purpose transporting the ore
concentrated to Europe. The conveyance from Star City (its
locality) to Virginia City will cost seventy dollars per ton;
from Virginia to San Francisco, forty dollars per ton; from
thence to Liverpool, its destination, ten dollars per ton. Their
idea is that its conglomerate metals will reimburse them their
cost of original extraction, the price of transportation, and the
expense of reduction, and that then a ton of the raw ore will net
them twelve hundred dollars. The estimate may be extravagant.
Cut it in twain, and the product is enormous, far transcending
any previous developments of our racy Territory.

A very common calculation is that many of our mines will yield
five hundred dollars to the ton. Such fecundity throws the Gould
& Curry, the Ophir and the Mexican, of your neighborhood, in the
darkest shadow. I have given you the estimate of the value of a
single developed mine. Its richness is indexed by its market
valuation. The people of Humboldt county are feet crazy. As I
write, our towns are near deserted. They look as languid as a
consumptive girl. What has become of our sinewy and athletic
fellow-citizens? They are coursing through ravines and over
mountain tops. Their tracks are visible in every direction.
Occasionally a horseman will dash among us. His steed betrays
hard usage. He alights before his adobe dwelling, hastily
exchanges courtesies with his townsmen, hurries to an assay
office and from thence to the District Recorder's. In the
morning, having renewed his provisional supplies, he is off again
on his wild and unbeaten route. Why, the fellow numbers already
his feet by the thousands. He is the horse-leech. He has the
craving stomach of the shark or anaconda. He would conquer
metallic worlds.

This was enough. The instant we had finished reading the above article,
four of us decided to go to Humboldt. We commenced getting ready at
once. And we also commenced upbraiding ourselves for not deciding
sooner--for we were in terror lest all the rich mines would be found and
secured before we got there, and we might have to put up with ledges that
would not yield more than two or three hundred dollars a ton, maybe. An
hour before, I would have felt opulent if I had owned ten feet in