T was not until early in the winter

following his arrival at Carson City that Samuel Clemens got the real mining infection. Everybody had it by that time; the miracle is that he had not fallen an earlier victim. The wildest stories of sudden fortune were in the air -some of them undoubtedly true. Men had gone to bed paupers, on the verge of starvation, and awakened to find themselves millionaires. Others had sold out claims for a song that had been suddenly found to be fairly stuffed with precious ores. Cart-loads of bricks-silver and gold-daily drove through the streets.

In the midst of these things reports came from the newly opened Humboldt region-flamed up with a radiance that was almost blinding. The papers declared Humboldt County (Nevada) to be "the richest mineral region on God's footstool." The mountains were said to be literally bursting with gold and silver. A correspondent of the daily Territorial Enterprise wallowed in rhetoric, yet found words inadequate to paint the measureless wealth of the Humboldt mines. No wonder those not already mad speedily became so. No wonder Samuel Clemens, with his natural tendency to speculative optimism, yielded to the epidemic and became as frenzied as the craziest. The air to him suddenly began to shimmer; all his thoughts were of " "leads and "ledges" and "veins"; all his clouds had silver linings, all his dreams were of gold. He joined an expedition at once; he reproached himself bitterly for not having started earlier.

"Hurry was the word! We wasted no time. Our party consisted of four persons-a blacksmith, sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and myself. We bought a wagon and two miserable old horses. We put eighteen hundred pounds of provisions and mining tools in the

wagon, and drove out of Carson on a chilly December afternoon."

In a letter to his mother he stated that, besides provisions and mining tools, their load consisted of certain luxuries-viz., ten pounds of Killikinick, Watts's Hymns, fourteen decks of cards, Dombey and Son, a cribbage-board, one small keg of lagerbeer, and the Carmina Sacra.

The two young lawyers were A. W. (Gus) Oliver ("Oliphant" in Roughing It) and W. H. Clagget. Sam Clemens had known "Billy" Clagget as a law student in Keokuk, and they were brought together now by this association. Both Clagget and Oliver were promising young men, and would be heard from in time. The blacksmith's name was Tillou (“Ballou"), a sturdy, honest soul with a useful knowledge of mining and the repair of tools.

There were also two dogs in the party-a small, curly-tailed mongrel named Curney, the property of Mr. Tillou, and a young hound. The combination seemed a strong one.

It proved a weak one in the matter of horses. Oliver and Clemens furnished the team, and their selection had not been of the best. It was two hundred miles to Humboldt, mostly across sand. The horses could not drag their load and the miners too, so the miners got out. Then they found it necessary to push.

"Not because we were fond of it, Ma," he writes. "Oh no! but on Bunker's account. Bunker was the 'near' horse on the larboard side, named after the Attorney-General of this Territory. My horse -and I am sorry you do not know him personally, Ma, for I feel toward him. sometimes as if he were a blood relation of our family-he is so lazy, you know— my horse, I was going to say, was the 'off' horse on the starboard side. But it was on Bunker's account, principally, that we pushed behind the wagon. In fact,

So they had to push; and most of that two hundred miles, through snow and sand-storm, they continued to push and swear and groan, sustained only by the thought that they must arrive at last, when their troubles would all be at an end. They would be millionaires in a brief time, and never know want or fatigue any more.

They were eleven weary days pushing their wagon and team the two hundred miles to Unionville, Humboldt County, arriving at last in a driving snow-storm. Unionville consisted of eleven poor cabins built in the bottom of a cañon-five on one side and six facing them on the other. They were poor, three-sided, one-room huts, the fourth side formed by the hill; the roof a sheet of domestic cotton. Stones used to roll down on them sometimes, and Mark Twain tells of live stock -specifically of a mule and a cow-that interrupted the patient, long-suffering Oliver, who was trying to write poetry, and only complained at last when "an entire cow came rolling down the hill, crashed through on the table, and made a shapeless wreck of everything." *

In the letter which Samuel Clemens wrote home he tells of what they found in Unionville.

"National' there was selling at $50 per foot, and assayed $2,496 per ton at the mint in San Francisco. And the 'Alba Nueva,' 'Peru,' 'Delirio,' 'Congress,' 'Independent,' and others were immense ly rich leads. And, moreover, having winning ways with us, we could get 'feet' enough to make us all rich one of these days."

"I confess with shame," says the author of Roughing It, "that I expected to find masses of silver lying all about the ground." And he adds that he slipped away from the cabin to find a claim on his own account, and tells how he came staggering back under a load of golden specimens; also how his specimens proved to be only worthless mica, and how he learned that in mining nothing that glitters is gold. His account in Roughing It of the Humboldt mining experience is sufficiently good history to make detail here unnecessary. Tillou instructed them * Innocents Abroad.

"One week of this satisfied me. I resigned."

They tried to tunnel, but soon resigned again. It was pleasanter to prospect and locate and trade claims and acquire feet in every new ledge than it was to digand about as profitable. The golden reports of Humboldt had been based on assays of selected rich specimens, and were mainly delirium and insanity. The Clemens - Clagget - Oliver - Tillou combination never touched their claims again with pick and shovel, though their faith, or at least their hope, in them did not immediately die. "Billy" Clagget put out his shingle as notary public, and "Gus" Oliver put out his as probate judge. Sam Clemens and Tillou, with a fat - witted, arrogant Prussian named Pfersdoff ("Ollendorf "), set out for Carson City. It is not certain what became of the wagon and team or of the two dogs.

Samuel Clemens, miner, remained but a short time in Carson City-only long enough to arrange for a new and more persistent venture. He did not confess his Humboldt failure to his people; in fact, he had not as yet confessed it to himself; his avowed purpose was to return to Humboldt after a brief investigation of the Esmeralda mines. He had been paying heavy assessments on his holdings there, and with a knowledge of mining gained at Unionville he felt that his personal attention at Aurora* might be important. As a matter of fact, he was by this time fairly daft on the subject of mines and mining, with the rest of the community for company.

In his letters home there appears an attempt at moderation, an effort to make light of his chances, to restrain his enthusiasm, but hardly a successful one. His earlier praises of the wonders and climate of Tahoe had inspired his sister Pamela-always frail-with a desire to visit that health-giving land. Perhaps he felt that he had recommended the country somewhat too highly.

* Aurora was the post-office of the Esmeralda district.

"By George, Pamela," he says, "I begin to fear that I have invoked a spirit of some kind or other which I will find more than difficult to allay." He proceeds to recommend California as a residence for any or all of them, but he is elearly doubtful concerning Nevada. He

goes on:

"Some people are malicious enough to think that if the devil were set at liberty and told to confine himself to Nevada Territory, he would come here and look sadly around awhile, and then get homesick and go back to hell again. ... Why, I have had my whiskers and mustaches so full of alkali dust that you'd have thought I worked in a starchfactory and boarded in a flour-barrel."

But then he can no longer restrain his youth and optimism. How could he, with a fortune so plainly in view? It was already in his grasp; in imagination he was on his way home with it.

"I expect to return to St. Louis in July-per steamer. I don't say that I will return then, or that I shall be able to do it; but I expect to-you bet. I came down here from Humboldt in order to look after our Esmeralda interests. Yesterday Bob Howland arrived here, and I have had a talk with him. He owns with me in the 'Horatio and Derby' ledge. He says our tunnel is in fifty-two feet, and a small stream of water has been struck which bids fair to become a 'big thing' by the time the ledge is reached-sufficient to supply a mill. Now if you knew anything of the value of water here, you would perceive at a glance that if the water should amount to fifty or one hundred inches, we wouldn't care whether school kept or not. If the ledge should prove to be worthless, we'd sell the water for money enough to give us quite a lift. But, you see, the ledge will not prove to be worthless. We have located, near by, a fine site for a mill; and when we strike the ledge, you know, we'll have a mill-site, water-power, and pay-rock all handy. Then we sha'n't care whether we have capital or not. Mill folks will build us a mill, and wait for their pay. If nothing goes wrong, we'll strike the ledge in June; and if we do, I'll be home in July, you know."

There are pages and pages of this, all glowing with golden expectations and

plans. Ah, well! we have all written such letters home, at one time or another, of gold-mines of one form or another.

Samuel Clemens had almost exhausted his own funds by this time, and it was necessary that Orion should become the financier. The brothers owned their Esmeralda claims in partnership, and it was agreed that Orion out of his modest, depleted pay should furnish the means, while the other would go actively into the field and develop their riches. Neither had the slightest doubt but that they would be rich presently, and both were willing to struggle and starve for the few intervening weeks.

It was February when the printerpilot - miner arrived in Aurora, that rough, turbulent camp of the Esmeralda district, lying about one hundred miles south of Carson City on the edge of California, in the Sierra slopes. Everything was frozen and covered with snow, but there was no lack of excitement and prospecting and grabbing for “feet" in this ledge and that, buried deep under the ice and drift. The new arrival camped with Horatio Phillips (Raish), in a tiny cabin with a domestic roof (the ruin of it still stands), and they cooked and bunked together and combined their resources in a common fund. Bob Howland joined them presently, and later an experienced miner, Calvin H. Higbie (Cal-one day to be immortalized in the story of Roughing It, and in the dedication of that book). Around the cabin stove they would gather and paw over their specimens, or test them with blowpipe and "horn spoon," after which they would plan tunnels and figure estimates of prospective wealth. Never mind if the food was poor and scanty, and the chill wind came in everywhere, and the roof leaked like a filter; they were living in a land where all the mountains were banked with nuggets, where all the rivers ran gold. Bob Howland declared, long after, that they used to go out at night and gather up empty champagne-bottles and fruit-tins and pile them in the rear of their cabin to convey to others the appearance of affluence and high living.

When they lacked for other employment and were likely to be discouraged, the expilot would "ride the bunk" and smoke,