Roughing It

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Roughing It


The great "Comstock lode" stretched its opulent length straight through
the town from north to south, and every mine on it was in diligent
process of development. One of these mines alone employed six hundred
and seventy-five men, and in the matter of elections the adage was, "as
the 'Gould and Curry' goes, so goes the city." Laboring men's wages were
four and six dollars a day, and they worked in three "shifts" or gangs,
and the blasting and picking and shoveling went on without ceasing, night
and day.

The "city" of Virginia roosted royally midway up the steep side of Mount
Davidson, seven thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea, and
in the clear Nevada atmosphere was visible from a distance of fifty
miles! It claimed a population of fifteen thousand to eighteen thousand,
and all day long half of this little army swarmed the streets like bees
and the other half swarmed among the drifts and tunnels of the
"Comstock," hundreds of feet down in the earth directly under those same
streets. Often we felt our chairs jar, and heard the faint boom of a
blast down in the bowels of the earth under the office.

The mountain side was so steep that the entire town had a slant to it
like a roof. Each street was a terrace, and from each to the next street
below the descent was forty or fifty feet. The fronts of the houses were
level with the street they faced, but their rear first floors were
propped on lofty stilts; a man could stand at a rear first floor window
of a C street house and look down the chimneys of the row of houses below
him facing D street. It was a laborious climb, in that thin atmosphere,
to ascend from D to A street, and you were panting and out of breath when
you got there; but you could turn around and go down again like a house
a-fire--so to speak. The atmosphere was so rarified, on account of the
great altitude, that one's blood lay near the surface always, and the
scratch of a pin was a disaster worth worrying about, for the chances
were that a grievous erysipelas would ensue. But to offset this, the
thin atmosphere seemed to carry healing to gunshot wounds, and therefore,
to simply shoot your adversary through both lungs was a thing not likely
to afford you any permanent satisfaction, for he would be nearly certain
to be around looking for you within the month, and not with an opera
glass, either.

From Virginia's airy situation one could look over a vast, far-reaching
panorama of mountain ranges and deserts; and whether the day was bright
or overcast, whether the sun was rising or setting, or flaming in the
zenith, or whether night and the moon held sway, the spectacle was always
impressive and beautiful. Over your head Mount Davidson lifted its gray
dome, and before and below you a rugged canyon clove the battlemented
hills, making a sombre gateway through which a soft-tinted desert was
glimpsed, with the silver thread of a river winding through it, bordered
with trees which many miles of distance diminished to a delicate fringe;
and still further away the snowy mountains rose up and stretched their
long barrier to the filmy horizon--far enough beyond a lake that burned
in the desert like a fallen sun, though that, itself, lay fifty miles
removed. Look from your window where you would, there was fascination in
the picture. At rare intervals--but very rare--there were clouds in our
skies, and then the setting sun would gild and flush and glorify this
mighty expanse of scenery with a bewildering pomp of color that held the
eye like a spell and moved the spirit like music.




CHAPTER XLIV.

My salary was increased to forty dollars a week. But I seldom drew it.
I had plenty of other resources, and what were two broad twenty-dollar
gold pieces to a man who had his pockets full of such and a cumbersome
abundance of bright half dollars besides? [Paper money has never come
into use on the Pacific coast.] Reporting was lucrative, and every man
in the town was lavish with his money and his "feet." The city and all
the great mountain side were riddled with mining shafts. There were more
mines than miners. True, not ten of these mines were yielding rock worth
hauling to a mill, but everybody said, "Wait till the shaft gets down
where the ledge comes in solid, and then you will see!" So nobody was
discouraged. These were nearly all "wild cat" mines, and wholly
worthless, but nobody believed it then. The "Ophir," the "Gould &
Curry," the "Mexican," and other great mines on the Comstock lead in
Virginia and Gold Hill were turning out huge piles of rich rock every
day, and every man believed that his little wild cat claim was as good as
any on the "main lead" and would infallibly be worth a thousand dollars a
foot when he "got down where it came in solid." Poor fellow, he was
blessedly blind to the fact that he never would see that day. So the
thousand wild cat shafts burrowed deeper and deeper into the earth day by
day, and all men were beside themselves with hope and happiness. How
they labored, prophesied, exulted! Surely nothing like it was ever seen
before since the world began. Every one of these wild cat mines--not
mines, but holes in the ground over imaginary mines--was incorporated and
had handsomely engraved "stock" and the stock was salable, too. It was
bought and sold with a feverish avidity in the boards every day. You
could go up on the mountain side, scratch around and find a ledge (there
was no lack of them), put up a "notice" with a grandiloquent name in it,
start a shaft, get your stock printed, and with nothing whatever to prove
that your mine was worth a straw, you could put your stock on the market
and sell out for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. To make money,
and make it fast, was as easy as it was to eat your dinner.

Every man owned "feet" in fifty different wild cat mines and considered
his fortune made. Think of a city with not one solitary poor man in it!
One would suppose that when month after month went by and still not a
wild cat mine (by wild cat I mean, in general terms, any claim not
located on the mother vein, i.e., the "Comstock") yielded a ton of rock
worth crushing, the people would begin to wonder if they were not putting
too much faith in their prospective riches; but there was not a thought
of such a thing. They burrowed away, bought and sold, and were happy.

New claims were taken up daily, and it was the friendly custom to run
straight to the newspaper offices, give the reporter forty or fifty
"feet," and get them to go and examine the mine and publish a notice of
it. They did not care a fig what you said about the property so you said
something. Consequently we generally said a word or two to the effect
that the "indications" were good, or that the ledge was "six feet wide,"
or that the rock "resembled the Comstock" (and so it did--but as a
general thing the resemblance was not startling enough to knock you
down). If the rock was moderately promising, we followed the custom of
the country, used strong adjectives and frothed at the mouth as if a very
marvel in silver discoveries had transpired. If the mine was a
"developed" one, and had no pay ore to show (and of course it hadn't), we
praised the tunnel; said it was one of the most infatuating tunnels in
the land; driveled and driveled about the tunnel till we ran entirely out
of ecstasies--but never said a word about the rock. We would squander
half a column of adulation on a shaft, or a new wire rope, or a dressed
pine windlass, or a fascinating force pump, and close with a burst of
admiration of the "gentlemanly and efficient Superintendent" of the mine
--but never utter a whisper about the rock. And those people were always
pleased, always satisfied. Occasionally we patched up and varnished our
reputation for discrimination and stern, undeviating accuracy, by giving
some old abandoned claim a blast that ought to have made its dry bones
rattle--and then somebody would seize it and sell it on the fleeting
notoriety thus conferred upon it.

There was nothing in the shape of a mining claim that was not salable.
We received presents of "feet" every day. If we needed a hundred dollars
or so, we sold some; if not, we hoarded it away, satisfied that it would
ultimately be worth a thousand dollars a foot. I had a trunk about half
full of "stock." When a claim made a stir in the market and went up to a
high figure, I searched through my pile to see if I had any of its stock
--and generally found it.

The prices rose and fell constantly; but still a fall disturbed us
little, because a thousand dollars a foot was our figure, and so we were
content to let it fluctuate as much as it pleased till it reached it.
My pile of stock was not all given to me by people who wished their
claims "noticed." At least half of it was given me by persons who had no
thought of such a thing, and looked for nothing more than a simple verbal
"thank you;" and you were not even obliged by law to furnish that.
If you are coming up the street with a couple of baskets of apples in
your hands, and you meet a friend, you naturally invite him to take a
few. That describes the condition of things in Virginia in the "flush
times." Every man had his pockets full of stock, and it was the actual
custom of the country to part with small quantities of it to friends
without the asking.

Very often it was a good idea to close the transaction instantly, when a
man offered a stock present to a friend, for the offer was only good and
binding at that moment, and if the price went to a high figure shortly
afterward the procrastination was a thing to be regretted. Mr. Stewart
(Senator, now, from Nevada) one day told me he would give me twenty feet
of "Justis" stock if I would walk over to his office. It was worth five
or ten dollars a foot. I asked him to make the offer good for next day,
as I was just going to dinner. He said he would not be in town; so I
risked it and took my dinner instead of the stock. Within the week the
price went up to seventy dollars and afterward to a hundred and fifty,
but nothing could make that man yield. I suppose he sold that stock of
mine and placed the guilty proceeds in his own pocket. [My revenge will
be found in the accompanying portrait.] I met three friends one
afternoon, who said they had been buying "Overman" stock at auction at
eight dollars a foot. One said if I would come up to his office he would
give me fifteen feet; another said he would add fifteen; the third said
he would do the same. But I was going after an inquest and could not
stop. A few weeks afterward they sold all their "Overman" at six hundred
dollars a foot and generously came around to tell me about it--and also
to urge me to accept of the next forty-five feet of it that people tried
to force on me.

These are actual facts, and I could make the list a long one and still
confine myself strictly to the truth. Many a time friends gave us as
much as twenty-five feet of stock that was selling at twenty-five dollars
a foot, and they thought no more of it than they would of offering a
guest a cigar. These were "flush times" indeed! I thought they were
going to last always, but somehow I never was much of a prophet.

To show what a wild spirit possessed the mining brain of the community,
I will remark that "claims" were actually "located" in excavations for
cellars, where the pick had exposed what seemed to be quartz veins--and
not cellars in the suburbs, either, but in the very heart of the city;
and forthwith stock would be issued and thrown on the market. It was
small matter who the cellar belonged to--the "ledge" belonged to the
finder, and unless the United States government interfered (inasmuch as
the government holds the primary right to mines of the noble metals in
Nevada--or at least did then), it was considered to be his privilege to
work it. Imagine a stranger staking out a mining claim among the costly
shrubbery in your front yard and calmly proceeding to lay waste the
ground with pick and shovel and blasting powder! It has been often done
in California. In the middle of one of the principal business streets of
Virginia, a man "located" a mining claim and began a shaft on it. He
gave me a hundred feet of the stock and I sold it for a fine suit of
clothes because I was afraid somebody would fall down the shaft and sue
for damages. I owned in another claim that was located in the middle of
another street; and to show how absurd people can be, that "East India"
stock (as it was called) sold briskly although there was an ancient
tunnel running directly under the claim and any man could go into it and
see that it did not cut a quartz ledge or anything that remotely
resembled one.

One plan of acquiring sudden wealth was to "salt" a wild cat claim and
sell out while the excitement was up. The process was simple.

The schemer located a worthless ledge, sunk a shaft on it, bought a wagon
load of rich "Comstock" ore, dumped a portion of it into the shaft and
piled the rest by its side, above ground. Then he showed the property to
a simpleton and sold it to him at a high figure. Of course the wagon
load of rich ore was all that the victim ever got out of his purchase.
A most remarkable case of "salting" was that of the "North Ophir."
It was claimed that this vein was a "remote extension" of the original
"Ophir," a valuable mine on the "Comstock." For a few days everybody was
talking about the rich developments in the North Ophir. It was said that
it yielded perfectly pure silver in small, solid lumps. I went to the
place with the owners, and found a shaft six or eight feet deep, in the
bottom of which was a badly shattered vein of dull, yellowish,
unpromising rock. One would as soon expect to find silver in a
grindstone. We got out a pan of the rubbish and washed it in a puddle,
and sure enough, among the sediment we found half a dozen black,
bullet-looking pellets of unimpeachable "native" silver. Nobody had ever
heard of such a thing before; science could not account for such a queer
novelty. The stock rose to sixty-five dollars a foot, and at this figure
the world-renowned tragedian, McKean Buchanan, bought a commanding
interest and prepared to quit the stage once more--he was always doing
that. And then it transpired that the mine had been "salted"--and not in
any hackneyed way, either, but in a singularly bold, barefaced and
peculiarly original and outrageous fashion. On one of the lumps of
"native" silver was discovered the minted legend, "TED STATES OF," and
then it was plainly apparent that the mine had been "salted" with melted
half-dollars! The lumps thus obtained had been blackened till they
resembled native silver, and were then mixed with the shattered rock in
the bottom of the shaft. It is literally true. Of course the price of
the stock at once fell to nothing, and the tragedian was ruined. But for
this calamity we might have lost McKean Buchanan from the stage.




CHAPTER XLV.

The "flush times" held bravely on. Something over two years before, Mr.
Goodman and another journeyman printer, had borrowed forty dollars and
set out from San Francisco to try their fortunes in the new city of
Virginia. They found the Territorial Enterprise, a poverty-stricken
weekly journal, gasping for breath and likely to die. They bought it,
type, fixtures, good-will and all, for a thousand dollars, on long time.
The editorial sanctum, news-room, press-room, publication office,
bed-chamber, parlor, and kitchen were all compressed into one apartment
and it was a small one, too. The editors and printers slept on the
floor, a Chinaman did their cooking, and the "imposing-stone" was the
general dinner table. But now things were changed. The paper was a
great daily, printed by steam; there were five editors and twenty-three
compositors; the subscription price was sixteen dollars a year; the
advertising rates were exorbitant, and the columns crowded. The paper
was clearing from six to ten thousand dollars a month, and the
"Enterprise Building" was finished and ready for occupation--a stately
fireproof brick. Every day from five all the way up to eleven columns
of "live" advertisements were left out or crowded into spasmodic and
irregular "supplements."

The "Gould & Curry" company were erecting a monster hundred-stamp mill at
a cost that ultimately fell little short of a million dollars. Gould &
Curry stock paid heavy dividends--a rare thing, and an experience
confined to the dozen or fifteen claims located on the "main lead," the
"Comstock." The Superintendent of the Gould & Curry lived, rent free, in
a fine house built and furnished by the company. He drove a fine pair of
horses which were a present from the company, and his salary was twelve
thousand dollars a year. The superintendent of another of the great
mines traveled in grand state, had a salary of twenty-eight thousand
dollars a year, and in a law suit in after days claimed that he was to
have had one per cent. on the gross yield of the bullion likewise.

Money was wonderfully plenty. The trouble was, not how to get it,--but
how to spend it, how to lavish it, get rid of it, squander it. And so it
was a happy thing that just at this juncture the news came over the wires
that a great United States Sanitary Commission had been formed and money
was wanted for the relief of the wounded sailors and soldiers of the
Union languishing in the Eastern hospitals. Right on the heels of it
came word that San Francisco had responded superbly before the telegram
was half a day old. Virginia rose as one man! A Sanitary Committee was
hurriedly organized, and its chairman mounted a vacant cart in C street
and tried to make the clamorous multitude understand that the rest of the
committee were flying hither and thither and working with all their might
and main, and that if the town would only wait an hour, an office would
be ready, books opened, and the Commission prepared to receive
contributions. His voice was drowned and his information lost in a
ceaseless roar of cheers, and demands that the money be received now
--they swore they would not wait. The chairman pleaded and argued, but,
deaf to all entreaty, men plowed their way through the throng and rained
checks of gold coin into the cart and skurried away for more. Hands
clutching money, were thrust aloft out of the jam by men who hoped this
eloquent appeal would cleave a road their strugglings could not open.
The very Chinamen and Indians caught the excitement and dashed their half
dollars into the cart without knowing or caring what it was all about.
Women plunged into the crowd, trimly attired, fought their way to the
cart with their coin, and emerged again, by and by, with their apparel in
a state of hopeless dilapidation. It was the wildest mob Virginia had
ever seen and the most determined and ungovernable; and when at last it
abated its fury and dispersed, it had not a penny in its pocket.

To use its own phraseology, it came there "flush" and went away "busted."

After that, the Commission got itself into systematic working order, and
for weeks the contributions flowed into its treasury in a generous
stream. Individuals and all sorts of organizations levied upon
themselves a regular weekly tax for the sanitary fund, graduated
according to their means, and there was not another grand universal
outburst till the famous "Sanitary Flour Sack" came our way. Its history
is peculiar and interesting. A former schoolmate of mine, by the name of
Reuel Gridley, was living at the little city of Austin, in the Reese
river country, at this time, and was the Democratic candidate for mayor.
He and the Republican candidate made an agreement that the defeated man
should be publicly presented with a fifty-pound sack of flour by the
successful one, and should carry it home on his shoulder. Gridley was
defeated. The new mayor gave him the sack of flour, and he shouldered it
and carried it a mile or two, from Lower Austin to his home in Upper
Austin, attended by a band of music and the whole population. Arrived
there, he said he did not need the flour, and asked what the people
thought he had better do with it. A voice said:

"Sell it to the highest bidder, for the benefit of the Sanitary fund."

The suggestion was greeted with a round of applause, and Gridley mounted
a dry-goods box and assumed the role of auctioneer. The bids went higher
and higher, as the sympathies of the pioneers awoke and expanded, till at
last the sack was knocked down to a mill man at two hundred and fifty
dollars, and his check taken. He was asked where he would have the flour
delivered, and he said:

"Nowhere--sell it again."

Now the cheers went up royally, and the multitude were fairly in the
spirit of the thing. So Gridley stood there and shouted and perspired
till the sun went down; and when the crowd dispersed he had sold the sack
to three hundred different people, and had taken in eight thousand
dollars in gold. And still the flour sack was in his possession.

The news came to Virginia, and a telegram went back:

"Fetch along your flour sack!"

Thirty-six hours afterward Gridley arrived, and an afternoon mass meeting
was held in the Opera House, and the auction began. But the sack had
come sooner than it was expected; the people were not thoroughly aroused,
and the sale dragged. At nightfall only five thousand dollars had been
secured, and there was a crestfallen feeling in the community. However,
there was no disposition to let the matter rest here and acknowledge
vanquishment at the hands of the village of Austin. Till late in the
night the principal citizens were at work arranging the morrow's
campaign, and when they went to bed they had no fears for the result.
At eleven the next morning a procession of open carriages, attended by
clamorous bands of music and adorned with a moving display of flags,
filed along C street and was soon in danger of blockade by a huzzaing
multitude of citizens. In the first carriage sat Gridley, with the flour
sack in prominent view, the latter splendid with bright paint and gilt
lettering; also in the same carriage sat the mayor and the recorder.
The other carriages contained the Common Council, the editors and
reporters, and other people of imposing consequence. The crowd pressed
to the corner of C and Taylor streets, expecting the sale to begin there,
but they were disappointed, and also unspeakably surprised; for the
cavalcade moved on as if Virginia had ceased to be of importance, and
took its way over the "divide," toward the small town of Gold Hill.
Telegrams had gone ahead to Gold Hill, Silver City and Dayton, and those
communities were at fever heat and rife for the conflict. It was a very
hot day, and wonderfully dusty. At the end of a short half hour we
descended into Gold Hill with drums beating and colors flying, and
enveloped in imposing clouds of dust. The whole population--men, women
and children, Chinamen and Indians, were massed in the main street, all
the flags in town were at the mast head, and the blare of the bands was
drowned in cheers. Gridley stood up and asked who would make the first
bid for the National Sanitary Flour Sack. Gen. W. said:

"The Yellow Jacket silver mining company offers a thousand dollars,
coin!"

A tempest of applause followed. A telegram carried the news to Virginia,
and fifteen minutes afterward that city's population was massed in the
streets devouring the tidings--for it was part of the programme that the
bulletin boards should do a good work that day. Every few minutes a new
dispatch was bulletined from Gold Hill, and still the excitement grew.
Telegrams began to return to us from Virginia beseeching Gridley to bring
back the flour sack; but such was not the plan of the campaign. At the
end of an hour Gold Hill's small population had paid a figure for the
flour sack that awoke all the enthusiasm of Virginia when the grand total
was displayed upon the bulletin boards. Then the Gridley cavalcade moved
on, a giant refreshed with new lager beer and plenty of it--for the
people brought it to the carriages without waiting to measure it--and
within three hours more the expedition had carried Silver City and Dayton
by storm and was on its way back covered with glory. Every move had been
telegraphed and bulletined, and as the procession entered Virginia and
filed down C street at half past eight in the evening the town was abroad
in the thoroughfares, torches were glaring, flags flying, bands playing,
cheer on cheer cleaving the air, and the city ready to surrender at
discretion. The auction began, every bid was greeted with bursts of
applause, and at the end of two hours and a half a population of fifteen
thousand souls had paid in coin for a fifty-pound sack of flour a sum
equal to forty thousand dollars in greenbacks! It was at a rate in the
neighborhood of three dollars for each man, woman and child of the
population. The grand total would have been twice as large, but the
streets were very narrow, and hundreds who wanted to bid could not get
within a block of the stand, and could not make themselves heard. These
grew tired of waiting and many of them went home long before the auction
was over. This was the greatest day Virginia ever saw, perhaps.