El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1901-01-16
Address by Professor
Carrera at the Min
ing Convention To-
Day

Anticipating that at this gathering
an opportunity might present itself By
which L could arise and snow in my
humble way the duties of s'Ich an in
stitution, its usefulness, and the great
advantages that will accrue from it, L
present myself before this audience
composed of SO many men that have
taken the lead in the development of
the mineral resources of the south
west, with a few remarks which will
in my opinion tend to further and to
promote more repid1y the development
of these resources. The world at
large knows how costly to certain
mining countries has been the lack of
knowledge of minerals. In Leadville
so long as they did not know the car
Donate of lead which was to maks such
a profound sensation in the mining
world, the untold wealth of these
mountains remained dormant. The
carbonate of lead that afterward pro-
duced such enormous wealth, was in
those days looked upon as merely
hindrance to the washing of gold. In
the year 1872, A. B. Wood of Utah.
came to where Leadville now is, and
told the miners there of the presence
of carbonate of lead. His statement
awoke no interest whatever And the
white heavy sand at the bottom of
those washing machines instead of be-
ing recognized as a blessing still re-
manned a curse to the mining district
of that locality and of those days.
Ninety feet of an outcrop of ore bask-
ing in the sun, begging, / may say, to
be taken hold of, was for a quarter of
a century, looked upon by the old min
ers with Indifference If not with con-
tempt. Then the discovery came. In
the year 1876 two young men, the Gal
1agher brothers. erected a cabin of logs
and plastered the inside of the cabin
with the yellow clay common in the
locality. And no sooner mad they the
fire lit in the chimney when the lead
began to run out of the clay with
which those rocks were set, and the
world from then knew that Leadville
had the ore bodies that became so fam
Gus afterwards.
Two young men left Philadelphia in
the early fifties to go to the gold fields
of California, then recently discovered.
Reaching the top of the Sierras that
divide Nevada from California, and
being unable to go up farther, they
stopped there and began prospecting.
They found a mass of black powder
out of which scanty colors of gold
could be obtained. They were very
anxious to know what the black pow
der was. One way or another they
managed to get a sack together and
then tried to devise means of taking
it to California to the gold fields, to try
to find out what it was. The sack or
ore was sulphide of silver. Fate was
contrary to this venture 1t was not
possible to convey the sack. because
the country was unsettled and the men
did not know the way or the distance.
In the course of time one of the young
men struck his toe with pick and
gangrene set in. The other brother
was made heroic enough by the sit
uation to start to walk on foot to the
then rising city of San Francisco, to
get help for his sick brother and at
the same time carry the sack of black
dust A frightful storm raging in the
Sierra Nevadas overlook him and he
froze to death. His brother mean
while died with the gangrene, on the
spot that only a few years afterwards
produced six hundred millions of dol
lars, the Comstock Lode.
Another and more recent occurrence
of these striking evidences of the lack
of knowledge of ores is found in the