Page:The Overland Monthly, Jan-June 1894.djvu/139



of all the occupations by which men seek to win gold, there are none so fascinating, so elusive, so en- couraging to all the gambler's faith in luck, as well as to the woodsman's in- nocent and healthy love for nature, as prospecting for gold quartz indications in the mountains. The murmuring firs whisper of the secret hidden by their roots for uncounted centuries before prying man came tapping the stones with his little hammer; and to his ex- cited mind the clear waters reflect a yel- low light, and the sound of their tink- ling is the ringing of the gold he seeks. As long as fifty years ago it was known that there existed, somewhere between the Sixus River and Port Or- ford, a rich ledge of gold-bearing quartz. Small, broken fragments had been picked up by hunters now and then, and rich deposits of black sand could be found in all the outlets of the streams that run over the beach to the sea at very short intervals along the shores of Oregon. Black sand is quartz decayed and worn away from the gold, which is washed with it down the swift streams. Many people were quite content to work a little, and capture the gold they could see in the sand by a simple contrivance of wooden troughs, and a copper plate with a quicksilver coating, to hold the shining flakes as they were washed over it. But others wanted a real mine, and spent a deal of money and hard labor hunting for the home of the gold in the near mountains, where the springs all had their fountain head. A goodly amount of gold was found and mined, but never a ledge such as all the old miners and geologists knew existed somewhere in that neighborhood.

At one time a great excitement was raised by the return of a party of pros- pectors with all their pockets filled with the richest specimens of gold-bearing quartz that had ever been found in the State. The stone was dark, very much decayed, but the gold was in thick streaks, yellow and unstained. They were jubilant ; they had found the ledge. They stayed in the little town of Port Orford over night. They took a great many drinks, and had built a large city, with all the modern improvements, be- fore morning, when they again started for the find with increased numbers and large hopes. The hopes were dashed to pieces when it was found that the ledge was only a detached fragment, and could be rolled out of the earth with two crow- bars, and leavp no sign behind it of where it came from. The bowlder was much the size and shape of an ordinary cook stove, but from it was taken nearly two thousand dollars worth of gold.

This find, of course, greatly increased the interest in Curry County gold de- posits, and many men and much money have parted company in searching for the lost ledge, as it is called. Lost it is not, for it has never been found, though that was twenty-three years ago now, and men are still climbing and dig- ging about among the fallen pine needles and the great bowlders of those rugged mountain sides.

The theory is, that some heavy land- slide has in past ages covered the place with earth and stones that have in- creased in depth as the vegetation grew upon it. Mighty trees have grown there, and furnished shelter and homes for the great elks and bears that were hunted by the Indians a thousand years before the white man heard of Oregon, or came there to banish the Indians to thei