But With Few
Exceptions, These Mining Storms Pass Away About As Suddenly As They
Rise, Leaving Only Ruins To Tell Of The Tremendous Energy Expended, As
Heaps Of Giant Boulders In The Valley Tell Of The Spent Power Of The
Mountain Floods.
In marked contrast with this destructive unrest is the orderly
deliberation into which miners settle in developing a truly valuable
mine.
At Eureka we were kindly led through the treasure chambers of
the Richmond and Eureka Consolidated, our guides leisurely leading the
way from level to level, calling attention to the precious ore masses
which the workmen were slowly breaking to pieces with their picks,
like navvies wearing away the day in a railroad cutting; while down at
the smelting works the bars of bullion were handled with less eager
haste than the farmer shows in gathering his sheaves.
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. They are monuments of fraud
and ignorance - sins against science. The drifts and tunnels in the
rocks may perhaps be regarded as the prayers of the prospector,
offered for the wealth he so earnestly craves; but, like prayers of
any kind not in harmony with nature, they are unanswered. But, after
all, effort, however misapplied, is better than stagnation. Better
toil blindly, beating every stone in turn for grains of gold, whether
they contain any or not, than lie down in apathetic decay.
The fever period is fortunately passing away. The prospector is no
longer the raving, wandering ghoul of ten years ago, rushing in random
lawlessness among the hills, hungry and footsore; but cool and
skillful, well supplied with every necessary, and clad in his right
mind.
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