THE LOG OF A SEA-GOING PIONEER By ALFRED BENNETT ILES 1855-1942 Contents Chapter I. Ancestors. The trip alone to Scotland at seven. Rossie Priory and life at the castle. A stone-cutter’s apprentice. II. A boy’s life in London. Bandits on the Queen’s highway. The crossing sweeper. The allure of the docks. Intimate side-lights among the crowned heads. III. I join Queen Victoria’s Navy. Life on the “Boscawen.” “All hands witness punishment!” Teaching the Big Guns. A midshipman on the “Excellent.” The duel. IV. The loss of the “Captain.” V. Crossing the Line. Baptized by King Neptune. VI. Ho! For the diamond fields! The trap. Punishment at the mast. The cat o’n- ine tails. VII. A banquet with the Sultan of Zanzibar. With Henry Norton Stanley on his expedition to find Livingston. Flogging spies. VIII. Chasing Arab slave dhows on the East Coast of Africa. The capture. IX. The island of Johanna. Visit with the Sultan. Exploring the pirate strong- hold. The capture of Black Jeffreys by the Rattlesnake. X. Fire in the coalbunker chutes. Jettisoning the coal. The race with sharks in the Mozambique Channel. XI. The Queen of Madagascar. A Bombay “suttee.” The python in Ceylon. XII. Falling from the ship in Hugli. Calcutta. The visit of Lord Mayo to Anda- man Island. The tragedy. The white squall. Washed over the side and back in a gun port. XIII. Overboard in the Red Sea. An ocean of milk. Homeward bound. Back to Portsmouth. XIV. Arrival in America. The trip across country to Colorado. My father dis- covered mineral springs at Manitou. A printer’s “devil” in Pueblo. Cele- bration in Pueblo on entrance of Colorado to statehood. “San Juan or Bust!” To Lake City in a covered wagon. Into Ouray on foot. Banking in Ouray. XV. Lost in the mountains. Packer, the Colorado cannibal; his capture, trial, and sentence. XVI. Prospecting. Our first find. Mining opportunities. My first experience with snow slides. The English plum pudding for Christmas. XVII. Frozen in the ice. Rich ores in Mt. Sneffles. I rescue a wounded miner. Explosion in the slag pool at the Lake City smelter. Driven out of Rice country by Indians. XVIII. The stampede to Leadville. Setting type on Leadville Reveille. Developing a salted mine for Tabor. A Western town during a mining boom. XIX. The location of the Lowland Chief. Blown form the shaft of the Wheel of Fortune. XX. Racing to ore – victory of the Robert E. Lee. XXI. A fool with dynamite. A town underneath the snow. Back to the San Juan on foot. A night spent with lively company in an abandoned cabin. Locat- ing a silver mine. A $100,000 deal and what came of it. XXII. Adventures with snow slides. I find Ariadne. XXIII. I become a newspaperman. The trails and tribulations of an editor. A re- form campaign in a wide-open town. The lynching of Bert Wilkinson. The labors of the Miner. XXIV. Romance enters my life. My marriage in New York. Idylls among the Colorado Rockies. The burning of the Miner. XXV. New York. An impresario in the making. Among the prima donnas. Pur- chase of the Washington Sunday Herald and National Intelligencer. I start the Washington Morning Herald. The panic of ’93. XXVI. Return to Silverton. Mining in the clouds. Lighting the fire with dynamite. Almost frozen to death on the summit of Mt. Kendall. The enterprises of Tom Walsh. XXVII. I become superintendent of the Ajo Mines in Arizona. Become connected with the New York syndicate. The water problem. Mexican at the water hole. XXVIII. Copper in Arizona. A deal with Barney Barnatto, the South African dia- mond king. Karl Eilers and I locate shafts which yield porphyry copper. My crew on strike. Blowing up the assay office. A bundle of dynamite and lighted fuse under our house. My men propose to hang me. The arrival of payroll in the nick of time. The rope “fence” to keep out snakes on the de- sert. Colonel Bean tames a rattlesnake. XXIX. Inspecting gold mines in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A mission to Mexico. Visit to San Francisco Mine on great Mexican plateau. My wife joins me in trip to Mexico City. The “Hotel Zaragossa.” An army for an escort to the Gov- ernor of Pueblo’s mine. Zapotitlan and the Governor’s banquet. Mañana. The return. My wife tells of her experience while alone in Mexican city. XXX. Alaska in 1900. Looking for copper prospect two hundred miles in the in- terior from Valdez. Scotty Crawford’s claim a disappointment. XXXI. Return trip by way of Kennicott Glacier and Kuskalina Glacier. Crossing the Lakina River with great danger. Visit to Kennicott Pot Hole and Bo- nanza Mine. XXXII. A commission from J. B. Haggin, Picking rocks from a miner’s hide. An option on the Humboldt. Running a ten-stamp mill. Celebrities on the steamer. Building the wharf at Valdez. The wreck of the Bertha. My lum- ber thrown overboard to lift vessel. XXXIII. Expedition to head of White River to Investigate copper deposits. Remains of camp of 98’ers at Copper Center. Crossing dangerous rivers and swim- ming horses. A Russian Village on the Nebesna. Copper nails and copper patches. Relics of Cooper expedition. XXXIV. My first grizzly. Bear, mountain sheep, and caribou. A canyon of pure copper. XXXV. Herds of caribou. Crossing the Nebesna. Floundering in the torrent. I break my leg. The return journey much complicated. XXXVI. Starting a railroad. Valdez subscribes for stock. Financing a Trans-Alaskan line. Asking Congress for a subsidy. The wild goose chase to Butte. Broke on the Pennsylvania Limited. XXXVII. In the toils of Wall Street. I build a power plant. Back to Colorado. Ship- ping ore from the Ariadne. I sell out for $100,000. XXXVIII. Appointed manager of the Alaska Consolidated Copper Company. Raising money in the East. A visit to J. P. Morgan. Shipping bornite from Nugget Creek. A four-and-a-half ton nugget of copper. Bear hunting on Admiralty Island. XXXIX. Icebergs from Muir Glacier. Running an opposition power plant. Unfair competition. The decline of Alaska. XL. The Ariadne comes back to me. Again financing on Wall Street. Danger- ous work in old drifts. Winter above timberline. Gold mining in Virginia. XLI. Ida. Back to Colorado to stay. The lost mine. Reminiscences. Chapter I My grandfather was one of the wealthiest landowners of Dorking, in the County of Sur- rey, England. He was also a great gambler, and at the time of his death he had lost everything but his wife and four children. Grandmother's maiden name was Ann Bennet, sister of the then Earl of Tankerville, of Chillingham castle, Nottinghamshire. The House of Tankerville was created by King Henry V in 1418. At the time of Queen Elizabeth, Sir John Bennet's son was raised to the peerage of Lord Ossulsron, and his son, having married Lady Mary Grey, only child of the Grey Earl of Tankerville, became heir to the title. My father always claimed that he was the rightful heir to the title, but the connection brought no emolument to the family. The Castle of Chillingham, with it's ancient park of 25,000 acres, came to the Bennet lords through the Tankerville marriage, and is one of the oldest country seats of England, having already been known as ancient in 1418, when the Grey earldom was created. The famous herds of white cattle, wild and fierce, have roamed under the trees of Chillingham Forest from time immemorial, having been described as of unknown antiquity in the days of William the Con- queror. The late King Edward had a narrow escape from death while engaged in shooting the king of his herd, and the head and horns now adorn the walls of Sandringham. On the death of my grandfather, my father and his family moved to Cheshire, where he became the steward of Cholmondeley Castle, the home of the Marquis and Marchioness. There I was born on October 11, 1855. At an early stage in my existence I attended the village school with my brother and sisters, until some change occurred in my father's fortunes and we moved to Exeter, where he invested his capital in the White Lion Hotel. The business prospered until the time of the Ascot races, when he lost his investments in an unlucky venture. Father was known at the time as one of the world's greatest cricket players and the man who taught King Edward of England, then Prince of Wales, and the late Czar of Russia the great English game. To recoup his fortunes he became Stewart of the properties of Prince Dhuleep Singh, an Indian Rajah, resign- ing this position to become manager of Rossie Priory, the Scottish estate of Lord Kinniard. After the Exeter collapse, Mother had taken the children to London, and I was growing to be a big boy of seven years. Word came to her one day from Father that I should be shipped post haste to Dundee, Scotland. As mother was in poor health, my Aunt Betsy was delegated to ac- company me to the steamer, which was lying at anchor in the Thames, off the West India docks. The boat that took us to the steamer was one of the small wherrys that ply on the river for two pence a trip. It was manned by a one-eyed boatman just from the country, who had invested his capital in the rowboat and was about to try out his new investment on us.