MYTHICAL GOLD MINES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7607, 17 January 1903, Page 2

MYTHICAL GOLD MINES.

2£on Rials Lifo and Fortune ia Searching 1 ?er Treasure. The reported discovery of a "lost cabin mine" in the Big Horn- mountains of Wvonling- conveys the information that it is the real thing, and the only '"lost cabin" mine in the. whole range of mining traditions' and fiction. Yet the Wyoming discovery is but one of hundred* of mysterious mines which have lured prospectors on and on for half a century, and are likely to remain an ir- ' resistible attraction while fortune-hunting the prospector's breast (says the " Om«ha. Bee."} ! There is nothing moire romantic in modern gold-mines than the legends and myths of golden and silver ores, whose re-discov-ery would bring fabulous riches to the finders. Nearly all prospectors, no matter •how long and severely buffeted by hard for- i tune; have an abiding faith that some time they will strike a lost mine and ~~be unspeakably wealthy. Every mining camp in -tiie west has its own characteristic stock of stories of incomparably rich mines once found by some lonely prospector, miles { away from auy human being, and in a region barren of readable landmarks, and then lost by some fateful incident, some tragedy or some strangely accidental circumstance. ! Every mining camp has its veteran residents, each of whom has some set theory as to how those lost treasure-beds may be re-located. Nothing else in the realm of mining has such a. charm upon the prospeotor's mind as the stories of lost mines. In every mining region every year men risk life and fortune in searching for legendary ledges once found 1 and then lost._ Last year some' fifty men gave un months of their time, travelled over burning deserts, endured severe privations for weeks at a time and came bade to civilisation older, poorer, haggard and. ragged, after a search for the ! Peg Lane mine among the Cocopah Moun- j There will undoubtedly be as many j mo-rat men go hunting for the Peg Leg this year. j MONTANA'S LOST CABIN. | A Frenchman came into Helena, Mon- ! tana, many years ago, bringing with him thousands of dollars' Avoith of gold-dust. He told his friends that he had found some placer ground richer than any ever worked. The dust he brought down had all been panned out. Wifcli sluice-boxes thousands of dollars could ba washed out iii~a day. Of course this news craated the greatest excitement. His friends prepared to accoDipany him back, but ere the da.y for their j departure arrived the Frenchman was taken I ill and died. Just before his death he managed to gasp : " Biackfoot country, two small lakes, cabin between them I built." Now this, information was very indefinite. There aro two Biackfoot countries. One is that great expanse of forest in which rise the Big Biackfoot River and its tributaries ; the other was, in those days, fc'he feastern slope of the Rockies, from the Missouri to the Saskatchewan. The miners wondered which One he . meant. Party after party was organised to search for the Lost Cabin mine. Both countries ihavo been explored again and again. s Year after yean has £one by and parties are still search; ing for it, undaunted 1 by the failure of their predecessors, hoping ever that the morrow will reveal to them two. little lakes nestling c in the depths of the forest, and, • a rude little cabin, long since in ruins, per* ■haps, but still the evidence of untold wealth. A MEXICAN MYSTERY. j The Vallagrana/ mine is the famous lost mine of Lower California. It was a silver mine, and the ruby ore from it, so tradition says, was jso rich that Don Tomasso Aguila, the richest man in Monterey, Mexico, in the fifties offered to 'buy onethird of it for' 150,000d01. Jose Vallagrana was a Mexican governor of the district of Lower California who fled to La Paz, at the- extreme southern end of Lower Califori nia, in 1850, during a political revolution. On the way he and his party took refuge in an Indian camp, and 1 the Indians theTe-, taking a fancy \o their courteous ; visitors, took them oht in a canyon and showed tho outcropping of a silver ledge. The tradition runs that the silver ore .couldi he clearly traced along the mountain side for some 1800 feet, that the ledge at the surface was over twenty-five feet wide, and that there were- indications that at widened; rapidly -below the surface of the earth. Governor Vallagrana promised not to disturb the Indians in thoiir ancestral rights there and to keep the silver kdge always a secret. On that promise, ihe and !his associates were permitted to take away with them seven specimens of the silver ore. The next day the governor and his party started on mules some 200 miles farther over an unbroken baiten wilderness toward La Paz. In th© course of two months tho party was at the City of lilexico, ■wHero they, were political prisoners for nearly a year. When they were freed only one of the party 'had kept, !his specimen of the i rich ore. An assayer in the City of Mexico assayed a part of the specimen, and he reported' that such ore ran oOOOoz to the ton. Silver was then worth, Idol an ounce. Every year since. 1851 men >have gone in parties of a dozen or twenty to seek the silver ledge. First and last, several thousand men 'have climbed over the mountains, toiled across the arid wastes and broiled in summer and shivered in winter as they prospected for the ledge that Vallagrana told ahout and 1 from which the specimens had come. Time and again the poor, ignorant Indians of Lower California have gotten money on the promises to lead prospectors to the Vallagrana mine, but each time it 'has been an instance of savage 11 buncoing " a trusting miner. In 1893, Governor Lopez, of the district of Lower California, officially reported that that year some 200 men had been vainly trying to get a clue to the mythical Vallagrana. \ PEO LEO TRADITION. The Colorado desert, in the extreme southern part of. California, and the mountains on the boundary between California and Mexico have been scoured annually for more thtuv thirty yeavs by adventurous goldseekers in quest of the Peg Leg mines. No lost mine, after the Gunsight, is more famous than the Peg Leg. O^ce every few I years the mining population! of the coast \ is excited by the news that the lost Peg Leg ha 3 been found again. Even now there are parties of miners prospecting for some indication that will show the loo&tion. of the rich ledge that Peg Leg Smith found years ago. A drunken, rollicking goldminer, John O. Smith, who was known as " Peg Leg " Smith, because of a wooden leg that he Wore i» place of a leg, came into Los Angeles <«ie day in July of 1868, with his camp outfit and his mules laden with several sacks of gold ore. The rook was assayed by mining experts' in the place, and the news quiokly spread that " Peg Leg " Smith had ore that ran all the way from 450d0l to 800dol a ton. Of course the whole country in and about,, what was the© the little Mexican town Of Los Angeles was soon wildly excited at the news ofthe find of a mine that yielded such ore. HfJot/hing j like it had ever been found south of Amador county. ' " Peg Leg " Smith was a curious, taciturn kind of fellow, and it w«« several i week^ before he could be induced to say a word as to where he got his ore and the j quantity there was of such rock. When at j last he- did say something about his dis- j covered treasure, he refused to give more | than a vague idea of where bis claim was situated.. He,. said, however, that' it -was down across the Colorado desert, in the mountain: range in San Diego County, and that until he knew whether this mine wai situated in the United State* or Mexico he must keep that part a strict secret to' himself. . - .. "Peg Leg" said (he was confident there was as much gold ore in his claim as in Mackay, Fair and Flood's Comstock ledges in Nevada-, and every miner who questioned and cross-questioned him day after day, made the same estimate from the old prospector's statements. Probably 50,000,000 or 60,000,000d0l was in the mines. . a' fatal siuftCH. , Earjy ,.)» September "Psg Leg" wa»

inissdng in Los Angeles, and the news came acvoss the country a week or two later from San Bernardino that he had been there, and hastily aad eeeretly "fitted out" for a camp of several months in the mountains and a mule ride across the desert. He had, at the last, moment, taken two old mining chums with him and set out in the night. It is almost impossible to track a man across a desert of shifting sand, so the several thousand men who had made up their minds and prepared themselves to follow " Peg Leg " Smith to his treasure-find were forced to await tho next appearance of the old fellow in public. From the time that "Peg Leg" and his companions set out from San Bernardino absolutely nothing has ever been heard from the old prospector. Several years later the dried and mummylike remains of the two men who accom-. panied him, and skeletons of the mules and remains of their waggon and mining tools were found over 100 miles out on the Colorado desert, but not one trace of "Peg Leg." It is impossible that he could have escaped from that spot in the desert in September on foot. The reputed treasure is still awaiting the man who will disclose it.