And anvils three we threw,
Likewise four bales of gunny-sacks,
Two hundred pounds of glue,
Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat,
A box of books, a cow,
A violin, Lord Byron's works,
A rip-saw and a sow.

A curve! a curve! the dangers grow!
"Labbord!--stabbord!--s-t-e-a-d-y!--so!
--Hard-a-port, Dol!--hellum-a-lee!
Haw the head mule!--the aft one gee!
Luff!--bring her to the wind!"

For straight a farmer brought a plank,
--(Mysteriously inspired)
--And laying it unto the ship,
In silent awe retired.

Then every sufferer stood amazed
That pilot man before;
A moment stood. Then wondering turned,
And speechless walked ashore.

CHAPTER LII.

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." 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 inclosed 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 (150 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. 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 $200 a ton for small lots (same price for
all express matter brought by stage), and $100 a ton for full loads.
One Virginia firm received one hundred tons of freight a month, and paid
$10,000 a month freightage. In the win