30. CHAPTER XXX.
I MET men at every turn who owned from one thousand to
thirty thousand "feet" in undeveloped silver mines, every single
foot of which they believed would shortly be worth from fifty to a
thousand dollars—and as often as any other way they were men
who had not twenty-five dollars in the world. Every man you met
had his new mine to boast of, and his "specimens" ready; and if the
opportunity offered, he would infallibly back you into a corner and
offer as a favor to
you, not
to him, to
part with just a few feet in the "Golden Age," or the "Sarah
Jane," or some other unknown stack of croppings, for money
enough to get a "square meal" with, as the phrase went. And you
were never to reveal that he had made you the offer at such a
ruinous price, for it was only out of friendship for you that he was
willing to make the sacrifice. Then he would fish a piece of rock
out of his pocket, and after looking mysteriously around as if he
feared he might be waylaid and robbed if caught with such wealth
in his possession, he would dab the rock against his tongue, clap
an eyeglass to it, and exclaim:
"Look at that! Right there in that red dirt! See it? See the
specks of gold? And the streak of silver? That's from the Uncle
Abe.' There's a hundred thousand tons like that in sight! Right in
sight, mind you! And when we get down on it and the ledge comes
in solid, it will be the richest thing in the world! Look at the assay!
I don't want you to believe
me—look at the assay!"
Then he would get out a greasy sheet of paper which showed
that the portion of rock assayed had given evidence of containing
silver and gold in the proportion of so many hundreds or thousands
of dollars to the ton.
I little knew, then, that the custom was to hunt out
the richest piece
of rock and get it assayed! Very often, that piece, the size of
a filbert, was the only fragment in a ton that had a particle of metal
in it—and yet the assay made it pretend to represent the average
value of the ton of rubbish it came from!
On such a system of assaying as that, the Humboldt world had
gone crazy. On the authority of such assays its newspaper
correspondents were frothing about rock worth four and seven
thousand dollars a ton!
And does the reader remember, a few pages back, the
calculations, of a quoted correspondent, whereby the ore is to be
mined and shipped all the way to England, the metals extracted,
and the gold and silver contents received back by the miners as
clear profit, the copper, antimony and other things in the ore being
sufficient to pay all the expenses incurred? Everybody's head was
full of such "calculations" as those—such raving insanity, rather.
Few people took work into
their
calculations—or outlay of money either; except the work and
expenditures of other people.
We never touched our tunnel or our shaft again. Why?
Because we judged that we had learned
the real secret of
success in silver mining—which was,
not to mine the silver
ourselves by the sweat of our brows and the
labor of our hands, but
to sell the ledges to
the dull slaves of toil and let them do the
mining!
Before leaving Carson, the Secretary and I had purchased
"feet" from various Esmeralda stragglers. We had expected
immediate returns of bullion, but were only afflicted with regular
and constant "assessments" instead—demands for money
wherewith to develop the said mines. These assessments had
grown so oppressive that it seemed necessary to look into the
matter personally. Therefore I projected a pilgrimage to Carson
and thence to Esmeralda. I bought a horse and started, in company
with Mr. Ballou and a gentleman named Ollendorff, a
Prussian—not the party who has inflicted so much suffering on the
world with his wretched foreign grammars, with their interminable
repetitions of questions which never have occurred and are never
likely to occur in any conversation among human beings. We rode
through a snow-storm for two or three days, and arrived at "Honey
Lake Smith's," a sort of isolated inn on the Carson river. It was a
two-story log house situated on a small knoll in the midst of the
vast basin or desert through which the sickly Carson winds its
melancholy way. Close to the house were the Overland stage
stables, built of sun-dried bricks. There was not another building
within several leagues of the place. Towards sunset about twenty
hay-wagons arrived and camped around the house and all the
teamsters came in to supper—a very, very rough set. There were
one or two Overland stage drivers there, also, and half a dozen
vagabonds and stragglers; consequently the house was well
crowded.
We walked out, after supper, and visited a small Indian camp
in the vicinity. The Indians were in a great hurry about something,
and were packing up and getting away as
fast as they could. In their broken English they said, "By'm-by,
heap water!" and by the help of signs made us understand that in
their opinion a flood was coming. The weather was perfectly
clear, and this was not the rainy season. There was about a foot of
water in the insignificant river—or maybe two feet; the stream was
not wider than a back alley in a village, and its banks were
scarcely higher than a man's head.
So, where was the flood to come from? We canvassed the subject
awhile and then concluded it was a ruse, and that the Indians had
some better reason for leaving in a hurry than fears of a flood in
such an exceedingly dry time.
At seven in the evening we went to bed in the second
story—with our clothes on, as usual, and all three in the same bed,
for every available space on the floors, chairs, etc., was in request,
and even then there was barely room for the housing of the inn's
guests. An hour later we were awakened by a great turmoil, and
springing out of bed we picked our way nimbly among the ranks of
snoring teamsters on the floor and got to the front windows of the
long room. A glance revealed a strange spectacle, under the
moonlight. The crooked Carson was full to the brim, and its
waters were raging and foaming in the wildest way—sweeping
around the sharp bends at a furious speed, and bearing on their
surface a chaos of logs, brush and all sorts of rubbish. A
depression, where its bed had once been, in other times, was
already filling, and in one or two places the water was beginning to
wash over the main bank. Men were flying hither and thither,
bringing
cattle and wagons close up to the house, for the spot of high
ground on which it stood extended only some thirty feet in front
and about a hundred in the rear. Close to the old river bed just
spoken of, stood a little log stable, and in this our horses were
lodged.
While we looked, the waters increased so fast in this place that in a
few minutes a torrent was roaring by the little stable and its margin
encroaching steadily on the logs. We suddenly realized that this
flood was not a mere holiday spectacle, but meant damage—and
not only to the small log stable but to the Overland buildings close
to the main river, for the waves had now come ashore and were
creeping about the foundations and invading the
great hay-corral adjoining. We ran down and joined the crowd of
excited men and frightened animals. We waded knee-deep into
the log stable, unfastened the horses and waded out
almost
waist-deep, so
fast the waters increased. Then the crowd rushed in a
body to the hay-corral and began to tumble down the huge stacks
of baled hay and roll the bales up on the high ground by the house.
Meantime it was discovered that Owens, an overland driver, was
missing, and a man ran to the large stable, and wading in, boot-top
deep, discovered him asleep in his bed, awoke him, and waded out
again. But Owens was drowsy and resumed his nap; but only for a
minute or two, for presently he turned in his bed, his hand dropped
over the side and came in contact with the cold water! It was up
level with the mattrass! He waded out, breast-deep, almost, and
the next moment the sun-burned bricks melted down like sugar
and the big building crumbled to a ruin and was washed away in a
twinkling.
At eleven o'clock only the roof of the little log stable was out
of water, and our inn was on an island in mid-ocean. As far as the
eye could reach, in the moonlight, there was no desert visible, but
only a level waste of shining water. The Indians were true
prophets, but how did they get their information? I am not able to
answer the question.
We remained cooped up eight days and nights with that
curious crew. Swearing, drinking and card playing were the order
of the day, and occasionally a fight was thrown in for variety. Dirt
and vermin—but let us forget those features; their profusion is
simply inconceivable—it is better that they remain so.
There were two men—however, this chapter is long
enough.