ALLADIN'S GAVE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XVII, Issue 1728, 21 September 1922, Page 2

ALLADIN'S GAVE.

STRANDED WOMAN FINDS TREASURE. A romance of the American silver mines, which reads like a story from Bret Harte, is recalled by the death at Sacramento, California, of Mrs James L. Butler, one of the richest women in the United States. Twenty years ago, at the age of 40, Mrs Butler and her late husband owned a small ranch in Northern California. Having difficulty in making ends meet, the couple decided to migrate to the Klondyke district of Nye County, in the State of Nevada, where the discovery of gold had started a rush of fortune-hunters. Mr and Mrs Butler hitched a couple of sturdy donkeys to a waggon, and set out on their long journey. Four miles north of what is now the important banking town of Tonopah, they were lost in the mountains. To add to their troubles the two donkeys strayed from the camp, which had been pitched for the night. For four days the stranded for-tune-seekers hunted high and low for the animals, Mrs Butler going one way and Mr Butler another, and returning to the camp at night. On the fourth day, late in the afternoon, Mrs Butler, retracing her steps, weary, hungry and disheartened, sat down on a ledge of rock to have a good cry.

Part of the rock crumbled beneath her weight, and, when she could see through her tears, she noticed that the spot thus bared looked bright in the light of the setting sun.

Two hours later her husband returned with the missing donkeys, and she called his attention to the bared spot on the ledge. Their wanderings ended there and then. The lodge was one mass of virgin silver. Mrs Butler named it "Mizpah." On it was sunk the Discovery Mine, which yielded fabulous returns, and Tonopah leaped into fame as the leading silver camp of the West.