Iowa Old Press
Weekly Council Bluffs Bugle
Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie co., Iowa
Wednesday, June 15, 1859
RICH LEAD
S. B. Kirkland, of Saint John P. O., Harrison County,
Iowa, has just shown us a parcel of quartz gold and gold quartz
which he states he found about twenty miles in the mountains on
the head waters of Vasquers Fork, directly west of this place. He
has $1.70 which he says he panned from a single pan of dirt and
rotten quartz rock. Where he found this lead it has a width of
from six inches to two feet and the depth is unknown. The quartz
is very rotten and the piece shown us literally glitter ad
sparkles with particles of gold.-News.
Almost A Fire
On Sabbath evening last, one of those frightful
accidents so often resulting from the use of Camphene, came near
destroying one of the best brick blocks in this city (the
Metropolitan block,) including a drug store, dry good’s
store, U. S. Receiver’s office, and City Council Chamber,
together with the County Treasurer and Recorder’s Office and
other tenements adjoining.
The accident occurred in a room occupied as a Daguerrean Gallery,
in the second story of the building, from filling a lamp with
Camphene fluid, which, igniting by contact of the leakage with a
burning match, exploded with the report of a small canon, and
instantly the interior of the room was in a blaze; the flames
seizing upon the cotton drapery about the chemicals and the dry
frame which supported it, extended to the ceiling before a move
could be made to extinguish them. Fortunately, assistance was
promptly at the spot, and the imminent danger was averted,
without further damage than that to the Daguerrean’s
apartus.
This is another pregnant warning, among the thousands on record,
against the use of an article which is more dangerous than gun
powder. When will people learn wisdom? Or, must we wait for some
more calamitous experience in the loss of life and property, for
such prohibitory measures as the public safety require?
Poor Babbitt
Col. Babbitt, the editor-in-chief of the Council
Bluffs Bugle, is very anxious to receive the nomination of
the Democratic State Convention for Lieutenant Governor. This,
however, is not at all surprising, for he is ALWAYS fishing for
office, whenever there is one to be filled; but then connected
with his wire pulling to secure the nomination of the approaching
Democratic Convention, we happen to know something that is too
good to be lost. A few days since, the Col. addressed a letter to
a prominent Democrat in this city, who is a delegate to the State
Convention, informing him of the very important fact that he
wished to be nominated for Lieutenant Governor, and asking his
support. But oh! cruel disappointment! His Democratic friend
informed him that he could not support any man who had interested
himself in inducing men to leave their homes and go off to the
plains to suffer from the notorious Pike’s Peak humbug, of
which the Bugle is one of the principle tools.-Served him right.-Winterset
Madisonian.
We copy the above for the purpose of showing how desperate our
political opponents are getting. Pike’s Peak, we suppose, is
one of the issues that our Black Republican opponents rely upon
for success. We have published and still continue to publish the
news from the Peak as we find it in the Newspapers, and as we get
it from reliable sources. If this be a political sin, we must
plead guilty and come down; but we would ask if we as an editor
of a paper are not expected to give the news from Pike’s
Peak as well as from other points? If Pike’s Peak is a
humbug (which we believe it is not) whose fault is it? Not ours.
We published such letters and only such as we knew to be Genuine,
and from men whose character, while residents here in Iowa, for
truth and veracity was never questioned. Are we to be blamed for
publishing their letters? – Does the editor of the
Madisonian assume that we are? Does he hold himself responsible
for the truth of every item of news that appears in his paper? We
think he does not, and his futile and foolish attempt to create a
little capital out of the above manufactured falsehood, we think
will not be long in recoiling upon the head of its author.
In conclusion we will say that the man cannot be found in Iowa,
who will say, and speak the truth, that we orally or by written
communication, requested him to vote for us for Lieut. Governor.
Nor has any man from Madison county, or any other county,
informed us that he could not support us for the cause alleged
above, or for any other cause.
The whole of the above statement from the Madisonian is
without any foundation, and to call the author of it a LIAR,
would be treating him with more respect than his standing in
community entitles him to receive.
[transcribed by L.D., November 2014]