The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-08-23

In the Desert and Now He is Rich
Rich Mines That are Overlooked by
by Greenhorns.
Los Angeles, Cal, Aug. 6.-The luck
that has come to young Barney Murphy
at Chloride, Ariz, is the talk of the
mining camps of the southwest nova
days. Four months ago he was team
ing on the desert from Kingman, Ariz.,
to the White Hills silver camp for for
ty-five dollars month and found. To-
day he has bank deposit here OF thir-
ty-five thousand dollars, and he is hav-
ing glorious time over at the Santa
Catalina Island summer resorts He
was grubstaked on May A, 1900, for sew
enteen dollars a month, and on May 70
he located the Prince gold mine among
the foothills of the Rio Colorado, in the
extreme northern part of Mojave coun-
ty, Ariz., sixty miles south of the south
ern boundary of Utah. BY June 16 he
had laid bare enough of the ledge to
show the width and length of vein of
and his grubstaking partner sold the
property for eighty thousand dollars.
OF this sum fifty thousand dollars was
paid cash down. The rest is to be paid
on November TO-
Such luck is rare nowadays. Thou
sands of prospectors have searched for
years over mountains, through canons,
across deserts and along foothills, en-
during privations and living like saw
ages, and have never found altogether
ore worth two thousand dollars Bar
ney Murphy has always lived in mining
camps, and has been a laborer in silver
and gold mines for six years. Sc he
had a large fund of information about
lodges and surface indications of their
presence. During his days and nights
of driving mule teams across the coun-
try he pondered over the geological lay
of the land among the hills on the hori-
zon off to the north Of his lonely route
through the sterile Sacramento valley
and with the stray specimens OF rock he
occasionally saw in the hands of the
Hualipi Indians he formed a theory as
to where strata of gold quartz ran in
that locality and where it might most
easily be found beneath the sunbaked
adobe soil and the whitened bouders.
There's so large an element of doubt in
the finest spun theories about gold
veins that Murphy hesitated about go
ing out to seek the mine he thought he
might find. He secretly told his plans
to Dan Freeman, a bartender at Chic
ride. For week Dan declined to in
vest his money on Barney Murphys
theory, but he finally gave in. An
agreement written on a dirty leaf from
a battered notebook. was signed by
Murphy and Freeman to the effect that
the former was to receive from the lat
ter seventeen dollars month for one
year, during which time Murphy was to
prospect for gold and silver mines in
northern Arizona Freeman was to
have one-third interest in all mining
claims that Murphy located during that
time. N.Y. tp
Along with jackass laden with a
frying pan, tin pail, coffee pot and ket-
tie, sacks of beans, salt pork and bacon,
roll of blankets and a pickaxe and
shovels, Murphy started out on May IL
for the bald, parched hills. He reached
the hills on May 10. He setSup camp
and began prospecting. While he had
been among miners and prospectors
from his earliest youth, he had never
before gone prospecting for himself.
With q pick in his hand he tramped
and crawled and scrutinized the desc
late, hot hills over for several days. He
found the topography as he had ex-
pected it to be, but the character of the
outcroppings was altogether different
from what he had been led to believe.
Only base copper was in sight, and the
chance of finding rich ore there grew
Simmer each day.
AT a little after dawn on May 90,
when Murphy was hunting quail, he
ran across rock in the bottom of
gulch, about the size of mans head.
He knew at a glance that it was live
rock, exactly like that he had seen in
the Indians hands at Chloride a year
or two before He ran back to his tent
and got his hammer and magnifying
glass. The rock was whacked into
pieces, and each piece revealed tiny
specl1s of gold in the gray quartz.
Murphy was wildly excited. He
abandoned all else and began a search |
for the ledge of outcropping from which !
the chunk in the gulch had been de- |
tached. He crawled up and down the
barren scorched hillside many times.
He crept over wide areas on his hands |
and knees, looking, scrutinizing and |
gazing all about him. He turned over |
hundreds of bits of oxidized rocks there. |
He Clipped away pieces Of outcroppings !
and pulled up dried sage brush and |
peered into the holes left by the roots
In his feverish restlessness he forgot
all about hunger and he paid little at
tention to the suns burning heat which
beat upon his back. When noon came
he was no nearer finding the spot from
which the float rock had been displaced
He slid down. the hillside and climbed
up the opposite side of the gulch, all the
time scrutinizing everything about him
with the nicely of a bird examining
flower. Not thing anywhere to indi-
cate whence the float had come. But
Murphy, with the patience of prospec-
tors, stuck to the search.
He went all over the hillsides and
found nothing. He retraced his steps
and went down into the gulch to resur-
vey the topography of the locality. He
gazed up and down, before and back.
Suddenly he saw in the late afternoons
sunlight a protruding mass of rocks a
half mile farther up the gulch, that re-
sembled in color the float he had come
across early in the morning. He hast
4ned up the gulch and climbed over