Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1883-12-13
Life in a Mining Camp,

1t is hard to keep separate the fan
! tastic and the sad in ones impressions;
hard to decide which has more pathos,
| the camp deserted or the camp newly
begun, the picture of disappointment
over and past or that of enthusiastic
hopes, nine out of ten of which are
doomed to die. / have sometimes
| thought that the newest, GUeSt, most
| sanguine camps were saddest sights of
all.
The expression of fresh mining
camp, at the hight of its ''boom," is
something which must be seen to be
| comprehended.
The camp is in the heart of fir for
est, perhaps, or on the stony sides of
gulch. Trees fall here, there, every
where, day and night. Nobody draws
breath till he has got a cabin, or
bough hut, or a tent over his head. AS
if by magic, there grows up q sort of
street, q dozen or two board shanties,
with that cheapest and silliest of all
shams, the battlement front, Haunting
its ugly squares all along the line.
Glaring signs painted on strips of cot
ton sheeting, bieached and unbleached,
are nailed over doors. In next to no
time, there will be a mint, an sex
change, -" a "bank, :" a''Vienna bakery"
Chinese laundry,n ''hotel" and
''livery stable" Between each night
and morning will blossom out crops of
''real estate Offices" and places where
mining claims are bought and sold,"
''claims located, proved, bought and
sold, surveys of mining claims
made" etc.. crops also, alas, of whis-
ky saloons, with wicked names and
lurid red curtains, danger and death
signals.
The stumps are not taken out of the
pretense of a road, neither are the
powders; nobody minds driving over
them, or over anything, in fact, so he
gets quick to his ''claim," or to the
tract in Which he is feverishly ''pros-
pecting." If q brook trickles through
the camp, so much the better; it can do
double duty as drain and well. Luck
lest they who drink highest up, but
they who drink lowest down do not
mind. The women, if women there
are, are fierce and restless, like the
men. They make shifty semblances
of homes out of their one-roomed cab
ms. 1t is not worth while to have
things comfortable, or keep them in
order, for there is no knowing wheth-
er the camp will turn out to be good
one or not; and tomorrow they may
pack up their chattels and move on.
At the faintest rumOr of q bigger
find in another camp, the men to
whom they belong will be off, and they
must follow. They stand in their door
ways, idling, wondering, waiting, Cos
siping, and quarreling. The ony pla-
cid creatures are the babies, whose
simple needs of sun, dirt, and being
let alone are amply supplied. They
are happy, and they only, in all the
camp.
1t is strange life, unnatural, I'M
wholesome, leading to no good, COM
fortress to a degree which many of
those who lead it would not endure a
day, except for the hope of great gain,
which fires their very veins. The worst
of it is that the life is as fascinating as
it is unwholesome. "Once miner al
ways a miner" is a proverb which is
little less than an exact truth. The
life is simply a gamester's life, with
the wide earth for hazard table, and
the instances are rare in which a per-
son who has once come under its spell
ever breaks away. 1t is no uncommon
thing, in Colorado, to meet an old
gray-haired man who has been pros
pecting and mining all his life, and has
not yet made a dollar but is buovantly
sure that he will ''strike it soon.-De-
cen1ber 44tldnt,c.