With the influx of population to our settlement came adventurers of all classes; desperadoes, gamblers, broken down professional men, nymphs du pave of the coarse and vulgar sort, gentlemen who "had interests" in "wild-cat" mines in half the counties of the Pacific States, greasers, or Mexicans, Indians (pueblas)—in short, a conglomerate mass of humanity; or, judging by later events, one might rather say inhumanity—such as is nowhere to be seen but in the mining towns of the far West. Under the instructions of Ned Harding, we had on our first arrival "located" all the "claims" that there was any probability of our working, and we were therefore secured against interference on the part of the new comers, who went prospecting all over the adjacent country, locating claims by the hundred.
As the process of "locating" claims may be new to the reader, I will give a brief description of it.
The first thing is to find your "lead," for this precious metal is not found indiscriminately in every rock or ledge you may chance upon. It is found only in the quartz rock, a ledge of which, say twenty feet in thickness, may run like a curbstone set on edge for many miles across hills and in valleys. It may be a mile in depth, and maintain a nearly uniform thickness, being perfectly distinct from the casing rock on each side of it, and keeping its distinctive character always, no matter how deep or how far into the earth it extends. Wherever it is bored into, gold and silver are found; but none in the meaner rock surrounding it. This peculiar rock formation is called a "lead;" and one of these you must first find before you have anything to "locate" a claim upon. When your prospecting has resulted in the discovery of a "lead," you write out and put up a "notice" as follows:
NOTICE.
I (or we), the undersigned, claim one (or more, according to the number of the party) claim of three hundred feet, and one for discovery, on this silver—(or gold) bearing quartz lead, or lode, extending east and west from this notice, with all its dips, spurs, and angles, extensions and sinuosities, together with fifty feet of ground on each side for working the same.
Then you file a copy of the same with the Mining Recorder in the town, and your claim is "entered." In order to secure it, however, you must, within ten days, do a certain amount of work upon the property, or any one may re-enter it at the expiration of that time.
Among the most important citizens in every mining community are the assayers, of whom there are generally a swarm to be found about every new strike; some of them the veriest charlatans that ever disgraced an honorable profession.
When you have located your claim, the next thing is to select some specimens and subject them to the test of the "fire assay." For this purpose it is customary to select the richest lump you can find, and take it to the assayer. On the result of his assay, he will predicate that a ton of such ore would yield hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars; and in this way many a worthless mine has been sold for a large price. In fact, I think, as a rule, the speculators made far more than the miners themselves.
We had at one time an assayer in our camp, who obtained such rich results from every specimen of rock brought to him, that he soon had a virtual monopoly of the business. No matter what specimen might be brought to him, he would demonstrate that it contained so large a portion of gold or silver, that the development of the mine could not fail to be profitable. Some of his rivals in the trade, becoming jealous of his superior success, conspired together and concocted a plan for his overthrow. One of them procured somewhere an old lapstone, and breaking it into small fragments, selected one as the specimen to be subjected to the intended victim for testing. They let several of the principal miners into the secret, and as there had been some doubts of the reliability of the reports of the assayer in question, they readily assented to assist in proving the truth of the matter. So one of them brought him the "specimen" and left it for assay. The result was encouraging in the extreme; for in the course of an hour the assayer sent in his report, from which it appeared that a ton of rock equal to the sample, would yield $1,324.80 in silver, and $214.58 in gold. The whole matter was at once made public, and the discomfited charlatan immediately found that important business called him elsewhere, and departed between two days. It was well for him that he did so; for so great was the popular indignation, that it is probable he would have found a permanent residence in the vicinity, could the excited miners have laid hands on him at this time.
The town of "Harding" had now developed into an embryo city. We had nearly two thousand inhabitants, representing every grade of civilization and barbarism, principally the latter. At night the place presented an animated spectacle; for about every third shanty was either a drinking den or a gambling hell. All were brilliantly lighted and wide open to the street, from which you could see the excited groups around the gaming tables, or before the bars. Every man went armed to the teeth. Fights and affrays were of almost daily—nay, hourly—occurrence. The crack of the pistol became a very familiar sound in my ears, and so frequent were the scenes of violence and murder, that I began to think that the men I was among were worse than the savages with whom my lot had been cast in former years.