Tonopah daily bonanza. [volume] (Tonopah, Nev.) 1906-1929, 1909-08-24
NO NECESSITY
To EXAGGERATE
NEVADA'S WEALTH
THE TRUTH is GOOD ENOUGH
TO BOOM NEVADA
MINES.

The articles that have been APP
pearing in some of the Nevada pa
pers relative to the enormous
strikes and imemnse lodges that are
found in some of our new camps
remin the writer of Mark Twain's
story of the Calistoga Springs.
number of years ago when
Mark was prospecting Nevada and
California his eyes CHANGED to read
a dispatch sent by we'll known
mining writer from San Francisco
to the Saturday Evening Post, in
reference to gold being found in
solution in the water of Calistoga
Springs. Mark wrote thuswise: 81
have just seen your dispatch form
San Francisco in the Saturday
Evening Post, about gold being
found in solution in Calistoga
Springs, and about the proprietor
having extracted 1900 ounces of
gold of the utmost fineness from
two barrels of water during the
past fortnight, by process known
only to himself This will surprise
many of your readers, but it does
not surprise me, for | once owned
those springs myself. What does
surprise me, however, is the falling
off in richness of the water. In my
time the yield was 81 a dipperful
am not saying this to injure the
property in case a sale is contem-
plated, am saying it in the in
terest of history. 1t may be that
the hotel proprietor's process is an
inferior one. Yes, that may be the
fault Mine was to take my uncle
| Ct had an extra one at that time
on account of his parents dying and
leaving him on my hands, and fill
him up and let him stand fifteen
minutes to give the water a chance
to settle. Well, then, l inserted
him in an exhaust receiver which
had the effect of sucking gold out
through the pores. | have taken
more than $1,000 out of that old
man in less than day and a half.
II should have held on to those
springs but for the badness of the
roads and the difficulty of getting
the gold to market | consider
that tba oold-1,iaIdinr mate, - -,
many respects remarkable, and yet
no more remarkable than the gold
bearing air of Catgut canyon up
there toward the head of the Auri-
ferrous range. This air, or this wind,
blows steadily down thru 600 miles
of the richest quartz groupings dur
ing an hour and quarter every
day except Sunday; is heavily charg-
ed with exquisitely fine, impalpable
gold. Nothing precipitates and SOL
idifies this gold so readily as con-
tact with human flesh heated by
passion. The time that William
Abrahams was disappointed in love
he used to sit outdoors when the
wind was blowing, and come in
again and begin to sigh, and I
would extract over a dollar and
half out of every sigh. He sighed
right along, and the time that John
Harbinson and Alex Norton quar-
relied about Harbinson's dog they
stood there swearing at each other,
and they knew how, and what they
didn't know about swearing they
couldn't learn from you and me.
| not by good deal, and at the end
| of every three or four minutes they
had to stop and declare a dividend.
If they didn't their Jaws would clog
up so they couldn't get big, nine
) syllable ones, out at all, and when
the wind was done blowing they
| cleaned up just little over $1,000
apiece | know these facts to be abb
solutely true, because I got them
! from a man whose mother I knew
{ personally I do not suppose a per-
. son could buy the water privilege
at Calistoga now at any price, but
} several good locations along the
) course of the Catgut canyon gold
' bearing trade winds are for sale.
; They are going to be stocked for
the New York market They will
sell, too; people will swarm for
them as thick as Handbook veterans
in the south"
Some of the literature that has
been dispensed about Nevada mines
and mining is just about as truth