True knowledge of the nature of silver mining came fast enough.We went out "prospecting" with Mr.Ballou.We climbed the mountain sides, and clambered among sage-brush, rocks and snow till we were ready to drop with exhaustion, but found no silver--nor yet any gold.Day after day we did this.Now and then we came upon holes burrowed a few feet into the declivities and apparently abandoned; and now and then we found one or two listless men still burrowing.But there was no appearance of silver.
These holes were the beginnings of tunnels, and the purpose was to drive them hundreds of feet into the mountain, and some day tap the hidden ledge where the silver was.Some day! It seemed far enough away, and very hopeless and dreary.Day after day we toiled, and climbed and searched, and we younger partners grew sicker and still sicker of the promiseless toil.At last we halted under a beetling rampart of rock which projected from the earth high upon the mountain.Mr.Ballou broke off some fragments with a hammer, and examined them long and attentively with a small eye-glass; threw them away and broke off more; said this rock was quartz, and quartz was the sort of rock that contained silver.
Contained it! I had thought that at least it would be caked on the outside of it like a kind of veneering.He still broke off pieces and critically examined them, now and then wetting the piece with his tongue and applying the glass.At last he exclaimed:
"We've got it!"
We were full of anxiety in a moment.The rock was clean and white, where it was broken, and across it ran a ragged thread of blue.He said that that little thread had silver in it, mixed with base metal, such as lead and antimony, and other rubbish, and that there was a speck or two of gold visible.After a great deal of effort we managed to discern some little fine yellow specks, and judged that a couple of tons of them massed together might make a gold dollar, possibly.We were not jubilant, but Mr.Ballou said there were worse ledges in the world than that.He saved what he called the "richest" piece of the rock, in order to determine its value by the process called the "fire-assay." Then we named the mine "Monarch of the Mountains" (modesty of nomenclature is not a prominent feature in the mines), and Mr.Ballou wrote out and stuck up the following "notice," preserving a copy to be entered upon the books in the mining recorder's office in the town.
"NOTICE."
"We the undersigned claim three claims, of three hundred feet each (and one for discovery), on this silver-bearing quartz lead or lode, extending north and south from this notice, with all its dips, spurs, and angles, variations and sinuosities, together with fifty feet of ground on either side for working the same."We put our names to it and tried to feel that our fortunes were made.