It was terribly hot and we were soaking wet most of the time, either from a sudden tropical shower or from our own perspiration. I do not know which was the worst for the showers came with such violence that they left one utterly sodden, and the sweat rolled down the forehead to sting the eyes. During the showers, the natives jumped into the river with all their clothes and swam about, glad for a moment’s lull in activities.

Before many days had passed we saw what was meant by a rising river. A twelve-foot wall of water marched down upon us leaving us with scant time to swing the sluice box onto the bank. Away went my sandbags, and it was with sinking heart that I recalled the torture of swinging those four hundred pound bags into the rushing stream.

This incident closed our work on the Negro, for we had sluiced ten days to a cost of thirty dollars and we had recovered less than fifteen dollars in gold. And that I am told is not good business.

And so Carper, with the little Englishman, scouted about the island in search of newer and better grounds. The Briton was somewhat abashed by our failure as he had stated in writing to his committee that gold was present in that river at an average of three dollars a cubic yard, while we had found it somewhat less than twenty cents.

We moved our sluice to the mid-reaches of the Marvillas River, several miles from Corozal, where Jose Rodriguez claimed to have panned many dollars’ worth of dust. And once again we completed the task of building a dam with the proper fall of water and began our labor. But this spot was no more fruitful than the other, and as Carper had left me in charge of the sluice for some days, I closed down shop and paid off the native workers with my last money. After that I sat on my heels and wondered what Carper had found which detained him so long out in the island.

But I did not have to worry for long about Carper and sluicing, as he suddenly took himself and the remainder of the eight hundred dollars out of the picture without even telling me goodbye.

After that I had ample time to study the history of gold mining in Puerto Rico, for I was too broke to do any prospecting other than with a pan, and succor as usual, was terribly slow.

Martin and Jose did their best to console me with tales of great riches, and I learned a little about gold mining. Jose had found employment with most of the prospectors who had come to the district and he told me of the ways they went about their work, how foolish they were, and why they finally failed to become wealthy. Martin had a Spanish chemistry book which had been printed in 1800 and with this as his final court of appeals he set himself up as a competent mining engineer. Whenever I would question some statement of Martin’s concerning odd bits of rock, he would pull at his fierce mustachios and produce his reference from the hip pocket of his soiled breeches to prove his point with words which neither he nor I had suspected of the Spanish language.

Both Martin and Jose ostensibly made their living with a gold pan, although I suspect that Jose depended upon the money his daughters brought him from schoolteaching, and that the coffers of Martin were filled now and then by a well-known political group for which he was the Corozal exponent. Gold mining was their sport and hobby, and they could never quite grasp the fact that I was commercially in dead earnest.

A Sample Pick Saga Continued...

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