I made haste to go down and sat on my snow shoes and slid down some distance to the cliffs.  It was late that day when I reached my bush cabin.  I slept very soundly that night.  The next morning I decided to investigate "May Flower Gulch", less than a mile away, which led me up to the top of the range that I was on yesterday.  As I traveled up the gulch I noticed what looked to me like a small mound of snow.  I went to it, brushed the snow off with my foot and found ore.  It looked like dark iron ore.  Someone had been there before me and dug it up.  Having no shovel to move the snow, I could not see the place where it came from as it was on a line with a cropping on top of the high peak which I had tried to reach the day before.  As all land around was Government land, the first prospector has a right to place stakes with marks stating his claim.  A claim in Lake County, Colorado, is 500 feet wide by 1500 feet long.  You are supposed, after you stake a claim to do a certain amount of work on it every year to hold it, according to Government law.

A few days before my partner, Frank BRISBANE left me to go back to Leadville, we made a trip to Elk Mountain, only a few miles away, having heard that silver was found there in places.  We took just enough food along for one day and also some tools to work with.  We prospected on the south side of the mountain.  In many places the snow had melted away around sage brushes exposing the surface.  Many prairie chickens would fly a short distance away and look at us, probably never having heard the sound of a gun.  We could also see many large bones lying around, supposed to be elk bones or mountain sheep bones that had died years before.  The Ute Tribe of Indians reservation is not far from this mountain.  Prospectors were not allowed on their land.  I could see prospectors' holes and shafts with windlass on them, but no miners were in sight.  Some were located on ore seams, but other shafts had not yet found ore.  BRISBANE and I found good cropping indications of ore after digging and following the ore cropping.  I would give out at times and BRISBANE would shout out, "This looks good.  Right now I would not sell this property for anything." Then he would say, "FRANCIS, what will you take for your part?" In a few hours more digging it gave out.  We both felt discouraged over it.

The next day BRISBANE left me and went to Leadville to clerk in the Claredon Hotel which had recently been built.  Two months later I met him in Leadville.  One day a man came to my brush home and said his name was William JAMES and that he was from Joplin, Missouri.  He said that he was just looking around and that he had followed the snow tracks which led him up there.  I said to him, "You are of Welsh nationality." He said , "Yes, my people are in Wales, but I can not speak Welsh." He was short of stature and heavy built and about thirty-five years old.  We discussed conditions around us and decided to be partners.  He left me saying he would be back in a few days with his pack.

I was glad to have another partner.  I was very lonesome when the night came.  I had been alone two weeks.  I would listen to the sighing of the wind in the tree tops.  It was interesting to see squirrels by the hundreds leaping from one branch to another just before sundown, then the stillness of night came on and I was alone with my thoughts, thinking of home and those left behind with its comforts; but I stopped dreaming.  I had come here for a purpose and I must carry it out.

When morning came, I could see fresh tracks of different animals in the snow around the cabin.  Having no gun of any kind, I kept a heavy axe at the head of my bed when I slept.  There was no door to the cabin.  The tope of the trees served for a door.  My bed was a blanket with small spruce branches laid one foot thick on poles.  I called it a Colorado feather bed.

While waiting for my new partner to come, a man from "Aleys and Duns Tent" brought me news that two men from Pennsylvania wanted to see me.  I went back with them.  This place took the place of the post office.  It was there I sent and received mail.  I was surprised to meet Richard MEYRICK, my father-in-law, and William REESE, both from Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania.  MEYRICK was an old 1849 California miner and he wanted to try it again in this desert.  After our greeting MEYRICK said, "We must leave in the morning.  Neither of us can breathe in this high altitude." As there was no place to sleep here they got their packs together and started over to my shack.  I had to carry both packs.  Both of them were past middle age and were troubled with coal miners' asthma.  It was difficult for them to breathe regularly, neither could they do any work.  When morning came I started them back to Leadville and from there they went by stage to Denver.  Two years later I met them both in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania.  They said they were both glad to get away from that climate.