PREFATORY.
This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious
history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record
of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is
rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour
than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science.
Still, there is information in the volume; information concerning
an interesting episode in the history of the Far West,
about which no books have been written by persons who were
on the ground in person, and saw the happenings of the time
with their own eyes. I allude to the rise, growth and culmination
of the silver-mining fever in Nevada—a curious episode,
in some respects; the only one, of its peculiar kind, that has
occurred in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likely
to occur in it.
Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information
in the book. I regret this very much; but really it
could not be helped: information appears to stew out of me
naturally, like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter.
Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give worlds if I
could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I calk up
the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom.
Therefore, I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the
reader, not justification.
