rt time thereafter and the boy was thrown
practically upon his own resources.

When gold was discovered in California in 1849, Mackay joined the crowd
that rushed to the new El Dorado, and for several years, he lived a
typical miner's life, roughing it in the camps, but gaining little
except a thorough knowledge of mining. In 1860, some guiding spirit led
him eastward to Nevada; his fortunes there steadily improved, until he
became one of the leading men in the settlement, and in 1872, he made
one of the most famous and romantic discoveries in mining history, that
of the famous Comstock lode, on a ledge of rock high in the Sierras,
under which Virginia City now nestles. So rich in silver was this great
ledge of rock and its enormous production added so greatly to the
world's supply of silver that the market price fell to a point where
such countries as India and China, whose currency was on a silver basis,
were seriously embarrassed to maintain values. From one mine alone over
$150,000,000 was taken out. Mackay devoted himself personally to the
superintendence of the mines, working in the lower levels with his men,
who idolized him.

* * * * *

Let us turn for a moment to the career of another great fortune-builder,
the man who was, perhaps, the greatest freebooter the American financial
world ever saw, who made his money by destroying rather than building
up, and whose wealth finally killed him--Jay Gould. Let us see if we can
get some sort of idea of the personality of this extraordinary man.

Born in 1836, a farmer's boy, with only such education as he could pick
up, he managed to find time to study surveying, and for two or three
years was engaged in making surveys of various New York counties. While
thus engaged, he fell in with a wealthy and eccentric individual named
Zadock Pratt, who sent him to the western part of the state to select a
site for a tannery. He was soon doing a large lumbering business, first
with Pratt and then in his own name; but he sold out just before the
panic of 1857, and soon after entered upon that career of speculation
in New York City which, in the end, made him the best-hated man in
America.

Picture the man, small, only five feet six inches in height, with sallow
skin and jet black whiskers, his eyes dark and piercing, his whole
personality, as one observer put it, "reminiscent of the spider." His
reputation was that of an unscrupulous and immoral r