3fc>3 
FOREST AND STREAM 
nearer than Fort Halleck, about one hundred 
miles to the north, where a couple of companies 
of infantry and a few cavalry were quartered, 
the stage company had constructed some places 
in stations more nearly resembling forts than 
anything to be found elsewhere from the Platte 
to the Sacramento. 
We took dinner on April 9th at such a rude 
fortress on Shell Creek which heads in the Gosi- 
Ute Range, as it was then called, though many 
of these mountain groups have changed their 
names from time to time. Shell Creek was a 
pretty little stream with water cresses in it, 1 
remember, and with green grass along its banks 
and bushes in the first tender foliage of spring 
hanging over. The little valley of the stream 
leads upward into the range, and in an open 
space a quarter of a mile wide was the station. 
It was built substantially of adobe bricks, and 
consisted of two houses, say, 150 feet long by 
15 in width, fronting each other and about one 
rod apart. All of the doors and windows were 
toward “the street’’ between the houses, but there 
were small holes for rifles at the ends and back; 
the roofs were of poles plentifully plastered with 
mud on the upper side after being calked with 
straw, and sloped toward the passageway. At 
each end of the fort were large double gates. 
When these were closed the station was safe 
from Indian attack. At the approach of one of 
the coaches the gates in that direction were 
opened to let it enter, and quickly closed behind. 
Within were stables, blacksmith shop, kitchen 
and sleeping apartments, all very comfortable and 
with plenty of room.There were more than the 
usual number of men here, six or seven at least. 
There was no well within the station but a 
great many barrels were kept filled with water 
and the stream was but a short distance away. 
When the railway was completed, all the com¬ 
pany's property was abandoned and I once after¬ 
ward visited this station on Shell Creek when it 
was a nucleus of a new camping site which shortly 
fizzled out. The first comers had simply taken 
possession of the two buildings I have described 
and, partitioning them off to suit their conveni¬ 
ence, had established saloons, gambling room, 
restaurant, barber shop and lodging house in the 
old station. It was a noisy and boisterous place, 
and I remember that, having provided for my 
pony and got my supper, I took my blankets and 
went out near the corral to sleep, in preference 
to the lodging house, and in. the course of the 
night came near being stepped on by a wandering 
mule whom I almost scared into a fit by the yell 
I gave when I awoke and saw it almost over me. 
The stage company’ supplies for this and all 
stations westward were brought from California, 
and some canned fruits and vegetables, a com¬ 
paratively new thing at that time, gave variety 
to the table. The afternoon of the day we dined 
at Shell Creek station was passed in crossing 
Steptoe Calley, and through what is now called 
Egan Canyon at which place was the . supper 
station. 
My traveling companion and I, with an end seat 
in the coach for each of us, passed a comfortable 
night, and took breakfast at a station nestled at 
the foot of a considerable butte which stood ad¬ 
vanced from the main range far into a wide 
sage brush covered valley, across which the stage 
road stretched with hardly a curve to conceal its 
course, to a low pass in the mountain range, 
which bounded the butte to the westward. There 
were a number of cold and clear springs bub¬ 
bling out from a thicket of willows and alders 
below a mass of sandstone rocks at the base of 
the butte, which was the reason for the location 
of the station at this point. 
We were told that about fifty miles further 
on was Austin, the principal mining camp of the 
Reese River country, at that time the farthest 
east of any place where mining worthy of the 
name had been done in Nevada. 
It was my intention to stop over for a day or 
two, and see the mines more particularly be¬ 
cause a friend from California, Mr. C. of Sacra¬ 
mento, was at that time the superintendent of 
the principal mines and reduction works. The 
fifty miles, if it only was that distance, for it 
seemed much more, took the coach teams nearly 
all the remainder of the day, over a succession 
of sage brush valleys and sparsely timbered hills, 
their rough outlines softened by a few cedars, 
nut pines and mountain mahogany. 
About four o’clock we saw the smoke from 
the roasting furnaces and mills, and an hour 
later were clattering up the main street of Aus¬ 
tin between the usual closely built rows of frame 
houses with square gable fronts. Not a familiar 
face was to be seen among the crowd gathered 
to watch our arrival; but as soon as I had 
registered, and secured a room at the hotel, I 
sought the office of the mining company and 
found Mr. C. upon the point of locking up his of¬ 
fice for the day. 
He was delighted to see me, and insisted that I 
should occupy a vacant bedroom adjoining his 
own in the company house. He was a bachelor, 
his domestic arrangements being in charge of a 
darkey who had somehow drifted to this outpost 
of civilization, and secured the kind of employ¬ 
ment the members of his race seem best fitted 
for, and which they prefer, that of serving the 
white man in some personal capacity. Jim was 
dispatched to the hotel for my bag, and after I 
had made myself as presentable as possible, we 
went to the principal restaurant of the place, and 
in a side room by ourselves, had one of the best 
dinners I ever sat down to, with as fine wines 
as could be procured in San Francisco. Indeed, 
if everything had not been of the best, why 
should I so clearly remember this particular din¬ 
ner? It is true I had been faring rather roughly 
and was entitled to a good appetite; but it is also 
a fact that you could get better things, if you 
were prepared to pay for them, at the chief res¬ 
taurant of any prosperous mining camp, 500 
miles from a railroad, or a seaport, than you 
could in a Wisconsin or Illinois “city” of twenty 
or thirty thousand inhabitants. The man who 
had money in those places had it to spend, not 
to save, and there were enough of them coming 
and going all the time to make it worth the while 
of the proprietor of the local “Restaurant de 
Paris,” or “Delmonico,” to keep things on hand 
which would never be called for in an eastern 
country town of twenty times the population. 
After dinner we went over to the hotel where 
C. apologized good-naturedly for moving me from 
there to 'his quarters; and then after smoking 
many cigars, and taking a glance in at all the 
gambling houses and other sights of the place, 
we turned in for the night. Next day I went 
down into the mine. The veins of ore were not 
wide, only two or three feet at the most, and 
once or twice pinching out to only an inch or 
two in a most alarming manner for the owners, 
but fortunately always widening out again. The 
ore was very rich, with, however, the great dis¬ 
advantage of having the silver and gold mingled 
with base metals, lead, antimony, zinc, etc., which 
necessitated the roasting in order to burn out 
and vaporize these before milling and amalga¬ 
mating with quicksilver. There being no min¬ 
eral coal to be had for the roasting furnaces, 
charcoal was used, and this was made by char¬ 
coal burners who located themselves in the 
mountains sometimes twenty or thirty miles 
away, wherever there was timber suitable for 
the purpose. 
The pinon or nut pine was the favorite fuel 
although every kind of wood was used. 
The charcoal burners were a rough lot, as may 
be imagined, and theirs was a lonely life, each 
one being desirous, of course, of having his loca¬ 
tion all to himself. A lad apparently of four¬ 
teen of fifteen years old who, in company with a 
man who had brought in a load of charcoal from 
the mountains, was pointed out to me as a girl; 
the man was her father. Austin was a place of 
enough importance to be an independent starting 
point for the stage coach, that is, it left for Cali¬ 
fornia every morning at nine o’clock, regardless 
of the time of arrival of the one from the east; 
so I was not able to leave until the morning of 
the second day after my arrival, as I would not 
have had any lime had I taken the Friday morn¬ 
ing coach, having come in so late on Thursday. 
However, Saturday, April 12th, saw me again 
on my way after many cordial good wishes from 
my host, and sundry new-made friends. There 
were a half dozen passengers from Austin for 
Virginia City. The country between these two 
points is absolutely the worst between the Platte 
and the Sacramento. 
Rugged mountain ranges, running in every di¬ 
rection, and alkali or salt flats of miles in ex¬ 
tent between, were the characteristic features of 
the landscape. To the northward of our route 
are the sinks of both the Carson and the Hum¬ 
boldt where the waters of these two rivers, the 
latter after a course of over 300 miles, spread 
over vast flats, in places as far as one can see, 
and finally disappear, partly by evaporation and 
partly by absorption in the volcanic ash sand and 
scoria which constituted the bottoms of most 
Nevada valleys. In the summer these sinks were 
nearly dried up, and three-fourths of the space 
where there was water in April, was, in Septem¬ 
ber, a sun-baked and alkali-encrusted plain, shin¬ 
ing in the sun as if covered with snow. 
Since the period of which I have been writ¬ 
ing, there has been an important change in these 
two sinks of the Carson and of the Humboldt, 
owing to the use of the streams for irrigation; 
so that in case of the latter, and probably of the 
former also, for a considerable portion of the 
year, not a drop of their waters ever gets, within 
many miles of their old point of disappearance. 
Dams and irrigating ditches use it all. I saw the 
bed of the Humboldt, in 1907, probably a hun¬ 
dred miles from the old sink, and there was not 
a drop of running water. At the same place in 
1867 the stream-was—so me twenty yards wide 
and a foot or two deep even in summer. 
(To Be Continued.) 
