Mark Twain On The Gold-bearing Water

To the Editor of the New York Eveninir Post. I have just seen your dispatch froin San Francisco, in Saturday'a Evening Post, about " Gold in Solution " in the Calistoga S pñngs, and about the proprietor's having "extracted $1,060 in gold of the utmost fineness f'rom ten barrels of the water," during the past fortnightj by a procets known only to himself. This will surprise many of your readers, but it does not surpriso me, for I once owned those springs myself. What does surprise me, however, is the falling off in the richness of the water. In my time the yield was a dollar a dipperful. I am not saying this to injurethe property in cas a sale is eonteniplated : I am only saying it in the interest of history. It inay be that this hotel propristor's process is an interior one - yen, that may be the fault. Mine was to tuke my uncle - I had an extra uncle at ihat time, on account of bis parents dyinit and lcavine hini on my hands - and fill hini u, and let hini stand fifteen ininuies to give the water a chance to settle well, iluru insert hini in an exhau.sted receiver, which had the effect of sucking the gold out through bis pores. I have taken more than $11,000 out of that old man in a day and a half. I should have held dn to those springs, but for the badness of the roads and the difficulty of getting the gold to market. I oonsider that gold-yielding water in many respect remarkable ; and yet not more remarkable than the gold bearing air of Catgut Canon, upthere toward thehead of' the auriferous range. This air - or this wind - forit is a kind of a trade wind which blows steadily down through 600 miles of rich quartz croppings during an hour and a quarter every day except Sundayn, is heavily charged with exquisitcly fine and impalpable gold. Notuing precipitatesand solidifies this gold so readily as contact with human flesh heated by passioh. The time that William Abrahams was disappointcd in love, he used to step out doors when that wind was blowing, and come in again and begin to sigh, and his brother, Andover J., would extract over tl. 50 out of every sigh he sighed, rightalong. And the tirue th:it John (larbisou and Aleck Norton quarrel ed about Harbison's dog, they stood there swearing at each other all they knew how - and what they didn't know about swearing they couldn't learn from you and me, not by a good deal - and at the end of every thrce or fbur minutes they had to stop and ïn.-iki' a dividend - if they didn't their jaws would clog up so that they couldn't get the liiii riine syllabledonesoutat all - and when the wind was done blowing they cleaned up ju!-ta little over $1,600 apicoe. 1 know these facts to be absolutely true, becauso I got them from a man whose mother I knew personally. I do not suppose a person could buy a water privilege at Calistoga now at any price ; but several good locations along the oourse of the Catgut Canon Gold Hearing ïrade Wind are for sale. They are going to be stocked for the New Hartford, Conn., September 14, 1880.