or ten thousand people, and counts itself well supplied with the luxuries of civilization. It has electric lights and a waterworks system, to say nothing of several stock boards, an infinite number of saloons, and various other modern improvements. During the days of the rush it was quite impossible to obtain any sort of accommodation unless you had engaged long in advance. And even now there hangs in the Palace Hotel, over the big fireplace of the lobby which is so good to sit by of a cold evening, a sign offering chairs for the night at fifty cents each. But the town has now fairly caught up with the demands upon it, and you may live as well here as you may in other places of the same size anywhere in the country. The citizens do not go about armed to the teeth, with revolvers and bowie-knives protruding from their pockets and Winchesters slung over their shoulders. There hasn't been so much as a shooting affray for I don't know how long, and a murder in a camp like this will excite immensely more attention than a "triple tragedy" in New York, and remain the leading topic of conversation for weeks.

The number of men now employed in the district is much smaller than it probably will be when the new cyanide and chlorination mills are completed, and it will be possible to successfully treat large bodies of low-grade ore. At the present time very little rock is shipped which does not run more than $25 to the ton, and the Grant Smelting-works is reported to have handled 40,000 tons of ore whose average value was $78 per ton. It is figures like this which the Colorado man is never weary of pointing out to you, and ironically, and with intent to discomfit and confound, he adds that a great deal of Cripple Creek gold doesn't cost ten cents in the dollar to produce. For all their satisfaction at the gold discoveries, Colorado has not yet forgiven Congress or the East for destroying its chief industry. So they find a deep and subtle joy in recalling to your mind how the argument was used in the silver repeal agitation that silver cost less than twenty cents an ounce to produce. And they ask you maliciously if, when the East hears of the cost of gold production in Cripple Creek, there will be another movement to demonetize the yellow metal. The figures cited represent the literal truth. There is in Cripple Creek an astonishing amount of wonderfully high-grade ore. For example, the Victor Mine, one of the chief producers of the district, last year turned out 1400 tons of an average value of $230 to the ton. The entire cost of taking this ore from the mine, and including freight and smelting charges, would be under $25 per ton, so that in this instance the cost of production was just about ten cents in the dollar of gross gold, or about
two dollars per ounce. One car of ore shipped from the Portland yielded $20,000 in gold, or about $2000 a ton, and President Burns of this mine told me that on one drift there is a chute of ore which assays 1900 ounces to the ton. There was ore found in the Doctor Mine, and I believe in others also, so rich that a hundred thousand dollars or more was stolen and carried out in the men's pockets. Quantities of it ran more than a dollar a pound, and some of it as high as ten or twenty dollars.

But the future of Cripple Creek does not rest upon its high-grade ores, but upon its hopes of a great body of low-grade rock, which, in turn, depends for its successful treatment upon cyanide and chlorination. Technical descriptions are quite out of place in such an article as this, but for those who have never seen a gold mine, and do not understand its workings, a word as to how the gold is got out of the rock may not be out of place.

In its outward aspect a gold mine is as intensely uninteresting as a black hole that you might blast in one of the big bowlders that lie up along Riverside Drive. And even the mineral-bearing vein itself, to the uninitiated eye, looks quite like any other. The rock as it comes from

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It is here that the new cyanide process, which has been the chief factor in the success of the Kaffir mines, will play an important role in the mines of Colorado and Cripple Creek. The process, at least in its general features, is exceedingly simple. The ore is pulverized to a fine granulation and thrown into huge vats containing a solution of cyanide of potassium. The cyanide takes up the gold, which is then held in solution, just as you might dissolve sugar in water. This auriferous liquid is then run over zinc shavings, which precipitate the gold from the cyanide in the form of gold slimes. These, in turn, are put through the refinery at the mill, producing almost pure gold bullion.

The new process applies to such ores as do not carry their values in the form of galena and some other base metals. By this process the Cripple Creek ores may be treated at a charge, including freights, of $7 or $8 a ton, where the ore is of low grade. The actual operating expenses are not over $3 a ton, and the rate for treatment will doubtless be greatly reduced in time. Eventually perhaps two-thirds, and possibly three-fourths of the ores of the district will be treated by this means. The chlori-nation process is rather more expensive, in that the ores must first be roasted before treatment by chlorine.

There are other things of interest in Cripple Creek besides its mines, and one of these, it seemed to me, was the fact that these rough and hardy miners should have voted recently, almost to a man, for woman suffrage. Indeed, in one of the little towns of the district, Alt-man, the vote was almost unanimous, and one member of the city council— they are all "cities" out here—is a woman. Altman has, I believe, the distinction of being the highest incorporated city in the world. And besides this it contains the little Homestead saloon, where "General Jack" Smith pulled the trigger for the last time. This "General Jack" Smith was one of the few desperadoes who ever came Cripple Creek way. He drifted into the camp about the time of the strike—the "miners' war"—and somehow or other, I suppose from natural qualities which always seem to assert their primacy on such occasions, the miners made him their leader. No one knew where he came from, but later, when he lay dying, he told the priest a little of his story, and disclosed the fact that he had been in his day a "bad man." But he had nerve. It was he who led a little handful of miners down Grassy Gulch, and met the regiments of militia, and said to them, "No farther!" And the troops went back, and came around the other way, and met with a similar repulse, and, indeed, never got into the miners' stronghold at all.

D. H. MOFFAT,
President of Victor Mining Company.

You may call this picturesque if you like, but it seems to me there are other terms which might fit better.

Upon a final point I spent some little care, for it is a matter in which many people seem to have taken a deep interest. That is the question of profitable investments in Colorado mines. I
can best put my impressions into this shape: the gold-bearing district of Cripple Creek, so far as it is now known, embraces a little area with a radius of not more than three miles. It contains, all told, perhaps eight or ten square miles of ground. This at the outside would yield six or seven hundred full claims. On these there would be a possibility, I do not say a probability, of finding veins rich enough to bear the cost of working. There are in the district, so far, some twelve thousand located claims. You may judge of the probable value of the most of them.

Of these twelve thousand claims of course the many are merely fractional. About thirteen hundred are patented, and have title established. Of these thirteen hundred, two hundred are shipping ore. In other words, there are ten thousand odd claims in the district that so far as developed are practically worth nothing at all.

To put the matter in another way, upwards of nine hundred companies have been organized thus far to operate in the district, and dozens more are being put in the field each week. Of these nine hundred or more companies about six per cent., or fifty or sixty in all, own producing mines—that is to say, are taking out any appreciable quantities of good ore. And of the latter but twelve or fifteen are dividend-payers. In other words, less than two companies in a hundred so far yield any return whatever upon a stock investment.Of course, in the clever and seductive circulars which the countless mining brokers scatter broadcast, you will read of this or that company which will be a dividend-payer the very next week, or the very next month, or something like that, and whose stock may be bought now for a song, and later be worth par. And they point to numerous instances—to such splendid mines as the Portland, for example. Just a year ago stock in the Portland was selling at 40 cents, and now "it is somewhere around 200, and paying a dividend of 12 per cent, on this value. There are a number of such instances as this, so that it is slight wonder that people should lose their senses and invest in all sorts of worthless and " wild-cat" schemes that are thrown on the market. But if you will recall to mind that the gold kings of California did not make their money mining in the hills, but by manipulation on the stock exchanges, you may perhaps conclude to keep your money in a safe place. I do not mean that all of the stocks offered on the exchanges of Colorado are worthless, but I do mean to say that most of the companies that are being flouted or offered in the East are the sort that have no standing, or will bring in Colorado nothing like the price asked for them East. It is a fact that more money is always spent on the claims next adjoining a bonanza mine than is ever taken out of the mine itself.

In Colorado, or, for that matter, all over the mining West, they divide mine-owners into producers and consumers—into the men who put money into a mine and the men who get money out of it. The meaning of this is that mining has come to be a business or a science which requires skill and training, and technical knowledge, and the same amount of shrewdness and ability which is required for success in any other line of trade. There may be greater follies than for an Eastern man to put his money into Colorado gold mines. Just at the moment 1 think of one—that is, speculating in mining stocks.

W. S. STRATTON,
Owner of the Independence.

SKETCHES OF MINING LIFE.

BY WILBERTINE TETERS.

That "there are miners and miners" is true, but one is apt to run across people of education, refinement, and travel in the most isolated places in the mountains. Men come to retrieve fallen fortunes, and bring their families with them, since the sojourn is never looked upon as any but the most temporary, although it frequently lengthens into years. The hope of obtaining, in a short time, a fortune that could only be accumulated in years elsewhere is the cause, and motley indeed is the population of a mining camp or mining town. A graduate of a German university drove the mules on a "whim," while a former Mayor of Pitts-burg sat on the "dump," and sorted ore in a town in southern Colorado. The graduate of the German university was also a member of the famous Seventh Regiment of New York, but he could not harness the mules to suit the manager of the mine, and threw up the position to dig a cellar by day and clerk in the post-office at night. In his cabin he had Royal Worcester side by side with bronzes and frying-pans in realistic and artistic confusion. Travel, search for health, and the novel life contribute their share to the population too.

BURRO PACK-TRAIN ON ASPEN MOUNTAIN.

My first impressions of a mining camp are all of glitter —glitter of mica in the sand beneath, glitter of the intense blue of the sky above; glare of dazzling sunlight on the slopes, where yellow prospect holes scarred the mountain-sides, and gleam of quartz and granite of distant ledges ; the shrill cry of the blue-jay darting through the air, and the saucy defiance of the chip-monk audaciously near, and everywhere the fresh wholesome odor of pine— from the boughs and sap of the living tree, from the dead needles that carpet the forests with dull brown, from the logs and boards of the new cabins and houses — but every where the odor of pine.

The rooms of the houses are finished inside with heavy rough paper nailed to the walls and ceilings, and the "missis" unpacks her Lares and Penates which she carries with her on her travels—some rugs, books, prints, and all the rest—and she is at home.

RED MOUNTAIN MINES.

" Come here," called the missis one morning. "I want you to look at my lord and master."

I went to the window where she was standing and saw a middle-aged man who commanded respect and veneration on the bench in a certain Eastern city, but I doubted whether his most ardent constituent would have accorded it him now. A small, round gray felt hat was jammed down disreputably over his iron-gray hair, his clothes were stained and discolored, and he himself was seated on a pile of rock, his hands clasped around his knees, contentedly watching a horse pursue an endless round on a whim. His face bore an expression of calm peculiar happiness, and he seemed to be at peace with the whole turbulent world.

"He is absolutely fascinated with mining." said the missis. "He is making a new opening on the Belle View in hope of finding the vein they lost five years ago."

At this period a bucket of ore was drawn up from the shaft, and at the same time two men mysteriously appeared. The Judge jumped up instantly and hovered over the bucket as a bee over a flower. He drew a large white silk handkerchief from his pocket, plunged it in a can of water, and began washing off a piece of ore which he had seized from the bucket, then all three of the men examined it closely.

"A handkerchief a day," murmured the missis, pensively, "and six miles to the nearest town, which is only a little Western one with the usual resources. I remonstrated with him the other day, but his only answer was to call my attention to the ' free gold' they had struck." '• Did you see it?" I asked.

"Well, with the aid of the three miners, very strong ore-glasses, and a powerful imagination, I finally thought I saw a faint color. If we only don't become so insolvent that we can't get back home after his vacation is over, I don't care," she continued. "But I suppose I ought not to 

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HARPER'S WEEKLY

"You got the pearls?"

" Oh yes," she answered.

The missis was a bright cheery woman, and soon knew everybody in the camp. She was a constant trial, however, to the man who kept the one grocery store, sending continually for strange edibles of which he had never heard. When I went in the store one day and asked timidly if he kept white pepper, he raised his gray head from behind the counter and fixed on me a look of deep scorn. "You'll be asking for white blackberries next," he said, sternly. And that was the only answer I got. And when we sent for "kerosene," he invariably said, "Oh yes— coal-oil."

There was a dance once a week, held on Saturday night, that the men might sleep late in the morning. We went to one. It was held in the school-house, and the music consisted of one violin and an organ. The dances were nearly all square, out of respect to the old people, who were in the majority. Everybody went, even children. The assembly was "mixed." There were two or three old grizzled men, who, with their wives, looked as if they came from Pike County; there was a civil engineer, who was adding this to the novelty of his experiences, and a young mining engineer, just graduated — quite too nice for every-day use; a graduate of an Eastern law school, who had come West in the zenith of his youth, buried his sheepskin, and openly announced that he was going to get what he could out of life and the mines. He seemed to get a good deal out of life. He knew only the lights of Western life, not the shadows. There were also a few stray people congenial to the missis, an ex-Senator who spent the evening in telling the Judge how the Little Johnny vein dipped in the White Crow side-lines, and a sprinkling of children. The school-teacher and myself were the only young women. Those who did dance danced very industriously until about midnight, when, escorted by a laughing crowd of young men with lanterns, in single file, we climbed the steep path to our cabin.

The cemetery of our mining-camp had its peculiar charm. It was at the summit of a gentle slope, in a grove of pine-trees, and within a stone's-throw of two of the largest mines in the vicinity, and so near the highway that teams passing each other were obliged to wind in and out among the graves. The cemetery was first in the place, but the mines were discovered, and its peace was invaded by the sound of hammer and drill, the loud report of the blast, the throbbing of the engines, and the talk and laughter of the men on the dump, and the constant passing of wagons.

The missis and I looked upon it and indulged in many theories. We imagined that this familiarity with it robbed it of its fearful aspects, and we wondered why cemeteries could not be turned into parks, where little children could play among the graves and people pass constantly to and fro.

These mountain cemeteries are oppressive, haunting. Sometimes they are on the mountain - sides, where, the missis and I calculated—the Judge accused us of having a "hankering"after such cheerful spots—the graves must be nearly perpendicular, and the inhabitants standing on their feet. We spent many a pensive hour in melancholy musings on an opposite slope, wondering who mourned these people, how far they were from the spot where they had first opened their eyes, and what futures their mothers planned for them when they were children—and we recalled Mrs. Hemans's poem.

From the fever of lead, or lode, mining the Judge passed into the fever of placer mining, and the house became the natural destination of books descriptive of hydraulic plants, reports of civil engineers, estimates of the fall of water, etc. He also exhibited to us phials full of black sand; then turning the sand in a saucer and pouring water on it, he would reveal to us the gold it contained.

The climax was reached when we were taken to visit a placer mine. It was a day's journey from our camp.

FLUME FOR PLACER MINING.

The placer mining was carried on in what was certainly a beautiful spot, a little valley, whose peaceful green meadows were torn up by great ugly trenches and scarred by great piles of rocks and dirt. Down these trenches ran the sluice-boxes, and through these the dirt was carried by means of water, force being obtained by the grade of the boxes. While the dirt is being carried through the boxes, the gold, from its specific gravity, settles in the riffles—a contrivance placed in the bottom of the boxes 10 retain the gold—and is taken up by means of quicksilver, which is placed in these riffles to prevent the gold from escaping.

It was very fascinating. In one sluice-box, where the water had been turned off, I was allowed to gather up some quicksilver in an iron spoon; holding the spoon over a little camp-fire out-doors, and turning my head away to avoid the fumes, I soon had a small lump of pale yellow gold. The miners, however, do not adopt such a primitive method in amalgamating the gold.

Even more fascinating it was to pan out the dirt— washing it away gently until only the black sand remains, and finally the little flakes of gold.

The Judge said placer mining was the most satisfactory. A man could see what he was getting. He did not have dull gray or brown rock, which choice would induce him to throw away, but prudence would impel him to send to the mills. In placer mining he had the gold in its natural state, and could not mistake it for anything else.

"Still, I hope he won't buy it," whispered the missis.

I comforted her by telling her the Judge probably made these last remarks in memory of the black-looking ore he threw over the dump at the Belle View, and which he afterward learned was the richest ore the Belle View had ever produced.

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