In the spring of 1859, a considerable number of miners returned to Six-Mile Cañon, to work. They now made their headquarters at Gold Hill, where two or three log-houses including a large log boarding-house, had been erected.
Peter O’Riley and Pat McLaughlin set to work well up at the head of the ravine, where the ground began to rise toward the mountain. They used rockers and found small pay. They continued to work at this point until about the 1st of June, 1859, gradually extending their operations up the slope of the hill, in the hope of finding something better. They had started a little cut or trench up the hill and were washing the dirt taken from this in their rockers. Before they started the cut they were making only from $1.50 to $2 per day; in the cut their pay was even less. They were becoming discouraged, and were thinking of going to Walker River to try their luck, placer-mines having been found in that region the year before, but concluded to work on where they were a few days longer—probably in the hope of being able to raise money with which to go to Walker River.
Having but a small stream of water, it became necessary for them to dig a hole as a sort of reservoir, in which to collect it for use in their rockers.
They set to work a short distance above the little cut in which they were mining, to make the needed reservoir or water-hole, and at a depth of about four feet, struck into a stratum of the rich decomposed ore of the Ophir Mine, and of the now world-famous Comstock silver lode.
The manner in which the grand discovery was made, was much less romantic than in the case of the discovery of the celebrated silver-mine of Potosi, Peru. What our miners found, was not glittering native silver, but a great bed of black sulphuret of silver—a decomposed ore of silver filled with spangles of native gold. This gold, however, was alloyed with silver to such an extent that it was more the color of silver than of gold.
The gold dug in the placer-mines of California, is worth from $16 to $19 per ounce, whereas, the gold taken from the croppings of the Comstock was worth no more than $11 or $12 per ounce.
When the discoverers struck into the odd-looking, black dirt, they only thought that it was a sudden and rather singular change from the yellowish gravel and clay in which they had been digging. As any change was welcome, the luck in which they had been working considered, they at once concluded to try some of the curious-looking stuff in their rockers.
The result astounded them. Before, they had only been taking out a dollar or two per day, but now they found the bottoms of their rockers covered with gold as soon as a few buckets of the new dirt had been washed. They found that they were literally taking out gold by the pound.
However, as the gold they were getting was much lighter in color and weight than any they had found below on the cañon, or even on the surface in their cut, they began to fear that all was not right. They thought that, after all, what they had found might be some sort of “bogus stuff”—base metal of some new and strange kind.
It is not strange that these impecunious miners, tinkering away there on the side of a lone, sage-covered mountain, with their rockers, should have felt a little alarmed on account of the great quantity of gold they were getting, as in a few weeks after the discovery had been made—and the work had been advanced further into the croppings of the lode—they were taking out gold at the rate of $1,000 per day. This they were doing with the rockers. Taking the harder lumps left on the screens of the rockers, one man was able to pound out gold at the rate of $100 per day in a common hand-mortar.