The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-09-13
ANACONDA, Mont, Sept.


ANACONDA, Mont, Sept. 5.
Mr.. EDITOR:
Here l am in the heart of the
Rocky mountains, more than a mile
above the sea-level, with great peaks
and ranges towering above me, other
thousands of feet, their tops marked
with patches of the never-melting
SHOWS.
This is a wonderful country. It
looks, much of it, like the dumping
ground of all creation. "A COW would
absorb all the sustanance furnished
by thousand acres; and yet from
holes in the ground, on mountain
slopes, where scrub pine and sage
bushes are the sole representatives
of the vegetable kingdom, we learn
that hundreds of millions of dollars
of metallic wealth have been taken in
the last twenty years. EVERYTHING is
found here:-gold, silver, copper,
iron, coal; and a thousand years will
not exhaust the resources of this
wonderland. Nature must have
been dancing a high old fandango
when these perpendicular strata of
rock were kicked into place. 1t
would have been much more in
teresting "shindig' to have wit
messed than to have participated in
like a Minnesota legislature it would
have been better for a mans COM
fort to be out of it than in it.
Everything is quiet enough now.
Whatever was the force,-the Jim
Hil1, that kicked up this bobberg,
and produced this eruption on the
face of the continent, it has evident
ly long since retired from business,
into the nether-most depths Of
Pluto's kingdom; and is there quiet
ly cutting off it's coupons, and wait
ing until the Great Governor calls
an extra session of the dynamic
forces of the planet.
THE ORIGIN OF THE METALS.
Where did all the gold, silver, cop
per and iron come from? There are
two answers. One set of reasoners
says it came from above, out of the
air, at the time of the aforesaid
Montanian highland-fiing; that it
was held in solution, as gases, in in
tensely heated air; and when it
cooled and condensed into liquids,
it ran into the crevices of the rocks,
out of which men are now laborusly
extracting it. The other, and more
numerous class of theorists, hold,
that in the middle of the earth
there is an immense q quantity of these
metals, and that it boils over and
eructates itself, and forces itself in-
to the crevices of rocks above it.
But there are two difficulties with
this hypothesies:-first, these metals
have never been found in the out
flow of volcanoes on any part of the
earth's surface; and if the pot below
was full of gold and silver, etc.,
sooner or later some of it would have
boiled over and flowed out at the
mouth of the craters. West of here,
in Idaho, &c. they have the great
lava-fields, thousand miles square,
where the contents of the earth
burst out, in an awful flood in the
remote past, and consigned vast
areas to everlasting desolation:-
but not a particle of the precious
metals has ever been found in any
part of this great overflow. In the
second place, if this gold and silver
came from a great metallic basin,
in the heart of the earth, why would
it not, in some places, have sQuirted
up thick columns of the precious
matter? But whether it came as a
Dance shower upon the earth, or was
caused by some telluric emetic, it
has filled this region with people,
with enterprise, with wealth.
All the nations are here:-Goth,
Celt, Gaul, Gael, italian, Magyar,
Huns, Asiatic, African, European,
here all toll peacefully together in
the depths of the mines, or swelter
together in the immense reduction
works.
Great railroads wind through the
mountains, turning and twisting
from one valley into another, like
a serpant crawling; electric street
car lines move through the cities:
incandescent burners light up the
houses; newspapers that would do
credit to Minneapolis or ST. Paul
are found in towns with one tenth
of their inhabitants; long fumes OF
timber, erected on high trussel
work, extend along for miles, carry.
ing water to run the machinery OF
mills or to irrigate the land of the
farmer. Over all stretches blue
sky, flecked with patches of clouds,