. At
first, they run little tunnels, what they called 'adits' from the side
o' the mountain an' drained that way. That wasn't no good, much. They
soon got below that. The lode got richer the farther down they went
an' some o' the big companies took to pumpin' out the water. Right
away, they started in to lose money. It cost more to pump than the
silver was worth. The boom dropped with a thud.

"Then Adolph Sutro come along. He was a big man was Sutro, one o'
these here engineers folks talk about. He offered to build a drainage
tunnel from the foot-hills o' the Carson Valley, just above the river
smack into the heart o' the lode, a distance o' four miles, tappin'
all the mines. He figured that, if it weren't done, all the mines'd
get flooded an' all the wealth o' Comstock'd go to smash.

"Seein' things were going' so bad, the mine-owners balked at first.
After a while, though, the water come in so free that they all agreed
to give him two dollars a ton for all the ore raised from the mines,
providin' his tunnel drained 'em all, an' providin' he fixed it so
that they could get men an' material through the tunnel, instead o'
having to pull it all up the shaft. It took Sutro six years to get the
capital, but he got it. He begun work in '71. Toward the end o' the
job the work was so hot an' tough that he doubled his rate o' wages,
an' in '77, bein' eighteen years old then, I started operatin' a drill
in the tunnel. I was thar on the day that we broke through."

Few engineering feats in the history of mining are more famous than
the making of the Sutro Tunnel. In one of the publications of the
U. S. Geological Survey, Eliot Lord has told its story of perseverance
and triumph.

"Sutro's untiring zeal," wrote Lord, "kindled a like spirit in his
co-workers. Changing shifts urged the drills on without ceasing;
skilled timberers followed up the attack on the breast and covered
the heads of the assailants like shield-bearers.

"The dump at the mouth of the tunnel grew rapidly to the proportions
of an artificial plateau raised above the surrounding valley slope;
yet the speed of the electric currents which exploded the blasts
scarcely kept pace with the impatient anxiety of the tunnel owners to
reach the lode, when the extent of the great Consolidated Virginia
Bonanza was reported; for every ton raised from the lode was a loss to
them of two dollars, as they thought.

"Urged on by zeal, pride, and natural covetousness, the mi