Idaho County free press. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho Territory) 1886-current, 1920-01-29
Must Prospector
ofOldDays Yield
TO Conservation?

will, no doubt, be shared by many
persons in Idaho county, lest the pic
turesque character most additionally
if not first introduced into American
fiction by Bert Harte, should become
a memory only. He is genuine char
acter, not much hattered or exaggera-
ted as he has been pictured by SYM
pathetic artists through the half cen
fury from Harte to Jack London.
The prospector has long been well and
favorably known to everyone in Idaho
county.
If no bther sufficient reason has
been advanced why the Philistine
hand of conservation should be with
held from this kindly, romantic figure
one was given when Senator Pittman,
of Nevada, arguing against govern
ment ownership, developing and con
troll of the nation s natural resources,
said:
WOULD DISCOVER NO MINERAL
81 believe that you would have a
development of the minerals now in
sight, and you would never find any
more minerals that are lying hidden
under the ground. l think you would
drive away from the west the pros
pectOr, q peculiar individual that cir
cumstances have developed in that
country, and without whom no mines
would have been found. You will
drive him to South America, to 81
IBERIA, to China, to Africa, to every
where else where there is reward
for individual suffering and initia
tive
1t may seem over-inclusive for the
senator to say that without the
prospector F'you will never find
and more minerals and maybe had
he spoken with more considered
thought he would have restricted his
list of minerals to gold and silver, or
even to gold alone.
The prospector hunts for gold. In
dry gravel over which rivers ran in
the dim past, in the beds of living
streams, in lodges of gold bearing |
quartz, gold the visible palpable vel
low metal, is what he seeks. He cares |
little for gold in combination with
other metals; even in quartz he wants |
gold that can be garnered by simple |
process-free or native gold, as he
calls it.
HE LOVES NATURE
The prospect is a lover of nature,
a dreamer, a poet. Harte was writing
of the "Luck of Roaring Camp" but
he might have written thus of the
Nature was his nurse
and playfellOw. For him she would
let slip between the leaves golden
shafts of sunlight; she would send
breezes to visit him with
The BAN of bay and resinous gum; to
lim the tall woods nodded Familiarity
and sleepily, the bumblebees buzzcd
md the rocks cawed a slumberous ac-
The prospeetors who discovered all
n nearly all the great mines Of the
vest had no knowledge of geology
n of the chemistry of minerals: they
asst aside all such as useless mental
crap with the saying, "YOu can go
10 further into the rocks than the
,ick goes Even in this day of i'm
'roved tools, the prospector S working
utft consists of little more than
pick, shovel and a pan for washing ,
.ravel; little else for their one little {
,urro has other burdens to carry {
There is nc hurry in the prospect I
IS day, no unwaiting trains, no tin ,
rarv. no factory whistle s call, no or =
cred time of labor. In pleasant, wa {
cred little valleys to be found even 7
igh up on mountain TANKS, at agree 7
BILE intervals, will camp, be pitched,
urro rested and fattened on plerti- 7
III rich grazing; deer or bear shot, its
leat dried in moistureless mountain
ir; thumbed copy of Dickens, or
lavbe Longfellow, read again by the
amp fire.
RICHES ARE UNEARTHED
Yet they find much. The prospect Fl
r who lazily followed a canyon whose Il
tream grudgingly filled his canvas S
ack with gold dust, bothered by the D
lack sand so heavy that it reluctant D
r separated from the heavier gold as +.
is pan was dipped and shaken in the
ream, came at last, as he knew nc T
ould to the quartz cropping from
hich. through the ages wearing wa (
r had dragged particles of free gold.
ut he profted nothing from the
omstock lode, which gave to the
orld two hundred millions in gold u
nd silver. Probably he did not much d
mont his lost wealth. He would &c
I'VE been troubled to have given up II
: vagrant joys for concern in the p
onster enginerv which, with pneu- -
attic or electric drills, blasts of dyna- q,
tie, roaring hoist works, laundering al
amp mills, whirling grinding steel, OF
osened. broke down, hoisted, crush h,
/. ground a mountain of ore, con- fl
ntrating the bothersome black sand c,
ON which chemists took gold and Iii
Iver. it
SELLS RICHES FOR PITTANcE OF
The prospectors who located a crop II
no of a Rocky mountain ledge car 1t
ing free gold sold it gladly Tor ne
life, and were curious, prooaoiy ne
Their than regretful, when they CT