26 CHARLES HIGGINS 



When his time was up he would stagger away and bathe 

 his head in a stream of water from a water pipe. In these 

 hot drifts more than thirty men were smothered by the foul 

 air and the heat in one year and thirteen more were scalded 

 by falling into the sumps, the seething pools at the bottom 

 of the shafts. With the air blower turned off the temperature 

 in those drifts rose twenty and even thirty degrees and at 

 one point where a thermometer hung against the rocky side 

 of the drift the mercury in the tube registered one hundred 

 and sixty five degrees Fahrenheit, which at that level— many 

 thousand feet below the surface of the ground but yet far 

 above the level of the sea— is but twenty five degrees below 

 the boiling point of water. 



Yet, undismayed the miners worked against all these 

 disadvantages until, twenty years after the opening of the 

 Comstock mines one of the shafts had been sunk to the depth 

 of more than half a mile into the earth, notwithstanding 

 the terrific heat, and others were under way designed to reach 

 the lode at a depth of a mile. 



John Mackay, part owner of the mine, voiced the senti- 

 ment of everyone connected with the work when he said : 



''If there is silver enough in there to pay for the cost 

 of taking it out and then leave something over for us I will 

 see that it is got out. There must be some way and I will 

 find that way." 



He knew every foot of every one of his mines. He was 

 vigilant always, watchful ever for accidents, carelessness on 

 the part of his men or for ways in which the lives and safety 

 of his employees could be safeguarded. He demanded that 

 they take chances, but there never was a chance that he asked 

 others to take that he would not, and did not take himself. 

 He was cool and cheery, and always harassed by the fear 

 of a fire. He had seen the fire in the Crowm Point mine a 

 few years before the opening of his Comstock properties and 

 he never forgot the horrible tragedy that followed the care- 

 lessness on the part of one of the men. 



The risks that Mackay encountered and the chances 

 that were taken in his mine surpassed those taken in any 

 other mine on earth, but the compensation was abundant. 



