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

SoC ms money ana went back to work as mining laborer, and Mrs. Carter went to live in Comstock's camp. Car ter stayed about Forest City for few months, spent all the money he got from the sale of his wife and wandered off to Sacramento. Comstock married Mrs. Carter four or five years later, and the last heard of her she had an aw- ful row with Comstoek and they were divorced. That was in 1868, when Com stock was living in Grass Valley, Cal, and was fairly well to do.
 "Comstocls and Joe Winters and
 Many Penrod's dry washings began to
 peter out in October, 1598. The miners,
 just as restless then as they are now, one by one pulled up stakes and struck
 out over the mountains looking for col
 or in other localities. One day Con-
 stock was going back to camp from
 Forest City with 'Kentuck' Osborne.
 He was very observing man and
 natural born prospector.
 " 'Kaintuck, this here sand looks
 blankety- blank good said he. I'm go-
 ing to try it. I've been thinking about
 it for weeks
 He filled his hat with the sand and
 
 meal he got out pan and washed it.
 The richness was apparent at once.
 I've been told by Osborne that the first
 pan ran over one dollar. That was the
 first gold ever taken from the wonder ful Ophir.
 'Kaintuck,' said Comstock, as he
 banned on sand, this is the biggest
 thing yet, and we'll beat the world
 now
 That very night the whole Comstock
 camp moved over to the new diggings
 and made their claims on the soil over
 which they had tramped scores of times
 and across which several hundred men searching for richness in mines, had
 passed without thought that over one hundred million dollars of yellow metal,
 and as much more in silver, lay there | below them in the dirt and rocks, only | awaiting some one to claim 1t. There l were with Comstock at that time John | E. Clark, Joe Winters, 'Kentuck Os- | borne and Pete Reilly. That was in | the latter part of October, 1859. The l men made their claims and went to
 work next day. They hauled their l chute over from the former diggings l and made new chute so as to carry
 water down from spring mile away. ! The lines of the mine were plainly vis- { ible. The pay dirt was about ten feet l across and about forty long. I never | saw any richer l went over to see the l men several times every month and 1 looked the country over for a mine of I my own, but I never struck one worth much. For a few days Comstock and | Winters and the others worked in dirt | that ran six dollars an ounce. Think of that! I saw lots of 1t that ran that | high. The men bought wooden pails
 and they had so much wealth that they
 measured it by the bucketful. In a
 month the news went about that the
 richest diggings of all had been found, | and the stampede of miners started | that way. By January there were over five hundred miners on the scene That 1 was the beginning of Virginia City. By | the way, the name came from saloon 1 keeper there who had been known in | California and Nevada as Virginny l Mike, because he came from Virginia | "Comstock and his partners kept
 right on mining, and the hundreds of other fellows skirmished for thirty miles around and didn't find enough to | puy D6dllS dilu DdCOll. 1 WOIkeu TOT | Comstock few weeks, but went back ] to California when the internal Flutes
 began warfare in February, 1860. I had l two cousins who were overland pony
 express riders and were killed and
 scalped by the Flutes, and heard eve ] ry few days of some fresh murder by ! the. savages So I got scared, and, with
 nearly every other white man in Neva- l da, got out Comstock and his part
 ners paid extra wages, and furnished ] their men with shotguns and pistols, and so they kept at work with guard | constantly about the camp for several months. I think it was along in June, | 1860, that the surface Ophir petered out. 1 It did so suddenly, and the miners were | blue and discouraged, notwithstanding 1 that each had a good-sized fortune 1 Old Comstock would have sold out what claims he had there for two thousand ! dollars any day. When the dirt had | been washed away to the depth of q dozen or so feet the men came on a grayish-hued fiinty rock that was l strange in those days. Comstock had l been prospecting for ten years, and had
 never seen anything like it before That was the discovery of the true Comstock lode-the quartz that made the greatest mining kings of the world. One would naturally wonder now why Comstock and his partners did not have the rock assayed there, but mining was a crude science in the west thirty-sev- en years ago, and the best of miners knew little of metallurgy The Ophir owners examined carefully the queer looking rock, and several of them were sure it was iron ore. Comstock himself was sure of that. They did nothing with the rock for month or so when they decided to spend several hundred
 dollars and have it tested by an expert in Sacramento So they got out @ | whole wagon load of the grayish rock, and with @ string of mules sent it over to Sacramento to an assayer A sharp young lawyer at Virginia City named
 Pat Walsh wanted to go to Sacramento | on business, and he was sent along to | get the assayer's report on the stuff. The Piute war was over by that time | and I went back to Virginia City while Walsh was absent. I remember seeing him on his way to Sacramento at that time with his load of rock-the first of the bonanza ore
 "Walshs return to Virginia City was not awaited with much anxiety. Com stock and his partners were pretty sure thaiy, ora full nf i,or yHvto,, Eu, 1.l>