Dont buy anything while I am here but save up some money for me. Dont send any money home. I shall have your next quarters salary spent before you get it, I think. I mean to make or break here within the next two or three months.
Yrs.
Sam.
The wars mentioned in the opening paragraph of this letter were incident to the trouble concerning the boundary line between California and Nevada. The trouble continued for some time, with occasional bloodshed. The next letter is an exultant one. There were few enough of this sort. We cannot pretend to keep track of the multiplicity of mines and shares which lure the gold-hunters, pecking away at the flinty ledges, usually in the snow. It has been necessary to abbreviate this letter, for much of it has lost all importance with the years, and is merely confusing. Hope is still high in the writers heart, and confidence in his associates still unshaken. Later he was to lose faith in Raish, whether with justice or not we cannot know now.
To Orion Clowns, in Carson City:
Esmeralda, May 11, 1862.
My dear Bro., To use a French expression I have got my d d satisfy at last. Two years time will make us capitalists, in spite of anything. Therefore, we need fret and fume, and worry and doubt no more, but just lie still and put up with privations for six months. Perhaps three months will let us out. Then, if Government refuses to pay the rent on your new office we can do it ourselves. We have got to wait six weeks, anyhow, for a dividend, maybe longer but that it will come there is no shadow of a doubt, I have got the thing sifted down to a dead moral certainty. I own one-eighth of the new Monitor Ledge, Clemens Company, and money cant buy a foot of it; because I know it to contain our fortune. The ledge is six feet wide, and one needs no glass to see gold and silver in it. Phillips and I own one half of a segregated claim in the Flyaway discovery, and good interests in two extensions on it. We put men to work on our part of the discovery yesterday, and last night they brought us some fine specimens. Rock taken from ten feet below the surface on the other part of the discovery, has yielded $150.00 to the ton in the mill and we are at work 300 feet from their shaft.
May 12Yours by the mail received last night. Eighteen hundred feet in the C. T. Rices Company! Well, I am glad you did not accept of the 200 feet. Tell Rice to give it to some poor man.
But hereafter, when anybody holds up a glittering prospect before you, just argue in this wise, viz: That, if all spare change be devoted to working the Monitor and Flyaway, 12 months, or 24 at furthest, will find all our earthly wishes satisfied, so far as money is concerned and the more feet we have, the more anxiety we must bear therefore, why not say No d n your prospects, I wait on a sure thing and a man is less than a man, if he cant wait 2 years for a fortune? When you and I came out here, we did not expect 63 or 64 to find us rich men and if that proposition had been made, we would have accepted it gladly. Now, it is made.
Well, I am willing, now, that Nearys tunnel, or anybody elses tunnel shall succeed. Some of them may beat us a few months, but we shall be on hand in the fullness of time, as sure as fate. I would hate to swap chances with any member of the tribein fact, I am so lost to all sense and reason as to be capable of refusing to trade Flyaway (with but 200 feet in the Company of four,) foot for foot for that splendid Lady Washington, with its lists of capitalist proprietors, and its 35,000 feet of Priceless ground.
I wouldnt mind being in some of those Clear Creek claims, if I lived in Carson and we could spare the money. But I have struck my tent in Esmeralda, and I care for no mines but those which I can superintend myself. I am a citizen here now, and I am satisfied although R. and I are strapped and we havent three days rations in the house.
Raish is looking anxiously for money and so am I. Send me whatever you can spare conveniently I want it to work the Flyaway with. My fourth of that claim only cost me $50, (which isnt paid yet, though,) and I suppose I could sell it here in town for ten times that amount today, but I shall probably hold onto it till the cows come home. I shall work the Monitor and the other claims with my own hands. I prospected of a pound of M, yesterday, and Raish reduced it with the blow-pipe, and got about ten or twelve cents in gold and silver, besides the other half of it which we spilt on the floor and didnt get. The specimen came from the croppings, but was a choice one, and showed much free gold to the naked eye.
Well, I like the corner up-stairs office amazingly provided, it has one fine, large front room superbly carpeted, for the safe and a $150 desk, or such a matter one handsome room amidships, less handsomely gotten up, perhaps, for records and consultations, and one good-sized bedroom and adjoining it a kitchen, neither of which latter can be entered by anybody but yourself and finally, when one of the ledges begins to pay, the whole to be kept in parlor order by two likely contrabands at big wages, the same to be free of expense to the Government. You want the entire second story no less room than you would have had in Harris and Cos. Make them fix for you before the 1st of July-for maybe you might want to come out strong on the 4th, you know.
No, the Post Office is all right and kept by a gentleman but W. F. Express isnt. They charge 25 cts to express a letter from here, but I believe they have quit charging twice for letters that arrive prepaid.
The Flyaway specimen I sent you, (taken by myself from DeKays shaft, 300 feet from where we are going to sink) cannot be called choice, exactly say something above medium, to be on the safe side. But I have seen exceedingly choice chunks from that shaft. My intention at first in sending the Antelope specimen was that you might see that it resembles the Monitor but, come to think, a man can tell absolutely nothing about that without seeing both ledges themselves. I tried to break a handsome chunk from a huge piece of my darling Monitor which we brought from the croppings yesterday, but it all splintered up, and I send you the scraps. I call that choiceany d d fool would. Dont ask if it has been assayed, for it hasnt. It dont need it. It is amply able to speak for itself. It is six feet wide on top, and traversed through and through with veins whose color proclaims their worth. What the devil does a man want with any more feet when he owns in the Flyaway and the invincible bomb-proof Monitor?
If I had anything more to say I have forgotten what it was, unless, perhaps, that I want a sum of money anywhere from $20 to $150, as soon as possible.
Raish sends regards. He or I, one will drop a line to the Age occasionally. I suppose you saw my letters in the Enterprise.
Yr. Bro,
Sam.
P. S. I suppose Pamela never will regain her health, but she could improve it by coming to California provided the trip didnt kill her.
You see Bixby is on the flag-ship. He always was the best pilot on the Mississippi, and deserves his posish. They have done a reckless thing, though, in putting Sam Bowen on the Swanfor if a bomb-shell happens to come his way, he will infallibly jump overboard.
Send me another package of those envelopes, per Bagleys coat pocket.
We see how anxious he was for his brother to make a good official showing. If a niggardly Government refused to provide decent quarters no matter; the miners, with gold pouring in, would themselves pay for a suite superbly carpeted, and all kept in order by two likely contrabandsthat is to say, negroes. Samuel Clemens in those days believed in expansion and impressive surroundings. His brother, though also mining mad, was rather inclined to be penny wise in the matter of office luxury not a bad idea, as it turned out.