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Show 592 WESTERN WILDS. borhood, and made desperate attempts to secure the prize, as can be seen by the wreck of the old adobe building which is on the road to Charleston, and which the miners built sixteen years ago as a common rendezvous and fort of protection against the Apaches. It is here that eleven of them perished so miserably by the hands of the red-skins. The present locations do not appear to have been the objec-tive point of these early prospectors, and the supposition is that other and richer deposits are yet to be found to the south and west. The bullion output for May, 1881, was set down at $ 482,106, but had the whole amount of custom work at the mills been cleaned up and added in, as the - returns show, the amount would have reached $ 502,000. This result is enormous when one considers the limited facilities, there being only six small mills on the river. All the ore had to be hauled by team from nine to eleven miles. The hoisting works and machinery are of a very primitive nature, mostly hand windlasses or a whim and horse power. Only from a very rich quality of ore could any such result be obtained. True, it is not like the Comstock bonanza. The very rich streaks are small in extent, but the ore aver-ages well and there is little or no waste. When a ton of ore is hoisted to the surface it can all be put into the wagon and sent to the mill, when it will yield from $ 95 to $ 150. It is easily mined. One man, with the proper facilities, in one day of eight hours, will hoist to the surface one ton of ore ready for the mill. This is speaking in a general way of the average ore and what can be done when a mine is being worked fair and square. There are about a thousand miners employed, and the mines, for wages and milling expenses, disburse about $ 125,000 per month. There is also quite an army of freighters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and other laborers who follow on the heels of the freight teams. The surrounding country is both a farming and grazing district. Beef cattle and farm produce are in demand. Prospectors are going out daily. Capital is coming in and being invested. A destructive fire occurred at Tombstone, June 22, 1881, causing a loss of $ 250,000. Hundreds were rendered homeless. The fire department and officials worked hard, buildings being pulled down by mule teams and men, and the fire was checked. Much to the credit of Tombstone no panic ensued, as is generally the case in such disasters. So much for Tombstone ; and we have detailed its common life fully because it is just now the objective point of thousands. Let us return down the wild valley of the San Pedro, go on to the Gila, and thence northeastward to scenes we visited in 1872. The first fact to attract |
