Weekly journal-miner., 1911-11-08

and shovel on their shoulders and a
 eanteen of water in their hand and walk to their work, doing the hardest kind of labor all day and then return
 at night and sit up till into the small | hours playing poker. Many of them
 get the gold from each days run in
 a small glass vial, bring it to Seott's get certain number of beans, repre- senting the value of the gold, and
 after supper sit into the poker game
 and there remain till they've abso- lutely lost every bean or won the
 others. This is a straight game all the way, too, because they know each other and there are no sharps in the eamp-but a tenderfoOt is advised to keep out if he wants to hang onto
 his money-fOr those old fellows sure
 do savvy poker. Some days there'n
 be an excitement because of a big
 nugget; the largest ever found there
 so far was worth $50.
 "The Middle Camp district, just
 across the wash, is different from
 Tyson's because there they sink shafts
 through the gravel from 45 to 60
 feet, where a white lime is found
 from a foot to four feet in thickness,
 lying on the bedrock. This limestone
 is taken to the surface and presently
 erumbles. It contains practically all
 the gold, and is exceptionally rich.
 As soon as it crumbles it is run
 through a dry washer. No pay has
 ever been found in this portion of the district above this limestone.
 ''The district is surrounded by
 mountains, where there are great
 mines-the Harqua Hala, King of Arizona, North Star, and others. In these quartz mines the Yuma-Apaehes are employed to good advantage. They are excellent hammersmen, but will not load or fire the holes.
 "And that reminds me Everybody among the old timers will remember Joe Doherty, who died at the Commer- cial in Phoenix a number of years ago. When he was on his death-bed he called me in and told me of a wonderful discovery he had made in
 '61, but from which he was driven by the Indians. He told me that it was six miles from the Empire Flat, but that he could not locate it more than that it was about three miles from the river. He said that if he had the dump alone-the material that came from a 15-foot hole-he world be rich. He said that the. doctors had told him he must die, and that mayLe I could find the mine, in which case twas mine of course. Well, Jim died, and soon after I went back to the mine in the Empire Flat which I was then in charge of When I had again got the run of things I began hunting for Doherty's mine, not succeeding till I had secured the country in regular eross-sections. In this way one fine I unexpectedly came upon the dump. It glistened like a lot of dia- monds, and there was more gold there than quartz, actually a fact. I went wild. I took a good quantity of samples from the dump and earted them to the mine, and then took them to Congress, showing them to my wife. She was wild too, and immedi- ately began planning on what we would do. Our oldest daughter was then running a weekly paper at Healdsburg, Cal, besides doing a deal of translating; and my wife decided that we would get her to dispose of the paper and go with us on a trip to Europe. There was six feet of his ore in the bottom of the shaft, 7ou must remember. Then I took tome of the rock to the assayer at Congress. When he laid his eyes on t, he said, You've struck it now, Tim, in fine shape. If there's three nehes of that stuff you are a very ieh man. But there's six feet of t, I said-at which he was perfectly razy. So he went on to ask all about t, and to tell me what I should do, ill I finally told him to take his ,nife and try it. He did so.
 G" 'Oh, hell!'
 That was all the assayer said. lad been saying it for a day or so, or I had discovered that it wasn't old at all, but pyrites of iron-but | sure looked more like gold than nything I ever saw that wasn't the cal thing. Well, the wife and I idn't go to Europe, and the daughter