MINING CAMPS AND DYNAMITE 391 



and in an instant its sudden brightening told that 

 the operation was over. When the button had 

 been weighed and the result indicated nine ounces 

 of silver to the ton I was greatly gratified to find 

 that the result closely approximated the report 

 of the assayers in whom previously I had no con- 

 fidence. When analysis by the wet process con- 

 firmed the result I developed the assurance of an 

 old assayer and thereafter made regular assays 

 of ore from the mines as we developed them be- 

 sides sampling the ore from every undeveloped 

 mine or outcropping on which work had been 

 done. 



I was not a mining engineer yet I got the credit 

 of being one through a single incident. The 

 Black Giant mine consisted of a tunnel some two 

 hundred feet long running in from the vertical 

 face of the mountain. It was sought to ventilate 

 it through a pipe which ran along the roof of the 

 tunnel from the breast to the mouth, where it was 

 connected with a stove pipe some thirty feet long 

 rising from a stove in which a fire was kept burn- 

 ing. The heated column of air was expected to 



