Roughing It, Part 3.

ROUGHING IT, By Mark Twain, Part 3

Project Gutenberg's Roughing It, Part 3., by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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Title: Roughing It, Part 3.

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Release Date: July 2, 2004 [EBook #8584]

Language: English

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Produced by David Widger

ROUGHING IT, Part 3

By Mark Twain

PREFATORY.

This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in the volume; information concerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes. I allude to the rise, growth and culmination of the silver-mining fever in Nevada—a curious episode, in some respects; the only one, of its peculiar kind, that has occurred in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likely to occur in it.

Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped: information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give worlds if I could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I calk up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore, I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not justification.

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXI. Alkali Dust—Desolation and Contemplation—Carson City—Our Journey Ended—We are Introduced to Several Citizens—A Strange Rebuke—A Washoe Zephyr at Play—Its Office Hours—Governor's Palace—Government Offices—Our French Landlady Bridget O'Flannigan—Shadow Secrets—Cause for a Disturbance at Once—The Irish Brigade—Mrs. O'Flannigan's Boarders—The Surveying Expedition—Escape of the Tarantulas

CHAPTER XXII. The Son of a Nabob—Start for Lake Tahoe—Splendor of the Views—Trip on the Lake—Camping Out—Reinvigorating Climate—Clearing a Tract of Land—Securing a Title—Outhouse and Fences

CHAPTER XXIII. A Happy Life—Lake Tahoe and its Moods—Transparency of the Waters—A Catastrophe—Fire! Fire!—A Magnificent Spectacle—Homeless Again—We take to the Lake—A Storm—Return to Carson

CHAPTER XXIV. Resolve to Buy a Horse—Horsemanship in Carson—A Temptation—Advice Given Me Freely—I Buy the Mexican Plug—My First Ride—A Good Bucker—I Loan the Plug—Experience of Borrowers—Attempts to Sell—Expense of the Experiment—A Stranger Taken In

CHAPTER XXV. The Mormons in Nevada—How to Persuade a Loan from Them—Early History of the Territory—Silver Mines Discovered—The New Territorial Government—A Foreign One and a Poor One—Its Funny Struggles for Existence—No Credit, no Cash—Old Abe Currey Sustains it and its Officers—Instructions and Vouchers—An Indian's Endorsement—Toll-Gates

CHAPTER XXVI. The Silver Fever—State of the Market—Silver Bricks—Tales Told—Off for the Humboldt Mines

CHAPTER XXVII. Our manner of going—Incidents of the Trip—A Warm but Too Familiar a Bedfellow—Mr. Ballou Objects—Sunshine amid Clouds—Safely Arrived

CHAPTER XXVIII. Arrive at the Mountains—Building Our Cabin—My First Prospecting Tour—My First Gold Mine—Pockets Filled With Treasures—Filtering the News to My Companions—The Bubble Pricked—All Not Gold That Glitters

CHAPTER XXIX. Out Prospecting—A Silver Mine At Last—Making a Fortune With Sledge and Drill—A Hard Road to Travel—We Own in Claims—A Rocky Country

CHAPTER XXX. Disinterested Friends—How Feet Were Sold—We Quit Tunnelling—A Trip to Esmeralda—My Companions—An Indian Prophesy—A Flood—Our Quarters During It

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER XXI.

We were approaching the end of our long journey. It was the morning of the twentieth day. At noon we would reach Carson City, the capital of Nevada Territory. We were not glad, but sorry. It had been a fine pleasure trip; we had fed fat on wonders every day; we were now well accustomed to stage life, and very fond of it; so the idea of coming to a stand-still and settling down to a humdrum existence in a village was not agreeable, but on the contrary depressing.

Visibly our new home was a desert, walled in by barren, snow-clad mountains. There was not a tree in sight. There was no vegetation but the endless sage-brush and greasewood. All nature was gray with it. We were plowing through great deeps of powdery alkali dust that rose in thick clouds and floated across the plain like smoke from a burning house.

We were coated with it like millers; so were the coach, the mules, the mail-bags, the driver—we and the sage-brush and the other scenery were all one monotonous color. Long trains of freight wagons in the distance envelope in ascending masses of dust suggested pictures of prairies on fire. These teams and their masters were the only life we saw. Otherwise we moved in the midst of solitude, silence and desolation. Every twenty steps we passed the skeleton of some