A Sportsman 121 



without even going up there for examinations. To the 

 first caller I gave assurances that my knowledge of 

 mineral ores was exceedingly limited and that I was 

 not even a professor. I overheard my querist after- 

 ward reciting to a small audience that I was a humbug 

 and did n't even know a good ore when I saw it. This 

 led me to exercise more caution, and securing a small 

 magnifying-glass and a pocket mineral-scraping knife, 

 I was better prepared for the next visitor, who un- 

 folded a precious specimen from the celebrated Killbug 

 mine. I put on the full power of my glass in critical 

 examination, remarking: 



"How much have you got of this?" to which he 

 might rejoin, "Seven hundred feet and Brother Tom 

 has four hundred feet more." 



Then giving the specimen a scrape with my mineral 

 knife and another glass examination, I would say, 

 "Better hold on to it," which I felt quite sure he would. 

 I then began to retrieve my sinking reputation. 



In a few days I took stage for the Central City min- 

 ing district, forty miles up in the mountains, situated 

 on a creek between hills. Colorado was then in a 

 very languishing condition. The decomposed surface- 

 ground over mineral veins having more or less free gold 

 had been worked over, as well as favorable gulches; 

 and the stubborn sulphurets, though gaudy and attrac- 

 tive to sight and containing more or less gold, could 

 not be successfully worked, owing to the association 

 with sulphur, zinc, iron, and various other minerals. 



T 



1HE discovery by some emigrants, in 1858, of gold 

 upon the shore of Cherry Creek, in the present 



