White Pine news weekly mining review. [volume] (East Ely, Nev.) 1910-1920, 1914-05-17

those famous through half a centur,
are still producing. The little
armies of men still go down in the
bucket" to the face of drifts three
thousand feet below the surface. Ac-
cording to the signs in Con Ahern's
famous old Crystal saloon at Virginia
City, Comstock has produced four
hundred millions in silver and three
hundred millions In gold from ten
million tons of ore taken out of six
hundred miles of tunnels, shafts, in
%clines, drifts, raises, wines and
slopes. Con Ahern came to the camp
soon after FOSTERING Jim Finney,
known as Old Virginia, John Bishop,
Aleck Henderson and Jack Young
had followed rich float up Gold Can
yon just as Peter O'Riley, Patrick
Mclaughlin and Henry Thomas Paige
Comstock, known as Old Pancake.
had followed it up Six-Mile Canyon
and opened the two ends of the
Comstock lode in 1859. Ahern is a
living witness to what happened
when the cry of "On to Washoe,"
went round the world just ten years
after the great gold rush to Cali
fornia. 1t vas California indeed that
supplied the earliest rushers to the
Comstock. The winter of SO saw
San Francisco deserted by nearly
every man who could pay for steamer
passage to Sacramento, whence he
travelled over the s~now-buried Sierra
by whatever method he could afford.
When the Central Pacific engineers
investigated the mountain travel
situation in 1863 preparatory TO
setting stakes for the railroad, they
found a magnificent toll-road reach
ing from Plaeerville to Virginia City.
The one hundred miles of turnpike
had been built at a cost of $500, 900
and was being kept free of snow in
winter and dust in summer at a cost
of $4,000 a mile. The stage coaches
were almost without number. Four
thousand men and twenty thousand
horses lifted one hundred and fifty
million pounds of freight over the
Sierra 10 Virginia City in a year at
six cents a pound.
Con Ahern al tell you of the
hard blue stun" that the discover
ers cursed and threw out of their
way. the same being the richest sill
yer ore ever found; of how each of
the discoveries sold out for a pittance
and each came to an unhappy end.
Old Virginia being thrown from his
horse, while on a spree, and killed;
Ola Pancake Comstock committing
suicide after failing TO recoup; Me-
Laughlin dying a pauper and being
buried at the public expense; O'Riley
losing everything in stock specula-
ton and ending his days in an
asylum for. the insane. Several men
remain in Virginia City who knew
John w. Mackay when he came in
from California after the first ex-
element was over. They knew him
when he lost his savings mining the
Union ground. and when he worked
as a timberman in the Mexican al
81 a day. They knew James G. Fair
from his arrival, saw Mackay and
Fair come together. each being at
traeted by the others mining knowl-
edge and keen business intelligence.
These old witnesses really didn't ex-
pect much when Maekay and Fair
interested James C. Flood and Will
liam S. O'Brien in their operations
and began in a quiet way to buck
William c. Sharon and the Bank OF
California crowd. These same wit
nesses thought Mackay and Fair had
reached the bottom of Con. Virginia
and California in 1874. when sudden
~ lnt pdItutiS cut inlO tue DOndHld
that paid one hundred million dollars
to the stockholders in the next Ave
years. Il remember the day the div
idends passed the hundred millions. y
says one old miner. II was just on
my way down to spend an afternoon
with Alyah Gould. You know Alvah
sold his half of Gould & Curry in the
first days for'$45O. and | was going
down to see him in Reno where he
was running a peanut stand"
The old ones remember too when
the "crazy little German Jew en-
gineer" came to town and swore he
was going to drive a six-mile tunnel
to drain the Lode of water and ore.
In the size of the accomplishment and
in the matter of obstacles overcome
.ho dr;ving of tha C,fra Tunual hy