The men who were mining on Six-mile Cañon first struck paying ground, at a point nearly a mile below the place where silver ore was afterwards found in the Ophir mine. The gold was in clay, which was so tough that before it could be washed out in rockers it was necessary to “puddle” it—that is, put it into a large square box or a hole in the ground, and dissolve it by adding a proper quantity of water and working it about with hoes or shovels. Even working in this way, the men were able to make from five dollars to an ounce per day. The gold found at this distance down the cañon was worth about $13.50 per ounce.
The miners on Six-mile Cañon sold their dust in Placerville, California. Being acquainted with some California boys who were mining in a place called ’Coon Hollow, our Washoe miners were in the habit of buying a certain quantity of fine dust of them, which they mixed with the gold from Six-mile Cañon, when they were able to sell the whole lot at such a price as was equal to fifteen dollars per ounce for their own dust. As they worked further up the ravine, toward the Comstock lode, the gold deteriorated so rapidly in weight, color and value, that this game could no longer be played. The gold-buyer looked upon the mixture of Six-mile Cañon and ’Coon Hollow products and pronounced it a delusion and a snare.
CHAPTER III.
ADVENTURES OF EARLY PROSPECTORS.
Two young men who were mining in Gold Cañon, suspected the existence of silver-mines in the country at least five or six years before silver was actually discovered. These men were Hosea B. and Edgar Allen Grosch, sons of A. B. Grosch, a Universalist clergyman of considerable note, and editor of a Universalist paper at Utica, New York. The Grosch brothers were well educated and had considerable knowledge of mineralogy and assaying.
They came to Gold Cañon in 1852, from Volcano, California, and engaged in placer-mining. In 1853 and 1854, they appear to have become convinced that there was silver to be found in the country, and did a good deal of prospecting in various directions among the neighboring mountains, doubtless in search of silver ore.
In their cabin, which stood near the present town of Silver City, about a mile above Johntown, they are said to have had a library consisting of a considerable number of volumes of scientific works; also chemical apparatus and assayer’s tools.
They did not associate with the miners working on the cañon, and were very reticent in regard to what they were doing. They, however, informed a few persons that they had discovered a vein of silver-bearing quartz and it was well known among the miners that they had formed a company for the purpose of working their mine. The majority of the members of their company were understood to be in California (about Volcano), and in one of the Atlantic States. Mrs. L. M. Dettenreider, one of the early settlers of the country, and a lady who had befriended the brothers, was given an interest in their mine, and at one time had in her possession a piece of ore from it. This ore, they assured her, contained gold, silver, lead, and antimony.
Mrs. Dettenreider, who is a resident of Virginia City, says she always understood that the mine discovered by the Grosch brothers was somewhere about Mount Davidson, and thinks they may have obtained their ore somewhere along the Comstock lead.
In 1860, I saw their old furnaces unearthed, they having been covered up to the depth of a foot or more by a deposit of mud and sand from Gold Cañon. They were two in number and but two or three feet in length, a foot in height and a foot and a half in width. One had been used as a smelting and the other as a cupel furnace. The remains of melting-pots and fragments of cupels were found in and about the furnaces, also a large piece of argentiferous galena, which had doubtless been procured a short distance west of Silver City, where there are yet to be seen veins containing ore of that character, some of which yield fair assays in silver.