dinner, and there was no one to man the windlass. So, having seen
the earthquake, we climbed out at the Union incline and tunnel, and
adjourned, all dripping with candle grease and perspiration, to
lunch at the Ophir office.
During the great flush year of 1863, Nevada [claims to have]
produced $25,000,000 in bullion–almost, if not quite, a round
million to each thousand inhabitants, which is very well,
considering that she was without agriculture and manufactures.
Silver mining was her sole productive industry. [Since the above was
in type, I learn from an official source that the above figure is
too high, and that the yield for 1863 did not exceed $20,000,000.
However, the day for large figures is approaching; the Sutro Tunnel
is to plow through the Comstock lode from end to end, at a depth of
two thousand feet, and then mining will be easy and comparatively
inexpensive; and the momentous matters of drainage, and hoisting and
hauling of ore will cease to be burdensome. This vast work will
absorb many years, and millions of dollars, in its completion; but
it will early yield money, for that desirable epoch will begin as
soon as it strikes the first end of the vein. The tunnel will be
some eight miles long, and will develop astonishing riches. Cars
will carry the ore through the tunnel and dump it in the mills and
thus do away with the present costly system of double handling and
transportation by mule teams. The water from the tunnel will
furnish the motive power for the mills. Mr. Sutro, the originator
of this prodigious enterprise, is one of the few men in the world
who is gifted with the pluck and perseverance necessary to follow up
and hound such an undertaking to its completion. He has converted
several obstinate Congresses to a deserved friendliness toward his
important work, and has gone up and down and to and fro in Europe
until he has enlisted a great moneyed interest in it there.
CHAPTER LIII.
Every now and then, in these days, the boys used to tell me I ought to
get one Jim Blaine to tell me the stirring story of his grandfather’s old
ram–but they always added that I must not mention the matter unless Jim
was drunk at the time–just comfortably and sociably drunk. They kept
this up until my curiosity was on the rack to hear the story. I got to
haunting Blaine; but it was of no use, the boys always found fault with
his condition; he was often moderately but never satisfactorily drunk.
I never watched a man’s condition with such absorbing interest, such
anxious solicitude; I never so pined to see a man uncompromisingly drunk
before. At last, one evening I hurried to his cabin, for I learned that
this time his situation was such that even the most fastidious could find
no fault with it–he was tranquilly, serenely, symmetrically drunk–not a
hiccup to mar his voice, not a cloud upon his brain thick enough to
obscure his memory. As I entered, he was sitting upon an empty powder-
keg, with a clay pipe in one hand and the other raised to command
silence. His face was round, red, and very serious; his throat was bare
and his hair tumbled; in general appearance and costume he was a stalwart
miner of the period. On the pine table stood a candle, and its dim light
revealed “the boys” sitting here and there on bunks, candle-boxes,
powder-kegs, etc. They said:
“Sh–! Don’t speak–he’s going to commence.”
THE STORY OF THE OLD RAM.
I found a seat at once, and Blaine said:
‘I don’t reckon them times will ever come again. There never was a more
bullier old ram than what he was. Grandfather fetched him from Illinois
–got him of a man by the name of Yates–Bill Yates–maybe you might have
heard of him; his father was a deacon–Baptist–and he was a rustler,
too; a man had to get up ruther early to get the start of old Thankful
Yates; it was him that put the Greens up to jining teams with my
grandfather when he moved west.
Seth Green was prob’ly the pick of the flock; he married a Wilkerson–