CARBONATES ON FKYER HILL. 13 



second contact, on Carbonate hill, the Carbonate and Shamrock mines being- 

 the first to yield considerable quantities of pay ore. 



In the following years the famous ore bodies on Fryer hill were discov- 

 ered by a singular accident. At this point there is no outcrop, the whole 

 surface of the hill being covered to an average depth of 100 feet by detri- 

 tal material. Tradition has it that two prospectors were "grub-staked," or 

 htted out with a supply of provisions, by Tabor, half of all they discovered 

 to belong to him. Among the provisions was a jug of whisky, which proved 

 so strong a temptation to the prospectors that they stopped to discuss its 

 contents before they had gone a mile fi'om town. When the whisky had 

 disappeared, though its influence might probably have been still felt, they 

 concluded that the spot on which they had thus prematurely camped was 

 as good a one to sink a prospecting hole on as any other. At a depth of 25 

 or 30 feet their shaft struck the famous ore bod}' of the Little Pittsburg 

 mine, the onl)^ point on the whole area of the hill where rock in place comes 

 so near the surface. Discoveries rapidly multiplied in this region; immense 

 amounts of ore were taken out, and the claims changed hands at prices 

 which advanced with marvelous rapidity into the millions. A half interest 

 in one claim which was sold one morning for $50,000, after being trans- 

 ferred through several hands, is said to have been repurchased by one of 

 the original holders for $225,000 on the following morning. 



The foundation of Mr. Tabor's wealth was laid in the first discovery 

 on Fryer hill, but its amount was materially increased in a singular way. 

 When the fame of the rich discovery of Fryer hill had already become 

 known at Denver, the wholesale house from which he was in the habit of 

 buying his provisions commissioned him to buy for them a promising 

 claim. On his return to Leadville, in accordance with this agreement, he 

 purchased on their account, for the sum of $40,000, the claim of a some- 

 what notorious j^rospector known as Chicken Bill, on what is now Chryso- 

 lite ground. Chicken Bill, in his haste to realize, had not waited till his 

 shaft reached rock in place, but had distributed at its bottom ore taken 

 from a neigiiboring mine, or, in the language of the miners, he had " salted " 

 his claim. After the l)argain with Tabor had been concluded he could not 

 resist the temptation of relating to a few of his friends the part he had 



