December 6, 2005

Nevada's Online State News Journal

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Nevada History:

            The fortunes of the Comstock mining district are now (1881) depressed. Since the discovery of the great Consolidated Virginia (California bonanza in 1873-4) no new ore-body has been developed. An over-sanguine hope of such a discovery did indeed puff up the shares of the Sierra Nevada Mine from $2.90 on May 14, 1878, to $270 four months later,[1]-- 103,645 shares, or more than the entire stock of the mine (100,000 shares), being sold at one exchange in San Francisco during the month of August.[2] But the boom culminated during the following month, and in spite of the zeal of the bulls the price of the stock dropped irresistibly in November (1878) from $200 to $39. On the 2d day of February, 1881, the value set upon the whole lode and its costly mine works in the stock exchanges was only $7,000,000,[3] which may be fairly contrasted with the valuation (highest) in January, 1875.

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transferred to the board of county commissioners.[5] This change is not likely to affect the future development of the mines in any way unfavorably. Whether ore-bodies whose existence is now unknown will be discovered in the depths yet unsearched is, of course, uncertain. The great fissure, filled with quartz, clay, and barren country rock, is still well defined, and the whole lode is impregnated with precious metals, but no bonanzas or concentrations of metalliferous deposits have rewarded the persistent search. No valid argument against their occurrence has been presented, but positive evidence of their existence is lacking.

            The toper, Finney, lived only a few years after locating his famous ledge, eking out a precarious livelihood by bartering feet in sundry claims in exchange for drink and food-money, and losing his life, at length, June 20, 1861, by falling from his horse and fracturing his skull.[6]

            Comstock, the loud-voiced impostor, distinguished himself by seducing and buying a wife from a Mormon for a horse, a revolver, and sixty dollars in money, but could not keep her from running away at the first opportunity. He offered a reward of $100 for the capture and return of his runaway slave, or spouse, and thus regained her only to lose her irrecoverably a few months later.[7] Then he bought less migratory chattels and opened two supply stores at Carson City and Silver City, but, as

his customers usually paid him in promises, which he accepted as cash, he was soon bankrupt and became again a prospector.[8] His past success and the hardships of his wandering life turned his poor brain. In fancy he still owned the Comstock Lode and even the cities on its line. Yet with princely kindness he suffered his tenants to live rent-free, "for the winters are cold," he babbled, and the people poor, and their need is greater than mine."[9] So the cities grew and the mines yielded bonanza after bonanza, while their landlord was toiling for bread among the bleak hills of the northern Territories. At length he was tired of drifting from camp to camp, and in a fit of despair and distraction blew out his brains September 27, 1870, and was buried without a headstone in Bozeman, a little mining camp of Montana.[10]

            Peter O'Riley wasted his fortune in absurd mining projects and other foolish speculations. He had wandered away from the Washoe district only to return to it in 1867 with small means but great expectations. His brain teemed with visions of wealth and spiritualistic delusions. Relying on the guidance of angelic retrospectors he began work upon a tunnel in a desolate place among the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The hill-side which he wished to pierce was only "a bed of rotten granite," as a well-informed observer[11] declared in a sketch, whose conclusion is here most apposite and interesting : "Here O'Riley toiled alone for two or three years under all manner of difficulties. The ground in which he was at work was full of water, and caves frequently occurred in his tunnel. The work of many weeks was often lost in a moment by a cave which crushed in his timbers and drove him back almost to where he first began ; but the spirits said there was a whole mountain of silver and gold ahead, and he believed them and persevered. He was without money but not without friends. One and another of his friends among the old settlers purchased for him what he required in the way of provisions and tools. As he worked alone in his dark tunnel month after

month, far under the mountain, the spirits began to grow more and more familiar. They swarmed about him, advising and directing the work. As he wielded pick and sledge their voices came to him out of the darkness which walled in the light of his solitary candle, cheering him on; voices from the chinks in the rocks whispered to him stories of great masses of native silver at no great distance ahead, of caverns floored with silver and roofed with great arches hung with stalactites of pure silver and glittering native gold. The spirits talked so much with him in his tunnel under the mountain, and had made themselves so familiar there, that at last they boldly conversed with him under the broad light of day, and in the city as well as in the solitude of the mountains. He was heard muttering to them as he walked the streets, and a wild and joyous light gleamed in his eyes as he listened to their promises. News at length came that O'Riley had been caved on and badly hurt; then that the physicians had pronounced him insane. When he recovered from his hurt he was anxious to return to his tunnel—the spirits under the mountain were calling to him; but he was sent to a private asylum for the insane at Woodbridge, California, and in a year or two died there, the spirits to the last lingering about him and heaping on him reproaches for having left the golden mountains and silver caverns they had pointed out to him."[12]

            The most honest and hard-working of the company, Patrick McLaughlin, struggled along with little judgment and general ill-fortune, serving at last as a cook for a party of miners in San Bernadino County, California, where he fell sick two years ago (1879), and died in the county hospital without leaving enough to pay for a pauper's burial.[13]