26. CHAPTER XXVI.
BY and by I was smitten with the silver fever. "Prospecting
parties" were leaving for the mountains every day, and discovering
and taking possesion of rich silver-bearing lodes and ledges of
quartz. Plainly this was the road to fortune. The great "Gould and
Curry" mine was held at three or four hundred dollars a foot when
we arrived; but in two months it had sprung up to eight hundred.
The "Ophir" had been worth only a mere trifle, a year gone by, and
now it was selling at nearly
four thousand dollars a foot!
Not a mine could be named that had not experienced an
astonishing advance in value within a short time. Everybody was
talking about these marvels. Go where you would, you heard
nothing else, from morning till far into the night. Tom So-and-So
had sold out of the 'Amanda Smith" for $40,000—hadn't a cent
when he "took up" the ledge six months ago. John Jones had sold
half his interest in the "Bald Eagle and Mary Ann" for $65,000,
gold coin, and gone to the States for his family. The widow
Brewster had "struck it rich" in the "Golden Fleece" and sold ten
feet for $18,000—hadn't money enough to buy a crape bonnet when
Sing-Sing Tommy killed her husband at Baldy Johnson's wake last
spring. The "Last Chance" had found a "clay casing" and knew
they were "right on the ledge"—consequence, "feet" that went
begging yesterday were worth a brick house apiece to-day, and
seedy owners who could not get trusted for a drink at any bar in
the country yesterday were roaring drunk on champagne to-day
and had hosts of warm personal friends in a town where they had
forgotten how to bow or shake hands from long-continued want of
practice. Johnny Morgan, a common loafer, had gone to sleep in
the gutter and waked up worth a hundred thousand dollars, in
consequence of the decision in the "Lady Franklin and Rough and
Ready" lawsuit. And so on—day in and day out the talk pelted our
ears and the excitement waxed hotter and hotter around us.
I would have been more or less than human if I had not gone
mad like the rest. Cart-loads of solid silver bricks, as large as pigs
of lead, were arriving from the mills every day, and such sights as
that gave substance to the wild talk about me. I succumbed and
grew as frenzied as the craziest.
Every few days news would come of the discovery of a
bran-new mining region; immediately the papers would teem with
accounts of its richness, and away the surplus population would
scamper to take possession. By the time I was fairly inoculated
with the disease, "Esmeralda" had just had a run and "Humboldt"
was beginning to shriek for attention. "Humboldt! Humboldt!"
was the new cry, and straightway Humboldt, the newest of the
new, the richest of the rich, the most marvellous of the marvellous
discoveries in silver-land was occupying two columns of the public
prints to
"Esmeralda's" one. I was just on the point of starting to
Esmeralda, but turned with the tide and got ready for Humboldt.
That the reader may see what moved me, and what would as surely
have moved him had he been there, I insert here one of the
newspaper letters of the day. It and several other letters from the
same calm hand were the main means of converting me. I shall
not garble the extract, but put it in just as it appeared in the
Daily Territorial Enterprise:
But what about our mines? I shall be candid with you. I shall
express an honest opinion, based upon a thorough examination.
Humboldt county is the richest mineral region upon God's
footstool. Each mountain range is gorged with the precious ores.
Humboldt is the true Golconda.
The other day an assay of
mere croppings yielded exceeding
four thousand dollars to the ton. A week
or two ago an assay of just such surface developments
made returns of
seven thousand dollars
to the ton. Our mountains are full of rambling
prospectors. Each day and almost every hour reveals new and
more startling evidences of the profuse and intensified wealth of
our favored county. The metal is not silver alone. There are
distinct ledges of auriferous ore. A late discovery plainly evinces
cinnabar. The coarser metals are in gross abundance. Lately
evidences of bituminous coal have been detected. My theory has
ever been that coal is a ligneous formation. I told Col. Whitman,
in times past, that the neighborhood of Dayton (Nevada) betrayed
no present or previous manifestations of a ligneous foundation,
and that hence I had no confidence in his lauded coal mines. I
repeated the same doctrine to the exultant coal discoverers of
Humboldt. I talked with my friend Captain Burch on the subject.
My pyrhanism vanished upon his statement that in the very region
referred to he had seen petrified trees of the length of two hundred
feet. Then is the fact established that huge forests once cast their
grim shadows over this remote section. I am firm in the coal faith.
Have no fears of the mineral resources of Humboldt county. They
are immense—incalculable.
Let me state one or two things which will help the reader to
better comprehend certain items in the above. At this time, our
near neighbor, Gold Hill, was the most successful silver mining
locality in Nevada. It was from there that more than half the daily
shipments of silver bricks came. "Very rich" (and scarce) Gold
Hill ore yielded from $100 to $400 to the ton; but the usual yield
was only $20 to $40 per ton—that is to say, each hundred pounds of
ore yielded from one dollar to two dollars. But the reader will
perceive by the
above extract, that in Humboldt from one fourth to nearly half the
mass was silver! That is to say, every one hundred pounds of the
ore had from
two hundred dollars
up to about
three hundred and fifty in it. Some
days later this same correspondent wrote:
I have spoken of the vast and almost fabulous wealth of this
region—it is incredible. The intestines of our mountains are gorged
with precious ore to plethora. I have said that nature has so shaped
our mountains as to furnish most excellent facilities for the
working of our mines. I have also told you that the country about
here is pregnant with the finest mill sites in the world. But what is
the mining history of Humboldt? The Sheba mine is in the hands
of energetic San Francisco capitalists. It would seem that the ore
is combined with metals that render it difficult of reduction with
our imperfect mountain machinery. The proprietors have
combined the capital and labor hinted at in my exordium. They
are toiling and probing. Their tunnel has reached the length of one
hundred feet. From primal assays alone, coupled with the
development of the mine and public confidence in the continuance
of effort, the stock had reared itself to eight hundred dollars
market value. I do not know that one ton of the ore has been
converted into current metal. I do know that there are many lodes
in this section that surpass the Sheba in primal assay value. Listen
a moment to the calculations of the Sheba operators. They
purpose transporting the ore concentrated to Europe. The
conveyance from Star City (its locality) to Virginia City will cost
seventy dollars per ton; from Virginia to San Francisco, forty
dollars per ton; from thence to Liverpool, its destination, ten
dollars per ton. Their idea is that its conglomerate metals will
reimburse them their cost of
original extraction, the price of transportation, and the expense of
reduction, and that then a ton of the raw ore will net them twelve
hundred dollars. The estimate may be extravagant. Cut it in
twain, and the product is enormous, far transcending any previous
developments of our racy Territory.
A very common calculation is that many of our mines will
yield five hundred dollars to the ton. Such fecundity throws the
Gould & Curry, the Ophir and the Mexican, of your
neighborhood, in the darkest shadow. I have given you the
estimate of the value of a single developed mine. Its richness is
indexed by its market valuation. The people of Humboldt county
are feet crazy. As I
write, our towns are near deserted. They look as
languid as a consumptive girl. What has become of our sinewy
and athletic fellow-citizens? They are coursing through ravines
and over mountain tops. Their tracks are visible in every
direction. Occasionally a horseman will dash among us. His steed
betrays hard usage. He alights before his adobe dwelling, hastily
exchanges courtesies with his townsmen, hurries to an assay office
and from thence to the District Recorder's. In the morning, having
renewed his provisional supplies, he is off again on his wild and
unbeaten route. Why, the fellow numbers already his feet by the
thousands. He is the horse-leech. He has the craving stomach of
the shark or anaconda. He would conquer metallic worlds.
This was enough. The instant we had finished reading the
above article, four of us decided to go to Humboldt. We
commenced getting ready at once. And we also commenced
upbraiding ourselves for not deciding sooner—for we were in terror
lest all the rich mines would be found and secured before we got
there, and we might have to put up with ledges that would not
yield more than two or three hundred dollars a ton, maybe. An
hour before, I would have felt opulent if I had owned ten feet in a
Gold Hill mine whose ore produced twenty-five dollars to the ton;
now I was already annoyed at the prospect of having to put up with
mines the poorest of which would be a marvel in Gold Hill.