Читать книгу Trails and Tales in Cobalt - W. H. P. Jarvis - Страница 3

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Let not the reader think that these stories, which I have tried to tell in truth of color, are all fiction; in fact, they are, many of them, true, while the thread that binds the tales, namely, the story of the prospecting trip in Cobalt, is true almost to the point of being history.

As for the tales which tell of mining, they are written with the greatest fidelity the writer can command; and the fact that he was in Rossland at the time of the ever-memorable War Eagle slump, which ruined so many fortunes in Eastern Canada, and also has spent five years in the mining camps of Alaska and the Yukon, prospecting and mining, will assure the reader as to the local color being genuine.

While the writer has tried to make his little work an exposé of mining promoters’ methods, and has sought to tell the “dear old public” how they are robbed, he does not wish to be thought to say that the honestly promoted mining company does not exist, but how are the widow and the orphan to discriminate when the highest art in newspaper advertising is employed to bring about their entrapment?

One thing, perhaps, has been omitted, and that is a compliment justly due Premier Whitney for the honesty of the administration of Cobalt camp by his Government, and the integrity of his officers in the field; but this has been apparent to all.

Popular prejudice ever has pictured the Western prospector of a certain type, and the majority of writers have pandered to this prejudice. The writer has attempted to present a true picture, notwithstanding the maxim of the great Barnum, who said “the public likes to be fooled.”

W. H. P. J.

Ottawa, March, 1908.