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 rmles 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. 



'X'HE discovery by some emigrants, in 1858, of gold 

 * upon the shore of Cherry Creek, in the present 



