THE DISCOVERY OF SILVER.
Once Comstock got into the Ophir claim he elected himself superintendent
and was the man who did all of the heavy talking. He made himself so
conspicuous on every occasion that he soon came to be considered not
only the discoverer but almost the father of the lode. As it was all
Comstock for a considerable distance round the Ophir mine, people began
to speak of the vein as Comstock’s mine, Comstock’s lode, and the lead
throughout its length and breadth came to be known as the Comstock lode,
a name which it bears to this day; while the names of O’Riley and
M^cLaughlin, the real discoverers, are seldom heard, even in the city
that stands on the spot where they first opened to the light of the sun
the glittering treasures of the vein.
Even after the Ophir claim had been duly recorded and its owners had
gone regularly to work upon it, they had no idea that the ore contained
anything of value except the gold that was found in it.
For some weeks they dug down the rich decomposed silver ore, washed the
gold out of it, and let it go as waste—throwing it anywhere to get it
out of the way of the rockers. They not only did not try to save it, but
they constantly and conscientiously cursed it.
Being very heavy, it settled to the bottom of their rockers, covered up
the quicksilver they contained, and prevented the thorough amalgamation
of the gold. The miners all thought well of the diggings, but for this
stuff. It was the great drawback. In mining on Gold Cañon, they had been
bothered with a superabundance of black sand and heavy pebbles of iron
ore, but this new, bluish sand was a thing which they had never before
encountered anywhere in the country.
Notwithstanding their trouble with the sulphuret of silver, they were
taking out gold at the rate of a thousand dollars or more per day; their
dust selling at about $11 per ounce. In some spots they obtained from
$50 to $150 in a single pan of dirt.
About this time some ladies from Genoa visited the mine, attracted by
the reports which had reached their town of its great richness. Comstock
was delighted, showed them everything and very gallantly offered each
lady a pan of dirt, a piece of politeness customary in California in the
early days when ladies visited a mine. “Old Pancake” was anxious that
each of the ladies should get something worth carrying home, therefore
by means of sly nods and winks gave one of the workmen to understand
that he was to fill the pans from the richest spot.
One of the ladies was young and very pretty. Although the other ladies
had each obtained from $150 to $200 in her pan, Comstock was determined
that something still handsomer should be done for this one. Therefore,
when her pan of dirt was being handed up out of the cut (_i. e._ the
open drift run into the lead), he stepped forward to receive it, and as
he did so, slyly slipped into it a large handful of gold which he had
taken out of his private purse. The result was a pan that went over
$300, and “Old Pancake” was happy all the rest of the day.
Although Comstock had a passion for possessing rich mines, and appeared
to have a great greediness for gold, yet no sooner was it in his
possession than he was ready to give it to the first man, woman, or
child that asked for it, or to recklessly squander it in all directions.
Anything that he saw and took a fancy to he bought, no matter what the
price might be, so long as he had the money. The article to which he had
taken a momentary fancy, once purchased, he presented it to the first
person that appeared to admire it, whether that person was white, red,
or black.
As work progressed, and the opening made in the hillside penetrated
further into the lead, the silver sulphuret, which had at first been
found in a decomposed condition, began to grow more firm. In order to
work it in the rockers it was necessary to pulverise much of it by
beating it with the poll of a pick or sledge-hammer. Even then there
were many lumps which it was necessary to pound in a mortar, and soon
much of the ore began to assume the form of a tolerably firm rock, when
it became necessary to work it in arastras—an old Mexican contrivance
for grinding up gold and silver-bearing quartz.
[Illustration: AN ARASTRA.]
[Illustration: NAMING VIRGINIA CITY.]
As soon as the grand strike had been made at the Ophir mine by O’Riley
and M^cLaughlin, there was a great rush to that neighborhood; not only
of miners from Johntown, Gold Hill, and Dayton (then known as
Chinatown), but also from the agricultural sections of the country—from
Washoe Valley, Tracker Meadow and from Carson and Eagle Valleys.
Claims were taken up and staked off for a great distance north and south
of the Ophir mine in the direction the lead was shown to run by the huge
croppings of quartz that came to the surface, and towered far above the
surface, in various places.
It was not long before other companies had found pay, and soon there was
in the place quite a lively little camp, the miners living in brush
shanties, houses made of canvas, or camping in the open air in the
sage-brush flats.
At this time the camp was spoken of, in documents placed upon the
records, as “Pleasant Hill” and as “Mount Pleasant Point;” in August,
1859, it was designated as “Ophir” and “the settlement known as Ophir,”
and in September, as “Ophir Diggings.” In October the place is first
mentioned as “Virginia Town,” but a month later it was proposed to
“change the name of the place from Virginia Town to Wun-u-muc-a, in
honor of the chief of the Py-utes.” Old Winnemucca, chief of all the
Piutes was not so honored, and in November, 1859, the town was first
called Virginia City, a name it has ever since retained.
Comstock says the way the place came to take the name of Virginia City
was this:
“‘Old Virginia‘ was out one night with a lot of the “boys” on a drunk,
when he fell down and broke his whisky bottle. On rising he said—‘I
baptize this ground Virginia.’”
For a time the old settlers had the new diggings all to themselves and
were hard at work with their rockers, saving only the gold and paying no
further attention to the silver than to curse it for interfering with
their operations; but in a few weeks after the discovery had been made,
there was suddenly stirred up in California a whirlwind of excitement
that swept over the Sierras, and not only overwhelmed these first miners
on the Comstock, but swept them almost out of sight.
About the 1st of July, 1859, Augustus Harrison, a ranchman living on the
Truckee Meadows, visited the new diggings about which so much was then
said in the several settlements. He took a piece of the ore and going to
California shortly afterwards carried it to Grass Valley, Nevada county.
He gave the specimen, as a curiosity, to Judge James Walsh, a resident
of Grass Valley, who took it to the office of Melville Atwood, an
assayer in the town. The ore was assayed and yielded at the rate of
several thousand dollars per ton, in gold and silver.
All were astonished and not a little excited when it was ascertained
that the black-looking rock which the miners over in Washoe—as the
region about the Comstock lode was called—considered worthless, and were
throwing away, was almost a solid mass of silver. The excitement by no
means abated when they were informed by Mr. Harrison that there were
tons and tons of the same stuff in sight in the opening that the Ophir
Company had already made in the lead. It was agreed among the few who
knew the result of the assay, that the matter should, for the time
being, be kept a profound secret; meantime they would arrange to cross
the Sierras and secure as much ground as possible on the line of the
newly-discovered silver lode.
But each man had intimate friends in whom he had the utmost confidence
in every respect, and these bosom friends soon knew that a silver-mine
of wonderful richness had been discovered over in the Washoe country.
These again had their friends, and, although the result of the assay
made by Mr. Atwood was not ascertained until late at night, by 9 o’clock
the next morning half the town of Grass Valley knew the wonderful news.
Judge Walsh and Joe Woodworth packed a mule with provisions, and
mounting horses, were off for the eastern slope of the Sierras at a very
early hour in the morning. This was soon known, and the news of the
discovery and their departure ran like wildfire through Nevada county.
In a few days hundreds of miners had left their diggings in California
and were flocking over the mountains on horseback, on foot, with teams,
and in any way that offered. Many men packed donkeys with tools and
provisions, and, going on foot themselves, trudged over the Sierras at
the best speed they were able to make.