When we finally left for Esmeralda, horseback, we had an addition to the
company in the person of Capt. John Nye, the Governor’s brother. He
had a good memory, and a tongue hung in the middle. This is a combination
which gives immortality to conversation. Capt. John never suffered the
talk to flag or falter once during the hundred and twenty miles of the
journey. In addition to his conversational powers, he had one or two other
endowments of a marked character. One was a singular “handiness”
about doing anything and everything, from laying out a railroad or
organizing a political party, down to sewing on buttons, shoeing a horse,
or setting a broken leg, or a hen. Another was a spirit of accommodation
that prompted him to take the needs, difficulties and perplexities of
anybody and everybody upon his own shoulders at any and all times, and
dispose of them with admirable facility and alacrity—hence he always
managed to find vacant beds in crowded inns, and plenty to eat in the
emptiest larders. And finally, wherever he met a man, woman or child, in
camp, inn or desert, he either knew such parties personally or had been
acquainted with a relative of the same. Such another traveling comrade was
never seen before. I cannot forbear giving a specimen of the way in which
he overcame difficulties. On the second day out, we arrived, very tired
and hungry, at a poor little inn in the desert, and were told that the
house was full, no provisions on hand, and neither hay nor barley to spare
for the horses—must move on. The rest of us wanted to hurry on while
it was yet light, but Capt. John insisted on stopping awhile. We
dismounted and entered. There was no welcome for us on any face. Capt.
John began his blandishments, and within twenty minutes he had
accomplished the following things, viz.: found old acquaintances in three
teamsters; discovered that he used to go to school with the landlord’s
mother; recognized his wife as a lady whose life he had saved once in
California, by stopping her runaway horse; mended a child’s broken
toy and won the favor of its mother, a guest of the inn; helped the
hostler bleed a horse, and prescribed for another horse that had the
“heaves”; treated the entire party three times at the landlord’s
bar; produced a later paper than anybody had seen for a week and sat
himself down to read the news to a deeply interested audience. The result,
summed up, was as follows: The hostler found plenty of feed for our
horses; we had a trout supper, an exceedingly sociable time after it, good
beds to sleep in, and a surprising breakfast in the morning—and when
we left, we left lamented by all! Capt. John had some bad traits, but he
had some uncommonly valuable ones to offset them with.
Esmeralda was in many respects another Humboldt, but in a little more
forward state. The claims we had been paying assessments on were entirely
worthless, and we threw them away. The principal one cropped out of the
top of a knoll that was fourteen feet high, and the inspired Board of
Directors were running a tunnel under that knoll to strike the ledge. The
tunnel would have to be seventy feet long, and would then strike the ledge
at the same dept that a shaft twelve feet deep would have reached!
The Board were living on the “assessments.” [N.B.—This
hint comes too late for the enlightenment of New York silver miners; they
have already learned all about this neat trick by experience.] The Board
had no desire to strike the ledge, knowing that it was as barren of silver
as a curbstone. This reminiscence calls to mind Jim Townsend’s
tunnel. He had paid assessments on a mine called the “Daley”
till he was well-nigh penniless. Finally an assessment was levied to run a
tunnel two hundred and fifty feet on the Daley, and Townsend went up on
the hill to look into matters.
He found the Daley cropping out of the apex of an exceedingly sharp-
pointed peak, and a couple of men up there “facing” the
proposed tunnel. Townsend made a calculation. Then he said to the men:
“So you have taken a contract to run a tunnel into this hill two
hundred and fifty feet to strike this ledge?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, do you know that you have got one of the most expensive and
arduous undertakings before you that was ever conceived by man?”
“Why no—how is that?”
“Because this hill is only twenty-five feet through from side to
side; and so you have got to build two hundred and twenty-five feet of
your tunnel on trestle-work!”
The ways of silver mining Boards are exceedingly dark and sinuous.
We took up various claims, and commenced shafts and tunnels on
them, but never finished any of them. We had to do a certain amount of
work on each to “hold” it, else other parties could seize our
property after the expiration of ten days. We were always hunting up new
claims and doing a little work on them and then waiting for a buyer—who
never came. We never found any ore that would yield more than fifty
dollars a ton; and as the mills charged fifty dollars a ton for working
ore and extracting the silver, our pocket-money melted steadily away and
none returned to take its place. We lived in a little cabin and cooked for
ourselves; and altogether it was a hard life, though a hopeful one—for
we never ceased to expect fortune and a customer to burst upon us some
day.
At last, when flour reached a dollar a pound, and money could not be
borrowed on the best security at less than eight per cent a month
(I being without the security, too), I abandoned mining and went to
milling. That is to say, I went to work as a common laborer in a quartz
mill, at ten dollars a week and board.
