As Bayard Taylor suggests in the preceding narrative, not all fortune
seekers in the mining camps succeeded in finding gold or silver. Many
were unlucky or unwilling to work hard and returned home disillusioned.
Most of them stayed in California, however, and became farmers or city
workers. Thus the West Coast was settled before many states farther
east. Sam Clemens, who tried his hand at prospecting, was not a very
serious miner and found his gold when he turned his western experiences
into literary material, such as _Roughing It_, from which the next
selection comes. Here he tells how he almost got rich.
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, maybe, but over-rated.
Seven-thousand-dollar ledges are scarce, though. That Sheba may be
rich enough, but we don’t own it; and besides, the rock is so full of
base metals that all the science in the world can’t work it. We’ll not
starve, here, but we’ll not get rich, I’m afraid.”
“So you think the prospect is pretty poor?”
“No name for it!”
“Well, we’d better go back, hadn’t we?”
“Oh, not yet—of course not. We’ll try it a riffle, first.”
“Suppose, now—this is merely a supposition, you know—suppose you could
find a ledge that would yield, say, a hundred and fifty dollars a
ton—would that satisfy you?”
“Try us once!” from the whole party.
“Or suppose—merely a supposition, of course—suppose you were to find a
ledge that would yield two thousand dollars a ton—would _that_ satisfy
you?”
“Here—what do you mean? What are you coming at? Is there some mystery
behind all this?”
“Never mind. I am not saying anything. You know perfectly well there
are no rich mines here—of course you do. Because you have been around
and examined for yourselves. Anybody would know that, that had been
around. But just for the sake of argument, suppose—in a kind of
general way—suppose some person were to tell you that
two-thousand-dollar ledges were simply contemptible—contemptible,
understand—and that right yonder in sight of this very cabin there
were piles of pure gold and pure silver—oceans of it—enough to make
you all rich in twenty-four hours! Come!”
“I should say he was as crazy as a loon!” said old Ballou, but wild
with excitement, nevertheless.
“Gentlemen,” said I, “I don’t say anything—_I_ haven’t been around,
you know, and of course don’t know anything—but all I ask of you is to
cast your eye on _that_, for instance, and tell me what you think of
it!” and I tossed my treasure before them.
There was an eager scramble for it, and a closing of heads together
over it under the candle-light. Then old Ballou said:
“Think of it? I think it is nothing but a lot of granite rubbish and
nasty glittering mica that isn’t worth ten cents an acre!”
So vanished my dream. So melted my wealth away. So toppled my airy
castle to the earth and left me stricken and forlorn.
Moralizing, I observed, then, that “all that glitters is not gold.”
Mr. Ballou said that 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 lowborn 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.