They hastened back to Brazil, only to find that the mines from which the pebbles had been gathered had been taken up by other prospectors and sold to the government.
The richest gold and silver mine in Nevada was sold by the owner for $42, to get money to pay his passage to other mines, where he thought he could get rich.

Professor Agassiz once told the Harvard students of a farmer who owned a farm of hundreds of acres of unprofitable woods and rocks, and concluded to sell out and get into a more profitable business.

He decided to go into the coal-oil business; he studied coal measures and coal-oil deposits, and experimented for a long time.

He sold his farm for $200, and engaged in his new business two hundred miles away.

Only a short time after, the man who bought his farm discovered upon it a great flood of coal-oil, which the farmer had previously ignorantly tried to drain off.
Hundreds of years ago there lived near the shore of the river Indus a Persian by the name of Ali Hafed.