intense and
destructive in their action than those of California, because the prizes
at stake were greater, while more skill was required to gain them. The
long trains of gold-seekers making their way to California had ample
time and means to recover from their first attacks of mining fever while
crawling laboriously across the plains, and on their arrival on any
portion of the Sierra gold belt, they at once began to make money. No
matter in what gulch or canyon they worked, some measure of success
was sure, however unskillful they might be. And though while making ten
dollars a day they might be agitated by hopes of making twenty, or of
striking their picks against hundred- or thousand-dollar nuggets, men
of ordinary nerve could still work on with comparative steadiness, and
remain rational.

But in the case of the Nevada miner, he too often spent himself in years
of weary search without gaining a dollar, traveling hundreds of miles
from mountain to mountain, burdened with wasting hopes of discovering
some hidden vein worth millions, enduring hardships of the most
destructive kind, driving innumerable tunnels into the hillsides, while
his assayed specimens again and again proved worthless. Perhaps one in
a hundred of these brave prospectors would "strike it rich," while
ninety-nine died alone in the mountains or sank out of sight in the
corners of saloons, in a haze of whiskey and tobacco smoke.

The healthful ministry of wealth is blessed; and surely it is a fine
thing that so many are eager to find the gold and silver that lie hid
in the veins of the mountains. But in the search the seekers too often
become insane, and strike about blindly in the dark like raving madmen.
Seven hundred and fifty tons of ore from the original Eberhardt mine on
Treasure Hill yielded a million and a half dollars, the whole of this
immense sum having been obtained within two hundred and fifty feet of
the surface, the greater portion within one hundred and forty feet.
Other ore masses were scarcely less marvelously rich, giving rise to
one of the most violent excitements that ever occurred in the history of
mining. All kinds of people--shoemakers, tailors, farmers, etc., as
well as miners--left their own right work and fell in a perfect storm of
energy upon the White Pine Hills, covering the ground like grasshoppers,
and seeming determined by the very violence of their efforts to turn
every stone to silver. But with few exceptions, these