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about "trains" across the plains. Because I am down on that arrangement.
That sort of thing is "played out," you know. The Overland Coach or the
Mail Steamer is the thing.
You want to know something about the route between California and Nevada
Territory? Suppose you take my word for it, that it is exceedingly
jolly. Or take, for a winter view, J. Ross Brown's picture, in Harper's
Monthly, of pack mules tumbling fifteen hundred feet down the side of a
mountain. Why bless you, there's scenery on that route. You can stand on
some of those noble peaks and see Jerusalem and the Holy Land. And you
can start a boulder, and send it tearing up the earth and crashing over
trees-down-down-down-to the very devil, Madam. And you would probably
stand up there and look, and stare and wonder at the magnificence spread
out before you till you starved to death, if let alone. But you should
take someone along to keep you moving.
Since you want to know, I will inform you that an eight-stamp water
mill, put up and ready for business would cost about $10,000 to $12,000.
Then, the water to run it with would cost from $1,000 to $30,000--and
even more, according to the location. What I mean by that, is, that
water powers in THIS vicinity, are immensely valuable. So, also, in
Esmeralda. But Humboldt is a new country, and things don't cost so much
there yet. I saw a good water power sold there for $750.00. But here is
the way the thing is managed. A man with a good water power on Carson
river will lean his axe up against a tree (provided you find him
chopping cord-wood at $4 a day,) and taking his chalk pipe out of his
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