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 mattress! 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.
