THE “ MIZPAH ” MINE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16846, 23 September 1922, Page 3

THE “ MIZPAH ” MINE.

♦ LUCK LEADS TO FORTUNE. A romance of the American si 1-rer mines, which reads like a. story from Bret Harte, is recalled by the death at Sacramento, California, of Mrs .Tames L». Butler, one of the richest women in the. United States. Twenty years ago. at tiie age of forty, 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 Xye County, in the State of Nevada, where the discovery of gold had started a rush of fortune-hunters (says the New York correspondent of the " Daily Chronicle ? \). Mr and Mrs Butler hitched a couple of sturdy donkeys to a waggon, and set out on their I long .journey. Four miles north of what is now the important banking town of Tonooab, 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 fortune seekers hunted high and low for the animals, Mr? Butler going one way and Mr Butler another, and returning to damp at night. On the fourth day in the late afternoon Mrs Butler. retracing her steps, weary, hungry and disheartened, sat down on a ledge of rock to have o good cry. Part of the rock crumbled beneath her j weight, and, when she- could see i 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 ledge was one mass of virgin silver. Mrs Butler named it “ Miz- 1 pah.” On it was sunk the Discovery mine, which yielded fabulous returns, and Toponah leaped into fame as the leading silver canip of the West.