SALTING A GOLD MINE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 146, 20 June 1903, Page 5 (Supplement)

SALTING A GOLD MINE.

HOW TO TURN A WORTHLESS CLAIM INTO A BONANZA. "Lots of people think," said the grizzled Forty-niner, "that nowadays 'salting' a gold mine is one of the lost arts. Those people were never more mistaken In their lives. 'Salting' a mine to sell it is even more common than It used to be, and every week In the far West some shrewd dealer, by the liberal use of 'salt,' unloads an empty proposition on the guileless tenderfoot. "Easy to detect, you should think? Not a bit of it. An old hand at the game will 'salt' a mine right under your eyes, and you never the wiser. "Tell you how it is done, yon say? Well, you must think I am pretty crooked myself to know the ways of the devious ones; but experience is a thorough teacher, you know.

"Well, there are all sorts and kinds of 'salting;' one of the neatest tricks Is In the manner of "Baiting' a mine where the test Is by pan. Suppose, for Instance, a man comes to sell you a gold claim. He declares that his pay-dirt pans out 50 dollars to the i pan or thereabouts, and offers to take yon I right ont to the claim and prove tils stateI ment. You take him up, and out you go to- ■ gether. Your man Is openness Itself. He tells you to shovel up a pan of dirt from any place on the claim that you like, and he wll wash it out for you. What 3ould be fairer than that? No possible chance for a fake, you think. Of course not!

"All right. You shovel up your panful at random and hand it over to your man to be I washed. You watch him with an eagle eye. No chance while you are by for him to slip a little dust from his hand into the pan! I You are too keen for that, of course. In ! fact, as the moments speed by, and the dirt 1 and water swirl away over the edge, you ; begin to think what a nice old boy he is anyj way—nothing to conceal; everything open I and above board. His smile Is truly benevolent as he puffs away on his old pipe, or, rather, bites the stem in the corner of hia mouth, for he is so in earnest ever the work that he has fairly let the pipe go out, and it is almost upside down. " 'Look out!' you say; 'your ashes are falling out.' " 'Oh, well, the tobacco is out anyway, , he says, and gets steadily on with the woik, ! you meanwhile watching eagerly and covetj ously for the shining particles and dnst to gleam from the black sand at the bottom. Ah, there they are at last! "You draw a deep breath of relief and delight, while the benevolent old man looks up i with a kindly smile and says, sbaklnir his : ' head, 'Wai, I declare, that shows up a benp I sight better even than I figured on. I'm ' sort of sorry I named that price to yon on' this 'ere claim. Looks like as if you had a j bonanza. , " 'But you gave me your word,' you blurt out impetuously, 'and you can't go back on It.' ! " 'No, young feller, that's right. I'll stick 'to what I said. But gosh! I had no idea j she'd pan out like this.' I "With trembling hands you scoop up the sand and gold from the pan and dash away to the assayer's offlce. You can feel your hair turn grey while he is weighing it out. " 'Sixty-two dollars,' he announces. "Whew! You almost drop in a dead faint with delight. You'll have a fortune In a

week at that rate. This Is Indeed the ccuntry of gold! "You rush after the old man and put the ; transfer papers through in a jiffy, paying I out every dollar that you possess in the world for the claim. You are full of gratitude to the old man, who stuck by his word of honour, regardless of loss. You did not know that in mining camps moral standards were so high. I "But the next morning comes a change. After a couple of hours of back-breaking panning out you have practically nothing I for your pains—a few dollars perhaps—hardly more than 50 cents a pan. A horrible suspicion enters your mind that there Is something wrong. "Why continue the suspense? The mining expert, whom you summon in and whose reputation is known for miles around, looks over the ground, and then asks you a few questions about the former owner who sold

t you the claim. 'Positively no chance for s "salting" the test-pan,' you assert. 11 "The expert nods asseht. 'Was he smoki Ing?' he asks. ij " 'Let me think.' You meditate. 'Ah, J yes, smoking an old clay pipe.' I "'Bowl upside down?' asks the expert, - pleasantly. -j " 'Why, yes, I guess it was; In fact ' 5 1 "'I know,' Interrupts the expert. 'The ' pipe was out, a big bunch of gold dnst was I mixed with the ashes, and they all sifted r from the bowl Into the pan.' ' "A sudden light dawns upon your rolnd. " 'Oh, just one of the old ways of "salt- • Ing" a gold mine,' says the expert consoling- ■ , ly. 'I aope he didn't hit you hard. The . | claim isn't worth shucks.' I I " 'No, not hard,' you say slowly, and turn • nway to look for a Job, for now a job Is the 1 .only thing between you and starvation. "'Salting' a mine with a blow-pipe Isn't an uncommon way to do the trick,' mused the narrator of old California days. "That 1 j method requires considerable skill. Suppose a crooked owner of a half-developed of I tunnellings decides to unload. He goes 1 ; through the tunnels, notes carefully ail the • knobs or chunks that project prominently from the sides or roof, and, with an Ingenious sort of a blower, he forces fine gold dust into the cracks and crevices of these outcropping knobs. Then he takes the wouldbe purchaser through the mine. "This time the prospective buyer is an old hand—not a raw youth, to be caught by such i tricks as fooled me. He doesn't Intend jto be taken in by salted bags of ore. He will do a little actual mining on his own ac- . I count. He takes a pick and hacks away at , a few knobs of the hard quartz that are i j embedded in the sides of the tunnel. , I " 'That's right,' says the owner, 'take it i out wherever you want. If those chunks • don't assay good, then the rest cf the mine , j won't either.' "That owner was quite right; he wasn't : j overstating the case a mite. Of course, i i 'those chunks assayed good'—that Is what 'they were blow,n for. But after the mine was sold there was nothing doing. It was i ; empty as a shell. Just the old story—a saltied mine unloaded on another 'sucker.' " — ! | "New York Tribune."