In sight
are snow-touched sentinel peaks kissed by earliest and latest sun. The
Rocky Mts. or Great Continental Divide is a continuation of the famous
Andes of South America, and jointly they form the longest and most
uniform chain of mountains on the globe. Amid the gorges of this system
of mountains, over 3000 miles in length, America's largest rivers have
their birth, and find their outlet into the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific
Oceans.
These mountains are vast vaults that will hold in trust for centuries to
come untold supplies of precious metal for the American nations. This
general fact did not concern Alfonso. He was ambitious to unlock for his
own use only a single box of the huge vault. He was familiar with the
wonderful story of Mackay, Fair, Flood, and O'Brien, Kings of the
Comstock Lode, and owners of the Big Bonanza, who paid their 600 miners
five dollars per day in gold, for eight hours' labor a third of a mile
below the earth's surface. The Comstock Lode yielded over $5,000,000 per
month, or a total output of silver and gold of over $250,000,000.
For six long weary months Alfonso and his companion searched for gold
down the Green River and along the river bottom of the Grand Canyon of
the Colorado, till they reached the Needles on the A.
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