The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1916-09-21

better In locating mineral At the end
Of his year, however the engineer re.
turned wiser and poorer man, hav-
ing found nothing worth development.
The best asset he brought back was
increased respect for the prospector
Il knew rocks. all right" he admit
to do the goat work necessary to good
prospecting. Technical knowledge is
OF little value without the strength
and patience to climb and explore"
Probably the greater number of sue
cessful mines have had their founda-
tons laid by this same kind Of goat
work, for there is something in the
detailed searching III the real pros
ing mineral has yet approximated.
Two centuries ago the Spaniards in
Mexico understood 1t and sent the In
dams out to explore for gold and sill
Yer. These dark skinned prospectors
took no grubstake. They went into
the wilds, understanding that failure
to find treasure meant death. As a
consequence, practically all the sur
face gold and silver in Mexico was To-
Gated then
Our own country was almost unex-
plored until the gold rush to Califor-
MIA. This was followed by two gener-
atoms of surface prospecting, with
periodical discoveries that led to the
erection of big gold camps in different
sections of the west. Then the rich
surface deposits of silver, copper, lead
and so forth, were located and work.
ed, until all the easily won metal had
been found, The metallurgists hold
that all this surface metal in the west
the come and find mel" stuff that re :.
vealed itself at the first stroke of the
pick, has been located and worked.
They admit they may be wrong and
discoveries tomorrow might alter this
opinion. But there is no doubt that the
prospector of today must climb as well
as dig, and that he searches for out
crop of mineral that would have been
passed by as worthless not so many
years ago, and rightly, because it was
actually worthless until improved
methods of treating the ore had been
devised
The prospector Is a character. Very
often he is an old timer, follower of
gold rushes and has been a figure in
mining camps for the past 20 or 80
years Once, perhaps, he worked at
scme routine trade, but Dame Fortune
called him, and he laid down his tools
to take the trail into some bonanza
district, and got permanent slant to-
ward prospecting. Every mining
stampede, since the days of forty-nine
has bred its swarm of prospectors,
and because there have been fewer
bonanza strikes in recent years some
mining men fear that the race OF
prospectors is in danger of becoming
extinct.
The true prospector Is an incurable
optimist He viii come in with speci-
mems from a find of sufficient promise
to induce investors to buy his claim
He may feel, in the conservative part
of his nature, If there is such part
, that this claim may never be fulfilled
and that a sale outright would bring
him more money. Yet will he sell out
right? Not if he is a true prospector!
From first to last the lure Of the game
, lies in those hidden faetors-the riches
that may be waiting in the earth Half
a dozen times in his life he may have
] taken small fortunes from pockets of
rich ore-and spent them. Again and
! again he may have let the bird in the
! hand fly away, because he preferred
, to try catching two birds in the BUSH
| This optimism is absolutely essen
, tial to his calllng-to take him
, through rough country and to keep
, him digging hopefully in the face of
hardship and encouragement This
very optimism may lead him to strike
rich find on ground that others have
passed over again and again. An en-
inent expert says that optimism and
, a 'hunch" are 1he prospectors
strength and the average mining en-
gineer's weakness. For the prospector
is always expecting to find something
with the next blow of the pick, while
the sophisticated engineer often goes
INTO a district with his mind all made
up to find nothing. Again and again
men have stumbled past mineral in
dications unwittingly because they
have had tiresome trip.
After optimism, probably the best
qualification for prospector is in
dustry. 1t takes hard climbing and
digging to locate the lean, deep ore
veins that now count most in western
mining, and the prospector who will
not go to the bottom of proposition,
after climbing to the top, is not likely
to succeed.