either, but in the very heart of the city;
and forthwith stock would be issued and thrown on the market. It was
small matter who the cellar belonged to--the "ledge" belonged to the
finder, and unless the United States government interfered (inasmuch as
the government holds the primary right to mines of the noble metals in
Nevada--or at least did then), it was considered to be his privilege to
work it. Imagine a stranger staking out a mining claim among the costly
shrubbery in your front yard and calmly proceeding to lay waste the
ground with pick and shovel and blasting powder! It has been often done
in California. In the middle of one of the principal business streets of
Virginia, a man "located" a mining claim and began a shaft on it. He
gave me a hundred feet of the stock and I sold it for a fine suit of
clothes because I was afraid somebody would fall down the shaft and sue
for damages. I owned in another claim that was located in the middle of
another street; and to show how absurd people can be, that "East India"
stock (as it was called) sold briskly although there was an ancient
tunnel running directly under the claim and any man could go into it and
see that it did not cut a quartz ledge or anything that remotely
resembled one.

One plan of acquiring sudden wealth was to "salt" a wild cat claim and
sell out while the excitement was up. The process was simple.

The schemer located a worthless ledge, sunk a shaft on it, bought a wagon
load of rich "Comstock" ore, dumped a portion of it into the shaft and
piled the rest by its side, above ground. Then he showed the property to
a simpleton and sold it to him at a high figure. Of course the wagon
load of rich ore was all that the victim ever got out of his purchase.
A most remarkable case of "salting" was that of the "North Ophir."
It was claimed that this vein was a "remote extension" of the original
"Ophir," a valuable mine on the "Comstock." For a few days everybody was
talking about the rich developments in the North Ophir. It was said that
it yielded perfectly pure silver in small, solid lumps. I went to the
place with the owners, and found a shaft six or eight feet deep, in the
bottom of which was a badly shattered vein of dull, yellowish,
unpromising rock. One would as soon expect to find silver in a
grindstone. We got out a pan of the rubbish and washed it in a puddle,
and sure enough, among the sediment we found half a dozen black,
bullet-look