ADVENTURES OF EARLY PROSPECTORS.
Two young men who were mining in Gold Cañon, suspected the existence of
silver-mines in the country at least five or six years before silver was
actually discovered. These men were Hosea B. and Edgar Allen Grosch,
sons of A. B. Grosch, a Universalist clergyman of considerable note, and
editor of a Universalist paper at Utica, New York. The Grosch brothers
were well educated and had considerable knowledge of mineralogy and
assaying.
They came to Gold Cañon in 1852, from Volcano, California, and engaged
in placer-mining. In 1853 and 1854, they appear to have become convinced
that there was silver to be found in the country, and did a good deal of
prospecting in various directions among the neighboring mountains,
doubtless in search of silver ore.
In their cabin, which stood near the present town of Silver City, about
a mile above Johntown, they are said to have had a library consisting of
a considerable number of volumes of scientific works; also chemical
apparatus and assayer’s tools.
They did not associate with the miners working on the cañon, and were
very reticent in regard to what they were doing. They, however, informed
a few persons that they had discovered a vein of silver-bearing quartz
and it was well known among the miners that they had formed a company
for the purpose of working their mine. The majority of the members of
their company were understood to be in California (about Volcano), and
in one of the Atlantic States. Mrs. L. M. Dettenreider, one of the early
settlers of the country, and a lady who had befriended the brothers, was
given an interest in their mine, and at one time had in her possession a
piece of ore from it. This ore, they assured her, contained gold,
silver, lead, and antimony.
Mrs. Dettenreider, who is a resident of Virginia City, says she always
understood that the mine discovered by the Grosch brothers was somewhere
about Mount Davidson, and thinks they may have obtained their ore
somewhere along the Comstock lead.
In 1860, I saw their old furnaces unearthed, they having been covered up
to the depth of a foot or more by a deposit of mud and sand from Gold
Cañon. They were two in number and but two or three feet in length, a
foot in height and a foot and a half in width. One had been used as a
smelting and the other as a cupel furnace. The remains of melting-pots
and fragments of cupels were found in and about the furnaces, also a
large piece of argentiferous galena, which had doubtless been procured a
short distance west of Silver City, where there are yet to be seen veins
containing ore of that character, some of which yield fair assays in
silver.
In the spring of 1857, Hosea Grosch, while engaged in mining, stuck a
pick in his foot, inflicting a wound, from the effects of which he died,
in a few days. In November of that year, while on his way to Volcano,
California, Allen, the surviving brother, was caught in a heavy storm in
the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and had his feet frozen so badly that
amputation was necessary, from the shock of which operation he died.
With the brothers was lost the secret of the whereabouts of their
silver-mine; if they ever discovered any silver except that contained in
the ore of the veins of argentiferous galena I have mentioned.
After the discovery of the old furnaces of the Grosch brothers in 1860,
there was much search by miners in the neighborhood for the mine they
had been prospecting, but no mine was ever found.
In a sort of sink on the side of a large mountain, at the foot of which
stood the cabin and furnaces of the brothers, was found an old shaft.
Here was supposed to be the spot where they had worked, and the place
was “located” (“claimed” or “pre-empted”), and called the “Lost Shaft.”
About the first discovery made by the locators, when they began cleaning
out the shaft, was the body—a sort of mummy—of a Piute squaw, who had
been murdered some years before by members of her tribe, who had tumbled
her remains into the old shaft.
After finding this “dead thing,” the owners of the claim let a contract
for the further sinking and exploration of the old shaft. The men who
took the contract soon gave it up. They said they could not work in the
shaft; that stones were falling out of its sides without cause. Others
took the contract, and each party of miners that went to work in the
shaft gave it up, saying that their lives were endangered by the stones
which suddenly and at unexpected times, jumped out of its sides. A
tunnel was then started to tap the ledge on which the old shaft was
supposed to have been sunk, but it was never completed. It is now well
known that the old shaft was sunk by a party of Gold Cañon miners in
1851, they having taken it into their heads that from this
curious-looking pit or sink in the side of the mountain came all the
gold found below in the cañon.
There was also a story current among the miners, in 1860, that before
starting on the trip over the Sierras which resulted in his death, Allen
Grosch boxed up the library and all the chemical and assaying apparatus,
and _cached_ the whole somewhere about Grizzly Hill, the mountain at the
base of which stood the cabin occupied by the brothers. There was much
search by curious miners in the neighborhood for this supposed deposit
of valuables. They crawled under the edge of shelving rocks, peered into
crevices among the cliffs, and probed all suspicious-looking
stone-heaps, but no bonanza of scientific apparatus was ever discovered.
When Allen Grosch left to go over the mountains to California, Comstock
was placed in charge of the cabin, and it is very probable that whatever
books and apparatus there may have been were carried away by such
visitors as took a fancy to them, and thus were scattered and lost.
In the summer of 1860 I was camped on a branch of Gold Cañon, near where
the old stone-cabin of the Grosch brothers stood. I had a score or more
of neighbors, whose tents were pitched on the banks of the ravine, or
who, having no tents, made the willows on the bars their shelter. One
hot day in July, one of the men, a big, long-legged Missourian, started
up the mountain to see what he could find. One object probably was to
look for the Grosch scientific “bonanza,” but, being a man who had no
more knowledge of ores and minerals than a Piute, he was quite sure to
make some remarkable discovery, no matter in what direction he traveled.
He had been absent some hours when, looking up towards the summit of
Grizzly Hill, we saw a cloud of dust moving down the face of the
mountain. In the midst of this whirling cloud, we caught occasional
glimpses of a man, bounding along like a wild goat. Rocks disturbed by
his feet, rolled down the steep slope of the mountain, adding greatly to
the dust and commotion. All in camp were soon out gazing at the unusual
spectacle, and all wondered what had happened to “Pike,” who by this
time had been recognized by his long legs and reckless manner of
handling them.
Some thought that a bear or some other wild beast was in pursuit of
Pike, as he charged down the steep mountain in a manner so reckless that
it was very evident he was taking no thought of the risk he ran of
breaking his neck.
Over jutting ledges and through huge patches of loose, sliding rock,
bounded Pike, and soon he came rushing wild-eyed into camp.
Rivulets of perspiration were coursing down his dust-covered cheeks;
dust whitened the ends of his long black locks, and dust seemed to fly
from his nostrils as, puffing and blowing, he made his way into our
midst.
In both hands he held a quantity of black-looking rock. As soon as he
could get his breath he said: “Boys, I’ve struck it! There’s millions of
tons of it! Millions on millions—enough to make the whole camp rich!”
“Well, what is it Pike?” asked some one. “Is it silver, gold, or what?”
“It is what none of you fellers would ever have found: it’s the stuff
they make compasses of!”
“Make compasses of! What do you mean?” asked the men.
“Mean! I mean just what I say, that it is the stuff they make compasses
of—surveyors’ compasses, mariners’ compasses, and all them kind of
compasses that pint to the North Pole. None of you would ever have found
it; you wouldn’t have knowed what it was!”
“Well, where is it? Where is this big thing?”
“Way up yander on top of the mountain,” said Pike, pointing towards the
summit of Grizzly Hill. “There’s a whole ledge of it—a ledge fifty foot
wide!”
“But how do you know that the stuff is good for anything?” asked the
boys. “How do you know that it is what compasses are made of?”
“How do I know? Easy enough. Just look here, will you!”
Pike then took a piece of the rock weighing about five pounds, and
placing one end of it in the midst of a handful of smaller pieces,
ranging from the size of a pea to that of a hulled walnut, the whole
mass of small fragments was lifted up and remained clinging to the
larger lump of rock.
“See that!” cried Pike, glancing at one and another of the men about
him: “What did I tell you? and there is millions more where I got this!”
All were now really a good deal interested in the rock found by Pike,
and in the powerful magnetic qualities it exhibited, as the large lumps
would pick up and hold suspended fragments weighing over an ounce.
“The way I come to find it,” now explained Pike, “was this: I found the
big ledge of black, heavy rock, and taking up a chunk of it began trying
to break off a slice from the main ledge. As I hammered away, I noticed
that all the little bits of rock pounded loose stuck to the chunk I held
in my hand. I thought at first that there was pine-gum on the chunk, but
could find none, then it all at once flashed into my mind, and I
said—‘I’ve struck it! This is the stuff they make compasses of!’ Then
you just ought to have seen me make tracks down the mountain.”
“We saw you!” said the men.
Pike then went on to say, that his discovery was one of the most
important, in many respects, that had been made in modern times. It
would be of incalculable advantage to navigation and would increase the
navies of the world a thousand-fold. He even went so far the next
morning (which showed that his brain had not been idle during the night)
as to assert that hereafter there would be no difficulty about reaching
the North Pole. All that would be necessary, he said, would be to place
a block of about ten tons of his rock on the bow of a ship, when,
without the aid of sail or rudder, and in spite of adverse winds and
ice-floes, the vessel would plough its way up through the oceans of the
north and never stop until its nose rested against the side of the Pole.
Pike had several assays of his “find” made, and it was weeks before he
could be made to believe that it was not something of more value than
magnetic iron ore.
Some years after Pike’s great discovery, a prospector who had been
roaming through the Pahranagat Mountains, the wildest and most sterile
portion of southeastern Nevada, brought back with him a great curiosity
in the shape of a number of traveling stones. The stones were almost
perfectly round, the majority of them as large as a hulled walnut, and
very heavy, being of an irony nature. When scattered about on the floor,
on a table, or other level surface, within two or three feet of each
other, they immediately began traveling toward a common centre, and then
huddled up in a bunch like a lot of eggs in a nest. A single stone
removed to a distance of a yard, upon being released, at once started
off with wonderful and somewhat comical celerity to rejoin its fellows;
but if taken away four or five feet it remained motionless.
The man who was in possession of these traveling stones said that he
found them in a region of country that, though comparatively level, is
nothing but bare rock. Scattered about in this rocky plain are a great
number of little basins, from a few feet to two or three rods in
diameter, and it is in the bottom of these basins that the rolling
stones are found. In the basins they are seen from the size of a pea to
five or six inches in diameter. These curious pebbles appeared to be
formed of loadstone or magnetic iron ore.