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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