Silver fever in Washoe

The “Washoe Zephyr” (Washoe is a pet nickname for Nevada) is a peculiar Scriptural wind, in that no man knoweth “whence it cometh.” … Its office hours are from two in the afternoon till two the next morning; and anybody venturing abroad during those twelve hours needs to allow for the wind or he will bring up a mile or two to leeward of the point he is aiming at.

The great “Gould and Curry” mine was held at three or four hundred dollars a foot when we arrived; but in two months it had sprung up to eight hundred. The “Ophir” had been worth only a mere trifle, a year gone by, and now it was selling at nearly four thousand dollars a foot! … I would have been more or less than human if I had not gone mad like the rest. Cart-loads of solid silver bricks, as large as pigs of lead, were arriving from the mills every day.

“Think of it? I think it is nothing but a lot of granite rubbish and nasty glittering mica that isn’t worth ten cents an acre!” So vanished my dream. So melted my wealth away. So toppled my airy castle to the earth and left me stricken and forlorn.

We would have been millionaires if we had only worked with pick and spade one little day on our property and so secured our ownership! … I can always have it to say that I was absolutely and unquestionably worth a million dollars, once, for ten days.

Virginia had grown to be the “livest” town, for its age and population, that America had ever produced. The sidewalks swarmed with people—to such an extent, indeed, that it was generally no easy matter to stem the human tide. … Money was as plenty as dust; every individual considered himself wealthy, and a melancholy countenance was nowhere to be seen.

The great “Comstock lode” stretched its opulent length straight through the town from north to south, and every mine on it was in diligent process of development. One of these mines alone employed six hundred and seventy-five men. … Laboring men’s wages were four and six dollars a day, and they worked in three “shifts” or gangs, and the blasting and picking and shoveling went on without ceasing, night and day.

Men coming up from the heated regions below, when the thermometer indicates a temperature of from 110 to 120 degrees, faint on reaching the cold air at, or near, the top of the shaft. Strangers visiting the mines should always mention the fact to those with them on the cage, if they feel the slightest symptom of vertigo or faintness, as they may then be properly supported.

There is also a large cask containing ice-water, with a tin dipper hanging on a nail near at hand. … The reports of the sales of stocks in the San Francisco Stock Board are brought to the office of the mine as soon as they are telegraphed to the city, and about the time the reports arrive, you will hear the men at the station anxiously inquiring the price of stocks of the first man who comes down from the surface.