[9] “Report on Disposition of San Saba.” Vide ante. [↑]
[11] See, for instance, “The Lost Gold Mines of Texas May Be Found,” by W. D. Hornaday in the Dallas News, January 7, 1923. [↑]
[12] U. S. Geological Survey, Bulletin 450, “Mineral Resources of the Llano-Burnet Region, Texas,” by Sidney Page, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1911.
But note the following dispatch in the San Antonio Express, February 26, 1924, p. 5:
“AUSTIN, Tex., Feb. 25—Sam Young, Llano banker, was in Austin Monday and reports much activity in that region in the mineral line. Young says experts think they have found gold in paying quantity, also graphite, and that capital now is being interested in the deposits with the early prospects of real mining and shipping of valuable ores and probably the refined products. Many small deposits of precious metals have been found near Llano in recent years, but the new finds are said to be large enough to warrant exploitation and give that section a new and valuable industry.”
Thus history never tires of repeating itself; thus the dream of treasure once dreamed lives on. [↑]
[13] Fournel, Henri, Coup d’oeil … sur le Texas, Paris, 1841, p. 23, speaks “des richesses metalliques depuis longtemps signalées par les Espagnoles.” I am unable now to verify the reference, but I am sure that Gustave Aimard introduces the subject in one of his romances, probably The Freebooters.
Of course the rumor of the mines had a wide vogue in Spain, where the viceroy’s reports went direct.
An English novel published in 1843 has this sentence: “The Comanches have a great profusion of gold, which they obtain from the neighborhood of the San Seba [sic] hills, and work it themselves into bracelets, armlets, diadems, as well as bits for their horses, and ornaments to their saddles.”—Marryat, Captain, Monsieur Violet, etc., p. 175. [↑]