Gypsy Heart
Gold Member
Aledo Weekly Record, April 19, 1876 Black Hills - Those who seek death by slow starvation will doubtless be able to find it in the Black Hills. Flour is quoted at 10 to 11 cents a pound, and bacon 25, sugar 40, salt 12, and beans 15 cents a pound, while molasses sells at $2.50 to $3.00 per gallon, and tobacco at from $1 to $1.50 a pound. After traveling 250 miles by ox or mule team from the nearest railroad point, Cheyenne, the gold hunter finds himself at the diggings, where, if he is lucky enough to get a good claim and is an expert miner, he can by hard work make a dollar a day. A correspondent of the New York Times, who has carefully explored the diggings, reports that very few make that, while the largest amount realized has been $55 per month, which would scarce pay for provisions. The correspondent of the Kansas City Times says he has carefully gone over the diggings and has not yet seen a nugget; that no gold from the mines has been sold at Custer City; and that the opinion of old miners there is that the diggings are emphatically a fraud. The excitement is kept up, however, by the papers at Cheyenne and other outfitting towns on the frontier, which publish glowing accounts of the gold fetched back by returned miners. But it is more than ever manifest that no one has returned with as much money as he took with him; that more gold can be made digging ditches in Iowa or Illinois than in the diggings; and that those who are rushing to the Black Hills are hurrying to extreme destitution, and suffering, with all the chances that they will have to endure yet greater suffering in order to get back. - Chicago Tribune
