Arizona weekly journal-miner., 1895-06-12
The Fallacy Of Lost Mines.

When it comes to lost mines Ari- zona is strictly in 1t and everything from cellar to garret goes. A few days since the Citizen man re- marked a trick overlooked; that California had made a scoop on the Lost Horse mine and Arizona was in the soup of departed greatness, but on being reminded by the Phe- nix Herald that the land of the horned toad and the cactus was still in it and that the Lost Jack ass" exceeded the wealth of the h. dies we pass and add the Barn door" to the territorial treasury.
 The Santa Catilina range, one of the grandest and most sublime of the great upheavals in southern Arizona is the home of Lost mines. Within its mysterous and labaryu- thine depths the legends of the past have root and radiation. Here TO- nance and reality were conceived and born, the Lost mine has its home and over it the gaunt spectre of the past, holds its unceasing watch.
 The lost mines in Arizona are as unbiquitous as the lost tribes of Israel. They exist in story and song, they are the ignus factus of the gold seeker, and, Jack O'Lan- tern like, have lured many a brave man to his grave. The end is still afar of. for the legend of hidden gold never dies. Bright as the morning sun that gilds Mount Lemons peaks or dips in the golden west, they can be had for the mere finding, but like death in Hamlet's famous soliloquy there's the rub" The complications and desert dan gers in Kipling's King Solomon's mines have been laughed to scorn a thousand times in Arizona, and voyages more fraught with peril than Jayson's quest for the Golden Fleece have not wanted for men to do and dare and die.
 The hypnotic influence of Host mines has ever run through iron tier blood as lightning leaps through air. With fascinating glitter the legends of the past gleam and glisten in the sun. The more distant, the more hazardous the pathway to the golden goal the more determined and heroically is it sought. Il dare do all that man may do who dares do more is none" has been exemphfied without end by Arizonans. Disappointed ever but discouraged never, while the lamp of life continues to flicker and burn. Like the "Old Guard" at Waterloo they die but never sur render" the idea of lost mines and their ultimate discovery. But the search is never done. Some can yons must be re-explored, some hill again climbed: a painless and waterless waste must be again crossed lodges re-examined, new dan gers faced and death again braved. - When the mania for finding a lost mine once fairly takes possession of a prospector his whole heart and soul is centered on the one unsatis- fled desire. Youth and strength are frittered away in the hopeless cause and when the last ditch of life has been. reached and he can no longer brave the rigors of the hills, > they bemoan their fate and curse their grizzled age. "If," said one within the hearing of the writer, not a week ago, If had little more time in there I know I could have found it, but Bill was killed by the Indians, Tom got crazy for water. and died and l had to get out, but l know it's there" and so the thousapdth lost mine story has been told.
 Occasionally a find is made but it brings no lasting joy. The fabu- lOusly rich Barn Door" mine of the Santa Catalinas has been dis covered, so many people think, but even the identity of this is in dis pute. Some miners who have ex- amined it declare it to be nothing but a natural rift in the face of a great bluff made in one of natures thrOes when the world was new, but others, good men and experienced miners too, can see in the cavernous opening in the rock the handiwork of the, ancient goldseeker, but all agree that, so far as rich mineral is concerned. there is nothing in it. But this will not deter men from
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