420 MISCELLANEOUS CORRESPONDENCE. 



precious metals, which reason teaches us must have been obtained from 

 the surface of the earth. Even in our day, it is a well-known fact that 

 over $125,000 in gold was taken from the surface on Antelope Hill, Ari- 

 zona, ten miles from water, all picked up by hand on top of the ground- 

 One of my own well-known friends was a participant in this gold-pick- 

 ing from the surface on Antelope Hill. (See J. Eoss Browne on Mineral 

 Eesources of the United States, pages 466, 467.) So far as the American 

 miner has prospected, he has found it to be a never-failing fact that 

 near all the Oasas Grandes, on the chain of immigration of the Monte, 

 zumas from north to south, there exist rich gold and silver mines. 



u There is a small Mexican town, called Casas Grandes, located at the 

 foot of the Sierra Madre, one hundred and fifty miles south from this 

 city, and near to . the old ruins of the Montezuma Casas Grandes, in 

 which there lives a brave and hardy race of Mexican mountaineers, who 

 have braved the inroads of the indomitable Apache, and have set his 

 malice, skill, and cunning at defiance from time immemorial. Some 

 three or four years since, a party of these Mexican mountaineers, as a 

 matter of curious speculation, commenced excavating in the old ruins of 

 the Montezuma Casas Grandes, each man drifting into the old ruins 

 at separate and several points. One, Teodoro Alverado, more fortunate 

 than the others, drifted into a large room, in the middle of which there 

 appeared a kind of tomb made of adobe-brick. Curiosity led this bold 

 knight of the crow-bar to renew his excavations ; and when he had 

 reached the middle of this tomb, he there found this curious mass of 

 meteoric iron referred to in the fore part of this dispatch, carefully and 

 curiously wrapped with a kind of coarse linen, similar to that with which 

 the Egyptians inclose or wrap their mummies. The excavators were 

 now all summoned to view the curiosity. One anxious spectator, with 

 more inquiry and ambition than the rest, gave this mass from the skies 

 a vigorous blow with his crow-bar, whereupon it grave forth a loud 

 and hollow sound, much resembling a church bell on a funeral occa- 

 sion, which struck these honest savages with holy and reverential 

 awe. An adjudication now immediately took place as to whether all 

 the knights of the crow-bar should have a pro-rata interest in this 

 interesting specimen, or whether the discoverer should own it in fee-simple. 

 After due and mature deliberation, it Avas decided that, whereas each 

 and everj^ escavator had dug or drifted his own shaft according to 

 his own notion of loss or gain, separately, therefore be it adjudged 

 and decreed that Teodoro Alverado, the discoverer, do own the said 

 meteoric mass in fee-simple. Twenty-six yoke of sturdy oxen were 

 mustered, and as many or more strong log chains, and, with this force 

 and tackle, the monster meteorite was hauled on the ground to the 

 modern town of Casas Grandes, and deposited in the street, in front 

 of the discoverer's door. Alverado and his neighbors at first fixed a 

 most fabulous value upon it, but after the lapse of years, both the novelty 



