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Show 486 WESTERN WILDS. triet has long since passed out of the era of romantic uncertainty and excitement to that of regular work and legitimate investment. An-other day's journey to the northward, over the eastern slope of the mountains, and through a region rich with scenic interest, brings us to Caribou, Nederland, and all that rich region at the head of Bowl-der Creek. Caribou, ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, on a gentle slope, and in the midst of a dense pine forest, was the most delightful of new mining towns when I visited it in August, 1874. Of course that part of Colorado which drains eastward is much the best known and developed, but beyond the main range are many new and promising mining camps, as Leadville and the San Juan District, which seem to lie across the very center of the great upheaval that, perhaps, made the mines. In every district are ten times as many locations as will ever be developed, and ten thousand hopes that will never be realized; for, despite his plain surroundings, the miner is the most romantic and imaginative of men. But his is a singularly unro-mantic work. It implies cold, dirt and wet, possibility of sudden death, probability of severe injury, soon or late, and certainty of sore trial and frequent disappointments. The history of a silver mine in-cludes these stages : prospecting, locating, opening, developing and working and at every step in development the chances of final failure are many. Thus it has been well and truly said that mining is a lot-tery, but it should still be remembered that this applies only to finding and developing mines. Once it has depth sufficient to prove it, and has opened into a regular vein, a mine is as certain as any property in the world. But on the surface, where the prospector makes his loca-tion according to the " indications," there is no science that enables him to judge what it will prove on depth. That he must learn by digging, and many are the alternations of hope and fear as he goes down. First a little " pocket " of rich sulphurets raises his hopes to fever heat, then comes a " cap " of barren rock, and down they go to zero ; next, perhaps, he finds the vein widening, with here and there a il nib " of chloride, azurite or ruby silver, and straightway his spirits mount as on eagle's wings ; again he encounters a " pinch " or " cap," and hope almost dies out ere he gets through it. Sometimes he fol-lows a " pinching vein," scarcely thicker than a knife- blade, for many a week, at an expense of fifteen dollars a foot, hoping that it will lead him to the main vein. At last, at the depth of one hundred feet or more, his varying crevice either opens into the main vein and rewards him a thousand fold for all his toil, or, as it does in nine cases out of ten, it ends in barren rock, beyond which there is no thoroughfare, |