The first mine I visited consisted of an immense horizontal shaft cut several hundred feet into a hill-side... upon which the proprietors had already sunk, in the brief space of one year, the enormous sum of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars! Such is often the fate of the speculative miner, whose vocation is closely allied to gaming, and equally precarious.

Commerce of the Prairies (1831–1839), Chapter 22 - Visit to Town of Jesus-Maria — Anti-Masonic Auto de Fe