Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1859 — A Baron Munchausen at Pike’s Peak. [ARTICLE]

A Baron Munchausen at Pike’s Peak.

About the tallest specimen of story-tel ling that has lately come under our obs n ation,; we copy from an exchange. It is as follows: ‘•Young gentlemen afflicted with the Pike’s Peak fever, will be interested in the following statement from a reliable gentleman in the new El Dorado, of the manner of gathering gold in the diggings. A man takes a frame work of heavy timber, built like a stone boat, the bottom of which is composed of heavy iron rasps. This frame work is-hoisted up to the top of the Pe tk, and the man gets on and slides d r.vn the side of the mountain. As he goes sliding down the rasps on the bottom of the frome work scrape oil the gold in immense shavings which curl up to the machine, and by the time the man gets to the bottom, nearly a ton of gold is following him. This is the common manner of gathering it. Another plan is to bore a hole in the side of the mountiiin, and fill it with coal and bitumen. A rousing fire is then built, and the proprietors sit around and “blow it.’> Shortly the gold begins to soften and melt, when quickly u -stream of molten gold as thick as your leg runs out through the fire, andjs caught in molds of sand made for the purpose, from whence the gold comes in sheets from eight to ten feet square, of the thickness of first c ..ss boiler iron. Gold is <OO plenty lieu.-, in fact. A paper of tobacco will buy two tons of it. “I am turning my attention to something different. I have 'bund in the Gulch, from which I date th><» letter, lumps oi r Md near-

ly as large as a hand sled, fairly encrusted with diamonds. I have dropped the gold business since, and have been steadily labor- j ing in the diamond business. You will not believe me, perhaps, but it is a solemn fact that I have already collected a bin full of splendid diamonds,nearly as large as a man’s fist—more or less; among them are more than one hundred larger than a piece of head cheese.