THE WASHOE “ZEPHYR.”
The “zephyr” is one of the peculiar institutions of Washoe, and as such
is worthy of special mention. At certain seasons—generally in the fall
and spring—furious gales prevail along the Comstock range. In and about
Virginia City these wind-storms are particularly severe. The city being
built on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, at an elevation of over
6,000 feet above the level of the sea, and the mountain rising abruptly
above the city on the west, to the height of about 2,000 feet above the
town, fierce whirls and “sucks” are formed in the lee of the mountain.
The prevailing winds of the country come from the west, and from this
quarter also comes the “zephyr.” It is probably a straight-ahead gale
before it strikes Mount Davidson, but upon that towering mass of granite
it splits. Currents pass round the north and south sides of the
mountain, meet in the city, and waltz about in the shape of whirlwinds
of from eighty to two hundred horse-power. To complicate things still
more, a third portion of the gale comes howling directly over the peak
of the mountain, and plunges down into the town among the whirlwinds,
knocking them right and left whenever it encounters them.
It is no doubt this particular and peculiar current of the gale whipping
down over the summit of the mountain, that produces the remarkable
vertical atmospheric action observable during the prevalence of a
first-class zephyr. A breeze of this kind will snatch a man’s hat off
his head and take it vertically a hundred feet into the air; then, as he
stands gazing after it, the hat suddenly comes down at his feet, as
though shot out of a cannon, and lies before him as completely flattened
out as though it had been struck with a sledge-hammer.
The action of the zephyr is sometimes much the same as that seen in the
leathern sucker with which boys are able to lift stones of considerable
weight. A furious gust falls upon the flat tin roof of a building, then
suddenly bounding upward rips a great hole in the tin. The whirlwinds
and winds of all other kinds—for in the same minute, and almost at the
same instant, it blows fiercely from every point of the compass—then
enter the hole, seize upon the roof, and very soon complete its wreck. A
section of tin twenty feet square, may be seen to flap in the air, like
the loose sail of a vessel at sea, but with a clashing sound that may be
heard a mile away; then, on a sudden, the whole sheet is ripped off, and
goes sailing through the air like a piece of paper, landing, perhaps,
two or three hundred yards away, and passing over half a dozen houses
during its flight.
Of late these “zephyrs” have not been so furious and destructive as in
years past. Then the tin on half a dozen roofs was often to be seen
flapping in the breeze at the same moment, each section of roofing
giving out a roar more startling than would be the combined sheet-iron
thunder of a dozen country theatres of average enterprise.
“Sleep! Sleep no more! the zephyr doth murder sleep.” After a night of
such wild work, the stranger within the gates of Virginia City is likely
to make his appearance very early in the morning, red-eyed and wrathy.
I remember to have heard a gentleman who sported a bunch of hair on each
cheek, about the size of a coyote’s tail, thus express himself one
morning after such an elemental carnival:
“Wind! talk about wind! Why, the wind ’owled at such a rate last night
that I thought it would bring the bloody ’ouse down about my ears. Blast
it! when it ’owls like that a fellow can’t sleep, you know! The clark o’
the ’otel calls it a Washoe zephyr—zephyr be blowed, it was a bloody
gale, you know!”
Not to exaggerate, I may say that one of the good old-fashioned Washoe
zephyrs, even in the present condition of the town, not only howls
itself, but also makes Virginia City howl, and would make Rome or any
other place howl. At times such clouds of dust are raised, that, viewed
from a distance, all there is to be seen is a steeple sticking up here
and there, a few scattering chimneys, an occasional poodle-dog, and,
perhaps, a stray infant drifting wrong end up, high above all the
house-tops. Down below in the darkness, gravel-stones are flying along
the street like grape-shot, and all the people have taken refuge in the
doorways.
Such ripping of signs, threshing of awnings, rattling and banging of
iron and wooden shutters—such tumbling about of chimney-pots and
sections of stovepipe, is seldom seen or heard in any less favored town.
Out on the Divide, a high part of the city where the wind has a fair
sweep (this is generally of nights, when strangers are not likely to see
it), the air is filled with dust, rags, tin cans, empty packing-cases,
old cooking-stoves, all manner of second-hand furniture, crowbars,
log-chains, lamp-posts, and similar rubbish. Hats! More hats are lost
during the prevalence of a single zephyr than in any city in the Union
on any election held in the last twenty years. These hats all go down
the side of the mountain and land in a deep gulch known as Six-mile
Cañon—the place where the Johntown Jasons found the first tag-locks of
the big bonanza.
After a very severe zephyr, it is said, drifts of hats fully fifteen
feet in depth, are to be seen in the bed of the cañon just named. All
these hats are found and appropriated by the Piute Indians, who always
go down to the cañon the next morning after a rousing and fruitful gale,
to gather in the hat crop. When the innocent and guileless children of
the desert come back to town, they are all loaded down to the guards
with hats. Each head is decorated with at least half a dozen hats of all
kinds and colors—braves, squaws, and pappooses are walking pyramids of
hats.
There is a tradition in Virginia City, that in the spring of 1863, a
donkey was caught up from the side of Mount Davidson—far up on the
northern side, near the summit of the mountain—and carried eastward over
the city, at a height of five or six hundred feet above the houses,
finally landing near the Sugar-Loaf Mountain—nearly five miles away.
Those who witnessed this remarkable instance of the force of the zephyr,
say that as the poor beast was hurried away over the town, his neck was
stretched out to its greatest length, and he was shrieking in the most
despairing and heart-rending tones ever heard from any living creature.
The oldest inhabitant sometimes tries to spoil this story by saying that
what was seen was an old gander, the leader of a flock of wild geese,
lost in the storm, and baffled in his attempt to make headway southward
against the hurricane. It may be so, but most folks along the Comstock
cling to the donkey and sneer at the gander.
Although there is hardly a green spot to be seen in any direction, yet
there are, in many places in Washoe, landscapes that will always at once
attract attention. From Virginia City, perched as it is, high on the
side of Mount Davidson, is obtained a grand view of a vast wilderness of
hills, mountains, and desert plains. The eye sweeps eastward over untold
scores of hills and valleys to the tall peaks of the Humboldt mountains,
distant not less than one hundred and eighty miles. Hill rises beyond
hill far away in all directions, each hill exhibiting in all its
outlines a stern individuality, and each rearing aloft a rock-crowned
and treeless head.
In the interstices of these peaks, each of which stands a dark-browed
and sullen Ajax, we catch glimpses of deserts that lie white and
glittering, long journeys away, yet we almost feel our eyes scorched as
we gaze, by their far-darted shimmer. These spots that so glitter and
twinkle, far away through the brown of the hills, are great plains of
salt and alkali—deserts more hungry and sterile than the wilds of
Sahara. In the view before us we have the “hoar austerity of rugged
desolation,” yet there dwells in it a grandeur that is almost awful, and
a something very fascinating.
Every artist who looks upon this weird and unsmiling landscape feels his
soul stirred with a desire to paint it. No man has yet painted it—no man
will ever paint it. There is that in it which no cunning in colors can
reach—no skill in drawing can express. The only way in which an artist
can approach the subject is by painting what he feels, not what he sees.
This vast landscape is at all times grand and worthy of study, but when
its many moods are evoked by elemental disturbances, it becomes wildly
beautiful.
Often in summer several thunder-showers are to be seen in progress at
the same moment, far out in the wide wilderness, each separated from the
other by a broad belt of blue sky and bright sunshine. While one dark
storm-cloud hovers over the city, showering its moisture upon the
thirsty earth, another is seen a whole day’s journey to the eastward,
creeping along some parched desert, with the rain, in slanting columns,
pouring upon the white and shining fields of alkali, and still others
hang about the mountain peaks in various directions, sending down red
bolts of lightning upon their dark granite summits. Away to the
northeast the tall, turreted peaks of Castle District rise against an
inky sky, each line of their rugged spires distinctly traceable, while
to the southeast, looming high above the horizon, are seen, through a
shower, the ashen-hued mountains of Como.
To the right of these, and miles on miles further away—far south of the
Carson River—stand many tall, purple peaks, here and there one among the
highest tipped with sunlight. Eastward, below the level of the city and
almost in the centre of the picture, the Sugar-Loaf rears its rounded
top, over which, and far beyond, stretched partly in sunlight and partly
in shadow, lies the valley of the Carson. A green fringe of cottonwoods,
visible along all the river’s eccentric meanderings, is the only tinge
of green in all the broad land before us. Here and there are seen short
reaches in the river that glitter like burnished silver in the rays of
the evening sun.
A long table-mountain cuts short our view of the valley and river, but
over this mountain we see, spread out like a vast sheet of parchment,
the Forty-mile Desert, over which shadows of clouds move as slowly as in
early times crawled across the same sands the long trains of weary
pilgrims, wearing out the way to the land of gold, over the Sierras. Far
beyond, where the cloud-shadows move in black squadrons across the
desert sands—quite two days’ journey beyond—are reared against the
eastern sky the Humboldt mountains, whose white peaks might pass for the
tombs and cenotaphs of the giants of the olden times. Some of these are
half hidden in patches of dark mist, or veiled by slanting columns of
rain, while others stand in the full glory of the sun. But in this scene
we have a constant change of light and shade. Peaks that were a moment
since sooty-black, suddenly flash up and become golden and brilliant,
soon again to resume their dusky robes, while neighboring peaks stand
forth clad in the garments of their departed glory.
As the sun sinks lower, night is seen to settle into the deeper cañons,
and take shelter behind the lower hills, and the shadow of Mount
Davidson goes forth as a giant, and stretches darkness from hill-top to
hill-top everywhere.
[Illustration]