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TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE

Wednesday February 19, 1890

SILVER CITY ITEMS.

About the Snow -- Present and Future Mining Prospects -- Water and Oil -- Sticky Seats.

Before this last snowstorm the snow was all melted off in and about Silver City, and the streets were getting dusty. Luke's fine 'bus sleigh runs from Virginia through to the end of the route in Lower Gold Hill, but from there down the sleighing does not amount to much. Silver City, generally, is below the snow belt.

MINING MATTERS.

Everybody is hopeful and feeling good over the prospect of a good mining season, with plenty of water, and many of the good little gold and silver veins in the vicinity will be made to yield liberal contributions to the wealth of the State and the world, including the Oest and Haywood group, and others, nearer, town. J. Lawson and Thomas Mayne -- who is a worthy and strong candidate for Sheriff of Lyon county -- are working the Cook & Gray mine, above Devil's Gate, and it is making a very good showing of pay ore at the present time, in the tunnel, the wein being about a foot and a half wide. It is gold ore, assaying well, and about two tons of ore per day is being extracted, which is expected to pay well under the stamps. Gold Canyon is booming and there iwll be no lack of water for milling purposes, or for the placer mining operations below town. It is safe to say that there will be more gold washing down between Silver and Dayton during the coming season than for the last ten years or more.

AFTER WATER OR OIL.

Dan Lucy of the old Armory Hall saloon has been engaged for some weeks past in sinking a well on his premises for water, keeping three or four men employed in the digging thereof. It has attained a depth of over fifty feet in a remarkable dry formation. The other evening, when the melting snow had caused an extra flow of water, some of the boys directed a good stream into the well for an hour or so. Then they interrupted Dan at the fine game of pedro he was playing in the saloon with a man from Dayton, telling him that the water had broken in at the bottom of his well. He went joyously out and by the aid of a stone tied to a string directly ascertained that there was fully ten feet of water. He immediately invited everybody to the saloon for a drink, and all the next day set 'em up for the whole town. He felt like he had struck a liquid bonanza, damned the water company and swore he would put up a windmill and supply the town with water independent of that soulless corporation. Then he got in a big pump to test the matter and very soon succeeded in pumping the well dry. About that time he discovered the delusion and was the maddest man in America. The bottom is in extremly hard rock, and the boys tell him that it is a first-class indication for striking oil. He is going for it -- water, oil or liquid brimstone, he don't care which.

STUCK TO THEIR SEATS.

On Christmas Eve, the festive Silverites were having a nice little musical and literary entertainment. The hall was well filled and everybody enjoyed it first-rate for a couple of hours. But when they went to leave, there was trouble. The seats had recently been painted and varnished, and the warmth of their person sitting thereon made everybody stick fast. Somebody profanely exclaimed "hell fire!" and directly there was a fire alarm and panic, all hands tearing loose and getting out lively, leaving the seats covered with fragments of skirts, coat-tails, pants, etc. The janitor cleaned up enough dry goods to last his family a year or two. That sticky paint, like Gallagher's dog, evidently had staying qualities.

ALF DOTEN.