Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1903-07-25

get a customer for their mine. To do
this they looked around for the nearest
. thing at hand and at length concluded
to sink pit on the gravel bar down by
the creek. This they done and found
that it would yield all the way from so
cents to S. per day. Low wages on an
average, but with very comfortable as
surance that it was good enough for a
sure thing on grub and tobacco. Then
he said to himself what next can do to
help myself, for l perceive that l am
liable to stay here for several years, for
the sale Of an undeveloped mine is
rather slow affair. guess will fence
in little piece of ground and spade it
up for garden. for this thing OF living
on bread and bacon is getting monoten-
Gus. SO this is the starter for the farm.
The prospector raised his own potatoes,
beets, turnips, oats, beans and barley.
Then he buys few hens and rooster,
and finally gets q COW. The COW must
have a shed. and the poney must haye a
stable, and the chickens must have a
hen house. Year by year almost un-
consciously those things are added until
without thought or intention the pros
pector has become farmer. By and by
there comes a time as he sits alone in
his cabin smoking his pipe, there comes
to him feeling of loneliness and from
this new sensation pervades his being
new idea has entered his brain, he
thinks, and thinks hard, and this is the
idea of his thoughts. I believe am
big enough and old enough to get mar
red. know girl way back in In.
diana who think would just suit me.
believe will take trip back there,
and if she is fool enough to have me I'll
bring her back with me. In this he is
successful and they are happy, for the
little woman was raised on a farm and
she takes to chickens and the butter
making as duck takes to the water.
But that was from 20 to rs years ago,
and our prospector and farmer has
changed somewhat, though he is still
hale and hearty. But his hair has taken
on the whitened tint Of age, and he is
talking of Investing in new set of false
teeth. But who are all these young
men and young women who, with their
children flock to the town whenever
there is circus or anything worth see
ing. These are the children and grand
children, theirs to the manor born and
the legitimate descendants of our pros
pector who piled his prentice pick on
the mountain back of his cabin q years
ago. He looks back and it all seems
like dream to him, and he can scarcely
realize how it all came about. His
flocks and herds have grown and he has
become prosperous farmer and cattle
man, while the mine on the hill still re-
mains unsold and year after year he
sinks the shaft little deeper into the
bowels Of the earth. The surface of the
soil from which he never expected to
realize wealth has made him rich, while
the mine upon which his expectations
and hopes of wealth were centered has
never yielded him cent. Does he
think any less Of it now than he did in
the early daysp Not a whit, but each
year as he sinks deeper it becomes more
valuable, and he says, "some day some
one will recognize its merit and will be
willing to pay what it is worth. If not,
my work has not been in vain, as each
year it has proven more and more the
value of the mine, and if 1 cannot get
something near what it is worth 1 will
keep it, as can afford to do it, and /
like to own a good mine as we'll as any
body"
And thus it is that we have class of
old timers who, while following the oc-
cupation of prospector have become
almost imperceptibly to themselves
prosperous farmers and stockmen. Is
there any other country on the face of
the earth that has been settled up and
populated in that way? Well, there
may have been few isolated individual
cases somewhat similar, but nothing like
to the same extent which has obtained
in the central and southern Black Hills.