The Arizona sentinel., 1888-05-26


 Bottles.
 To catch a bird, says the proverb, put some salt on its tail. To catch a victim. says the mining shark. put some salt on a mine. l do not know whether the verb salt" in this sense. ~ has been as yet incorporated in any dictionary, but when it is it will be de- fined something in thIs way: Salt: To stucco a worthless mine with high grade ore for the purpose of inducing some old gentleman from down East to invest his kopecks therein" To write the history of mining without ahe history of salting might not be Hamlet with Hamlet left out but it would be at least Hamlet with Ophelia omitted-without the melancholy dame. It is as old as rascality. The mines of Australia have been salted repeatedly, and on one occasion high colonial official narrowly escaped prison for complicity; a gold mine in Africa was salted. few years ago, and sold for e20 900; the "Ari- zona diamond fields'' were noth- ing but salt, with uncut stones bought in Amsterdam, and here in Colorado the thing was reduced to a fine art years ago. However, it is not the purpose of this brief chronicle to trace salting from Lots wife on, but rather to give a few curious instances which have come under the writer's observation. It may be taken for granted in general way, that salting is the first thing thought of when boom draws investors to a new min- ing camp. and the last thing resorted to when the decline begins 10 send them away.
 In 1878. at the height of the silver mining craze in this State, a German shoemaker lived on the eminence sub- sequently known as Carbonate hill. He was lazy and so fond of whisky that the neighbors said he didn't get drunk, but occasionally got sober. For months the great silver fever pulsed around him without disturbing his equanimity. He would sit in the door of his shop. shoe under his lap strap, and listlessly watch the endless stream of pack trains. the hurrying procession of excited men, the vel low stage coach dashing six-in- hand up the hill, and all the indescribable and intermin- able hustle of the hour. Shaft-houses sprang up all around him. but he paid no attention to them. At last one day he surprised every body by laying down his pipe, going out into his back yard. and digging a hole In few days he was out of sight, and kept on digging. In month he was down thirty feet, and then he sudden denly rushed to an assayer' office with a handful of ore that made peoples eyes stick out It was the richest kind of carbonate. heavy with virgin sil- ver
 The hole was examined and a big vein of it was found in the bottom Then the great question was how to get the property away from the shoe maker on the easiest possible terms. He did not seem to understand the | value of his discovery, and when a syndicate was formed and offered him | S2, 800 he accepted at once.
 That night was murder out The t cobbler went on a big spree, and boasted all over the camp that he had bought wheelbarrow full of ore from the Chrysolite mine and salted his prospect hole, which had nothing in it more valuable than mud. But before Ihis confession reached the purchasers they had sunk the shaft four feet deeper and cut right into a huge body of real carbonates that threw the stuff in the shade. If it hadn't been for the Dutchm ans story they would never have known the mine was salted at all. When the shoemaker heard of the discovery he swOre that he had been robbed. Near ly million dollars in ore was taken out of that mine.
 In the same year, or the succeeding one, a very singular thing occurred near Deadwood. A new camp had sprung up on the verge of a precipi- Ious cliff, nearly 600 feet hIgh, and one of those rude basins known Tn Western vernacular as parks" One day some miners, eat inc their dinner, saw a man down in he park, diminished and fore-short- ened so that he looked like a little lolL Presently he raised a gun to his h oulder, smoke drifted from the nuzzle. and moment later the faint echo of report reached their ears. He must have missed that bird, said he miners, and went on eating their Timer.
 A few days afterward a raggd
 ~'He to the camp and went