Note 13 — THE LEGEND OF THE SAN SABA OR BOWIE MINE
Reading edition
Where history is doubtful, legend is assured; and a volume of the most engrossing narratives might easily be compiled on the Almagres Mine. The legend, in its color, variety, and luxuriance, has reached into the literature of England and continental Europe,13 reverted with thousand-fold increase to the Mexican land of its birth, and flourished in the camps, households, and offices of a century of American cowboys, rangers, miners, farmers, bankers, lawyers, preachers, and newspaper writers of the Southwest; entering, on one hand, into professed fiction,14 and on the other hand, leading hundreds of men into the grave business of disemboweling mountains, draining lakes, and turning rivers out of their courses.