Tonopah bonanza. [volume] (Butler City [i.e. Butler], Nev.) 1901-1909, 1909-08-28
NO NECESSITY TO EXAG-
GERATE NEVADA'S WEALTH


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.
A number of years ago when
Mark was prospecting Nevada and
California his eyes CHANGED to read
a dispatch sent by a well 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. y
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 ineness from
two barrels of water during the
past fortnight, by a 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 d|ipperful,
| 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 ar
inferior n Yes, that may be this
fault. Mine was TO take my unclt
U had an extra n at that tim
on account of his parents dying anC
leaving him on my hands, and fiji
him up and let him stand ifteeI
minutes to give the water a chanc,
to settle. Well, then, l inserted
him in an exhaust receiver which
had the effect of sucking gold on
through the pores. ! have takel
more than $1,000 out of that oil
man in less than a day and a half
II should have held on to thos,
springs but for the badness OF tn
roads and the difficulty Of gettinI
the gold to market. ! conside
that the gold-yielding water is Il
many respects remarkable, and We
no nor remarkable than the gold
bearing air of Catgut canyon II
There toward the head of the Auri
ferrous range. This air, or this wind
blows steadily down thru 600 mile
of the richest quartz groupings dur
ing an hour and a quarter ever
/, day except Sunday; is heavily chare
ed with ~exquisitely fine, impalpabl
. gold. Nothing precipitates and so.
: idiies this gold 50 readily as cor
: tact with human flesh heated b
passion. The time that Williai
Y Abrahams was disappointed in loy
he used to sit outdoors when tn
I wind was blowing, and come
A again and begin to sigh, and
would extract yer a dollar and
half out of every sigh. He sighe
right along, and the time that job
Harbinson and Alex Norton qua
relied about H%arbinson's dog the
stood there swearing at each othe
and they knew how, and what the
, didn't know about swearing the
couldn't learn from you and m
not by a good deal, and at the en-
of every three or four minutes the
had TO stop and declare a dividen
If they didn't their jaws would clC
up SO they couldn't get big, min
syllable ones out at all, and wht
the wind vas done blowing tn,
cleaned up just a little over $16(
apiece ! know these facts to be a
, %solutely true, because l got the
from a man whose mother kne
! personally. l do not suppose a pc
son could buy the water privile,
, at Calistoga now at any price, b
several good locations along Il
course of the Catgut canyon COL
. bearing trade winds are for sal
They are going to be stocked f
the New York market. They W
6 sell, too; people will swarm +
them as thick as Handbook vetera.
,s in the south"
Some of the literature that h
been dispensed about Nevada min
and mining is just about as trut
full as Marks tales and facts .mu
be written to get results. The tru
about our prospects, u mines al
" our productions are good enoug