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.