We reach Carson City about nine o'clock in the morning. It is the
capital of the silver-producing territory of Nevada.
They shoot folks here somewhat, and the law is rather partial than
otherwise to first-class murderers.
I visit the territorial Prison, and the Warden points out the
prominent convicts to me thus:
"This man's crime was horse-stealing. He is here for life."
"This man is in for murder. He is here for three years."
But shooting isn't as popular in Nevada as it once was. A few
years since they used to have a dead man for breakfast every
morning. A reformed desperado told my that he supposed he had
killed men enough to stock a graveyard. "A feeling of remorse,"
he said, "sometimes comes over me! But I'm an altered man now.
I hain't killed a man for over two weeks! What'll yer poison
yourself with?" he added, dealing a resonant blow on the bar.
There used to live near Carson City a notorious desperado, who
never visited town without killing somebody. He would call for
liquor at some drinking-house, and if anybody declined joining him
he would at once commence shooting. But one day he shot a man too
many. Going into the St. Nicholas drinking-house he asked the
company present to join him in a North American drink. One
individual was rash enough to refuse. With a look of sorrow rather
than anger the desperado revealed his revolver, and said, "Good
God! MUST I kill a man every time I come to Carson?" and so saying
he fired and killed the individual on the spot. But this was the
last murder the bloodthirsty miscreant ever committed, for the
aroused citizens pursued him with rifles and shot him down in his
own dooryard.
. . . .
I lecture in the theatre at Carson, which opens out of a drinking
and gambling house. On each side of the door where my ticket-taker
stands there are monte-boards and sweat-cloths, but they are
deserted to-night, the gamblers being evidently of a literary turn
of mind.
. . . .
Five years ago there was only a pony-path over the precipitous
hills on which now stands the marvelous city of Virginia, with its
population of twelve thousand persons, and perhaps more. Virginia,
with its stately warehouses and gay shops; its splendid streets,
paved with silver ore; its banking houses and faro-banks; its
attractive coffee-houses and elegant theatre, its music halls and
its three daily newspapers.
Virginia is very wild, but I believe it is now pretty generally
believed that a mining city must go through with a certain amount
of unadulterated cussedness before it can settle down and behave
itself in a conservative and seemly manner. Virginia has grown up
in the heart of the richest silver regions in the world, the El
Dorado of the hour; and of the immense numbers who are swarming
thither not more than half carry their mother's Bible or any
settled religion with them. The gambler and the strange woman as
naturally seek the new sensational town as ducks take to that
element which is so useful for making cocktails and bathing one's
feet; and these people make the new town rather warm for a while.
But by and by the earnest and honest citizens get tired of this
ungodly nonsense and organize a Vigilance Committee, which hangs
the more vicious of the pestiferous crowd to a sour-apple tree; and
then come good municipal laws, ministers, meeting-houses, and a
tolerably sober police in blue coats with brass buttons. About
five thousand able-bodied men are in the mines underground, here;
some as far down as five hundred feet. The Gould and Curry Mine
employs nine hundred men, and annually turns out about twenty
million dollars' worth of "demnition gold and silver," as Mr.
Mantalini might express it, though silver chiefly.
There are many other mines here and at Gold Hill (another startling
silver city, a mile from here), all of which do nearly as well.
The silver is melted down into bricks of the size of common house
bricks; then it is loaded into huge wagons, each drawn by eight and
twelve mules, and sent off to San Francisco. To a young person
fresh from the land of greenbacks this careless manner of carting
off solid silver is rather a startler. It is related that a young
man who came Overland from New Hampshire a few months before my
arrival became so excited about it that he fell in a fit, with the
name of his Uncle Amos on his lips! The hardy miners supposed he
wanted his uncle there to see the great sight, and faint with him.
But this was pure conjecture, after all.
. . . .
I visit several of the adjacent mining towns, but I do not go to
Aurora. No, I think not. A lecturer on psychology was killed
there the other night by the playful discharge of a horse-pistol in
the hands of a degenerate and intoxicated Spaniard. This
circumstance, and a rumor that the citizens are "agin" literature,
induce me to go back to Virginia.
. . . .
I had pointed out to me at a restaurant a man who had killed four
men in street broils, and who had that very day cut his own
brother's breast open in a dangerous manner with a small supper
knife. He was a gentleman, however. I heard him tell some men so.
He admitted it himself. And I don't think he would lie about a
little thing like that.
The theatre at Virginia will attract the attention of the stranger,
because it is an unusually elegant affair of the kind, and would be
so regarded anywhere. It was built, of course, by Mr. Thomas
Maguire, the Napoleonic manager of the Pacific, and who has built
over twenty theatres in his time and will perhaps build as many
more, unless somebody stops him--which, by the way, will not be a
remarkably easy thing to do.
As soon as a mining camp begins to assume the proportions of a
city, at about the time the whiskey-vender draws his cork or the
gambler spreads his green cloth, Maguire opens a theatre, and with
a hastily-organized "Vigilance Committee" of actors, commences to
execute Shakespeare.