28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
AFTER leaving the Sink, we traveled along the Humboldt
river a little way. People accustomed to the monster mile-wide
Mississippi, grow accustomed to associating the term "river" with
a high degree of watery grandeur. Consequently, such people feel
rather disappointed when they stand on the shores of the Humboldt
or the Carson and find that a "river" in Nevada is a sickly rivulet
which is just the counterpart of the Erie canal in all respects save
that the canal is twice as long and four times as deep. One of the
pleasantest and most invigorating exercises one can contrive is to
run and jump across the Humboldt river till he is overheated, and
then drink it dry.
On the fifteenth day we completed our march of two hundred
miles and entered Unionville, Humboldt county, in the midst of a
driving snow-storm. Unionville consisted of eleven cabins and a
liberty-pole. Six of the cabins were strung along one side of a
deep canyon, and the other five faced them. The rest of the
landscape was made up of bleak mountain walls that rose so high
into the sky from both sides of the canyon that the village was left,
as it were, far down in the bottom of a crevice. It was always
daylight on the mountain tops a long time before the darkness
lifted and revealed Unionville.
We built a small, rude cabin in the side of the crevice and
roofed it with canvas, leaving a corner open to serve as a chimney,
through which the cattle used to tumble occasionally,
at night, and mash our furniture and interrupt our sleep. It was
very cold weather and fuel was scarce. Indians brought brush and
bushes several miles on their backs; and when we could catch a
laden Indian it was well—and when we could not (which was the
rule, not the exception), we shivered and bore it.
I confess, without shame, that I expected to find masses of
silver lying all about the ground. I expected to see it glittering in
the sun on the mountain summits. I said nothing about this, for
some instinct told me that I might possibly have an exaggerated
idea about it, and so if I betrayed my thought I might bring derision
upon myself. Yet I was as perfectly satisfied in my own mind as I
could be of anything, that I was going to gather up, in a day or two,
or at furthest a week or two, silver enough to make me
satisfactorily wealthy—and so my fancy was already busy with
plans for spending this money. The first opportunity that offered, I
sauntered carelessly away from the cabin, keeping an eye on the
other boys, and stopping and contemplating the sky when they
seemed to be observing me; but as soon as the coast was
manifestly clear, I fled away as guiltily as a thief might have done
and never halted till I was far beyond sight and call. Then I began
my search with a feverish excitement that was brimful of
expectation—almost of certainty. I crawled about the ground,
seizing and examining bits of stone, blowing the dust from them or
rubbing them on my clothes, and then peering at them with
anxious hope. Presently I found a bright fragment and my heart
bounded! I hid behind a boulder and polished it and scrutinized it
with a nervous eagerness and a delight that was more pronounced
than absolute certainty itself could have afforded. The more I
examined the fragment the more I was convinced that I had found
the door to fortune. I marked the spot and carried away my
specimen. Up and down the rugged mountain side I searched, with
always increasing interest and always augmenting gratitude that I
had come to Humboldt and come in time. Of all the experiences
of my life, this
secret search among the hidden treasures of silver-land was the
nearest to unmarred ecstasy. It was a delirious revel.
By and by, in the bed of a shallow rivulet, I found a deposit of
shining yellow scales, and my breath almost forsook me! A gold
mine, and in my simplicity I had been content with vulgar silver! I
was so excited that I half believed my overwrought imagination
was deceiving me. Then a fear came upon me that people might
be observing me and would guess my secret. Moved by this
thought, I made a circuit of the place, and ascended a knoll to
reconnoiter. Solitude. No creature was near. Then I returned to
my mine, fortifying myself against possible disappointment, but
my fears were groundless—the shining scales were still there. I set
about scooping them out, and for an hour I toiled down the
windings of the stream and robbed its bed. But at last the
descending sun warned me to give up the quest, and I turned
homeward laden with wealth. As I walked along I could not help
smiling at the thought of my being so excited over my fragment of
silver when a nobler metal was almost under my nose. In this little
time the former had so fallen in my estimation that once or twice I
was on the point of throwing it away.
The boys were as hungry as usual, but I could eat nothing.
Neither could I talk. I was full of dreams and far away.
Their conversation interrupted the flow of my fancy somewhat,
and annoyed me a little, too. I despised the sordid and
commonplace things they talked about. But as they proceeded, it
began to amuse me. It grew to be rare fun to hear them planning
their poor little economies and sighing over possible privations
and distresses when a gold mine, all our own, lay within sight of
the cabin and I could point it out at any moment. Smothered
hilarity began to oppress me, presently. It was hard to resist the
impulse to burst out with exultation and reveal everything; but I
did resist. I said within myself that I would filter the great news
through my lips calmly and be serene as a summer morning while I
watched its effect in their faces. I said:
"Where have you all been?"
"Prospecting."
"What did you find?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? What do you think of the country?"
"Can't tell, yet," said Mr. Ballou, who was an old gold miner,
and had likewise had considerable experience among the silver
mines.
"Well, haven't you formed any sort of opinion?"
"Yes, a sort of a one. It's fair enough here, may be, but
overrated. Seven thousand dollar ledges are scarce, though. That
Sheba may be rich enough, but we don't own it; and besides, the
rock is so full of base metals that all the science in the world can't
work it. We'll not starve, here, but we'll not get rich, I'm
afraid."
"So you think the prospect is pretty poor?"
"No name for it!"
"Well, we'd better go back, hadn't we?"
"Oh, not yet—of course not. We'll try it a riffle, first."
"Suppose, now—this is merely a supposition, you
know—suppose you could find a ledge that would yield, say, a
hundred and fifty dollars a ton—would that satisfy you?"
"Try us once!" from the whole party.
"Or suppose—merely a supposition, of course—suppose
you were to find a ledge that would yield two thousand dollars a
ton—would
that
satisfy you?"
"Here—what do you mean? What are you coming at? Is there
some mystery behind all this?"
"Never mind. I am not saying anything. You know perfectly
well there are no rich mines here—of course you do. Because you
have been around and examined for yourselves. Anybody would
know that, that had been around. But just for the sake of
argument, suppose—in a kind of general way—suppose some person
were to tell you that two-thousand-dollar ledges were simply
contemptible—contemptible, understand—and that right yonder in
sight of this very cabin there were piles of pure gold and pure
silver—oceans of it—enough to make you all rich in twenty-four
hours! Come!"
"I should say he was as crazy as a loon!" said old Ballou, but
wild with excitement, nevertheless.
"Gentlemen," said I, "I don't say
anything—I haven't
been around, you know, and of course don't know anything—but all
I ask of you is to cast your eye
on
that, for instance, and tell
me what you think of it!" and I tossed my
treasure before them.
There was an eager scramble for it, and a closing of heads
together over it under the candle-light. Then old Ballou said:
"Think of it? I think it is nothing but a lot of granite rubbish
and nasty glittering mica that isn't worth ten cents an acre!"
So vanished my dream. So melted my wealth away. So
toppled my airy castle to the earth and left me stricken and
forlorn.
Moralizing, I observed, then, that "all that glitters is not
gold."
Mr. Ballou said I could go further than that, and lay it up
among my treasures of knowledge,
that nothing that glitters is gold.
So I learned then, once for all, that gold in its
native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born
metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious
glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on
underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica.
Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.