GOLD RUSH.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 21 January 1925, Page 5

GOLD RUSH.

NEW MEXICO FIELDS. PROSPECTORS SUFFER HARDSHIPS. by cable—press association— copyright. NEW YORK, Jan. 19. A' telegram from Hatch, New Mexico, reports that what old prospectors designate as the greatest gold rush in the history of America has begun with the opening of the great placer mining works spreading over thirty-five miles of the mesa district. Thousands of people are coming by railways and in automobiles. '

The rush began when it was announced that several prospectors had panned out as much as 90,000 dollars worth of gold dust within a few weeks. Old Klondike miners declare that'the mesa workings are bigger than the famous pay sands of the Nome beach, Alaska.

Prospectors are being subjected to terrible hardships, terrific snowstorms having swept over the diggings, where there is little shelter available and no fuel, except mesquite hush, the area being a veritable desert. Many women, girls, and mothers with babes in arms are among the thousands who crowd the Hatch field.

Many prospectors are digging in ditches all night long, the light being supplied by automobiles, the motors of whicli are used to generate electric current. Bitter cold and biting snows failed to check the diggers, who wash their pay dirt in iron hand pans or Mexican rockers of an antiquated type. Adventurers, attracted hv reports which spread overnight through the country, are pouring into the southwest of New Mexico, and the desertis pock-marked with innumerable shallow pits, which must necessarily he dug under the law before n claim can be registered.

Gold appears plentifully, varying from fine to coarse dust and nuggets valued at ten dollars. '