The man on the frontier who has no speculation in his eyes is dead as
Banquo. The contagion of soul, says the ancient philosopher, is quicker
than that of the body, and I have yet to see the one with soul so dead
as to refuse a venture in mines, and wholly resist the fever which
spares neither age nor sex, yet is not fatal or even unpleasant. While
the craze lasts, it affects the brain, quickening the imagination and
distorting the vision. Under its powerful alchemy discolored stones by
the wayside become bowlders of ore, it seams bare cliffs with veins of
gleaming metal, plants mines in impossible places, converts vertical
strata into immense deposits. All the way it silvers the dreams of
night and lengthens them unbroken into the day. Knowledge comes to the
fever-smitten without study. One glance at a lofty mountain-range is
sufficient to determine if it be metalliferous, and, balancing a lump
of ore on his gritty forefinger, he can tell its exact per cent. of
silver.
The victim of the epidemic carries scraps of grimy stuff in his
pockets, wrapped in dirty cloths, and a small magnifying glass, into
which he puckers his fevered eyes many times in the twenty-four
hours, and surveys his uncoined treasure with doating glances. He
unselfishly allows confidential friends to look through the lens, and
expects enthusiastic admiration in return for the privilege. Unless
the confidential friend is an enemy in disguise, he will gloat over
the earthy specimens too. He talks little, if at all, apparently
in a generous burst of feeling about bonanzas. _En bonanza_ means
literally smooth sailing, a fair breeze, etc., and is used by Mexican
miners, applied to exceedingly rich ores or “shoots.” Free translation,
“booming.” His voice is pitched in a low key--a loud, impressive, I may
say distracting whisper. The delirium is pleasurable, for the man’s
hopes are indomitable, and a secret trust covers a dark stratum, so
to speak, of fear; but he is reticent, grave as though his shafts had
pierced to the very center of gravity.
The arithmetic man, who loves figures, has estimated that in the flush
times of Colorado the successful were one to every five hundred honest
miners. He has not brought in returns from the territories, and there
is, in consequence, broader sweep for imagination in the undeveloped
regions, where mining is yet partly experiment.
The fortunes of two or three millionaires balance the losses of
thousands, like the many deaths which go to make up a victory. Are
you the five hundredth or eight hundredth happy child of Destiny,
the victorious captain for whom the unnamed heroes fell? YOU? Of the
bonanza king we daily hear by telegraph, photograph, autograph. Of the
vast army of the defeated--nothing. Singly they tramp back home, steal
in darkly at dead of night, ravage the pantry, and, having slept off
fatigue, are ready to deny having thought of Leadville and Golden.
One of the cheapest and easiest ways of reaching a mine is by a
“grubstake.” This euphonious word means a certain sum (say one hundred
and eighty dollars) advanced to a man by another, with more money
and less time, and the prospector has an interest in whatever he may
find. You meet him on every road, every highway, every by-way, and
where there is no way in the territories. The prospective millionaire
generally wears an umbrageous hickory shirt, sleeves usually rolled
to the elbow, exposing arms not the fairest, buckskin or brown duck
pants, or a ready-made suit, ready to be unmade at the seams, and
a hat of superlative slouch. His head is shaggy as a buffalo’s,
with sun-scorched hair, and his face, lined with fierce sunbeat and
wrinkling wind, is a glossy red, as though it had been veneered,
sand-papered, and varnished. He carries a striking hammer, weighing
from five to eight pounds. Does it look like an enchanter’s rod?
In his hand it may prove a fairy wand, potent as the double-headed
hammer of Thor. His _burro_, or donkey, is not much larger than a
sheep, yet able to bear three hundred pounds’ weight. On the patient,
long-suffering brute is strapped a blanket. Above it are piled rations
of bacon, sugar, crackers, a pick and shovel, and a tin pot for boiling
a coarse brown powder, called in bitter (very bitter) sarcasm coffee.
In seeking claims, he is oftenest attended by a partner, familiarly and
affectionately called “my pard.” In this land of sudden death, where
every man carries pistols and loves to use them, one lone prospector
may be picked off almost anywhere, and his bones left in deep cañon or
lonesome gulch, and no questions asked. It is best to hunt in couples.
Like the intelligent and reliable contraband of other days, the honest
miner is forever bringing in good news. “Lee is just where we want
him!” “The latest find is prodigious, the best thing yet, and lacks
nothing but capital for development to equal anything in the Comstock
Lode or Santa Eulalia!” This last is a mine worth having, where the
early diggers set no value on common ore, but sought “pockets,” rich
with silver; a soft yellow clay, scooped out rapidly and easily with
horn spoons. Sometimes they were of immense extent, requiring years to
exhaust.
I have not been able to learn why the miner is always named the
honest miner; but such is the fact. To this well-worn adjective are
sometimes added reticent and successful, when the speaker wishes to be
unusually impressive. It has been written that mining speculations,
like transactions in horse-flesh, have a tendency to blunt moral
perceptions, and soured politicians insinuate it was first phrased by
ambitious patriots who were anxious to secure his suffrage. Be that as
it may, the honest miner is our man now. Though he does not pretend
to be a poet, his is the vision and faculty divine. He is attended by
presences to other eyes unseen, like the inspired sculptor, who in
a heavenly fervor of inspiration hewed the rough block of marble by
the roadside and let the prisoned angel out. By break of day, while
the warm valley still holds the night in its bosom, he is up and on
the march. The shadow of a great rock or a sighing pine has been his
shelter, the overarching blue canopy his tent, the world is his field.
For his unfailing appetite there are crackers, bacon, and coffee.
Like Macaulay’s fellow-traveler, he breakfasts as if he had fasted
the day before, and dines as though he had never breakfasted. His
_burro_ is happy as that melancholy beast can be on a little grama
grass (_Ætheroma oligistarchon_) or twigs and leaves of scrub oak. He
wanders from the borderline northward, among cold, sharp, icy crags,
where desolation dwells in matchless state; where, among treeless, bald
peaks, she holds and guards her Paradise, perfect even to the grim,
painted savage, who, with scalping-knife, instead of flaming sword,
does the duty of the sentinel-angel at the gate. Lava-beds do not stop
him, nor chaparral, mezquit, or cactus jungle, or the pricking “Spanish
bayonet.” In withering wind, in blinding snow and drifting sand, the
undaunted fellow pushes his search for rich leads. Such persistent
energy directed to any other business would command success; but will
it in prospecting? That depends. If he fails in finding a good thing
(say a lode worth a million or so) in a given district, it does not
shake his steadfast confidence. He makes a new deal, and begins again,
for he “is bound to spot the treasure.”
The claim-stake is usually a pine board, marked with certain
inscriptions in pencil, which ooze from within glazes over and makes
indelible. Pleasant and consoling to him is it to know that no wise man
from the East--no scientist, no geologist--has ever found a valuable
mine. “Them literary fellows have to take a back seat” when it comes to
locating a claim. Luck, chance, accident, and the prospector are the
powers to be depended upon then. But when he does strike the big lead,
and the crumbly ore, with its glittering white-and-yellow streakings,
is reported inexhaustible then these wholesome adages floor the honest
miner. A man cannot see very far underground. It takes a mine to work a
mine. Luck may find the lead, but science molds the silver brick; and
to these precious truths are added the proverb so dear to gentlemen of
the profession of the renowned Oakhurst: “There’s nothing certain about
luck, except that it’s bound to change.”
The old Spaniards had the national love of gambling--the gambler’s
unreasoning hope and his blind belief in luck. If Fortune frowned
to-day, she would brightly smile across the green cloth to-morrow. If
gold is not in this glittering, cheating mica, it is hidden elsewhere,
awaiting him who is bold enough to risk the chances of winning. The
same trait is deeply marked in the American of our generation. Mining
is a business to which all other occupations are dull and tame. The
lumps of soft, blue-looking rock, not much harder than clay, streaked
and spangled with shining threads, are dear to the American as they
were to the Castilian heart and eye.
A man undertaking a scheme in which the odds are five hundred to one
against success might be considered a simpleton elsewhere; but not so
on the frontier. Thousands, armed with pretended stoicism, fevered with
anxiety, rush West, “to look into mines a little,” dig deep, and find
at the bottom of the shaft what the gods of Olympus sent as underlying
all the ills--Hope.
It is as certain as the sun rises and sets that the gambling and not
the commercial instinct predominates in mining transactions. The
fascination is in the hazard. The spell, so binding usually, is not
of avarice, but lies in that delicious, feverish, intoxicating _charm
of chance_. To borrow the words of one who has tried it: “There is a
delight in its agony, a sweetness in its insanity, a drunken, glorious
intensity of _sensation_ in its limitless swing between a prince’s
treasures and a beggar’s death, which lend life a sense never known
before; rarely, indeed, once tasted, ever abandoned.”