The Holbrook news., 1912-05-24


 "A has its stories of lost mines, N but there is no place where 1 A there exists a better excuse
 for them than the great Amert- can desert It is the lure of lost mines that has caused a great deal of the prospecting and exploration of the deserts in recent years, and in one manner or other you will find that tradition of lost mine is at the bot tom of almost every important dis eovery.
 The fame of Death Valley has been largely due to the fact that a num- per of glowing stories of lost treasure have centered about 1t since the ear Her days of the first explorers who crossed its vast and mysterious wastes.
 There is the well authenticated story of the Lost Breyfogle Mine" which, is known to many old-timers, and the golden lure of which has been constant incentive to prospectors for half a century. Then there is The Lost Gun-sight," the story of which has spread far and wide and aas become one of the permanent legends of the western mining world.
 The Lost Alvord," somewhere in the western verges of Death Valley, has about 1t tang of romance like that of the Spanish treasures. And there Is still another treasure story pertaining to the discovery of noun tain of solid black sulphurets of sill yer, somewhere in the southern Panamints, by struggling party of immigrants, who made their way through that region in 1850.
 These stories all give to that region coloring and allurement that makes It worth while to here relate them.
 The BreyfogIe.
 It was somewhere back in the early sixties when all the southwest was still an arid and sparsely settled country, that an early pioneer of the desert mountains, namely James Breyfogle, prospector, made his way into the Death Valley region, and with Ehe aid of a burro, was exploring and prospecting the Funeral mountains, ,n the eastern verge of the great, torlorn, desolate and mysterious val icy of death. But the burros then were as burros now and inclined to Itray away, as only burros can, and 70 one day when MT. Breyfogle, like many prospectors before and since, aad gone in search of his burro, he 'ound himself lured on and on in the vain effort to locate the beast or dis anguish it from other objects, he penetrated a vast, far canyon in the Funeral range, partly for purposes of prospecting and exploration and part y to determine if the burro might oe found brousing in there somewhere or seeking the company of other burros.
 However he found no friendly or familiar object of the animate world, only the vast and -blackened, weather-beaten cliffs and crags and the gray and solemn sage and sand and the strewn debris of the hollows
 Finally he espied lone willow tree In a ravine, and with the instinct of. one accustomed to the deserts he knew that the willow was a good in- dication of water. Upon investigation he found that there was really a spring beside the willow, and what was more, that a big ledge of heavy, dark, rusty ore traversed the ravine just above. Breaking of some of the rock he saw that 1t was permeated with gold. The yellow, lustrous gleam of the metal everywhere in the half-corroded ledge quickly gave the lone prospector the conviction that he had discovered one of the greatest gold deposits ever known. He broke from the ledge a number of speci- mems and finally in the gathering dusk he resumed his way over the crags and ridges and after some hours of devious travel was again at h1s camp.
 With a great resolve to get oSt to the settlements and thence return with companions and equipment, the lone prospector with such thoughts as would come to most men under such circumstances made his way across the rugged solitudes, In the direction of civilization.
 Just what befell at certain points in this journey seems never to have been remembered by Breyfogle-