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,