CHAPTER LXV.

AGGREGATED WEALTH.

In the California ground the bonanza extends through to the Ophir, the next mine north, and by the cross-cuts run into it every one hundred feet, it is shown to be—as far as explored—fron one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty feet in width, and everywhere are found the rich chloride and sulphuret ores. At the present writing (August 1875,) no ore has been extracted from the California, except that taken out in running drifts and cross-cuts. The ground, however, as far as developed, has been laid off in large blocks by means of drifts and cross-cuts, therefore is ready to be mined whenever it is necessary to extract ore for reduction, which will be whenever the company’s new mill is completed.

In the California ground are found the same nests of stephanite and other extraordinarily rich ores as are seen in the Consolidated Virginia mine. While these form no large part of the bonanza, they are sufficiently large and numerous to very materially swell the average value of the deposit.

The Consolidated Virginia Company extracts five hundred tons of ore per day. This is the average daily yield from all parts of the mine—from the 1500-foot level, and from the levels above. Although much of the ore from the upper levels is of low grade, yet the whole averages $100 per ton in the mills. The yield of the mine has regularly been $50,000 per day, or from $1,500,000 to $1,600,000 per month ever since the work of reaching ore from the bonanza began. Much of the ore on the 1500-foot level is too rich to be economically worked alone by pan process, therefore it is mixed with poorer ore from certain parts of the upper levels. Much more than 500 tons of ore per day might be extracted were it necessary, but that is all that is required to keep the mills of the company in operation.

Opened as it now is, there can easily be extracted from the California mine as many tons of ore per day as are being taken out of the Consolidated Virginia, and ore that will average even higher, as the upper levels of the California are all intact. There is not the slightest doubt that when the California mill shall be started up, these two mines will produce $3,000,000 per month, or $36,000,000 per year; and not for one or two, but for many years—ten years at least, in which time would be extracted $360,000,000. A single foot of ground taken out across the whole width of the bonanza in its widest part would contain a fortune for any man of moderate desires. Should we go into the centre of the Consolidated Virginia ground and take a slice from the bonanza 250 feet in width and extending one level below and two levels above the 1500-foot level we should then have a section of ore 300 feet long, 250 feet in width, and one foot thick. This would contain 75,000 cubic feet, and containing thirteen cubic feet to the ton would weigh a trifle over 5,769 tons, which at $100 per ton would amount to $576,900 for a single slice of the bonanza one foot in width. By continuing to cut off such slices until we had reached the California line—say 230 feet—we should have in all $132,687,000.

At a time when the Consolidated Virginia mine was much less extensively developed than at present, Mr. I. E. James, a mining engineer who has been engaged on the Comstock for many years, made an estimate of the ore contained in the mine at the time. He took from the working plans of the mines the actual length of each drift and the cross-cuts measured by sections, and measured all triangles separately. The winzes were measured no lower than they had been sunk, and in no place did he estimate ore which had not yet been opened. The amount of ore thus found was 20,669,500 cubic feet. The usual calculation is thirteen cubic feet of ore to the ton, but in order to make ample allowances for “horses” and waste rock two feet were added and fifteen cubic feet reckoned to a ton, giving 1,377,966 tons, which at $100 per ton amounts to $137,796,600, and at $200, as many estimate, the average of the ore in the bonanza proper, would amount to $275,593,200. Mr. James G. Fair, superintendent of the mine, puts the cost of milling and mining at $17 per ton, but calling it $18, it cost to mine and mill the number of tons mentioned $24,803,388. Subtracting this from the gross amounts at $100 and at $200 per ton, and dividing the product by the number of shares in the mine, namely 108,000, and it is found that if the ore averages $100 per ton, each share of stock will receive in net dividends $1,046 and at $200 per ton will receive $2,322 in dividends. The stock is selling at about $400 per share, and a dividend of $10 per share $1,080,000 in all is paid regularly every month.

Whatever amount of wealth there may be in the Consolidated Virginia and California mines it is evident that their owners are quite confident that they will continue to yield as at present for many years to come, otherwise they would not expend money as lavishly as they are doing in preparations for their long continued and more extensive working. They are sinking a new and very large shaft 1000 feet east of the present main shaft of the Consolidated Virginia, the machinery to be set up at which will cost $200,000. Through a drift run from this shaft ore will be extracted from both the California and the Consolidated Virginia mines. The two companies are equally interested in the shaft. The new mill being erected by the California Company will cost $400,000. The mill containing the stamps will be near the mine, and the crushed ore as it runs from the batteries will be conveyed in a flume to the pan-mill, nearly half a mile below on Six-mile Cañon.

Besides these heavy expenditures the two companies have bought 12,000 acres of timber-land high in the Sierras, to which has been constructed a flume through which to float wood, lumber, and timber, and the cost of this flume (twenty-one miles in length) was $250,000. These grand and expensive preparations show that the companies in question are but getting ready to mine.

Notwithstanding that this Comstock bonanza is the largest and richest deposit of silver in the world, none of the scientific men of America have yet taken the trouble to visit and examine it. It has been visited by many mining men from Europe, however. The majority of the European visitors are Englishmen, though many Germans and Frenchman, and a few Russians, have come to see and inspect this wonder of the modern mining world. All these foreigners are not only astounded at the great size and richness of the vein, but are also forced to admit that the mining and milling machinery of Nevada is far superior to anything of the kind to be found in Europe.

The northern extremity of the bonanza penetrates the Ophir ground where, however, it as yet appears to be somewhat broken and is found to lie in huge detached masses, between the 1300 and the 1600-foot levels. Much of the ore found is exceedingly rich, carrying a large percentage of gold. Stopes have been opened in several places in the Ophir, and ore is being extracted at the rate of three hundred tons per day. Here, too, are being made very extensive preparations for future mining operations. Hoisting-machinery for the incline is being erected that will be capable of sinking to the depth of 4,000 feet—well on toward a mile. Machinery for the pumping from the same great depth is also being erected. Their present greatest depth is 1700 feet, at which point they are drifting for the vein. Their present shaft is on a line, north and south, with the Consolidated Virginia, and Gould & Curry shafts, and is about one thousand feet east of the old shaft, and the point where silver was first discovered in 1859 by Pat M^cLaughlin and Peter O’Riley.

It is a circumstance worthy of note that fourteen years after the discovery of silver, the big bonanza, the mammoth deposit of the lode, should be found near where the first silver ore was turned up to the light of day. About one thousand feet eastward from the spot where O’Riley and M^cLaughlin first saw and wondered at the strange “blue stuff” in the bottom of their rocker we now have the bonanza, a second wonder. Still to the eastward one of these days a third will be found. Out of the first bonanza, into the top of which O’Riley and M^cLaughlin luckily struck their picks, was taken about $20,000,000 before the deposit was exhausted; out of the Consolidated Virginia mine alone has already been taken $15,500,000 and as yet they have hardly begun working in real earnest. What they have worked out in the bonanza is as one room to a whole block of buildings. In regard to what is still below, they only know that at the greatest depth yet attained they still have the same rich ore that is found on the 1500-foot level.

By referring to the map of the 1500-foot level it will be seen that the Consolidated Virginia Company still have a great amount of unexplored ground lying to the southward of where they have drifted and opened stopes in the great ore-body. What is in the ground remains to be seen, but undoubtedly it contains a vast amount of rich ore. As is to be seen, the California Company have to the eastward a vast unexplored region into which no less than five cross-cuts, one hundred feet apart, are being extended. All of these are in ore of the richest character, and the width of the bonanza at that point is likely to prove as great as at cross-cut No. 2, in the Consolidated Virginia, namely eighteen or twenty rods. To cut off and estimate “slices” through the whole length of the California ground would count up more hundreds of millions of dollars than I dare name. When the new mill of the California Company shall have gone into operation, silver will be produced so rapidly, and in such amount as to astonish the world, and may perhaps reduce the market value of the metal. When they begin the work of extracting ore they will be able to take out all that they can reduce in their own mill and as many other mills as they can secure, whether the amount required be five hundred or one thousand tons per day.

In the Mexican and Union Consolidated mines, lying just north of the Ophir, the work of prospecting has but recently been commenced, yet very promising assays are obtained. The Sierra Nevada mine, which lies next to the Union Consolidated, on the north, has yielded a large amount in gold from surface earth, and from decomposed rock and earth extracted a short distance below the surface, but as yet nothing that could be called a bonanza has been found. In the early days, about 1862, a great deal of gold was extracted from the surface earth by washing with the hydraulic apparatus, as the placer-mines of California are worked. As at Gold Hill, and at the head of Six-mile Cañon were found great bonanzas where were at first found gold-diggings on the surface; so the Sierra Nevada Company may yet expect to find a bonanza in some part of the large mountain on which their mine is located. To the eastward of the mines in which is situated the big bonanza a score of new claims have been located, and on many of these, machinery has been set up, and large shafts are being rapidly sunk. A new bonanza is liable to be found in this direction, as it is a part of the silver belt that has been but little explored.

The excitement in regard to the grand development in the Consolidated Virginia and California mines had the effect of sending up the price of stocks along the whole line of the Comstock. Mines that could show no manner of improvements in their prospects went up with the rest, under the pressure of the excitement. The aggregate value of mines in Virginia and Gold Hill districts, whose stocks are called in the San Francisco Stock Board, was about $93,000,000 November 22, 1874. On the same day of the following month their market value was as follows:

Andes, $250,000 Arizona and Utah, 18,000 Alpha, 159,000 American Flat, 240,000 Baltimore Consolidated, 450,000 Bacon, 240,000 Belcher, 5,720,000 Best & Belcher, 3,528,000 Bullion, 1,700,000 Caledonia, 520,000 California, 54,000,000 Chollar, 2,464,000 Confidence, 1,123,200 Consolidated Virginia, 54,000,000 Consolidated Gold Hill Quartz, 140,000 Crown Point, 5,200,000 Challenge, 600,000 Crown Point Ravine, 100,000 Dardanelles, 670,000 Eclipse, 250,000 Empire Mill, 800,000 Exchequer, 900,000 Globe, 25,000 Gould and Curry, 2,880,000 Hale and Norcross, 1,024,000 Imperial, 1,900,000 Julia, 210,000 Justice, 1,470,000 Kentuck, 660,000 Knickerbocker, 120,000 Kossuth, 216,000 Lady Washington, 75,000 Leo, 40,000 Mexican, 3,456,000 New York Consolidated, 144,000 Ophir, 18,900,000 Overman, 2,944,000 Rock Island, 125,000 Savage, 2,000,000 Segregated Belcher, 960,000 Silver Hill, 540,000 Sierra Nevada, 340,000 Succor, 114,000 Trench, 50,000 Union Consolidated, 1,400,000 Utah, 160,000 Whitman, 150,000 Woodville, 252,000 Yellow-Jacket, 1,920,000 —————————- Total. $175,147,200

By the above it will be seen that the appreciation in the value of forty-nine mines was over $82,000,000 in thirty days. Besides the mines given in the above list there were a score more that have a market value, all of which were more or less affected by the excitement, and were bought by persons who not having money to purchase bonanza stocks were yet determined to get into mines of some kind.

The body of ore in the California and Consolidated Virginia mines, known as the “Big Bonanza” is by no means the only bonanza found on the Comstock that was worth having. From the first Ophir bonanza was extracted, all told, about $20,000,000; from the Savage, $15,750,000; Hale & Norcross, $8,000,000; Chollar-Potosi, $16,000,000; Gould & Curry, $15,550,000; Yellow-Jacket, $15,000,000; Crown Point, $20,000,000; Belcher, $25,000,000; Overman, $3,000,000; Imperial, $2,500,000, and many other mines sums running into millions, or well up in the hundreds of thousands. The Belcher and Crown Point mines are still yielding about 500 tons of ore each per day. The Belcher mine has paid its stockholders dividends to the amount of $14,135,000; the stockholders of the Crown Point have received $11,588,000; the Consolidated Virginia has paid $9,720,000; Chollar-Potosi, $3,080,000; Gould & Curry, $3,826,800; Hale & Norcross, $1,598,000; Savage, $4,440,000; Yellow-Jacket, $2,184,000; and many others sums ranging from fifty thousand to one million dollars.

There is, of course, a vast deal of money paid out in the shape of assessments levied for the purpose of opening new mines, and sometimes on mines already opened, when they get into a “bad streak”—are in “borrasca”—but, taking all kinds of mines together, the dividends have far exceeded the assessments. From first to last, on all the mines the stock of which is bought and sold in the San Francisco Stock Board, there have been levied assessments amounting to $54,258,500; showing a balance of $28,256,708 in favor of the mines; there is also the present market value of the mines to be taken into consideration, which is a grand item.

The mines of the Comstock give life to the whole Pacific Coast, and are the main-spring, so to speak, of all kinds of trades and every kind of business. They furnish to the California mechanic that employment which gives him his bread. The army of workmen of all kinds, who were employed in the building of the famous Palace Hotel, of San Francisco, the largest and most costly structure of the kind in the world, were all paid with money taken out of the mines of the Comstock. Washoe money also reared the Nevada Block, and scores more of the finest and most costly buildings in San Francisco—buildings which are the pride of the city.

All the foundries and machine-shops of San Francisco and other large towns on the Pacific Coast are running day and night to fill orders from Nevada for engines, boilers, pumps, and all manner of mining machinery; but for the Washoe silver-mines nearly all the workmen employed in these foundries and machine-shops would be obliged to migrate to some other land. The ranchmen and fruit-growers of California would find times very dull with them but for Nevada, as in the towns of the silver-mines, they always find a market for all their products at high prices in ready coin. Without the “big bonanza,” and the many other silver-mines of all classes in Nevada, times would be very different from what they now are in San Francisco, and, indeed, throughout California and over the whole Pacific Coast.

The influence of the Washoe silver-mines does not stop on the Pacific Coast, but extends throughout the United States and is also felt in Europe. Not only are manufacturing establishments in California running to fill orders for machinery for the mines of Nevada, but many establishments in the Atlantic States and a few in European countries are also at work on certain kinds of machinery required in the silver-mines; as steel-wire cables, air-compressure power-drills, and the like. Not alone to the deposit of ore in one or two mines, but to the whole Comstock lode should be given the name of the “Big Bonanza.”

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