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in the "Alba Nueva" and other claims with gorgeous names, and was rich
again--in prospect. I owned a vast mining property there. I would not
have sold out for less than $400,000 at that time. But I will now.
Finally I walked home--200 miles partly for exercise, and partly because
stage fare was expensive. Next I entered upon an affluent career in
Virginia City, and by a judicious investment of labor and the capital
of friends, became the owner of about all the worthless wild cat mines
there were in that part of the country. Assessments did the business
for me there. There were a hundred and seventeen assessments to one
dividend, and the proportion of income to outlay was a little against
me. My financial barometer went down to 32 Fahrenheit, and the
subscriber was frozen out.
I took up extensions on the main lead-extensions that reached to
British America, in one direction, and to the Isthmus of Panama in the
other--and I verily believe I would have been a rich man if I had ever
found those infernal extensions. But I didn't. I ran tunnels till I
tapped the Arctic Ocean, and I sunk shafts till I broke through the roof
of perdition; but those extensions turned up missing every time. I am
willing to sell all that property and throw in the improvements.
Perhaps you remember that celebrated "North Ophir?" I bought that mine.
It was very rich in pure silver. You could take it out in lumps as large
as a filbert. But when it was discovered that those lumps were melted
half dollars, and hardly melted at that, a painful case of "salting" was
apparent, and the undersigned adjourned to the poorhouse again.
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