The Goldfield news. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1904-1911, 1906-10-27

purchase. The nobility came into vast holdings through
Grown Grants" gifts for service or because of royal favor
capriciously shown. Grants are the concessions cleveriy
worked through bodies legislative and are often most unjust
to the body of the people.
The American congress gave after the manner of princes
what was esteemed worthless. mountains, valleys. plains.
an immensely of estate, wide belts across the continent to
the builders of the first ocean to ocean railroad. Perhaps 1t
was worth the price considering what the railways have
made possible. but if France sold for a mess of pottage the
Mississippi valley. what a stupendous price this Nation
handed up for service of those who made the routes they
laid the means of general extortion!
The laws that congress has passed. as to the acquisition
Of small portions of this priceless public domain. purport
to be for the benefit of those who are honest in purpose. and
who manifest that honesty by performance-in the matter
Of agricultural lands by stated periods of occupation and
cultivation, and in the matter of mineral lands by the per-
Torrance of specific acts involving location. record, labor,
expenditures. which when all done ent1e to the issue by the
government of its deed, termed patent. upon stipulatd pay
ment.
The first step is that Of segregation from the body of
public land. The right is purely possessory. Congress per-
mits the location of a tract $500 feet long by 600 feet wide.
as a single location, or mining claim. a bit over twenty acres.
There is no restriction upon the number of claims any citi-
zen. or one who has declared for citizenship, may hold.
The location by an alien is wholly void alb initio, incur
able by subsequent declaration to become a citizen.
Upon the claim anywhere may be set the monument of
location, which may be a stake or mound of stone. Upon or
within is left a notice. This notice contains the name of
the locator, the name or the claim, date o location, n
distance in all directions from the location monument
These are essentials to the notice. Distances may not
be quite right, directions may approximate only, and if dis
pute arises the stakes upon the ground. or the courses given
may control, as the case may be. Distances incorrectly
paced or measured are in the main correctable. The omission
of name or date can not be cured, there is no admissible
proof otherwise, and the attempt at location is not void
able but is absolutely void.
The location hole must be sunk or driven. The specific
instruction is to a depth of ten feet in a shaft from the
lowest rim thereof" and in case of a tunnel to a length Of
ten feet. or if a cut then to show a ten-foot face. The idea
of the law Qf it can be credited with carrying an ideal is
that mineral shall be discovered in such working, but the
instruction ito a well-dehned crevice containing mineral in
rock in place" is more than absurdity.
We'll defined crevice," rock in place" have each cost
millions before court and jury, though it would seem that
the term mineral would mean clearly the substance that
we know, but the popular thought is of metal, and minerals
exist that are impossible of reduction to metallic form and
many o fthem are of value to warrant their extraction from
surrounding earth. At one time the question of value came
up, and many a wise decision reads that sit must be COM
mercially profitable in order to hold the claim.
Then wisdom, whose constant birth keeps Experience in
perpetual travail, came to the judges and they tempered
that severity by work "of such value as to warrant the belief
that further effort will lead to lodes that will be commercial
ly valuable" and, 10 after many days. we have emerged to
the doctrine that it make no difference in what quantity it ex-
lists, or of what value, its presence in any appreciable amount
will hold the claim. Now as some of the best mines ever
found, our own Mohawk for instance, had no values appre-
ciable or at all for long distance down and no commercial
! NdlueS TOT W nunuTeu why SnOuIQ tneTe ID u IL e
striction within any area whose formations show that min
eral most certainty exists?
The construction of the courts has been that having min
eral in place" it makes little difference how the work shall
be done. and so that the work amounts to as much dispace-
ment as by a shaft 4 feet by 6 feet by 10 feet, or in all 24O
cubic feet it will satisfy.
In the effort to construe the existing laws with any refer
ence to actual conditions the courts have had a mighty task.
In spite of the disclosures of trials that have cost stipend
Gus sums the laws have been in no way modified to conform
to facts.
The origin and source of mineral, except that in some
way it came from below surface. that it found it's way along
unity, gravity. chemical decomposition of the substance that
would otherwise hold it, are in dispute among the learned.
The fire contention is met and attempted to be drowned in
the hot water contention. However the tyro can tnat
rocks have been dissolved and rendered fluid, whether by fire
or intensely heated waters, particularly in the regions
where minerals abound.
Some of the mystery is departing. 1t has been found
that nugget placer, even though some little of it may
fringe moraines, is not altogether the gift of the far-away
gods of the frozen north sent hither on the ice foes, but
that near by mountains have disintegrated and have freed
their contents. The eternal hills" is the fiction of the poet,
for the wear of the mountains, their lessening height, is
matter of observation and is measurable.
Not one claim out of hundreds on mineral ground full
fills the lawful requirement at time of location in respect to
having mineral in rock place. The requirement is unreason-
able. impossible and grossly absurd.
Mr.. Justice Miller of the United States supreme court
rendered a decision which miners and those who best love
the pursuit hoped would be considered a precedent, in his
famous pedis possessio determination.
He enunciated the doctrine that having staked, segre-
gated, marked and claimed ground which by common knowl-
edge was mineral ground, having sunk his hole thereon to
the legal depth. and thereafter with reasonable diligence
having prosecuted exploration within the bounds thereof.
performing annually as a minimum the amount the law de-
mands, he had a right as against all the world except the
government of these United states to hold and to enjoy the
land as a mining location, and that no one might come
within that segregated area to explore, locate, or to exploit,
except as a tresspasser, against whom ejectment, tresspass,
case, might be maintained.
This possession of the Foot" is basis. and upon it rests
the rights of nations. 1t is the foot of the in vader that more
than his sword conquors. 1t is the foundation of all titles,
and the law recognizes it at all stages. Though one might
have derained through ten thousand years, himself blazoned
in heraldry, without the tale of ancestral emprise history
itself incomplete, he dares not let another enjoy "peaeeable
and undisturbed possession for the period of twenty years"
adversely to his own. Even highways, the very rights of
government itself. may be and often have been appropriated
and for that length enjoyed. the only method of reopening
icing by resort to the law of eminent domain and compensa-
ton awarded by a jury the same as though forebears had
owned it from time immemorial.
IT, nam az tha Miller dacisinn 10 that cnmmnn Lazy nrin-