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Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets
Nevada County, California (PH 1-19)(1926) (19 pages)
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Page: of 19
OPERATING A GO-DEVIL 4000 FEET UNDERGROUND
yet one could not be more comfortable or more contented than
have been for the past year. I have been lonesome at times
and have had blue spells, but they did not last very long. There
is nothing but a dirt floor, with pine needles where we roll up in
our blankets and on which we sleep like logs; three-legged stools
for scats, a plank for a table; an open fire-place five feet wide;
an iron kettle and a coffee pot; a Dutch oven and a frying pan
to cook in, it used to be tin plates and cups until we got hightoned and bought crockery; grub stored away most anywhere,
a shelf full of books we have bought, about fifty volumes altogether—and that is about all. We put a big oak back-log in
the fire-place, pile up big chunks in front and the flames leap up
the chimney and light the old cabin. Pard grows sentimental
and quotes poetry and gets down a book and reads a chapter or
two, and we are off in our minds to England, France or Spain
Owe are reading Irving's “History of Granada."") Then we turn
into our bunks, the fire dies down to coals and as they sputter
and sparkle I lie and watch the glow and sce all sorts of pictures
until my eyelids grow heavy and . don’t know anything more
until I get a dig in the ribs and Pard says: “Get up, you lazy
whelp, and help get breakfast.”
HUNTING FOR POCKETS
February 29, 1852. I rode over to Rough and Ready and
found a lively camp. The diggings have been very rich all around
it and they have found on the ridge, near Randolph Flat, claims
that have paid big A peculiarity is the number of rich pockets
that have been struck, A miner named Axtell uncovered one
two weeks ago, from which he has taken out fourteen thousand
dollars, and there haye been any number that yielded from four
hundred to five thousand dollars. “There are miners who follow
pocket mining exclusively, and there certainly is a fascination to
it. They will work for weeks without making grub and come
across a pocket from which they will take out hundreds or
thousands. As one of them said to me: “It’s like playing a number on ‘Red and Black.’ You may make a hundred bets without
winning, a cent, but when it does come up you get a hundred
for one.” 1 guess we all like to gamble,
THE QUARTZ MINES DON'T PINCH OUT
February 29, 1852. I crossed over the trail to Grass Valley
and had a look at the quartz mines. There is something that upsets all of our notions. In two or three places they have followed
these veins of white, glassy rock, down into the bed-rock for
seventy-five feet and they don’t seem to pinch out. I did not
find anybody to explain how gold got inside this hard rock, and
I guess nobody knows.
(Note: These mines are now more than six thousand feet
deep on the pitch of the veins.)
A MAN, AS MEASURED BY THE YARDSTICK OF THE
MINER
March 14, 1852. I know half a dozen men on Selby Hill who
have taken out in the past year anywhere from forty thousand
to sixty thousand apiece, and a dozen more who have made
still more than that from mining ground on Gold Flat, Coyoteville and Manzanita Hill. They don’t put on any airs and no
envies them. We don’t ask what a man is worth or how much he
has got. The only question is, is he a good fellow? If he is, he
is one of us; if he isn't, we let him alone.
THE EARLY DAY DESPERADO
April 4, 1852. The country above and all the trails have been
infested with a gang of highwaymen for the Past three months
and it has not been safe to travel, as they robbed and murdered
right and left. It is Reelfoot Williams’ gang and he and his
followers do not seem to be afraid of anything or anybody.
Wednesday morning, they held up the Nevada Stage near
Ilinoistown and they got away with seventy-five hundred
dollars. There were only two passengers aboard, a man and a
woman. He gave up two hundred and thirty dollars, all that he
had. She swore she did not have any money, but they were mean
enough to search her, and although she fought like a tiger cat,
it did not do her any good. Sure enough, they found six slugs
(fifty dollars each) in her stockings, which they confiscated and
rode away laughing
(Note: Reelfoot Williams, who is credited with being the
leader of the gang of highwaymen mentioned in the diary, was
a notorious desperado of the early days, and, so far as known,
the first to organize a gang of murderers and thieves for systematicPredatory work on the roads and trails. He was arrested in
1851 for highway robbery, and escaped conviction after a hardfought legal battle in Downieville, Sierra County. The day
after the acquittal: in Schaffer’s court of Reelfoot Williams,
the Judge had business in one of the adjacent mining camps
A HYDRAULIC MINE