"It was the same ol' story—he didn't know enough! Workin' hard may bring a man some money, but havin' savvy will bring him a lot more.
"Right where Father was workin', he was havin' all sorts o' trouble wi' a heavy black sand that kep' on fillin' up the riffles like it was gold. He shoveled away cubic yards of it! An' do you know what that was? That dirty black sand was nigh pure silver, an' Father was pannin' less'n quarter of a mile away from the richest section in all Nevada. He was campin' right on the Comstock Lode! I reckon you've heard o' that, Mr. Owens!"
"Every mining man has heard of the Comstock," the mine-owner replied. "Personally, I don't know a great deal about silver, although the Broken Hill mine, New South Wales, which is nearly as rich as the great Nevada deposit, is located not far from my home. I went straight from gold to coal. So I never did hear the real story of the Comstock. But you ought to know about it, Jim. Was it found by accident, too?"
"Rank good luck an' rotten bad luck mixed," Jim answered. "Do I know that story! The first week's pay I ever drew was on the Comstock. An' I was born, as I told you, near enough to throw a stone right on to the Comstock outcrop. This was how it begun!
"There was two prospectors, Patrick McLaughlin an' Peter O'Riley, Irishmen both, what had been pannin' gold on Gold Cañon, where, I told you, Father had been. Luck was poor. Grub was hard to get. The water o' the Carson had a strong taste, an' wasn't none too healthy. So the two pardners started diggin' a water-hole down in the gulch, near where they was workin'. What come up out o' the hole was a yellow sand, all mixed up with bits o' quartz an' a crumblin' black rock, much the same as the black sand Father'd been worried with.
The Miner's Sluice.
Such a device as this was being worked by Jim's father when the Comstock Lode was discovered.
Courtesy of Netman & Co.