By and by I was smitten with the silver fever. “Prospecting
parties” were leaving for the mountains every day, and
discovering and taking possession 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.
