Arizona silver belt., 1899-09-07
THE OLD MINER.
tie May not be Rich, but He Opened the Gates through which the
 More Fortunate Passed.

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 Every old miner is not rich man, nor is every rich miner an old one. Many, very many, who joined in blaz- ing trails to the Fl Dorados in the far west, who have built their humble log cabins where prosperous towns or cities have long since displaced them, who set their stakes and spent months or years to develop prospects into paying mines, whose hopes of striking wealth ended not in fruitioD, whose tcnacity of pur- pose and bulldog hang -onativeness led them, over and over again, to venture their time, their labor, their all in other equally disastrous ventures, have either passed cover the range" to pros. pect for home mot made with hands, eternal in the heavens" or are now with whitened locks and furrowed cheeks, with bent forms and faltering steps, patiently waiting for the sum mons to lay aside their picks, pans and shovels and drills and spoons and ham. mers, and go up higher where short water and barren rock are known no more forever.
 We say there are many old miners waiting to join their comrades who .have gone to find bonanza in the Great Beyond and who leave the world as they entered it, with nothing to claim save the air they breathed, But they have done good work, they lived not Tn vain. Fifty years ago they crossed the Missouri river and entered the "Great American Desert, into an almost unknown country, bearing their lives iu their hands, meeting and over coming obstacles and dangers of which they knew not, frightening or driving the savages of the plains from their pathway, and the less savage animals from their lairs, but defying all, fol- lowed the settirg sun on its course to the golden sands of the Pacific, where they found an empire in domain, a storehouse abounding in gold. But they builded better than they knew. They opened the way for others 10 fol low. In blazing the trail to the Pacific they passed over great stretches of plains and mountains, out of which Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Montana and Nevada have been carved each treasure yanltfrom which countless millions have been emptied into the busy worlds channels of trade, creating millionaires aad multi-million- aires while the trail-blazers themselves 1 were awakening echoes in camps that added more millions to the wealth of l countries and their people.
 All hail to the old miner! He open ed the gates through which the more fortunate passed to wealth. He un- complainingly endured the privations and hardships which are ever the hand maids of the pioneer. His youth dis appeared in his combats with an ad. verse fortune. Mlddle-age claimed him before he finished his battle, and old age has seized him. Physically broken down, but rejoicing, he has liv- ed to see m empire in the west, "all of which he saw and part of which he was. " Envy possesses not the old miners soul. It will be short time only when the busy, hnsiliDg, bustling throng now around him, grasping for the almighty dollar," will also travel the road leading to the unknown here after, which he is prepared to take when the signal is given to ''strike camp. Western Mining World.
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