The San Francisco call., 1898-01-23

giants who wrought in those old bonanza days.
 Of course we were eXtravagant. When we had money we spent it roy ally. Why, San Francisco, half your young men were directly or indirectly supported by our mines. We used to pay dollar a pound for butter, for hay $100 a ton. We paid our cooks S100 a month. Our shovels cost $9 apiece. We paid S1 a pound for freight. The best your markets could produce was sent up over the mountains and that crook ed little railway to Virginia City. We spent ten millions in litigation. It cost us three-quarters of a million monthly to pay wages in the mines. Our 20,000 people spent s900,00O year for beer. It took 61.200 pounds of quicksilver month for use in our mills. Two million dollars was spent that Comstockers might drink mountain water that is the purest, the sweetest draught that has ever quenched mans thirst. We used S0,000,0 900 feet of lumber a year in tim bering our mines. Once in 1863 we made the trip between Sacramento and Vir- ginia City by stage in twelve hours and twenty-three minutes. Steam and iron do not accomplish as much nowadays, over the same route.
 But everybody was a millionaire, or expected to be one, in those days. All one had to do was to buy mine, like Con. Virginia say. The Big Bonanza could have been bought for $40.0OO, but 1t took nearly s100.000. In three years 1t produced s105 O00, 900. Or if you hadn't quite S10000 to invest, it was almost as profitable and ten times as interesting to buy Crown Point at g a share and watch it sail up to $1S25; or Belcher at $1 50 share and sell at s1525 a share.
 
 the heart of the Comstock was struck, and a cubic chamber ten feet on edge was exposed, glittering with stephanite, with the finest chlorides and the richest black sulphurets.
 "The scene within this imperial treas ure house was a stirring sight. Cribs of timber were piled in successive stages from basement to dome, 400 feet above, and everywhere were men at work in changing shifts, descending and ascending in the crowded cages. clambering up to their assigned stopes with swinging lanterns or fiickering candles. picking and drilling the crum- bling ore or pushing lines of loaded cars to the stations on the shaft. Flashes of exploding powder were blaZ- ing from the rent faces of the stopes: blasts of gas and smoke filled the con- meeting drifts: mufffed roars echoed
  hours a hail of rock fragments might be heard rattling on the floor of level and massive Jumps of ore falling heav- fly on the slanting pile at the foot of the breast"
 The total valuation of all the mines on the Comstock lode at that time was nearly S400 000. .000.
 Now-well, now the Comstock Is in borrasca. But the spirit of the Com stock is as sanguine. as unconquered as ever. Old Comstockers will tell you that forty years ago the bears de- clared Nevada a "played-out" country while the richest treasure in the world lay at their very feet. Tn that queer little. slanting city which circles Mount Davidson, blessed with the most glor- ious climate, air which is like ethereal ized champagne. there are undismayed old miners whose hopes shine as stead fastly as the stars that bespangle the skies these dark, cold winter nights. They know that the Comstock in her old spendthrift days threw away enough to make a f1ourishing mining camp of '97 or '9S. They are firm in their belief that. in time. some way will be discovered of working the old tail ings. They have faith in the old lode They hone for the re-opening of old levels. They are ready to declare for the Brunswick ledge.
 They will never admit that the Com stock is dead.