A Curious Find.
P. C. Bicknell is back from an extended trip into the Superstition mountains, where he went to look
up “the old Doc. Thorne mine,” on a clue he had himself found. The clue consisted in a cliff dwelling of the true ancient era, perched high up on the side of a canyon in the Superstitions, about ten miles east of Weaver Needle. The dwelling was seemingly as it had been abandoned by its occupants of several thousands of years ago, being in a notable state of preservation.
But, outside of its antiquarian interests, in one of the rooms were found articles that would deeply excite the curiosity of any prospector. One was a prospector’s pick, the other a short and small spade, evidently used in smelting, though its handle was missing. The main peculiarity of the odd looking tool however, lay in the fact that upon its blade were patches of silver stuck to its rusty face, much as solder splashes attach to tin. there is no silver in that region, so far as modern miners have been able to find. The nearest white metal is over at the Silver King, fully thirty miles away. The spade evidently was used for the purpose of skimming off the dross from the cast, metal in a silver smelting furnace of many years ago and had but recently been used for this purpose when abandoned in the cave.
Nothing was found that would indicate who the ancient refiner was, and in a close search of the surrounding country not a trace of minors 1 could be found in a radius of at least three miles. In the midst of a highly mineralized region, this neighborhood appears to be absolutely void of a formation in which silver or gold would be likely to be found.
Yet it is in this neighborhood, so Bicknell declares, that the Thorne mine was found three decades ago, the cliff dwelling well answering the description of the “stone cabin” in which the doctor had his adobe. Still, it may have simply been the temporary residence of a poor devil of a prospector, who left only to fall a victim to the Apaches, who infested the region till fifteen years ago.
The silver-flecked spade Bicknell brought back to Phoenix and it now can be seen a’. Luke Hurley’s.—Gazette.