Arriving at Chihuahua, Kirker went to…
source date: 1889
availability: public-domain

ld timers,” the ad- vance guard, who made the Santa Fe trail and marked the route traveled by thousands in after years; all honorable men, they never returned to their native country ; they were married here, raised respectable families and died in the land of their adoption. Arriving at Chihuahua, Kirker went to Guadalupe Calvo, a mining hacienda in the southern part of the state, belonging to an Eng- lish company, where he was employed as a boss for two years. Meantime, McKnight obtained a lease on the Santa Rita copper mines and writing to Kirker, requested him to come and go in with him. With much regret he left his Eng- lish friends to join the first good friend *he had after his arrival in America. At that time, this was the most fearful and dangerous enterprise that any man could think of engaging in; the mines were more than a hundred miles remote from any settlement and surrounded as they were by two tribes of the worst blood-spilling Indians on the continent; it was like going through the gates of hell to get there. The town of Janos was a presidio on the frontier, midway between Santa Rita copper mines and the city of Chihuahua; he left his family there at a place of safety and engaged in the business of trans- porting the copper to Chihuahua.