OCR Text |
Show 560 WESTERN WILDS. ther up, and it may be near by and buried beneath the drift. When search above failed to find it, I have known miners to turn a stream of water from the highest practicable mountain torrent and wash a gully to the bed rock, down the mountain side, searching the bottom carefully all the way for evidences of the lode. It may be, however, that the lode is right under us, but shows no evidence at the surface ; it is then known as a " blind lode," and is either discovered by mere accident or by tracing from an adjacent gulch. Right here the " pilgrim" is an unfailing source of amusement to the old miner. One day he goes wild over a piece of iron pyrites (" fool's gold"), the next he locates a mine on the strength of a slab of yellow mica; now his spirits mount on eagle's wings at some trifling outcrop of galena or iron, and again the mercury goes down to the bottom of his boots because he can find nothing that glitters. But the old prospector knows too well that silver in its native matrix is the most modest of all the metals. In nature it is like the native dia-mond without luster. It is only the low- grade galena ores, the many-hued sulphur, or the " peacock," which dazzle the eye. Horace has well expressed it : Nullus argento cohr est avaris abditce terris " There is no luster to silver hidden in the grasping earth." The richer an ore is, the less like a rich ore it looks to the unpracticed eye. As we hunt up the mountain side we encounter some " blossom rock," which is merely float of such size, richness, and generally rag-ged contour as to show that it has not rolled far. The trail is now get-ting hot. We are certainly near the outcrop from which the " blossom" was broken, and if an assay shows the ore attached to it to be rich, we feel all the enthusiasm of the true prospector; our bacon and beans have a new relish, and over the evening pipe, around the camp- fire, we speculate as to how we will spend all the money we are sure to make. If this is at a point where the bed rock is not covered by drift, we redouble our scrutiny; we tap the rock at every point and search diligently for any indications of mineral. Stains on the rock are now of much more importance than they were among the foot-hills. If the snow is just going off we notice very carefully what sort of a stain the drip leaves on the rock. Iron stains are red; copper stains, a reddish yellow; but lead and silver stains are gray, the brightness varying with the proportion of other minerals. One of the richest mines in American Fork Caflon, Utah, was discovered by following up a stain left by melting snow. But while we specu-late on these things we happen at last on a point where there is an unmistakable outcrop of something different from the country rock. |