A day or two after that we picked up a Denver man at the cross roads,

and he told us a good deal about the country and the Gregory Diggings.

He seemed a very entertaining person and a man well posted in the

affairs of Colorado. By and by he remarked:

“I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to

listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was

leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an

engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through

quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The

coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the

buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean

through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and

begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was

awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get

you there on time!’—and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”

At Fort Bridger, some days after this, we took on board a cavalry

sergeant, a very proper and soldierly person indeed. From no other man

during the whole journey, did we gather such a store of concise and

well-arranged military information. It was surprising to find in the

desolate wilds of our country a man so thoroughly acquainted with

everything useful to know in his line of life, and yet of such inferior

rank and unpretentious bearing. For as much as three hours we listened

to him with unabated interest. Finally he got upon the subject of trans-

continental travel, and presently said:

“I can tell you a very laughable thing indeed, if you would like to

listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was

leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an

engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through

quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The

coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the

buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean

through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and

begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was

awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get

you there on time!’—and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”

When we were eight hours out from Salt Lake City a Mormon preacher got

in with us at a way station—a gentle, soft-spoken, kindly man, and one

whom any stranger would warm to at first sight. I can never forget the

pathos that was in his voice as he told, in simple language, the story

of his people’s wanderings and unpitied sufferings. No pulpit eloquence

was ever so moving and so beautiful as this outcast’s picture of the

first Mormon pilgrimage across the plains, struggling sorrowfully onward

to the land of its banishment and marking its desolate way with graves

and watering it with tears. His words so wrought upon us that it was a

relief to us all when the conversation drifted into a more cheerful

channel and the natural features of the curious country we were in came

under treatment. One matter after another was pleasantly discussed, and

at length the stranger said:

“I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to

listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was

leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an

engagement to lecture in Placerville, and was very anxious to go through

quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The

coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the

buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean

through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and

begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was

awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get

you there on time!’—and you bet you bet you he did, too, what was left

of him!”

Ten miles out of Ragtown we found a poor wanderer who had lain down to

die. He had walked as long as he could, but his limbs had failed him at

last. Hunger and fatigue had conquered him. It would have been inhuman

to leave him there. We paid his fare to Carson and lifted him into the

coach. It was some little time before he showed any very decided signs

of life; but by dint of chafing him and pouring brandy between his lips

we finally brought him to a languid consciousness. Then we fed him a

little, and by and by he seemed to comprehend the situation and a

grateful light softened his eye. We made his mail-sack bed as

comfortable as possible, and constructed a pillow for him with our

coats. He seemed very thankful. Then he looked up in our faces, and said

in a feeble voice that had a tremble of honest emotion in it:

“Gentlemen, I know not who you are, but you have saved my life; and

although I can never be able to repay you for it, I feel that I can at

least make one hour of your long journey lighter. I take it you are

strangers to this great thorough fare, but I am entirely familiar with

it. In this connection I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if

you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley——”

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I said, impressively:

“Suffering stranger, proceed at your peril. You see in me the melancholy

wreck of a once stalwart and magnificent manhood. What has brought me to

this? That thing which you are about to tell. Gradually but surely, that

tiresome old anecdote has sapped my strength, undermined my

constitution, withered my life. Pity my helplessness. Spare me only just

this once, and tell me about young George Washington and his little

hatchet for a change.”

We were saved. But not so the invalid. In trying to retain the anecdote

in his system he strained himself and died in our arms.

I am aware, now, that I ought not to have asked of the sturdiest citizen

of all that region, what I asked of that mere shadow of a man; for,

after seven years’ residence on the Pacific coast, I know that no

passenger or driver on the Overland ever corked that anecdote in, when a

stranger was by, and survived. Within a period of six years I crossed

and recrossed the Sierras between Nevada and California thirteen times

by stage and listened to that deathless incident four hundred and

eighty-one or eighty-two times. I have the list somewhere. Drivers

always told it, conductors told it, landlords told it, chance passengers

told it, the very Chinamen and vagrant Indians recounted it. I have had

the same driver tell it to me two or three times in the same afternoon.

It has come to me in all the multitude of tongues that Babel bequeathed

to earth, and flavored with whiskey, brandy, beer, cologne, sozodont,

tobacco, garlic, onions, grasshoppers—everything that has a fragrance to

it through all the long list of things that are gorged or guzzled by the

sons of men. I never have smelt any anecdote as often as I have smelt

that one; never have smelt any anecdote that smelt so variegated as that

one. And you never could learn to know it by its smell, because every

time you thought you had learned the smell of it, it would turn up with

a different smell. Bayard Taylor has written about this hoary anecdote,

Richardson has published it; so have Jones, Smith, Johnson, Ross Browne,

and every other correspondence-inditing being that ever set his foot

upon the great overland road anywhere between Julesburg and San

Francisco; and I have heard that it is in the Talmud. I have seen it in

print in nine different foreign languages; I have been told that it is

employed in the inquisition in Rome; and I now learn with regret that it

is going to be set to music. I do not think that such things are right.

Stage-coaching on the Overland is no more, and stage drivers are a race

defunct. I wonder if they bequeathed that bald-headed anecdote to their

successors, the railroad brakemen and conductors, and if these latter

still persecute the helpless passenger with it until he concludes, as

did many a tourist of other days, that the real grandeurs of the Pacific

coast are not Yo Semite and the Big Trees, but Hank Monk and his

adventure with Horace Greeley.

[And what makes that worn anecdote the more aggravating, is, that the

adventure it celebrates never occurred. If it were a good anecdote, that

seeming demerit would be its chiefest virtue, for creative power belongs

to greatness; but what ought to be done to a man who would wantonly

contrive so flat a one as this? If I were to suggest what ought to be

done to him, I should be called extravagant—but what does the sixteenth

chapter of Daniel say? Aha!]

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CHAPTER XXI.

We were approaching the end of our long journey. It was the morning of

the twentieth day. At noon we would reach Carson City, the capital of

Nevada Territory. We were not glad, but sorry. It had been a fine

pleasure trip; we had fed fat on wonders every day; we were now well

accustomed to stage life, and very fond of it; so the idea of coming to

a stand-still and settling down to a humdrum existence in a village was

not agreeable, but on the contrary depressing.

Visibly our new home was a desert, walled in by barren, snow-clad

mountains. There was not a tree in sight. There was no vegetation but

the endless sage-brush and greasewood. All nature was gray with it. We

were plowing through great deeps of powdery alkali dust that rose in

thick clouds and floated across the plain like smoke from a burning

house.

We were coated with it like millers; so were the coach, the mules, the

mail-bags, the driver—we and the sage-brush and the other scenery were

all one monotonous color. Long trains of freight wagons in the distance

enveloped in ascending masses of dust suggested pictures of prairies on

fire. These teams and their masters were the only life we saw. Otherwise

we moved in the midst of solitude, silence and desolation. Every twenty

steps we passed the skeleton of some dead beast of burthen, with its

dust-coated skin stretched tightly over its empty ribs. Frequently a

solemn raven sat upon the skull or the hips and contemplated the passing

coach with meditative serenity.

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By and by Carson City was pointed out to us. It nestled in the edge of a

great plain and was a sufficient number of miles away to look like an

assemblage of mere white spots in the shadow of a grim range of

mountains overlooking it, whose summits seemed lifted clear out of

companionship and consciousness of earthly things.

We arrived, disembarked, and the stage went on. It was a “wooden” town;

its population two thousand souls. The main street consisted of four or

five blocks of little white frame stores which were too high to sit down

on, but not too high for various other purposes; in fact, hardly high

enough. They were packed close together, side by side, as if room were

scarce in that mighty plain.

The sidewalk was of boards that were more or less loose and inclined to

rattle when walked upon. In the middle of the town, opposite the stores,

was the “plaza” which is native to all towns beyond the Rocky

Mountains—a large, unfenced, level vacancy, with a liberty pole in it,

and very useful as a place for public auctions, horse trades, and mass

meetings, and likewise for teamsters to camp in. Two other sides of the

plaza were faced by stores, offices and stables.

The rest of Carson City was pretty scattering.

We were introduced to several citizens, at the stage-office and on the

way up to the Governor’s from the hotel—among others, to a Mr. Harris,

who was on horseback; he began to say something, but interrupted himself

with the remark:

“I’ll have to get you to excuse me a minute; yonder is the witness that

swore I helped to rob the California coach—a piece of impertinent

intermeddling, sir, for I am not even acquainted with the man.”

Then he rode over and began to rebuke the stranger with a six-shooter,

and the stranger began to explain with another. When the pistols were

emptied, the stranger resumed his work (mending a whip-lash), and Mr.

Harris rode by with a polite nod, homeward bound, with a bullet through

one of his lungs, and several in his hips; and from them issued little

rivulets of blood that coursed down the horse’s sides and made the

animal look quite picturesque. I never saw Harris shoot a man after that

but it recalled to mind that first day in Carson.

This was all we saw that day, for it was two o’clock, now, and according

to custom the daily “Washoe Zephyr” set in; a soaring dust-drift about

the size of the United States set up edgewise came with it, and the

capital of Nevada Territory disappeared from view.

Still, there were sights to be seen which were not wholly uninteresting

to new comers; for the vast dust cloud was thickly freckled with things

strange to the upper air—things living and dead, that flitted hither and

thither, going and coming, appearing and disappearing among the rolling

billows of dust—hats, chickens and parasols sailing in the remote

heavens; blankets, tin signs, sage-brush and shingles a shade lower;

door-mats and buffalo robes lower still; shovels and coal scuttles on

the next grade; glass doors, cats and little children on the next;

disrupted lumber yards, light buggies and wheelbarrows on the next; and

down only thirty or forty feet above ground was a scurrying storm of

emigrating roofs and vacant lots.

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It was something to see that much. I could have seen more, if I could

have kept the dust out of my eyes.

But seriously a Washoe wind is by no means a trifling matter. It blows

flimsy houses down, lifts shingle roofs occasionally, rolls up tin ones

like sheet music, now and then blows a stage coach over and spills the

passengers; and tradition says the reason there are so many bald people

there, is, that the wind blows the hair off their heads while they are

looking skyward after their hats. Carson streets seldom look inactive on

Summer afternoons, because there are so many citizens skipping around

their escaping hats, like chambermaids trying to head off a spider.

The “Washoe Zephyr” (Washoe is a pet nickname for Nevada) is a peculiar

Scriptural wind, in that no man knoweth “whence it cometh.” That is to

say, where it _originates_. It comes right over the mountains from the

West, but when one crosses the ridge he does not find any of it on the

other side! It probably is manufactured on the mountain-top for the

occasion, and starts from there. It is a pretty regular wind, in the

summer time. Its office hours are from two in the afternoon till two the

next morning; and anybody venturing abroad during those twelve hours

needs to allow for the wind or he will bring up a mile or two to leeward

of the point he is aiming at. And yet the first complaint a Washoe

visitor to San Francisco makes, is that the sea winds blow so, there!

There is a good deal of human nature in that.

We found the state palace of the Governor of Nevada Territory to consist

of a white frame one-story house with two small rooms in it and a

stanchion supported shed in front—for grandeur—it compelled the respect

of the citizen and inspired the Indians with awe. The newly arrived

Chief and Associate Justices of the Territory, and other machinery of

the government, were domiciled with less splendor. They were boarding

around privately, and had their offices in their bedrooms.

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The Secretary and I took quarters in the “ranch” of a worthy French lady

by the name of Bridget O’Flannigan, a camp follower of his Excellency

the Governor. She had known him in his prosperity as commander-in-chief

of the Metropolitan Police of New York, and she would not desert him in

his adversity as Governor of Nevada.

Our room was on the lower floor, facing the plaza, and when we had got

our bed, a small table, two chairs, the government fire-proof safe, and

the Unabridged Dictionary into it, there was still room enough left for

a visitor—may be two, but not without straining the walls. But the walls

could stand it—at least the partitions could, for they consisted simply

of one thickness of white “cotton domestic” stretched from corner to

corner of the room. This was the rule in Carson—any other kind of

partition was the rare exception. And if you stood in a dark room and

your neighbors in the next had lights, the shadows on your canvas told

queer secrets sometimes! Very often these partitions were made of old

flour sacks basted together; and then the difference between the common

herd and the aristocracy was, that the common herd had unornamented

sacks, while the walls of the aristocrat were overpowering with

rudimental fresco—_i.e._, red and blue mill brands on the flour sacks.

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Occasionally, also, the better classes embellished their canvas by

pasting pictures from _Harper’s Weekly_ on them. In many cases, too, the

wealthy and the cultured rose to spittoons and other evidences of a

sumptuous and luxurious taste. [Washoe people take a joke so hard that I

must explain that the above description was only the rule; there were

many honorable exceptions in Carson—plastered ceilings and houses that

had considerable furniture in them.—M. T.]

We had a carpet and a genuine queen’s-ware washbowl. Consequently we

were hated without reserve by the other tenants of the O’Flannigan

“ranch.” When we added a painted oilcloth window curtain, we simply took

our lives into our own hands. To prevent bloodshed I removed up stairs

and took up quarters with the untitled plebeians in one of the fourteen

white pine cot-bedsteads that stood in two long ranks in the one sole

room of which the second story consisted.

It was a jolly company, the fourteen. They were principally voluntary

camp-followers of the Governor, who had joined his retinue by their own

election at New York and San Francisco and came along, feeling that in

the scuffle for little territorial crumbs and offices they could not

make their condition more precarious than it was, and might reasonably

expect to make it better. They were popularly known as the “Irish

Brigade,” though there were only four or five Irishmen among all the

Governor’s retainers.

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His good-natured Excellency was much annoyed at the gossip his henchmen

created—especially when there arose a rumor that they were paid

assassins of his, brought along to quietly reduce the democratic vote

when desirable!

Mrs. O’Flannigan was boarding and lodging them at ten dollars a week

apiece, and they were cheerfully giving their notes for it. They were

perfectly satisfied, but Bridget presently found that notes that could

not be discounted were but a feeble constitution for a Carson boarding-

house. So she began to harry the Governor to find employment for the

“Brigade.” Her importunities and theirs together drove him to a gentle

desperation at last, and he finally summoned the Brigade to the

presence. Then, said he:

“Gentlemen, I have planned a lucrative and useful service for you—a

service which will provide you with recreation amid noble landscapes,

and afford you never ceasing opportunities for enriching your minds by

observation and study. I want you to survey a railroad from Carson City

westward to a certain point! When the legislature meets I will have the

necessary bill passed and the remuneration arranged.”

“What, a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains?”

“Well, then, survey it eastward to a certain point!”

He converted them into surveyors, chain-bearers and so on, and turned

them loose in the desert. It was “recreation” with a vengeance!

Recreation on foot, lugging chains through sand and sage-brush, under a

sultry sun and among cattle bones, cayotes and tarantulas.

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“Romantic adventure” could go no further. They surveyed very slowly,

very deliberately, very carefully. They returned every night during the

first week, dusty, footsore, tired, and hungry, but very jolly. They

brought in great store of prodigious hairy spiders—tarantulas—and

imprisoned them in covered tumblers up stairs in the “ranch.” After the

first week, they had to camp on the field, for they were getting well

eastward. They made a good many inquiries as to the location of that

indefinite “certain point,” but got no information. At last, to a

peculiarly urgent inquiry of “How far eastward?” Governor Nye

telegraphed back:

“To the Atlantic Ocean, blast you!—and then bridge it and go on!”

This brought back the dusty toilers, who sent in a report and ceased

from their labors. The Governor was always comfortable about it; he said

Mrs. O’Flannigan would hold him for the Brigade’s board anyhow, and he

intended to get what entertainment he could out of the boys; he said,

with his old-time pleasant twinkle, that he meant to survey them into

Utah and then telegraph Brigham to hang them for trespass!

The surveyors brought back more tarantulas with them, and so we had

quite a menagerie arranged along the shelves of the room. Some of these

spiders could straddle over a common saucer with their hairy, muscular

legs, and when their feelings were hurt, or their dignity offended, they

were the wickedest-looking desperadoes the animal world can furnish. If

their glass prison-houses were touched ever so lightly they were up and

spoiling for a fight in a minute. Starchy?—proud? Indeed, they would

take up a straw and pick their teeth like a member of Congress. There

was as usual a furious “zephyr” blowing the first night of the brigade’s

return, and about midnight the roof of an adjoining stable blew off, and

a corner of it came crashing through the side of our ranch. There was a

simultaneous awakening, and a tumultuous muster of the brigade in the

dark, and a general tumbling and sprawling over each other in the narrow

aisle between the bedrows. In the midst of the turmoil, Bob H——sprung up

out of a sound sleep, and knocked down a shelf with his head. Instantly

he shouted:

“Turn out, boys—the tarantulas is loose!”

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No warning ever sounded so dreadful. Nobody tried, any longer, to leave

the room, lest he might step on a tarantula. Every man groped for a

trunk or a bed, and jumped on it. Then followed the strangest silence—a

silence of grisly suspense it was, too—waiting, expectancy, fear. It was

as dark as pitch, and one had to imagine the spectacle of those fourteen

scant-clad men roosting gingerly on trunks and beds, for not a thing

could be seen. Then came occasional little interruptions of the silence,

and one could recognize a man and tell his locality by his voice, or

locate any other sound a sufferer made by his gropings or changes of

position. The occasional voices were not given to much speaking—you

simply heard a gentle ejaculation of “Ow!” followed by a solid thump,

and you knew the gentleman had felt a hairy blanket or something touch

his bare skin and had skipped from a bed to the floor. Another silence.

Presently you would hear a gasping voice say:

“Su-su-something’s crawling up the back of my neck!”

Every now and then you could hear a little subdued scramble and a

sorrowful “O Lord!” and then you knew that somebody was getting away

from something he took for a tarantula, and not losing any time about

it, either. Directly a voice in the corner rang out wild and clear:

“I’ve got him! I’ve got him!” [Pause, and probable change of

circumstances.] “No, he’s got me! Oh, ain’t they never going to fetch a

lantern!”

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The lantern came at that moment, in the hands of Mrs. O’Flannigan, whose

anxiety to know the amount of damage done by the assaulting roof had not

prevented her waiting a judicious interval, after getting out of bed and

lighting up, to see if the wind was done, now, up stairs, or had a

larger contract.

The landscape presented when the lantern flashed into the room was

picturesque, and might have been funny to some people, but was not to

us. Although we were perched so strangely upon boxes, trunks and beds,

and so strangely attired, too, we were too earnestly distressed and too

genuinely miserable to see any fun about it, and there was not the

semblance of a smile anywhere visible. I know I am not capable of

suffering more than I did during those few minutes of suspense in the

dark, surrounded by those creeping, bloody-minded tarantulas. I had

skipped from bed to bed and from box to box in a cold agony, and every

time I touched anything that was furzy I fancied I felt the fangs. I had

rather go to war than live that episode over again. Nobody was hurt. The

man who thought a tarantula had “got him” was mistaken—only a crack in a

box had caught his finger. Not one of those escaped tarantulas was ever

seen again. There were ten or twelve of them. We took candles and hunted

the place high and low for them, but with no success. Did we go back to

bed then? We did nothing of the kind. Money could not have persuaded us

to do it. We sat up the rest of the night playing cribbage and keeping a

sharp lookout for the enemy.

CHAPTER XXII.

It was the end of August, and the skies were cloudless and the weather

superb. In two or three weeks I had grown wonderfully fascinated with

the curious new country and concluded to put off my return to “the

States” awhile. I had grown well accustomed to wearing a damaged slouch

hat, blue woolen shirt, and pants crammed into boot-tops, and gloried in

the absence of coat, vest and braces. I felt rowdyish and “bully,” (as

the historian Josephus phrases it, in his fine chapter upon the

destruction of the Temple). It seemed to me that nothing could be so

fine and so romantic. I had become an officer of the government, but

that was for mere sublimity. The office was an unique sinecure. I had

nothing to do and no salary. I was private Secretary to his majesty the

Secretary and there was not yet writing enough for two of us. So Johnny

K——and I devoted our time to amusement. He was the young son of an Ohio

nabob and was out there for recreation. He got it. We had heard a world

of talk about the marvellous beauty of Lake Tahoe, and finally curiosity

drove us thither to see it. Three or four members of the Brigade had

been there and located some timber lands on its shores and stored up a

quantity of provisions in their camp. We strapped a couple of blankets

on our shoulders and took an axe apiece and started—for we intended to

take up a wood ranch or so ourselves and become wealthy. We were on

foot. The reader will find it advantageous to go horseback. We were told

that the distance was eleven miles. We tramped a long time on level

ground, and then toiled laboriously up a mountain about a thousand miles

high and looked over. No lake there. We descended on the other side,

crossed the valley and toiled up another mountain three or four thousand

miles high, apparently, and looked over again. No lake yet. We sat down

tired and perspiring, and hired a couple of Chinamen to curse those

people who had beguiled us. Thus refreshed, we presently resumed the

march with renewed vigor and determination. We plodded on, two or three

hours longer, and at last the Lake burst upon us—a noble sheet of blue

water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the level of the sea,

and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft

full three thousand feet higher still! It was a vast oval, and one would

have to use up eighty or a hundred good miles in traveling around it. As

it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed

upon its still surface I thought it must surely be the fairest picture

the whole earth affords.

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We found the small skiff belonging to the Brigade boys, and without loss

of time set out across a deep bend of the lake toward the landmarks that

signified the locality of the camp. I got Johnny to row—not because I

mind exertion myself, but because it makes me sick to ride backwards

when I am at work. But I steered. A three-mile pull brought us to the

camp just as the night fell, and we stepped ashore very tired and

wolfishly hungry. In a “cache” among the rocks we found the provisions

and the cooking utensils, and then, all fatigued as I was, I sat down on

a boulder and superintended while Johnny gathered wood and cooked

supper. Many a man who had gone through what I had, would have wanted to

rest.

It was a delicious supper—hot bread, fried bacon, and black coffee. It

was a delicious solitude we were in, too. Three miles away was a saw-

mill and some workmen, but there were not fifteen other human beings

throughout the wide circumference of the lake. As the darkness closed

down and the stars came out and spangled the great mirror with jewels,

we smoked meditatively in the solemn hush and forgot our troubles and

our pains. In due time we spread our blankets in the warm sand between

two large boulders and soon feel asleep, careless of the procession of

ants that passed in through rents in our clothing and explored our

persons. Nothing could disturb the sleep that fettered us, for it had

been fairly earned, and if our consciences had any sins on them they had

to adjourn court for that night, any way. The wind rose just as we were

losing consciousness, and we were lulled to sleep by the beating of the

surf upon the shore.

It is always very cold on that lake shore in the night, but we had

plenty of blankets and were warm enough. We never moved a muscle all

night, but waked at early dawn in the original positions, and got up at

once, thoroughly refreshed, free from soreness, and brim full of

friskiness. There is no end of wholesome medicine in such an experience.

That morning we could have whipped ten such people as we were the day

before—sick ones at any rate. But the world is slow, and people will go

to “water cures” and “movement cures” and to foreign lands for health.

Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy

to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I do

not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones.

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and

delicious. And why shouldn’t it be?—it is the same the angels breathe. I

think that hardly any amount of fatigue can be gathered together that a

man cannot sleep off in one night on the sand by its side. Not under a

roof, but under the sky; it seldom or never rains there in the summer

time. I know a man who went there to die. But he made a failure of it.

He was a skeleton when he came, and could barely stand. He had no

appetite, and did nothing but read tracts and reflect on the future.

Three months later he was sleeping out of doors regularly, eating all he

could hold, three times a day, and chasing game over mountains three

thousand feet high for recreation. And he was a skeleton no longer, but

weighed part of a ton. This is no fancy sketch, but the truth. His

disease was consumption. I confidently commend his experience to other

skeletons.

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I superintended again, and as soon as we had eaten breakfast we got in

the boat and skirted along the lake shore about three miles and

disembarked. We liked the appearance of the place, and so we claimed

some three hundred acres of it and stuck our “notices” on a tree. It was

yellow pine timber land—a dense forest of trees a hundred feet high and

from one to five feet through at the butt. It was necessary to fence our

property or we could not hold it. That is to say, it was necessary to

cut down trees here and there and make them fall in such a way as to

form a sort of enclosure (with pretty wide gaps in it). We cut down

three trees apiece, and found it such heart-breaking work that we

decided to “rest our case” on those; if they held the property, well and

good; if they didn’t, let the property spill out through the gaps and

go; it was no use to work ourselves to death merely to save a few acres

of land. Next day we came back to build a house—for a house was also

necessary, in order to hold the property.

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We decided to build a substantial log-house and excite the envy of the

Brigade boys; but by the time we had cut and trimmed the first log it

seemed unnecessary to be so elaborate, and so we concluded to build it

of saplings. However, two saplings, duly cut and trimmed, compelled

recognition of the fact that a still modester architecture would satisfy

the law, and so we concluded to build a “brush” house. We devoted the

next day to this work, but we did so much “sitting around” and

discussing, that by the middle of the afternoon we had achieved only a

half-way sort of affair which one of us had to watch while the other cut

brush, lest if both turned our backs we might not be able to find it

again, it had such a strong family resemblance to the surrounding

vegetation. But we were satisfied with it.

We were land owners now, duly seized and possessed, and within the

protection of the law. Therefore we decided to take up our residence on

our own domain and enjoy that large sense of independence which only

such an experience can bring. Late the next afternoon, after a good long

rest, we sailed away from the Brigade camp with all the provisions and

cooking utensils we could carry off—borrow is the more accurate word—and

just as the night was falling we beached the boat at our own landing.

CHAPTER XXIII.

If there is any life that is happier than the life we led on our timber

ranch for the next two or three weeks, it must be a sort of life which I

have not read of in books or experienced in person. We did not see a

human being but ourselves during the time, or hear any sounds but those

that were made by the wind and the waves, the sighing of the pines, and

now and then the far-off thunder of an avalanche. The forest about us

was dense and cool, the sky above us was cloudless and brilliant with

sunshine, the broad lake before us was glassy and clear, or rippled and

breezy, or black and storm-tossed, according to Nature’s mood; and its

circling border of mountain domes, clothed with forests, scarred with

land-slides, cloven by cañons and valleys, and helmeted with glittering

snow, fitly framed and finished the noble picture. The view was always

fascinating, bewitching, entrancing. The eye was never tired of gazing,

night or day, in calm or storm; it suffered but one grief, and that was

that it could not look always, but must close sometimes in sleep.

We slept in the sand close to the water’s edge, between two protecting

boulders, which took care of the stormy night-winds for us. We never

took any paregoric to make us sleep. At the first break of dawn we were

always up and running foot-races to tone down excess of physical vigor

and exuberance of spirits. That is, Johnny was—but I held his hat. While

smoking the pipe of peace after breakfast we watched the sentinel peaks

put on the glory of the sun, and followed the conquering light as it

swept down among the shadows, and set the captive crags and forests

free. We watched the tinted pictures grow and brighten upon the water

till every little detail of forest, precipice and pinnacle was wrought

in and finished, and the miracle of the enchanter complete. Then to

“business.”

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That is, drifting around in the boat. We were on the north shore. There,

the rocks on the bottom are sometimes gray, sometimes white. This gives

the marvelous transparency of the water a fuller advantage than it has

elsewhere on the lake. We usually pushed out a hundred yards or so from

shore, and then lay down on the thwarts, in the sun, and let the boat

drift by the hour whither it would. We seldom talked. It interrupted the

Sabbath stillness, and marred the dreams the luxurious rest and

indolence brought. The shore all along was indented with deep, curved

bays and coves, bordered by narrow sand-beaches; and where the sand

ended, the steep mountain-sides rose right up aloft into space—rose up

like a vast wall a little out of the perpendicular, and thickly wooded

with tall pines.

So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only twenty or

thirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct that the boat

seemed floating in the air! Yes, where it was even _eighty_ feet deep.

Every little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, every hand’s-

breadth of sand. Often, as we lay on our faces, a granite boulder, as

large as a village church, would start out of the bottom apparently, and

seem climbing up rapidly to the surface, till presently it threatened to

touch our faces, and we could not resist the impulse to seize an oar and

avert the danger. But the boat would float on, and the boulder descend

again, and then we could see that when we had been exactly above it, it

must still have been twenty or thirty feet below the surface. Down

through the transparency of these great depths, the water was not

_merely_ transparent, but dazzlingly, brilliantly so. All objects seen

through it had a bright, strong vividness, not only of outline, but of

every minute detail, which they would not have had when seen simply

through the same depth of atmosphere. So empty and airy did all spaces

seem below us, and so strong was the sense of floating high aloft in

mid-nothingness, that we called these boat-excursions “balloon-voyages.”

We fished a good deal, but we did not average one fish a week. We could

see trout by the thousand winging about in the emptiness under us, or

sleeping in shoals on the bottom, but they would not bite—they could see

the line too plainly, perhaps. We frequently selected the trout we

wanted, and rested the bait patiently and persistently on the end of his

nose at a depth of eighty feet, but he would only shake it off with an

annoyed manner, and shift his position.

We bathed occasionally, but the water was rather chilly, for all it

looked so sunny. Sometimes we rowed out to the “blue water,” a mile or

two from shore. It was as dead blue as indigo there, because of the

immense depth. By official measurement the lake in its centre is one

thousand five hundred and twenty-five feet deep!

Sometimes, on lazy afternoons, we lolled on the sand in camp, and smoked

pipes and read some old well-worn novels. At night, by the camp-fire, we

played euchre and seven-up to strengthen the mind—and played them with

cards so greasy and defaced that only a whole summer’s acquaintance with

them could enable the student to tell the ace of clubs from the jack of

diamonds.

We never slept in our “house.” It never recurred to us, for one thing;

and besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that was enough. We

did not wish to strain it.

By and by our provisions began to run short, and we went back to the old

camp and laid in a new supply. We were gone all day, and reached home

again about night-fall, pretty tired and hungry. While Johnny was

carrying the main bulk of the provisions up to our “house” for future

use, I took the loaf of bread, some slices of bacon, and the coffee-pot,

ashore, set them down by a tree, lit a fire, and went back to the boat

to get the frying-pan. While I was at this, I heard a shout from Johnny,

and looking up I saw that my fire was galloping all over the premises!

Johnny was on the other side of it. He had to run through the flames to

get to the lake shore, and then we stood helpless and watched the

devastation.

The ground was deeply carpeted with dry pine-needles, and the fire

touched them off as if they were gunpowder. It was wonderful to see with

what fierce speed the tall sheet of flame traveled! My coffee-pot was

gone, and everything with it. In a minute and a half the fire seized

upon a dense growth of dry manzanita chapparal six or eight feet high,

and then the roaring and popping and crackling was something terrific.

We were driven to the boat by the intense heat, and there we remained,

spell-bound.

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Within half an hour all before us was a tossing, blinding tempest of

flame! It went surging up adjacent ridges—surmounted them and

disappeared in the cañons beyond—burst into view upon higher and farther

ridges, presently—shed a grander illumination abroad, and dove

again—flamed out again, directly, higher and still higher up the

mountain-side threw out skirmishing parties of fire here and there, and

sent them trailing their crimson spirals away among remote ramparts and

ribs and gorges, till as far as the eye could reach the lofty mountain-

fronts were webbed as it were with a tangled network of red lava

streams. Away across the water the crags and domes were lit with a ruddy

glare, and the firmament above was a reflected hell!

Every feature of the spectacle was repeated in the glowing mirror of the

lake! Both pictures were sublime, both were beautiful; but that in the

lake had a bewildering richness about it that enchanted the eye and held

it with the stronger fascination.

We sat absorbed and motionless through four long hours. We never thought

of supper, and never felt fatigue. But at eleven o’clock the

conflagration had traveled beyond our range of vision, and then darkness

stole down upon the landscape again.

Hunger asserted itself now, but there was nothing to eat. The provisions

were all cooked, no doubt, but we did not go to see. We were homeless

wanderers again, without any property. Our fence was gone, our house

burned down; no insurance. Our pine forest was well scorched, the dead

trees all burned up, and our broad acres of manzanita swept away. Our

blankets were on our usual sand-bed, however, and so we lay down and

went to sleep. The next morning we started back to the old camp, but

while out a long way from shore, so great a storm came up that we dared

not try to land. So I baled out the seas we shipped, and Johnny pulled

heavily through the billows till we had reached a point three or four

miles beyond the camp. The storm was increasing, and it became evident

that it was better to take the hazard of beaching the boat than go down

in a hundred fathoms of water; so we ran in, with tall white-caps

following, and I sat down in the stern-sheets and pointed her head-on to

the shore. The instant the bow struck, a wave came over the stern that

washed crew and cargo ashore, and saved a deal of trouble. We shivered

in the lee of a boulder all the rest of the day, and froze all the night

through. In the morning the tempest had gone down, and we paddled down

to the camp without any unnecessary delay. We were so starved that we

ate up the rest of the Brigade’s provisions, and then set out to Carson

to tell them about it and ask their forgiveness. It was accorded, upon

payment of damages.

We made many trips to the lake after that, and had many a hair-breadth

escape and blood-curdling adventure which will never be recorded in any

history.

CHAPTER XXIV.

I resolved to have a horse to ride. I had never seen such wild, free,

magnificent horsemanship outside of a circus as these picturesquely-clad

Mexicans, Californians and Mexicanized Americans displayed in Carson

streets every day. How they rode! Leaning just gently forward out of the

perpendicular, easy and nonchalant, with broad slouch-hat brim blown

square up in front, and long _riata_ swinging above the head as they

swept through the town like the wind! The next minute they were only a

sailing puff of dust on the far desert. If they trotted, they sat up

gallantly and gracefully, and seemed part of the horse; did not go

jiggering up and down after the silly Miss-Nancy fashion of the riding-

schools. I had quickly learned to tell a horse from a cow, and was full

of anxiety to learn more. I was resolved to buy a horse.

While the thought was rankling in my mind, the auctioneer came skurrying

through the plaza on a black beast that had as many humps and corners on

him as a dromedary, and was necessarily uncomely; but he was “going,

going, at twenty-two!—horse, saddle and bridle at twenty-two dollars,

gentlemen!” and I could hardly resist.

A man whom I did not know (he turned out to be the auctioneer’s brother)

noticed the wistful look in my eye, and observed that that was a very

remarkable horse to be going at such a price; and added that the saddle

alone was worth the money. It was a Spanish saddle, with ponderous

‘_tapidaros_’, and furnished with the ungainly sole-leather covering

with the unspellable name. I said I had half a notion to bid. Then this

keen-eyed person appeared to me to be “taking my measure”; but I

dismissed the suspicion when he spoke, for his manner was full of

guileless candor and truthfulness. Said he:

“I know that horse—know him well. You are a stranger, I take it, and so

you might think he was an American horse, maybe, but I assure you he is

not. He is nothing of the kind; but—excuse my speaking in a low voice,

other people being near—he is, without the shadow of a doubt, a Genuine

Mexican Plug!”

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I did not know what a Genuine Mexican Plug was, but there was something

about this man’s way of saying it, that made me swear inwardly that I

would own a Genuine Mexican Plug, or die.

“Has he any other—er—advantages?” I inquired, suppressing what eagerness

I could.

He hooked his forefinger in the pocket of my army-shirt, led me to one

side, and breathed in my ear impressively these words:

“He can out-buck anything in America!”

“Going, going, going—at twent—ty—four dollars and a half, gen—”

“Twenty-seven!” I shouted, in a frenzy.

“And sold!” said the auctioneer, and passed over the Genuine Mexican

Plug to me.

I could scarcely contain my exultation. I paid the money, and put the

animal in a neighboring livery-stable to dine and rest himself.

In the afternoon I brought the creature into the plaza, and certain

citizens held him by the head, and others by the tail, while I mounted

him. As soon as they let go, he placed all his feet in a bunch together,

lowered his back, and then suddenly arched it upward, and shot me

straight into the air a matter of three or four feet! I came as straight

down again, lit in the saddle, went instantly up again, came down almost

on the high pommel, shot up again, and came down on the horse’s neck—all

in the space of three or four seconds. Then he rose and stood almost

straight up on his hind feet, and I, clasping his lean neck desperately,

slid back into the saddle and held on. He came down, and immediately

hoisted his heels into the air, delivering a vicious kick at the sky,

and stood on his forefeet. And then down he came once more, and began

the original exercise of shooting me straight up again. The third time I

went up I heard a stranger say:

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“Oh, don’t he _buck_, though!”

While I was up, somebody struck the horse a sounding thwack with a

leathern strap, and when I arrived again the Genuine Mexican Plug was

not there. A California youth chased him up and caught him, and asked if

he might have a ride. I granted him that luxury. He mounted the Genuine,

got lifted into the air once, but sent his spurs home as he descended,

and the horse darted away like a telegram. He soared over three fences

like a bird, and disappeared down the road toward the Washoe Valley.

I sat down on a stone, with a sigh, and by a natural impulse one of my

hands sought my forehead, and the other the base of my stomach. I

believe I never appreciated, till then, the poverty of the human

machinery—for I still needed a hand or two to place elsewhere. Pen

cannot describe how I was jolted up. Imagination cannot conceive how

disjointed I was—how internally, externally and universally I was

unsettled, mixed up and ruptured. There was a sympathetic crowd around

me, though.

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One elderly-looking comforter said:

“Stranger, you’ve been taken in. Everybody in this camp knows that

horse. Any child, any Injun, could have told you that he’d buck; he is

the very worst devil to buck on the continent of America. You hear _me_.

I’m Curry. _Old_ Curry. Old _Abe_ Curry. And moreover, he is a simon-

pure, out-and-out, genuine d—d Mexican plug, and an uncommon mean one at

that, too. Why, you turnip, if you had laid low and kept dark, there’s

chances to buy an _American_ horse for mighty little more than you paid

for that bloody old foreign relic.”

I gave no sign; but I made up my mind that if the auctioneer’s brother’s

funeral took place while I was in the Territory I would postpone all

other recreations and attend it.

After a gallop of sixteen miles the Californian youth and the Genuine

Mexican Plug came tearing into town again, shedding foam-flakes like the

spume-spray that drives before a typhoon, and, with one final skip over

a wheelbarrow and a Chinaman, cast anchor in front of the “ranch.”

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Such panting and blowing! Such spreading and contracting of the red

equine nostrils, and glaring of the wild equine eye! But was the

imperial beast subjugated? Indeed he was not.

His lordship the Speaker of the House thought he was, and mounted him to

go down to the Capitol; but the first dash the creature made was over a

pile of telegraph poles half as high as a church; and his time to the

Capitol—one mile and three quarters—remains unbeaten to this day. But

then he took an advantage—he left out the mile, and only did the three

quarters. That is to say, he made a straight cut across lots, preferring

fences and ditches to a crooked road; and when the Speaker got to the

Capitol he said he had been in the air so much he felt as if he had made

the trip on a comet.

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In the evening the Speaker came home afoot for exercise, and got the

Genuine towed back behind a quartz wagon. The next day I loaned the

animal to the Clerk of the House to go down to the Dana silver mine, six

miles, and _he_ walked back for exercise, and got the horse towed.

Everybody I loaned him to always walked back; they never could get

enough exercise any other way.

Still, I continued to loan him to anybody who was willing to borrow him,

my idea being to get him crippled, and throw him on the borrower’s

hands, or killed, and make the borrower pay for him. But somehow nothing

ever happened to him. He took chances that no other horse ever took and

survived, but he always came out safe. It was his daily habit to try

experiments that had always before been considered impossible, but he

always got through. Sometimes he miscalculated a little, and did not get

his rider through intact, but _he_ always got through himself. Of course

I had tried to sell him; but that was a stretch of simplicity which met

with little sympathy. The auctioneer stormed up and down the streets on

him for four days, dispersing the populace, interrupting business, and

destroying children, and never got a bid—at least never any but the

eighteen-dollar one he hired a notoriously substanceless bummer to make.

The people only smiled pleasantly, and restrained their desire to buy,

if they had any. Then the auctioneer brought in his bill, and I withdrew

the horse from the market. We tried to trade him off at private vendue

next, offering him at a sacrifice for second-hand tombstones, old iron,

temperance tracts—any kind of property. But holders were stiff, and we

retired from the market again. I never tried to ride the horse any more.

Walking was good enough exercise for a man like me, that had nothing the

matter with him except ruptures, internal injuries, and such things.

Finally I tried to _give_ him away. But it was a failure. Parties said

earthquakes were handy enough on the Pacific coast—they did not wish to

own one. As a last resort I offered him to the Governor for the use of

the “Brigade.” His face lit up eagerly at first, but toned down again,

and he said the thing would be too palpable.

Just then the livery stable man brought in his bill for six weeks’

keeping—stall-room for the horse, fifteen dollars; hay for the horse,

two hundred and fifty! The Genuine Mexican Plug had eaten a ton of the

article, and the man said he would have eaten a hundred if he had let

him.

I will remark here, in all seriousness, that the regular price of hay

during that year and a part of the next was really two hundred and fifty

dollars a ton. During a part of the previous year it had sold at five

hundred a ton, in _gold_, and during the winter before that there was

such scarcity of the article that in several instances small quantities

had brought eight hundred dollars a ton in coin! The consequence might

be guessed without my telling it: people turned their stock loose to

starve, and before the spring arrived Carson and Eagle valleys were

almost literally carpeted with their carcases! Any old settler there

will verify these statements.

I managed to pay the livery bill, and that same day I gave the Genuine

Mexican Plug to a passing Arkansas emigrant whom fortune delivered into

my hand. If this ever meets his eye, he will doubtless remember the

donation.

Now whoever has had the luck to ride a real Mexican plug will recognize

the animal depicted in this chapter, and hardly consider him

exaggerated—but the uninitiated will feel justified in regarding his

portrait as a fancy sketch, perhaps.

CHAPTER XXV.

Originally, Nevada was a part of Utah and was called Carson county; and

a pretty large county it was, too. Certain of its valleys produced no

end of hay, and this attracted small colonies of Mormon stock-raisers

and farmers to them. A few orthodox Americans straggled in from

California, but no love was lost between the two classes of colonists.

There was little or no friendly intercourse; each party staid to itself.

The Mormons were largely in the majority, and had the additional

advantage of being peculiarly under the protection of the Mormon

government of the Territory. Therefore they could afford to be distant,

and even peremptory toward their neighbors. One of the traditions of

Carson Valley illustrates the condition of things that prevailed at the

time I speak of. The hired girl of one of the American families was

Irish, and a Catholic; yet it was noted with surprise that she was the

only person outside of the Mormon ring who could get favors from the

Mormons. She asked kindnesses of them often, and always got them. It was

a mystery to everybody. But one day as she was passing out at the door,

a large bowie knife dropped from under her apron, and when her mistress

asked for an explanation she observed that she was going out to “borry a

wash-tub from the Mormons!”

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In 1858 silver lodes were discovered in “Carson County,” and then the

aspect of things changed. Californians began to flock in, and the

American element was soon in the majority. Allegiance to Brigham Young

and Utah was renounced, and a temporary territorial government for

“Washoe” was instituted by the citizens. Governor Roop was the first and

only chief magistrate of it. In due course of time Congress passed a

bill to organize “Nevada Territory,” and President Lincoln sent out

Governor Nye to supplant Roop.

At this time the population of the Territory was about twelve or fifteen

thousand, and rapidly increasing. Silver mines were being vigorously

developed and silver mills erected. Business of all kinds was active and

prosperous and growing more so day by day.

The people were glad to have a legitimately constituted government, but

did not particularly enjoy having strangers from distant States put in

authority over them—a sentiment that was natural enough. They thought

the officials should have been chosen from among themselves from among

prominent citizens who had earned a right to such promotion, and who

would be in sympathy with the populace and likewise thoroughly

acquainted with the needs of the Territory. They were right in viewing

the matter thus, without doubt. The new officers were “emigrants,” and

that was no title to anybody’s affection or admiration either.

The new government was received with considerable coolness. It was not

only a foreign intruder, but a poor one. It was not even worth

plucking—except by the smallest of small fry office-seekers and such.

Everybody knew that Congress had appropriated only twenty thousand

dollars a year in greenbacks for its support—about money enough to run a

quartz mill a month. And everybody knew, also, that the first year’s

money was still in Washington, and that the getting hold of it would be

a tedious and difficult process. Carson City was too wary and too wise

to open up a credit account with the imported bantling with anything

like indecent haste.

There is something solemnly funny about the struggles of a new-born

Territorial government to get a start in this world. Ours had a trying

time of it. The Organic Act and the “instructions” from the State

Department commanded that a legislature should be elected at such-and-

such a time, and its sittings inaugurated at such-and-such a date. It

was easy to get legislators, even at three dollars a day, although board

was four dollars and fifty cents, for distinction has its charm in

Nevada as well as elsewhere, and there were plenty of patriotic souls

out of employment; but to get a legislative hall for them to meet in was

another matter altogether. Carson blandly declined to give a room rent-

free, or let one to the government on credit.

But when Curry heard of the difficulty, he came forward, solitary and

alone, and shouldered the Ship of State over the bar and got her afloat

again. I refer to “Curry—_Old_ Curry—Old _Abe_ Curry.” But for him the

legislature would have been obliged to sit in the desert. He offered his

large stone building just outside the capital limits, rent-free, and it

was gladly accepted. Then he built a horse-railroad from town to the

capitol, and carried the legislators gratis.

He also furnished pine benches and chairs for the legislature, and

covered the floors with clean saw-dust by way of carpet and spittoon

combined. But for Curry the government would have died in its tender

infancy. A canvas partition to separate the Senate from the House of

Representatives was put up by the Secretary, at a cost of three dollars

and forty cents, but the United States declined to pay for it. Upon

being reminded that the “instructions” permitted the payment of a

liberal rent for a legislative hall, and that that money was saved to

the country by Mr. Curry’s generosity, the United States said that did

not alter the matter, and the three dollars and forty cents would be

subtracted from the Secretary’s eighteen hundred dollar salary—and it

was!

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The matter of printing was from the beginning an interesting feature of

the new government’s difficulties. The Secretary was sworn to obey his

volume of written “instructions,” and these commanded him to do two

certain things without fail, viz.:

1. Get the House and Senate journals printed; and, 2. For this work, pay

one dollar and fifty cents per “thousand” for composition, and one

dollar and fifty cents per “token” for press-work, in greenbacks.

It was easy to swear to do these two things, but it was entirely

impossible to do more than one of them. When greenbacks had gone down to

forty cents on the dollar, the prices regularly charged everybody by

printing establishments were one dollar and fifty cents per “thousand”

and one dollar and fifty cents per “token,” in _gold_. The

“instructions” commanded that the Secretary regard a paper dollar issued

by the government as equal to any other dollar issued by the government.

Hence the printing of the journals was discontinued. Then the United

States sternly rebuked the Secretary for disregarding the

“instructions,” and warned him to correct his ways. Wherefore he got

some printing done, forwarded the bill to Washington with full exhibits

of the high prices of things in the Territory, and called attention to a

printed market report wherein it would be observed that even hay was two

hundred and fifty dollars a ton. The United States responded by

subtracting the printing-bill from the Secretary’s suffering salary—and

moreover remarked with dense gravity that he would find nothing in his

“instructions” requiring him to purchase hay!

Nothing in this world is palled in such impenetrable obscurity as a U.S.

Treasury Comptroller’s understanding. The very fires of the hereafter

could get up nothing more than a fitful glimmer in it. In the days I

speak of he never could be made to comprehend why it was that twenty

thousand dollars would not go as far in Nevada, where all commodities

ranged at an enormous figure, as it would in the other Territories,

where exceeding cheapness was the rule. He was an officer who looked out

for the little expenses all the time. The Secretary of the Territory

kept his office in his bedroom, as I before remarked; and he charged the

United States no rent, although his “instructions” provided for that

item and he could have justly taken advantage of it (a thing which I

would have done with more than lightning promptness if I had been

Secretary myself). But the United States never applauded this devotion.

Indeed, I think my country was ashamed to have so improvident a person

in its employ.

Those “instructions” (we used to read a chapter from them every morning,

as intellectual gymnastics, and a couple of chapters in Sunday school

every Sabbath, for they treated of all subjects under the sun and had

much valuable religious matter in them along with the other statistics)

those “instructions” commanded that pen-knives, envelopes, pens and

writing-paper be furnished the members of the legislature. So the

Secretary made the purchase and the distribution. The knives cost three

dollars apiece. There was one too many, and the Secretary gave it to the

Clerk of the House of Representatives. The United States said the Clerk

of the House was not a “member” of the legislature, and took that three

dollars out of the Secretary’s salary, as usual.

White men charged three or four dollars a “load” for sawing up stove-

wood. The Secretary was sagacious enough to know that the United States

would never pay any such price as that; so he got an Indian to saw up a

load of office wood at one dollar and a half. He made out the usual

voucher, but signed no name to it—simply appended a note explaining that

an Indian had done the work, and had done it in a very capable and

satisfactory way, but could not sign the voucher owing to lack of

ability in the necessary direction. The Secretary had to pay that dollar

and a half. He thought the United States would admire both his economy

and his honesty in getting the work done at half price and not putting a

pretended Indian’s signature to the voucher, but the United States did

not see it in that light.

The United States was too much accustomed to employing dollar-and-a-half

thieves in all manner of official capacities to regard his explanation

of the voucher as having any foundation in fact.

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But the next time the Indian sawed wood for us I taught him to make a

cross at the bottom of the voucher—it looked like a cross that had been

drunk a year—and then I “witnessed” it and it went through all right.

The United States never said a word. I was sorry I had not made the

voucher for a thousand loads of wood instead of one.

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles

artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very

capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or

two.

That was a fine collection of sovereigns, that first Nevada legislature.

They levied taxes to the amount of thirty or forty thousand dollars and

ordered expenditures to the extent of about a million. Yet they had

their little periodical explosions of economy like all other bodies of

the kind. A member proposed to save three dollars a day to the nation by

dispensing with the Chaplain. And yet that short-sighted man needed the

Chaplain more than any other member, perhaps, for he generally sat with

his feet on his desk, eating raw turnips, during the morning prayer.

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The legislature sat sixty days, and passed private tollroad franchises

all the time. When they adjourned it was estimated that every citizen

owned about three franchises, and it was believed that unless Congress

gave the Territory another degree of longitude there would not be room

enough to accommodate the toll-roads. The ends of them were hanging over

the boundary line everywhere like a fringe.

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The fact is, the freighting business had grown to such important

proportions that there was nearly as much excitement over suddenly

acquired toll-road fortunes as over the wonderful silver mines.

CHAPTER XXVI.

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.

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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.

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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.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Hurry, was the word! We wasted no time. Our party consisted of four

persons—a blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and myself.

We bought a wagon and two miserable old horses. We put eighteen hundred

pounds of provisions and mining tools in the wagon and drove out of

Carson on a chilly December afternoon. The horses were so weak and old

that we soon found that it would be better if one or two of us got out

and walked. It was an improvement. Next, we found that it would be

better if a third man got out. That was an improvement also. It was at

this time that I volunteered to drive, although I had never driven a

harnessed horse before and many a man in such a position would have felt

fairly excused from such a responsibility. But in a little while it was

found that it would be a fine thing if the driver got out and walked

also. It was at this time that I resigned the position of driver, and

never resumed it again. Within the hour, we found that it would not only

be better, but was absolutely necessary, that we four, taking turns, two

at a time, should put our hands against the end of the wagon and push it

through the sand, leaving the feeble horses little to do but keep out of

the way and hold up the tongue. Perhaps it is well for one to know his

fate at first, and get reconciled to it. We had learned ours in one

afternoon. It was plain that we had to walk through the sand and shove

that wagon and those horses two hundred miles. So we accepted the

situation, and from that time forth we never rode. More than that, we

stood regular and nearly constant watches pushing up behind.

We made seven miles, and camped in the desert. Young Clagett (now member

of Congress from Montana) unharnessed and fed and watered the horses;

Oliphant and I cut sagebrush, built the fire and brought water to cook

with; and old Mr. Ballou the blacksmith did the cooking. This division

of labor, and this appointment, was adhered to throughout the journey.

We had no tent, and so we slept under our blankets in the open plain. We

were so tired that we slept soundly.

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We were fifteen days making the trip—two hundred miles; thirteen,

rather, for we lay by a couple of days, in one place, to let the horses

rest.

We could really have accomplished the journey in ten days if we had

towed the horses behind the wagon, but we did not think of that until it

was too late, and so went on shoving the horses and the wagon too when

we might have saved half the labor. Parties who met us, occasionally,

advised us to put the _horses_ in the wagon, but Mr. Ballou, through

whose iron-clad earnestness no sarcasm could pierce, said that that

would not do, because the provisions were exposed and would suffer, the

horses being “bituminous from long deprivation.” The reader will excuse

me from translating. What Mr. Ballou customarily meant, when he used a

long word, was a secret between himself and his Maker. He was one of the

best and kindest hearted men that ever graced a humble sphere of life.

He was gentleness and simplicity itself—and unselfishness, too. Although

he was more than twice as old as the eldest of us, he never gave himself

any airs, privileges, or exemptions on that account. He did a _young_

man’s share of the work; and did his share of conversing and

entertaining from the general stand-point of any age—not from the

arrogant, overawing summit-height of sixty years. His one striking

peculiarity was his Partingtonian fashion of loving and using big words

_for their own sakes_, and independent of any bearing they might have

upon the thought he was purposing to convey. He always let his ponderous

syllables fall with an easy unconsciousness that left them wholly

without offensiveness. In truth his air was so natural and so simple

that one was always catching himself accepting his stately sentences as

meaning something, when they really meant nothing in the world. If a

word was long and grand and resonant, that was sufficient to win the old

man’s love, and he would drop that word into the most out-of-the-way

place in a sentence or a subject, and be as pleased with it as if it

were perfectly luminous with meaning.

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We four always spread our common stock of blankets together on the

frozen ground, and slept side by side; and finding that our foolish,

long-legged hound pup had a deal of animal heat in him, Oliphant got to

admitting him to the bed, between himself and Mr. Ballou, hugging the

dog’s warm back to his breast and finding great comfort in it. But in

the night the pup would get stretchy and brace his feet against the old

man’s back and shove, grunting complacently the while; and now and then,

being warm and snug, grateful and happy, he would paw the old man’s back

simply in excess of comfort; and at yet other times he would dream of

the chase and in his sleep tug at the old man’s back hair and bark in

his ear. The old gentleman complained mildly about these familiarities,

at last, and when he got through with his statement he said that such a

dog as that was not a proper animal to admit to bed with tired men,

because he was “so meretricious in his movements and so organic in his

emotions.” We turned the dog out.

It was a hard, wearing, toilsome journey, but it had its bright side;

for after each day was done and our wolfish hunger appeased with a hot

supper of fried bacon, bread, molasses and black coffee, the pipe-

smoking, song-singing and yarn-spinning around the evening camp-fire in

the still solitudes of the desert was a happy, care-free sort of

recreation that seemed the very summit and culmination of earthly

luxury.

It is a kind of life that has a potent charm for all men, whether city

or country-bred. We are descended from desert-lounging Arabs, and

countless ages of growth toward perfect civilization have failed to root

out of us the nomadic instinct. We all confess to a gratified thrill at

the thought of “camping out.”

Once we made twenty-five miles in a day, and once we made forty miles

(through the Great American Desert), and ten miles beyond—fifty in

all—in twenty-three hours, without halting to eat, drink or rest. To

stretch out and go to sleep, even on stony and frozen ground, after

pushing a wagon and two horses fifty miles, is a delight so supreme that

for the moment it almost seems cheap at the price.

We camped two days in the neighborhood of the “Sink of the Humboldt.” We

tried to use the strong alkaline water of the Sink, but it would not

answer. It was like drinking lye, and not weak lye, either. It left a

taste in the mouth, bitter and every way execrable, and a burning in the

stomach that was very uncomfortable. We put molasses in it, but that

helped it very little; we added a pickle, yet the alkali was the

prominent taste and so it was unfit for drinking.

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The coffee we made of this water was the meanest compound man has yet

invented. It was really viler to the taste than the unameliorated water

itself. Mr. Ballou, being the architect and builder of the beverage felt

constrained to endorse and uphold it, and so drank half a cup, by little

sips, making shift to praise it faintly the while, but finally threw out

the remainder, and said frankly it was “too technical for _him_.”

But presently we found a spring of fresh water, convenient, and then,

with nothing to mar our enjoyment, and no stragglers to interrupt it, we

entered into our rest.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

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.

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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.

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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.

CHAPTER XXIX.

True knowledge of the nature of silver mining came fast enough. We went

out “prospecting” with Mr. Ballou. We climbed the mountain sides, and

clambered among sage-brush, rocks and snow till we were ready to drop

with exhaustion, but found no silver—nor yet any gold. Day after day we

did this. Now and then we came upon holes burrowed a few feet into the

declivities and apparently abandoned; and now and then we found one or

two listless men still burrowing. But there was no appearance of silver.

These holes were the beginnings of tunnels, and the purpose was to drive

them hundreds of feet into the mountain, and some day tap the hidden

ledge where the silver was. Some day! It seemed far enough away, and

very hopeless and dreary. Day after day we toiled, and climbed and

searched, and we younger partners grew sicker and still sicker of the

promiseless toil. At last we halted under a beetling rampart of rock

which projected from the earth high upon the mountain. Mr. Ballou broke

off some fragments with a hammer, and examined them long and attentively

with a small eye-glass; threw them away and broke off more; said this

rock was quartz, and quartz was the sort of rock that contained silver.

_Contained_ it! I had thought that at least it would be caked on the

outside of it like a kind of veneering. He still broke off pieces and

critically examined them, now and then wetting the piece with his tongue

and applying the glass. At last he exclaimed:

“We’ve got it!”

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We were full of anxiety in a moment. The rock was clean and white, where

it was broken, and across it ran a ragged thread of blue. He said that

that little thread had silver in it, mixed with base metal, such as lead

and antimony, and other rubbish, and that there was a speck or two of

gold visible. After a great deal of effort we managed to discern some

little fine yellow specks, and judged that a couple of tons of them

massed together might make a gold dollar, possibly. We were not

jubilant, but Mr. Ballou said there were worse ledges in the world than

that. He saved what he called the “richest” piece of the rock, in order

to determine its value by the process called the “fire-assay.” Then we

named the mine “Monarch of the Mountains” (modesty of nomenclature is

not a prominent feature in the mines), and Mr. Ballou wrote out and

stuck up the following “notice,” preserving a copy to be entered upon

the books in the mining recorder’s office in the town.

“NOTICE.”

“We the undersigned claim three claims, of three hundred feet each (and

one for discovery), on this silver-bearing quartz lead or lode,

extending north and south from this notice, with all its dips, spurs,

and angles, variations and sinuosities, together with fifty feet of

ground on either side for working the same.”

We put our names to it and tried to feel that our fortunes were made.

But when we talked the matter all over with Mr. Ballou, we felt

depressed and dubious. He said that this surface quartz was not all

there was of our mine; but that the wall or ledge of rock called the

“Monarch of the Mountains,” extended down hundreds and hundreds of feet

into the earth—he illustrated by saying it was like a curb-stone, and

maintained a nearly uniform thickness—say twenty feet—away down into the

bowels of the earth, and was perfectly distinct from the casing rock on

each side of it; and that it kept to itself, and maintained its

distinctive character always, no matter how deep it extended into the

earth or how far it stretched itself through and across the hills and

valleys. He said it might be a mile deep and ten miles long, for all we

knew; and that wherever we bored into it above ground or below, we would

find gold and silver in it, but no gold or silver in the meaner rock it

was cased between. And he said that down in the great depths of the

ledge was its richness, and the deeper it went the richer it grew.

Therefore, instead of working here on the surface, we must either bore

down into the rock with a shaft till we came to where it was rich—say a

hundred feet or so—or else we must go down into the valley and bore a

long tunnel into the mountain side and tap the ledge far under the

earth. To do either was plainly the labor of months; for we could blast

and bore only a few feet a day—some five or six. But this was not all.

He said that after we got the ore out it must be hauled in wagons to a

distant silver-mill, ground up, and the silver extracted by a tedious

and costly process. Our fortune seemed a century away!

But we went to work. We decided to sink a shaft. So, for a week we

climbed the mountain, laden with picks, drills, gads, crowbars, shovels,

cans of blasting powder and coils of fuse and strove with might and

main. At first the rock was broken and loose and we dug it up with picks

and threw it out with shovels, and the hole progressed very well. But

the rock became more compact, presently, and gads and crowbars came into

play. But shortly nothing could make an impression but blasting powder.

That was the weariest work! One of us held the iron drill in its place

and another would strike with an eight-pound sledge—it was like driving

nails on a large scale. In the course of an hour or two the drill would

reach a depth of two or three feet, making a hole a couple of inches in

diameter. We would put in a charge of powder, insert half a yard of

fuse, pour in sand and gravel and ram it down, then light the fuse and

run. When the explosion came and the rocks and smoke shot into the air,

we would go back and find about a bushel of that hard, rebellious quartz

jolted out. Nothing more. One week of this satisfied me. I resigned.

Clagget and Oliphant followed. Our shaft was only twelve feet deep. We

decided that a tunnel was the thing we wanted.

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So we went down the mountain side and worked a week; at the end of which

time we had blasted a tunnel about deep enough to hide a hogshead in,

and judged that about nine hundred feet more of it would reach the

ledge. I resigned again, and the other boys only held out one day

longer. We decided that a tunnel was not what we wanted. We wanted a

ledge that was already “developed.” There were none in the camp.

We dropped the “Monarch” for the time being.

Meantime the camp was filling up with people, and there was a constantly

growing excitement about our Humboldt mines. We fell victims to the

epidemic and strained every nerve to acquire more “feet.” We prospected

and took up new claims, put “notices” on them and gave them

grandiloquent names. We traded some of our “feet” for “feet” in other

people’s claims. In a little while we owned largely in the “Gray Eagle,”

the “Columbiana,” the “Branch Mint,” the “Maria Jane,” the “Universe,”

the “Root-Hog-or-Die,” the “Samson and Delilah,” the “Treasure Trove,”

the “Golconda,” the “Sultana,” the “Boomerang,” the “Great Republic,”

the “Grand Mogul,” and fifty other “mines” that had never been molested

by a shovel or scratched with a pick. We had not less than thirty

thousand “feet” apiece in the “richest mines on earth” as the frenzied

cant phrased it—and were in debt to the butcher. We were stark mad with

excitement—drunk with happiness—smothered under mountains of prospective

wealth—arrogantly compassionate toward the plodding millions who knew

not our marvellous canyon—but our credit was not good at the grocer’s.

It was the strangest phase of life one can imagine. It was a beggars’

revel. There was nothing doing in the district—no mining—no milling—no

productive effort—no income—and not enough money in the entire camp to

buy a corner lot in an eastern village, hardly; and yet a stranger would

have supposed he was walking among bloated millionaires. Prospecting

parties swarmed out of town with the first flush of dawn, and swarmed in

again at nightfall laden with spoil—rocks. Nothing but rocks. Every

man’s pockets were full of them; the floor of his cabin was littered

with them; they were disposed in labeled rows on his shelves.

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CHAPTER XXX.

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!”

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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.

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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.

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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.

CHAPTER XXXI.

There were two men in the company who caused me particular discomfort.

One was a little Swede, about twenty-five years old, who knew only one

song, and he was forever singing it. By day we were all crowded into one

small, stifling bar-room, and so there was no escaping this person’s

music. Through all the profanity, whisky-guzzling, “old sledge” and

quarreling, his monotonous song meandered with never a variation in its

tiresome sameness, and it seemed to me, at last, that I would be content

to die, in order to be rid of the torture. The other man was a stalwart

ruffian called “Arkansas,” who carried two revolvers in his belt and a

bowie knife projecting from his boot, and who was always drunk and

always suffering for a fight. But he was so feared, that nobody would

accommodate him. He would try all manner of little wary ruses to entrap

somebody into an offensive remark, and his face would light up now and

then when he fancied he was fairly on the scent of a fight, but

invariably his victim would elude his toils and then he would show a

disappointment that was almost pathetic. The landlord, Johnson, was a

meek, well-meaning fellow, and Arkansas fastened on him early, as a

promising subject, and gave him no rest day or night, for awhile. On the

fourth morning, Arkansas got drunk and sat himself down to wait for an

opportunity. Presently Johnson came in, just comfortably sociable with

whisky, and said:

“I reckon the Pennsylvania ’lection—”

Arkansas raised his finger impressively and Johnson stopped. Arkansas

rose unsteadily and confronted him. Said he:

“Wh—what do you know a—about Pennsylvania? Answer me that. Wha—what do

you know ’bout Pennsylvania?”

“I was only goin’ to say—”

“You was only goin’ to say. You was! You was only goin’ to say—what was

you goin’ to say? That’s it! That’s what _I_ want to know. I want to

know wha-what you (’_ic_) what you know about Pennsylvania, since you’re

makin’ yourself so d——d free. Answer me that!”

“Mr. Arkansas, if you’d only let me—”

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“Who’s a henderin’ you? Don’t you insinuate nothing agin me!—don’t you

do it. Don’t you come in here bullyin’ around, and cussin’ and goin’ on

like a lunatic—don’t you do it. ’Coz _I_ won’t stand it. If fight’s what

you want, out with it! I’m your man! Out with it!”

Said Johnson, backing into a corner, Arkansas following, menacingly:

“Why, _I_ never said nothing, Mr. Arkansas. You don’t give a man no

chance. I was only goin’ to say that Pennsylvania was goin’ to have an

election next week—that was all—that was everything I was goin’ to say—I

wish I may never stir if it wasn’t.”

“Well then why d’n’t you say it? What did you come swellin’ around that

way for, and tryin’ to raise trouble?”

“Why I didn’t come swellin’ around, Mr. Arkansas—I just—”

“I’m a liar am I! Ger-reat Caesar’s ghost—”

“Oh, please, Mr. Arkansas, I never meant such a thing as that, I wish I

may die if I did. All the boys will tell you that I’ve always spoke well

of you, and respected you more’n any man in the house. Ask Smith. Ain’t

it so, Smith? Didn’t I say, no longer ago than last night, that for a

man that was a gentleman _all_ the time and every way you took him, give

me Arkansas? I’ll leave it to any gentleman here if them warn’t the very

words I used. Come, now, Mr. Arkansas, le’s take a drink—le’s shake

hands and take a drink. Come up—everybody! It’s my treat. Come up, Bill,

Tom, Bob, Scotty—come up. I want you all to take a drink with me and

Arkansas—_old_ Arkansas, I call him—bully old Arkansas. Gimme your hand

agin. Look at him, boys—just take a _look_ at him. Thar stands the

whitest man in America!—and the man that denies it has got to fight

_me_, that’s all. Gimme that old flipper agin!”

They embraced, with drunken affection on the landlord’s part and

unresponsive toleration on the part of Arkansas, who, bribed by a drink,

was disappointed of his prey once more. But the foolish landlord was so

happy to have escaped butchery, that he went on talking when he ought to

have marched himself out of danger. The consequence was that Arkansas

shortly began to glower upon him dangerously, and presently said:

“Lan’lord, will you p-please make that remark over agin if you please?”

“I was a-sayin’ to Scotty that my father was up’ards of eighty year old

when he died.”

“Was that _all_ that you said?”

“Yes, that was all.”

“Didn’t say nothing but that?”

“No—nothing.”

Then an uncomfortable silence.

Arkansas played with his glass a moment, lolling on his elbows on the

counter. Then he meditatively scratched his left shin with his right

boot, while the awkward silence continued. But presently he loafed away

toward the stove, looking dissatisfied; roughly shouldered two or three

men out of a comfortable position; occupied it himself, gave a sleeping

dog a kick that sent him howling under a bench, then spread his long

legs and his blanket-coat tails apart and proceeded to warm his back. In

a little while he fell to grumbling to himself, and soon he slouched

back to the bar and said:

“Lan’lord, what’s your idea for rakin’ up old personalities and blowin’

about your father? Ain’t this company agreeable to you? Ain’t it? If

this company ain’t agreeable to you, p’r’aps we’d better leave. Is that

your idea? Is that what you’re coming at?”

“Why bless your soul, Arkansas, I warn’t thinking of such a thing. My

father and my mother—”

“Lan’lord, _don’t_ crowd a man! Don’t do it. If nothing’ll do you but a

disturbance, out with it like a man (’_ic_)—but _don’t_ rake up old

bygones and fling’em in the teeth of a passel of people that wants to be

peaceable if they could git a chance. What’s the matter with you this

mornin’, anyway? I never see a man carry on so.”

“Arkansas, I reely didn’t mean no harm, and I won’t go on with it if

it’s onpleasant to you. I reckon my licker’s got into my head, and what

with the flood, and havin’ so many to feed and look out for—”

“So _that’s_ what’s a-ranklin’ in your heart, is it? You want us to

leave do you? There’s too many on us. You want us to pack up and swim.

Is that it? Come!”

“Please be reasonable, Arkansas. Now _you_ know that I ain’t the man

to—”

“Are you a threatenin’ me? Are you? By George, the man don’t live that

can skeer me! Don’t you try to come that game, my chicken—’cuz I can

stand a good deal, but I won’t stand that. Come out from behind that bar

till I clean you! You want to drive us out, do you, you sneakin’

underhanded hound! Come out from behind that bar! _I’ll_ learn you to

bully and badger and browbeat a gentleman that’s forever trying to

befriend you and keep you out of trouble!”

“Please, Arkansas, please don’t shoot! If there’s got to be bloodshed—”

“Do you hear that, gentlemen? Do you hear him talk about bloodshed? So

it’s blood you want, is it, you ravin’ desperado! You’d made up your

mind to murder somebody this mornin’—I knowed it perfectly well. I’m the

man, am I? It’s me you’re goin’ to murder, is it? But you can’t do it

’thout I get one chance first, you thievin’ black-hearted, white-livered

son of a nigger! Draw your weepon!”

With that, Arkansas began to shoot, and the landlord to clamber over

benches, men and every sort of obstacle in a frantic desire to escape.

In the midst of the wild hubbub the landlord crashed through a glass

door, and as Arkansas charged after him the landlord’s wife suddenly

appeared in the doorway and confronted the desperado with a pair of

scissors! Her fury was magnificent. With head erect and flashing eye she

stood a moment and then advanced, with her weapon raised. The astonished

ruffian hesitated, and then fell back a step. She followed. She backed

him step by step into the middle of the bar-room, and then, while the

wondering crowd closed up and gazed, she gave him such another tongue-

lashing as never a cowed and shamefaced braggart got before, perhaps! As

she finished and retired victorious, a roar of applause shook the house,

and every man ordered “drinks for the crowd” in one and the same breath.

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The lesson was entirely sufficient. The reign of terror was over, and

the Arkansas domination broken for good. During the rest of the season

of island captivity, there was one man who sat apart in a state of

permanent humiliation, never mixing in any quarrel or uttering a boast,

and never resenting the insults the once cringing crew now constantly

leveled at him, and that man was “Arkansas.”

By the fifth or sixth morning the waters had subsided from the land, but

the stream in the old river bed was still high and swift and there was

no possibility of crossing it. On the eighth it was still too high for

an entirely safe passage, but life in the inn had become next to

insupportable by reason of the dirt, drunkenness, fighting, etc., and so

we made an effort to get away. In the midst of a heavy snow-storm we

embarked in a canoe, taking our saddles aboard and towing our horses

after us by their halters. The Prussian, Ollendorff, was in the bow,

with a paddle, Ballou paddled in the middle, and I sat in the stern

holding the halters. When the horses lost their footing and began to

swim, Ollendorff got frightened, for there was great danger that the

horses would make our aim uncertain, and it was plain that if we failed

to land at a certain spot the current would throw us off and almost

surely cast us into the main Carson, which was a boiling torrent, now.

Such a catastrophe would be death, in all probability, for we would be

swept to sea in the “Sink” or overturned and drowned. We warned

Ollendorff to keep his wits about him and handle himself carefully, but

it was useless; the moment the bow touched the bank, he made a spring

and the canoe whirled upside down in ten-foot water.

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Ollendorff seized some brush and dragged himself ashore, but Ballou and

I had to swim for it, encumbered with our overcoats. But we held on to

the canoe, and although we were washed down nearly to the Carson, we

managed to push the boat ashore and make a safe landing. We were cold

and water- soaked, but safe. The horses made a landing, too, but our

saddles were gone, of course. We tied the animals in the sage-brush and

there they had to stay for twenty-four hours. We baled out the canoe and

ferried over some food and blankets for them, but we slept one more

night in the inn before making another venture on our journey.