Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1907-03-02
The kid-g!oved Gold fields.

The tenderfoot will seek in vain the
thrills of story and drama In the Ne
vada desert.
There seems no longer any border
land of civilization. The realist hunt
ing for ideas and color must fare far
and wide from even the jumping-off
place in the new gold country, where
scores of booming and boom commune
lies have mushroomed forth upon the
sand-plats and hitherto untrodden
alkali within the past lustrum.
The awakening is rude. DisillusionS
crowd upon one another's heels from
he moment of your arrival. AS far as
the railroads are concerned you have
reached the Ultima Thule. Southwark
there is q vast unpeopled Wastc-un-
peopled if you put out of the reckoning
the widely scattered little shacktowns
where the gold-hunters are digging
with a fine frenzy for the ore Nature
locked deep in subterranean bikes of
rock below the sunbaked naked, I'M
Watered desert.
The imagination draws Wholesome
lurid pictures while you ride a day
and half the night beyond the benign
pale Of growing things. There is in
sage-brush must struggle desperately
to exist in sparse and vagrant clumps.
where the claynivcrous, the word is Of
Western coinage) iack-rabbit and
gopher can find no sustenance, and
where no insect breeds in the poisoned
dust
Therefore il is abruptly disconcerting
TO descend from a weather. beaten Pull
man (only the very dereiict of has
been-palace cars are permitted to roll
over the deserD into the dazzling glare
IF electric lamps; to feel the air vibrate
With the burr ana mutter and racket
of motors, and to find the station
thronged with chauffeurs in leather
livery and hungry-eyed cabmen. This
aspect of the latter-day worlds ad-
vance is Keen disappointment.
Why did you ever read Bret Harte
and the other favorites who wrote of
dismal little camps where men with
pasts toiled wolfishly at the gold
digging?
There was spice in rou2hing it then.
There was romance, there was danger.
Enthusiasm found vent in shOOtin5s-up
The whiskey would burn d hole through
horsc-hide boot Treasure was car
ried in belts. Men slept with rifles iii
their hands and shot prowling wolves
at the tent-fiap. Revolver hits and
gun butts were notched. The tender
foot danced the artillery nuickstep. If
temperate he was made to drink fusel-
oil while the muZZle of a viIlainous
weapon tickled his ear.
Whce-whoop! Those We're the days
But now, Shades of the Forty
miners! In the modern gold quest you
must have n veritable city for an out
fit, an electrified, telephone connected
town. complete from bath-tub to tour
ing-car-a portable city that can Il
rushed UP over night. And you must
transport Your city hundreds OF miles
over the alkali desert and set it down
where the stunted Joshua-tree with it,
deformed tentaclCs has stood lonely
vigil for centuries. Then you may DIG
amid congenial and rcsourceful sur
roundings.
Lament, oh tender stranger from The
highly civilized Eastern States. TIL
days of the stored Bad Lands are OR
ANY n-fghters left?' is the husky
query of the literary miner. Our cir
culation demands something short ana
full of action"
Yes, indeed. More than several sur
vivc both here il Nevada and in Cali
foInia. There are gun-fehts, too
which are very short and full of action
So there are occasionally on Broadway
often on the Bowory. and now and then
in domestic Harlem. Nevada has NJ
monopoly. But there are no fussv
policemen. and the camp daily makes
only paragraph of them, tucked away
under an ad which reads sometime
like this Ohis was an actual advertise
ment printed in the Goldfield Sun last
September):
Wanted, piano-player. Must be
good dish-washer Last performer had
a mean temper and quit very suddenly.
Apply-Glad Hand loon.'-Harper's
Weekly.