The San Francisco call., 1898-01-23

are not matter of choice. And its patrons being what they were, what can you expect of a town?
 We have done some queer things, up there on the side of Mount Davidson in Nevada, 5000 feet above the level Of the sea- In those old days when we had outgrown our antisilVer stupidity and no more sought for paltry gold placers while ten feet below Belcher, Grown Point and Yellow Jacket lay a rich mass of solid quartz; in those freez- ing winters when we crept into tun- nels and dwelt there to escape the Washoe zephyrs that tore, shrieking, down the canyons, and the snow that shrouded the town in white, Virginia City was made up of frame shantles pitched together as 1T by accldeht' tents of canvas, of blankets. of brush, of potato sacks, and old shirts, with empty whisky barrels for chimneys; smoking novels of mud and stone; coyote holes in the hillsideS forclDiy seized by men; pits and shanties, with smoke issuing from every creVlce' piles of goods and rubbish on craggy points, in the hollows. on the rocks, in the mud, on the snOw-everywhere- scattered broadcast in pellmen con- fusion, as if the clouds had suddenly burst overhead and rained down the dregs of all the flimsy, rickety, filthy little novels and rubbish of merchan-
  cess of evaporation from the earth since the days of Noah. The intervals of space, which may or may not have been streets, were dotted over with human beings of such sort, variety and numbers that the famous anthills Of Africa were as nothing in comparison. To say that they were rough, muddy, unkempt and unwaShed would be but faintly expressive of their actual ap- pearance; they seemed to have caught the diabOlical tint and grime of the whole place,
 It must be admitted that we were bad men from Bodie" and Tomb stone terrors'' in those days. We lolled on gambling tables and in the saloons which. like the poor, we still have with us-and we swaggered and bullied and murdered and robbed in our frank, simple Comstock fashion. We hired ourselves at S10 a day as fighting men," and, dressed as miners, we stepped on the cage and went under ground to meet others like us; and down in the hot, dark. moist drifts we fought like subterranean monsters for the possession of a mine. Our judges oh. our judges were so corrupt that nine-tenths of the voting population of the State (and everybody knows we Nevadans are not prudesD signed a pe- tition asking all judges to resign.
 Yes, it's all true. But look at the other side of the account. Your Cali fornia miner knew not one-thOOsandth of the danger, the privation. that we suffered. He washed out his pan of rock on the borders of limpid stream in a climate that made outdoor living delightful. We had to blast and drill and burrow; to work nearly naked in a temperature of 175 degrees at times. We went mad from the heat; we lost
 
 falling, from horrible accidents to machinery. We starved, we stiled. We spent our best years more than half a mile below the surface of the earth. If our faults were great what adjective will you use to describe our virtues? :? The Conlstock has produced such heroes as the world has not known elsewhere. It has given birth and op- portunity to men of extraordinary genius We have taught the world how to construct Comstock pumps that lift 1000 GOO gallons of water a day; how to build V fumes and carry water twenty-five miles across thirteen steep gulches. every curve and every angle of the road mapped and measured: we have shown you how to dig tunnel more than six miles long, half a mile below the earths surface, and while the famous Freiburg tunnel was ad- vancing twenty-siX feet a month, our Sutro tunnel went ahead one hundred and five feet; we originated the most marvellous system of timbering; we built a vast underground city and peo- pied it with thousands of miners Everything we needed we had to in- vent The world has never encountered such difficulties before; but we sur mounted them. "The Comstock system of working ore bodies could no more be improved upon," said scientific en- gineer. than the cells of a honey-bee' II
 We had to have the best. and if the best that existed was not good enough we invented a better. By the magic ot wealth allied to intellect we changed the old arrastra into a gigantic mill the thunder of whose crashing stamps once filled the town with its noisy clat- ter.
 Why, a year of Nevada life then was equal to ten years of life elsewhere, ir opportunity for development, fol growth. Before the railroad was built we spread blankets before the pack burros feet that he might not sink into the snow We built roads that are un- rivaled in picturesqueness by the most famous roads in the old world. The tale can never be fully told of the