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.
