The hydraulic press. (North San Juan, Nev. Co., Cal.) 1858-18??, 1858-12-04

SATURDAY, z DEC. 4, 1868.
THE PROSPECTOR.


long boot-legs drawn over his neither
garments, pick thrown across his shout
der, blankets ON his back, and shining
tin pan under one arm-he of the stout
form and healthful face and hopeful
heart, The, the discoyerer of buried
treasure, who went alone into the woods,
quietly stuck his pick into the earth and
sent stream of wealth flowing forth to
the world. g., as,,...,s ..~....s.
The Prospector was great character
once in California At time when
her gold-fields were mostly undiscovered,
and the more timid adventures congre-
gated thickly at the few places where
the precious metal had already been
found, the bold prospector struck out
new trail for himself, felled trees to cross
rivers as yet unbridged, and mid canons
strange to the tread Of the white man,
woke the echoes with hispick and stained
the crystal water with the color of aurif-
erous earth brought from secretest pla-
ces. Not long was it before the crowd
followed, and then the Prospector would
pick up his tools and his blankets to go
again in search of virgin 1ozaccrs. Thus
have the gold-lined streams, and ravines,
and lofty ridges of long-since ocean,
washed gravel, been one by one explored,
their character revealed and their riches
laid open to the arm of industry or the
unthinking grasp of luck. Thus the
Prospector has been the pioneer geolo-
gist Of the State, its chief explorer for
minerals, and thousands who now avail
themselves of his courageous enterprise
contemn him for his improvidence and
laugh at his present poverty. While
other men were slowly accommodating
wealth, he was prospecting. When the
old diggings gave out, he went in search
of new, and found them. Though
many an ignis fatu,s he followed over
the mountains and through the woods
fabulous lakes whose clear depths re-
flectcd nuggets Of gold, ocean shores,
whose sandy margins glittered with such
precious dust as African princes powder
their hair withal such were the ro-
mantle tales that allured him from GER
tain independence, and made his days
dream in which there was nothing real
but toll and danger. Still, there was
wild Kind Of happiness in the rowing,
unreasonable, unthrifty life of the Pros
pector. Health and Hope were his at
tendant spirits. These waved their
wands and all was gay before him. The
future was not presented very tangibly
to him, but what cared he for that? He
believed the road to it led through fairy
cave of riches, which he would soon find,
and then labor would be the open sesame
that should admit him.
Travelling itselfwas happiness to him.
He bore his burden of blankets lightly,
spurned the earth with his heel as though
it were not his element, drank joy from
every mountain top, luxuriated in the
hermit vale that he called home, and
dreamed pleasantly with the river and
the pines moaning their old grief inhis
car "a aeiH3 boon bad ga sGvBoal II
All this was well, while it lasted. But
the mother on whose breast he had SO
often lovingly thrown himself to sleep
at night, was ungrateful; she breathed
a poisonous miasma upon him and he
woke from his dream of fortune-seeking,
and of reckless animal enjoyment, to
find himself in the hot grasp of disease.
A rude awakening. Henceforth he
wandered aimless, hopeless, and while
the alert graspers of opportunities were
clutching at things hecould not see, he
listlessly drifted down to these latter
days, and is now either satisfied to re-
sumo life where he began it, at the
starting point of economical labor, or
else ekes out precarious livelihood by
various illegitimate and shameful expe-
i d;ents sea Il asadS 5nss baa .iIsrh Y1sT d
A 1most lame and iimpotent conclu-
sion, in truth; but even such is the
Experience Of your genuine prospector.