Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1907-08-07
FRANKLIN's LOST MINE.


make five gallon kettle lying among the
seams in Hooper mountain, ready to be
picked up and carried away. Yet nobody
has been curious enough to Investigate
the region, because similar story was re-
lated by Judson Hooper, delirious and
dying man, who was found much ex-
hausted from exposure. right at the foot Of
the precious seam in the summer Of 1890.
The story as to how the mine was dis
covered sounds like residing page torn
from the Arabian Nights. Seventeen
years ago Judson Hooper was a young
man belonging to good family, who had
been given up to die by his physicians,
| and who was addicted to taking daily
walks through the country, partly in the
hope Of deriving help from exercise in the
open air, but chiefly to kill the remaining
time which he was destined to survive be-
fore his malady should claim him.
| He had been in feeble health all through
the previous winter, and showed no in
dication Of mending with the coming Of
summer. As the days grew warm and the
conditions Of the fields and woods inn
proved, he took longer or shorter walks
into the country.
The day he made his last journey was in
the middle Of June, 1890. An early woods
fire had swept over the side Of Hooper
mountain, burning the leaf mold and UNI
derbrush clear down to the solid ledge.
With much labor young Hooper had tot
tered to the foot OF the mountain to note
the work of the fire. As he did not re-
turn at nightfall, q searching party was
sent out. They found him lying in q
wood road near the foot Of the barred
ledge in a half-conscious condition. He
was in high fever, and very weak, and
talked vaguely about a wonderful discov-
cry of lead and copper, which he had
made by accident. He asked to be taken
| up the side OF the rocky activity by Ian
tern light, SO he could show his rescuers
his discovery, and when they refused he
grew excited and suffered from severe
| hemorrhage, which rendered him uncon-
scious until some hours after he had been
taken home and put to bed.
! fright in the seam of the LEDGE" the
sick man had cried, ''not 100 feet from the
old tote road and at the place where the
granite meets the red rock, have found
more than 100 pounds Of lead and some
copper, which were melted in the late fire
and which have flowed down the seam
and hardened into long sheets or ingots.
They are all open to the sky, so anybody
can see them. OF course they were melted
from the seam in the ledge by the fire, and
| IL a wood fire can melt out as much metal
as that from the surface, there is enough
lead and copper in that seam to make us
all rich. Let me just show you where
look, and l don't care how soon you put
me away under the ground"
| Those who assisted in getting the sick
man home and heard his frantic appeals
for delay believed he was wandering in
delirium of fever, and as soon as the doc
tor could be summoned hypodermic in
| lection of morphine was administered,
which put him to sleep. He died three
days later, though every time he became
conscious, he resumed his talk about the
mine he had discovered. The physician
and the attending friends believed the
| idea was an hallucination due to the fever
and the exhausted condition of the pa
tient, and paid no attention to what they
| heard.
| Recently, however, when several capital
lists were buying up mica schist rocks and
ancient pasture lands with view of open
ing copper mines, the rawlings of the con-
sumptive were called TO mind, and some
OF the young men went out and hunted
over the lodges on the side Of Hooper
mountain in the vicinity OF where the
dead man claimed to have found a valu-
able mine.
Seventeen years can accomplish great
changes in renovating burned-over
forest area. The barred lodges had been
draped for years with fallen leaves, and
where the fires ragged fiercely are now sap
ling birches and red cherry trees. while
among these shelters are Seeding pines
and spruces, some of them more than
yard tall.
the dying man, the searchers pulled away
the vines and humus and exposed the
| ledge until they came to a seam which
| they followed up for about fifty feet,
| where they found long sheet OF melted
| lead, below which, lying in long trough
of rock, were several pounds of ruddy
copper. Beyond question the mine which
Judson Hooper had discovered just pre-
vious to his death had been found again.
To make the story come out as it should,
the new discoveries ought to be very rich
men by this time. They should have sold
out to the copper trust or the lead trust
| for fabulous sum, and then moved to
Boston or New York and bought out sew
eraI banks and started on careers of tinan-
| cial conquest.
The facts in the case tend to give ro-
nance black eye. The vein is indeed
very rich in both copper and lead, but it is
so narrow not more than four inches
wide-that experts are doubtful if it will
pay for the blasting and other labors. To
/ ~ IL,