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     “...The big man hunched his heavy frame and bent his broad shoulders to scan the wet sand under his feet.. The bright light from the miner's carbide lamp on his cap caught the yellow gleam of gold flakes, ‘coarse’ gold and small nuggets worn smooth by the erosion of the stream that trickled in the bottom of the cavern. Here was the blackest of utter darkness not known on top of earths, for he was many hundreds of feet beneath the hot sands of the Mojave desert.

     “The miner filled a bag with tie heavy ‘black sand’ dotted with yellow sparkles.

     “Then he helped his ailing partner up through the labyrinths, the many tight passes, the devious crawlways, up the long torturous climb to sunshine again.

    “The miner was Earl P. Dorr whose troubles began almost as soon as the two men reached daylight. Other prospectors were there and reports are conflicting as to what happened. There was misunderstanding. Later, Dorr apparently wished to avoid the subject. But his secret was out. He had a sample of fantastically rich placer gold from the depths of the cavern, the only sample that has been seen.

    “It was not that someone else could not have found the way down through the darkness, lowering by rope ladders from chamber to hanging rim to pit so vast that his light would not reach its curving walls. How it came about that Dorr lost his cavern and its contents is a story of confusion told further on. He closed the route he had followed. Other ore was found on the surface bringing on a rash of staking claims.

    “Dora believed another access to the cavern existed, but so many difficulties assailed him that he never found it.

     “It was in 1944 in Los Angeles that I first learned of Earl Dorr's story in the course of research for my book, ‘Lost Mines of the Old West.’ 

    “The CALIFORNIA MINING JOURNAL of November, 1940