752 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ally a pin point of ore was seen. For hundreds of feet the miners 

 drifted beside this slender clew. Fair became ill, and the work- 

 men lost it, but on his return he picked up the ore thread. They 

 were now a hundred feet in Consolidated Virginia ground, and 

 the price of the stock began to break, when suddenly the stringer 

 widened to a vein of sixty-dollar ore. In October, on the 1,167- 

 f oot level, the top of the " Big Bonanza " was uncovered ; the 

 drift went 148 feet through solid ore 54 feet wide. The great 

 kidney-shaped mass extended downward below the 1,500-foot 

 level, and widened to 150 feet and even to 300 feet. The ore grew 



Gould and Cdrry Miners ready for Work. 



richer and richer as the men advanced. Nothing like it had ever 

 been known in the history of mining. 



Here, in the heart of the Comstock, hundreds of naked miners 

 were soon hewing down the ore. On all sides of a pyramidal 

 mass of timber which grew larger every minute were twinkling 

 stars of lamps. Everything in the bonanza was sent to the mill 

 as fast as it was quarried out, and some of it was so rich that 

 waste rock was added to aid amalgamation. An average block 

 of ore three feet square contained from two hundred to five hun- 

 dred dollars in silver and gold. The richest spot was near the 

 California line, where clusters of malleable silver in coiled wires 

 occurred beside shining stephanite, pale-green and steel-gray 

 chlorides, and lustrous black silver glance, besides masses of the 

 most exquisite crystals of every color known to the mineralogist. 



In six years Consolidated Virginia milled G82,355 tons of ore, 

 producing $60,732,882 ; California, in four years, milled 480,043 

 tons, producing $43,727,837. The total yield of the Big Bonanza 

 had been nearly $105,000,000, and more than $73,000,000 had been 



