The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-11-03

several years. I believe he got about three hundred thousand dollars for his share when he sold, and he had got as much more from dividends, too.
 Just as soon as the mine had passed into the new hands the facts of the as- say came out. Jeminy! but there was a roar of astonishment and anger up in the little mining camp of Virginia City then, Old Comstock was almost crazy for weeks, and Osborne was in despair. It was found that the Wagon-load of ore that Walsh had taken to the assay CT was worth over forty-seven hundred dollars, that it had been assayed at thirteen thousand dollars a ton, that the money had been deposited in a bank, and that the men in Sacramento and Frisco who had been let into the secret were wild over the discovery of such wonderful ore Iron in it? Not a it. Walsh had been made one of the syndicate that had come on to buy the Ophir mine, and had concealed the written report of the assay. Penrod never smiled again after he saw how stupendously rich the lode was of which he had sold his sixth interest for a paltry five thousand dollars. Con- stock himself went to California, and I have heard he never wanted to see the Ophir again after he heard how it was paying dividends of ninety thousand dollars a. month. His share in the mine would have brought him fully twelve million dollars in fifteen years had he but known the correct assay and held on. q .....
 1.-The new Ophir Mining company went to work in 1861 to develop the lode, They were scientific miners for those days, and they brought the finest machinery known in mining to Nevada
 James G. Fair, afterward the famous bonanza miner, and once United States senator from Nevada, went to Virginia City in 1862 as a superintendent in the Ophir, and John w. Mackay went there in 1865, They had the means of getting the best knowledge of the lode They soon saw that the Comstock lode was far richer than it's buyers had ever dreamed, They set about finding from the indications in the shafts and tun- nels haw far the Comstock lode
 reached, and it's dip and course. In that way came the opening of the Sier-
 ra and the Ruby, over to the north of
 the Ophir. Dozens of men spent small fortunes trying to get the southerly course of the Comstock lode. Joe Win ters spent all the money he had made
 as one of the original Ophir Mining company, in trying to determine how far out the lode reached to the south
 east He consulted astrologers and
 paid money to humber of wild-eyed
 cranks who claimed to have mysterious ,f ba ats of bn rt !, at one hundred dollars a day and all
 expenses paid. But Flood, Mackay,
 Fair and O'Brien found that secret, and they located south of the Ophir the bonanza mines, the Crown Point, Bel cher and Consolidated Virginia, and no sudden fortunes like theirs from mining have ever been anywhere equalled in 1 the world In 1872 the four bonanza
 kings took out over fifty-four million l dollars in clean profits from the Com
 stock lode. I have heard Penrod tell in | Virginia City and Frisco many a time, while he sobbed, how he had sold a 1 sixth interest in that lode for a pitiful 1 five thousand dollars. He lived in Vir- | ginia City for years and was one of it's ! characters.
 "In 1876 the limits of the Comstock | lode were reached. Prospectors have | tried for over twenty years to find it again among the hills and mountains of
 Nevada, but so far all in vain. Of 1 course, that lode, although broken and | twisted, extends somewhere, and some | day it may be relocated. There's no
 reason why trshould not be as rich
 elsewhere as the mines in it have al-
 ready been, and it may make another
 set of bonanza millonaires "-New | York Sun.