[Albert S. Evans, Up in the Po-go-nip, The Overland Monthly, March 1869]

 

UP IN THE PO-GO-NIP.

 

            FROM the proud city by the sunset sea, past the green hills which skirt the blue waters of the broad bay of San Francisco, through the wide valley of the Sacramento, across the deep morasses and quaking tule swamps to the City of the Plains—up, up, up to the very throne of the Frost King, on the snow-mantled summit of the great Sierra, down the tortuous grade on the eastern slope, down by the rock-ribbed banks of the swift, bounding, flashing Truckee, out across the dreary desert plains, where sage-brush and alkali-encrusted soil unceasingly offend the sight, up the long winding valley of the deep, dark, rolling Humboldt, through the Beaowawe Gate, the rugged Railroad Cañon, and the Titanic Palisades, to Elko. Five hundred and fifty miles the tireless steed, with thews of steel and breath of fire, has dragged us swiftly on, nor yet kept pace with the feverish impatience of our desire.

            Through a long day of labor, and a night devoid of ease, packed like herrings in a cask, or sardines in a box, we have endured the agony of the journey in the slow-moving, sharp-jolting stagecoach, and the six hundred and twenty-fifth mile is passed at last. Slowly the gray dawn crept over the snowy mountains; bright flushed the fleecy vapors along the eastern horizon ; into the rose-hued and purple sky climbed the sun, and his golden glory filled all the land as the waters fill the sea. Towering aloft in the far southeast, grim and cold, lonely and silent, the great White Pine giant confronted us. Deep lay the snows on his rugged shoulders, and around his brow was wound, in many a fleecy fold, the whiter turban of the Pogo-nip.

            Across the wide, treeless Mirage Valley, over the low Pancake Mountain, across another and narrower valley, and we enter at last the long winding cañon which leads up into the White Pine Mountain Range and terminates at Hamilton, where we found ourselves, tired, weary, worn out, half disgusted, and just a trifle homesick, soon after noon. Long lines of mules and oxen, drawing heavy wagons, laden with supplies of every kind — mill machinery, whiskey, provisions, whiskey, hardware, whiskey, mule feed, and whiskey again —"jerkwater" stages, which had been three or four days making the trip of one hundred and ten miles from Hamilton with passengers for the mines ; mine owners, or those who had but recently sold mines, and were flush, on horseback ; bull-whackers, in soldiers' coats, with whips a dozen feet in length on poles longer still, just in from Austin or Wadsworth ; honest miners, with salted claims, ready to sell to the newly-arrived greenhorns ; foot-packers, without a cent, who had packed their blankets and luggage all the way from Elko, sparing their meals, and sleeping in snow-drifts, if they slept at all ; painted Jezebels from every mining camp from Idaho to Sonora ; Shoshone Indians, Chinamen, and "capitalists," who in San Francisco were never known as men with plethoric bank accounts, crowded the streets of Hamilton. All was bustle and hurry, noise, excitement, and confusion. The stores and saloons were crowded with men in huge overcoats, the pockets of which were filled with big specimens, small silver bars, and rolls of location notices and assay certificates, buying, selling, and talking mines, and "bummers" of the seediest class, who drank at the expense of every stranger who approached the bar — swore, talked, fought, and " swapped " filthy lies from morning to night. In the evening the

274      UP IN THE PO-GO-NIP.          [March,

streets were deserted, but the mad excitement indoors was as great as ever. The bar-tenders were kept in incessant motion in their frantic efforts to supply the demand for drinks which poured in from every direction. The express office was crowded with men writing letters, or sending off packages to their distant friends. The dance-house was filled with half or wholly tipsy miners, with a sprinkling of abandoned women, whose smiles and favors were as eagerly sought for and as jealously observed by the unfavored as were ever those of the most gifted and virtuous of their sex in the abode of wealth and refinement, at the East, on a gala night.

            In the rear of every bar-room was a door bearing a sign inscribed " Club Room," through which was heard the strains of discordant music and the chinking of coin. These club rooms were crowded to their utmost capacity, and the tables were piled with coin and checks, while hundreds of men, who had made lucky strikes at finding, working, or, more frequently, selling mines, were betting away in a single hour what might have kept them, and those dependent on them, for years in comfort, or served as the foundation for a colossal fortune. Every five or ten minutes the dealers would pause in their work of turning cards and raking down the coin to ring a bell, when a bar-tender would enter the club room.

            "Gentlemen, what will you take ? You drink with me, you know !" said the smiling dealer in pasteboard and other people's hard-earned coin.

            " Whiskey toddy ! whiskey straight ! whiskey hot ! whiskey sour ! whiskey and gum !" replied the crowd ; the fiery liquor was swallowed, and the game went on. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, came from the fandango room. The players at the gaming tables remarked that there was fun going on there, but were too busy to go and see what it was. A man told us the next morning that he believed somebody was killed, but he wasn't certain ; and another man, who was there, and knew all about it, but had no time to go into details, corrected him by saying that "there was n't nobody killed, and the affair didn't amount to much, anyhow. Only one man was hit, and he an outsider, who had no part in the affray, of course; only got a bullet through his shoulder." We found a place to spread our blankets at last, and from the bottom of our hearts echoed the pious remark of good Sancho Panza, "A blessing on the head of him who invented sleep !"

            " All aboard for Treasure City ! Carry you right up the hill for three dollars," was the first thing we heard next morning as we stepped forth from the canvas-walled and sawdust-floored restaurant in which we had obtained our dollar's worth of slaughter-house steak, North American hash, saleratus biscuit, and frijole coffee. The distance was two miles, the ascent fifteen hundred feet, the road slippery with ice, and the wind sharp and strong enough to make sitting still in a sleigh anything but fun, and we concluded to foot it and save our money. Up, up we go. We are already eight thousand feet above the sea, the air is becoming every moment more highly rarefied and electrical, our breath comes short and quick and sharp, and still the summit of Treasure Hill is a thousand feet above us. Jolly old jokers are these Po-go-nipers, and calling this a " hill " is one of their best efforts.

            We have almost reached the summit at last ; a few more steps and our weary journey will be over. The sun, which had been shining in an unclouded sky, suddenly becomes obscured, and with a sharp, rustling sound the snow-white frozen cloud, the dreaded Po-go-nip, drifts swiftly over the crest of the mountain and sweeps down upon us. The infinitesimal particles of ice, sharp as the point of the finest cambric needle, sting the eyes, the nostrils, and even the

1869.]              UP IN THE PO-GO-NIP.          275

lungs. We bend our heads against the storm, and in a minute a wondrous change has come over the entire party. Grizzled and white-haired as an octogenarian is every man ; moustaches and whiskers are masses of ice, and everyone wears a sparkling suit of silver gray. What shapes are these which like phantoms of the air come silently towards us moving with the storm ? A knight, clad in armor of frosted silver mail, on milk-white steed, with silver bridle and housings, rides forth from the clouds and dashes down the steep acclivity at a gallop, while his trusty squire, carrying his broadsword of Damascus steel, follows at his horse's heels at a run. Thus rode we forth in our childhood's dreams to rescue distressed damsels, uphold the Right and do valiant battle with the giant Wrong. Another knight, and yet another, all in silver harness mailed. Four milk- white steeds drawing a silver chariot, a coachman in white livery with silver whip in hand, and a fair-faced woman wrapped in Siberian furs upon the seat. It is Cinderella, with her fairy gift-outfit, on her way to the ball at the king's palace. We saw her thus in the colored wood-cuts in our primers long ago. An old man, bowed down with the weight of a huge bundle on his shoulders, moves painfully along, with eyes bent on the earth. It is Christian going to cast the burden of his sins at the foot of the cross. A dozen men with uncouth wrappings on their limbs and strange weapons in their hands, follow on in Indian file ; they are the sad remnants of the Grand Army of Napoleon making their disastrous retreat from Russia in midwinter. A little round-faced fellow, with twinkling eyes, mirth and good-humor breaking  out all over his whimsical visage ; a short body and thick, and protuberant of belly, round cap which conceals his ears, large woolly overcoat, which drags on the snow, and a bag thrown over his shoulders, comes next. It is blessed Santa Claus with the Christmas presents for the children ; wonder if he knows how good we have been and if he has got that silver bar which we dreamed we found in our stocking ? And here comes the Queen of Fairy Land, clad in robes of silver tissue and bearing her wand of magic power in her hand.

            The procession has passed, but the illusion is not over. Tell me not that the knights were but Mexican vacqueros on half-starved mustangs, going down to the valley after more stock for the slaughter-house on the hill ; that the foremost knight's squire was a carpenter going down to Hamilton to have his hand-saw filed in a milder climate where it would not be so likely to break in the operation ; that Cinderella in her chariot was a women from Montana, whose steps take hold on the bottomless pit, going down to Hamilton in the public hack ; that the grim veterans of the Old Guard coming back from Moscow were honest miners going out with pick-axes and shovels, and with barley sacks on their feet to keep out the snow, to jump a lot on the hillside ; that Santa Claus was a little German clothing dealer from Montgomery Street, San Francisco, with similar pedal attachments and a sack of specimens an his back ; and the Queen of Fairy Land an honest old lady of sixty from Athlone who does washing for a living for herself and "the childers," and is going out with a revolver in her hand to drive off "the dirty, murtherin' scum who should be afther stealing away the bit ov land a poor lone widdy has worked hard and paid fur, bad luck to thim, fur blackguards, every mother's son of thim ! "  I will not look back on that weird procession as it emerges from the cloud into the broad, garish light of the day below. I will not give up my day-dream of beauty and chivalry, the vision of youth's generous romance.

276      UP IN THE PO-GO-NIP.          [March,

Yours if you like shall be the dull, dirty, prosaic personages and matters of fact if you will, but mine the silver-mailed knights and trusty squires, Cinderella, Santa Claus, the Fairy Queen, and the ice-sheeted ghosts of the heroes of France, marching on through the Pogo-nip.

            A long, crooked street, rocky and ungraded, bordered by one-story shanties of rough boards, slabs, cedar posts, stones, and mud, with vacant lots fenced in with little narrow strips of raw-hide, led us on into Treasure City, the business centre of the White Pine Silver Mines. The four-horse sleigh which had started from Hamilton with a load of passengers just as we left there, arrived at the usual stopping-place in front of Wells, Fargo and Company's, in Treasure City, a few minutes behind us. There was a female dressed in moire antique and furs, painted like the barracks on Alcatraz, and glittering with cheap but gaudy jewelry, in the sleigh, and when the vehicle stopped, two six-foot gallants, bearded like the pard and costumed like Esquimaux, sprang out simultaneously and offered their hands to assist her to alight. She had but one hand free and could of course give that to one only. Which should it be ? Neither gallant would yield the point—both were in blood earnest. A shove, a push, a stinging blow and out came the revolvers, of course. The combatants were so hampered with their heavy clothing that they could take no accurate aim, and fired at random. A few of the bystanders seeing the unsatisfactory result of the fight, threw in a few spare shots at random, on the principle adopted by the old lady out West, who having no idea whatever of the nature of her husband's malady, prescribed calomel, and ipecacuanha, paregoric, salts, Swain's Vermifuge, camphor, opodeldoc, quinine, Brandeth's pills, tincture of ammonia, croton-oil, Godfrey's Cordial, and a few other trifles which she had in the house, piously trusting that in the multiplicity of remedies with the blessing of Providence some one of them would reach the right spot in his system and help him out of his misery. The bullets hummed like bees through the sleety mist, causing the crowd to scatter right and left, but nothing practical came of it until one of them struck one of the horses in the head, cutting an artery, and giving him a death wound, from which the blood spurted in a stream over one of the combatants who stood partially under him. The blood-covered combatant, supposing himself shot, threw down his revolver and ran down the street groaning and crying murder alternately, and the fight was ended. The woman meantime had been sitting quietly in the sleigh an impartial spectator of the conflict, and patiently waiting to see which gallant would kiss the snow-drift, and which, as the survivor and winner of the tournament, have the honor of helping her out. It is gratifying to see that amid all the rush, excitement, and mad struggle for wealth, our people do not wholly forget the chivalrous deference which above all other nations it is our proud privilege to pay to the gentler sex, and still find time to indulge in the small, sweet courtesies of civilized life. What other people can boast as much ?

            Pious, too, as well as courteous, in a certain rough, off-hand sort of a way, are these dwellers in the Po-go-nip. They will put themselves out of the way sometimes to give a friend a cheerful and pleasant burial. Instance a case which came under our notice while coming up here on the railroad. One of the seekers after sudden wealth sickened and died by the wayside, and his companions desirous of bearing testimony to his many good qualities, decided to do the handsome thing by him in the way of respectable obsequies. They accordingly went around taking up a collection, and in due time succeeded

1869.]              UP IN THE PO-GO-NIP.          277

in getting together enough boxes and bits of lumber to make a sort of rough box, resembling a disproportioned hencoop, in which to bury him. "Sardines a 1' huile " and " Dessicated codfish" at the head and foot ; " Peach blow " and Private Cuvee " on the sides, with "glass with care " on the top—will be likely to puzzle the antiquarians of 1969, who may chance to light on his grave, as badly as did the inscriptions on the sarcophagus of Gliddon's Mummy the learned savans of Boston. They wrapped him in his second-best pair of blankets, placed him in the box, and consigned him to the bosom of Mother Earth. Then they tossed up to see who should read a chapter of Scripture over his grave, and the lot falling on one not well versed in such matters, he opened the book at the story of Susannah and the Elders, and read it through from first to last, with solemn unction. Then they dumped the earth and rock upon his packing box, and were preparing to leave him alone in his glory, when it occurred to somebody in the crowd that there should be something to designate his resting-place. So they drove an old pick-handle down into the dirt at the head of the grave, and nailed a narrow slip of a soda-cracker box horizontally across it. The cross was now two-thirds complete ; but the lumber was exhausted. A lucky idea occurred to help them out. One of the party had a bottle about half-full of whiskey They finished the whiskey, filled the bottle with sand and gravel to keep the wind from blowing it away, and set it upright on the board ; the emblem of the faith was complete. But there should be some inscription on it. Oh, yes ; that is so ! I. H. S., or INRI, was proposed ; but the learned man of the party, who took some pride in his scholastic attainments, thought it best to write the inscription out in full, which he did, after his own ideas—and the label now reads : " J. H. Cutter's Old Bourbon Whiskey. In Hoc Signo Vinces." It was such a capital joke on Cutter, they said ; it would be a pity if the dead man could not see it.

            Passing on down the street we met an old San Franciscan, now a real estate and mining broker, who was standing in front of his place, bantering with the proprietor of two diminutive jackasses, and one pack load of wood, weighing about one hundred pounds.

            " What is the least you will take for the load ? "

            " Wall, see'n it's you, I'll take four dollars and a half ; I would n't let anybody else have it less than five dollars."

            "Four dollars and a half? Why, I bought two loads for that yesterday, and you have n't packed this over forty rods."

            " Two loads for four dollars and a half? Well, if you want wood given to you, you had better patronize somebody else. I sell my wood—I do. Git up ! Vamos !"

            And the man with the jackasses waved his hand in supreme contempt, kicked one of the animals with all his might and a number twelve pegged boot, and started off in disgust. The jackass which caught the kick being without a load, went off with a jump, and as he passed his loaded companion, caught the iron hook of the aparejo in his tackle, and supposing himself suddenly loaded, doubled down like a woodchuck to his work. Ice on the road and a descending grade favored him, and the last that we saw of the party, the heavily-burdened animal was spread out like a turtle, vainly endeavoring to regain his grip, while the other was towing him at a "two-forty" gait down the road toward Silver Springs, his owner fairly turning the air blue with curses and anathemas of everything bipedal and quadrupedal meantime, as he vainly endeavored to cast off the entangling alliance, and reduce things to a normal condition once more.

278      UP IN THE PO-GO-NIP.          [March,

            "This is a pretty fair room you have here, as things go in White Pine." " Well, yes ; so it is," said the ex- San Franciscan, meditatively ; "but I came mighty near not getting it. You see, the gentleman from Southwestern Missouri who owned the shanty, had rented the basement-room for one hundred dollars per month, and asked the same for this part of it. I wanted him to put a roof on it ; and after a time he agreed to do so, if I'd pay in advance. I agreed to this when he remembered a transaction with another party, and said : Come to think about it, stranger, I 'm too fast. I 'm afear'd after all that thar room is rightly let. I told t' other un that he might have it, and dog-gone him I wish I had n't. He 's one o' them bilks as parts his har onto the middle on his head, and talks like a preacher. When he started to go he shaked my hand like as if he'd known me from a baby, and was sweet on my sister ; and, says he : "Good-by, Mister Smith. God bless you." Now, that may do for Yanks ; but it do n't take with me. I 'm right smart dubersome, and I've a good mind to shake him ; but I allow after all I'll have to let him take it.' "  We remarked that he seemed to have got it after all.      

            "You may bet that I did," said our friend, with emphasis. " I had him down to a dot in my measure book at once. I turned as if to leave, and then whirling around held out my hand and said : ' Well, good-by, old Persimmons, God d—n you!' throwing my whole weight (one hundred and eighty pounds) on the d—n. That got him. The words were not fairly out before he slapped me on the back and sung out : ' Now, old hoss, that gait suits me. You can have the room, and if that thar long-haired, God-bless you customer, comes foolin' around with any more of his Scripter, we 'll make him roost mighty high, or leave Treasure Hill in a hurry ; let 's go and take pizen, then we 'll sign the lease ! ' So I got the place and the other fellow had to roost on a snow drift until he got frozen out and left."

            New faces at every turn ; strangers fill every street. The crowd which we met here sixty days since has hardly a representative left. One sold out a claim for a fortune a hundred times greater than he ever had before in his life, and left for the States ; another kept drunk until his friends, from motives of economy, made up a purse and sent him away to San Francisco ; another is dead ; another gone down to the new districts to the southward ;  another gone east, and another west, to sell their claims, and spread the excitement far and wide. Nothing save the mountain has stood still, and change is written all over the face of that. Even the dead man rested not, for they have moved him twice already, on account of new discoveries, and chlorides have been struck again in the vicinity of his last location during the week.

            Chlorides and bromides, horn silver and ruby ; nothing but silver from morning to night. Is there no longer such a place as home, or has that dear word lost all its attractions ? Is health not desirable ; are all the comforts of life to be despised ; is art a humbug, patriotism a myth, religion a delusion ; is friendship a dream of the past, is there faith no longer in woman's love ? No, the dwellers in the Po-go-nip do not believe all this, but they are swimming in a stream of incessant excitement, and must go on with the torrent, since they could not breast its wild waters and make head against the current if they would.

            The Eberhardt is the representative mine of this wonderful district, and seeing it we have seen all the rest concentrated in one. Provided with a pass from the Superintendent's office, we descend the hill to the works and enter the building. At the door a pack train

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of Mexican mules are being loaded with the precious ore for the mill two miles to the southwest, and two thousand feet lower down. In the shed men are busy at a great pile of brown, blue, red, green and black rock, breaking it to pieces and sorting it, the richest being thrown aside for the crucible, and the rest going into the sacks to be packed away to the mill. There is a princely fortune in this pile of ore, which to the uninitiated eye is but a heap of broken rock fit only for building walls or macadamizing public streets.

            Over one of the hoisting shafts there is a large wooden bucket with a rope and rude windlass such as you might see on the prospecting shaft of the poorest miner. It has served for hoisting all this wealth to the surface. In this bucket we descended into the mine. A long, narrow chamber, with dull, dark walls, and a few men at work with pick and gad, were all that the first glance revealed, and there was a momentary feeling of disappointment. A closer inspection showed that the walls, the ceiling, the floor, were silver ; even the very dust on the floor was silver. This lump will yield five dollars a pound, this six, this seven, this eight, and this, which will flatten like lead under the hammer, is worth within a fraction of ten dollars a pound. They tell us that there is a million dollars worth of silver piled up before our eyes in this gloomy cavern, and such is indeed the fact. Talk of the power of gunpowder, of steam, of the whirlwind, of the earthquake ; here is a power which is greater than all ! Their operations are but local, partial and temporary ; this can replace what they destroy—this can rebuild what they have hurled down ; all save

                                                "The touch of a vanished hand,         

                                                And the sound of a voice that is still,"

can this bring back to its possessor.    

            Forth from this black cave in the top of the cloud-capped mountain shall flow a stream which all the world shall see, and whose force the millions yet un born shall feel. Down in the cañon at the foot of the mountain swarthy men in smoke-soiled garments through all the long night are bending anxiously over the furnaces, from whose open mouths leap white-forked tongues of flame. What do they there while others sleep ? They have learned the secret of the Fire-King's power, and master no longer, but submissive slave, he is toiling in bonds at their bidding. He touches the black stone as they hand it down, and it becomes as white as the snow on the mountain. Henceforth it shall know no change, whatever outward form it may assume, but it shall go forth through all the world, the standard of value, the emblem of purity, a blessing and a curse to all nations. Men shall slave and women sin for it ; beggars shall clutch at it ; kings shall fight over it ; millions shall die for it. It shall blunt the edge of the sword of justice, soil the hands of the judge on the bench, and change the color of the ink in the pen in the hand of the son of genius. In a thousand forms it shall glitter as a thing of beauty ; in only and to only a few shall it prove a joy forever.

            Back in the sunlight once more, we look down the steep declivity of Treasure Hill stretching away to the southward and westward. Hundreds of prospecting shafts dot the face of the hill ; men busy " developing the resources of the country" are running about the country like ants. Blasts, or " shots " as they term them here, are being let off in the prospecting claims every minute. With lumber at four hundred dollars per thousand, it won't pay to cover the shafts when blasts are being let off, even if there were time to be spared—so they are let off at random ; heads at the risk of the owners. When the fuse is lighted, the owner calls out " shot !" and gets under cover of the nearest rock, well satisfied

280      OUR MANUFACTURING ERA.         [March,

with himself for having shown so much regard for the public safety ; a careless fellow would not have called out at all. One passer-by runs one way, another the other ; bang goes the blast, up goes a volley of rocks, some of them weighing perhaps a hundred pounds each, and then they come rattling down on everything in the way. " Why, you have filled up my house plumb full of rock," exclaims the proprietor of a cabin, with sides of cobble and mud, the cloth roof of which has been riddled like a cullender by the flying missiles, as he rushes out in breathless haste. " Yes, and you were in big luck to get out alive !" is the good-humored reply. Both parties consent to adopt this view of the case as a finality ; they take a drink together, and the owner of the cabin goes back to finish mixing his biscuit, and the miner gets ready for the next shot, which may have more serious consequences.

            We rise from our luxurious couch on the hard board floor, shake the snow from off our blankets, wrap ourselves in overcoats and comforters, and packed in sleighs, ride out of the long cañon, bound northward, westward and home. Looking back from the open valley in the afternoon, with the warm sunlight resting lovingly upon us, we see the white-mantled mountain still crowned with its whiter turban. A rift in the frozen vapor, through which the blue sky is seen, takes the form of a monster eye, which, as we gaze at it, seems to wink viciously back at us. Wink away, old fellow, we are out of your reach at last! Out of the wild excitement, and the mad rush for wealth ; out of the hurry and noise and confusion ; out of the reach of the contagious frenzy of the worshippers in the temple of the god with the shrine of silver, which affects all who witness it, even as the furious dance of the dervish affects the followers of the Prophet. Out of the snow-drifts ; out of the tempest; out of the Po-go-nip.