There is now not only an ample supply of water in the city for all town and domestic uses, but also for the boilers of the many hoisting works, and for use in the several mills where the ores of the Comstock mines are reduced. The cost of the water-works was over two million dollars.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
HOW WOOD IS CUT IN THE SIERRAS.
The Comstock lode may truthfully be said to be the tomb of the forests of the Sierras. Millions on millions of feet of lumber are annually buried in the mines, never-more to be resurrected. When once it is planted in the lower levels it never again sees the light of day. The immense bodies of timber now being entombed along the Comstock, will probably be discovered some thousands of years hence, by the people to be born in a future age, in the shape of huge beds of coal, and the geologists of that day will say that this coal or lignite came from large deposits of driftwood at the bottom of a lake; that there came a grand upheaval, and Mount Davidson arose, carrying the coal with it on its eastern slope.
Not less than eighty million feet of timber and lumber are annually consumed on the Comstock lode. In a single mine—the Consolidated Virginia—timber is being buried at the rate of six million feet per annum, and in all other mines in like proportion. At the same time about 250,000 cords of wood are consumed.
The pine-forests of the Sierra Nevada Mountains are drawn upon for everything in the shape of wood or lumber, and have been thus drawn upon for many years. For a distance of fifty or sixty miles all the hills of the eastern slope of the Sierras have been to a great extent denuded of trees of every kind; those suitable only for wood as well as those fit for the manufacture of lumber for use in the mines. Already the lumbermen are not only extending their operations to a greater distance north and south along the great mountain range, but are also beginning to reach over to the western slope—over to the California side of the range.
Long since, all the forests on the lower hills of the Nevada side of the mountains that could be reached by teams, were swept away, when the lumbermen began to scale the higher hills, felling the trees thereon, and rolling or sliding the logs down to flats whence they could be hauled. The next movement was to erect saw-mills far up in the mountains, and to construct from these, large flumes leading down into the valleys, through which to float wood, lumber, and timber. Some of these flumes are over twenty miles in length, and are very substantial structures, costing from $20,000 to $250,000 each. They are built on a regular grade, and, in order to maintain this grade, wind round hills, pass along the sides of steep mountains, and cross deep cañons; reared, in many places, on trestle-work of great height.
These flumes are made so large that timbers sixteen inches square and twenty or thirty feet in length may be floated down in them. In a properly constructed flume, timbers of a large size are floated by a very small head of water; and not alone single logs, but long processions of them. Timbers, wood, lumber—in fact, all that will float—is carried away as fast as thrown in. When a stick of timber or a plank has been placed in the flume, then ends all the expense of transportation, as, without further attention, it is dumped in the valley—twenty miles away, perhaps. By means of these flumes, tens of thousands of acres of timber-land are made available, that could never have been reached by teams.
In some places, where the ground is very steep, there are to be seen what are called gravitation flumes, down which wood is sent without the aid of water. These, however, are merely straight chutes, running from the top to the bottom of a single hill or range of hills. In places, they are of great use, as through them wood may be sent down within reach of the main water-flume leading to the valley. Nearly all of the flumes have their dumps near the line of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, or some of its branches or side-tracks, and in these dumps are at times to be seen thousands upon thousands of cords of wood and millions of feet of lumber.
In some localities a kind of chute is in use, made by laying down a line of heavy timbers in such shape as to form a sort of trough. Down these tracks or troughs are slid huge logs. When the troughs are steep, the logs rush down at more than railroad speed, leaving behind them a trail of fire and smoke. Such log-ways are generally to be seen about the lakes, and are so contrived that the logs leap from them into water of great depth, as otherwise they would be shivered to pieces and spoiled for use in the manufacture of lumber. Occasionally, in summer, a daring lumberman mounts a large log at the top of one of these chutes, high up the mountain, and darting down at lightning speed, with hair streaming in the breeze, takes a wild leap of twenty or thirty feet into the lake. In one place, in order to obtain a supply of water sufficient to run two lumber-flumes, a tunnel was run a distance of 2,100 feet at a cost of $30,000. This tunnel passed through a ridge, and tapped a lake lying within the basin of Lake Tahoe.