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    It would be altogether impossible to tell how many poor fellows have been utterly ruined by the cry of "better diggins over yonder." We have known parties who were making ten dollars per day for each man pull up and start off for a new locality because the report was abroad that they could there make fifty dollars per day. When they got to that locality they discovered, perhaps, that the story had been started by certain parties with the sole view of alluring them from their old position in order that they might seize upon and mine it for themselves. It was just such designing sharp-witted fellows who raised the cry of Fraser River, Washoe, Feather River, Rogue River, Golden Hill and a thousand other equally fruitless journeys after better diggins.
    We remember a party of harebrained boys who were going up into the Cascade Mountains upon a hunting expedition, and who proposed just for the fun of the thing to see how much excitement they could kick up without saying anything. Accordingly they began buying supplies for a six weeks campaign, and whenever their destination was inquired after they said they were going elk shooting. They bought mules to pack their provisions on, they bought axes to cut wood with, and a huge tin pan to mix their bread in. To the uninitiated there would be nothing wonderful in this preparation, but among the excitable people who then sought gold in California there was a deep mystery. This unusual array of transportation meant a regular carrying of flour and pork to supply a large party of miners, and the large tin pan could be for no other purpose than for washing gold. Excitement began to awake, and the whole town was watching every move of those six boys. It was known that one of the party had spent a great great deal of his time in the mountain ranges along the coast, and it was believed that he had made a rich discovery. So when the boys were found to be missing one fine morning, the question went from mouth to mouth "which way did they take?" Strange to say no one could tell, for they had gone singly out of town in different directions, and had thus eluded the vigilance and curiosity of the whole neighborhood.
    They had, however, after making a large circuit, come together and gone up to the headwaters of the Santiam in pursuit of elk and bear. But the town was alive with excitement, and for the next five days diligent search and inquiry was made for a trace of the party, but without effect until an Indian who met them in the mountains revealed their hiding place. As he understood very little English, all he could say was that he saw them going up the Santiam River far into the Cascade Mountains. This was enough, and within a week the whole settlement was astir, and hundreds acting upon this poor information set out for the mountains fully assured that before many days they should become the fortunate possessers of extravagantly huge fortunes, go home to the States, marry the girl they left behind them and live happy ever afterwards. They followed the Santiam to its source, but did not find the hunters, who had gone out through a gorge of the mountain over the hard bare rock, leaving no trace behind. They came back to the forks of the river and explored its other branch with no better success, and finally started for home, when one of the hunters coming down to the river in pursuit of a stray mule discovered the party and divining the cause of their presence at once determined to have some sport at their expense. Hastening back to his camp he notified his party of the appearance below them of a large party who had evidently lost their trail and were in pursuit of gold. They at once left their camping ground and moved over to a small but rapid mountain stream that emptied into the Santiam just beside the camp of the pursuers. Here they began to stake off claims and number them, and one or two actually began digging in the stream so as to render the water muddy. A rude shelter was built and everything done to give the place the appearance of a permanent location. An occasional gun was fired, and sundry devices known only to miners used to attract the attention of their neighbors. On the following day their bait was taken and the whole party came whooping and shouting through the forest to ascertain what muddied the water of this little stream. When they came upon the hunters, great was their joy and loud their exultations at having traced them to their rich discoveries. The hunters were meek as lambs and had no word of welcome for any of them, but they, nevertheless, were very much at home, and began making their selections in great haste, as they said in a day or two a very large number of miners would arrive. The hunters assured them at last that it was all a jest, and returned to their old camp, but so certain were they that a large deposit lay in the lonely bottom of that creek that they never could be convinced to the contrary until they had dug it and washed it from end to end without ever having "raised the color." At length however, they turned homeward, and meeting many new adventurers advised them not to be humbugged, but without succeeding in turning one of them back, and we solemnly believe that if a party of miners once got it into their heads that there was gold in large deposits in the crater of Mt. Vesuvius, they would every man of them go down to make a personal observation, however many might have been roasted under his very eyes. If you appeal to them not to be humbugged, they take it for granted that you wish to perpetrate a "sell" and go at once and are humbugged. The very excitement of gold hunting is more intoxicating than strong drink, and has brought many a man to beggary and starvation.
East Saginaw Courier, Michigan, January 27, 1864, page 1


    It is owing almost altogether to the prospector that the vast territory west of, and including, the Rocky Mountains was settled in such short order. The prospector with his burros would adventure far ahead of the settlements, find gold or some other valuable minerals, spill the information and then would come the rush of perhaps thousands of hardy men who wished to share in quickly gotten riches. Not all were lucky and not all could prospect or mine, but once on the ground they soon became aware of the possibilities of the country, and while some established a mining camp and started in business of one sort or another, others found openings for their various trades and still others settled on the surrounding lands and took to ranching or cattle raising. Then the average prospector, feeling that the country was too full of people and his toes were in danger of being tramped on, would pack his burros and strike out for some new spot where he felt there was not so much danger of being crowded. Go where you will in all this western land and inquire as to when and how it was first settled and you will always find that the prospector was the guy who found something good in the mineral line to begin with, and that was what attracted the first settlers, though naturally in time people branched out to considerable distances away, but stayed with the country just the same.
    Prospecting in early days while the West was still wild was an occupation that would furnish a man with about all the thrills he needed. And it is a fine, clean business, hunting for the hidden riches of old Mother Earth and constantly adding to the wealth of the world. Almost all other occupations consist in simply transferring wealth from some other person's pockets into your own. There is something very fascinating to the prospector in this game of hide and go seek. To live close to Mother Nature, to commune with her, [and] learn to read her most carefully guarded secrets, is an ideal existence.
    That is the reason why forest rangers are so devoted to their jobs and prefer that kind of life to anything else that may be offered, although many of them could make far more money in some other line of industry. To a gold hunter who has learned to read the surface signs, Mother Nature speaks in guarded whispers that he can understand. Grass, or the color of the grass, bushes, or the color of the bushes, or the kind of bushes, will tell him something. Even an insignificant badger hole or a tiny stream of water sometimes speaks volumes. I have talked with hundreds of people who are forest-bred and with loggers who spend their whole time in the woods and make their living from the forests, who didn't know there are five kinds of dead trees and that each kind has its own particular message for him who wants to receive it.
    There are trees that are killed by fire, trees that are killed by the ravages of bugs, trees that die of old age. Then there are trees whose roots are poisoned by the minerals in quartz ledges or in mineralized dikes, in whose crevices they have found lodgment, and such trees generally are dead part of the way up while the tops are still green. To the close observer there are distinctive signs about such a tree that can never be mistaken for anything but just exactly what it is.
    In California, I found a quartz lead once in just that way. A quartz lead was known to cross a certain mountainside, but the topsoil was deep and though 60 prospect holes of from six to 20 feet deep had been sunk on the ground through which it was supposed to run, it had never been encountered. For two weeks I crossed this mountain daily to get to a place higher up where I was prospecting at the time. One afternoon as I was returning to camp I happened to stop for a look around and at once noticed a tree like [those] I speak of whose roots had been poisoned by the copper and iron and arsenic in the mineral deposit below it. About 200 yards beyond it I saw another, and following along in the same direction I discovered others all in a line, while the rest of the forest on each side was just the plain, ordinary stand of various kinds of trees like one sees anywhere. So I knew well enough that a mineralized ledge ran in that direction as indicated by the half-dead, green-topped firs. Next morning I brought my tools and started digging right at the base of the tree I had noticed first, and two feet under the surface I found the ledge that proved to be three feet wide and which brought us $6000 three months afterward. I neglected to say that there were three of us, which made $2000 apiece.
    A prospector should never get to believing he knows it all, as every mining district has its own peculiar characteristics, which may be altogether different from anything he has ever encountered, and must be learned carefully before he can consider himself at all familiar with conditions in that locality. The first California miners that came to Leadville said it was impossible that big gold values could be found in sandstone. Yet it was so.
    In Nevada, where there was no quartz to be found, I inquired of the prospectors where they were getting the gold that showed up in long strings in the pans. And when they told me they were getting it from the crystallized lime so abundant in that vicinity, I certainly thought they were trying to kid me. But it was so. Throughout the West jasper quartz is supposed to be barren. Yet I found a dike of jasper quartz in Colorado, some of which assayed as high as $60 a ton in gold alone. My partner and I found a chunk of jasper that had a round gold nugget in it as large as a pea. We had this sawed in halves and each one of us had his half set into a gold ring which we wore just to show to fellows who would argue that no gold was ever found in jasper quartz. I have even seen gold in marble in California, and I can assure you if I hadn't seen it, I would never have believed it. So it don't pay a fellow to know too much about a lot of these things, because oftentimes he has to back up and acknowledge he is wrong. And that seems to hurt a lot of wise guys that I have met in my ramblings.
    Probably half of my prospecting has been done on a grubstake, which works out all right if you happen to connect in with the right parties. If you are unlucky enough to have as partners the wrong kind of people, it is not so good. Any man grubstaked is supposed to be broke, whether he is or not, the same as any man applying for a job at a tie-camp [logging railroad ties] is supposed to be without means to purchase tools, provisions or a camp outfit, and these are furnished without question before he starts to work.
    The usual method in grubstaking anyone was as follows: The parties of the first part agreed to furnish the party of the second part, the prospector, with a complete outfit of whatever was needed during the term of the contract. A camp outfit, cooking utensils, portable forge for blacksmithing, guns, ammunition and pack animals if necessary, half wages and half of whatever was found. If miner's wages were $3.50 per day, the prospector received $1.75 per day for spending money. If he found anything worthwhile, his backers were to furnish a stamp mill, or any machinery needed for handling the ore. And at the end of the season, or termination of the grubstake, all the camp outfit, guns, pack animals, etc., were to be the property of the prospector. Of course many grubstakes were made in different ways. I am only outlining the method mostly. For myself I generally had a first-class outfit of my own, animals, guns and everything needed, and only used the grubstake as a matter of policy and convenience. I didn't always have good partners, though, and in time became opposed to having any partners at all and became convinced I would do far better to go it alone. That way I could work to suit myself, had no apologies to make to anybody, and no one to contrary me in regard as to where I should prospect, or how.
    With partners I generally worked too hard in my efforts to make a suitable showing to them.
    In early days it was no trick at all to sell a hole in the ground that showed any amount of mineral value. The country was full of people who wanted to take a chance on mining, enthused by the numbers of really fine mines being discovered and the immense fortunes many of them produced. Pretty near all of the prospectors had claims around in the hills to sell, and any time they were in town they would have no trouble in meeting someone who wanted to get into the mining game if they could buy in reasonably. A great many of the prospectors held their claims far too high, but I found that by putting the price right, I would have no trouble in selling any of my claims for cash. I made it a point to tell the exact truth in regard to any claim I sold and also in every instance underestimated its assay value, so that the purchaser would find it a little bit better than what I had represented. I also found it paid me to take pains to put a front on any tunnel I wished to sell. A purchaser cannot help but be influenced by the first impression he gets of a claim. If he sees only an ugly hole in the ground that causes him to stoop to crawl inside, he gets a bad impression of the layout right there, unless he is either a thorough mining man who knows his stuff, or can be shown something inside that is really rich. Whereas, if when he approaches a tunnel he finds it high and roomy, with stout, hewed timbers in front and perhaps a door with which the tools can be locked up inside, and everything looking shipshape, he thinks to himself, "Now here is something worthwhile, else why would this trouble have been taken to make everything secure?" That is simply human nature, or perhaps you might call it psychology. Anyway, it always worked fine for me. In those days the law only required one to expose 10 feet of his vein, and as there were hundreds of veins exposed for 50 or 100 feet, all one had to do for the first year's assessment was to stake it out and, of course, get it recorded in 90 days afterward. It was policy though to build a good trail to the claim, so a city man could get up to it without becoming dizzy on the high slopes and cliffs of the rough mountainsides.
    I used to have my best luck selling claims to club members in the cities. Prosperous merchants and other city dwellers have their clubs at which they get together and discuss affairs of all kinds. Those days they all had the mining fever. Take a mining claim that would assay an ounce of gold, or better, per ton on the surface, in a not too remote locality, if they could purchase such a property for say $1200 or $1500 cash, they would be only too glad to take advantage of such a bargain. They would put four or five men to work developing the ground and at their clubs they could saunter around with their thumbs in their vest holes and an expensive cigar between their teeth and discuss their mining property out in the hills and the progress that was being made on it. They got a great kick out of that. And though none of the claims I sold ever made a great mine, some indeed paid for a while before being worked out, and if I had had more claims to sell in that vicinity, I could have sold them to the same parties easily enough.
    You may think that in selling all these claims I took a chance of parting with some rich bonanza that might have made me rich. I will not only say that if I had a claim that I was certain, after thorough examination of the formation surrounding it, would turn out to be a big mine, I wouldn't have sold it. I knew my stuff too well for anything like that. I never sold but one claim in my life that amounted to anything, and that barely paid expenses and a little better for about 10 years.
    In speaking of selling claims, of course it was understood that I could not give a title to the ground. But the government allows anyone to sell their improvements, which is generally referred to as selling a claim. One must do $100 worth of work on a claim each year for five consecutive years before he can get a deed for it.
Jacksonville Miner, August 17, 1934, page 4


    A prospector's life can hardly be described as short and merry. But it is at least busy, with very few dull moments in it, especially in the summertime.
    Take the average prospector, for example.
    He needs no alarm clock. Shortly after daylight each morning he is rudely awakened by some early rising. hunger-ridden mosquito, who shoves about half an inch of case-hardened proboscis into some place in his anatomy. No more sleep after that, so he rises and starts dressing but discovers he has had a visit from a porcupine during the night, that has eaten the entire side out of one of his shoes. Nothing can be done about it, so he swallows his wrath and goes to the spring for a bucket of water, but backs up when he sees an immense, obscene, filthy toad calmly soaking his warts in the cool drinking water. So he drags the toad out, kills him and gets his water from another source farther away. Breakfast over, dishes washed, he hikes out to find some firewood. Returning with a large armful, he steps on a fat, sluggish bull snake too lazy to get out of the path. This causes him to lose his balance as well as the firewood and roll down a bank into a cluster of blackberry bushes, whose many thorn-loaded stems receive him gratefully and enfold him with such fervor that by the time he gets loose his clothes are in rags, his face and hands scratched and his body resembles a pincushion. The snake meanwhile has escaped.
    It is now time to resume his unfinished work of yesterday in the placer claim. Presently, reaching his hand under a boulder to turn it over, he receives a painful sting from the tail of a black scorpion that has been waiting there patiently all its life for such a favorable opportunity. This is all in the day's work, so he goes ahead digging and uncovers a deep pothole that by all the rules of placer mining should contain a nice deposit of the precious metal. Cleaning this out carefully, he pans it and is rewarded by the sight of one lonely little color the size of a gnat's toenail. This is rather poor remuneration for the labor and sweat expended during a hard morning's digging, but a prospector never allows himself to become discouraged. If he did he wouldn't be a prospector.
    An uneasy sensation on his back between his shoulders, in a spot he can neither see nor reach, causes him to request the assistance of a friend. Removing his shirt, a wood tick is disclosed which has bored deep into the flesh until it is almost buried from sight. The friend attempts to remove it but only succeeds in pulling away the tick's body, leaving the head embedded in the flesh, which means several days of intense itching, if nothing worse.
    Arriving home, he discovers a gray-digger has carried away most of his potatoes, little black ants have bored a hole into his sugar sack and are swarming all through the sweet stuff, and a small piece of fresh meat that he intended to have for dinner has been ruined by blowflies. He picks up a tomato to slice it but finds the whole interior has been homesteaded by a big, white, nasty-looking worm. Noticing a mud-daubing wasp coming out of his best hat, which is hanging on a nail, he takes a look-see and is amazed to see the whole interior of his hat is a mass of sticky clay, glued tightly to the lining. It will take two hours of hard work to clean up that mess.
    After a bite of dinner he sits down to rest a few minutes and, becoming drowsy, drops off to sleep. But his nap is cut short by a few thousand houseflies who start a game of golf on his bald head. Oh well, he ought to be at work anyhow, so out he goes and encounters a hornet that makes a swipe at his face. He succeeds in dodging this, but the hornet, not to be cheated out of its fun, makes a swift revolution and, coming back, hits him a foul rabbit-punch on the back of his neck which makes him say "OUCH!"
    During his afternoon's work he has to clear away some roots from his diggings, and they turn out to be poison oak and he gets well salivated. Ruminating quietly in his camp after supper, he catches a glimpse of a rattlesnake slipping under a piece of board not far away, with the intention evidently of bumming a night's lodging on the premises. This calls for immediate action. He puts off making a light as long as possible to avoid the swarms of moths who will be attracted and which are a great nuisance. Some flutter around the light as a camouflage for the rest, who search diligently for woolen clothes in which they lay their eggs, which in time develop into young moths, which in turn eat holes in said woolen clothes, which when discovered by the prospector cause him to use up a lot of profanity.
    Bedtime comes at last and the prospector drops upon his calloused knees as all pious prospectors do, to thank the Lord for having preserved him through the daylight hours and to request that half a dozen of the most experienced angels be appointed to him while he slumbers. But before he has finished, a sharp twinge of rheumatism gets in its dirty work and involuntarily he exclaims, "Damn that rheumatism anyway," which puts the kibosh on everything. The Angel Gabriel just makes a black mark in his book and turns away with a scowl. The prospector has barely closed his eyes in sleep when a noisy rattling arouses him. Just some mice playing tag in a lot of old papers. He sets the mouse trap and goes to sleep again, when a tremendous clatter brings him wide awake again. He snaps on his flash and sees a big black and white skunk making himself at home by knocking the dishes around and rummaging for something to eat. There is nothing can be done about it, only cover up head and all and let him have his fun.
    Finally, having explored every part of the camp, the skunk gets on the bed and prowls around for a while but, finding nothing there, goes away and the prospector is not molested further, except by a spider that crawls under the blankets and hands the sleeper a bite that raises a welt as large as a pigeon egg. However, a little thing like that doesn't count, so the prospector slumbers deeply until comes the old familiar daylight and the old familiar mosquito slams the old case-hardened proboscis into the old aforesaid anatomy, as per schedule, and it is time to get up and do it all over again as on yesterday.
    It sure is a great life if one doesn't weaken.--J. C. Reynolds.
Jacksonville Miner, August 24, 1934, page 4


    As I stated once before, the prospector and his jassack and the lure of the gold, or other valuable metals he found, was the primary cause of the great West being settled as quickly as it was. But I venture to say that the three most important items in the settling of this vast domain were Colt's six-shooters, hay wire and profanity. Hay wire was used for every purpose imaginable. Men even used it to tie their shoes with when they could get nothing else. Even if a person was filthy with money, he would often be in places where be couldn't buy as common an article as a pair of socks. And as to profanity, it was the only language understood by horses, mules, burros or cattle. With a played-out herd of cattle, or a burro train nearly dead on their feet from fatigue, or a team of mules stuck in a mud hole, nothing would put some pep into them and wake 'em up as a cracking volley of cuss words. Nothing so eased men's pent-up feelings as a good round oath. When danger or tribulation threatened, they did not resort to prayer. They swore. I was in the West a good many years before I heard any praying done, except by Indians and Mexicans praying for rain, which, by the way, they seldom got.
    The snake god of the Hopi Indians sometimes bestowed rain in answer to their supplications, but I never knew of the Mexicans getting any. The Hopi medicine men were cute enough to wait until they were sure that rain was about due. Then they would pull off the big snake dance and sometimes it would start raining before the dance was over. Westerners didn't waste any of their valuable time in praying. Not in those days anyway. They were far too practical for anything like that. They figured that not more than one prayer in a thousand was ever answered, and they could get a better break bucking the roulette wheels, where there were only about 33 chances against them winning. I have often heard them say that if there were anything in praying, nobody would need to be hungry or hard up. One would only have to pray to get anything he wanted. The West's slogan at that time was "root, little hog, or die." And anyone who was too lazy to root passed out of the picture sooner or later.
    Probably a good half of the men one met in the West those days were confirmed infidels. Whether there are any of that belief living today, I could not say. All I know is that for over 30 years, in all the knocking around that I have done, I have not happened to meet one of them. That old stuff is "out" anyway. Nobody these days is so densely ignorant that they imagine any business, large or small, can be run without a head to it. Neither could this universe function without the aid of a Supreme Intelligence. For the benefit of those who discourse so wisely concerning infidels, agnostics and atheists and expose their ignorance by putting them all in the same class, allow me to state there is a world of difference between them, as anyone familiar with the subject knows.
    It is true that churches sprang up here and there throughout the West as early as during the first part of the eighties, and without a doubt there was much praying done by the members of those various denominations, but the men who settled the country, rid it of outlaws, subdued the Indian tribes, established outposts along the frontiers and faced fearlessly every danger the new land could produce, were not praying men. They had confidence in their own ability to survive without help from any source. And history will bear me out in this assertion.
    Around the campfires of an evening I have often heard this subject discussed. It was a favorite saying of my boss that praying was just a lazy man's attempt to get something for nothing. And never, even in the face of the most deadly peril to himself or his herds, have I ever known him to do anything but swear that we would get through all right in spite of hell and high water.
    Many times have I heard the remark passed that "people had been praying, 'Give us this day our daily bread,' for 1900 years, but that up to date no bread had been received from that source, so what was the use?" For myself, I had been religiously raised and used to pray for what I wanted.
    But, in the course of time, realizing that it wasn't getting me anything and that I was simply one of the little hogs who must root or die, I discontinued the practice. I have nothing against any person who is either prayerful or profane, unless they overdo the matter to a point which becomes obnoxious to others. Either of the two, in my opinion, is simply an expression, a blowing-off of steam as one might put it, which relieves pent-up feelings in the system. Though I can assure you that if you desire anything particularly, the quickest way to get it is to work for it with all your might and, by the natural law of averages, it will come to you in time. As the French say, "everything comes to him who waits."
    Speaking of socks reminds me that almost everybody learned to wear "California socks" sooner or later. These California socks consisted of a couple of squares cut or torn from a flour sack, 12 or 14 inches square. By setting the foot in the middle of one of them, it could be folded in such a way that it answered the purpose fine. It took some practice though to do such a good job on each one that it would remain in place through the day without wrinkling. A few attempts generally would result in a perfect fit.
    As to underwear, we usually did without. Not because we didn't have the price, but for the reason that we couldn't get them for love or money. Brown overalls made of ducking and blanket-lined were much in vogue and helped to mitigate the absence of underwear. When we got soaked in a rainstorm or became drenched to the skin in crossing a river, we simply let our clothes dry on us, which was supposed to prevent rheumatism. There seemed to be only one kind of rheumatism those days that anyone knew anything about, and when one got it, right away he took a file and filed an old horseshoe into shavings.
    Then three times a day he would swallow a heaping teaspoonful of the filings before meals and presently the rheumatism would leave him. The uric acid in the stomach was supposed to absorb the iron filings immediately. I had no rheumatism myself, so did not try this remedy, but I have seen it done some hundreds of times. For toothache, the sufferer would take some carbolic acid (provided he could get it), put a few drops on some cotton batting torn from a quilt, and place it on the tooth. Generally some was spilled on the gums during the process, resulting in painful blisters.
    In later years I suffered considerably from toothache myself when out in the wilderness away from any dentist. When a tooth got to cutting up too bad, I would tie a fine wire, or a very stout cord, tight around the offending member, attach a rope with a heavy boulder to it, and if it was an upper tooth, throw the boulder away as hard as I could. Something had to give and it always was the tooth. Once in Idaho when the snow was three feet deep and the nearest dentist was across the range, 25 miles distant, two of my lower teeth began hurting and caused me to do some serious thinking. Finally I bethought me of a large iron pulley which I attached with hay wire to a stout branch on a convenient tree, ran my rope through that, and when I threw the boulder away the teeth came out in fine fashion, one by one. A fellow can do lots of things that way, if compelled to.
    For a long time after I had reached the West the only fruit we had was dried currants, and they must have been raised in a very sandy country as they were about half sand. After getting as much of the sand out of them as possible we would stew them or, for a change, toss a handful into the dough when we were making bread, which was not a bad idea at all. But talk about sand in the craw, we all had plenty sand in our craws when we ate currants. Almost all our baking was done in dutch ovens and a lot of other cooking as well. Nothing is nicer than beans or venison cooked in a dutch oven under proper conditions. It is quite a trick to make a fire on the prairie out of bunchgrass and sagebrush in a high wind and cook a meal when your coals are being whipped in every direction. But I have done it many and many a time. I began to think I was the champion fire builder of the West at one time, by reason of acquiring the knack making a fire anywhere, out of anything at all. But of course there were hundreds just as good as I was. Many a tasty meal have I eaten on the prairie when the only plates we had to lay our bread and meat on were clean flat buffalo chips. And many a family in early days on the prairie had no fuel at all except these same chips.
    After dried currants, the next fruit we had, as I remember, was dried apples, of which we soon tired, till we got hold of some that had been quartered, strung on strings and dried in the sun by the Mormon girls in Utah. They were sure fine. Next in line appeared dried blackberries and raspberries, of which we never seemed to get enough. Later came dried peaches, then dried apricots which surely were delicious, but very rich and, in time, we became fed up on them. We hailed evaporated pears with delight when they finally were introduced, and ate great quantities of them for a while. In time nearly all the dried fruits were displaced by canned goods. When I went to Canada dried figs had just come out and I was tickled stiff, as I was tremendously fond of figs in any shape. But everywhere I went those Canadians had figs three times a day, stewed for supper, run over for breakfast, and made into pies for dinner. I got so sick of figs that even today after 25 years I don't want to look at a fig.
    In writing these sketches of the West in early days, I trust I have said nothing to give offense to readers who hold a different belief from what I do. I only ask them to concede to me the same right to my personal beliefs that I do to them. I was asked to write these little stories of frontier life and they seem to have met with the approval of the majority of the readers of the Jacksonville Miner, as well as of editors in other sections of the country, some of my stuff being copied by papers as far away as Texas.
    I am simply retailing the events of these early years as true to facts as possible, and some of them are not so pleasant as might be desired by those who have no idea of what the real frontier actually consisted. Many oldtimers read my stuff, and if it didn't ring true to them, they would catch me up on it PDQ.
    There are plenty of oldtimers who have seen more action along the frontier than I have, but it seems to be difficult to get them to talk of it, let alone write of it. Others whose stories would be full of interest have no talent for writing. Many others who have been in the West much longer than myself have lived their lives principally in some certain section and have not cared to travel all over the West like I have done. My yen for traveling around has brought me into every state in the great West, and those who like to read of the real doings of early days will doubtless find much of interest in my humble descriptions of western life at that time. And for those whose sensibilities may possibly be shocked by the revelation of what actually occurred in those days, I would suggest that the bookstores are full of pleasing fiction which might suit them a whole lot better. But I am not writing fiction, so I have to tell it as I saw it.
Jacksonville Miner, August 24, 1934, page 6

Last revised May 17, 2024