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.
