In the midst of the falling shadows, we passed the snow-limit, and again betook ourselves to mountain mud-wagons, which farther down we again exchanged for Concord coaches. About 9 p. m. we halted for supper, but were soon on the road again, and striking the Truckee, followed it down until long after sunrise. Once out of the mountains, its valley rapidly broadened; but here was the rainless region, and sage-brush again prevailed, as in Idaho and Arizona. Here and there, we passed some fair farms; but irrigation was the secret, and without this, agriculture in Nevada, as elsewhere in the great basin of the continent, will seldom amount to much. The air continued raw and chilly, well into the morning; but the roads had become dusty and superb, and we bowled along down the mountains, and up the wonderful Geiger grade, at a swinging pace, that brought us into Virginia City—seventy miles or more from Cisco—at about 10 a. m. Here we stopped at the International, then the "swell" house of Virginia City, and found excellent cheer, for the hungry and the weary.
The next day was Sunday, and though many of the business houses continued open, yet the mines and mills as a rule were silent, and the proportion of church-goers was larger than we expected. Virginia already boasted several creditable churches, and in one of these a noted revivalist from the East (Rev. Mr. E.) was attracting crowds by his zeal and earnestness. His discourse that day was bald to plainness, but direct and searching; and when, at its close, he invited penitents to rise, a score or more stood up—many of them rough and burly men, bathed in tears. He had crossed our path in Oregon in December, and subsequently we had heard of him again in San Francisco, where the press were divided as to his merits. But here in Nevada, he was regarded as a great evangelist, and one enthusiastic journalist asserted that he had added more to the church, during his brief tour on the Coast, than all their parsons before all put together. Some days after, when about to depart for other fields, he was presented with a silver "brick" or two, as appropriate evidence of Nevada appreciation.
As a mining town, Virginia City impresses one very favorably, and her growth seemed steady and real. She already possessed many excellent buildings, and others were fast going up. She sits high and dry, on the side of a silver mountain, six thousand feet above the sea, with a population of some eight or ten thousand souls, with other mountains shouldering away beneath and above her; and, of course, would never have been at all, had it not been for the lucky discovery of the Comstock Lode. This is the great lode of Nevada, from which the bulk of her silver has been taken, and few of her mining operations elsewhere were then paying for themselves. White Pine had not then been discovered (May, '67), and the great enterprises of Nevada, such as Gould & Curry, Yellow Jacket, Ophir, Savage, Crown Point, etc., were all located on the Comstock Lode. This ran along the mountain-side, beneath the town, for two or three miles, varying in width from fifty to one hundred feet, and of unknown depth. The Gould & Curry Company had sunk a shaft nearly a thousand feet, and the argentiferous deposits still appeared, more or less richly. Less than a third of the companies then at work on this great lode, however (some thirty in all), were then paying dividends, and the general product of the State, it was conceded, was falling off. One company had spent over a million dollars, in "developing" its property, without striking "pay-ore," and others were following in its footsteps. But others, again, had paid very handsomely. The Gould & Curry, on an investment of less than two hundred thousand dollars from its stockholders, had paid them back four millions in dividends, and altogether had produced over twelve millions in bullion. In one year, it had yielded nearly five millions, with a clear profit of over one million; but in 1867, it was not promising so well. It had spent vast sums in mining and improvements, with something here and there that looked like extravagance, if not worse. Its magnificent mill, of eighty-stamp power, cost over a million of dollars, and was said to be the largest and finest quartz-mill in the world. This company owned twelve hundred feet of the Comstock Lode, and had dug down nearly a thousand feet in depth, and back and forth fifty times. Its shafts and tunnels measured over two miles under ground, and it had used more lumber in strengthing its walls, it was said, than was embraced in the whole of Virginia City overhead. We spent an afternoon wandering through its drifts and galleries, part of the time nine hundred and fifty feet beneath the surface, and were amazed at the work that had been done.
Another, the Yellow Jacket, had yielded over two millions of dollars, and paid its stock-holders nearly four hundred thousand dollars, or fifty thousand more than all their subscriptions and assessments. The Savage had taken out six millions of bullion, and the Ophir over twelve millions; but, as yet, the stockholders had realized but little, because of bad management and expensive experiments, that proved failures. This Comstock ore averaged less than forty dollars per ton, more usually only twenty-five to thirty; but it was less refractory than most American ores, and required only to be crushed and amalgamated to extract the bullion. Better "processes" were continually being looked for, as in Colorado, with which it was hoped much poorer ores would pay well. Selected ores, such as averaged a thousand dollars per ton or so, were still shipped to Swansea, Wales, for treatment, though this seemed absurd, considering the distance and expense, and our vast deposits of coal at home. The famous Sutro Tunnel, in behalf of which Congress has since been so earnestly memorialized, is a magnificent scheme to tap this great lode at lower levels, where it may be drained and worked at much better advantage; and, if ever realized, will no doubt result in the Comstock turning out fabulous sums again.[26]
The most of the mining capital seemed to be furnished by California, and the best-informed people thought, notwithstanding the large yield of many mines, that she had not yet received back the amount of money she had actually invested. A fair estimate was, that she had put fully a hundred millions into Nevada mines and mills, and had taken out only about sixty millions, leaving a balance of forty millions on the wrong side of the ledger yet; but then there were the shafts and tunnels, the mills and machinery, with large added experience, and 'Frisco capitalists were still hopeful of the future.
The fluctuations of mining stocks were great and frequent, and we watched them with interest while on the Coast. A lucky "strike," probably in some rich "pocket," would send Savage or Yellow Jacket high up·on the list for a few days or weeks, when the vein would "peter out," and again it would drop to its former figures or below. Our conclusion was, that silver-mining, after all, is a very risky business. There may be money in it, for superintendents and directors; but for stockholders, as a rule, very little. The Mexicans have an adage, and they are old and experienced miners, that "it takes a mine to work a mine;" and that seemed to be about the opinion of the best minds we met with. Miners and mining-life, are much the same everywhere; and if the reader wants to know more about them, let him turn to Chapter V., p. 58.