The silver state news. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1907-1909, 1908-05-14

ley and William Hart claimed that
ground, and advised O'Riley and Nc
Llaughlin to buy them out. Penrose
was delegated to make the purchase,
and for $50 zach succeeded in get
ting a bill of sale from Penney, Cur
ley and Old Virginia. Comstock ex-
exchanged an old horse for the other
tenth interest in the stream. 1t was
then agreed that O'Riley, McLaugh-
lin, Penrose and Comstock should own
the ground and water in common, They
went to work running three rockers,
which paid them $500 per day for
each man.
All this time only gold was thought
of although the miners were continual
ly troubled with black sand which
clogged their rockers and sluices.
There are two stories of how it was
discovered that the great lode was
more a silver than a gold mine. One
is that the miners gave some Of this
black material to "Snowshoe' Thomp
son, who carried the mail on his back
from P~lacerville, California to Genoa,
Nevada and the surrounding camps
in the winter on shonwshoes, hence
his sobriqnet, that Thompson showed
the material to Professor Frank Stew
art, an editor of a little newspaper
in Placerville, California, who, on
looking at it, told Thompson hat he
had no way of testing it, but that
it looked like what the books called
black sulphurettes of silver, and adj
vised him to have 1t assayed at Sacra-
pnonfn That Thnpnponp 1.1 NTH fka
result that it showed some $500 per
ton in gold and silver, the silver pre-
dominating.
Very soon the great lode was locat-
ed up and down for miles and miles,
the locations often overlapping each
othher. Many of the locations were
so indefinite in descriptions and dates
and erudely and vaguely written and
the records so carelessly kept, that the
adjusting of accounts kept the courts
busy and made a perpetual harvest for
lawyers for years thereafter
The first great showing was in the
Spanish and Ophir mines and as the.
daily yield was reported it stirred the
whole coast and quickly spread to the
East.
In the meantime Virginia City had
become a big little city, The salaries
paid, the retainers paid to lawyers,
the fortunes made in a day in stocks,
the rush and roar of business, all CON-
bined to draw to that city the very
foremost talent in the United States
at that time.
There were fortunes being made
every day in stocks and fortunes be-
ing lest, because if there had not been
any lost, there would not have been
money enough in the world to make up
the game, and all the while William
held his hand steadily at the
wheel, and they used to say that he
could pour three MILLION dollars into
a hole without the tremble of a nerve.
had a suspicion that he had a
promonition when he did things of
kind, Of about when the money
would come back. Dominicv Tarpey
used to tell one story on him. He
and Sharon had been calling on the
boys for some shorts, which they had
been foolish enough to sell. Things
were very blue. Tarpey went out of
the hills and reached San Francisco
lust when the panic was the worst. in
usual way he walked up to the
bar where they were used to drink.
ing threw a $50 gold piece ON thecoun-
ter and said, Boys, come aand take
drink A little short Irishman
walked up behind him, picked up the
$40 piece bitit and then dropped it on
on the counter where it would ring.
md everybody watched him. When
it was still, he looked up at Tarpey
and simply said, "Did Sharon know
you had thate'
When the first ore was found in the
Virginia, the stock was
at about SO. A year and a half
the values had increased so that
the stock was selling at 5000 a share.
the owners in the Con-Virginia
General Thomas II. Williams.
He was a LAWYER. He tried the case for
mining company and as a fee re-
1873 shares of the old Con-Vir.
ginia. He tried for two years to I'M
load it, and to his friends he told how
hard he had worked on the case, how
4 ueh he needed the money, how much
his family needed the money, but he
not sell. Three years after he
up one morning with $12, 100000,
and then his opinion of the mine was
for by everybody, he being
IN expert Why shouldn t a man who
had made $12, 100000 out Of a mine be