Besides these heavy expenditures the two companies have bought 12,000 acres of timber-land high in the Sierras, to which has been constructed a flume through which to float wood, lumber, and timber, and the cost of this flume (twenty-one miles in length) was $250,000. These grand and expensive preparations show that the companies in question are but getting ready to mine.
Notwithstanding that this Comstock bonanza is the largest and richest deposit of silver in the world, none of the scientific men of America have yet taken the trouble to visit and examine it. It has been visited by many mining men from Europe, however. The majority of the European visitors are Englishmen, though many Germans and Frenchman, and a few Russians, have come to see and inspect this wonder of the modern mining world. All these foreigners are not only astounded at the great size and richness of the vein, but are also forced to admit that the mining and milling machinery of Nevada is far superior to anything of the kind to be found in Europe.
The northern extremity of the bonanza penetrates the Ophir ground where, however, it as yet appears to be somewhat broken and is found to lie in huge detached masses, between the 1300 and the 1600-foot levels. Much of the ore found is exceedingly rich, carrying a large percentage of gold. Stopes have been opened in several places in the Ophir, and ore is being extracted at the rate of three hundred tons per day. Here, too, are being made very extensive preparations for future mining operations. Hoisting-machinery for the incline is being erected that will be capable of sinking to the depth of 4,000 feet—well on toward a mile. Machinery for the pumping from the same great depth is also being erected. Their present greatest depth is 1700 feet, at which point they are drifting for the vein. Their present shaft is on a line, north and south, with the Consolidated Virginia, and Gould & Curry shafts, and is about one thousand feet east of the old shaft, and the point where silver was first discovered in 1859 by Pat McLaughlin and Peter O’Riley.
It is a circumstance worthy of note that fourteen years after the discovery of silver, the big bonanza, the mammoth deposit of the lode, should be found near where the first silver ore was turned up to the light of day. About one thousand feet eastward from the spot where O’Riley and McLaughlin first saw and wondered at the strange “blue stuff” in the bottom of their rocker we now have the bonanza, a second wonder. Still to the eastward one of these days a third will be found. Out of the first bonanza, into the top of which O’Riley and McLaughlin luckily struck their picks, was taken about $20,000,000 before the deposit was exhausted; out of the Consolidated Virginia mine alone has already been taken $15,500,000 and as yet they have hardly begun working in real earnest.[earnest.] What they have worked out in the bonanza is as one room to a whole block of buildings. In regard to what is still below, they only know that at the greatest depth yet attained they still have the same rich ore that is found on the 1500-foot level.
By referring[referring] to the map of the 1500-foot level it will be seen that the Consolidated Virginia Company still have a great amount of unexplored ground lying to the southward of where they have drifted and opened stopes in the great ore-body. What is in the ground remains to be seen, but undoubtedly it contains a vast amount of rich ore. As is to be seen, the California Company have to the eastward a vast unexplored region into which no less than five cross-cuts, one hundred feet apart, are being extended. All of these are in ore of the richest character, and the width of the bonanza at that point is likely to prove as great as at cross-cut No. 2, in the Consolidated Virginia, namely eighteen or twenty rods. To cut off and estimate “slices” through the whole length of the California ground would count up more hundreds of millions of dollars than I dare name. When the new mill of the California Company shall have gone into operation, silver will be produced so rapidly, and in such amount as to astonish the world, and may perhaps reduce the market value of the metal. When they begin the work of extracting ore they will be able to take out all that they can reduce in their own mill and as many other mills as they can secure, whether the amount required be five hundred or one thousand tons per day.
In the Mexican and Union Consolidated mines, lying just north of the Ophir, the work of prospecting has but recently been commenced, yet very promising assays are obtained. The Sierra Nevada mine, which lies next to the Union Consolidated, on the north, has yielded a large amount in gold from surface earth, and from decomposed rock and earth extracted a short distance below the surface, but as yet nothing that could be called a bonanza has been found. In the early days, about 1862, a great deal of gold was extracted from the surface earth by washing with the hydraulic apparatus, as the placer-mines of California are worked. As at Gold Hill, and at the head of Six-mile Cañon were found great bonanzas where were at first found gold-diggings on the surface; so the Sierra Nevada Company may yet expect to find a bonanza in some part of the large mountain on which their mine is located. To the eastward of the mines in which is situated the big bonanza a score of new claims have been located, and on many of these, machinery has been set up, and large shafts are being rapidly sunk. A new bonanza is liable to be found in this direction, as it is a part of the silver belt that has been but little explored.
The excitement in regard to the grand development in the Consolidated Virginia and California mines had the effect of sending up the price of stocks along the whole line of the Comstock. Mines that could show no manner of improvements in their prospects went up with the rest, under the pressure of the excitement. The aggregate value of mines in Virginia and Gold Hill districts, whose stocks are called in the San Francisco Stock Board, was about $93,000,000 November 22, 1874. On the same day of the following month their market value was as follows:
| Andes, | $250,000 |
| Arizona and Utah, | 18,000 |
| Alpha, | 159,000 |
| American Flat, | 240,000 |
| Baltimore Consolidated, | 450,000 |
| Bacon, | 240,000 |
| Belcher, | 5,720,000 |
| Best & Belcher, | 3,528,000 |
| Bullion, | 1,700,000 |
| Caledonia, | 520,000 |
| California, | 54,000,000 |
| Chollar, | 2,464,000 |
| Confidence, | 1,123,200 |
| Consolidated Virginia, | 54,000,000 |
| Consolidated Gold Hill Quartz, | 140,000 |
| Crown Point, | 5,200,000 |
| Challenge, | 600,000 |
| Crown Point Ravine, | 100,000 |
| Dardanelles, | 670,000 |
| Eclipse, | 250,000 |
| Empire Mill, | 800,000 |
| Exchequer, | 900,000 |
| Globe, | 25,000 |
| Gould and Curry, | 2,880,000 |
| Hale and Norcross, | 1,024,000 |
| Imperial, | 1,900,000 |
| Julia, | 210,000 |
| Justice, | 1,470,000 |
| Kentuck, | 660,000 |
| Knickerbocker, | 120,000 |
| Kossuth, | 216,000 |
| Lady Washington, | 75,000 |
| Leo, | 40,000 |
| Mexican, | 3,456,000 |
| New York Consolidated, | 144,000 |
| Ophir, | 18,900,000 |
| Overman, | 2,944,000 |
| Rock Island, | 125,000 |
| Savage, | 2,000,000 |
| Segregated Belcher, | 960,000 |
| Silver Hill, | 540,000 |
| Sierra Nevada, | 340,000 |
| Succor, | 114,000 |
| Trench, | 50,000 |
| Union Consolidated, | 1,400,000 |
| Utah, | 160,000 |
| Whitman, | 150,000 |
| Woodville, | 252,000 |
| Yellow-Jacket, | 1,920,000 |
| Total. | $175,147,200 |
By the above it will be seen that the appreciation in the value of forty-nine mines was over $82,000,000 in thirty days. Besides the mines given in the above list there were a score more that have a market value, all of which were more or less affected by the excitement, and were bought by persons who not having money to purchase bonanza stocks were yet determined to get into mines of some kind.
The body of ore in the California and Consolidated Virginia mines, known as the “Big Bonanza” is by no means the only bonanza found on the Comstock that was worth having. From the first Ophir bonanza was extracted, all told, about $20,000,000; from the Savage, $15,750,000; Hale & Norcross, $8,000,000; Chollar-Potosi, $16,000,000; Gould & Curry, $15,550,000; Yellow-Jacket, $15,000,000; Crown Point, $20,000,000; Belcher, $25,000,000; Overman, $3,000,000; Imperial, $2,500,000, and many other mines sums running into millions, or well up in the hundreds of thousands. The Belcher and Crown Point mines are still yielding about 500 tons of ore each per day. The Belcher mine has paid its stockholders dividends to the amount of $14,135,000; the stockholders of the Crown Point have received $11,588,000; the Consolidated Virginia has paid $9,720,000; Chollar-Potosi, $3,080,000; Gould & Curry, $3,826,800; Hale & Norcross, $1,598,000; Savage, $4,440,000; Yellow-Jacket, $2,184,000; and many others sums ranging from fifty thousand to one million dollars.