The Goldfield news. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1904-1911, 1905-11-03
ANOTHER TELLING OF dH4
AN OFT TOLD TALE
%. R. Morgan in Reno Gazstte.)

tell q tale tnat mas pteh boiu snou
sand times. Since that day when the
indomitable Jim Butler caught up
with the golden will-o -the-wisp
caught up with the tantalizing phan-
tom and laid bare the treasure OF
dreams, the story has .een told so
many times that it seems an audacious
thing to attempt to lend it new inter
est. But ism t it always newt Does
it not, in a way, resemble the other
miracles, such as the rising Of the sun,
the birth of springtime, and all the
countless other manifestations, an
Gent OF days, yet always as truly
novel as the first cry of the babe IS to
the spent motherf 1t is the story or
a mans will rising supreme over the
obstacles that beset his path. 1t il the
story Of victory. 1t has in 1t all the
thrill of the tale Of any triumph IN the
face of vast odds. 1t viii bear the
thousandth-and-one telling.
But let US understand each other
right here. 1 am not going to tell Of
the discovery of the richness of the
southern district. l am not going even
to attempt to prove the greatness OF
the camps that sprung full-armed into
being down there in the desert. There
is not going to be a single statistic in
the paragraphs that follow. Frankly,
IL do not know at the present word just
what / shall have written when the
last period is set down. Just one
thing is clear, and that is that last
week / spent a day in each Of the
great camps, Goldfeld and Tonopah,
and / have the desire to write some
thing of what interested me most No
word that I might write could add
one letter to the glory Of that Sec
ton, nor on the other hand could any
sentence of mine detract one whit
from their deserved fame. Therefore,
what follows will be easy reading,
recording impressions that would come
to you as they came to me, with many
paragraphs to take the place of GASES
for him who wearies of the trail.
I think that the first and greatest
thought, claiming for it nothing, how
ever, in the way of original discovery,
was that the men who found fortune
down there deserved all that came to
them. There is beauty in the desert.
The colors that glow and fade and
come anew will be noted with delight
from the pushed seat of a Pullman.
But the man who strikes out into the
unknown is not chasing sunset effects.
There is just one color that he is after
and he wants it in the tangible form
of good yellow metal. He knows that
the desert means more than violet
colorings on distant hills. He is a man
acquainted with the dragons of thirst
and hardships that the desert has set
about itself. And when he goes forth
on his quest he goes forth to battle
with these. Bleached bones tell of the
result of many of those fights. But
Jim Butler and the hardy crew that
came after him won. They faced the
same things that those others faced.
But they won. They deserved all the
spoils that came their way.
In regard to the trip now for him
who would go down there and see the
miracle of the deserts There is nothing
more to be said about it now than
there would be to write of a jaunt
from here to Winnemucca, or any other
OF Reno's suburbs. 1t is simply a mat
ter of paying for your ticket, getting
into a comfortable train and staying
there until the porter grabs your grip
and tells you that you are in Tonopah.
1t is just as comfortable and prosaie
as any Philadelphia capitalist might
like.
The day of the picturesque has gone
by in Tonopah. Anyone who goes
down there thinking to find Romance,
raw and palpitating, might just as well
stay home. He can find what he is
lage just as readily as he will find it
H. 49, To~o-ch 20 n urnl1 o~lorol
~well-governed, substantial city. Elec-
tric lights, good hotels, stores such as
you will find in any live, hustling city,
"a sewer system these are just a few
of the things that will soon serve no.
tice on the traveller that although he
may be in the midst of the desert he
has about him all the comforts of his
own Preside.
1t is only when you look at the big
peaks towering on all sides, Mount
lOddie and Mount Brougher and Mount
Butler, looming there in all the ma
jesty of the desert, that one begins to
wonder if it be a truthful story that
three or four years ago those peaks
looked down on lonely wastes just as
do thousands of other similar peaks on
the desert today. That is the difficult
thing to realize. In other places where
towns are situated, where there are
green grass and trees and running
water, it is not 90 hard to picture the
scene before man came and builded for
himself a home. But down there, with
the ~forbidding stretches all around,
one finds it more difficult to realize
that those crowded streets Of the min
ing camps were as the rest of the
desert only yesterday.
The minesf But why should I write
about the minesf I went through one
of them; / went through it just as 1
used to see countless other tenderfeet
go through the mines Of Bodie, when
Bodie was bad and booming.
l had good guides, for was not Tom
Kendall on one side and Jim McQuil-
Ian ON the otherf / looked where they
told me to look. We got of at one
level and walked through drifts and
crosscuts. We went down a winze,
and between keeping nv LIGHT burning