The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-01-12
BR1DGEwATER's ONE NUGGET.

The Strange History of a Canadian
 Town That Was Built of Marble. "One salmon multiplies it's species million fold; the giants of the western forest spring from seed no larger than peat; but for gold-the magic
 metal-humanity has !eveled noun
 tains and bridged seas and oceans" ;" said a well known local civil engineer. T was assistant engineer on the On
 tario and Quebec railroad, a branch of 1 the Canadian Pacific railway, and in i running our preliminary lines one of
 them touched Bridgewater, Ontario, a | deserted town, that was the personifica- tion of Oliver Goldsmith's Deserted Village Bridgewater was brought into | existence by one of the strangest gold l finds and crazes in the history of this continent, and it goes to show what great results sometimes follow small | and unimportant occurrences. will | tell you the story of how a stray COW caused millions of money to be spent in search of gold.
 Nearly twenty-five years ago a | farmers wife was searching the woods surrounding their farm for COW that | had strayed and, becoming thirsty, stopped to get drink from spring. | Slipping, she fell against small, loose rock, which rolled to her feet and which proved to be twenty-pound. nugget of | almost pure gold. Bridgewater at that | time was nearly forty miles from the
 nearest railroad, and the present site | of the town was nothing but a wilder | ness, but the effect of that accidental | find of the farmers wife was such that 1 inside of six months what had been a
 burned-over, barren wilderness was l converted into a substantial city of
 nearly 5000 people.
 "In digging a shaft about mile south of the townsite on the claim of I the Hon. Billia Flint a life senator of Canada, an immense quarry of the pur- est white marble ever found on this
 continent was discovered, and, at the | suggestion of the senator, the town or
 Bridgewater was practically built of marble, for 1t has to-day the only hotel, l church, school, court house and private | dwellings constructed entirely of white marble in the world, and mile north l of the town are an abandoned axe fac-
 tory and grist mill, whose foundations are built of the same beautiful mate | rial
 | During the building of the town | thousands of men prospected the entire country, and shafts and tunnels were driven-some of them nearly one hun- dred feet deep, but, strange as it may l seem. there was never enough gold
 found to pay the cost of a single shaft
 or tunnel sunk or run In the entire dis
 trict. So excited did the farmers around
 Bridgewater become that some of them
 actually hired guards to keep men from
 going on their land to pick up gold.
 Pat Kehoe, an old Irishman, who
 owned one hundred acres of rock
 strewn, barren land. was offered $125,- 900 for his holding, but held out for
 $50, ,000 To-day you could buy the
 property for probably s15O.
 | "One rancher. whose farm adjoined | 'Aladn's Cave the place where the
 original nugget was found, sold five
 acres to an English syndicate for S1O0,-
 000 and it is an established fact that
 the syndicate spent as much more de- veloping their claim, as everything was
 very costly, all material having to be hauled nearly fifty miles, over rough
 roads. and they did not get single ounce of free gold out of their pur-
 chase; but they mined some quartz | about one hundred tons-shipped it to
 the states, and in return got bih from the smelting company for sS6o smelting