CHAPTER XXXV.

THE WASHOE “ZEPHYR.”

The “zephyr” is one of the peculiar institutions of Washoe, and as such is worthy of special mention. At certain seasons—generally in the fall and spring—furious gales prevail along the Comstock range. In and about Virginia City these wind-storms are particularly severe. The city being built on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, at an elevation of over 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, and the mountain rising abruptly above the city on the west, to the height of about 2,000 feet above the town, fierce whirls and “sucks” are formed in the lee of the mountain.

The prevailing winds of the country come from the west, and from this quarter also comes the “zephyr.” It is probably a straight-ahead gale before it strikes Mount Davidson, but upon that towering mass of granite it splits. Currents pass round the north and south sides of the mountain, meet in the city, and waltz about in the shape of whirlwinds of from eighty to two hundred horse-power. To complicate things still more, a third portion of the gale comes howling directly over the peak of the mountain, and plunges down into the town among the whirlwinds, knocking them right and left whenever it encounters them.

It is no doubt this particular and peculiar current of the gale whipping down over the summit of the mountain, that produces the remarkable vertical atmospheric action observable during the prevalence of a first-class zephyr. A breeze of this kind will snatch a man’s hat off his head and take it vertically a hundred feet into the air; then, as he stands gazing after it, the hat suddenly comes down at his feet, as though shot out of a cannon, and lies before him as completely flattened out as though it had been struck with a sledge-hammer.

The action of the zephyr is sometimes much the same as that seen in the leathern sucker with which boys are able to lift stones of considerable weight. A furious gust falls upon the flat tin roof of a building, then suddenly bounding upward rips a great hole in the tin. The whirlwinds and winds of all other kinds—for in the same minute, and almost at the same instant, it blows fiercely from every point of the compass—then enter the hole, seize upon the roof, and very soon complete its wreck. A section of tin twenty feet square, may be seen to flap in the air, like the loose sail of a vessel at sea, but with a clashing sound that may be heard a mile away; then, on a sudden, the whole sheet is ripped off, and goes sailing through the air like a piece of paper, landing, perhaps, two or three hundred yards away, and passing over half a dozen houses during its flight.

Of late these “zephyrs” have not been so furious and destructive as in years past. Then the tin on half a dozen roofs was often to be seen flapping in the breeze at the same moment, each section of roofing giving out a roar more startling than would be the combined sheet-iron thunder of a dozen country theatres of average enterprise.

“Sleep! Sleep no more! the zephyr doth murder sleep.” After a night of such wild work, the stranger within the gates of Virginia City is likely to make his appearance very early in the morning, red-eyed and wrathy.

I remember to have heard a gentleman who sported a bunch of hair on each cheek, about the size of a coyote’s tail, thus express himself one morning after such an elemental carnival:

“Wind! talk about wind! Why, the wind ’owled at such a rate last night that I thought it would bring the bloody ’ouse down about my ears. Blast it! when it ’owls like that a fellow can’t sleep, you know! The clark o’ the ’otel calls it a Washoe zephyr—zephyr be blowed, it was a bloody gale, you know!”

Not to exaggerate, I may say that one of the good old-fashioned Washoe zephyrs, even in the present condition of the town, not only howls itself, but also makes Virginia City howl, and would make Rome or any other place howl. At times such clouds of dust are raised, that, viewed from a distance, all there is to be seen is a steeple sticking up here and there, a few scattering chimneys, an occasional poodle-dog, and, perhaps, a stray infant drifting wrong end up, high above all the house-tops. Down below in the darkness, gravel-stones are flying along the street like grape-shot, and all the people have taken refuge in the doorways.

Such ripping of signs, threshing of awnings, rattling and banging of iron and wooden shutters—such tumbling about of chimney-pots and sections of stovepipe, is seldom seen or heard in any less favored town.

Out on the Divide, a high part of the city where the wind has a fair sweep (this is generally of nights, when strangers are not likely to see it), the air is filled with dust, rags, tin cans, empty packing-cases, old cooking-stoves, all manner of second-hand furniture, crowbars, log-chains, lamp-posts, and similar rubbish. Hats! More hats are lost during the prevalence of a single zephyr than in any city in the Union on any election held in the last twenty years. These hats all go down the side of the mountain and land in a deep gulch known as Six-mile Cañon—the place where the Johntown Jasons found the first tag-locks of the big bonanza.

After a very severe zephyr, it is said, drifts of hats fully fifteen feet in depth, are to be seen in the bed of the cañon just named. All these hats are found and appropriated by the Piute Indians, who always go down to the cañon the next morning after a rousing and fruitful gale, to gather in the hat crop. When the innocent and guileless children of the desert come back to town, they are all loaded down to the guards with hats. Each head is decorated with at least half a dozen hats of all kinds and colors—braves, squaws, and pappooses are walking pyramids of hats.

There is a tradition in Virginia City, that in the spring of 1863, a donkey was caught up from the side of Mount Davidson—far up on the northern side, near the summit of the mountain—and carried eastward over the city, at a height of five or six hundred feet above the houses, finally landing near the Sugar-Loaf Mountain—nearly five miles away. Those who witnessed this remarkable instance of the force of the zephyr, say that as the poor beast was hurried away over the town, his neck was stretched out to its greatest length, and he was shrieking in the most despairing and heart-rending tones ever heard from any living creature. The oldest inhabitant sometimes tries to spoil this story by saying that what was seen was an old gander, the leader of a flock of wild geese, lost in the storm, and baffled in his attempt to make headway southward against the hurricane. It may be so, but most folks along the Comstock cling to the donkey and sneer at the gander.

Although there is hardly a green spot to be seen in any direction, yet there are, in many places in Washoe, landscapes that will always at once attract attention. From Virginia City, perched as it is, high on the side of Mount Davidson, is obtained a grand view of a vast wilderness of hills, mountains, and desert plains. The eye sweeps eastward over untold scores of hills and valleys to the tall peaks of the Humboldt mountains, distant not less than one hundred and eighty miles. Hill rises beyond hill far away in all directions, each hill exhibiting in all its outlines a stern individuality, and each rearing aloft a rock-crowned and treeless head.

In the interstices of these peaks, each of which stands a dark-browed and sullen Ajax, we catch glimpses of deserts that lie white and glittering, long journeys away, yet we almost feel our eyes scorched as we gaze, by their far-darted shimmer. These spots that so glitter and twinkle, far away through the brown of the hills, are great plains of salt and alkali—deserts more hungry and sterile than the wilds of Sahara. In the view before us we have the “hoar austerity of rugged desolation,” yet there dwells in it a grandeur that is almost awful, and a something very fascinating.

Every artist who looks upon this weird and unsmiling landscape feels his soul stirred with a desire to paint it. No man has yet painted it—no man will ever paint it. There is that in it which no cunning in colors can reach—no skill in drawing can express. The only way in which an artist can approach the subject is by painting what he feels, not what he sees. This vast landscape is at all times grand and worthy of study, but when its many moods are evoked by elemental disturbances, it becomes wildly beautiful.

Often in summer several thunder-showers are to be seen in progress at the same moment, far out in the wide wilderness, each separated from the other by a broad belt of blue sky and bright sunshine. While one dark storm-cloud hovers over the city, showering its moisture upon the thirsty earth, another is seen a whole day’s journey to the eastward, creeping along some parched desert, with the rain, in slanting columns, pouring upon the white and shining fields of alkali, and still others hang about the mountain peaks in various directions, sending down red bolts of lightning upon their dark granite summits. Away to the northeast the tall, turreted peaks of Castle District rise against an inky sky, each line of their rugged spires distinctly traceable, while to the southeast, looming high above the horizon, are seen, through a shower, the ashen-hued mountains of Como.

To the right of these, and miles on miles further away—far south of the Carson River—stand many tall, purple peaks, here and there one among the highest tipped with sunlight. Eastward, below the level of the city and almost in the centre of the picture, the Sugar-Loaf rears its rounded top, over which, and far beyond, stretched partly in sunlight and partly in shadow, lies the valley of the Carson. A green fringe of cottonwoods, visible along all the river’s eccentric meanderings, is the only tinge of green in all the broad land before us. Here and there are seen short reaches in the river that glitter like burnished silver in the rays of the evening sun.

A long table-mountain cuts short our view of the valley and river, but over this mountain we see, spread out like a vast sheet of parchment, the Forty-mile Desert, over which shadows of clouds move as slowly as in early times crawled across the same sands the long trains of weary pilgrims, wearing out the way to the land of gold, over the Sierras. Far beyond, where the cloud-shadows move in black squadrons across the desert sands—quite two days’ journey beyond—are reared against the eastern sky the Humboldt mountains, whose white peaks might pass for the tombs and cenotaphs of the giants of the olden times. Some of these are half hidden in patches of dark mist, or veiled by slanting columns of rain, while others stand in the full glory of the sun. But in this scene we have a constant change of light and shade. Peaks that were a moment since sooty-black, suddenly flash up and become golden and brilliant, soon again to resume their dusky robes, while neighboring peaks stand forth clad in the garments of their departed glory.

As the sun sinks lower, night is seen to settle into the deeper cañons, and take shelter behind the lower hills, and the shadow of Mount Davidson goes forth as a giant, and stretches darkness from hill-top to hill-top everywhere.

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