The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1891-07-24
MINING EXPERTS.

10 the average prospector and
mining operator the services of an
intelligent, experienced, liberal, hon
est and self reliant mining expert is
always helpful and ofttimes condu-
Give of great results, but the dictum
of one protesting adequate qualihca-
tions and wanting them is most dis
astrous. Geology and mineralogy
are progressive sciences, if it can be
conceded that the facts deduciblc
from the knowledge thus far obtain
ed from sufficient foundation for
science. Professor Clayton, than
whom no other man ever more closely
studied the facts thus disclosed by
nature as to formation and stratifica-
ton, only few months before his
death, stated that close and continu-
ed investigation into the existing
conditions of the earth's crust con-
stantly necessitated the entire revers-
al of theories formed years ago, which
the present generation CT students
had, through the books, accepted as
facts and the substitution of other
theories more in harmony with the
recent discoveries. And his was the
experience that has and will contin-
ue to come to all earnest truth seek
ers. The first lesson to be learned by
the expert from the schools, coming
into mining district, is that rare
jewel, SO seldom acquired by the
bookish man, modesty. Through its
possession some men have acquires.
fame, wooed and won treasures in
the realms of the heart and the bus
mess of life, when the fussy, arrogant
self-assertion of all aoquirable wis
dom has met with life depressing
failure. The arrogance of opinion is
not confined to the young graduate
from the scho!s of mines in Europe
and America, but it is disease; it
may be diagnosied as college malaria;
no respecter of persons, it attacks the
scientific, law and medical graduate
with equal virulence and there is no
corrective that acts with such radical
effectiveness and cffectuates SO
speedily, a permanent cure as the
free ozone of Montana. Another cx-
ample of experts is the man who
mined in California and Nevada in
the tifties and sixties. Broad minded,
his advice is most valuable and
should be needed: narrow minded
the farther he is kept from the mouth
of shaft the better for the miner;
heis ''hoodo" and his opinion a
snare.
The mistakes of Moses may have
been many, of whic no opinion is ex-
pressed, but the mistakes that have
been made by the so called mining
experts of the two classes above ds-
scribed would fill book as large as
the condemned" statutes of Mon
tana, An instance; A few months
since a property purchased and OPP
Grated by a few young men was in
danger of being lost through an in
Cured Indebtedness of less than
$500. Several had heard of an expert
enced(O expert who was engaged at
s25 day, to examine the property
and report; he went, spent less than
an hour on the property, returned,
and without assaying single sample
of ore, briefly and sententiousl y re-
ported there was ''not d-n thing
in it," One week afterwards one
man, un aided and alone, extracted
ten sacks of ore that weighed over
SOOpounds and assayed s75 per ton,
and afterwards a car load, of little
more than ten TONS was shipped to
smelter and realized net over s4OO,
enough to have paid the indebted
ness through which the propert was
lost. However, the boys lost the
property for which, within the past
month, a bonatidc offer of 5000 has
been made, and Mr.. Expert is drift
ing around the hotel looking owlishly
wise with his soliciting rod up in
the hope that other s25 day jobs
will strike it. a plague to all such.
An other instance: One year ago