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Arnold, Oren. Superstition's gold... 1934. One thousand copies were mistakenly printed when they ordered 100 copies. As "hand-tinted in oils by Dona Linda Esposa" suggests, the colors were added by some of the Dons' wives. They didn't complete the job, however, so Arnold paid one of them $.50 per volume to finish (GD). Superstition's gold... 1946. The 1946 edition is almost identical in content to the 1934 edition. The last two paragraphs of the original introduction are deleted and four new paragraphs are added at the end of chapter 9, Other Men's Lives, thus bringing local happenings in the Superstitions up-to-date. More significant is the replacement of the original illustrations with a whole new set; they are better too. Ghost gold. 1954. Ghost Gold certainly looks like a new work when compared to Superstition's Gold, but closer examination reveals the content to be substantially the same. Nevertheless, the title is different, it is a nice hardcover with a dust jacket, the old fashioned illustrations are gone, and there are eight new pages of photographs as well as a new preface. The few differences in the text are found in chapters 8-11. For example, chapter 9 is rewritten to bring matters up-to-date, but in the process Arnold drops any mention of things found in previous editions, the Howlands for instance. Likewise, chapter 10 drops mention of the tale Mike Burn's told the Dons. Chapter 11, on the other hand, adds to the advice Arnold gives to adventure seekers in the Superstitions. The First, Second, Third, and Fourth editions are identical. Significant changes do appear, however, with the publication of the Fifth edition in 1967, the "enlarged and expanded edition." An entirely new chapter is added, Modern Dramas in the Mountains, bringing things up-to-date as of October 1966 (i.e. Glenn Magill). This becomes a new chapter ten, increasing the total number of chapters in the book to twelve. The other very noticeable change is the shift of the plates of photographs from the front of the book to the middle. The difference in the total number of pages between the First and Fifth editions is due to this additional chapter and to the text being spread over more pages. The Sixth edition, 1971, has an additional four pages in chapter ten and a dedication page, but there are no changes to the Seventh. So, editions 1-4 are the same, 5 is different, 6 is different, and 7 is just like 6. One puzzle I noticed was that even though the total number of pages reaches 84 by the Fifth edition the subsequent Sixth and Seventh editions contain 80 pages; what happened? The answer is not found in the text, there is very little difference between the Fifth and Sixth editions, but rather in the way Arnold did the pagination. What he did was start the numbering of the text differently. In the Fifth, pagination starts with Roman numerals then continues with Arabic numerals when the main text is reached, pagination starting there with page 11. In the later editions he starts numbering the main text with the numeral 1, not just continuing in Arabic numerals the sequence started in Roman numerals. So here the front matter pagination using Roman numerals goes to xv and stops. This method of pagination plus the addition of the new pages in the Sixth explain the different numbers of pages; that is, the actual number of physical pages only increases by 5 or so, but the way he counts them is different. Arnold's tales about Waltz (or Walz as he spells it!), the Peraltas, and latter-day searchers are key sources for Lost Dutchman lore, though not for Lost Dutchman facts. Arnold tells the story well in a tall-tales manner, artfully and self-consciously a good yarn rather than an artless presentation of "facts." Arnold obviously meant it to be fun and to glorify the "romance" of the story. This playful sophistication is missing in many Dutchman writers who tend to take it all very seriously. On the other hand, Arnold's work is not too satisfying if what is desired is a critical presentation of the "facts." It is interesting to speculate on the place of Arnold's book in the popularization and spread of the Lost Dutchman lore. Arnold was the first president of the Dons and a professional writer who authored a number of works on a wide range of topics. CM: "A colorful, well-written tale concerning the Lost Dutchman Mine, originally published in 1934 under the title Superstition Gold."

Doug Stewart. © 1994-2012.