"salting"

[George Thompson]

We English majors -- some of us, anyway -- would call this a conjectural emendation, and it's an excellent one.

I was reading this from a microfilm, not from the EAN database.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
Date: Friday, September 10, 2010 5:59 pm
Subject: Re: "salting"
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> George,
>
> I just looked into EAN.  I assume, since you wrote "garbled" and not
> "unreadable", you have the whole last sentence, which reads:
> "When the lucky spot is pointed out to the gold hunter, and it is
> "panned" as the term goes, particles of gold salted in a proper way,
> of the course discovered, as the land is bid for accordingly."
>
> My guess is that the meaning is "[particles of gold] are of course
> discovered, and the land is bid for accordingly."
>
> EAN has this from the Rhode Island American, Oct. 18, 1832 (two days
> later than the Morning Courier & New-York Enquirer, which was a
> little closer to the South); and the Salem Gazette, Oct. 26, 1832.
>
> This is presumably about the Georgia Gold Rush of 1829.  I think
> someone of Hawthorne's family went South and lost his investment
> (although I don't know whether he bought into a salted mine).  The
> publication in the Salem Gazette is perhaps not surprising.
>
> Joel
>
> At 9/10/2010 05:08 PM, George Thompson wrote:
> >My many fans will be disappointed to find that there is nothing at
> >all indecent about this posting.
> >
> >Salting. -- A new and unprecedented scheme to knavery has been
> >invented in the gold regions of the South. . . .  It consists of
> >sprinkling judiciously a few penny weights of gold in places which
> >have all other signs of containing the precious metal, except the
> >gold itself.  When the lucky spot is pointed out to the gold hunter,
> >and it is "panned" as the term goes, particles of gold salted in a
> >proper way [are found].  ***
> >Morning Courier & New-York Enquirer, October 17, 1832, p. 2, col.
> >3  [The end of the last sentence quoted is garbled beyond
> >explication.  The article concludes with an instance of a man who
> >paid heavily for land that had been salted, and after more than a
> >year's effort, had found only a few dollars worth of gold.]
>
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