416 WALL STREET AND THE WILDS 



beginning of the Vallecito trail and there we 

 found sledges, drills, dynamite, and other mining 

 paraphernalia which we concealed in our packs as 

 well as possible. 



We found other outcroppings of ore than the 

 one we had sampled and claims were staked out 

 and notices posted for each one of the party. 

 Ned and I kept the camp supplied with fish, flesh 

 and fowl until two burro loads of ore had been 

 secured. 



The talk around the camp-fire each night was 

 of prospects, mines, and great strikes of rich ore. 

 Mackenzie was obsessed with the belief that he 

 knew where the richest ore in the country could 

 be found. He begged us to give up the good-for- 

 nothing veins on which we were working and go 

 with him one day's march to the northeast to a 

 place t on the mountain not far from Wagon 

 Wheel Gap where a great strike could be made. 

 Knowing what the assay had told me about our 

 own strike, his talk interested me but little. Yet 

 the place he was talking of was afterwards known 



