CHAPTER IX

THE STORY OF A STREAK OF YELLOW

If "the love of money is the root of evil," it is, as well, the germ of progress. It was the imaginary glitter of the yellow metal that lured De Soto across the continent to the Mississippi and beyond; it enticed De Balboa to the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific, led Cortez through the land of the Aztecs, and its magnetism drew Alvarado down into Central America and carried Pizarro to the conquest of Peru; it dragged Coronado across the arid plains of Mexico, New Mexico, and Arizona in search of the fabled land of Cibola, and, in fact, its gleaming has explored and exploited the Americas from Alaska to Cape Horn. It has led man to brave the perils of the desert, and as the result prosperous towns have sprung up in that dread region, and millions of dollars of wealth have been wrested from its treasure-house. Just what this continent would now be, had it not been for the glitter of the yellow dust, it is hard to estimate. It is probable that the dusky savage would still hold dominion over the land.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PROSPECTOR SETS FORTH From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]

The prospector is the advance agent of progress, civilization, and prosperity. He has spied out the country,--with the aid of his faithful burro,--and has marked every trail, preceded every stage route and railroad, and founded the greater number of towns on the western half of this United States.

He it is who has unlocked the treasure-house of the continent and poured into the coffers of this Republic the golden stream which has made her the first nation on the globe. It is for the sight of a yellow streak in his pan that he has been tempted to endure the fatigue, cold, and hunger of the mountains, and the heat, thirst, and horror of the desert.

The prospector is a man of small pretentions, of peaceful disposition, indomitable will, boundless perseverance, remarkable endurance, undoubted courage, irrepressible hopefulness, and unlimited hospitality. He is the friend of every man till he has evidence that the man is his enemy, and he is the most respected man in the mining regions of the West.

Of what does the prospector's outfit consist? That is a question the writer put to one of the ilk who was just starting out for the desert.

"Plenty of bacon, son," said he, "for that's whar ye git yer grease fer to fry yer flap-jacks, yer stock fer soup, an' it gives ye rines fer the burro to chaw. Next ye takes rice, fer it don't take up much room an' it swells like all-git-out when ye gits it in the pot. Comes mighty handy in yer soup, too. Half a dozen onions an' a few taters--not many, fer ye can't tote 'em--them's fer soup, too, an' then the flour. Flour's the princ.i.p.al thing in the grub line. A few beans is good an' they swells like the rice. Then thar's the tent canvas an' the blankets an' the pick an' shovel an'

pan, fer washin' dirt, the mortar an' chemicals fer testin'

rock, an' the cookin' outfit. There's a knife, a fork, a spoon, a tin plate an' cup an' the fryin' pan, an' thar ye are."

The prospector no longer deems it necessary to seek entirely new territory in which to prosecute his search for the precious metal. He has learned that good results are obtained on ground many times prospected. It takes sharp eyes to detect traces of the precious stuff--not only that, but keen judgment and technical knowledge coupled with experience.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN AGED PROSPECTOR AT MOUTH OF HIS MINE From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]

In the early days of mining in this country it was in the placer fields that the prospector reaped his fortune. In California, successive ages of erosion had worn away portions of the gold-bearing veins of the Sierras, and the rains and brooks and rivers had distributed the metal along the valleys and plains where it but awaited the test of the pan to disclose its whereabouts. In ten years after the prospector began his wanderings through the State there were taken from the placer diggings more than $500,000,000 worth of gold. In the year 1875, $20,000,000 worth were washed from the sands of California Gulch alone.

When the placer fields were practically worked out the prospector began looking for "mother lodes," as they termed the veins which had furnished the dust and yellow lumps they had been gathering from the sands in the placer diggings. In this search the real skill of the prospector comes into play.

Gold is found in a variety of rocks. Its usual home, however, is in quartz, although a few of our richest mines have been found in other rocks. The prospector must be able to read the book of nature closely.

He starts from the placer fields to search for the mother lode. He must determine in what direction to prosecute his search. The fine particles of gold which have been disseminated through the soil must originally have come from higher ground. One thing to determine is whether, since the gold has been laid down, there has been displacement or upheaval.

If not, it is evident that somewhere upstream he must look for the vein, but the question is: Where. There are mountains and valleys upon every side, and in any one of these may lie the object of his search.

He circles about, looking for "float," as the small pieces of disintegrated quartz or rock are called. If he finds one piece he seeks a second and a third, that he may get a line or trail to the point from which they came.

We will suppose that he finds several pieces of float at intervals on a certain line. He follows these to a point where two canons or valleys join. Here is another puzzle. He must again turn to the book of nature and closely scan her pages. His mode of reasoning will be something like this:

"Here are three pieces of float. One I found back at the mouth of this valley. Another I picked up forty rods back, and here, where the canon splits, I find the third. Now from which branch did they come? They could not have come from the sides of this canon, for they bear away from both sides where I found this last piece. Now, if they had come from the left branch they would have landed over against the right side of the valley, for there is where the debris from that gulch has piled up. The float was on the left side and therefore must have come from the gulch on the right. They did not come from far, for the edges have not been worn smooth by the action of the water and by friction with other pebbles. Then, too, this last piece is too large to have been carried any great distance."

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ANXIOUS MOMENT--LOOKING FOR THE YELLOW STREAK From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]

The prospector then takes the right-hand gulch and soon finds other pieces of float and knows that he is on the right trail. By and by he finds his quartz vein outcropping, or he has the good luck to uncover it. He examines the rock carefully and obtains some promising specimens and proceeds to test them. In his mortar he grinds the specimens to a fine powder. This powder he roasts in a big iron spoon till it is cherry red. He finds that the ore fuses, indicating a metal of some kind, so he drops a bit of blazing paper into it and notes that the flame burns brighter. That indicates the presence of nitrates and chlorides. Then he takes some of the oxidized ore and puts it into a tin cup and covers it with iodine. After it has stood two or three hours he soaks a piece of filter paper in the solution and sets fire to it. If it gives out a purple color in burning he knows there is gold in it. How much must be determined by a.s.say, but it is encouragement enough to lead him to select the most promising location and stake his claim thereon. Then he loads his burro with specimens of his ore and returns to civilization to seek an a.s.sayer.

If the a.s.sayer finds large proportions of gold in the ore the prospector has little trouble in finding capital to interest itself in his property to the extent of developing it for an interest, and perhaps his fortune is made. On the other hand, the a.s.say may prove unfavorable and show returns so small as to make it unprofitable to mill the ore, and the matter ends there. The prospector then starts out after another will-o'-the-wisp. With many it is a lifelong chase, with a pauper's grave at the end of the course. It is a fascinating life, however, and once a prospector is, in most cases, always a prospector.

To some, fortune comes on the brink of the grave, to some never, and now and then the most inexperienced "tenderfoot" stumbles upon wealth at the very outset of his search. There was the notable case of Dave Moffatt. He had no technical knowledge of mining and absolutely no experience. He started out in the hills prospecting and chanced upon a deer's horn lying upon the ground.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN AeRIAL FERRY--PROSPECTORS CROSSING COLORADO RIVER From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]

"That's a sign of good luck," reasoned he, and he fell to digging where had lain the horn. He struck it rich, named his claim the "Deer's Horn," sold out for forty thousand dollars--and got cheated.

Even the most experienced prospector believes in luck. They believe that experience counts for little if a man is not naturally lucky. They still refer to the late multi-millionaire Stratton as an example of the lucky man. He found his famous Independence mine where hundreds of experienced prospectors had repeatedly looked over the ground. They tell how the cows once cropped the gra.s.ses over the richest mines of Cripple Creek, while their owners cursed their luck for not being able to strike pay. No amount of hard luck, however, will convince the prospector that his good luck is not waiting just ahead, so he totes his pick and pan over mountain and plain, out into the heart of the desert, up and down the face of the earth, till he stakes his final claim--six feet of earth--where the lucky and unlucky are on an equal footing.

Many rich strikes of gold have been made in the Colorado and Mojave deserts. The possibilities of these deserts are not exhausted, however.

Prof. G. E. Bailey of San Francisco, who was one of a party of Government surveyors who recently made an exhaustive study of the Mojave Desert, says:

"We have heard a great deal about Alaska as a gold-producer, but the Mojave Desert is now more talked about in the financial centers of the East than Alaska, and the day is not far off when there will be a greater rush to this desert than ever there was to the northern zone.

"Take the desert as a mineral-bearing region, and we have not begun to discover its vast wealth. There are gold-fields here which will astonish the world. Every little while some prospector brings in float rock, sparkling with the precious metal which has been broken from a ledge as rich, but that ledge has been hunted for in vain. The day will come when these rich ledges will be located and contribute to the world's wealth of gold."

Speaking of the recent placer strike near the town of Needles he says:

"The real wealth of the ground has not been determined, but gold, coa.r.s.e gold and nuggets of good size, have been discovered. The real story of the strike is about like this:

"'The Clark road is building down a canon between Needles and Goff, and the men had occasion to drive several piles.

One of the piles was split and was withdrawn, when several nuggets were found imbedded in the pine. Word of the strike was sent quietly to San Francisco, and several well-known men from there came down and located. I believe the field is to develop into a permanent one, and may yet grow to large proportions.'"

The Randsburg district was discovered in 1894, and it has developed into an extensive gold-producing district of which Randsburg and Johannesburg are the chief towns. That field has yielded millions of dollars of gold and is yet in an early stage of development.

CHAPTER X

DESERT BORAX MINES

In the most desolate, dangerous, and terrifying locality in the United States, if not in the whole world, lie the largest known deposits of borax in the universe. Death Valley is the repository of more mineral wealth than has ever been brought out of the Klondike, but Death stands guard over the h.o.a.rds of gold, silver, copper, salt, niter, borax, and precious stones known to abound there.

Every year prospectors brave the terrors of the desert and enter the dread portals of the gateway to the valley. This gateway is through a range of mountains to which have been given the most appropriate name of Funeral Mountains. Every year new tragedies are enacted in the valley and new graves are made under the shadow of these mountains, or else the victims, finding no grave, lie upon the burning sands and stare with sightless eyes at the mountains which bound the valley.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TRACTION ENGINE HAULING BORAX FROM DEATH VALLEY From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]

Where fortunes are to be made lives are held cheap, and natures great deposits of wealth in the valley have tempted man to pit his ingenuity, strength, and endurance against the powers of the great destroyer.

In the United States the supply of borax is limited to the States of California, Oregon, and Nevada. Until within the last ten or twelve years the supply of borax in this country was derived from evaporating the water of Clear Lake and several alkaline marshes in California and Nevada. In 1890, it was discovered that the crust of borax which formed in such places was but a secondary deposit from the main body of the mineral drug stored below. Then began the real history of the borax industry in this country.

It is said that borax is never found in nature except in craters of extinct volcanoes. Be that as it may, certain it is that in California all the deposits yet discovered lie at the bottom of those bowl-shaped valleys which are known to have been once the outlet for the vomitings of prehistoric Pelees.

The presence of borax is indicated by the snowy appearance of the valley bottoms, and to the uninitiated these white stretches, when seen from a little distance, might well be mistaken for snow-fields. Many a life has been lost in attempting to cross these snowy plains, for beneath the thin sh.e.l.l of salts lie fathomless depths of poisonous waters, for the funnels of those extinct volcanoes are filled with solutions of a mult.i.tude of mineral drugs such as were never brewed in chemist's laboratory.

In Death Valley thirty thousand acres of borax, niter, soda, and salt deposits have been located. The valley is literally a vast chemical laboratory where Nature has compounded and stored drugs by the millions of tons. It is the drug store of the universe.

There are several different forms in which borax occurs in nature. It is found in solution in some of the lakes and pools, from which it is obtained by evaporation; in salts or crystals known as boreat, which require no other treatment than to be dissolved in vats of boiling water and then allowed to crystallize again, and it is found in the form of "cotton b.a.l.l.s," as the round ma.s.ses of ulexite are called, ma.s.ses varying in size from a rifle-ball to a bushel basket. The finest borax on the market is made from the "cotton b.a.l.l.s." These b.a.l.l.s, when broken, are fibrous and woolly in appearance, hence the name.