NEVADA SILVER. 741 



of brush. Piles of goods were scattered about in the rain and 

 snow. A scathing wind, the "Washoe zephyr," tore the huts 

 apart and filled the air with gravel. Crowds were gathered in 

 open places, trading claims or fighting over them. Other crowds 

 were drinking and gambling in the numerous saloons. Rough, 

 unkempt, unwashed miners, speculators, bummers, thieves, cut- 

 throats filled the raw, unsightlj'' mining camp with horrible con- 

 fusion. " In truth," says our artless adventurer, " there was much 

 to confirm the foreboding with which I had entered the Devil's 

 Gate." 



In a short time the demands of the Washoe country developed 

 a complete system of transportation over three great toll roads, 

 the finest on the Pacific coast. Massive freight wagons, marking 

 in every detail the utmost skill of California workers in wood 

 and iron, carried all the supplies for Nevada. Bearded and 

 weather-beaten freighters, who were also owners of their outfits, 

 walked beside the great mule teams. Each freighter carried his 

 rod of empire, a short hickory handle to which was attached a 

 long, close-plaited whiplash as big as one's wrist at the swelling 

 part. At first receiving twenty-five cents a pound for whatever 

 was carried between Sacramento and Virginia City, and hauling 

 a thousand pounds to the animal, the freighter in a year or so 

 was able to move twenty-four tons besides the wagons, with a 

 sixteen-mule team, at a cost of four cents a pound for the entire 

 distance. It is said that there is not on record in courts or news- 

 papers a single instance of the loss of goods in transit either by 

 fraud, force, or carelessness during all the years of the Nevada 

 freighter's glory. 



One stage line carried twelve thousand passengers to Nevada in 

 1863. Schedule time in 1861 had been three days for the one hun- 

 dred and sixty-two miles, but it was soon reduced to eighteen 

 hours. Three wealthy mining operators were once taken from 

 Virginia City to the steamboat wharf in Sacramento in twelve 

 hours and twenty-three minutes. Old travelers still recall with 

 pleasure the ride across the mountains on the Placerville route. 

 Its most striking moment was when one first saw from the summit 

 of the pass the hyacinthine waters of sealike Tahoe and the level 

 desert. "The eastward-gazing grizzly bear," to quote from one 

 of the stories written by an old Elko silver miner, the late Dr. 

 Gaily, " lifts his flexible nostril to sniff the odor of the arid waste, 

 then slowly turns and prowls westward. There is a visible line 

 eastward where two worlds appear to meet. Beyond is the great 

 'empire of Artemisia,' where gold and silver were married in 

 the volcanic chambers of the awful past. One sees the land of 

 Washoe outstretched from the mountain tops, with its browns 

 and grays, its arid junipers and dull nut pines, its crags of lime- 



