So let’s dive deeper into Prospecting and See if we can’t drum up some fantastic ideas together. I mentioned earlier about the Gold Rush a few couple of minutes ago and it got me to thinking about a book I read… Actually one of the best books that you could possibly read. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

He told this story of a guy name R.U. Darby

Back in the gold rush days of the wild wild west there was a man (R.U. Darby’s uncle) who heard about the riches that were being ‘found’ and struck in mining for gold out on the western frontier. He left Maryland to journey to Colorado and stake a claim to the newfound gold! After some preliminary digging, he discovered that he had found a deposit of gold so vast that it boggled everyone’s mind! It was thought they had found the biggest goldmine in history. So he travelled back to Maryland to ‘raise’ the funds necessary to buy and install all the equipment they would need to mine the gold.

On the return trip to Colorado, both the uncle and Darby staked their claim. They went to work on the mine. They pulled the first car out filled with ore out and sent it to the smelters to determine the gold content. The results came back and they were able to prove that indeed this had been one of the richest finds of gold in history! Of course everyone was mesmerized with dollar signs/wealth in their eyes. They ‘knew’ that in just a short period of time of mining they would all have amassed more wealth than they had ever dreamt about!

So they fired up the drills and went after the gold with a vengeance; and that’s when they hit their wall! Something happened. The gold ‘vein’ had mysteriously disappeared! It was nowhere to be found – they kept digging, and digging, and digging further down, but it was to no avail … it just wasn’t there! They desperately tried and tried and tried some more! Their hopes, dreams, all their wishes were dashed! They had come crushing down – boom!

Down and out, depressed, and dragging their feet, with their shoulders stooped – they finally decided to quit. They had all those thoughts that no doubt – you’ve all had before. Thoughts like; “…boy, we were pretty stupid to think we would be the ones to find the biggest gold deposits in history weren’t we? What the heck were we thinking? Surely if there were any real gold here, the entire world would be digging here! We’re just a bunch of amateurs anyway, there are well financed & rich companies out there with all the experts in the world telling them scientifically where to dig, and we come down here on a hunch and a prayer hoping to make the gold appear? Boy was that dumb … we’re just a bunch of dreamers … geeesh! Well, never
again! I’ll tell you what Darby, I will never waste my time chasing down another one of these wild goose chases!!! I mean, I’m an adult now … this is the stuff that kids like you – your age go after this kind of thing, I’m too old for this crap anymore! I’m going to settle in and just get a good paying job and do the smart thing! Will you just kick my teeth in the next time I start talking delirious again, if ever? Let’s just sell all the equipment to some other fool like us, if there are any others left, and get the hell out of here and go back home.”

Does Any of This Sound Familiar?

So they decided to walk away from it, and sell it for whatever they could sell their equipment for. They found a man who bought junk for pennies. The ‘junk’ man bought all their machinery and equipment for a few hundred dollars. The Darby’s took the next train back home to Maryland. Mr. Junk Man decided to bring in a mine engineer (a specialist) and look at the mine and do some analysis. Well it didn’t take long for this specialist to discover what the Darby’s had done wrong, where they had made their mistake. It turns out as he explained to the junk man; the Darby’s had overlooked or were unaware of “fault lines.” He further explained that according to his calculations, the huge gold vein would be found again just three feet away from where the Darby’s had stopped drilling!
Needless to say, they started drilling in the place the specialist had indicated and …

The Gold Vein was Found Exactly Three Feet Away!

Exactly where the fault line shift indicated.

The result: The junk man took in MILLIONS of dollars in gold ore out of the mine simply because he had the presence of mind to seek a specialist / expert before he gave up.

The moral of the story: I’ll leave that for you to think about.

You shouldn’t feel bad for Mr. Darby. You see, what appears to have been a massive blunder (and it was), Darby learned
from. Remember that he vowed to find a ‘good’ job? Well Darby went into the life insurance business. He used his prior experience of having lost a fortune because he had stopped just 3 feet away from the gold. He remembered the lesson, and he vowed in his new business to – never stop because someone said ‘no’ to him when he asked them to buy insurance. So Darby never again stopped.

Darby became one of just a handful of ‘producers’ who sold over a million dollars in life insurance annually. He had learned to stick with it
because he had already experienced quitting
in his past gold mining business. It might not seem like much today, but this happened in the early 1900’s at the turn of the past century!

Sorry about getting off Track about the story but I have 5 Main Places I prospect