86 SHORT STALKS 



usually found among the rouglier AVesterners. There were 

 various stories of how he came to settle here. One was 

 that he thus got out of the way of drink ; another, that he 

 w^as the " Jack the Ripper " of those days ; l)ut I did not 

 invite his confidence. Apparently he supported himself 

 exclusively by trapping, which art he told me he had 

 taught himself out of books. He certainly drew no income 

 from his gold mine, which was his special hobby, and which 

 was for ever in his conversation. This was a claim which 

 he had secured a short distance above his house, and to 

 work which he tried to persuade us to invest our capital 

 and bring out a company. There is gold throughout the 

 Wind River mountains, and to " show the colour," i.e. tiny 

 flakes of gold, it was only necessary to wash out the first 

 handful of river gravel in a tin basin ; but to do this on 

 a large scale and profitably, in "placer" mining, it is 

 necessary to find not only a good gold-bearing bed of gravel, 

 as Clarke had done, but a great fall of water which can be 

 l^rought in iron pipes and directed against the face of the 

 gravel in a jet sufficiently powerful to break it up, and to 

 wash away the superfluous stones and mud. These and 

 other necessary conditions were wanting in this case, so I 

 was not tempted, nor by other discoveries of his, which he 

 imparted to me in solemn secrecy, and wdiich afforded 

 him a great amount of innocent satisfaction. 



Arrived here, to our dismay we found no waggon. It 

 turned up, however, the following night. The way is an 

 uncommonly rough one, and one of the horses becoming 

 entangled in the harness had been so injured that he had 

 to be killed. We used the delay to pay a visit to Clarke's 

 mine, and also to climb an outlying peak, where we hoped, 



