Daily press. [volume] (Newport News, Va.) 1896-current, 1907-04-06

o'oHShiS uo Ill tie Ull'ltS 10 inc
prospector and miner her smile means
all That the heart OF man can desire:
her fromn means disappointment de.
SPAR, perhaps death. Yet She seat
tiers smiles and frowns with frivolous
disregard to the merits of those who
WOO her. Sometimes she seems Il
grim, sardonic joker, making uuips and
jests of the lives and hopes of men;
sometimes the tragedies she inspires
are unrelieved by even graveyard hui
NOR; and sometimes, though not often.
she plays the leading woman in Il com,
edy so bright and cheerful that the
whole world joins in the laugh. Yet,
strumpct though she is, she never
lacks ardent suitors for her favor, even
though she leads them through fire,
famine and dishonor into the very
jaws of death.
The Comstock Discovery.
With the possible exception of Mar
shall's lucky find in the race of SUIT
ters mill, which started the rush of
the forty-niners to California, the most
famous of American gold discoveries
was that of the Comstock lode. Yet
years before COmstGck ever saw Ne
Vada the pan, the cradle, the long tom
and the sluice box had extracted tens
or millions from the sands of the
Washoe placers, composed of crumbs
mat had dropped from the table of
Dives spread at the foot OF Mount Da-
wilson. Every miner in the Washoe
district experienced the same difficult
", due to n heavy, blush black sub
stance that refused to be washed away
with the lighter sand and gravel. No
one knew what it was, but they felt
sure it wasn't gold, and gold was the
only thing they wanted Probably it
caused more profanity than anything
else ever found in Il mining camp. Yet
it was sulphuret of silver, worth more
than six thousand dollars to the ton,
one-third in gold and the rest in sill
yer; and every miner in the Wasloe
digsings ignorantly threw away four
times the wealth that his misdirected
labor yielded.
Then the Grosh brothers came upon
the scene. They hailed from Maine,
where people are born asking ques-
tons. They didn't know What the
black stuff was, either, but they took
the trouble to find out: and of all of
the tens of thousands of seasoned
sourdoughs and unseasoned tenderfeet.
these two young men from Maine were
they were doing. They did not pro-
claim their knowledge in every saloon
and dance hall in the district but set
to work to find out where the sulphur
ret of silver came from. Their quest
was successful. They located the great
mother lode that was destined to set
the financial world agog. disorganize
the worlds monetary system, create
scores OF multimillionaires, anu insti-
gate the crime of '76" One of them
started for California TO enlist the aid
OF capitalists. The other stayed to
watch the mine. Then the jade for
time played them a scurvy trick The
first froze to death in the Icy passes
of the Sierras. The other drove Il
rusty pick into his foot and died Of
blood poisoning.
Next came Pat Mclaughlin and Pete
O'Riley. With the proverEial luck of
fools and tenderfeet they struck phe-
nomenal streak of pay dirt that lay
like golden blanket over the spot in
which the main shaft of the Virginia
mine was destined to be driven. AS
they busted themselves washing out
the particles blind luck drove Henry
Comstock that way. He was lank,
cadaverous, untutored and unwashed
Canadian. Possessed of neither holi-
or, brains nor industry, he was yet
gifted with nerve SO monumental that
1t oyertopped the highest peak of the
-.erras. Seeing the CLINT OF color in
the rocker, he dismounted from his
pony and coolly informed the workers
that they were trespassing upon his
farm and using water from his stream,
because, forsooth, he owned all the
land whereabouts by right of agricul
tnral location. or course this was
pure fiction. but the bluff was not
called. The over-anXious discoveries
promptly donated him a two-thirds in
terest in the greatest mineral discov
cry ever made in America.
Reward for His Nerve.
Comstock's Incompatible nerve thus
gave his name to the famous mother
lode of Nevada, and James Finney, a
harmless but worthless drunkard,
known in the camp as "Old Virginia, :"
bestowed his sobriquet upon one of the
famous Big Bonanza mines, as well as
upon the city that sprang into exist
ence. Those two and the pair whom
Comstock -..u hoodwinked Jared little
better than the Grosh brothers. Fin
ney drank himself into the grave;
SoihSLoCh WeHl crazy anu committed
suicide; O'kiley died in an insane
asylum, and Mclaughlin did odd Jobs
in the camp for awhile and then drift
ed out to California, where he died in
the poorhouse.
Less gruesome has been the fate OF
later Nevada gold seekers, of whom
one of the most renowned is George
Humphrey, the locator of the discov.
~ nj hof 4,
cowpuncher and later a rancher Of
Reno. Two years ago he was seized
by a bad attack of the gold fever, and
haStanpd to Tnnnnnh for trnn tnnnt