17 and 19 April 1862 • Aurora, Calif./Nev. Terr. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00043)
P. S. I wrote for $40 or $50 &
some 3
& 10ct stamps—get the
letter?
“Stand by” to let me have $150
when I
call for it.
As to the “Live Yankee,” I will see the President in the morning, and get the Secy’s address.1explanatory note
No, don’t buy any ground, anywhere. The pick and shovel are the only claims I have any confidence in now. My back is sore and my hands blistered with handling them to-day. But something must come, you know.
We shall let a contract on the H. & Derby in a day or two. Most folks like these ledges. I don’t. It will not cost much now, though, to test it with the tunnellⒶemendation.
I, too, have seen very rich specimens from East Walker.2explanatory note Not quite so rich, and gold hardly as fine as that taken from the National, though.
The “Live Yankees,” as you call them, are a pack of d—d fools. They have run a tunnel 100 ft long to strike the croppings.3explanatory note They could have blasted, above ground, easier. It is the craziest piece of work I know of, except that wherein the owners of the “Esmeralda” discovery sold one-half their interests to get money to run a tun seventeen-thousand-dollarⒶemendation tunnel in, to strike the ledge just under the croppings, when said croppings are 100 feet high, and pay $300 a ton in Clayton’s Mill4explanatory note—which, by-the-bye, is an excellent mill, and cannot be beaten any where. It is the only mill here.
Oh, Dewy be d—d. Keep a chance at the “six” if you can, but pay Harroun no money.5explanatory note If I can dig pay rock out of a ledge here myself, I will buy—not otherwise.
Yes—if we find good rock in the H. & Derby, wil we’llⒶemendation incorporate it. Raish and I would then have full control of it—we represent 750 feet in it.
Got Billy’s letter. Tell him to be Recorder.6explanatory note
Crooker7explanatory note wants you to certify his claim, as enclosed, or, if it isn’t figured up right, why, ma figureⒶemendation it up right yourself, get the scrip for it, and, if you can sell the scrip for 75 cents, do so, and forward the money—if not, forward the scrip. I told him it was a d—d sight easier to sell tracts than scrip in Carson. (It may be well enough, though, to sell enough to pay your fee for the seal, you know.)8explanatory note Also, do ditto and likewise for R. M. Howland, who was Messenger, only, but traveled 30 miles more, (to Mono,) making 150 miles. You can sell his for 50 cents, and if anyⒶemendation body offers that, and send u the money to me or Raish—don’t collect your fee in this case, though. Crooker sent his bill by Kinney to Turner, once.
Well, things are so gloomy that I begin to feel really jolly and comfortable again.9explanatory note I enjoy myself hugely now.
Saturday—I have fixed the “Live Yankee”—it is all right now. Port-folio & the Gen.’s letter came to hand all right.
O. Clemens, Esq. | C KarsonⒶemendation City | N. T. postmaster’s hand: Esmeralda Cal, | April 21st 1862 brace postage stamp cut away
A. D. Allen, president of the Live Yankee Mining Company, was an early locator on the Comstock lode and in the summer of 1860 was one of the organizers of the Bodie mining district (southwest of Esmeralda) and one of the locators of the Real del Monte mine in Aurora (Angel, 58; Wasson, 6, 44). Later, while working as foreman of the Wide West mine, he joined with Clemens and Calvin Higbie in the blind-lead project that supposedly made them millionaires for ten days (see 23 July 62 to OCclick to open letter, n. 1). Allen was reportedly among the successful Aurora miners who were “sure to sell stock in claims which have long since been given up by poor miners, while many rich ledges lie neglected because confidence is only reposed in the wealthy, and because of their the poor miners’ inability to bring rock to the market” (Sahab, 1). The secretary of the Live Yankee Company has not been identified. Clemens possibly intended to contact him to get a copy of the deed Orion had failed to send (see 13 Apr 62 to OCclick to open letter).
Clemens here refers to mining activity along the east fork of the Walker River and its tributaries in an area about thirty-five miles north of Aurora. In July a resident of the region would report that seventy-two well-defined leads had been discovered, and many of them prospected, in the East Walker River district (Veni, Vidi 1862, 1).
“That part of a vein which appears above the surface is called the cropping or outcrop” (Raymond, 26).
The Esmeralda claim, on Silver Hill (also called Esmeralda Hill), Aurora, was located on 25 August 1860 by James M. Braly, J. M. Cory, and E. R. Hicks, the original discoverers of the rich mineral deposits in that area (Kelly 1862, 239–41; Kelly 1863, 408). “Any amount of mills,” it was reported, “can be supplied from this mammoth lead,” which yielded “big boulders of amalgam and bullion” (“Letter from Esmeralda,” Stockton Weekly Independent, 21 June 62, 3).
Between October 1861 and July 1862, Orion paid $600 for feet in six ledges that De Witt Harroun owned in the Santa Clara district of Humboldt County, and an unknown sum for feet in seven ledges that Harroun owned in the Star district of the same county (deeds in CU-MARK).
The Clemens brothers’ correspondent was William H. Clagett. As the next letter indicates, he had written on 2 April. See also 28 Feb 62 to Clagett, n. 22click to open letter.
D. C. Crooker, clerk at the district recorder’s office in Aurora (Kelly 1862, 247). The claims by Crooker and Robert M. Howland discussed in this paragraph evidently concerned reimbursement of travel expenses.
On 29 November 1861 “An Act to authorize the Secretary of the Territory to receive Compensation for certain Duties pertaining to his Office” had been passed. It permitted Orion to collect several fees, including one dollar “for attaching a certificate and the seal of his office to any instrument not pertaining to the government of said territory” (Laws 1862, 310; see also William C. Miller, 4–5). This act provided a significant supplement to Orion’s salary (see Mack 1961, 81).
Clemens echoes the determinedly cheerful words of Mark Tapley in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit. Tapley is mentioned explicitly in the next letter.
MS, Moffett Collection, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L1 , 189–191; MTB , 1:198–99, brief excerpt.
see Moffett Collection, p. 462.