History of the big bonanza

by Dan De Quille

In the Consolidated Virginia mine there is a man who is what may be called a general foreman. He has charge of the shaft, the prospecting drifts, and cross-cuts, and attends to the ventilation of the mine and to keeping it clear of water; in short, looks after underground affairs generally.

After ore has been struck in the drifts and the work of extraction begins, this officer turns that portion of the mine over to one of the foremen who superintends the work of extracting the ore.

There is always a day-boss on the 1500-foot level, and at night his place is filled by a second general foreman of the underground regions, who has charge of everything by night, as the other officer has during the day.

Besides the miners there are employed a great number of timbermen, who look after the timbers and the timbering; the pump man, who takes care of the pumps; the watchmen, who go their rounds, each on his level, to look out for fire and to keep an eye on things generally; and the pick-boy, who goes about through the mine gathering up the dull picks and sending them up the shaft to be sharpened, who carries the sharp picks to the places where they are wanted, who distributes water among the men and who, in short, is general errand-boy in the mine. As may be supposed, his position is no sinecure.

The following amounts of timber, wood, and other mining supplies are used per month in the Consolidated Virginia mine, and, from this, what is used in other leading mines may be surmised: Feet of timber per month, 500,000; cords of wood, 550; boxes of candles, 350; giant-powder, 2 tons; 100 gallons of coal-oil, 200 gallons of lard-oil, 800 pounds of tallow, 20,000 feet of fuse, 37 tons of ice, 3,000 bushels of charcoal, 1½ tons of steel, 5 tons of round and square iron, 4 tons of hard coal (Cumberland), 50 kegs of nails, and a thousand and one other articles in the same proportion. The amount of timbers buried in the mines of the Comstock is almost beyond computation. It is more than there is in all of the buildings in the State of Nevada.

Nearly all the pine forests on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, for a distance of fifty or sixty miles north and south, have been swept away and buried in the lower levels, or consumed under the boilers of the mills and hoisting works. Already the lumbermen are pushing their way beyond the summit of the mountains, and the demand for timber and lumber is increasing every month, as new levels and new mines are opened.

In a silver-mine it is not all dark and dismal below, as many persons suppose. On the contrary, the long drifts and cross-cuts are lighted up with candles and lamps. It is only the little-used drifts, in parts of the mine distant from the main workings, that absolute and pitchy darkness prevails.

In the principal levels candles and lamps are always burning. When it is midnight above, and storms and darkness prevail throughout the city, whole acres of ground, hundreds of feet below in the bowels of the earth, are lighted up; and down there all is calm and silent, save when sounds peculiar to the place break the stillness.

In a mine there is neither day nor night; it is always candle-light. If we go into a mine late in the afternoon and remain below for some hours, a gloomy feeling is experienced when we come to the surface and find it is everywhere night above. We almost wish ourselves back in the lower levels of the mine, for when we are there it seems to be always daylight above.

On the principal levels of a mine we have long drifts, galleries and cross-cuts which intersect each other, much as do the streets and alleys in some old-fashioned, overcrowded village—some village seated in a confined place, where encroaching precipices seem to crush it out of shape.