In 1876—the year which the gentle reader will call to mind as the centennial—a slight fragment of this lode, weighing over three tons, was cut in the form of a cube and sent to the Centennial, where it attracted very much attention.
Six weeks afterward the unsightly hole in the deposit at the lake was entirely filled up with a new formation.
This goes to show how inexhaustible is the mighty reservoir, and the gentle reader may give it his earnest thought as a mathematical question, what amount of this formation might be secured to the enterprising manufacturer who might see fit to purchase and develop it.
Suppose there are sixty-four tons to every 400 superficial feet, and suppose there are four lakes averaging forty acres, which is a low estimate, then we have at present on hand 17,424 tons, with a capacity to reproduce itself every two months, we will say, or at the rate of 104,544 tons per annum.
Suppose, then, we take a ten years' working test of the lakes, and we have 1,002,864 tons of soda.
This soda is not adulterated with alum or other injurious substances, and would therefore sell very rapidly.
It might be put in half-pound and pound cans which would sell at, we will say, twenty-five and fifty cents per can.
Taking the very low estimate made above, as a basis we have the neat little income of $1,062,864,000.
This is more than I am now clearing, I find, over and above expenses, and I am thinking seriously of opening up this vast avenue to wealth myself.
I would have done so long ere this, were it not that I am now developing the Boomerang mine.