The mighty roaring of the conflagration, together with our solitary and somewhat unsafe position (for there was no one within six miles of us), rendered the scene very impressive. Occasionally one of us would remove his pipe from his mouth and say, "Superb, magnificent!--beautifull--but--by the Lord God Almighty, if we attempt to sleep in this little patch to-night, we'll never live till morning!"
This is good writing too, but it lacks the fancy and the choice of phrasing which would develop later. The fire ended their first excursion to Tahoe, but they made others and located other claims--claims in which the "folks at home, "Mr. Moffett, James Lampton, and others, were included. It was the same James Lampton who would one day serve as a model for Colonel Sellers. Evidently Samuel Clemens had a good opinion of his business capacity in that earlier day, for he writes:
This is just the country for cousin Jim to live in. I don't believe it would take him six months to make $100,000 here if he had $3,000 to commence with. I suppose he can't leave his family, though.
Further along in the same letter his own overflowing Seller's optimism develops.
Orion and I have confidence enough in this country to think that if the war lets us alone we can make Mr. Moffett rich without its ever costing him a cent or a particle of trouble.
This letter bears date of October 25th, and from it we gather that a certain interest in mining claims had by this time developed.
We have got about 1,650 feet of mining ground, and, if it proves good, Mr. Moffett's name will go in, and if not I can get "feet" for him in the spring.
You see, Pamela, the trouble does not consist in getting mining ground--for there is plenty enough--but the money to work it with after you get it.
He refers to Pamela's two little children, his niece Annie and Baby Sam, --[Samuel E. Moffett, in later life a well-known journalist and editor.] --and promises to enter claims for them--timber claims probably--for he was by no means sanguine as yet concerning the mines. That was a long time ago. Tahoe land is sold by the lot, now, to summer residents. Those claims would have been riches to-day, but they were all abandoned presently, forgotten in the delirium which goes only with the pursuit of precious ores.
XXXIII
THE PROSPECTOR
It was not until early winter 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 for a song claims 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 fairly blinding. The papers declared that Humboldt County "was 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 fairly 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.