If I do not forget it, I will send you, per next mail, a pinch of decom.
(decomposed rock) which I pinched with thumb and finger from “Wide West”
ledge awhile ago. Raish and I have secured 200 out of a 400 ft. in it,
which perhaps (the ledge, I mean) is a spur from the W. W.--our shaft
is about 100 ft. from the W. W. shaft. In order to get in, we agreed to
sink 30 ft. We have sub-let to another man for 50 ft., and we pay for
powder and sharpening tools.
The “Wide West” claim was forfeited, but there is no evidence to
show that Clemens and his partners were ever, except in fiction,
“millionaires for ten days.” The background, the local color, and
the possibilities are all real enough, but Mark Twain's aim in this,
as in most of his other reminiscent writing, was to arrange and
adapt his facts to the needs of a good story.
The letters of this summer (1862) most of them bear evidence of
waning confidence in mining as a source of fortune--the miner has
now little faith in his own judgment, and none at all in that of his
brother, who was without practical experience.
Letter to Orion Clemens, in Carson City:
ESMERALDA, Thursday.
MY DEAR BRO.,--Yours of the 17th, per express, just received. Part of
it pleased me exceedingly, and part of it didn't. Concerning the letter,
for instance: You have PROMISED me that you would leave all mining
matters, and everything involving an outlay of money, in my hands.
Sending a man fooling around the country after ledges, for God's sake!
when there are hundreds of feet of them under my nose here, begging for
owners, free of charge. I don't want any more feet, and I won't touch
another foot--so you see, Orion, as far as any ledges of Perry's are
concerned, (or any other except what I examine first with my own eyes,)
I freely yield my right to share ownership with you.
The balance of your letter, I say, pleases me exceedingly. Especially
that about the H. and D. being worth from $30 to $50 in Cal. It pleases
me because, if the ledges prove to be worthless, it will be a pleasant
reflection to know that others were beaten worse than ourselves. Raish
sold a man 30 feet, yesterday, at $20 a foot, although I was present at
the sale, and told the man the ground wasn't worth a d---n. He said he
had been hankering after a few feet in the H. and D. for a long time,
and he had got them at last, and he couldn't help thinking he had
secured a good thing. We went and looked at the ledges, and both of them
acknowledged that there was nothing in them but good “indications.” Yet
the owners in the H. and D. will part with anything else sooner than
with feet in these ledges. Well, the work goes slowly--very slowly
on, in the tunnel, and we'll strike it some day. But--if we “strike it
rich,”--I've lost my guess, that's all. I expect that the way it got so
high in Cal. was, that Raish's brother, over there was offered $750.00
for 20 feet of it, and he refused.....
Couldn't go on the hill today. It snowed. It always snows here, I
expect.
Don't you suppose they have pretty much quit writing, at home?
When you receive your next 1/4 yr's salary, don't send any of it here
until after you have told me you have got it. Remember this. I am afraid
of that H. and D.
They have struck the ledge in the Live Yankee tunnel, and I told the
President, Mr. Allen, that it wasn't as good as the croppings. He said
that was true enough, but they would hang to it until it did prove rich.
He is much of a gentleman, that man Allen.
And ask Gaslerie why the devil he don't send along my commission as
Deputy Sheriff. The fact of my being in California, and out of his
country, wouldn't amount to a d---n with me, in the performance of my
official duties.
I have nothing to report, at present, except that I shall find out all I
want to know about this locality before I leave it.
How do the Records pay?
Yr. Bro.
SAM.
In one of the foregoing letters--the one dated May 11 there is a
reference to the writer's “Enterprise Letters.” Sometimes, during
idle days in the camp, the miner had followed old literary impulses
and written an occasional burlesque sketch, which he had signed
“Josh,” and sent to the Territorial Enterprise, at Virginia City.
--[One contribution was sent to a Keokuk paper, The Gate City, and a
letter written by Mrs. Jane Clemens at the time would indicate that
Mark Twain's mother did not always approve of her son's literary
efforts. She hopes that he will do better, and some time write
something “that his kin will be proud of.”]--The rough, vigorous
humor of these had attracted some attention, and Orion, pleased with
any measure of success that might come to his brother, had allowed
the authorship of them to become known. When, in July, the
financial situation became desperate, the Esmeralda miner was moved
to turn to literature for relief. But we will let him present the
situation himself.
To Orion Clemens, in Carson City:
ESMERALDA, July 23d, 1862.
MY DEAR BRO.,--No, I don't own a foot in the “Johnson” ledge--I will
tell the story some day in a more intelligible manner than Tom has told
it. You needn't take the trouble to deny Tom's version, though. I own
25 feet (1-16) of the 1st east ex. on it--and Johnson himself has
contracted to find the ledge for 100 feet. Contract signed yesterday.
But as the ledge will be difficult to find he is allowed six months
to find it in. An eighteenth of the Ophir was a fortune to John D.
Winters--and the Ophir can't beat the Johnson any.....
My debts are greater than I thought for; I bought $25 worth of clothing,
and sent $25 to Higbie, in the cement diggings. I owe about $45 or $50,
and have got about $45 in my pocket. But how in the h--l I am going to
live on something over $100 until October or November, is singular. The
fact is, I must have something to do, and that shortly, too.....
Now write to the Sacramento Union folks, or to Marsh, and tell them I'll
write as many letters a week as they want, for $10 a week--my board must
be paid. Tell them I have corresponded with the N. Orleans Crescent, and
other papers--and the Enterprise. California is full of people who have
interests here, and it's d---d seldom they hear from this country. I
can't write a specimen letter--now, at any rate--I'd rather undertake
to write a Greek poem. Tell 'em the mail and express leave three times
a week, and it costs from 25 to 50 cents to send letters by the blasted
express. If they want letters from here, who'll run from morning till
night collecting materials cheaper. I'll write a short letter twice a
week, for the present, for the “Age,” for $5 per week. Now it has been
a long time since I couldn't make my own living, and it shall be a long
time before I loaf another year.....
If I get the other 25 feet in the Johnson ex., I shan't care a d---n.
I'll be willing to curse awhile and wait. And if I can't move the bowels
of those hills this fall, I will come up and clerk for you until I get
money enough to go over the mountains for the winter.
Yr. Bro.
SAM.
The Territorial Enterprise at Virginia City was at this time owned
by Joseph T. Goodman, who had bought it on the eve of the great
Comstock silver-mining boom, and from a struggling, starving sheet
had converted it into one of the most important--certainly the most
picturesque-papers on the coast. The sketches which the Esmeralda
miner had written over the name of “Josh” fitted into it exactly,
and when a young man named Barstow, in the business office, urged
Goodman to invite “Josh” to join their staff, the Enterprise owner
readily fell in with the idea. Among a lot of mining matters of no
special interest, Clemens, July 30th, wrote his brother: “Barstow
has offered me the post as local reporter for the Enterprise at $25
a week, and I have written him that I will let him know next mail,
if possible.”
In Roughing It we are told that the miner eagerly accepted the
proposition to come to Virginia City, but the letters tell a
different story. Mark Twain was never one to abandon any
undertaking easily. His unwillingness to surrender in a lost cause
would cost him more than one fortune in the years to come. A week
following the date of the foregoing he was still undecided.
To Orion Clemens, in Carson City:
ESMERALDA, Aug. 7, 1862.
MY DEAR BRO,--Barstow wrote that if I wanted the place I could have
it. I wrote him that I guessed I would take it, and asked him how long
before I must come up there. I have not heard from him since.
Now, I shall leave at mid-night tonight, alone and on foot for a walk of
60 or 70 miles through a totally uninhabited country, and it is barely
possible that mail facilities may prove infernally “slow” during the few
weeks I expect to spend out there. But do you write Barstow that I have
left here for a week or so, and in case he should want me he must write
me here, or let me know through you.
The Contractors say they will strike the Fresno next week. After fooling
with those assayers a week, they concluded not to buy “Mr. Flower”
at $50, although they would have given five times the sum for it four
months ago. So I have made out a deed for one half of all Johnny's
ground and acknowledged and left in judge F. K. Becktel's hands, and if
judge Turner wants it he must write to Becktel and pay him his Notary
fee of $1.50. I would have paid that fee myself, but I want money now as
I leave town tonight. However, if you think it isn't right, you can pay
the fee to judge Turner yourself.
Hang to your money now. I may want some when I get back.....
See that you keep out of debt--to anybody. Bully for B.! Write him that
I would write him myself, but I am to take a walk tonight and haven't
time. Tell him to bring his family out with him. He can rely upon what
I say--and I say the land has lost its ancient desolate appearance; the
rose and the oleander have taken the place of the departed sage-bush; a
rich black loam, garnished with moss, and flowers, and the greenest
of grass, smiles to Heaven from the vanished sand-plains; the “endless
snows” have all disappeared, and in their stead, or to repay us for
their loss, the mountains rear their billowy heads aloft, crowned with
a fadeless and eternal verdure; birds, and fountains, and trees-tropical
bees--everywhere!--and the poet dreamt of Nevada when he wrote:
“and Sharon waves, in solemn praise,
Her silent groves of palm.”
and today the royal Raven listens in a dreamy stupor to the songs of
the thrush and the nightingale and the canary--and shudders when the
gaudy-plumaged birds of the distant South sweep by him to the orange
groves of Carson. Tell him he wouldn't recognize the d--d country. He
should bring his family by all means.