After Comstock’s wife ran away with the strolling miner he thought best to let her continue her travels unmolested. He opened a store at Carson City with the money received for his mining interests in Virginia City and also had a branch-store at Silver City, a town on Gold Cañon, about three miles below Gold Hill, which was laid out in the summer of 1859.
He soon broke up in the mercantile line, losing everything. He trusted everybody—all went to his stores and purchased goods without money and without price, and at last his old friends the Piute Indians came in and carried away the remnants. Comstock made them all happy, male and female, by passing out to them armfuls of red blankets and calico of brilliant hues.
His stock in the Carson store was as good as was seen in most trading establishments of the kind at that day, but his Silver City branch never amounted to much, the stock consisting principally, as the miners said, of blue cotton overalls, pick-handles, rusty bacon, “nigger” shoes, and “dog-leg” tobacco.
After losing all of his property, Comstock left Nevada and went to Idaho and Montana, through which countries he wandered and prospected for some years, always hoping that some day he should come upon a second Comstock lode. He was always ready to join every expedition that was fitted out to explore new regions, as the “big thing” seemed to him to be ever just ahead.
In 1870 he joined the Big Horn expedition in Montana, and this was his last undertaking. When near Bozeman City, on September 27th, 1870, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with his revolver. The Montana papers said it was supposed that he committed the act while laboring under temporary aberration of mind, and this was doubtless the case, as his was by no means a sound or well-balanced brain.
CHAPTER X.
A LETTER FROM COMSTOCK.
The following letter from H. T. P. Comstock was originally published in the St. Louis Republican, some years ago, and gives a good idea of the man and his mental condition during the latter years of his life. He was always very eccentric, and even during the time he was in Washoe, in the early days, was considered by many persons to be “a little cracked” in the “upper story”—was a man flighty in his imaginings. The first part of the letter, with the date, is lacking and was no doubt left off as being merely introductory and unimportant, by the papers which republished it after it reached the Pacific Coast. The letter was written from Butte City, Montana. Some of Comstock’s statements are correct, but the greater part of what he says is a mere jumble and shows a wavering mind. His letter begins:
“These men, there in Washoe, are interested in misrepresenting the facts about the Comstock lode; they fear my claims to the water, the town site of Virginia and other interests they have swindled me out of. It is just what they are afraid of exactly; and that’s what everybody in Washoe is afraid of. I shall yet have my say, I am writing a history of my life and all those fellows had better stand from under. Now I want to tell the whole truth about the Comstock lode: I’ll try to do it and I want you to publish it. If you are gentlemen you will do it—it is nothing more than right. Here it is:
I, Henry Thomas Paige Comstock, first went to that country—the Washoe—from Mexico, in 1853; roved all around California, and went back to Mexico that year; went back then to Washoe, in the spring of 1854, and staid there. My home was in Santa Fe, when in Mexico. I, old Joe Caldwell, Elmore & Co., partners of mine for twelve years, were the first men who ever worked in that section.
Worked there in 1855-56 on surface-diggings, prospecting all the while for silver ore. The Grosch brothers worked at what is now known as Silver City. One of them, Hosea, stuck a pick in his foot and died in my cabin. The other, Allen, died near Sugar-Loaf, California. This was three years before the Comstock lode was discovered.