Metal. Ounces. Value per ton.
Gold — —
Silver — —
Railroad iron 1 —
Pyrites of poverty 9 —
Parasites of disappointment 90 —
McVicker, Assayer.
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. 36132, 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.
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.