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It was known that there was silver in the rocks that run back into the North-West Territories, but nobody had found ore that would pay for refining. The rich strike in Ontario had not been made yet, and the prospectors who pushed into the forests with drill and dynamite were regarded as rash enthusiasts.
They're as loyal as soldiers to the flag. They're a mighty self-sufficient, independent lot, these lumberjacks, and that goes for most everybody knocking about in this country, loggers, prospectors, miners, settlers, and all. If you're what they term 'all right, you can do anything, and they'll back you up.
There by the old cabin built by prospectors?" "Yes, I know. It's a pretty place fine valley, but Wils, you can't live there," she expostulated. "Why not, I'd like to know?" "That little cubby-hole! It's only a tiny one-room cabin, roof all gone, chinks open, chimney crumbling.... Wilson, you don't mean to tell me you want to live there alone?" "Sure. What'd you think?" he replied, with sarcasm.
The coroner's inquest, at Maryville, was attended by swarms, who hoped to get from the testimony some clew to the whereabouts of the mine. But many did not wait for that. Before the assayer's report had been received there were prospectors hurrying into the Esmeraldas and raking Shoestring Cañon and the environs.
She must live and struggle with savage Nature as the prospectors and half-breeds did. But this was not all; she had, perhaps, cut herself off from other things than the comfort and security that civilization offered. Mabel Farnam's warning was, no doubt, justified. It was possible that the school managers would dismiss her and she would be unable to get another scholastic post.
"Where did it come from and who found it?" "About sixty miles from here, and Fisette found it he's one of my prospectors." "He's the man who discovered iron for you?" "Yes." "How very extraordinary," she said under her breath. "Why should it be?" "The last time we talked you had just found iron, and now it's gold. This is even more wonderful, isn't it?" He shook his head.
Despite the angered protests of half a thousand mining men, the Easterner, with four of the shrewdest prospectors in the State, had traversed the entire mineral region of the reservation in the utmost security and assurance. Five hundred men had been forced to remain at the border, at the points of official guns.
"But any one would know enough to camp near water," said Solange, surprised. "Yes'm," agreed Sucatash, solemnly. "Any one would! But them prospectors ain't human, that a way. They lives in the deserts so much they gets kind of wild and flighty, ma'am. Water is so scarce that they gets to regardin' it as somethin' onnatural and dangerous.
Years ago, prospectors hunting for minerals had started forest-fires to level the ridges. The result was the burning-over of perhaps a hundred square miles of magnificent forest. The second growth which has come up is scrubby, a wilderness of young trees and chaparral, through which progress was difficult and uninteresting.
Some few prospectors for mineral veins began investigations in the neighbourhood of the lower part of the Grand Canyon, and the gorge was entered from below, about 1864, by O. D. Gass and three other men. It was not till 1866 that any one tried again to navigate the river above Mohave.
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