A WYOMING ROMANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 58, 9 March 1889, Page 3 (Supplement)

A WYOMING ROMANCE.

Eigllt Prospectors Found Murdered,

Cheyenne, February 9. — The discovery of the bodies of eight Mexican prospectors at the mouth of the abandoned San Salvador mine, in the northern part of Wyoming, has brought to light a romantic story rivalling all the tales about seekers for Captain Kidd's buried treasures. Miguel Martinez, at the head of a party of his countrymen,was here last fall for two days. He confided to a Mexican gambler here the statement that they were in search of an abandoned gold mine which they believed to be rich in metal and were going to develop. Martinez carried a chart traced on a parchment which they said was 200 years old and was made by an ancestor of his in the seventeenth century. The chart had been lo3t for years, but had recently turned up, and at once a party was organised. The story that had run through the family for generations was that Martinez, the elder, was at the head of a band of Spanish^ gold hunters who were working a rich mine in this ports of the country. The miners quarrelled and finally fought, and their division resulted in the abandonment of the mine, though it was very rich. Martinez was wounded and died on the way home. With his blood he traced a chart which was to be a rioh legacy to his children. A faithful friend delivered the document, which soon afterward was lost and only recently turned up. The present Martinez was told of two

mines in the north that mineralogists have declared were worked by Spaniards a hundred years ago. His party was not heard of again until to-day, when a hunter named Keller reported that his party had discovered their bodies. All the Mexicans had been shot, and were somewhat cut up by knives, showing that the struggle was a hand-to-hand one. There were evidences that the victorious party had lost three or four men, and that they had made a hasty departure, carrying their dead and wounded with them.

What surprised the hunter most was to find that the mine had recently been worked. It is not known that a pickaxe has touched a stone since two men starved to death there in 1877. There is reason to think that tl'ie San Salvador was not the mine described on their chart, and that the murderers have taken the map and gone off to locate the ancient mine.

The fact that the Mexicans' horses and tools were taken and that their jewellery and some money were not removed from their bodies seems to prove this. Keller says there was every indication that the San Salvador mine was pa.ving, and believes that the mine sought for by the Mexicans is not far from the other and is known to the party who were at work. No one here knows who the murderous pi-os-pectors were, and as the region in which the events occurred is almost inaccessible, it is not likely that anyone will start to work the old mine and bury the Mexicans before spring.