History of the big bonanza

by Dan De Quille

To return to the notions of the early miners and others, in regard to the existence of silver in Nevada. Few, it would seem, besides the Grosch brothers, and one or two of their intimate friends, ever dreamed of there being any silver-mines in the country. Had there been anything said about the existence of silver, those who made predictions that it would be found, would not have been slow to remind their friends of the fact as soon as the first discovery of silver was made. Some of the Johntowners say that, in 1853, a Mexican who was hired by them and who worked a few days in Gold Cañon, tried to tell them that he was of the opinion that there were silver-mines in the mountains above them. The man spoke no English, therefore was unable at that time to make himself understood; now that the silver-mines have been found, all seems plain enough.

Pointing to the large fragments of quartz rock lying along the bed of the cañon, the Mexican said: “Bueno!”—good! Then pointing toward the mountain peaks about the head of the cañon, and giving his hand a general wave over them all, he cried emphatically: “Mucho plata! mucho plata!” “Much silver! much silver! all above you in those hills,” was what the Mexican said by word and gesture.

The men who were at work with the Mexican remember this, because during the two or three days he was at work with them he several times uttered the same words and went through the same pantomime. All that the miners understood of what the fellow was driving at was, “lots of money, gold,” somewhere above them in the mountains.

The fact is, that silver was so little in the minds of the early miners, and they knew so little about any ore of silver, that when they at last found it, they did not know what it was and cursed it as some kind of heavy, worthless sand of iron, or some other base metal, that covered up the quicksilver in the bottom of their rockers and interfered with the amalgamation and saving of the gold they were washing out. They damned this stuff from the rising of the sun till the going down thereof, and worked in it for a considerable length of time before anybody knew what it was. Until after an assay of the “blasted blue stuff” had been made, the miners were all working in blissful ignorance of silver existing anywhere in the country.

In the spring of 1858, which the snow was going off and water was plentiful, the men who had worked in Six-mile Cañon the year before, with a number of other miners from Johntown, returned to their diggings. The newcomers set to work on the cañon above the claims of those who had mined there the previous year, planting their rockers wherever they found a spot of ground that would pay wages.

Among those who came to mine on Six-mile Cañon at this time were Peter O’Riley and Pat McLaughlin, the discoverers of the Comstock silver lode, and “Old Virginia” who gave his name to Virginia City, under the streets of which now lie the bonanza mines.

Nick Ambrose, better known in that country as “Dutch Nick,” also moved up to Six-mile Cañon, following his customers in their exodus from Johntown. Nick came not to mine, but to minister to the wants of the miners. He set up a large tent and ran it as a saloon and boarding-house. The boys paid him $14 per week for board and “slept themselves;” that is, they were provided with blankets of their own, and rolling up in these, they just curled down in the sagebrush, wherever and whenever they pleased.

The liquid refreshment furnished these miners by Nick was probably the first of that popular brand of whisky known as “tarantula juice” ever dispensed within the limits of Virginia City. When the boys were well charged with this whisky it made the snakes and tarantulas that bit them very sick.

At this time, H. T. P. Comstock was engaged in mining on American Flat Ravine, a branch of Gold Cañon, a short distance above the point where Silver City now stands. He was working with a “tom” (a contrivance for washing auriferous gravel which combines the principles of the rocker and the sluice-box), and, the water used in the tom being some distance below where his “pay-dirt” was found, he had a number of lusty Piute Indians employed in packing the dirt to where he was engaged in washing it and supervising things in general, as became the proprietor of the “works.”

The ground worked was not so rich as to greatly excite anyone, it being about, as the Chinamen say, “two pan, one color,” therefore it is not likely that the Indians received wages that gave them a very exalted opinion of mining as a regular business.