In Tuolumne lived two miners who used to go to the
neighboring village in the afternoon and return every night with
household supplies. Part of the distance they traversed a trail, and
nearly always sat down to rest on a great boulder that lay beside
the path. In the course of thirteen years they had worn that boulder
tolerably smooth, sitting on it. By and by two vagrant Mexicans
came along and occupied the seat. They began to amuse
themselves by chipping off flakes from the boulder with a
sledge-hammer. They examined one of these flakes and found it
rich with gold. That boulder paid them $800 afterward. But the
aggravating circumstance was that these "Greasers" knew that
there must be more gold where that boulder came from, and so
they went panning up the hill and found what was probably the
richest pocket that region has yet produced. It took three months
to exhaust it, and it yielded $120,000. The two American miners
who used to sit on the boulder are poor yet, and they take turn
about in getting up early in the morning to curse those
Mexicans--and when it comes down to pure ornamental cursing,
the native American is gifted above the sons of men.
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