The Wealth Nevada Has Already Given To The World Is Indeed Wonderful,
But The Only Grand Marvel Is The Energy Expended In Its Development.
The amount of prospecting done in the face of so many dangers and
sacrifices, the innumerable tunnels and shafts bored into the
mountains, the mills that have been built - these would seem to require
a race of giants.
But, in full view of the substantial results
achieved, the pure waste manifest in the ruins one meets never fails
to produce a saddening effect.
The dim old ruins of Europe, so eagerly sought after by travelers,
have something pleasing about them, whatever their historical
associations; for they at least lend some beauty to the landscape.
Their picturesque towers and arches seem to be kindly adopted by
nature, and planted with wild flowers and wreathed with ivy; while
their rugged angles are soothed and freshened and embossed with green
mosses, fresh life and decay mingling in pleasing measures, and the
whole vanishing softly like a ripe, tranquil day fading into night.
So, also, among the older ruins of the East there is a fitness felt.
They have served their time, and like the weather-beaten mountains are
wasting harmoniously. The same is in some degree true of the dead
mining towns of California.
But those lying to the eastward of the Sierra throughout the ranges of
the Great Basin waste in the dry wilderness like the bones of cattle
that have died of thirst. Many of them do not represent any good
accomplishment, and have no right to be.
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