746 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Work went on with increasing zeal. Mines that were in "bor- 

 rasca," or barren rock, were kept going by immense assessments. 

 If the present business methods that prevail in mining had been 

 adopted on the Comstock, half of this enormous yield of $145,000,- 

 000 would have been clear profit, but the greater part of every 

 bonanza went into running and extraordinary expenses. Reck- 

 less waste and superb enterprise seemed to go hand in hand. The 

 numbers of relatives and friends that the owners of the mines 

 managed to support by making positions for them can hardly be 

 reckoned. Everybody, from servant girls to bankers, speculated 

 in Comstocks and other mining shares. 



In 1860 more than five thousand claims within thirty miles of 

 Virginia City were " on the market." Frenzied prospectors were 

 marking out thousands more, until the most remote corners of 

 the desert were "pegged down with claim stakes" set on indi- 

 cations which were seldom attractive to a mineralogist. Iron 

 pyrites and all sorts of worthless combinations seemed as good as 

 gold or silver to the enterprising adventurers. Before long men 

 were claiming to have found huge ledges of iridium, platinum, 

 and plumbago. One Washoe speculator being told by a gentle- 

 man that an ambergris mine would be valuable, replied that he 

 had just staked out one ! A company tunneled for weeks into 

 the granite of Mount Davidson in order to tap an alleged lake of 

 coal oil. 



No one can reckon up the number of prospect holes that dot 

 Nevada. Millions of them, mere ragged cuts or pits in the tawny 

 hillsides, make wind-blown heaps on every hand between the 

 clumps of dark sagebrush and the dull yellow of an occasional 

 sunflower. Only one prospect hole in a hundred ever material- 

 ized into a recorded claim ; only one claim in a thousand ever 

 became a mine. Up to 1880 Virginia City and Gold Hill alone 

 had 10,000 registered claims, and less than a dozen really great 

 mines. To sum it up, the amount of dead work and wasted capi- 

 tal in every mining region almost surpasses belief. Ruins of 

 mills and dwellings, nameless graves in the canons, fragments of 

 old trails washed by the storms of thirty winters, are all that 

 mark the sites of many once- aspiring districts. In Esmeralda 

 and White Pine, which the late Dr. DeGroot used to call "those 

 Golgothas of Nevada speculators," what millions were fruitlessly 

 scattered ! 



The entire history of the Comstock lode is revealed by the as- 

 sessments, dividends, and fluctuations of the stocks of separate 

 mines. Before the close of 1861 eighty-six companies were work- 

 ing on or near the great lode. Gould and Curry, a marvelous! y 

 rich mine, declared $2,008,800 in dividends in 1863 and 1864. This 

 was upon an actual investment of less than $200,000. But the ex- 



