THE BONANZA KINGS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XVII, Issue 842, 2 June 1885, Page 3

THE BONANZA KINGS.

There never was a more improvident set oE men than the Colorado bonanza kings. Inaptitude for business life was also a sli iking characteristic. Chaffee frittered away the bulk of liisimmense fortune on railroad stocks of which he knew nothing—absolutely nothing. For years his life had been mainly spent in the neighborhood of the " ticker." Bob Greer, once a 'wealthy placer-miner, is a miserable pauper, wandering about the streets of Denver. Colonel Denver, the possessor of hundreds of thousands not many years since, is enjoying the life of the gentleman on the collection of supposedly bad loans made when he was affluent. liieho. the discoverer of the Little Pitsburg,' is in a fair way to soon return to his shoemaker bench. He it was thai, paid £IO,OOO for a wife, and who, when he shot I'at Dillon in a saloon brawl, said : '-' !v I haf kilt him, send, arou'ut the pill in the morniu'." George Daly was killed by the Apaches. 11 is debts, which were cancelled by his tragic death, are said to be enormous. He led a life that for fastness was never surpassed in the West. Nelso Haileck, discoverer of the Carbonate mine, and William Yankee, of the Yankee Consolidated, have a mere pittance left between them. Jim William 3, one of the discoverers of thp Grand View, .did not have enough money to buy a coffin when he was shot down in a Silver City dance-hall. Bill West, his partner, is a destitute drunkard at Leadville, dependent upon a chair in some friendly drinking resort for a sleeping-place.

George Houston, of the Big Pitsburg, died penniless in an Ohio insane asylum. General Craig, of the little Giant, died of paralysis of the heart, after a night's debauch. And S'i ended the lives of twenty others, who turned up fortunes at the point of a miner's pick in California. The case of George Gryer was perhaps the saddest. In 1872 he cleaned up £40,000 from the sale of the Pioneer Consolidated at Alma. His aged mother was in poor circumstances at Philadelphia, and the first expenditure he made was that of £6OOO for a home in the suburbs of the city. Banking £4OOO to her credit, he launched out, into a life of dissipation and profligacy that made him notorious, Chartering a coaster, he peopled it with the most beautiful women to be had from among the southern demimonde, and loaded it with wines and table luxuries. After cruising about for two weeks at a total expense of L6OOO, he returned to land to continue his mad revelling. A year later he was traversing the mountains again, an impecunious prospector. He never would take as much as a dime from his mother, and punished himself for his folly by exposure to every privation and hardship known to mountain life." Four years later he struck it rich a second time in the New Discovery claim at Leadville. He endeavored to take advantage of the opportunity which the sudden acquisition of L 40.000 gave him, but through business incapacity failed.