I have decided to sacrifice another valuable piece of mining property
this spring. It would not be sold if I had the necessary capital to
develop it. It is a good mine, for I located it myself. I remember well
the day I climbed up on the ridge-pole of the universe and nailed my
location notice to the eaves of the sky.
It was in August that I discovered the Vanderbilt claim in a snow-storm.
It cropped out apparently a little southeast of a point where the arc
of the orbit of Venus bisects the milky way, and ran due east eighty
chains, three links and a swivel, thence south fifteen paces and a half
to a blue spot in the sky, thence proceeding west eighty chains, three
links of sausage and a half to a fixed star, thence north across the
lead to place of beginning.
The Vanderbilt set out to be a carbonate deposit, but changed its mind.
I sent a piece of the cropping to a man over in Salt Lake, who is a good
assayer and quite a scientist, if he would brace up and avoid humor. His
assay read as follows, to wit:
Salt Lake City, U. T., August 25, 1877.
Mr. Bill Nye--Your specimen of ore No. 35,832, current series, has been
submitted to assay and shows the following result:
Metal. Ounces. Value per ton.
Gold..................................
Silver................................
Railroad iron..................... 1 . .
Pyrites of poverty................ 9 . .
Parasites of disappointment....... 90 . .
McVicker, Assayer.
[Illustration: 0366]
Note.--I also find that the formation is igneous, prehistoric and
erroneous. If I were you I would sink a prospect shaft below the
vertical slide where the old red brimstone and preadamite slag cross-cut
the malachite and intersect the schist. I think that would be schist
about as good as anything you could do. Then send me specimens with $2
for assay and we shall see what we shall see.
Well, I didn't know he was "an humorist," you see, so I went to work
on the Vanderbilt to try and do what Mac. said. I sank a shaft and
everything else I could get hold of on that claim. It was so high that
we had to carry water up there to drink when we began and before fall we
had struck a vein of the richest water you ever saw. We had more water
in that mine than the regular army could use.
When we got down sixty feet I sent some pieces of the pay streak to the
assayer again. This time he wrote me quite a letter, and at the same
time inclosed the certificate of assay.
Salt Lake City, U. T., October 3, 1877. Mr. Bill Nye--Your specimen of
ore No. 36,132, current series, has been submitted to assay and shows
the following result:
[Illustration: 0367]
In the letter he said there was, no doubt, something in the claim if I
could get the true contact with calcimine walls denoting a true fissure.
He thought I ought to run a drift. I told him I had already run adrift.
Then he said to stope out my stove polish ore and sell it for enough to
go on with the development. I tried that, but capital seemed coy. Others
had been there before me and capital bade me soak my head and said other
things which grated harshly on my sensitive nature.
The Vanderbilt mine, with all its dips, spurs, angles, variations,
veins, sinuosities, rights, titles, franchises, prerogatives and
assessments is now for sale. I sell it in order to raise the necessary
funds for the development of the Governor of North Carolina. I had so
much trouble with water in the Vanderbilt, that I named the new claim
the Governor of North Carolina, because he was always dry.