The Bonanza Kings.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 106, 13 June 1885, Page 6

The Bonanza Kings.

There never was a more improvident set oi mon than the Colorado bonanza kings. Inaptitude for business life was also a striking characteristic. Chaffee frittered away the bulk of his immense fortune on railroad stocks of which he knew nothing— absolutely nothing. For years his life had been mainly spent in the neighbourhood of the " ticker." Bob Greer, once a wealthy placer-miner, is a miserable pauper, wandering about the streets of Denver. Col. Denver, 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 aflluent. Riche, the discoverer of the Little Pittsburg, is in a fair way to soon return to his shoemaker bench. He it was who paid £10,000 for a wife, and who, when he shot Pat Dillon in a saloon brawl, said, " Iv I haf kUfc him, send arount the pill in the mornin'." George Daly was killed by the Apaches. His 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. Nelson Halleck, discoverer of the Carbanate mine, and William Yankee, of the Yankee Consolidated, have a mere pittance left between them. Jim Williams, one of the discoverers of tho Grand View, did not have enough money to buy a coinri 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 Pittsburg, 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 so ended the lives of twenty others, who turned up fortunes at the point of a miner's pick in Colorado. The case ot George Gryor 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 £6,000 for a home in the suburbs of the city. Banking £4,000 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 demi monde, and loaded it with Mines and table luxuries. After cruising about for two weeks at a total expense of £f>,000, 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 overy privation and hardship known to mountain life. Pour years later he struck it rich a second time in the new Discovery claim at Leadvillo. He endeavoured to take advantage of the opportunity which the sudden acquisition of £40,000 gave him, but through business incapacity failed.