Page 26 - Early Naturalists of the Black Range
P. 26
Between pages 182 and 183 of Volume 1 (of the edition linked to above). This image from Commerce of the Prairies depicts a mule pack train. Pack trains like this were the major method of conveyance for many of the expeditions in the west.
numbers shown here will differ. Look to the table of contents of whatever version you are using. The images below were taken from Volume 2 of this edition.
I (the editor) have always been amazed at the amount of ingenuity, effort, and the reliance on an absurd amount of luck which went into mining in the Black Range. There were deep shafts, falling rocks, cave-ins, buckets lowering miners hundreds of feet etc. - all the time, as in, regular occurrences. When I came across the image to the left and the description of what was happening (albeit not in the Black Range - but easily imagined from the Black Range), I was awe-struck. Yes, that is a mule being drawn up (being lowered would have looked the same) from a mine shaft. The exploitation of the natural world causes many strange, perhaps wondrous (I have always loved the “theater of the absurd”), things to happen.
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