HOW A MINING STAMPEDE BREAKS OUT.

Inangahua Times, Volume IX, Issue 1438, 1 September 1884, Page 2

HOW A MINING STAMPEDE BREAKS OUT.

Dear reader, shall I give you a few symptoms of the mining epidemic in mountain towns ? All right. I will anyhow : Sympton 1. — A long-haired man is seen pounding up a piece of quartz about the size of a man's hand. Sympton 2. — Two men meander np to him and ask him where he got it. Sympton 8, — The long-haired man looks down into the mortar, and lies gently to the inquiring minds who linger near.

Sympton 4 — More men come around. The long-haired man gets a gold pan and doubles himself up over the ditch and begius to pan. Symptom I. — Two huninrf more men come out of saloons Wtir *Hfefr mercantile establishments ano* join the throng. Sympton 6. — The long haired man gets down to black sand and shows several colors about the size of a bluejar's ear. Symptom 7. — Several solitary horsemen start out with some pack mules, and blank location notices, and valley tan. The plot deepens. The telegraph gets red-hot. Men who have been impecunious for lo ! these many years come around to pay some old bills Poor men buy spotted dogs and goldheaded caves. Stingy men get reckless and buy the first box of strawberries without asking the prioe. I have caught the epidemic myself, I am getting reckless. Instead of turning my last summer lavender pants hind side before, and removing the ham-sandwich lithographs from the front breadths, J. have purchased a newpair. I never experienced sudfe a wild , glad feeling of perfect abandon. Igo to church and chip in for the* heathen. perfectly regardless of expense, l( Zion languishes, I throw in a small currency with a, lavish hand. Bank, offices, hotels, saloons, and private residences show specimens of quartz carrying free gold and carbonates, hard soft, and medium soft, with iron protoxide of nitrogon, rhombohedral glucose, in lice tions of valedictory, and free milling oxide of auti-fat in abundance. Nellis, who lives near the MillCreek carbonate claims, came into town the other day to getaainjnnotioni against the miners, so that he could injunct them from prospecting in his cellar and staking his pieplant bed. When he goes out after dark to drive the cows out of his turnip-patch, he falls over a stake every little while, with a notice tacked on it vrijieh sets forth that the undersigned — viz. : Johnny Comelatey, Joe Nembegin, Shoo^nly Smith, and Union-Foreover Dandelion claim 1,500 feet in length by 600 feet in width for mineral purposes on this claim, to be know» as • The Gal with the Skim-Milk Bye. together with all dips, spurs, aufr.es, jor variations, gold, silver, or other precious metal a therein coutained. Mr. Nellis says he is glad to see a ' boom,' and at first he did all he could to make it pleasant for prospectors; but lately he thinks that their sociability has become too earnest aud too simultaneous. I told him that the only way I could see to avoid losing his grip, and having bis string-beans dug; op prematurely, was to stake the eat_r» ranch as a placer-olalm, buy hi not » Gattling gun that would shoot th* large size of buckshot, aud then trust overruling Providence. I do not know whether he took my advice or not, but lam looking anxiously along the Mill Creek ro id every day for a six- mule team loaded wiUi disorganised remains, and driven by a man who looks as though he had glutted his vengeance, and had two or three gluts left over on his hands. — Bill Ny* in Cleverland Leader