believed that a mining city must go through with a certain amount
of unadulterated cussedness before it can settle down and behave
itself in a conservative and seemly manner. Virginia has grown up
in the heart of the richest silver regions in the world, the El
Dorado of the hour; and of the immense numbers who are swarming
thither not more than half carry their mother's Bible or any
settled religion with them. The gambler and the strange woman as
naturally seek the new sensational town as ducks take to that
element which is so useful for making cocktails and bathing one's
feet; and these people make the new town rather warm for a while.
But by and by the earnest and honest citizens get tired of this
ungodly nonsense and organize a Vigilance Committee, which hangs
the more vicious of the pestiferous crowd to a sour-apple tree; and
then come good municipal laws, ministers, meeting-houses, and a
tolerably sober police in blue coats with brass buttons. About
five thousand able-bodied men are in the mines underground, here;
some as far down as five hundred feet. The Gould and Curry Mine
employs nine hundred men, and annually turns out about twenty
million dollars' worth of "demnition gold and silver," as Mr.
Mantalini might express it, though silver chiefly.

There are many other mines here and at Gold Hill (another startling
silver city, a mile from here), all of which do nearly as well.
The silver is melted down into bricks of the size of common house
bricks; then it is loaded into huge wagons, each drawn by eight and
twelve mules, and sent off to San Francisco. To a young person
fresh from the land of greenbacks this careless manner of carting
off solid silver is rather a startler. It is related that a young
man who came Overland from New Hampshire a few months before my
arrival became so excited about it that he fell in a fit, with the