THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



product of which commands locally but 81 per ton,, owing 

 to its inaccessibility, though other localities in the State 

 pay $20 to 840 per ton for a similar product. White 

 Pine county, along the eastern boundary, has extensive 

 gold placers. 



Finally, there is a large deposit in Elko county of 

 something which is said never to have been discovered 

 elsewhere mineral soap, superior in cleansing virtues to 

 any of the manufactured varieties known to the students 

 of modern advertising. As the country was principally 

 occupied by Pinto Indians, the deposit remained undis- 

 turbed for nameless centuries. But it was exhibited at 

 the World's Fair, where, it is feared, it added nothing 

 to Nevada's fame. The thing was so palpably and un- 

 mistakably the perfection of toilet articles that it over- 

 taxed eastern credulity, and was quietly set down as a 

 larger piece of mendacity than of soap. 



It is further charged that Nevada " has no agricultural 

 resources." Of all arraignments, this is the most mis- 

 taken and unjust, yet it is the one which will find readi- 

 est credence by those who know the State only through 

 the experience of a restless day's travel by railroad across 

 its waste of sage-brush, of sunshine, and of dust. The 

 more need, then, for its emphatic refutation, for there 

 are millions of Nevada acres which might answer the cry 

 of thousands of homeless num. 



The territorial grandeur of the battle-born common- 

 wealth is not a matter of dispute. In the East it would 

 lill a space from central Pennsylvania to (icorgia, and 

 from Delaware Bay to Ohio. But as Nevada is very arid, 

 having but ten inches of rainfall, and but little of that in 

 the growing season, the extent of the water supply is tho 



198 



