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<h2> CHAPTER XXIX. </h2>
<p><br/></p>
<p>True knowledge of the nature of silver mining came fast enough. We went
out "prospecting" with Mr. Ballou. We climbed the mountain sides, and
clambered among sage-brush, rocks and snow till we were ready to drop with
exhaustion, but found no silver—nor yet any gold. Day after day we
did this. Now and then we came upon holes burrowed a few feet into the
declivities and apparently abandoned; and now and then we found one or two
listless men still burrowing. But there was no appearance of silver. These
holes were the beginnings of tunnels, and the purpose was to drive them
hundreds of feet into the mountain, and some day tap the hidden ledge
where the silver was. Some day! It seemed far enough away, and very
hopeless and dreary. Day after day we toiled, and climbed and searched,
and we younger partners grew sicker and still sicker of the promiseless
toil. At last we halted under a beetling rampart of rock which projected
from the earth high upon the mountain. Mr. Ballou broke off some fragments
with a hammer, and examined them long and attentively with a small
eye-glass; threw them away and broke off more; said this rock was quartz,
and quartz was the sort of rock that contained silver. Contained it! I had
thought that at least it would be caked on the outside of it like a kind
of veneering. He still broke off pieces and critically examined them, now
and then wetting the piece with his tongue and applying the glass. At last
he exclaimed:</p>
<p>"We've got it!"</p>
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<p>We were full of anxiety in a moment. The rock was clean and white, where
it was broken, and across it ran a ragged thread of blue. He said that
that little thread had silver in it, mixed with base metal, such as lead
and antimony, and other rubbish, and that there was a speck or two of gold
visible. After a great deal of effort we managed to discern some little
fine yellow specks, and judged that a couple of tons of them massed
together might make a gold dollar, possibly. We were not jubilant, but Mr.
Ballou said there were worse ledges in the world than that. He saved what
he called the "richest" piece of the rock, in order to determine its value
by the process called the "fire-assay." Then we named the mine "Monarch of
the Mountains" (modesty of nomenclature is not a prominent feature in the
mines), and Mr. Ballou wrote out and stuck up the following "notice,"
preserving a copy to be entered upon the books in the mining recorder's
office in the town.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"NOTICE."</p>
<p>"We the undersigned claim three claims, of three hundred feet each (and
one for discovery), on this silver-bearing quartz lead or lode,
extending north and south from this notice, with all its dips, spurs,
and angles, variations and sinuosities, together with fifty feet of
ground on either side for working the same."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We put our names to it and tried to feel that our fortunes were made. But
when we talked the matter all over with Mr. Ballou, we felt depressed and
dubious. He said that this surface quartz was not all there was of our
mine; but that the wall or ledge of rock called the "Monarch of the
Mountains," extended down hundreds and hundreds of feet into the earth—he
illustrated by saying it was like a curb-stone, and maintained a nearly
uniform thickness-say twenty feet—away down into the bowels of the
earth, and was perfectly distinct from the casing rock on each side of it;
and that it kept to itself, and maintained its distinctive character
always, no matter how deep it extended into the earth or how far it
stretched itself through and across the hills and valleys. He said it
might be a mile deep and ten miles long, for all we knew; and that
wherever we bored into it above ground or below, we would find gold and
silver in it, but no gold or silver in the meaner rock it was cased
between. And he said that down in the great depths of the ledge was its
richness, and the deeper it went the richer it grew. Therefore, instead of
working here on the surface, we must either bore down into the rock with a
shaft till we came to where it was rich—say a hundred feet or so—or
else we must go down into the valley and bore a long tunnel into the
mountain side and tap the ledge far under the earth. To do either was
plainly the labor of months; for we could blast and bore only a few feet a
day—some five or six. But this was not all. He said that after we
got the ore out it must be hauled in wagons to a distant silver-mill,
ground up, and the silver extracted by a tedious and costly process. Our
fortune seemed a century away!</p>
<p>But we went to work. We decided to sink a shaft. So, for a week we climbed
the mountain, laden with picks, drills, gads, crowbars, shovels, cans of
blasting powder and coils of fuse and strove with might and main. At first
the rock was broken and loose and we dug it up with picks and threw it out
with shovels, and the hole progressed very well. But the rock became more
compact, presently, and gads and crowbars came into play. But shortly
nothing could make an impression but blasting powder.</p>
<p>That was the weariest work! One of us held the iron drill in its place and
another would strike with an eight-pound sledge—it was like driving
nails on a large scale. In the course of an hour or two the drill would
reach a depth of two or three feet, making a hole a couple of inches in
diameter. We would put in a charge of powder, insert half a yard of fuse,
pour in sand and gravel and ram it down, then light the fuse and run. When
the explosion came and the rocks and smoke shot into the air, we would go
back and find about a bushel of that hard, rebellious quartz jolted out.
Nothing more. One week of this satisfied me. I resigned. Clagget and
Oliphant followed. Our shaft was only twelve feet deep. We decided that a
tunnel was the thing we wanted.</p>
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<p>So we went down the mountain side and worked a week; at the end of which
time we had blasted a tunnel about deep enough to hide a hogshead in, and
judged that about nine hundred feet more of it would reach the ledge. I
resigned again, and the other boys only held out one day longer. We
decided that a tunnel was not what we wanted. We wanted a ledge that was
already "developed." There were none in the camp.</p>
<p>We dropped the "Monarch" for the time being.</p>
<p>Meantime the camp was filling up with people, and there was a constantly
growing excitement about our Humboldt mines. We fell victims to the
epidemic and strained every nerve to acquire more "feet." We prospected
and took up new claims, put "notices" on them and gave them grandiloquent
names. We traded some of our "feet" for "feet" in other people's claims.
In a little while we owned largely in the "Gray Eagle," the "Columbiana,"
the "Branch Mint," the "Maria Jane," the "Universe," the "Root-Hog-or-
Die," the "Samson and Delilah," the "Treasure Trove," the "Golconda," the
"Sultana," the "Boomerang," the "Great Republic," the "Grand Mogul," and
fifty other "mines" that had never been molested by a shovel or scratched
with a pick. We had not less than thirty thousand "feet" apiece in the
"richest mines on earth" as the frenzied cant phrased it—and were in
debt to the butcher. We were stark mad with excitement—drunk with
happiness—smothered under mountains of prospective wealth—arrogantly
compassionate toward the plodding millions who knew not our marvellous
canyon—but our credit was not good at the grocer's.</p>
<p>It was the strangest phase of life one can imagine. It was a beggars'
revel. There was nothing doing in the district—no mining—no
milling—no productive effort—no income—and not enough
money in the entire camp to buy a corner lot in an eastern village,
hardly; and yet a stranger would have supposed he was walking among
bloated millionaires. Prospecting parties swarmed out of town with the
first flush of dawn, and swarmed in again at nightfall laden with spoil—rocks.
Nothing but rocks. Every man's pockets were full of them; the floor of his
cabin was littered with them; they were disposed in labeled rows on his
shelves.</p>
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