CHAPTER 52 | The Writings of Mark Twain (beta)

Explanatory Notes Ⓔ
See Headnote

Apparatus Notes Ⓐ
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CHAPTER 52

[begin page 354]

CHAPTER 52

Since I desire, in this chapter, to say an instructive word or two about the silver mines, the reader may take this fair warning and skip, if he chooses. The year 1863 was perhaps the very top blossom and culmination of the “flush times.”Ⓔexplanatory note Virginia swarmed with men and vehicles to that degree that the place looked like a very hive—that is when one’s vision could pierce through the thick fog of alkali dust that was generally blowing in summer. I will say, concerning this dust, that if you drove ten miles through it, you and your horses would be coated with it a sixteenth of an inch thick and present an outside appearance that was a uniform pale yellow color, and your buggy would have three inches of dust in it, thrown there by the wheels. The delicate scales used by the assayers were enclosedⒶemendation in glass cases intended to be air-tight, and yet some of this dust was so impalpable and so invisibly fine that it would get in, somehow, and impair the accuracy of those scales.

Speculation ran riot, and yet there was a world of substantial business going on, too. All freights were brought over the mountains from California (a hundred and fiftyⒶemendation miles) by pack-train partly, and partly in huge wagons drawn by such long mule teams that each team amounted to a procession, and it did seem, sometimes, that the grand combined procession of animals stretched unbroken from Virginia to CaliforniaⒺexplanatory note. Its long route was traceable clear across the deserts of the Territory by the writhing serpent of dust it lifted up. By these wagons, freights over that hundred and fifty miles were two hundred dollarsⒶemendation a ton for small lots (same price for all express matter brought by stage), and a hundred dollarsⒶemendation a ton for full loads. One Virginia firm received one hundred tons of freight a month, and paid ten thousand dollarsⒶemendation a month freightage. In the winter the freights were much higher. All the bullion was [begin page 355]

silver bricks.

shipped in bars by stage to San Francisco (a bar was usually about twice the size of a pig of lead and contained from fifteen hundred to three thousand dollarsⒶ according to the amount of gold mixed with the silver), and the freight on it (when the shipment was large) was one and a quarter per centⒶ of its intrinsic value. So, the freight on these bars probably averaged something more than twenty-five dollarsⒶ each. Small shippers paid two per cent. There were three stages a day, each way, and I have seen the out-going stages carry away a third of a ton of bullion each, and more than once I saw them divide a two-ton lot and take it off. However, these were extraordinary events.* Two tons of silver bullion would be in the

This endnote spans pages 355 and 356 in the MTP edition *Mr.Ⓐ Valentine, Wells Fargo’s agentⒺ Ⓐ, has handled all the bullion shipped through the Virginia office for many a month. To his memory—which is excellent—we are indebted for the following exhibit of the company’s business in the Virginia office since the first of January, 1862: From January 1st to April 1st, about $270,000 worth of bullion passed through that office; during the next quarter, $570,000; next quarter, $800,000; next quarter, $956,000; next quarter, $1,275,000; and for the quarter ending on the 30th of last June, about $1,600,000Ⓐ. Thus in a year and a half, the Virginia office only shipped $5,330,000 in bullion. During the year 1862 they shipped $2,615,000, so we perceive the average shipments have more than doubled in the last six months. This gives us room to promise for the Virginia office $500,000 a month for the year 1863 (thoughⒶ perhaps, judging by the steady increase in the business, weⒶ are underestimating, somewhat)Ⓐ. This gives us $6,000,000 for the year. Gold Hill and Silver City together can beat us—we will give themⒶ $10,000,000. To Dayton, Empire City, Ophir and Carson City, we will allow an aggregate of $8,000,000, which is not over the mark, perhaps, and may possibly be a little under it. To Esmeralda we give $4,000,000. To Reese River and Humboldt $2,000,000, which is liberal now, but may not be before the year is out. So we prognosticate that the yield of bullion this year will be about $30,000,000. Placing the number of mills in the Territory at 100, this gives to each the labor of producingⒶ $300,000 in bullion during the twelve months. Allowing them to run 300 days in the year, (which none of them more than do) this makes their work average $1,000 a dayⒶ. Say the mills average 20 tons of rock a day and this rock worth $50 as a general thing, and you haveⒶ the actual work of our 100 mills figured downⒶ “to a spot”—$1,000 a day each, and $30,000,000 a year in the aggregate.—Enterprise.Ⓔ Ⓐ Enterprise.
　　 [A considerable overestimate.—M. T.]Ⓐ [begin page 356] neighborhood of forty bars, and the freight on it over a thousand dollarsⒶ. Each coach always carried a deal of ordinary express matter besidesⒶ, and also from fifteen to twenty passengers at from twenty-five to thirty dollarsⒶ a headⒺ. With six stages going all the time, Wells, Fargo and Co.’s Virginia City business was important and lucrative.

All along under the centre of Virginia and Gold Hill, for a couple of miles, ran the great Comstock silver lode—a vein of ore from fifty to eighty feet thick between its solid walls of rock—a vein as wide as some of New York’s streets. I will remind the reader that in Pennsylvania a coal vein only eight feet wide is considered ample.

timber supports.

Virginia was a busy city of streets and houses above ground. Under it was another busy city, down in the bowels of the earthⒺexplanatory note, where a great population of men thronged in and out among an intricate maze of tunnels and drifts, flitting hither and thither under a winking sparkle of lights, and over their heads towered a vast web of interlocking timbersⒺexplanatory note that held the walls of the gutted Comstock apart. These timbers were as large as a man’s body, and the framework stretched upward so far that no eye could pierce to its top through the closing gloom. It was like peering up through the clean-picked ribs and bones of some colossal skeleton. [begin page 357] Imagine such a framework two miles long, sixty feet wide, and higher than any church spire in America. Imagine this stately lattice-work stretching down Broadway, from the St. Nicholas to Wall street, and a Fourth of July procession, reduced to pigmies, parading on top of it and flaunting their flags, high above the pinnacle of Trinity steepleⒺexplanatory note. One can imagine that, but he cannot well imagine what that forest of timbers cost, from the time they were felled in the pineries beyond Washoe Lake, hauled up and around Mount Davidson at atrocious rates of freightage, then squared, let down into the deep maw of the mine and built up there. Twenty ample fortunes would not timber one of the greatest of those silver mines. The Spanish proverb says it requires a gold mine to “run” a silver oneⒺexplanatory note, and it is true. A beggar with a silver mine is a pitiable pauper indeed if he cannot sell.

I spoke of the underground Virginia as a city. The Gould &Ⓐemendation Curry is only one single mine under there, among a great many others; yet the Gould &Ⓐemendation Curry’s streets of dismal drifts and tunnels were five miles in extent, altogether, and its population five hundred miners. Taken as a whole, the underground city had some thirty miles of streets and a population of five or six thousand. In this present day some of those populations are at work from twelve to sixteen hundred feet under Virginia and Gold Hill, and the signalbells that tell them what the superintendent above ground desires them to do are struck by telegraph as we strike a fire alarm. Sometimes men fall down a shaft, there, a thousand feet deep. In such cases, the usual plan is to hold an inquest.

If you wish to visit one of those mines, you may walk through a tunnel about half a mile long if you prefer it, or you may take the quicker plan of shooting like a dart down a shaft, on a small platform. It is like tumbling down through an empty steeple, feet first. When you reach the bottom, you take a candle and tramp through drifts and tunnels where throngs of men are digging and blasting; you watch them send up tubs full of great lumps of stone—silver ore; you select choice specimens from the mass, as souvenirs; you admire the world of skeleton timbering; you reflect frequently that you are buried under a mountain, a thousand feet below daylightⒶemendation; being in the bottom of the mine you climb from “gallery” to “gallery,” up endless ladders that stand straight up and down; when your legs fail you at last, you lie down in a small box-car in a [begin page 358] cramped “incline” like a half-up-ended

from gallery to gallery.

sewer and are dragged up to daylight feelingⒶ as if you are crawling through a coffin that has no end to it. Arrived at the top, you find a busy crowd of men receiving the ascending cars and tubs and dumping the ore from an elevation into long rows of bins capable of holding half a dozen tons each; under the bins are rows of wagons loading from chutes and trap-doors in the bins, and down the long street is a procession of these wagons wending toward the silver mills with their rich freight. It is all “done,” now, and there you are. You need never go down again, for you have seen it all. If you have forgotten the process of reducing the ore in the mill and making the silver bars, you can go back and find it again in my Esmeralda chapters if so disposed.

Of course these mines cave in, in places, occasionally, and then it is worth one’s while to take the risk of descending into them and observing the crushing power exerted by the pressing weight of a settling mountain. I published such an experience in the Enterprise, once, and from it I will take an extract:

An Hour in the Caved Mines.—We journeyed down into the Ophir mine, yesterday, to see the earthquake. We could not go down the deep incline, because it still has a propensity to cave in places. Therefore we traveled through the long tunnel which enters the hill above the Ophir office, and then by means of a series of long ladders, climbed away down from the first to the fourth gallery. Traversing a drift, we came to the Spanish line, passed five sets of timbers still uninjured, and found the earthquakeⒶemendation. [begin page 359] Here was as complete a chaos as ever was seen—vast masses of earth and splintered and broken timbers piled confusedly together, with scarcely an aperture left large enough for a cat to creep through. Rubbish was still falling at intervals from above, and one timber which had braced others earlier in the day, was now crushed down out of its former position, showing that the caving and settling of the tremendous mass was still going on. We were in that portion of the Ophir known as the “north mines.” Returning to the surface, we entered a tunnel leading into the CentralⒺexplanatory note, for the purpose of getting into the main Ophir. Descending a long incline in this tunnel, we traversed a drift or so, and then went down a deep shaft from whence we proceeded into the fifth gallery of the Ophir. From a side-drift we crawled through a small hole and got into the midst of the earthquake again—earth and broken timbers mingled together without regard to grace or symmetry. A large portion of the second, third and fourth galleries had caved in and gone to destruction—the two latter at seven o’clock on the previous evening.

At the turn-table, near the northern extremity of the fifth gallery, two big piles of rubbish had forced their way through from the fifth gallery, and from the looks of the timbers, more was about to come. These beams are solid—eighteen inches square; first, a great beam is laid on the floor, then upright ones, five feet high, stand on it, supporting another horizontal beam, and so on, square above square, like the framework of a window. The superincumbent weight was sufficient to mash the ends of those great uprightⒶemendation beams fairly into the solid wood of the horizontal ones three inches, compressing and bending the upright beam till it curved like a bow. Before the Spanish caved in, some of their twelve-inch horizontal timbers were compressed in this way until they were only five inches thick! Imagine the power it must take to squeeze a solid log together in that way. Here, also, was a range of timbers, for a distance of twenty feet, tilted six inches out of the perpendicular by the weight resting upon them from the caved galleries above. You could hear things cracking and giving way, and it was not pleasant to know that the world overhead was slowly and silently sinking down upon you. The men down in the mine do not mind it, however.

Returning along the fifth gallery, we struck the safe part of the Ophir incline, and went down it to the sixth; but we found ten inches of water there, and had to come back. In repairing the damage done to the incline, the pump had to be stopped for two hours, and in the meantime the water gained about a foot. However, the pump was at work again, and the flood-waterⒶemendation was decreasing. We climbed up to the fifth gallery again and sought a deep shaft, whereby we might descend to another part of the sixth, out of reach of the water, but suffered disappointment, as the men had gone to dinner, and there was no one to man the windlass. So, having seen the earthquakeⒶemendation, we climbed out at the Union incline and tunnelⒺexplanatory note, and adjourned, [begin page 360] all dripping with candle grease and perspiration, to lunch at the Ophir office.Ⓔexplanatory note Ⓐtextual note

During the great flush year of 1863, Nevada [claims to have] produced $25,000,000Ⓐtextual note in bullion—almost, if not quite, a round million to each thousand inhabitants, which is very well, considering that she was without agriculture and manufactures.* Silver mining was her sole productive industry.

*Since the above was in type, I learn from an official source that the above figure is too high, and that the yield for 1863 did not exceed $20,000,000Ⓔ. However, the day for large figures is approaching; the Sutro Tunnel is to plow through the Comstock lode from end to end, at a depth of two thousand feet, and then mining will be easy and comparatively inexpensive; and the momentous matters of drainage, and hoisting and hauling of ore will cease to be burdensome. This vast work will absorb many years, and millions of dollars, in its completion; but it will early yield money, for that desirable epoch will begin as soon as it strikes the first end of the vein. The tunnel will be some eight miles long, and will develop astonishing richesⒺ. Cars will carry the ore through the tunnel and dump it in the mills and thus do away with the present costly system of double handling and transportation by mule teams. The water from the tunnel will furnish the motive power for the mills. Mr. SutroⒺ, the originator of this prodigious enterprise, is one of the few men in the world who is gifted with the pluck and perseverance necessary to follow up and hound such an undertaking to its completion. He has converted several obstinate Congresses to a deserved friendliness toward his important work, and has gone up and down and to and fro in Europe until he has enlisted a great moneyed interest in it there.

Editorial Emendations CHAPTER 52

Ⓐ enclosed (C) • inclosed (A)

Ⓐ a hundred and fifty (C) • 150 (A)

Ⓐ two hundred dollars (C) • $200 (A)

Ⓐ a hundred dollars (C) • $100 (A)

Ⓐ ten thousand dollars (C) • $10,000 (A)

Ⓐ fifteen hundred to three thousand dollars (C) • $1,500 to $3,000 (A)

Ⓐ cent (C) • cent. (A)

Ⓐ twenty-five dollars (C) • $25 (A)

Ⓐ *Mr. (A) • Ye Bulletin Cyphereth.—The Bulletin folks have gone and swallowed an arithmetic; that arithmetic has worked them like a “wake-up-Jake,” and they have spewed up a multitude of figures. We cypher up the importance of the Territory sometimes so recklessly that our self-respect lies torpid within us for weeks afterwards—but we see now that our most preposterous calculations have been as mild as boarding-house milk; we perceive that we haven’t the nerve to do up this sort of thing with the Bulletin. It estimates the annual yield of the precious metals at $730,000,000! Bully! They say figures don’t lie—but we doubt it. We are distanced—that must be confessed; yet, appalled as we are, we will venture upon the Bulletin’s “boundless waste” of figures, and take the chances. A Gould & Curry bar with $2,000 in it weighs nearly 100 pounds; $100,000 worth of their bullion would weigh between two and two and a half tons; it would take two of Wells Fargo’s stages to carry that $100,000 without discommoding the passengers; it would take 100 stages to carry $5,000,000; 2,000 stages to carry $100,000,000, and 14,600 stages to carry the Bulletin’s annual yield of $730,000,000! Wells, Fargo & Co. transport all the bullion out of the Territory in their coaches, and to attend to this little job, they would have to send forty stages over the mountains daily throughout the year, Sundays not excepted, and make each of the forty carry considerably more than a ton of bullion!—yet they generally send only two stages, and the greatest number in one day, during the heaviest rush, was six coaches; they didn’t each carry a ton of bullion, though, old smarty from Hongkong. The Bulletin also estimates the average yield of ore from our mines at $1,000 a ton! Bless your visionary soul, sixty dollars—where they get it “regular like”—is considered good enough in Gold Hill, and it is a matter of some trouble to pick out many tons that will pay $400. From sixty to two hundred is good rock in the Ophir, and when that company, or the Gould & Curry, or the Spanish, or any other of our big companies get into a chamber that pays over $500, they ship it to the Bay, my boy. But they don’t ship thousands of tons at a time, you know. In Esmeralda and Humboldt, ordinary “rich rock” yields $100 to $200, and when better is found, it is shipped also. Reese River appears to be very rich, but you can’t make an “average” there yet awhile; let her mines be developed first. We place the average yield of the ore of our Territory at $100 a ton—that is high enough; we couldn’t starve, easily, on forty-dollar rock. Lastly, the Bulletin puts the number of our mills at 150. That is another mistake; the number will not go over a hundred, and we would not be greatly amazed if it even fell one or two under that. While we are on the subject, though, we might as well estimate the “annual yield” of the precious metals, also; we did not intend to do it at first. Mr. (TE63)

Ⓐ agent (A) • handsome and accomplished agent (TE63)

Ⓐ $1,600,000 (A) • 1,600,000 (TE63)

Ⓐ 1863 (though (A) • 1863, and now, (TE63)

Ⓐ we (A) • we too, like the Bulletin, (TE63)

Ⓐ underestimating, somewhat) (C) • under estimating, somewhat) (A) “underestimating,” somewhat (TE63)

Ⓐ them (A) • them eight, no, to be liberal, (TE63)

Ⓐ producing (A) • not in (TE63)

Ⓐ day (A) • day—one ton of the Bulletin’s rock, or ten of ours (TE63)

Ⓐ have (A) • have got (TE63)

Ⓐ down (A) • down just about (TE63)

Ⓐ aggregate.—Enterprise. (A) • aggregate. Oh no!—we have never been to school—we don’t know how to cypher. Certainly not—we are probably a natural fool, but we don’t know it. Anyhow, we have mashed the Bulletin’s estimate all out of shape and cut the first left-hand figure off its $730,000,000 as neatly as a regular banker’s clerk could have done it. (TE63)

Ⓐ [A considerable overestimate.—M. T.] (C) • [A considerable over estimate.—M. T.] (A) not in (TE63)

Ⓐ a thousand dollars (C) • $1,000 (A)

Ⓐ besides (C) • beside (A)

Ⓐ twenty-five to thirty dollars (C) • $25 to $30 (A)

Ⓐ & (C) • and (A)

Ⓐ daylight (C) • day- | light (A)

Ⓐ feeling (C) • feel- | (A)

Ⓐ earthquake (C) • earth- | quake (A)

Ⓐ upright (C) • up- | right (A)

Ⓐ flood-water (C) • flood- | water (A)

Ⓐ earthquake (C) • earth- | quake (A)

Textual Notes CHAPTER 52

Ⓐ An . . . office.] No printing of this extract from the Enterprise—which is not extant for this period—has been found, so A is necessarily copy-text.

Ⓐ $25,000,000] Figures have been retained for the dollar amounts here and in the two footnotes to this chapter. It was (and still is) customary for compositors to leave such numbers in arabic figures, when “the amounts are large and of frequent recurrence” (De Vinne, 84).

Explanatory Notes CHAPTER 52

Ⓔ The year 1863 was perhaps the . . . culmination of the “flush times.”] See the note at 281.4–6.

Ⓔ the grand combined procession . . . stretched unbroken from Virginia to California] Eliot Lord notes that the mule teams crossing the Sierra at this time “stretched along the highway for miles in an unbroken procession, and if a teamster by chance fell out of line he would often be compelled to wait for hours before he could regain a place in the column” (Lord, 192–93).

Ⓔ a hundred dollars a ton for full loads . . . passengers at from twenty-five to thirty dollars a head] Eliot Lord claims that a “computed average” of five cents per pound was paid to “teamsters and shippers in 1862” (confirming Mark Twain’s “hundred dollars a ton”) and cites an advertised price in 1863 of twenty-seven dollars per stagecoach passenger (Lord, 194). The rest of the figures in this paragraph, although plausible, have not been confirmed.

Ⓔ *Mr. Valentine . . . Enterprise.] This is an excerpt, edited by Mark Twain, from a much longer item he had written for the Enterprise of 27 August 1863, entitled “Ye Bulletin Cyphereth”—a response to gross overestimates of bullion yields which had appeared a few days earlier in the Virginia City Evening Bulletin (SLC 1863n; ET&S1 , 414). Note that Mark Twain’s sums are incorrect: according to his figures, in 1862 the Virginia City office of Wells, Fargo shipped $2,596,000 (not $2,615,000), and between January 1862 and June 1863 it shipped $5,471,000 (not $5,330,000).

Ⓔ Mr. Valentine, Wells Fargo’s agent] Wells, Fargo and Company was organized in May 1852 by Henry Wells (1805–78) and William G. Fargo (1818–81), both of whom had more than a decade of experience in the express business. Within six months of its organization the company [begin page 683] was well established in California mining camps as a major carrier of mail, gold dust and bullion, and passengers. Soon it was the dominant express line in the West, connecting with affiliated companies for delivery throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. In 1863 the company was so successful that it paid its stockholders 122 percent in dividends. John J. Valentine (1840–1901) learned the express business in Kentucky. He emigrated to California in the spring of 1862, where he went to work for Wells, Fargo and Company, but was soon transferred to Virginia City, where he became a joint agent for that company, the Overland Mail Company, and the Pioneer Stage Company. In 1866 he became Wells, Fargo’s superintendent of express, and by 1884 he was vice-president and general manager. He was president of the company from 1892 until his death (Loomis, 15–18, 34, 167, 188, 255, 280).

Ⓔ Under it was another busy city, down in the bowels of the earth] Here Mark Twain touches on a theme often developed in the columns of the Enterprise, even before he joined the staff. For example, in August 1862 the Enterprise local wrote, “Who ever thinks, in walking the streets, that perhaps hundreds of feet beneath him—beneath the city, in the bowels of the earth, a fellow mortal may also be walking in the same direction, in one of the streets of the city below?” (“Underground Life in the Silver Mines,” San Francisco Alta California, 5 Aug 62, 1, reprinting the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise; see also “Subterranean Washoe,” San Francisco Herald and Mirror, 14 May 62, 1, and “Washoe Underneath,” Stockton Independent, 21 June 62, 1, both reprinting the Enterprise).

Ⓔ a vast web of interlocking timbers] The method of timbering a mine in square sets—somewhat like a honeycomb—was invented in 1860 by Philipp Deidesheimer (b. 1832) for use in the Ophir mine, and was soon adopted throughout the Comstock. The Deidesheimer method made possible the extraction of large ore bodies and provided a degree of safety to miners not possible under the old method of support by posts and caps. In late October 1862, about a month after going to work for the Enterprise, Clemens described the Deidesheimer square sets in his account of his descent into the Spanish mine (Angel, 573–74; SLC 1862g).

Ⓔ from the St. Nicholas to Wall street . . . high above the pinnacle of Trinity steeple] The vast and splendid St. Nicholas Hotel was opened in 1853 on Broadway at Spring Street, over a mile north of Wall Street. It was one of Clemens’s favorite stopping places in New York. Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church, on Broadway opposite the head of Wall Street, was completed in 1846; its steeple was 284 feet high (Kouwenhoven, 277; King, 341–42).

Ⓔ The Spanish proverb says it requires a gold mine to “run” a silver one] Richardson also referred to this proverb in Beyond the Mississippi [begin page 684] (370), although he did not identify it as Spanish. George Lyman, in The Saga of the Comstock Lode, renders the original proverb as “Para trabajar una mina de plata se necesita una mina de oro” (Lyman, 361 n. 4).

Ⓔ An Hour in the Caved Mines . . . office.] The Territorial Enterprise printing of this article is not known to survive. In addition to this account, which probably appeared on 17 July 1863, Mark Twain’s descriptions of his descents into the Ophir mine immediately before and after the 15 July cave-in are preserved in his San Francisco Morning Call letters published on 15, 18, and 23 July; in excerpts of Enterprise items reprinted in the Mining and Scientific Press of 27 July; and in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin of 21 July (SLC 1863f–j).

Ⓔ the Central] The Central Mining Company owned 150 feet on the Comstock lode immediately south of the Ophir claim (Lord, 61).

Ⓔ the Union incline and tunnel] The Mexican, California, Central, and Ophir companies cooperated to construct this eleven-hundred-foot tunnel in 1860 in order to “drain the ledge to the depth of 200 feet” (Lord, 88–89).

Ⓔ I learn from an official source . . . that the yield for 1863 did not exceed $20,000,000] In this chapter Mark Twain presents three estimates of 1863 Nevada bullion production: $30 million (355n.18), $25 million (360.4), and $20 million. It is possible that his unidentified “official source” for this last figure was one of the numerous reports prepared in conjunction with the Sutro tunnel project, or even Adolph Sutro himself (see the next two notes). The best estimates now available indicate that the Nevada bullion yield for 1863 was only about $13.1 million: $12.4 million for the Comstock, $.5 million for Esmeralda, and $.2 million for Reese River and Humboldt (Lord, 416; Wasson, 47; Angel, 464; J. Ross Browne 1868, 332, 387, 431).

Ⓔ

the Sutro Tunnel is to plow through the Comstock lode . . . and will develop astonishing riches] The Sutro Tunnel, planned and built by Adolph Sutro at a cost of about $5 million, was begun on 19 October 1869—after several years of heroic effort by Sutro to obtain the required political and financial backing. The main tunnel, which was bored from a spot near the Carson River, east of Virginia City, into the flank of Mount Davidson, was completed on 8 July 1878. According to the 1867 “Report of the Committee on Federal Relations, of the Nevada Legislature,” it was designed to intersect the

mines at a depth of 2,000 feet, draining off the water to that depth by its natural flow, securing the best ventilation, cooling the atmosphere in the mine, furnishing facilities for transportation, and making it possible to dispense with all pumping and hoisting machinery: for the miner can enter the mines from below, work upwards, and the ore will fall by its own gravity; whilst a railroad in [begin page 685] the tunnel will transport the same at small cost to the adjacent valley. (Adolph Sutro, 81)

In August 1871 Clemens queried Sutro (who was about to embark from New York for Europe) about the tunnel project, writing from Hartford, where he was hard at work revising the printer’s copy of Roughing It: “Can’t you run up here for one day? I’m awful busy on my new book on Nevada & California. And by the way you might tell me something about the tunnel that would make an interesting page, perhaps”; ten days later, apparently after a meeting with Sutro in New York, he sent a follow-up telegram requesting the length of the tunnel “when finished” (SLC to Sutro, 19 Aug 71, Koundakjian, and 29 Aug 71, NvHi). Sutro evidently supplied the information for this appended annotation: according to his own 1868 published defense of the project, the main tunnel was to run 4.0 miles, and the lateral branches to it another 3.4 miles, for a total of 7.4 miles. (As built, the branches were about a mile shorter than originally planned.) Although the tunnel was a benefit to the mines, especially as a means of drainage, it was built too late to be very profitable. No sizable bonanzas were discovered after its completion, and about fifty years later it was abandoned (Adolph Sutro, 23; Theodore Sutro, 37–38; Shinn, 194–208; Stewart and Stewart, 168).

Ⓔ Mr. Sutro] Adolph Heinrich Joseph Sutro (1830–98), a native of Prussia, emigrated to America in 1850 and soon proceeded to the West Coast, where he became a successful merchant. Drawn to Nevada in 1860 by the silver discoveries, he built a quartz mill at Dayton, employing a process for extracting metals which he had helped to develop. Within a short time he conceived his tunnel project and devoted his energies to it for over fifteen years. In 1880, after the tunnel was completed, he sold his shares in the Sutro Tunnel Company and returned to San Francisco. Real-estate investments increased his fortune, much of which he devoted to construction projects beneficial to the city. He served as San Francisco’s mayor from 1894 to 1896 (Stewart and Stewart, 9, 19, 26–27, 33, 36–38, 166–68, 181–90, 202–9). Mark Twain described a stagecoach trip with Sutro from Virginia City to Dayton in a letter to the Enterprise written in late 1863 or early 1864. There he briefly portrayed Sutro as a hardheaded, humorless businessman and an outspoken advocate of entrusting all public projects to individual enterprise (SLC 1863x).

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