Explanatory Notes
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Apparatus Notes
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CHAPTER 40
[begin page 256]

CHAPTER 40

I now come to a curious episode—the most curious, I think, that had yet accented my slothful, valueless, heedless career. Out of a hillside toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddish looking quartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a silver-bearing ledge that extended deep down into the earth, of course. It was owned by a company entitled the “Wide West.” There was a shaft sixty or seventy feet deep on the under side of the croppings, and everybody was acquainted with the rock that came from it—and tolerably rich rock it was, too, but nothing extraordinary. I will remark here, that although to the inexperienced stranger all the quartz of a particular “district” looks about alike, an old resident of the camp can take a glance at a mixed pile of rock, separate the fragments and tell you which mine each came from, as easily as a confectioner can separate and classify the various kinds and qualities of candy in a mixed heap of the article.

All at once the town was thrown into a state of extraordinary excitement. In mining parlance the Wide West had “struck it rich!” Everybody went to see the new developments, and for some days there was such a crowd of people about the Wide West shaft that a stranger would have supposed there was a mass meeting in session there. No other topic was discussed but the rich strike, and nobody thought or dreamed about anything else. Every man brought away a specimen, ground it up in a hand mortar, washed it out in his horn spoon, and glared speechless upon the marvelous result. It was not hard rock, but black, decomposed stuff which could be crumbled in the hand like a baked potato, and when spread out on a paper exhibited a thick sprinkling of gold and particles of “native” silverexplanatory note. Higbie brought a handful to the cabin, and when he had washed it out his amazement was beyond description. Wide [begin page 257] West stock soared skywards. It was said that repeated offers had been made for it at a thousand dollars a foot, and promptly refused. We have all had the “blues”—the mere sky-blues—but mine were indigo, now—because I did not own in the Wide West. The world seemed hollow to me, and existence a grief. I lost my appetite, and ceased to take an interest in anything. Still I had to stay, and listen to other people’s rejoicings, because I had no money to get out of the camp with.

The Wide West company put a stop to the carrying away of “specimens,” and well they might, for every handful of the ore was worth a sum of some consequence. To show the exceeding value of the ore, I will remark that a sixteen-hundred-poundemendation parcel of it was sold, just as it lay, at the mouth of [begin page 258] the shaft, at one dollar a pound; and the man who bought it “packed” it on mules a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, over the mountains, to San Franciscoexplanatory note, satisfied that it would yield at a rate that would richly compensate him for his trouble. The Wide West people also commanded their foreman to refuse any but their own operatives permission to enter the mine at any time or for any purpose. I kept up my “blue” meditations and Higbie kept up a deal of thinking, too, but of a different sort. He puzzled over the “rock,” examined it with a glass, inspected it in different lights and from different points of view, and after each experiment delivered himself, in soliloquy, of one and the same unvarying opinion in the same unvarying formula:

“It is not Wide West rock!”

He said once or twice that he meant to have a look into the Wide West shaft if he got shot for it. I was wretched, and did not care whether he got a look into it or not. He failed that day, and tried again at night; failed again; got up at dawn and tried, and failed again. Then he lay in ambush in the sage-brushemendation hour after hour, waiting for the two or three hands to adjourn to the shade of a boulder for dinner; made a start once, but was premature—one of the men came back for something; tried it again, but when almost at the mouth of the shaft, another of the men rose up from behind the boulder as if to reconnoitre, and he dropped on the ground and lay quiet; presently he crawled on his hands and knees to the mouth of the shaft, gave a quick glance around, then seized the rope and slid down the shaft. He disappeared in the gloom of a “side drift” just as a head appeared in the mouth of the shaft and somebody shouted “Hello!”—which he did not answer. He was not disturbed any more. An hour later he entered

interviewing the “wide west.”
the cabin, hot, red, and ready to burst with smothered excitement, and exclaimed in a stage whisper:

“I knew it! We are rich! It’s a blind lead explanatory note!”

I thought the very earth reeled under me. Doubt—conviction—doubt again—exultation—hope, amazement, belief, unbelief—every emotion imaginable swept in wild procession through my heart and brain, and I could not speak a word. After a moment or two of this mental fury, I shook myself to rights, and said:

“Say it again!”

“It’s a blind lead!”

“Cal., let’s—let’s burn the house—or kill somebody! Let’s get out where there’s room to hurrah! But what is the use? It is a hundred times too good to be true.”

“It’s a blind lead, for a million!—hanging wall—foot wall—clay casings—everything complete!” He swung his hat and gave three cheers, and I cast doubt to the winds and chimed in with a will. For I was worth a million dollars, and did not care “whether school kept or not!”

But perhaps I ought to explain. A “blind lead” is a lead or ledge that does not “crop out” above the surface. A miner does not know where to look for such leads, but they are often stumbled upon by accident in the course of driving a tunnel or sinking a shaft. Higbie [begin page 259] knew the Wide West rock perfectly well, and the more he had examined the new developments the more he was satisfied that the ore could not have come from the Wide West vein. And so had it occurred to him alone, of all the camp, that there was a blind lead down in the shaft, and that even the Wide West people themselves did not suspect itexplanatory note. He was right. When he went down the shaft, he found that the blind lead held its independent way through the Wide West vein, cutting it diagonally, and that it was enclosed in its own well-defined casing-rocks and clay. Hence it was public property. Both leads being perfectly well defined, it was easy for any miner to see which one belonged to the Wide West and which did not.

worth a million.

We thought it well to have a strong friend, and therefore we brought the foreman of the Wide Westexplanatory note to our cabin that night and revealed the great surprise to him. Higbie said:

[begin page 260] “We are going to take possession of this blind lead, record it and establish ownershipexplanatory note, and then forbid the Wide West company to take out any more of the rockexplanatory note. You cannot help your company in this matter—nobody can help them. I will go into the shaft with you and prove to your entire satisfaction that it is a blind lead. Now we propose to take you in with us, and claim the blind lead in our three names. What do you say?”

What could a man say who had an opportunity to simply stretch forth his hand and take possession of a fortune without risk of any kind and without wronging any one or attaching the least taint of dishonor to his name? He could only say, “Agreed.”

The notice was put up that night, and duly spread upon the recorder’s books before ten o’clock. We claimed two hundred feet each—six hundred feet in all—the smallest and compactest organization in the district, and the easiest to manage.

millionaires laying plans.

No one can be so thoughtless as to suppose that we slept, that night. Higbie and I went to bed at midnight, but it was only to lie broad awake and think, dream, scheme. The floorless, tumble-down cabin was a palace, the ragged gray blankets silk, the furniture rosewood and mahogany. Each new splendor that burst out of my visions of the future whirled me bodily over in bed or jerked [begin page 261] me to a sitting posture just as if an electric battery had been applied to me. We shot fragments of conversation back and forth at each other. Once Higbie said:

“When are you going home—to the States?”

“To-morrow!”—with an evolution or two, ending with a sitting position. “Well—no—but next month, at furthest.”

“We’ll go in the same steamer.”

“Agreed.”

A pause.

“Steamer of the 10th?”

“Yes. No, the 1st.”

“All right.”

Another pause.

“Where are you going to live?” said Higbie.

“San Francisco.”

“That’s me!”

Pause.

“Too high—too much climbing”—from Higbie.

“What is?”

“I was thinking of Russian Hill—building a house up there.”

“Too much climbing? Shan’t you keep a carriage?”

“Of course. I forgot that.”

Pause.

“Cal., what kind of a house are you going to build?”

“I was thinking about that. Three-story and an attic.”

“But what kind?

“Well, I don’t hardly know. Brick, I suppose.”

“Brick—bosh.”

“Why? What is your idea?”

“Brown stone front—French plate glass—billiard-room off the dining-room—statuary and paintings—shrubbery and two-acre grass plat—greenhouse—iron dog on the front stoop—gray horses—landau, and a coachman with a bug on his hat!”

“By George!”

A long pause.

“Cal., when are you going to Europe?”

“Well—I hadn’t thought of that. When are you?”

“In the springemendation.”

[begin page 262] “Going to be gone all summer?”

“All summer! I shall remain there three years.”

“No—but are you in earnest?”

“Indeed I am.”

“I will go along too.”

“Why of course you will.”

“What part of Europe shall you go to?”

“All parts. France, England, Germany—Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Syria, Greece, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, Egypt—all over—everywhere.”

“I’m agreed.”

“All right.”

“Won’t it be a swell trip!”

“We’ll spend forty or fifty thousand dollars trying to make it one, anyway.”

Another long pause.

“Higbie, we owe the butcher six dollars, and he has been threatening to stop our—”

“Hang the butcher!”

“Amen.”

And so it went on. By three o’clock we found it was no use, and so we got up and played cribbage and smoked pipes till sunrise. It was my week to cook. I always hated cooking—now, I abhorred it.

The news was all over town. The former excitement was great—this one was greater still. I walked the streets serene and happy. Higbie said the foreman had been offered two hundred thousand dollars for his third of the mine. I said I would like to see myself selling for any such price. My ideas were lofty. My figure was a million. Still, I honestly believe that if I had been offered it, it would have had no other effect than to make me hold off for more.

I found abundant enjoyment in being rich. A man offered me a three-hundred-dollar horse, and wanted to take my simple, unendorsed note for it. That brought the most realizing sense I had yet had that I was actually rich, beyond shadow of doubt. It was followed by numerous other evidences of a similar nature—among which I may mention the fact of the butcher leaving us a double supply of meat and saying nothing about money.

By the laws of the district, the “locators” or claimants of a ledge [begin page 263] were obliged to do a fair and reasonable amount of work on their new property within ten daysexplanatory note after the date of the location, or the property was forfeited, and anybody could go and seize it that chose. So we determined to go to work the next day. About the middle of the afternoon, as I was coming out of the post office, I met a Mr. Gardiner, who told me that Capt. John Nye was lying dangerously ill at his place (the “Nine-Mile Ranch”explanatory note), and that he and his wife were not able to give him nearly as much care and attention as his case demanded. I said if he would wait for me a moment, I would go down and help in the sick room. I ran to the cabin to tell Higbie. He was not there, but I left a note on the table for him, and a few minutes later I left town in Gardiner’s wagon.

dangerously sick.
Editorial Emendations CHAPTER 40
  sixteen-hundred-pound (C)  ●  sixteen-hundred-pounds (A) 
  sage-brush (C)  ●  sage brush (A) 
  spring (C)  ●  Spring (A) 
Explanatory Notes CHAPTER 40
 the Wide West had “struck it rich!” . . . black, decomposed stuff . . . gold and particles of “native” silver] The Wide West claim was located in 1860 on Last Chance Hill, Aurora; its mining company was incorporated the following January with a capital stock of 2,400 shares valued at $600,000 ( L1 , 217 n. 2). The rich strike mentioned here occurred toward the end of May 1862; Clemens was among those who obtained a sample of the ore, “a pinch of decom, . . . pinched with thumb and finger, from Wide West ledge,” as he wrote to Orion on 2 June ( L1 , 217). The Esmeralda Star reported on 31 May: “We have been in California since the spring of ’49, visited many of the mines, but never saw anything to compare in richness with the ledge of the ‘Wide West,’ we have only spoken of the gold which could be seen and we were told that it was equally as rich in silver” (quoted in Mack 1947, 165–66).
 a sixteen-hundred-pound parcel . . . to San Francisco] The details of this anecdote suggest that Mark Twain used as a source a clipping of a report in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise for 20 July 1862, presumably preserved in a scrapbook. This report—from “a correspondent, writing from Esmeralda, July 13th”—had almost certainly been written by Clemens himself: “Sol. Carter purchased sixteen hundred pounds of decomposed Pride of Utah rock from the company, in the beginning of the week, for which he paid one dollar a pound in cash, [begin page 642] and shipped said rock to San Francisco by his pack train” (SLC 1862c). When Mark Twain adapted this anecdote for use in Roughing It, he altered only the name of the mine, from the “Pride of Utah” to the “Wide West.” The history of the Wide West was closely tied to that of the Pride of Utah, situated slightly above and parallel to it on Last Chance Hill. A rich strike was made in the Pride of Utah in mid-June, two or three weeks after the one in the Wide West. By early July it was known that the two ledges were intersected by the same rich cross vein, which was the source of both strikes. By the end of 1862 the two claims were owned by one company, and this consolidated Wide West mine was ultimately among the most productive in Esmeralda. In chapters 40–41 Mark Twain conflated the facts about the Wide West and the Pride of Utah, evidently in order to simplify his story of the blind lead as well as make it more dramatic, while still drawing on certain essential facts. The note at 269.25–26 discusses the question of whether the tale is fact or fiction.
 

he meant to have a look into the Wide West shaft . . . It’s a blind lead] According to Higbie’s recollection, the superintendent of the Wide West invited him to inspect the excavation:

While walking about and trying to get at the shape and formation of the deposit I discovered a cross vein running diagonally across this chimney and entering the walls at both sides. I called the attention of the superintendent to it. He thought it only a short spur and worthy of no attention, but as I had seen it entering both walls I was confident it was a permanent and distinct vein from the Wide West. Accordingly I made a mining location on this cross vein, as the mining laws permitted me to do, and put Sam L. Clemens’ name on the location notice. (Phillips, 70)

 even the Wide West people themselves did not suspect it] In reality, the owners of the Wide West quickly realized that the source of their rich strike was not their own claim but a cross ledge, apparently already located by someone else, called the “Dimes.” In a letter of 22 June Clemens told Orion, “You see the grand rock comes from the ‘Dimes,’ in reality, and not from the W.W., although the latter said nothing about it until they had bought into the former” ( L1 , 220; Esmeralda district mining deeds, Book B:299–300, Mono County Archives).
 the foreman of the Wide West] In the next chapter (268.29–30) Mark Twain identifies the foreman as A. D. Allen, an identification confirmed by the Esmeralda Star report of 31 May 1862 (quoted in Mack 1947, 165–66). Allen was an early locator of mining property on the Comstock lode, in Aurora, and in the Bodie mining district southwest of Esmeralda. In 1862 he was also president of Aurora’s Live Yankee Mining Company. In September of that year he was elected a representative from Esmeralda County to the second Territorial Legislature, but failed to serve his term ( L1 , 191 n. 1; Angel, 402).
  [begin page 643] take possession of this blind lead, record it and establish ownership] Since the 1862 mining locations for the Esmeralda district (as opposed to mining deeds, which were entered in separate books) are not known to survive, it has not been possible to confirm whether Clemens and Higbie recorded a claim to the blind lead, or cross ledge, where it intersected the Pride of Utah tunnel. It is clear, however, that it turned out to be a continuation of the Dimes cross ledge. While the Wide West worked along the Dimes, the Pride of Utah followed its own rich strike, and the excavations soon met, which resulted in several months of legal “warfare” between the two companies (“The Wealth of Esmeralda,” San Francisco Alta California, 3 Aug 62, 2).
 and then forbid the Wide West company to take out any more of the rock] On 13 July, an Aurora correspondent—probably Clemens—reported that the excavations of the two companies had “run together.” The Wide West served an injunction on the Pride of Utah (not the other way around) and, in addition, seized over one hundred pounds of its bullion from Clayton’s mill. In retaliation, the Pride of Utah men “built a fire of such aromatic fuel as old boots, rags, etc., in the bottom of their shaft, and closed up the top, thus converting the Wide West shaft into a chimney”—which necessarily led to a suspension of work, at least temporarily (SLC 1862c).
 By the laws of the district . . . obliged to do a fair and reasonable amount of work . . . within ten days] The first laws of the Esmeralda mining district were passed in August 1860, amended in June 1861, and amended again in June 1862. Although it is difficult to determine which laws were current and which were superseded by later ones, it appears that no provision such as the one that Mark Twain describes was in effect in June 1862. Mark Twain’s reference to a ten-day period suggests that he was recalling Section 11 of the original code, which applied only to surface claims: “All surface claims shall be worked within ten days after there is sufficient water to successfully work said claims.” It may be significant, in spite of Mark Twain’s (and Higbie’s) unequivocal assertion that they officially recorded their claim, that Section 5 read, “All quartz claims shall be duly recorded within ten days from the time of location.” The law regarding labor that actually governed Clemens’s claim was a recent amendment, passed on 1 June, which applied to both surface and underground (blind) leads: “There shall be ($20) twenty dollars’ worth of work, or four days of useful labor, . . . done on each claim of two hundred feet . . . on or before the first day of December, 1862; said work to hold the claim good until the first day of June, 1863” ( Mining Laws , 4, 6; Phillips, 70). Clemens and his partners would thus have had to perform twelve days of labor—at any time prior to 1 December—to secure their six-hundred-foot claim for a year. To obtain a perpetual title, they [begin page 644] needed to do fifteen days of work on each two-hundred-foot claim, a total of forty-five days of labor. In a letter of 22 June 1862 Clemens indicated that he was familiar with this provision: “By the new law I can get a perpetual title to our ground very easily,” he wrote Orion (in reference to another claim) ( L1 , 221). In retelling the blind-lead story many years later, in 1906, he described a different version of the labor requirement, claiming that he and his partners could have made their “ownership of that exceedingly rich property permanent by doing ten days’ work on it, as required by the mining laws” (AD, 26 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA , 2:253).
 a Mr. Gardiner . . . “Nine-Mile Ranch”] The owner of this ranch, located about nine miles northwest of Aurora, has not been conclusively identified. Two Gardiners are listed as Aurora residents: E. L. H. Gardiner, deputy recorder for the Esmeralda district, and T. W. Gardiner (Kelly 1863, 425, 427; Mining Laws , 2). Another early settler in the area, George Albert Green, has also been named as an owner of the ranch, probably at a later date (see supplement B, map 3; Fox, foldout map; Wedertz, 43).