THE BONANZA KINGS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 2011, 9 June 1885, Page 2

THE BONANZA KINGS.

There never, was a more improvident?: set of men than the Colorado Bonanza • kings. Inaptitude for business life was- . also a striking characteristic;' k •_' Chaffee frittered away the bulk of liuft immense fortune on railway stocks, £ h which he knew nothing—absolutely nothing. For years his life had been mainly.spent in the neighbourhood of the- • "ticker. ■ Bob Greer, once a wealthy place-miner, is a miserable pauper, wandering about the streets of Denver.' " . ' Colonel Denver the possessor of hun- . dreds of thousands not many years sito, is enjoying the life of the gentlemeSbh 1 the collection of supposedly bad loans •' made when he was affluent. _ Riche, the discovered Little Pitsburg, is in a fair way to soon return to his shoemaker's bench, lie it was that paid £IO,OOO for a wife, and who, when ho shot Pat Dillon; in a saloon brawl,, said : "lvlhafkilthim, send arount the pill in the morning'." George Daly was killed by the Apaches. His debts, which were cancelled by his' tragic death, are said to bo enqrmous, Ho. led a life that for fastness was never surpassed in the West,; Nelson Halleck, discoverer of the Car- • ' bonate mine, and William Yankee, of the '"■ ; Yankee Consolidated, have amere pittance left between them. ■• Jim Williams, one of the discovered \ of the Grand View, did not have enough* money to buy a coffin when he was shot down in a Silver City danco-hall. . Bill West, his partner, is a destitute i drunkard at Leadville, dependant upon a chair hi some, friendly drinking resort for a sleeping place, George Houston, of the Big Pittsburg, died penniless in an Ohio insane asylum,; , General Craig, of the Little Giant, died,..; of paralysis of the heart, after a night's •■ debauch. And so ended the lives of • twenty others, who turned up fortunes aj, the point of a miner's pick in ColorafloJk The case of George Cryer was nerhtß the saddest. In 1872 he eleahed up £40,000 from tho sale - of the Pioneer Consolidated at Alma. His aged mother ■ was in poor circumstances at Philadelphia, and the first expenditure ho made was that of £6,000 for. a home in the suburbs • ■ of the city. Banking £4,000 to her credit, he' launched out into a life offt ! disspiation and"• profliga'tion that'im% i him notorious. Qhartering a CQagjej, h> peopled it with the most bea#i\ women, to be had from among the southern' demimonde, and loaded it wsi wines and table, luxuries. After vruising about for two, weeks at a total expense of £6,000, lie ' returned to, land to continue on his mad revelling, A year later h/ w a| j traversing the mountains a ™ n( ! impecunious prospector, He never aa muchas wouldtakeadinie from his mother, and punished himself for his folly by exposure tn every privation and hardship known to mountain life, Four years later he struck jt rich a second time in the New Discovery claim at Leadville, He endeavored to take advantage of the opportunity which the sudden aquisita»> of £40,000 gave him, but throflt business incapacity failed. T