Virginia City was first called Silver City. I named it at the time I gave the Ophir claim its name. Old Virginia and the other boys got on a drunk one night there, and Old Virginia fell down and broke his bottle, and when he got up he said he baptized that ground Virginia—hence Virginia City—and that is the way it got its name. At that time there were a few tents, a few little huts, and a grog-shop; that was all there was. I was camped under a cedar-tree at that time—I and my party.
I am now living at Butte City, in Montana Territory. The quartz in Montana is very rich quartz, and the Cable claim is next to the Comstock, but gold in place of silver. There is a greater variety of minerals in Montana than in any country I have ever explored. There are tin mines here. I discovered them myself; and there are alabaster mines here.[here.] Silver, vastly rich, and gold very rich. The Flint Creek mines—oh, God! how rich! This is bound to be a rich country, but we are a long way from market and have to go slow.
And the Butte mines, too, they are vastly rich, but very much mixed with other metals—that is, a great many of them—and Highland has a good many rich leads now open and opening.
H. T. P. COMSTOCK.
This is a country second to none on the globe, in point of mineral wealth and in the precious metals. Now, you newspaper men have got me in your papers, I want to say a word about myself. I am a man that has been through the wars. I was in the Black Hawk war; was with Black Hawk when he died. I was in the Mexican war, and all through in the patriot war in Canada; had three brothers in it—I was the youngest; they are all dead now.
I am the son of old Noah Comstock, living in Cleveland, Ohio. He has been largely engaged in the lumber and hotel business there. I have been in the wilderness since a child; was bound to the American Fur Company; my boss died and that’s the way I got with old Black Hawk. My first recollection was packing traps; trapped all over Canada, Michigan, and Indiana; but the Rocky Mountains have been my home; I have been a guide these years and years. I was born in Canada, and am now near fifty years of age.
Henry T. P. Comstock.”
James Fennimore, better known as James Finney and familiarly called “Old Virginia,” by all the old settlers of Washoe, he being a native of the State of Virginia, came to the mines on Gold Cañon, in 1851. He came from the Kern River country, California, where he had a “difficulty” with a man, and, believing he had killed him, took a little walk across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, dropping the name of Fennimore and calling himself James Finney.
Although fond of the bottle, Old Virginia was by no means a loafer. He had his sprees, but these were generally followed by seasons of great activity.