The level ranks of flame were relieved at intervals by the standard-bearers, as we called the tall, dead trees, wrapped in fire, andwaving their blazing banners a hundred feet in the air. Then wecould turn from the scene to the lake, and see every branch and leafand cataract of flame upon its banks perfectly reflected, as in agleaming, fiery mirror. The mighty roaring of the conflagration,together with our solitary and somewhat unsafe position (for therewas no one within six miles of us), rendered the scene veryimpressive. Occasionally one of us would remove his pipe from hismouth and say, “Superb, magnificent!—beautifull—but—by the LordGod Almighty, if we attempt to sleep in this little patch to-night,we'll never live till morning!”
This is good writing too, but it lacks the fancy and the choice of phrasing which would develop later. The fire ended their first excursion to Tahoe, but they made others and located other claims—claims in which the “folks at home,” Mr. Moffett, James Lampton, and others, were included. It was the same James Lampton who would one day serve as a model for Colonel Sellers. Evidently Samuel Clemens had a good opinion of his business capacity in that earlier day, for he writes:
This is just the country for cousin Jim to live in. I don't believeit would take him six months to make $100,000 here if he had $3,000to commence with. I suppose he can't leave his family, though.
Further along in the same letter his own overflowing Seller's optimism develops.
Orion and I have confidence enough in this country to think that ifthe war lets us alone we can make Mr. Moffett rich without its evercosting him a cent or a particle of trouble.
This letter bears date of October 25th, and from it we gather that a certain interest in mining claims had by this time developed.
We have got about 1,650 feet of mining ground, and, if it provesgood, Mr. Moffett's name will go in, and if not I can get “feet” forhim in the spring.You see, Pamela, the trouble does not consist in getting miningground—for there is plenty enough—but the money to work it withafter you get it.
He refers to Pamela's two little children, his niece Annie and Baby Sam,—[Samuel E. Moffett, in later life a well-known journalist and editor.]—and promises to enter claims for them—timber claims probably—for he was by no means sanguine as yet concerning the mines. That was a long time ago. Tahoe land is sold by the lot, now, to summer residents. Those claims would have been riches to-day, but they were all abandoned presently, forgotten in the delirium which goes only with the pursuit of precious ores.
It was not until early winter that Samuel Clemens got the real mining infection. Everybody had it by that time; the miracle is that he had not fallen an earlier victim. The wildest stories of sudden fortune were in the air, some of them undoubtedly true. Men had gone to bed paupers, on the verge of starvation, and awakened to find themselves millionaires. Others had sold for a song claims that had been suddenly found to be fairly stuffed with precious ores. Cart-loads of bricks—silver and gold—daily drove through the streets.
In the midst of these things reports came from the newly opened Humboldt region—flamed up with a radiance that was fairly blinding. The papers declared that Humboldt County “was the richest mineral region on God's footstool.” The mountains were said to be literally bursting with gold and silver. A correspondent of the daily Territorial Enterprise fairly wallowed in rhetoric, yet found words inadequate to paint the measureless wealth of the Humboldt mines. No wonder those not already mad speedily became so. No wonder Samuel Clemens, with his natural tendency to speculative optimism, yielded to the epidemic and became as “frenzied as the craziest.” The air to him suddenly began to shimmer; all his thoughts were of “leads” and “ledges” and “veins”; all his clouds had silver linings; all his dreams were of gold. He joined an expedition at once; he reproached himself bitterly for not having started earlier.
Hurry was the word! We wasted no time. Our party consisted of fourpersons—a blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, andmyself. We bought a wagon and two miserable old horses. We put1,800 pounds of provisions and mining tools in the wagon and droveout of Carson on a chilly December afternoon.
In a letter to his mother he states that besides provisions and mining tools, their load consisted of certain luxuries viz., ten pounds of killikinick, Watts's Hymns, fourteen decks of cards, Dombey and Son, a cribbage-board, one small keg of lager-beer, and the “Carmina Sacra.”
The two young lawyers were A. W.(Gus) Oliver (Oliphant in 'Roughing It'), and W. H. Clagget. Sam Clemens had known Billy Clagget as a law student in Keokuk, and they were brought together now by this association. Both Clagget and Oliver were promising young men, and would be heard from in time. The blacksmith's name was Tillou (Ballou), a sturdy, honest soul with a useful knowledge of mining and the repair of tools. There were also two dogs in the party—a small curly-tailed mongrel, Curney, the property of Mr. Tillou, and a young hound. The combination seemed a strong one.
It proved a weak one in the matter of horses. Oliver and Clemens had furnished the team, and their selection had not been of the best. It was two hundred miles to Humboldt, mostly across sand. The horses could not drag their load and the miners too, so the miners got out. Then they found it necessary to push.
Not because we were fond of it, Ma—oh, no! but on Bunker's account.Bunker was the “near” horse on the larboard side, named after theattorney-general of this Territory. My horse—and I am sorry you donot know him personally, Ma, for I feel toward him, sometimes, as ifhe were a blood relation of our family—he is so lazy, you know—myhorse—I was going to say, was the “off” horse on the starboardside. But it was on Bunker's account, principally, that we pushedbehind the wagon. In fact, Ma, that horse had something on his mindall the way to Humboldt.—[S. L. C. to his mother. Published inthe Keokuk (Iowa) Gate city.]—
So they had to push, and most of that two hundred miles through snow and sand storm they continued to push and swear and groan, sustained only by the thought that they must arrive at last, when their troubles would all be at an end, for they would be millionaires in a brief time and never know want or fatigue any more.
There were compensations: the camp-fire at night was cheerful, the food satisfying. They bundled close under the blankets and, when it was too cold to sleep, looked up at the stars, while the future entertainer of kings would spin yarn after yarn that made his hearers forget their discomforts. Judge Oliver, the last one of the party alive, in a recent letter to the writer of this history, says:
He was the life of the camp; but sometimes there would come areaction and he could hardly speak for a day or two. One day a packof wolves chased us, and the hound Sam speaks of never stopped tolook back till he reached the next station, many miles ahead.
Judge Oliver adds that an Indian war had just ended, and that they occasionally passed the charred ruin of a shack, and new graves: This was disturbing enough. Then they came to that desolation of desolations, the Alkali Desert, where the sand is of unknown depth, where the road is strewn thickly with the carcasses of dead beasts of burden, the charred remains of wagons, chains, bolts, and screws, which thirsty emigrants, grown desperate, have thrown away in the grand hope of being able, when less encumbered, to reach water.
They traveled all day and night, pushing through that fierce, waterless waste to reach camp on the other side. It was three o'clock in the morning when they got across and dropped down utterly exhausted. Judge Oliver in his letter tells what happened then:
The sun was high in the heavens when we were aroused from our sleepby a yelling band of Piute warriors. We were upon our feet in aninstant. The pictures of burning cabins and the lonely graves wehad passed were in our minds. Our scalps were still our own, andnot dangling from the belts of our visitors. Sam pulled himselftogether, put his hand on his head as if to make sure he had notbeen scalped, and then with his inimitable drawl said: “Boys, theyhave left us our scalps. Let's give them all the flour and sugarthey ask for.” And we did give them a good supply, for we weregrateful.
They were eleven weary days pushing their wagon and team the two hundred miles to Unionville, Humboldt County, arriving at last in a driving snow-storm. Unionville consisted of eleven poor cabins built in the bottom of a canon, five on one side and six facing them on the other. They were poor, three-sided, one-room huts, the fourth side formed by the hill; the roof, a spread of white cotton. Stones used to roll down on them sometimes, and Mark Twain tells of live stock—specifically of a mule and cow—that interrupted the patient, long-suffering Oliver, who was trying to write poetry, and only complained when at last “an entire cow came rolling down the hill, crashed through on the table, and made a shapeless wreck of everything.”—['The Innocents Abroad.']
Judge Oliver still does not complain; but he denies the cow. He says there were no cows in Humboldt in those days, so perhaps it was only a literary cow, though in any case it will long survive. Judge Oliver's name will go down with it to posterity.
In the letter which Samuel Clemens wrote home he tells of what they found in Unionville.
“National” there was selling at $50 per foot and assayed $2,496 perton at the mint in San Francisco. And the “Alda Nueva,” “Peru,”“Delirio,” “Congress,” “Independent,” and others were immensely richleads. And moreover, having winning ways with us, we could get“feet” enough to make us all rich one of these days.
“I confess with shame,” says the author of 'Roughing It', “that I expected to find masses of silver lying all about the ground.” And he adds that he slipped away from the cabin to find a claim on his own account, and tells how he came staggering back under a load of golden specimens; also how his specimens proved to be only worthless mica; and how he learned that in mining nothing that glitters is gold. His account in 'Roughing It' of the Humboldt mining experience is sufficiently good history to make detail here unnecessary. Tillou instructed them in prospecting, and in time they located a fairly promising claim. They went to work on it with pick and shovel, then with drill and blasting-powder. Then they gave it up.
“One week of this satisfied me. I resigned.”
They tried to tunnel, but soon resigned again. It was pleasanter to prospect and locate and trade claims and acquire feet in every new ledge than it was to dig-and about as profitable. The golden reports of Humboldt had been based on assays of selected rich specimens, and were mainly delirium and insanity. The Clemens-Clagget-Oliver-Tillou combination never touched their claims again with pick and shovel, though their faith, or at least their hope, in them did not immediately die. Billy Clagget put out his shingle as notary public, and Gus Oliver put out his as probate judge. Sam Clemens and Tillou, with a fat-witted, arrogant Prussian named Pfersdoff (Ollendorf) set out for Carson City. It is not certain what became of the wagon and team, or of the two dogs.
The Carson travelers were water-bound at a tavern on the Carson River (the scene of the “Arkansas” sketch), with a fighting, drinking lot. Pfersdoff got them nearly drowned getting away, and finally succeeded in getting them absolutely lost in the snow. The author of 'Roughing It' tells us how they gave themselves up to die, and how each swore off whatever he had in the way of an evil habit, how they cast their tempters-tobacco, cards, and whisky-into the snow. He further tells us how next morning, when they woke to find themselves alive, within a few rods of a hostelry, they surreptitiously dug up those things again and, deep in shame and luxury, resumed their fallen ways: It was the 29th of January when they reached Carson City. They had been gone not quite two months, one of which had been spent in travel. It was a brief period, but it contained an episode, and it seemed like years.
Meantime, the Territorial secretary had found difficulties in launching the ship of state. There was no legislative hall in Carson City; and if Abram Curry, one of the original owners of the celebrated Gould and Curry mine—“Curry—old Curry—old Abe Curry,” as he called himself—had not tendered the use of a hall rent free, the first legislature would have been obliged to “sit in the desert.” Furthermore, Orion had met with certain acute troubles of his own. The government at Washington had not appreciated his economies in the matter of cheap office rental, and it had stipulated the price which he was to pay for public printing and various other services-prices fixed according to Eastern standards. These prices did not obtain in Nevada, and when Orion, confident that because of his other economies the comptroller would stretch a point and allow the increased frontier tariff, he was met with the usual thick-headed official lack of imagination, with the result that the excess paid was deducted from his slender salary. With a man of less conscience this condition would easily have been offset by another wherein other rates, less arbitrary, would have been adjusted to negotiate the official deficit. With Orion Clemens such a remedy was not even considered; yielding, unstable, blown by every wind of influence though he was, Orion's integrity was a rock.
Governor Nye was among those who presently made this discovery. Old politician that he was—former police commissioner of New York City—Nye took care of his own problems in the customary manner. To him, politics was simply a game—to be played to win. He was a popular, jovial man, well liked and thought of, but he did not lie awake, as Orion did, planning economies for the government, or how to make up excess charges out of his salary. To him Nevada was simply a doorway to the United States Senate, and in the mean time his brigade required official recognition and perquisites. The governor found Orion Clemens an impediment to this policy. Orion could not be brought to a proper political understanding of “special bills and accounts,” and relations between the secretary of state and the governor were becoming strained.
It was about this time that the man who had been potentate of the pilot-house of a Mississippi River steamer returned from Humboldt. He was fond of the governor, but he had still higher regard for the family integrity. When he had heard Orion's troubled story, he called on Governor Nye and delivered himself in his own fashion. In his former employments he had acquired a vocabulary and moral backbone sufficient to his needs. We may regret that no stenographic report was made of the interview. It would be priceless now. But it is lost; we only know that Orion's rectitude was not again assailed, and that curiously enough Governor Nye apparently conceived a strong admiration and respect for his brother.
Samuel Clemens, miner, remained but a brief time in Carson City—only long enough to arrange for a new and more persistent venture. He did not confess his Humboldt failure to his people; in fact, he had not as yet confessed it to himself; his avowed purpose was to return to Humboldt after a brief investigation of the Esmeralda mines. He had been paying heavy assessments on his holdings there; and, with a knowledge of mining gained at Unionville, he felt that his personal attention at Aurora might be important. As a matter of fact, he was by this time fairly daft on the subject of mines and mining, with the rest of the community for company.
His earlier praises of the wonders and climate of Tahoe had inspired his sister Pamela, always frail, with a desire to visit that health-giving land. Perhaps he felt that he recommended the country somewhat too highly.
“By George, Pamela,” he said, “I begin to fear that I have invoked a spirit of some kind or other, which I will find more than difficult to allay.” He proceeds to recommend California as a residence for any or all of them, but he is clearly doubtful concerning Nevada.
Some people are malicious enough to think that if the devil were setat liberty and told to confine himself to Nevada Territory, he wouldcome here and look sadly around awhile, and then get homesick and goback to hell again.... Why, I have had my whiskers and mustachesso full of alkali dust that you'd have thought I worked in a starchfactory and boarded in a flour barrel.
But then he can no longer restrain his youth and optimism. How could he, with a fortune so plainly in view? It was already in his grasp in imagination; he was on the way home with it.
I expect to return to St. Louis in July—per steamer. I don't saythat I will return then, or that I shall be able to do it—but Iexpect to—you bet. I came down here from Humboldt, in order tolook after our Esmeralda interests. Yesterday, Bob Howland arrivedhere, and I have had a talk with him. He owns with me in the“Horatio and Derby” ledge. He says our tunnel is in 52 feet, and asmall stream of water has been struck, which bids fair to become a“big thing” by the time the ledge is reached—sufficient to supply amill. Now, if you knew anything of the value of water here, youwould perceive at a glance that if the water should amount to 50 or100 inches, we wouldn't care whether school kept or not. If theledge should prove to be worthless, we'd sell the water for moneyenough to give us quite a lift. But, you see, the ledge will notprove to be worthless. We have located, near by, a fine site for amill, and when we strike the ledge, you know, we'll have a mill-site, water-power, and payrock, all handy. Then we sha'n't carewhether we have capital or not. Mill folks will build us a mill,and wait for their pay. If nothing goes wrong, we'll strike theledge in June—and if we do, I'll be home in July, you know.
He pauses at this point for a paragraph of self-analysis—characteristic and crystal-clear.
So, just keep your clothes on, Pamela, until I come. Don't you knowthat undemonstrated human calculations won't do to bet on? Don'tyou know that I have only talked, as yet, but proved nothing? Don'tyou know that I have expended money in this country but have madenone myself? Don't you know that I have never held in my hands agold or silver bar that belonged to me? Don't you know that it'sall talk and no cider so far? Don't you know that people who alwaysfeel jolly, no matter where they are or what happens to them—whohave the organ of Hope preposterously developed—who are endowedwith an unconcealable sanguine temperament—who never feel concernedabout the price of corn—and who cannot, by any possibility,discover any but the bright side of a picture—are very apt to go toextremes and exaggerate with 40-horse microscopic power?But-butIn the bright lexicon of youth,There is no such word as Fail—and I'll prove it!
Whereupon, he lets himself go again, full-tilt:
By George, if I just had a thousand dollars I'd be all right! Nowthere's the “Horatio,” for instance. There are five or sixshareholders in it, and I know I could buy half of their interestsat, say $20 per foot, now that flour is worth $50 per barrel andthey are pressed for money, but I am hard up myself, and can't buy—and in June they'll strike the ledge, and then “good-by canary.”I can't get it for love or money. Twenty dollars a foot! Think ofit! For ground that is proven to be rich. Twenty dollars, Madam-and we wouldn't part with a foot of our 75 for five times the sum.So it will be in Humboldt next summer. The boys will get pushed andsell ground for a song that is worth a fortune. But I am at thehelm now. I have convinced Orion that he hasn't business talentenough to carry on a peanut-stand, and he has solemnly promised methat he will meddle no more with mining or other matters notconnected with the secretary's office. So, you see, if mines are tobe bought or sold, or tunnels run or shafts sunk, parties have tocome to me—and me only. I'm the “firm,” you know.
There are pages of this, all glowing with golden expectations and plans. Ah, well! we have all written such letters home at one time and another-of gold-mines of one form or another.
He closes at last with a bit of pleasantry for his mother.
Ma says: “It looks like a man can't hold public office and behonest.” Why, certainly not, Madam. A man can't hold public officeand be honest. Lord bless you, it is a common practice with Orionto go about town stealing little things that happen to be lyingaround loose. And I don't remember having heard him speak the truthsince we have been in Nevada. He even tries to prevail upon me todo these things, Ma, but I wasn't brought up in that way, you know.You showed the public what you could do in that line when you raisedme, Madam. But then you ought to have raised me first, so thatOrion could have had the benefit of my example. Do you know that hestole all the stamps out of an 8-stamp quartz-mill one night, andbrought them home under his overcoat and hid them in the back room?
He had about exhausted his own funds by this time, and it was necessary that Orion should become the financier. The brothers owned their Esmeralda claims in partnership, and it was agreed that Orion, out of his modest depleted pay, should furnish the means, while the other would go actively into the field and develop their riches. Neither had the slightest doubt but that they would be millionaires presently, and both were willing to struggle and starve for the few intervening weeks.
It was February when the printer-pilot-miner arrived in Aurora, that rough, turbulent camp of the Esmeralda district lying about one hundred miles south of Carson City, on the edge of California, in the Sierra slopes. Everything was frozen and covered with snow; but there was no lack of excitement and prospecting and grabbing for “feet” in this ledge and that, buried deep under the ice and drift. The new arrival camped with Horatio Phillips (Raish), in a tiny cabin with a domestic roof (the ruin of it still stands), and they cooked and bunked together and combined their resources in a common fund. Bob Howland joined them presently, and later an experienced miner, Calvin H. Higbie (Cal), one day to be immortalized in the story of 'Roughing It' and in the dedication of that book. Around the cabin stove they would gather, and paw over their specimens, or test them with blow-pipe and “horn” spoon, after which they would plan tunnels and figure estimates of prospective wealth. Never mind if the food was poor and scanty, and the chill wind came in everywhere, and the roof leaked like a filter; they were living in a land where all the mountains were banked with nuggets, where all the rivers ran gold. Bob Howland declared later that they used to go out at night and gather up empty champagne-bottles and fruit-tins and pile them in the rear of their cabin to convey to others the appearance of affluence and high living. When they lacked for other employment and were likely to be discouraged, the ex-pilot would “ride the bunk” and smoke and, without money and without price, distribute riches more valuable than any they would ever dig out of those Esmeralda Hills. At other times he talked little or not at all, but sat in one corner and wrote, wholly oblivious of his surroundings. They thought he was writing letters, though letters were not many and only to Orion during this period. It was the old literary impulse stirring again, the desire to set things down for their own sake, the natural hunger for print. One or two of his earlier letters home had found their way into a Keokuk paper—the 'Gate City'. Copies containing them had gone back to Orion, who had shown them to a representative of the Territorial Enterprise, a young man named Barstow, who thought them amusing. The Enterprise reprinted at least one of these letters, or portions of it, and with this encouragement the author of it sent an occasional contribution direct to that paper over the pen-name “Josh.” He did not care to sign his own name. He was a miner who was soon to be a magnate; he had no desire to be known as a camp scribbler.
He received no pay for these offerings, and expected none. They were sketches of a broadly burlesque sort, the robust horse-play kind of humor that belongs to the frontier. They were not especially promising efforts. One of them was about an old rackabones of a horse, a sort of preliminary study for “Oahu,” of the Sandwich Islands, or “Baalbec” and “Jericho,” of Syria. If any one had told him, or had told any reader of this sketch, that the author of it was knocking at the door of the house of fame such a person's judgment or sincerity would have been open to doubt. Nevertheless, it was true, though the knock was timid and halting and the summons to cross the threshold long delayed.
A winter mining-camp is the most bleak and comfortless of places. The saloon and gambling-house furnished the only real warmth and cheer. Our Aurora miners would have been less than human, or more, if they had not found diversion now and then in the happy harbors of sin. Once there was a great ball given at a newly opened pavilion, and Sam Clemens is said to have distinguished himself by his unrestrained and spontaneous enjoyment of the tripping harmony. Cal Higbie, who was present, writes:
In changing partners, whenever he saw a hand raised he would graspit with great pleasure and sail off into another set, oblivious tohis surroundings. Sometimes he would act as though there was no usein trying to go right or to dance like other people, and with hiseyes closed he would do a hoe-down or a double-shuffle all alone,talking to himself and saying that he never dreamed there was somuch pleasure to be obtained at a ball. It was all as natural as achild's play. By the second set, all the ladies were falling overthemselves to get him for a partner, and most of the crowd, too fullof mirth to dance, were standing or sitting around, dying withlaughter.
What a child he always was—always, to the very end? With the first break of winter the excitement that had been fermenting and stewing around camp stoves overflowed into the streets, washed up the gullies, and assailed the hills. There came then a period of madness, beside which the Humboldt excitement had been mere intoxication. Higbie says:
It was amazing how wild the people became all over the Pacificcoast. In San Francisco and other large cities barbers, hack-drivers, servant-girls, merchants, and nearly every class of peoplewould club together and send agents representing all the way from$5,000 to $500,000 or more to buy mines. They would buy anything.in the shape of quartz, whether it contained any mineral value ornot.
The letters which went from the Aurora miner to Orion are humanly documentary. They are likely to be staccato in their movement; they show nervous haste in their composition, eagerness, and suppressed excitement; they are not always coherent; they are seldom humorous, except in a savage way; they are often profane; they are likely to be violent. Even the handwriting has a terse look; the flourish of youth has gone out of it. Altogether they reveal the tense anxiety of the gambling mania of which mining is the ultimate form. An extract from a letter of April is a fair exhibit:
Work not yet begun on the “Horatio and Derby”—haven't seen it yet.It is still in the snow. Shall begin on it within 3 or 4 weeks—strike the ledge in July: Guess it is good—worth from $30 to $50a foot in California....Man named Gebhart shot here yesterday while trying to defend a claimon Last Chance Hill. Expect he will die.These mills here are not worth a d—n—except Clayton's—and it isnot in full working trim yet.Send me $40 or $50—by mail-immediately. I go to work to-morrowwith pick and shovel. Something's got to come, by G—, before I letgo here.
By the end of April work had become active in the mines, though the snow in places was still deep and the ground stony with frost. On the 28th he writes:
I have been at work all day blasting and digging, and d—ning one ofour new claims—“Dashaway”—which I don't think a great deal of, butwhich I am willing to try. We are down, now, 10 or 12 a feet. Weare following down under the ledge, but not taking it out. If weget up a windlass to-morrow we shall take out the ledge, and seewhether it is worth anything or not.
It must have been hard work picking away at the flinty ledges in the cold; and the “Dashaway” would seem to have proven a disappointment, for there is no promising mention of it again. Instead, we hear of the “Flyaway;” and “Annipolitan” and the “Live Yankee” and of a dozen others, each of which holds out the beacon of hope for a little while and then passes from notice forever. In May it is the “Monitor” that is sure to bring affluence, though realization is no longer regarded as immediate.
To use a French expression, I have “got my d—-d satisfy” at last.Two years' time will make us capitalists, in spite of anything.Therefore we need fret and fume and worry and doubt no more, butjust lie still and put up with privation for six months. Perhaps 3months will “let us out.” Then, if government refuses to pay therent on your new office we can do it ourselves. We have got to waitsix weeks, anyhow, for a dividend—maybe longer—but that it willcome there is no shadow of a doubt. I have got the thing sifteddown to a dead moral certainty. I own one-eighth of the new“Monitor Ledge, Clemens Company,” and money can't buy a foot of it;because I know it to contain our fortune. The ledge is six feetwide, and one needs no glass to see gold and silver in it....When you and I came out here we did not expect '63 or '64 to find usrich men—and if that proposition had been made we would haveaccepted it gladly. Now, it is made. I am willing, now, that“Neary's tunnel” or anybody else's tunnel shall succeed. Some ofthem may beat us a few months, but we shall be on hand in thefullness of time, as sure as fate. I would hate to swap chanceswith any member of the tribe....
It is the same man who twenty-five years later would fasten his faith and capital to a type-setting machine and refuse to exchange stock in it, share for share, with the Mergenthaler linotype. He adds:
But I have struck my tent in Esmeralda, and I care for no mines butthose which I can superintend myself. I am a citizen here now, andI am satisfied, although Ratio and I are “strapped” and we haven'tthree days' rations in the house.... I shall work the “Monitor” andthe other claims with my own hands. I prospected 3/4 of a pound of“Monitor” yesterday, and Raish reduced it with the blow-pipe, andgot about 10 or 12 cents in gold and silver, besides the other halfof it which we spilt on the floor and didn't get....I tried to break a handsome chunk from a huge piece of my darling“Monitor” which we brought from the croppings yesterday, but it allsplintered up, and I send you the scraps. I call that “choice”—anyd—-d fool would.Don't ask if it has been assayed, for it hasn't. It don't need it.It is simply able to speak for itself. It is six feet wide on top,and traversed through with veins whose color proclaims their worth.What the devil does a man want with any more feet when he owns inthe invincible bomb-proof “Monitor”?
There is much more of this, and other such letters, most of them ending with demands for money. The living, the tools, the blasting-powder, and the help eat it up faster than Orion's salary can grow.
“Send me $50 or $100, all you can spare; put away $150 subject to my call—we shall need it soon for the tunnel.” The letters are full of such admonition, and Orion, more insane, if anything, than his brother, is scraping his dollars and pennies together to keep the mines going. He is constantly warned to buy no claims on his own account and promises faithfully, but cannot resist now and then when luring baits are laid before him, though such ventures invariably result in violent and profane protests from Aurora.
“The pick and shovel are the only claims I have any confidence in now,” the miner concludes, after one fierce outburst. “My back is sore, and my hands are blistered with handling them to-day.”
But even the pick and shovel did not inspire confidence a little later. He writes that the work goes slowly, very slowly, but that they still hope to strike it some day. “But—if we strike it rich—I've lost my guess, that's all.” Then he adds: “Couldn't go on the hill to-day. It snowed. It always snows here, I expect”; and the final heart-sick line, “Don't you suppose they have pretty much quit writing at home?”
This is midsummer, and snow still interferes with the work. One feels the dreary uselessness of the quest.
Yet resolution did not wholly die, or even enthusiasm. These things were as recurrent as new prospects, which were plentiful enough. In a still subsequent letter he declares that he will never look upon his mother's face again, or his sister's, or get married, or revisit the “Banner State,” until he is a rich man, though there is less assurance than desperation in the words.
In 'Roughing It' the author tells us that, when flour had reached one dollar a pound and he could no longer get the dollar, he abandoned mining and went to milling “as a common laborer in a quartz-mill at ten dollars a week.” This statement requires modification. It was not entirely for the money that he undertook the laborious task of washing “riffles” and “screening tailings.” The money was welcome enough, no doubt, but the greater purpose was to learn refining, so that when his mines developed he could establish his own mill and personally superintend the work. It is like him to wish us to believe that he was obliged to give up being a mining magnate to become a laborer in a quartz-mill, for there is a grim humor in the confession. That he abandoned the milling experiment at the end of a week is a true statement. He got a violent cold in the damp place, and came near getting salivated, he says in a letter, “working in the quicksilver and chemicals. I hardly think I shall try the experiment again. It is a confining business, and I will not be confined for love or money.”
As recreation after this trying experience, Higbie took him on a tour, prospecting for the traditional “Cement Mine,” a lost claim where, in a deposit of cement rock, gold nuggets were said to be as thick as raisins in a fruitcake. They did not find the mine, but they visited Mono Lake—that ghastly, lifeless alkali sea among the hills, which in 'Roughing It' he has so vividly pictured. It was good to get away from the stress of things; and they repeated the experiment. They made a walking trip to Yosemite, carrying their packs, camping and fishing in that far, tremendous isolation, which in those days few human beings had ever visited at all. Such trips furnished a delicious respite from the fevered struggle around tunnel and shaft. Amid mountain-peaks and giant forests and by tumbling falls the quest for gold hardly seemed worth while. More than once that summer he went alone into the wilderness to find his balance and to get away entirely from humankind.
If I do not forget it, I will send you, per next mail, a pinch ofdecom. (decomposed rock) which I pinched with thumb and finger fromWide West ledge a while ago. Raish and I have secured 200 out of acompany with 400 ft. in it, which perhaps (the ledge, I mean) is aspur from the W. W.—our shaft is about 100 ft. from the W. W.shaft. In order to get in, we agreed to sink 30 ft. We have subletto another man for 50 ft., and we pay for powder and sharpeningtools.
This was the “Blind Lead” claim of Roughing It, but the episode as set down in that book is somewhat dramatized. It is quite true that he visited and nursed Captain Nye while Higbie was off following the “Cement” 'ignus fatuus' and that the “Wide West” holdings were forfeited through neglect. But if the loss was regarded as a heavy one, the letters fail to show it. It is a matter of dispute to-day whether or not the claim was ever of any value. A well-known California author—[Ella Sterling Cummins, author of The Story of the Files, etc]—declares:
No one need to fear that he ran any chance of being a millionairethrough the “Wide West” mine, for the writer, as a child, playedover that historic spot and saw only a shut-down mill and desolatehole in the ground to mark the spot where over-hopeful men had sunkthousands and thousands, that they never recovered.
The “Blind Lead” episode, as related, is presumably a tale of what might have happened—a possibility rather than an actuality. It is vividly true in atmosphere, however, and forms a strong and natural climax for closing the mining episode, while the literary privilege warrants any liberties he may have taken for art's sake.
In reality the close of his mining career was not sudden and spectacular; it was a lingering close, a reluctant and gradual surrender. The “Josh” letters to the Enterprise had awakened at least a measure of interest, and Orion had not failed to identify their author when any promising occasion offered; as a result certain tentative overtures had been made for similar material. Orion eagerly communicated such chances, for the money situation was becoming a desperate one. A letter from the Aurora miner written near the end of July presents the situation very fully. An extract or two will be sufficient:
My debts are greater than I thought for—I bought $25 worth ofclothing and sent $25 to Higbie, in the cement diggings. I oweabout $45 or $50, and have got about $45 in my pocket. But how inthe h—l I am going to live on something over $100 until October orNovember is singular. The fact is, I must have something to do, andthat shortly, too.... Now write to the Sacramento Union folks, orto Marsh, and tell them I'll write as many letters a week as theywant for $10 a week. My board must be paid. Tell them I havecorresponded with the N. Orleans Crescent and other papers—and theEnterprise.If they want letters from here—who'll run from morning till nightcollecting material cheaper? I'll write a short letter twice aweek, for the present for the 'Age', for $5 per week. Now it hasbeen a long time since I couldn't make my own living, and it shallbe a long time before I loaf another year.
Nothing came of these possibilities, but about this time Barstow, of the Enterprise, conferred with Joseph T. Goodman, editor and owner of the paper, as to the advisability of adding the author of the “Josh” letters to their local staff. Joe Goodman, who had as keen a literary perception as any man that ever pitched a journalistic tent on the Pacific coast (and there could be no higher praise than that), looked over the letters and agreed with Barstow that the man who wrote them had “something in him.” Two of the sketches in particular he thought promising. One of them was a burlesque report of an egotistical lecturer who was referred to as “Professor Personal Pronoun.” It closed by stating that it was “impossible to print his lecture in full, as the type-cases had run out of capital I's.” But it was the other sketch which settled Goodman's decision. It was also a burlesque report, this time of a Fourth-of-July oration. It opened, “I was sired by the Great American Eagle and foaled by a continental dam.” This was followed by a string of stock patriotic phrases absurdly arranged. But it was the opening itself that won Goodman's heart.
“That is the sort of thing we want,” he said. “Write to him, Barstow, and ask him if he wants to come up here.”
Barstow wrote, offering twenty-five dollars a week, a tempting sum. This was at the end of July, 1862.
In 'Roughing It' we are led to believe that the author regarded this as a gift from heaven and accepted it straightaway. As a matter of fact, he fasted and prayed a good while over the “call.” To Orion he wrote Barstow has offered me the post as local reporter for the Enterprise at $25 a week, and I have written him that I will let him know next mail, if possible.
There was no desperate eagerness, you see, to break into literature, even under those urgent conditions. It meant the surrender of all hope in the mines, the confession of another failure. On August 7th he wrote again to Orion. He had written to Barstow, he said, asking when they thought he might be needed. He was playing for time to consider.
Now, I shall leave at midnight to-night, alone and on foot, for a walk of 60 or 70 miles through a totally uninhabited country, and it is barely possible that mail facilities may prove infernally “slow.” But do you write Barstow that I have left here for a week or so, and in case he should want me, he must write me here, or let me know through you.
So he had gone into the wilderness to fight out his battle alone. But eight days later, when he had returned, there was still no decision. In a letter to Pamela of this date he refers playfully to the discomforts of his cabin and mentions a hope that he will spend the winter in San Francisco; but there is no reference in it to any newspaper prospects—nor to the mines, for that matter. Phillips, Howland, and Higbie would seem to have given up by this time, and he was camping with Dan Twing and a dog, a combination amusingly described. It is a pleasant enough letter, but the note of discouragement creeps in: