It is then removed from the crucible and carefully weighed. The weight of this matter shows the gold contained in the button, and the loss in the weight—that which was dissolved[dissolved] out of the original button by the action of the nitric acid—represents the silver. The bars being next accurately weighed, their value is determined from the amount of gold and silver found in the sample of one gramme taken from the silver of which the bars were moulded. The calculations here required are much facilitated by the use of very comprehensive tables of values for all degrees of fineness of silver and gold—a species of logarithms. Thus, for instance, when silver is 900 fine, an ounce of such silver is worth $1,16,36, and when gold is 900 fine an ounce of it is worth $18,60½. This is seen at a glance by referring to the tables; and the same is the case no matter what the degree of fineness of the metal may be.
The scales used in assaying are wonderfully delicate and sensitive. The smaller ones will weigh a piece of hair only an inch in length, from the human head. There is a separate room in which the weighing is done and the calculations made. All in this room is as neat and clean as in the finest parlor. In another room are the muffle-furnace and sand-bath, and in still another the furnace where the assays are made, also a still for distilling water. In ore assays, 200 grains of finely powered ore are placed in a small earthen crucible; a proper quantity of flux is added, and the whole is then placed in the furnace and melted. After the mass has remained in the molten state a sufficient length of time, the crucible is taken out and allowed to cool. When cold it is broken by a blow with a hammer, and the button deposited by the ore is found at its bottom. This button is then assayed in the same way as the granulations taken from the melting-pot, and from the result the value per ton of the ore is calculated.
In the Consolidated Virginia assay-office from sixty to eighty assays of ore, tailings, and slimes are daily made. The finished bars of silver have stamped upon them their weight, fineness of gold and silver, value in gold and in silver, and the total value of the bars. They are then ready to be sent to one of the United States’ Mints to be coined, or to be shipped to Europe, China, or Japan, and sold. The total cost of the Consolidated Virginia reduction works was $350,000.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
SALOON BIRDS.
As the reader has been kept for some time in the “lower levels,” and amid the roar of the machinery of the mills, I shall now give a few chapters illustrative of life in Virginia City, and along the Comstock lode.
In Virginia City are found many odd, curious, and reckless characters. It would be strange, indeed, if such were not the case, in a city having a population of over twenty thousand souls, composed of adventurers from every land, all attracted thither by the great richness of the mines and the abundance of money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars being paid out on the first of every month to the miners and the workmen employed in the many mills, there have been attracted to the Comstock range hundreds of gamblers of all grades, and men of all kinds who live by their wits. There is always a small army of men who haunt the saloons and gambling rooms, and by begging a good deal and stealing a little, and playing all manner of tricks and dodges, manage to pick up a precarious subsistence. There are in Virginia City about one hundred saloons, all of which have their customers. The majority of these saloons are what are called “bit houses;” that is, drinks of all kinds and cigars are one bit—twelve and one-half cents. The dime, however, passes as a “bit” in all of these houses.
The money in circulation is wholly gold and silver coin, and the smallest coin in use is the bit, ten-cent piece—sometimes spoken of as a “short bit,” as not being twelve and one-half cents, the “long bit.” There being no smaller change in use than the dime, the bit passes for the half of twenty-five cents. Thus, whenever a customer throws down a quarter of a dollar in payment for a drink or a cigar, he gets back a dime, and so has paid fifteen cents for his “nip” or smoke. The new twenty-cent pieces, of which Senator Jones, of Nevada, is the father, will, however, cure this little ill. In the “two-bit,” or twenty-five cent saloons, everything is twenty-five cents, even the same drinks that are sold in the bit houses for ten cents; as lager beer, soda water, lemonade, cider, and the like.
There is really but one hotel—kept after the plan of hotels in other places—in Virginia City. The people of the town eat at restaurants and have their rooms at lodging-houses. It is on the European plan, except that a restaurant is seldom found in the same building as a lodging-house. Those who live in lodging-houses patronize that restaurant which best suits them. Restaurants and lodging-houses are, therefore, even more numerous in the town than saloons.
The grand army of men who live by their wits are always at war with the restaurant keepers. Of late, however, the latter have formed an association for their mutual protection, and furnish each other lists of all swindling customers, which makes it no easy matter for one of the “dead beats” to get a “square meal,” unless he first “puts up” his coin. These fellows cannot now rove from house to house as in former times.