History of the big bonanza

by Dan De Quille

Peter O’Riley, one of the discoverers of the Comstock lode, as has been stated, held his interest in the Ophir mine, longer than any of the original locators, and realized nearly $50,000. He seemed to be “fixed” for the remainder of his days. Being a man used to roughing it all the days of his life, his wants, both real and imaginary, were few. Had he placed his money at interest he could have taken his ease all the rest of his days. But he built a big stone hotel in Virginia City, and then allowed persons to persuade him that he was a great man, a man of financial genius, who should make himself felt in the stock-market. As he could neither read nor write, he was obliged to find persons to do that part of the business for him. He and his assistants then speculated—speculated until one day “poor old Pete” found himself with pick, shovel, and pan, on his back, again going forth to prospect; as we have seen Comstock wandering in unrest through the wilds of Montana.

Being a spiritualist and having always the latest advices from the ghosts of the departed, in regard to mines and all else worth knowing about, O’Riley did not find it necessary to wander as far as to Montana. The spirits pointed out a place in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where they said was stored up far more gold and silver than in the whole Comstock lode.

The place shown O’Riley by the spirits was nothing more than a bed of rotten granite. Here he toiled alone at running a tunnel—worked for two or three years—under all manner of difficulties.

The ground in which he was at work was full of water, and caves frequently occurred in his tunnel. The work of many weeks was often lost in a moment by a cave, which crushed in his timbers and drove him back almost to where he first began; but the spirits said there was a whole mountain of silver and gold ahead, and he believed them and persevered.

GUIDED BY SPIRITS.

He was without money but not without friends. One and another of his friends among the old settlers, purchased for him what he required in the way of provisions and tools. As he worked alone in his dark tunnel, month after month, far under the mountain, the spirits began to grow more and more familiar. They swarmed about him, advising him and directing the work. As he wielded pick and sledge, their voices came to him out of the darkness which walled in the light of his solitary candle, cheering him on; voices from the chinks in the rocks whispered to him stories of great masses of native silver at no great distance ahead, of caverns floored with silver and roofed with great arches hung with stalactites of pure silver and glittering, native gold.

The spirits talked so much with him in his tunnel under the mountain, and had made themselves so familiar then, that at last they boldly conversed with him under the broad light of day, and in the city as well as in the solitude of the mountains. He was heard muttering to them as he walked the streets, and a wild and joyous light gleamed in his eyes as he listened to their promises of mountains of gold and caves of silver.

News at length came that O’Riley had been caved on and badly hurt; then that the physicians had pronounced him insane.

When he recovered from his hurt, he was anxious to return to his tunnel—the spirits under the mountain were calling to him—but he was sent to a private asylum for the insane, at Woodbridge, California, and in a year or two died there; the spirits to the last lingering about him and heaping on him reproaches for having left the golden mountains and silver caverns they had pointed out to him.