Crawling out of his narrow quarters, the fellow rubbed his eyes and gazed at the coffin-shaped case for some time, then said:
“I’d like to know what sort of a dod-rotted set of undertakers you’ve got out here in this country, anyway, that go and set rows of coffins ’longside the sidewalks, fur to ketch corpses?” and without waiting for an answer, he shuffled away to find safer quarters.
VIRGINIA CITY, NEVADA.
CHAPTER XXX.
HE TOWNS OF THE BIG BONANZA.
As not much has yet been said in regard to the principal towns of the “big bonanza,” I shall now devote a few chapters to Virginia City and Gold Hill, but more particularly to railroads, water-works, lumber-flumes, and other things intimately connected with the growth and prosperity of those towns, and the cheap and economical working of the mines.
To begin, I may say that the two towns, Virginia City and Gold Hill, which were formerly over one mile apart, are now united, and the dividing line cannot be distinguished. The population of Virginia City is a little over twenty thousand, and that of Gold Hill about ten thousand, according to the directory for 1875.
Virginia City, as has already several times been mentioned, lies along the eastern face of Mount Davidson, on a broad sloping plateau, and is surrounded on all sides by rugged hills and rocky mountain peaks. In the early days, these hills were covered with a sparse growth of nut pine-trees—a sort of stunted pine, in size and form of trunk and branches somewhat resembling an ordinary apple-tree—but the demand for fuel for the mines, mills, and domestic uses, swept all these away in a very few years, and even the stumps have been dug up and made into firewood by the Chinese.
Gold Hill is situated at the head of Gold Cañon, on the south side of Mount Davidson, and is shut in by the walls of the ravine, along which stand the principal buildings of the town. A ridge about two hundred feet in height, lies between the two towns, which is known as the “Divide.” The Divide is covered with buildings, and is a fine airy location—a place where the “Washoe zephyr” waltzes to and fro at will.
In 1859, there were some scattering nut pine-trees on the sides of the mountains about Gold Hill, but these soon went the way of those about Virginia City, and now all the hills and mountains, as far as the eye can reach, are brown and treeless. The only covering of either hills or valleys is the eternal and ever-present sage-brush.