“Provided you have a chance to run,” sneered Cartter.
Turning as he was passing out of the door, the fellow said:
“It’s all very nice, Mr. Jones, but that is either Jim Cartter or the devil, and you can’t ring him in on me!”
CHAPTER LI.
THE “HEATHEN CHINEE.”
As a rule the miners have no very exalted opinion of geologists, mineralogists, and other scientific persons who come into the country and claim to be able to tell all about each lead and stratum of rock, from the earliest ages down to the last Presidential election.
In 1874, after a State Mineralogist had been elected in Nevada—it was just previous to the transit of Venus—a Comstocker gave the following information in regard to the duties of the newly-elected officer, they not being very well understood by the majority of the people:
1. He will calculate all eclipses of the sun, moon, and larger stars, as soon as he is reliably informed that any have occurred, sending in to the Board of Alderman on the following Tuesday evening his diagnosis, in order that it may be duly referred to the Committee on Fire and Water.
2. He is to discover earthquakes and provide suitable means for the extermination of the same; also, for book-agents, erysipelas, corn doctors, cerebro-spinal meningitis and the Grecian bend.
3. He will be expected to foretell cloud-bursts, and to cause them to burst by degrees.