Dan De Quille

“ A great fire on the surface of the earth is a grand and fearful spectacle, but a great fire hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the earth is terrible—terrible beyond measure or the power of words to express, when we know that far down underneath the ground which lies so calmly on all sides, giving forth no sound, are scores of human beings pursued by flames and gases, scorched and panting, fleeing into all manner of nooks and corners, there to meet their death. ”

“ It was the coming in of the multitude, as, indeed, it always is, that sent not only the stock of the bonanza mines, but also all other stocks rushing sky-ward with rocket-like celerity. When the people start in en masse to buy stocks they—to use a very elegant illustration—shut their eyes and rush in like a hog going into battle. ”

“ Among miners it means that they are working in a body of ore, that they are in luck, and all with them is prosperous. “Borrasca” means just the opposite of “bonanza.” At sea it means tempestuous and dangerous weather, bad fortune—all going wrong; among miners it means that they are in barren rock, that they are in a bad streak, out of luck. Among miners, borrasca is suggestive of long faces, sad hearts, and empty pockets, while bonanza shows us faces wreathed in smiles, hearts that are merry, and purses that are plethoric. ”

“ While one dark storm-cloud hovers over the city, showering its moisture upon the thirsty earth, another is seen a whole day’s journey to the eastward, creeping along some parched desert, with the rain, in slanting columns, pouring upon the white and shining fields of alkali, and still others hang about the mountain peaks in various directions, sending down red bolts of lightning upon their dark granite summits. ”

“ She always makes the grandest and most beautiful things that we see upon earth; it is she who has cultivated the fields, and pruned the trees; it is she who tends the fields, singing the most beautiful airs; it is she who sees the first peep of dawn, and receives the last smile of evening—the good Goddess of Poverty! It is she who carries the sabre and gun; who makes war and conquest; it is she who collects the dead, tends the wounded, and hides the conquered—the Goddess, the good Goddess of Poverty! ”

“ Should the Mexicans now strike a bonanza, what kind of a bonanza, he reasoned, would it be by the time it came into his hands? In six months those Mexicans would have it completely skinned and gutted. He might as well have no mine. He now began to suspect that the fellows knew exactly where to drift to open out in a bonanza of vast size and incalculable richness—probably nearly all silver—but were only drifting about on the outside of it in order to get more time inside. He began to hate the very sound of those words: “As many days as you are in borrasca, so many days shall you be in bonanza.” ”

“ In the mass of buildings before us we see nothing to cause us to think of a mine. What we have before us more nearly resembles a large iron-foundry or big manufactory of some kind. As we see on the grounds surrounding the buildings a number of immense piles of timber and lumber; in all, an amount sufficient to stock at least half a dozen ordinary lumber-yards, we should be more likely to guess that we saw before us a large planing-mill, or door, sash, and blind manufactory, than that we were approaching the main working shaft of a great silver-mine. ”

“ Lighting our camp-fire we baked our slap-jacks, fried our bacon, and made a glorious meal, after which pipes were lighted, and many stories told of the good old days of “49,” when the pockets of every honest miner overflowed with gold. When each man had spun his yarn it was time to think of sleep, and every man rolled himself in his blankets and stretched himself in the best and softest spot he could find, looking up at the stars in the ceiling of his bedroom until he fell asleep. At daylight we were astir, Pike was among the first up. Tom did not “unroll” till breakfast was almost ready. ”

“ FIREDAMP.—A MINE IN FLAMES. No premature explosion of blasts, crushing in of timbers, caving of earth and rock—no accident of any kind is so much feared or is more terrible than a great fire in a large mine. It is a hell, and often a hell that contains living, moving, breathing, and suffering human beings—not the ethereal and intangible souls of men. It is a region of fire and flame, from which the modes of egress are few and perilous. ”

“ If mining men knew the exact spot in which the rich deposits are located, it would be an easy matter to sink a shaft or run a drift to tap them. Thus it happened that it was fourteen years after the discovery of silver, and the Comstock lode before what is now known as the “Big Bonanza,”—the chief of all the bonanzas—was found. For fourteen years men daily and hourly walked over the ground under which lay the greatest mass of wealth that the world has ever seen in the shape of silver ore, yet nobody suspected its presence. ”

“ On all sides of the pyramidal scaffold of timbers to its very apex, where the candles twinkle like stars in the heavens, we see the miners cutting their way into the precious ore—battering it with sledge-hammers and cutting it to pieces with their picks as though it were but common sandstone. Silver-ore is not—as many may suppose—a bright and glittering mass. In color the ore runs from a blueish-grey to a deep black. ”

“ A long table-mountain cuts short our view of the valley and river, but over this mountain we see, spread out like a vast sheet of parchment, the Forty-mile Desert, over which shadows of clouds move as slowly as in early times crawled across the same sands the long trains of weary pilgrims, wearing out the way to the land of gold, over the Sierras. ”

“ One of the foremen of the mine, the superintendent, or whoever is to be our conductor, groups us upon the cage, showing us where we may safely grasp its iron frame for support, and finally all are in position.
The engineer is standing with one hand on the lever of his engine, watching our proceedings. Our conductor turns toward him with a wave of the hand. Instantly we feel ourselves dropping into the depth and darkness of the shaft. ”

“ Taking a last lingering look at all about us, observing that our cloud-sea was again assuming the hue of amber and that the horizon was widening and brightening in all directions, as the light spread abroad and drove back the brown and the more distant black, we plunged down into the thick cloud-stratum, and, guided by the light of our lanterns, made the best of our way down the bed of a huge gorge in the face of the mountain, and went back into the city. ”

“ Had the safety apparatus failed to work, we at the surface would doubtless have all been summoned as witnesses when the coroner held his inquest.
In case of a train of railroad cars getting off the track, we never know where we shall bring up; we may go over an embankment or may be dragged against a point of rocks, but when a cable breaks while we are descending a shaft, we stop exactly where we happen to be when the accident occurs. Thus, as the sailor in a storm at sea pities the poor wretches who are on shore, so may the miner pity those persons above ground who travel on railroads. ”

“ The silver-bearing veins of Europe are but a few feet in width, and to speak to a German miner of a mine in which the breadth of ore was measured by rods would cause him to suppose that he was talking with a crazy man. Even in the richest mines of Mexico and South America they have never had any such astounding width of bonanza. Then they have always been able to keep up their ground with single timbers—posts and caps—which they could not have done with bodies of ore more than a few feet in width. ”

“ Crossing this thoroughfare of the 1500-foot level and advancing a few steps further to the eastward, we reach the vast deposit of ore known as the “Big Bonanza.” Cross-cuts pass through the ore, east and west, and cross-drifts from north to south, cutting it into blocks from fifty to one hundred feet square, as the streets run through and divide a town into blocks. It is indeed a sort of subterranean town, and is more populous than many towns on the surface, as it numbers from 800 to 1,000 souls, and nearly all are voters. ”

“ Through the bare granite mountains walling in the lake on the west, passes a tunnel, into which it is a relief to see the trains plunge as they dart through the last of the snow-sheds and glide round the last of the cliffs. ”

“ Once he was thus fairly hooked, the man of money was never to refuse the jolly prospector any favor, was always to stand ready to hand out any sum that might be called for, from a four-bit piece to a double eagle; otherwise, the prospecting man might bring out that little stub of a pencil which he always carried in his vest pocket—with which he was to be seen figuring most industriously, as though trying to estimate the millions in his mine—and at a single sweep scratch out the name of the moneyed man and his chance for an interest in one of the biggest things of the age. ”

“ Before him is a small alcohol lamp burning with a blue flame which gives out but little light—only enough to cast a sickly glare upon the corpse-like face of the smoker, as he holds his pipe in the flame, and by a long draught inhales and swallows the smoke of the loved drug. These fellows are silent as dead men, and seem unconscious of our presence. Occasionally, at a sign, the proprietor arises and furnishes the customer a fresh supply of the drug. The peculiar sweetish-bitter odor of the burning opium fills and saturates the whole place—one can almost taste it. ”

“ Some persons will no doubt think that if there is a deposit of ore in a mine it should be found in a short time and with but little trouble, but miners can see no further into the ground than persons who have their homes and business on the surface. Place a man in the bottom of a shaft one thousand feet in depth; then tell him to drift off and find a body of ore, and he is much the same as a man groping about in a dark cellar. He knows which way to go to reach the vein, but when once he is in the vein he may almost touch that of which he is in search without finding it. ”

“ All took what they could conveniently carry in their hands, those things they most prized, and fell back out of the track of the fire. Men, women, and children thus leaving their homes, and house after house being thus deserted, a great human wave was pushed back on all sides toward the suburbs of the city. Hundreds moved their goods again and again, each time losing something, until at last they found themselves driven far up on the open face of the mountain, empty-handed, panting for breath, and parched with thirst. ”

“ Mackey is one of the most modest and unassuming of men, yet he is a shrewd observer of character, and of all that is going on in the world about him. Generally he has but little to say, but that little is to the point—goes directly to the bull’s-eye. He is not often misunderstood. He most thoroughly understands mining in all its branches, as there is nothing required to be done in a mine that he has not done with his own hands. No man is more ready to adopt improvements than Mr. Mackey. He is ever ready to spend money for labor-saving machinery. ”

“ It is the iron and copper pyrites that are everywhere mingled with the ore, and which, in many places, are found in the form of regular and beautiful crystals that send out from their facets flashes of light that almost rival the fire and splendor of precious stones. ”

“ During summer, men who have for sale all manner of quack nostrums, men with all kinds of notions for sale, street-shows, beggars, singers, men with electrical-machines, apparatus for testing the strength of the lungs, and a thousand other similar things, flock to Virginia City. Of evenings, when the torches of these parties of peddlers, showmen, and quack doctors are all lighted and all are in full cry, a great fair seems to be under headway in the principal street of the town—there is a perfect Babel of cries and harangues. ”

“ No man in Nevada more thoroughly understands the Comstock lode than Mr. Mackey. He has made it his study for years. No change of rock can occur but that he knows what it portends. He appears to know almost every clay-seam, and streak of quartz, and porphyry that runs through the vein. By looking at a sample of ore he can tell the amount of silver it contains almost as well as if he had seen it assayed. He is particularly at home in the northern part of the Comstock, where he has had most acquaintance with the mines, and may be said to have that part of the lode by heart. ”

“ Looking for the first time upon the rolling and whirling clouds of vapor pouring up from the shaft, more than one dandy tourist, who but a few minutes before was very enthusiastic in his talk about exploring the lower levels, has wished in his secret soul that he had never hinted that he had the slightest desire to descend into the dark and dismal bowels of the earth. ”

“ The prevailing winds of the country come from the west, and from this quarter also comes the “zephyr.” It is probably a straight-ahead gale before it strikes Mount Davidson, but upon that towering mass of granite it splits. Currents pass round the north and south sides of the mountain, meet in the city, and waltz about in the shape of whirlwinds of from eighty to two hundred horse-power. ”

“ Men no more take into consideration the real value of a stock at a time when there is a crash in the market than they do when the market is unduly excited and everything is going up with a “rush.” The condition of the mines is not taken into consideration on the occasion of a panic. Rich developments in the mines undoubtedly are the prime cause of an advance, and this advance is generally such as is justified by the mineral wealth brought to light until the people “rise up in their might” and take a hand in the business, after which time no man can say what will happen. ”