NEVADA SILVER. 



735 



certainly wortliless for agriculture. Unless there shall prove to 

 be great mineral wealth there, it has been created in vain. But 

 if, in the workings of Divine Providence, vast treasure houses are 

 revealed, as I believe there will be, then, my friends, it will take 

 the labor of a hundred thousand California miners a hundred 

 thousand years even to prospect it ! " 



Even while Greeley spoke a small group of ignorant pros- 

 pectors, climbing the canons that slope south from Mount David- 



Caksun liiVEE Canon. 



son, were approaching the Comstock ledge. They were, in fact, 

 already filling their rude sluice-boxes with decomposed rock from 

 the giant lode, and were washing out a little gold, while they 

 threw many a lump of nearly pure silver down the gulches with 

 loud imprecations because the " blue stuff " clogged the machines. 

 These miners were the remnants of several larger camps that had 

 grown, flourished, and fallen into ruins in western Utah during 

 eight or ten years, but they were not the first settlers of the 

 Nevada region. The Oregon trail had three thousand emigrants 



