NEVADA SILVER. 



755 



The progress of the work was dramatic. The face of the rock 

 "showed a temperature of 114." Two or three hours was all that 

 the strongest men could work. Endurance was strained to its 

 utmost capacity. Man after man dropped down on the rocky 

 floor and was carried to the surface babbling and incoherent. 

 This strenuous toil continued till July 8, 1878, when Sutro him- 

 self, half naked like one of his miners, labored at the front, and 

 finally crawled through a jagged hole into the Savage drift, 

 " overcome with excitement," as one of the newspaper accounts 



Sutko Tunnel, Sutko, Nevada. 



said. What had been contemptuously called "Sutro's coyote 

 hole " thus became an accomplished fact. 



Through such passionate conflicts as those described the 

 heroes of the Comstock continued making workshops, mills, 

 machinery ; building two marvelously picturesque towns along 

 the lode, and hiding underneath the greater creation the real 

 City of the Comstock. Here, in deeps below deeps, are three- 

 mile streets, mysterious labyrinths, water torrents, burning 

 heats, perils numberless, legends that might serve to fill a vol- 

 ume. Time was when twelve thousand miners toiled in these 

 vast galleries, swinging picks, hammering drills, raising timbers 

 to place, climbing to the stopes, breaking down the ore, pushing 

 lines of loaded cars to stations on the hoisting shafts. They were 

 superb athletes, with muscles evenly developed by their labor. 

 A few of them remain, scraping out the ore left in older work- 

 ings and maintaining to the fullest degree the fine old-time pride 

 of their craft. For sixteen years, however, the mines have been 



