2005-03
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/28/2005
Autograph Letter Signed “Gus”, 4 pages, quarto, September 27, 1865, Empire City, Colorado Territory to Captain N.A. Frye, Salem, Massachusetts. Penned on a pre-printed letterhead of the Bay State Gold Mining Company. The letter reads in part: “...We left Denver at 7 in the morning in a coach...Blackhawk City 1 mile this side of Central is where we saw the first indications of mining - Sluice Mining is the Original method practiced here - they use a long trough several hundred feet long and two feet wide - the fals bottom is bored full of small holes & the real bottom, two or three inches underneath, is covered with quicksilver. The dirt from the River bed, which has been turned by a dam into the trough is then shoveled in at the upper end, and is carried swiftly along in the water, the particles of gold being the heaviest fall to the bottom through the little holes and are held fast by the quicksilver...almost every gulch in the country has been sluiced in this way & the gold exhausted...Will you please ask fatherto buy for me a Colts Revolver & send it out by Express, for whn the coach upset of the plains, I lost my Revolver, Holster & belt..”. With stamped cover bearing an Empire City postmark. One split, else VF condition.
Click on a thumbnail above to display a larger image below
Hold down the mouse button and slide side to side to see more thumbnails(if available).
Click above for larger image.