What to see in America . son\alley. They were preparing to skin it when one of themstuck his knife into a crevice in a rock and uncovered a smallnugget of gold. They called the gulch Gold the next half dozen years thousands of miners weredrawn thither from the California fields. A little stream inthe canyon had its source far up on the slopes of jMt. David-son. Prospectors worked up the stream and into the crossgulches, finding much treasure. Often they dug into apeculiar hard blue clay on which they bestowed many luridadjectives. For half a dozen years the prospectors formedthei
What to see in America . son\alley. They were preparing to skin it when one of themstuck his knife into a crevice in a rock and uncovered a smallnugget of gold. They called the gulch Gold the next half dozen years thousands of miners weredrawn thither from the California fields. A little stream inthe canyon had its source far up on the slopes of jMt. David-son. Prospectors worked up the stream and into the crossgulches, finding much treasure. Often they dug into apeculiar hard blue clay on which they bestowed many luridadjectives. For half a dozen years the prospectors formedtheir camps about the mountain searching the region for gold,and making enough finds to keep up the excitement. Oneday a farmer from a distant ranch came into Virginia Citywith a load of supplies. He knew nothing of ores or minerals,but he picked up a lump of the curious blue clay and sentit to a friend in San Francisco who was an assayer. Theassay showed that the clay contained $1595 in gold and2k 498 What to See in America. Mill AT GOLDFIELD $4791 in silver to theton. San Franciscomen of capital hur-ried to Virginia Cityand bought up allthe cheap abandonedclaims they could se-cure. Tunnels weredriven and shafts sunk, and the greatComstock Lode was at last revealed — the lode that mademulti-millionaires of the Big Four Californians, Fair,]\Iackay, Flood, and OBrien, and the fortunes of a scoreof others. The lode is about four miles in length, and in-creases in width from nothing at the ends to 3000 feet inthe middle. The ore contains gold and silver in the pro-portion of two of the former to three of the latter. Thesemetals occur in great pockets known as bonanzas. VirginiaCity, though in the midst of a desert, grew to be a thriv-ing place with a population of 30,000. To-day there areless than one tenth that many, and dilapidation and ruinare seen on every hand. INIark Twain began his literarycareer in the old mining camp as a reporter on a local paper,and there he got much mate
Size: 2281px × 1096px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthorjohnsonc, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1919
