1865.]

CURIOUS INVENTIONS OF MINERS.

375

inserted in an apple will represent a silver vein, and the apple inclosing it the wall-rock. A 'foot' is twelve inches in length on the vein, including its entire width, whether six inches or sixty feet, and its whole depth down toward the earth's center. How deep silver veins extend is only conjectured. In Mexico and South America some have been worked for three hundred years. Of the hundreds opened in Nevada but few have yet proved remunerative. Many companies after immense expenditure reap only as sessments, which in this region are termed 'Irish dividends.'

There are many ingenious inventions. The ore comes from the mines in fragments as large as a man's head. They were formerly broken by hand with sledge-hammers into pieces small enough to go under the stamps. Now a machine with a 'hopper' like a grist-mill seizes them and

chews them with its iron teeth to the proper fineness, like bits of cheese. At the Savage we saw a new 'safety cage' for lowering miners and visitors down the shaft. A roof of boiler-iron protects the head against missiles falling from above. In our presence the superintendent loaded one of these cages with a ton of ore, and then, two hundred feet above the bottom of

THE CRUSHED TIMBERS.

the mine and about as far below the surface, cut the rope. The heavy car fell two or three feet, and then suddenly stopped. Two strong arms of steel darting out horizontally struck into the wall on either side, and held the burden firmly over the dark abyss! It was precisely like a falling man throwing out his hands to grasp the nearest object--a marvelous counterfeit of human instinct.

The subterranean tunnels and chambers are planked and timbered to prevent them from falling in. Some of the timbers, crushed and half broken by the weight of rock, suggest unpleas

376 FOUR HUNDRED FEET UNDER GROUND. [1865.

ant possibilities as one creeps under them. We saw a new machine mortise and frame both ends of a pine joist seven feet long by fourteen inches square, in two minutes and forty-five seconds. The proprietors of the Savage assured us that it was saving them eighty dollars per day. These are all the productions of practical working miners. Theorists and savans are held in amusing contempt. The workmen declare that they find the richest ore where the geologists pronounced the existence of silver utterly impossible, and vice versa.

The city stands directly over the Comstock Lode, which is honeycombed with hundreds of subterranean tunnels and chambers, from twenty to six hundred feet below the surface.

Standing upon a little platform and holding by an iron bar overhead, down, down a dark, narrow perpendicular shaft we shot breathless through the dense darkness. In a moment the rush of air ceased, and four hundred feet under ground we stepped into a chamber of the Gould and Curry. Already thirtyfive chambers, seven feet in hight, have been opened and timbered one above another; and the 'drifts' and tunnels seem endless. There is doubtless more lumber in the Gould and Curry mine than in the whole city of Virginia above ground.

Sometimes the ore ceases, the wall rocks unite and the vein seems to give out. Then, hundreds of feet below, a long tunnel is run in from the hill-side, and in each case after months of labor and enormous expenditure, the ore has been struck again at a lower level.

We walked for hours through long hollow passages where the blows of the pick rang and echoed, while flaring candles threw their lurid light over perspiring miners and carmen. Our stairway labors ended in climbing a perpendicular ladder one hundred and twenty feet high. Some one kindly suggested that on account of weakness I should lead the party. A few rounds up, my candle went out; and toward the top a sensation of faintness came over me in the thin, close air. Glancing instinctively at the suc cession of tapers twinkling in the dark chasm beneath, I shuddered to think what a clean sweep of every man from the ladder my fall would produce! But we all mastered the ascent, mounted the cage again, and it bounded up into daylight like a schoolboy's ball.

1865.] ORES SENT ABROAD FOR REDUCTION.

378

FIVE HUNDRED MILLIONS PER ANNUM [1865.

south of Austin, and the Pah-Ranagat district near the Colorado river, are said to contain larger and more remunerative mines than have yet been opened; but no single vein has been found equaling the Comstock Lode, which has already yielded more than sixty millions of dollars.

Senator Nye believes that Nevada contains more silver ore than all the rest of the world. Bishop Simpson insists that our silver resources are sufficient to pay off a national debt of twenty billions, present each returned soldier of the Union with a silver musket, and then plate all our war vessels with silver thicker than they are now sheathed with iron. Doubtless both gentlemen are over-sanguine; but the ores of Nevada seem practically inexhaustible; and our silver mining is yet in its infancy. Every dollar spent in developing our quartz lodes enhances the value of every foot of real estate in the Atlantic cities, and every acre of farming land in the Union; and enriches every mercantile, manufacturing and railroad interest. Within fifteen years after the Pacific railroad is completed the silver and gold mines of the United States will be yielding five hundred millions of dollars per annum.

1865.]

CARSON CITY AND CARSON VALLEY.

379

CHAPTER XXXII.

NEVADA abounds in hot springs. A few miles from Virginia, over a tract a mile long following the course of a little brook, sulphur-water boils and throbs under ground, here and there breaking through in jets of hot water and steam. At one point rises from the ground a fountain six or eight feet high, puffing like a high-pressure steamer; wherefore all the waters are known as the 'Steamboat Springs.' Like the great sulphur springs at Salt Lake they possess much curative virtue, and are especially useful in rheumatism.

Hot springs, deserts, alkaline waters, precious metals and precious stones, seem everywhere to have natural affinity for each other. Marco Polo's ancient accounts of wells of petroleum which had caught fire and which the Persians worshipped; of hot springs with swimming baths 'very salutary in cutaneous and other diseases;' of salt and bitter desert waters which 'produce violent purging if a man tastes even a drop;' 'mountains formed entirely of salt;' deep caverns 'cut by those who worked silver mines;' deposits of lapis lazuli, rubies, jasper, chalcedony and asbestos, in Tartary, read like descriptions of our own mining States.

Sixteen miles west of Virginia, Carson City, the pleasant capital of the State, nestles in a green valley at the foot of the Sierras. The city and the neighboring river perpetuate the name of Kit Carson, the trapper and scout.

Carson valley is the largest and richest farming region of Nevada. The State looks so utterly barren and desolate that early settlers believed all its supplies must be drawn from Utah and California. Nothing is raised without irrigation; but experience proves that many of its little valleys have great agricultural