A score or more of shafts, above which were the rude windlasses with rope and bucket of the period, disclosed the beginning of mining enterprise, advertising the hope and expectation of a subterranean treasure-house—the hope invariable, the expectation, alas! so often doomed to barren disappointment and eventual despair.
However, when the prospectors’ claim was reached, within the area of which no intrusion was allowed, the dull grey rock from which Mr. Blount was urged to break down a few fragments disclosed a perfect Aladdin’s cave of the precious metal. His enthusiasm, slow to arouse, became keen, stimulated by this “potentiality of boundless wealth.” His more emotional partner was loudly enthusiastic upon the immense value of the discovery.
“See that stone,” he said, knocking off a corner of the “face,” “it’s all fifty per cent. stuff—when it’s not seventy-five. Look at the native silver and the malachite! I’ve been on the ‘Comstock,’ and the ‘Indian Chief’ in Denver, and can make affidavit that in their best days they never turned out better stone than that—most of it was less than half the percentage, indeed. The ore bodies were larger, you say? No such thing. This lode widens out; the deeper you go, the more there is of it. Easy worked, too. Freight expensive? Wait till the corduroy’s finished to the main road; we’ll have stores and hotels, the electric light, hot and cold water laid on; a couple of clubs, with the last month’s magazines, and The Times itself on the smoking-room table. You don’t know how everything comes to ‘a big field,’ gold, silver or copper, as soon as the precious metal is proved—proved, mind you—to have a settled abode there. Fortune? There’s a fortune apiece for every proprietor here to-day—even for Clarke, who’s now in his bunk reading a yellow-back novel.”
All this fairy-appearing relation turned out to be a sober and accurate statement of facts, as far as could be gathered from the survey made by the partners in the enterprise. The stone, which was of surpassing richness, was principally found in a well-defined lode, forty feet wide, increasing in volume as the shafts pierced more deeply into the bowels of the earth.
A mining expert of eminence turned up, who had, after many perils and disasters, found his way to Comstock. On being permitted a “private view,” he confirmed Mr. Tregonwell’s wildest flights of fancy.
“Nothing in the Southern Hemisphere as rich, or half as rich, has ever been discovered,” he said. He doubted, as did Tregonwell, whether in all the mines from Peru to Denver such a deposit had ever been unearthed. He proved by reference to scientific geological treatises that it was so rare as to have been doubted as a possibility that such a find could occur, but if so, the most apocryphal yield of Peru and Chile would have paled before the size and richness of this Silverado of the Wilderness, so long hidden from the gaze of man.
Then an adjournment was made to the “Emporium,” as it was proudly styled, the meagreness of its materials and adornments being in the inverse proportion to its imposing designation.
But the glory of the future, the assured development of the mine, and, as a natural sequence, of the “field,” was shed around with irradiating effect and brilliancy of colouring. Upon this the proprietor proceeded to dilate, after an invitation to a calico shielded sanctum, sacred to the account books and documents of the establishment. In the centre of the compartment stood a table composed of the top of a packing case, placed upon stakes driven into the earthen floor. At one side was a stretcher with his blankets and bedclothes, surmounted by a gaily coloured rug, upon which the visitors were invited to sit, while the host after placing a bottle of whisky of a fashionable brand upon the festive board, cordially requested his guests to join him in drinking the health of the energetic and spirited proprietors of the Great Comstock Silver Mine.
“Not that it looks much now, gentlemen; no more does this stringy bark and calico shanty of mine. But that says nothing. I was at Ballarat in the ‘fifties,’ and Jack Garth, the baker, had just such a gunya as this. I brought up a load of flour for him, and was paid a hundred and fifty pound a ton for the carriage. The roads were bad certainly—puts me in mind of this hole, in that way; but you could travel, somehow. And look at Ballarat now, with trams, and town halls, and artificial lakes, and public gardens and statues—just like the old country. And Jack Garth, well, he’s worth a couple of hundred thousand pounds, if he’s worth a penny; owns farms and prize stock, and hotels, and everything a man can want in this world. How came that, gentlemen? Because he was a hardworking straightgoing chap? No! that wouldn’t have done it, though he’d always have made a good living—any man of the right sort can do that in Australia. But the gold was there! It was there then, and it’s there now. It floated the whole place up to fortune and fame, the diggers, the storekeepers, the publicans, the commissioners, the carriers, the very police made money: some of ’em saved it too. Didn’t one of ’em own a whole terrace of houses afterwards? Well, the gold was there, and the silver’s here; that’s all that’s wanted for miners to know, and they’ll follow it up, if it was to the South Pole; and mark my words, gentlemen, this place’ll go ahead, and grow and flourish, and make fortunes for us men standing here, and for the er—er—babe unborn.” Concluding his peroration with this effective forecast, which showed that his connection, as member, with the Bungareeshire council had not been without effect on his elocution, Mr. Morgan replenished his glass, and invited his distinguished guests to do likewise.