“Comstock Lead” was discovered to exist in almost every locality,
however remote or divergent from the original direction of the vein.
I know a gentleman who certainly discovered a continuation of the
Comstock forty miles from the Ophir mines, and at an angle of more
than sixty degrees. But how could the enterprising adventurer fail to
hit upon something rich, when every clod of earth and fragment of rock
contained, according to the assays, both silver and gold? There was
not a coyote hole in the ground that did not develop “indications.” I
heard of one lucky fellow who struck upon a rich vein, and organized
an extensive company on the strength of having stumped his toe. Claims
were even staked out and companies organized on “indications” rooted up
by the squirrels and gophers. If they were not always indications of
gold or silver, they were sure to contain copper, lead, or some other
valuable mineral--plumbago or iridium, for instance. One man actually
professed to have discovered “ambergris”; but I think he must have been
an old whaler.
The complications of ills which had befallen me soon became so serious
that I resolved to get away by hook or crook, if it was possible to
cheat the----corporate authorities of their dues. I had not come there
to enlist in the service of Mammon at such wages.
Bundling up my pack one dark morning, I paid “Zip” the customary
dollar, and while the evil powers were roistering about the grog-shops,
taking their early bitters, made good my escape from the accursed
place. Weak as I was, the hope of never seeing it again gave me nerve;
and when I ascended the first elevation on the way to Gold Hill, and
cast a look back over the confused mass of tents and hovels, and
thought of all I had suffered there in the brief space of a few days,
I involuntarily exclaimed, “If ever I put foot in that hole again, may
the--”
But perhaps I had better not use strong language till I once more get
clear of the Devil’s Gate.
II
1864
I was prepared to find great changes on the route from Carson to
Virginia City. At Empire City--which was nothing but a sage-desert
inhabited by Dutch Nick on the occasion of my early explorations--I
was quite bewildered with the busy scenes of life and industry.
Quartz-mills and sawmills had completely usurped the valley along the
head of the Carson River; and now the hammering of stamps, the hissing
of steam, the whirling clouds of smoke from tall chimneys, and the
confused clamor of voices from a busy multitude, reminded one of a
manufacturing city. Here, indeed, was progress of a substantial kind.
Further beyond, at Silver City, there were similar evidences of
prosperity. From the descent into the cañon through the Devil’s Gate,
and up the grade to Gold Hill, it is almost a continuous line of
quartz-mills, tunnels, dumps, sluices, water-wheels, frame shanties,
and grog-shops.
Gold Hill itself has swelled into the proportions of a city. It is now
practically a continuation of Virginia. Here the evidences of busy
enterprise are peculiarly striking. The whole hill is riddled and
honey-combed with shafts and tunnels. Engine-houses for hoisting are
perched on points apparently inaccessible; quartz-mills of various
capacities line the sides of the cañon; the main street is well
flanked by brick stores, hotels, express-offices, saloons, restaurants,
groggeries, and all those attractive places of resort which go to make
up a flourishing mining town. Even a newspaper is printed here, which
I know to be a spirited and popular institution, having been viciously
assailed by the same. A runaway team of horses, charging full tilt
down the street, greeted our arrival in a lively and characteristic
manner, and came very near capsizing our stage. One man was run over
some distance below, and partially crushed; but as somebody was killed
nearly every day, such a meagre result afforded no general satisfaction.
Descending the slope of the ridge that divides Gold Hill from Virginia
City a strange scene attracts the eye. He who gazes upon it for the
first time is apt to doubt if it be real. Perhaps there is not another
spot upon the face of the globe that presents a scene so weird and
desolate in its natural aspect, yet so replete with busy life, so
animate with human interest. It is as if a wondrous battle raged, in
which the combatants were man and earth. Myriads of swarthy, bearded,
dust-covered men are piercing into the grim old mountains, ripping them
open, thrusting murderous holes through their naked bodies; piling
up engines to cut out their vital arteries; stamping and crushing
up with infernal machines their disemboweled fragments, and holding
fiendish revels amidst the chaos of destruction; while the mighty
earth, blasted, barren, and scarred by the tempests of ages, fiercely
affronts the foe, smiting him with disease and death; scoffing at his
puny assaults with a grim scorn; ever grand in his desolation, ever
dominant in the infinity of his endurance. “Come!” he seems to mutter,
“dig, delve, pierce, and bore, with your picks, your shovels, and your
infernal machines; wring out of my veins a few globules of the precious
blood; hoard it, spend it, gamble for it, bring perdition to your souls
with it--do what you will, puny insects! Sooner or later the death-blow
smites you, and Earth swallows you! From earth you came--to earth you
go again!”
The city lies on a rugged slope, and is singularly diversified in its
uprisings and downfallings. It is difficult to determine, by any system
of observation or measurement, upon what principle it was laid out. My
impression is that it was never laid out at all, but followed the dips,
spurs, and angles of the immortal Comstock. Some of the streets run
straight enough; others seem to dodge about at acute angles in search
of an open space, as miners explore the subterranean regions in search
of a lead. The cross-streets must have been forgotten in the original
plan--if ever there was a plan about this eccentric city. Sometimes
they happen accidentally at the most unexpected points; and sometimes
they don’t happen at all where you are sure to require them. A man
in a hurry to get from the upper slope of the town to any opposite
point below must try it underground or over the roofs of the houses,
or take the customary circuit of half a mile. Everybody seems to have
built wherever he could secure a lot. The two main streets, it must be
admitted, are so far regular as to follow pretty nearly the direction
of the Comstock lead. On the lower slope, or plateau, the town, as
viewed from any neighboring eminence, presents much the appearance of
a vast number of shingle-roofs shaken down at random, like a jumbled
pack of cards. All the streets are narrow, except where there are but
few houses, and there they are wide enough at present. The business
part of the town has been built up with astonishing rapidity. In the
spring of 1860 there was nothing of it save a few frame shanties and
canvas tents, and one or two rough stone cabins. It now presents some
of the distinguishing features of a metropolitan city. Large and
substantial brick houses, three or four stories high, with ornamental
fronts, have filled up most of the gaps, and many more are still in
progress of erection. The oddity of the plan, and variety of its
architecture--combining most of the styles known to the ancients,
and some but little known to the moderns--give this famous city a
grotesque, if not picturesque, appearance, which is rather increased
upon a close inspection.
Immense freight-wagons, with ponderous wheels and axles, heavily
laboring under prodigious loads of ore for the mills, or groaning with
piles of merchandise in boxes, bales, bags, and crates, block the
narrow streets. Powerful teams of horses, mules, or oxen, numbering
from eight to sixteen animals to each wagon, make frantic efforts to
drag these land schooners over the ruts, and up the sudden rises, or
through the sinks of this rut-smitten, ever-rising, ever-sinking city.
A pitiable sight it is to see them! Smoking hot, reeking with sweat,
dripping with liquefied dust, they pull, jerk, groan, fall back, and
dash forward, tumble down, kick, plunge, and bite; then buckle to it
again, under the galling lash; and so live and so struggle these poor
beasts, for their pittance of barley and hay, till they drop down dead.
How they would welcome death if they had souls! Yet men have souls, and
work hard too for their miserable pittance of food. How many of the
countless millions of the earth yearn for death or welcome its coming?
Even the teamsters that drive these struggling labor-worn brutes seem
so fond of life that they scorn eternity. Brawny, bearded fellows they
are; their faces so ingrained with the dust and grit of earth, and
tanned to such an uncertain hue by the scorching suns and dry winds of
the road, that for the matter of identity they might as well be Hindoos
or Belooches. With what malignant zeal they crack their leather-thonged
whips, and with what ferocious vigor they rend the air with their
imprecations! O Plutus! such swearing--a sliding scale of oaths to
which swearing in all other parts of the world is as the murmuring of
a gentle brook to the volume and rush and thunder of a cataract. The
fertility of resource displayed by these reckless men; their ready
command of metaphor; their marvelous genius for strange, startling
and graphic combinations of slang and profanity; their grotesque
originality of inflexion and climax; their infatuated credulity in the
understanding of dumb animals; would in the pursuit of any nobler art
elevate them to a niche in the temple of fame. Surely if murder be
deemed one of the Fine Arts in Virginia City, swearing ought not to be
held in such common repute.
Entering the main street you pass on the upper side huge piles of earth
and ore, hoisted out of the shafts or run out of the tunnels, and cast
over the “dumps.” The hill-sides, for a distance of more than a mile,
are perfectly honey-combed. Steam-engines are puffing off their steam;
smoke-stacks are blackening the air with their thick volumes of smoke;
quartz-batteries are battering; hammers are hammering; subterranean
blasts are bursting up the earth; picks and crowbars are picking and
crashing into the precious rocks; shanties are springing up, and
carpenters are sawing and ripping and nailing; store-keepers are
rolling their merchandise in and out along the way-side; fruit vendors
are peddling their fruits; wagoners are tumbling out and piling in
their freights of dry-goods and ore; saloons are glittering with their
gaudy bars and fancy glasses, and many-colored liquors, and thirsty men
are swilling the burning poison; auctioneers, surrounded by eager and
gaping crowds of speculators, are shouting off the stocks of delinquent
stock-holders; organ-grinders are grinding their organs and torturing
consumptive monkeys; hurdy-gurdy girls are singing bacchanalian
songs in bacchanalian dens; Jew clothiers are selling off prodigious
assortments of worthless garments at ruinous prices; bill-stickers are
sticking up bills of auctions, theatres, and new saloons; news-boys are
crying the city papers with the latest telegraphic news; stages are
dashing off with passengers for “Reese”; and stages are dashing in with
passengers from “Frisco”; and the inevitable Wells, Fargo, and Co. are
distributing letters, packages, and papers to the hungry multitude,
amidst tempting piles of silver bricks and wonderful complications of
scales, letter-boxes, clerks, account-books, and twenty-dollar pieces.
All is life, excitement, avarice, lust, deviltry, and enterprise. A
strange city truly, abounding in strange exhibitions and startling
combinations of the human passions. Where upon earth is there such
another place?
One of the most characteristic features of Virginia is the inordinate
passion of the inhabitants for advertising. Not only are the columns
of the newspapers filled with every possible species of advertisement,
but the streets and hill-sides are pasted all over with flaming bills.
Says the proprietor of a small shanty, in letters that send a thrill of
astonishment through your brain:
“LOOK HERE! _For fifty cents_ YOU CAN GET A GOOD SQUARE MEAL at the
HOWLING WILDERNESS SALOON!”
A square meal is not, as may be supposed, a meal placed upon the table
in the form of a solid cubic block, but a substantial repast of pork
and beans, onions, cabbage, and other articles of sustenance that will
serve to fill up the corners of a miner’s stomach.
The Jew clothing-stores present the most marvelous fertility of
invention in this style of advertising. Bills are posted all over the
doorways, in the windows, on the pavements, and on the various articles
of clothing hung up for sale. He who runs may read:
“NOW OR NEVER! _Cheapest coats in the world!!_ PANTS GIVEN AWAY!!!
WALK IN, GENTS.”
And so on without limit. New clothes and clothes doubtful are offered
for sale at these prolific establishments, which are always selling
off at cost or suicidal prices, yet never seem to be reduced in stock.
I verily believe I saw hanging at the door of one of these shops
the identical pair of stockings stolen from me several years ago at
Strawberry.
Drinking establishments being rather numerous, the competition in
this line of business gives rise to a very persuasive and attractive
style of advertising. The bills are usually printed in florid and
elaborately gilt letters, and frequently abound in pictures of an
imaginative character. “Cosy Home,” “Miner’s Retreat,” “Social Hall,”
“Empire,” “Indication,” “Fancy-Free,” “Snug,” “Shades,” etc., are a few
of the seductive names given to these places of popular resort; and
the announcements are generally followed by a list of “choice liquors”
and the gorgeous attractions of the billiard department, together with
a hint that Dick, Jack, Dan, or Jerry “is always on hand, and while
grateful for past favors will spare no pains to merit a continuance of
the same. By catering to the public taste he hopes to make his house
in the future, as it has been in the past, a real Home for the Boys!”
Nice homes these, and a nice family of boys that will come out of them!
Where will they live when they grow to be men? A good idea it was to
build a stone penitentiary.
“_Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh yes!_”
“AUCTION SALES EVERY DAY!”
This is another form of advertisement for a very prolific branch of
trade. Day and night auctions are all the rage in Virginia as in San
Francisco. Everything that can’t go any other way, and many things that
can, go by auction. Stocks, horses, mules, boots, groceries, tinware,
drugs and medicines, and rubbish of all kinds are put in flaming bills
and auctioned off to the highest bidder for cash. “An’af! an’af! an’af!
shall I have it?” is a part of the language popularly spoken on the
principal streets.
A cigar store not much bigger than a dry-goods box must have its
mammoth posters out over the town and hill-sides, displaying to the
public eye the prodigious assortments of Regalias, Principes, Cheroots,
etc., and choice brands of “Yellow-leaf,” “Honey-dew,” “Solace,” and
“Eureka,” to be had within the limits of their cigar and tobacco
emporium. If Archimedes were to rush from the solace of a bath and run
naked through the streets of Virginia, shouting, “Eureka! Eureka!”
it would merely be regarded as a dodge to dispose of an invoice of
Fine-Cut.
Quack pills, sirups, tonics, and rectifiers stare you in the face from
every mud-bank, rock, post, and corner, in red, black, blue, and white
letters; in hieroglyphics, in cadaverous pictures of sick men, and
astounding pictures of well men.
Every branch of trade, every conceivable species of amusement, is
forced upon the public eye in this way. Bill-posting is one of the fine
arts. Its professors are among the most notable characters in Virginia.
They have a specific interest in certain corners, boards, boxes, and
banks of earth and rock, which, with the brush and pot of paste, yield
them a handsome revenue. To one who witnesses this bill-mania for the
first time the effect is rather peculiar. He naturally imagines that
the whole place is turned inside out. Every man’s business fills his
eye from every point of view, and he cannot conceive the existence of
a residence unless it be that where so much of the inside is out some
portion of the outside may be in. With the exception of the silver
mines this is, to a casual observer, an inverted city, and may well
claim to be a city of anomalies.
I had occasion, during my stay, to avail myself of the services of a
professional bill-sticker. For the sum of six dollars he agreed to
make me notorious. The bills were printed in the approved form: “A
Trip to Iceland,” etc. Special stress was given to the word “ICELAND,”
and my name was printed in extravagantly conspicuous letters. In the
course of a day or two I was shocked at the publicity the Professor
of Bill-Posting had given me. From every rock, corner, dry-goods box,
and awning post; from every screen in every drinking saloon, I was
confronted, and browbeaten by my own name. I felt disposed to shrink
into my boots. Had anybody walked up to me and said, “Sir, you
are a humbug!” it would have been an absolute relief. I would have
grasped him by the hand, and answered, “I know it, my dear fellow,
and honor you for your frankness!” But there was one consolation: I
was suffering in company. A lady, popularly known as “The Menken”
(the afterwards celebrated actress, Adah Isaacs Menken) had created
an immense sensation in San Francisco, and was about to favor the
citizens of Virginia with a classical equestrian exhibition entitled
“Mazeppa.” She was represented as tied in an almost nude state to the
back of a wild horse, which was running away with her at a fearful
rate of speed. My friend the Professor was an artist in the line of
bill-sticking, and carefully studied effects. He evidently enjoyed
Mazeppa. It was a flaming and a gorgeous bill. Its colors were of the
most florid character; and he posted accordingly. First came Mazeppa
on the mustang horse; then came the Trip to Iceland and myself. If I
remember correctly we (that is to say “The Menken” and I) were followed
by “Ayer’s Tonic Pills,” “Brown’s Bronchial Troches,” and “A good
Square Meal at the Howling Wilderness Saloon.” Well, I suppose it was
all right, though it took me rather aback at the first view. If the
lady had no reason to complain, it was not for me, an old traveler, to
find fault with the bill-sticker for placing me prominently before the
public. Perhaps the juxtaposition was unfortunate in a pecuniary point
of view; perhaps the citizens of Virginia feel no great interest in
icy regions. Be that as it may, never again so long as I live will I
undertake to run “Iceland” in the vicinity of a beautiful woman tied to
the back of a wild horse.
* * * * *
Making due allowance for the atmosphere of exaggeration through
which a visitor sees everything in this wonderful mining metropolis,
its progress has been sufficiently remarkable to palliate in some
measure the extraordinary flights of fancy in which its inhabitants
are prone to indulge. I was not prepared to see so great a change
within the brief period of three years; for when people assure me
“the world never saw anything like it,” “California is left in the
shade,” “San Francisco is eclipsed,” “Montgomery Street is nowhere
now,” my incredulity is excited, and it takes some little time to
judge of the true state of the case without prejudice. Speaking then
strictly within bounds, the growth of this city is remarkable. When it
is considered that the surrounding country affords but few facilities
for the construction of houses; that lumber has to be hauled a
considerable distance at great expense; that lime, bricks, ironwork,
sashes, doors, etc., cost three or four times what similar articles do
in San Francisco; that much indispensable material can only be had by
transporting it over the mountains a distance of more than a hundred
and fifty miles; and that the average of mechanical labor, living, and
other expenses is correspondingly higher than in California, it is
really wonderful how much has been done in so short a space of time.
Yet, allowing all this, what would be the impressions of a Fejee
Islander sent upon a mission of inquiry to this strange place? His
earliest glimpse of the main street would reveal the curious fact
that it is paved with a conglomerate of dust, mud, splintered planks,
old boots, clippings of tinware, and playing-cards. It is especially
prolific in the matter of cards. Mules are said to fatten on them
during seasons of scarcity when the straw gives out. The next marvelous
fact that would strike the observation of this wild native is that so
many people live in so many saloons, and do nothing from morning till
night, and from night till morning again, but drink fiery liquids and
indulge in profane language. How can all these able-bodied men afford
to be idle? Who pays their expenses? And why do they carry pistols,
knives, and other deadly weapons, when no harm could possibly befall
them if they went unarmed and devoted themselves to some useful
occupation? Has the God of the white men done them such an injury in
furnishing all this silver for their use that they should treat His
name with contempt and disrespect? Why do they send missionaries to
the Fejee Islands and leave their own country in such a dreadful state
of neglect? The Fejeeans devour their enemies occasionally as a war
measure; the white man swallows his enemy all the time without regard
to measure. Truly the white man is a very uncertain native! Fejeeans
can’t rely upon him.
When I was about to start on my trip to Washoe, friends from Virginia
assured me I would find hotels there almost, if not quite, equal to
the best in San Francisco. There was but little difference, they said,
except in the matter of extent. The Virginia hotels were quite as
good, though not quite so large. Of course I believed all they told
me. Now I really don’t consider myself fastidious on the subject of
hotels. Having traveled in many different countries I have enjoyed an
extensive experience in the way of accommodations, from my mother-earth
to the foretop of a whale-ship, from an Indian wigwam to a Parisian
hotel, from an African palm-tree to an Arctic snowbank. I have slept
in the same bed with two donkeys, a camel, half a dozen Arabs, several
goats, and a horse. I have slept on beds alive with snakes, lizards,
scorpions, centipedes, bugs, and fleas--beds in which men stricken
with the plague had died horrible deaths--beds that might reasonably
be suspected of smallpox, measles and Asiatic cholera. I have slept in
beds of rivers and beds of sand, and on the bare bed rock. Standing,
sitting, lying down, doubled up, and hanging over; twisted, punched,
jammed, and elbowed by drunken men; snored at in the cars; sat upon and
smothered by the nightmare; burnt by fires, rained upon, snowed upon,
and bitten by frost--in all these positions, and subject to all these
discomforts, I have slept with comparative satisfaction. There are
pleasanter ways of sleeping, to be sure, but there are times when any
way is a blessing. In respect to the matter of eating I am even less
particular. Frogs, horse-leeches, snails, and grasshoppers are luxuries
to what I have eaten. It has pleased Providence to favor me with
appetites and tastes appropriate to a great variety of circumstances
and many conditions of life. These facts serve to show that I am not
fastidious on the subject of personal accommodations.
Perhaps my experience in Virginia was exceptional; perhaps misfortune
was determined to try me to the utmost extremity. I endeavored to
find accommodations at a hotel recommended as the best in the place,
and was shown a room over the kitchen stove, in which the thermometer
ranged at about 130 to 150 degrees of Fahrenheit. To be lodged and
baked at the rate of $2 per night, cash in advance, was more than I
could stand, so I asked for another room. There was but one more, and
that was pre-empted by a lodger who might or might not come back and
claim possession in the middle of the night. It had no window except
one that opened into the passage, and the bed was so arranged that
every other lodger in the house could take a passing observation of
the sleeper and enjoy his style of sleeping. Nay, it was not beyond
the resources of the photographic art to secure his negative and
print his likeness for general distribution. It was bad enough to be
smothered for want of light and air; but I had no idea of paying $2 a
night for the poor privilege of showing people how I looked with my
eyes shut, and possibly my mouth open. A man may have an attack of
nightmare; his countenance may be distorted by horrible dreams; he
may laugh immoderately at a very bad pun made in his sleep--in all
which conditions of body and mind he doubtless presents an interesting
spectacle to the critical eyes of a stranger, but he doesn’t like to
wake up suddenly and be caught in the act.