530         THE CHICAGO RECORD'S
have dropped out, but the innocent keeps on working     :f
pluckily, and at the end of a week has about three ounces
to show, two of them being the fruits of his first day's  :
labor. If he is wise he goes back to town in search of information and to talk over the erratic showing of his mine. Then the first honest man of experience that he
strikes will laugh and shout the melancholy word, "salted."
How did the "old miner" salt the mine? Easily
enough. The common method is to take a shotgun, put
in a moderate charge of powder and a quarter of an ounce of gold dust on top. Then the sharper fires the
gun into the dirt, the gold dust scattering widely. Repeating this a dozen or eighteen times, the "old miner s
mine is ready for the innocent. The "old miner" can tell
just where he fired the gold dust, and the first day's
work is sure to lead to the recovery of most of the salting.
This is one way the mining confidence man works, but  ,
there are others. In one of the northern states of Mex- :
ico an English syndicate narrowly escaped paying $800,ooo for a mine that wasn't worth $80. The money was sent over and deposited in a San Francisco bank and the payment was about to be made when a halt was called by an American mineralogist. The Englishmen had first sent over an expert, who made a most careful investigation. He spent two months on the work, and his findings full demonstrated the truth of the seller's statements.
Without notifying-the first expert, a second expert
was sent over, and he spent some six months in the work.
First he visited several large American mines, and then
he made a close study of the Mexican people, with the result that he determined to trust none of them. He de*.   cided to get the ore himself, breaking it off with a pick
--.-'i -  , ~-  -.'  '  'i