"Even the tough, wiry mules of the car train could hardly be driven up to the end of the tunnel and sought for fresh air not less ardently than the men. Curses, blows, and kicks could scarcely force them away from the blower-tube openings, and, more than once, a rationally obstinate mule thrust his head in the end of the canvas air-pipe. He was literally torn away by main strength, as the miners, when other means failed, tied his tail to the bodies of two other mules in his train and forced them to haul back their companion, snorting viciously, and slipping with stiff legs over the wet floor.
"Neither men nor animals could long endure work so distressing. Fortunately, the compressed air drills knew neither weariness nor pain, and churned their way to the mines without ceasing.
"A blast from the Savage Mine tore an opening through the wall, in the evening of that day. The goal for which Sutro had striven so many years was in sight. He was waiting at the breach, impatient of delay, and crawled, half-naked, through the jagged opening, while the foul air of the heading was still gushing into the mine."
Meanwhile, over the heads of the workers of the Sutro tunnel, a not less marvelous change had come over the Comstock Lode. This was the discovery of the Great Bonanza. After the slump of 1864 and the terrible handicap of the water, mine-owners on the Comstock fell deeper and deeper into despair. Gone were the wild days of riot and extravagance. Only by extreme care, by the use of every modern appliance, by the lowering of wages—some thirty pitched battles, with six-shooters, marked this period—were they able to keep going at all.
Then, just as two Irishmen had first found the Comstock, two other Irishmen forged to the front. These were John W. Mackay, who had begun work as a day-laborer in the mine, and James G. Fair, a young fellow who had come to Virginia City with only a few hundred dollars' capital. They made a daring team. Seizing the opportunities of the dull times, they bought property after property as it was abandoned by the owners, who declared that the great lode had "pinched out." With a third Irishman, Wm. O'Brien, and a 'Frisco miner, James C. Flood, they bought the entire stretch between the two famous mines—the Ophir and the Gould & Curry—thus forming what became known to history as the Virginia Consolidated. The four men paid $50,000 for this huge property; risking their all on the chance that deeper mining might reach the supposedly "pinched out" vein.
They sank a shaft, down, down and down,—nothing! They ran a drift to meet it from one of their purchased mines, and drilled for weeks—nothing! Then a thin seam of ore appeared, but so small as to seem insignificant. Fair pursued this vein. A quarter of a million dollars were eaten up in chasing this elusive line of ore but the vein would neither disappear nor get wider. Fair's partners tried to insist on running galleries in various directions to explore—and did so for one month while he was ill—but Fair returned insistently again to that thin thread of silver. There was one place where it was only two inches thick. And then, in October 1873, the miners cut suddenly into the Big Bonanza.
"No discovery," wrote Lord, "to match this one had ever been made on this earth from the time when the first miner struck a ledge with his rude pick. The plain facts are as marvelous as a Persian tale, for the young Aladdin did not see in the glittering cave of the genii such fabulous riches as were lying in the dark womb of the rock.
"The wonder grew as the depths were searched out foot by foot. The Bonanza was cut at a point 1167 feet below the surface, and, as the shaft went down, it was pierced again at the 1200-foot level. One hundred feet deeper and the prying pick and drill told the same story, yet another hundred feet, and the mass appeared to be swelling. When, finally, the 1500-foot level was reached and ore richer than any before met with was disclosed, the fancy of the coolest brains ran wild. How far this great Bonanza would extend, none could predict, but its expansion seemed to keep pace with the most sanguine imaginings. To explore it thoroughly was to cut it out bodily; systematic search through it was a continual revelation."
The wealth revealed was beyond believing. This Bonanza, alone, yielded $3,000,000 of silver every month for the first three years.
Yet it was hard to win. Mackay believed in high wages and paid more than double the wages given to any miners in any place in the history of the world. All were picked men, who had passed a severe medical test. The hours were short. The men worked naked save for a loin-cloth and shoes to protect them from the hot rocks. The heat reached 110°. Three men, who stepped accidentally into a deep pool of water, were scalded to death. The air was foul. The toil was severe.