Daily Arizona silver belt., 1908-12-16

 Gulch has a history as bizarre as it's unfavorable name. It is situated about four miles from Congress in Yavapai county, and rests at the head of gulch at the foot of Yarnell mountain, upon whose summit several thousand dollars in coarse gold nuggets were picked up by band of pioneers who journeyed that way in the early sixties. The camps revitalization recalls rag-time history of ten or eleven years ago, when it enjoyed, or suffered, the unique dis tinetion of being closed down for sever al years because of the plentitude of dried apricots that made its boarding house menu famous.
 The adamantine spar that made it's formation a terror to the miners of that region kept it's force of ten-day knights of the single jack in about as amiable a disposition as that generally aseribed to bear with sore head. The lady who held the company concession of the chow foundry did not take into eonsid- eration that a hard-rock miner is about as finicky to feed as pampered prima donna-and the result was seismic.
 During a trip to california she appar ently had contracted for the entire apri- cot oatput of the Golden state, for from the date of her return to the -scald- ed Gulch the percentage of apricots inn pregnating the daily fare was as infin- itly to tick. The boys stood it with out serious outbreak for about week, but the flavor of the jerked fruit began to pail before ten days of it had passed and ground swell of discomfort began to ruffie the tenor of the camps life. Before fortnight had slipped into the gulf of enternity the dissatisfaction could be observed without the aid of Lick telescope--stuck out like a belfry on a hen house, in fact, and delegation of disgruntled miners informed the hash mistress that they were morally certain they could jog along through this vale of beers without such generous supply of smoked fruit. Their protest, how ever, was received with contempt and a gratuitous output of eross-cut repar- tee that caused dozen of the futile re- formers to request the main squeeze to mix them up a hike-the same being written order to the paymaster to give John Dough his wages to date.
 A few days subsequently, score of the disgusted vegetarians threw their lunch buckets down the shaft and were promptly canned; and that night the superintendent emerging from his domicile in pair of embroidered slip pers he had received as token of friendship from the mistress of the boarding house, stepped into beautiful geometrical design resembling flower bed, but composed of half hundred quarters of the detested apricot pie, saved from the lunch buckets of, the miners. His resultant wrath caused the discharge of about twenty miners and the residue of the original force quit at about the same time rather than longer endure the monotony of pie, pud- ding, desert, short-cake, and various other fabrications that had as base dried apricots.
 At that time miners were not very plentiful in the hot country around the Gulch, and representative of the com pany came westward to learn the cause of the trouble. Whatever the reason, whether he too was "leaded' by the hairy California fruit, or whether he was dissatisfied with the mineral show ing of the property, it is matter of rec