128 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SPECIAL BOOKS. 



THE first volume of the Story of the West Series dealt with a class that 

 is becoming smaller and weaker, the second concerns one that is growing 

 larger and stronger.* The miner, however, is changing his characteristics 

 hardly less rapidly than the Indian, hence it is none too early to put his 

 picturesque past on record. Mr. Shinn takes the development of the great 

 Comstock Lode of Nevada as typical of all the various phases of mining, 

 from the scratching of the prospector to the stupendous feats of the en- 

 gineer as typical also of the leap into bonanza and the sinking into bor- 

 rasca. The Mormons made the first notable efforts to settle the region that 

 is now Nevada, but the growth of the mineral interests soon took it out of 

 their control. In describing the placer mining and the first quartz pro- 

 specting that preceded the discovery of the Comstock Lode, Mr. Shinn in- 

 troduces some of the restless pioneers that gave the mining camps of the 

 period their rough and picturesque character. After the great discovery 

 was made in 1859, came the rush across the Sierras which brought other 

 choice spirits who figure in the early times of Virginia City. There were 

 the industrious and unfortunate Grosh brothers ; the bombastic, scheming, 

 and ineffective Comstock who gave his name to the great Lode ; drunken 

 "Old Virginia," who christened Virginia City with an accidentally broken 

 bottle of whisky; the wily gamblers and their often hard-working but 

 reckless victims; enterprising traders and energetic teamsters; while the 

 nationalities represented included Irishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Cana- 

 dians, Mexicans, Indians, and Jews. Mr. Shinn shows us the trails almost 

 impassable with snow or mud along which a constant stream of pilgrims 

 was toiling, the crowded public houses, the conglomeration of huts, tents, 

 and dug-outs that made up a mining camp, and the abandoned pits and 

 shafts which often entrapped straying animals and men. Passing from 

 these primitive scenes, he shows us the various phases of the great industry 

 which mining has become in our western country. He tells us how the 

 crude methods of treating ores used by the early prospectors were suc- 

 ceeded by the arrastra, and this by the stamp mill ; how some great me- 

 chanical problems were solved, such as timbering the wide Comstock Lode 

 and bringing the water supply of Virgina City through a fourteen-mile 

 flume and seven-mile siphon from Hobart Creek, and how the freighters, 

 stage-drivers, and lumberers made money by letting the mines alone and 

 devoting themselves to dependent industries. Mining litigation and stock 

 speculation each have a chapter. We have an account of the days of the 

 great bonanza, in which the operations of Mackay, Fair, Flood, O'Brien, 

 and others are described. Perhaps the greatest engineering feat that 

 figures in the story is the Sutro Tunnel the " coyote hole," as contemptu- 

 ous opposition termed it. In conclusion we are told what a present-day 

 mine is like, both above and under ground, and what sort of men now 

 make up its community. The volume is illustrated with many fittingly 

 picturesque views. 



* The Story of the Mine. By Charles Howard Shinn. Illustrated. New York : D. Appleton & 

 Co. Pp. 272, 12mo. Price, $1.50. 



