This was written about the end of October. Two months later, in midwinter, the mining fever came upon him with full force.
XX.
THE MINER
The wonder is that Samuel Clemens, always speculative and visionary, had not fallen an earlier victim. Everywhere one heard stories of sudden fortune—of men who had gone to bed paupers and awakened millionaires. New and fabulous finds were reported daily. Cart-loads of bricks—silver and gold bricks—drove through the Carson streets.
Then suddenly from the newly opened Humboldt region came the wildest reports. The mountains there were said to be stuffed with gold. A correspondent of the "Territorial Enterprise" was unable to find words to picture the riches of the Humboldt mines.
The air for Samuel Clemens began to shimmer. Fortune was waiting to be gathered in a basket. He joined the first expedition for Humboldt—in fact, helped to organize it. In "Roughing It" he says:
"Hurry was the word! We wasted no time. Our party consisted of four persons—a blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and myself. We bought a wagon and two miserable old horses. We put eighteen hundred pounds of provisions and mining-tools in the wagon and drove out of Carson on a chilly December afternoon.."
The two young lawyers were W. H. Clagget, whom Clemens had known in Keokuk, and A. W. Oliver, called Oliphant in "Roughing It." The blacksmith was named Tillou (Ballou in "Roughing It"), a sturdy, honest man with a knowledge of mining and the repair of tools. There were also two dogs in the party—a curly-tailed mongrel and a young hound.
The horses were the weak feature of the expedition. It was two hundred miles to Humboldt, mostly across sand. The miners rode only a little way, then got out to lighten the load. Later they pushed. Then it began to snow, also to blow, and the air became filled with whirling clouds of snow and sand. On and on they pushed and groaned, sustained by the knowledge that they must arrive some time, when right away they would be millionaires and all their troubles would be over.
The nights were better. The wind went down and they made a camp-fire in the shelter of the wagon, cooked their bacon, crept under blankets with the dogs to warm them, and Sam Clemens spun yarns till they fell asleep.