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GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 563
ing Obarr's fondness for litigation, I warned my men to be prepared
for action, but to take no offensive step.
" 'Mr. Parks,' were Obarr's first words, 'I want the mine.'
" 'If you were to offer me ten times its value,' I replied, 'I would
not sell it to you.'
" 'Well, the longest pole will knock off the persimmon,' said he
with an implied .threat.
"At the same moment, Mrs. Obarr broke the sluice-gate to let out
the water. There was a laborer in the ditch, and the woman threw
rocks in the water, in order to splash him. Failing to make the man
aggressive, she burst into tears; whereupon her son advanced to attack
him. I caught him by the collar and flung him back. Then the party
went off, swore out warrants against us, and had us all arrested. This
was all done for intimidation, but it failed to work. The next thing I
heard Was that Obarr had,sold the place to Judge Underwood, who, in
turn, sold it to Senator John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina. Then I
lost my fortune. Senator Calhouu wanted to buy my lease, and I sold
it for what I thought was a good price. The very month after the sale,
he took out 24,000 pennyweights of gold, and then I was inclined to
be as mad with him as Obarr was with me. But gold mining is like
gambling—all luck."
According to the late Prof. "W. S. Yeates, who was at one time state
geologist of Georgia, an expression which Mark Twain has made classic
in two hemispheres originated at Dahlonega. Says Professor Yeates:
'' One of the most active and enthusiastic spirits of the flush times was
Dr. M. F. Stevenson, an amateur geologist and mineralogist, who was
full of the belief that Georgia was one of the richest mineral States in
the Union. When, in 1849, the miners around Dahlonega gathered to
take action on the project of deserting the mines in Georgia and going
in a body to the new fields of California, this earnest believer in Geor
gia's great mineral wealth mounted the court-house steps in Dahlonega,
and, addressing a crowd of about 200 miners, plead with them not to
be turned by the stories of the wondrous discoveries in California, but
to stick to the Georgia fields, which were rich in possibilities. Point
ing to Findley. Ridge, which lay about half a mile to the south, he ex
claimed: 'Why go to California? In that ridge lies more gold than
man ever dreamt of. There's millions in it.' This last sentence was
caught up by the miners and taken with them to California, where for
years it was a by-word among them. It remained for Mark Twain,
who heard it.in common use, in one of the mining camps of California,
to broadcast it over creation by placing it in the mouth of his world-
renowned character, Colonel Mulberry Sellers.'' *
EAELT GOLD-MINING IN GEORGIA.—According to the testimony of not a few resi
dents in this neighborhood, some of whom have passed the patriarchal limit of four
score years, gold was found in Lumpkin County prior to the date given for its dis
covery in White County, on Duke's Creek, in 1828. Mr. Eeese Crisson, one of the
best-known of the practical miners who came to Dahlonega in the early days, was
heard to say on more than one occasion that when he came to Dahlonega, in the
above-named year, it was some time after the discovery of gold in this neighborhood.
Mr. Joseph Edwards, a man of solid worth, still living at a ripe old age near
'Gold Deposits of Georgia," Bulletin 4-A, pp. 274-275, Atlanta, 1896.