After leaving the Sink, we traveled along the Humboldt river a little way.People accustomed to the monster mile-wide Mississippi, grow accustomed to associating the term "river" with a high degree of watery grandeur.Consequently, such people feel rather disappointed when they stand on the shores of the Humboldt or the Carson and find that a "river"in Nevada is a sickly rivulet which is just the counterpart of the Erie canal in all respects save that the canal is twice as long and four times as deep.One of the pleasantest and most invigorating exercises one can contrive is to run and jump across the Humboldt river till he is overheated, and then drink it dry.
On the fifteenth day we completed our march of two hundred miles and entered Unionville, Humboldt county, in the midst of a driving snow-storm.Unionville consisted of eleven cabins and a liberty-pole.Six of the cabins were strung along one side of a deep canyon, and the other five faced them.The rest of the landscape was made up of bleak mountain walls that rose so high into the sky from both sides of the canyon that the village was left, as it were, far down in the bottom of a crevice.
It was always daylight on the mountain tops a long time before the darkness lifted and revealed Unionville.
We built a small, rude cabin in the side of the crevice and roofed it with canvas, leaving a corner open to serve as a chimney, through which the cattle used to tumble occasionally, at night, and mash our furniture and interrupt our sleep.It was very cold weather and fuel was scarce.
Indians brought brush and bushes several miles on their backs; and when we could catch a laden Indian it was well--and when we could not (which was the rule, not the exception), we shivered and bore it.
I confess, without shame, that I expected to find masses of silver lying all about the ground.I expected to see it glittering in the sun on the mountain summits.I said nothing about this, for some instinct told me that I might possibly have an exaggerated idea about it, and so if Ibetrayed my thought I might bring derision upon myself.Yet I was as perfectly satisfied in my own mind as I could be of anything, that I was going to gather up, in a day or two, or at furthest a week or two, silver enough to make me satisfactorily wealthy--and so my fancy was already busy with plans for spending this money.The first opportunity that offered, I sauntered carelessly away from the cabin, keeping an eye on the other boys, and stopping and contemplating the sky when they seemed to be observing me; but as soon as the coast was manifestly clear, I fled away as guiltily as a thief might have done and never halted till I was far beyond sight and call.Then I began my search with a feverish excitement that was brimful of expectation--almost of certainty.
I crawled about the ground, seizing and examining bits of stone, blowing the dust from them or rubbing them on my clothes, and then peering at them with anxious hope.Presently I found a bright fragment and my heart bounded! I hid behind a boulder and polished it and scrutinized it with a nervous eagerness and a delight that was more pronounced than absolute certainty itself could have afforded.The more I examined the fragment the more I was convinced that I had found the door to fortune.I marked the spot and carried away my specimen.Up and down the rugged mountain side I searched, with always increasing interest and always augmenting gratitude that I had come to Humboldt and come in time.Of all the experiences of my life, this secret search among the hidden treasures of silver-land was the nearest to unmarred ecstasy.It was a delirious revel.
By and by, in the bed of a shallow rivulet, I found a deposit of shining yellow scales, and my breath almost forsook me! A gold mine, and in my simplicity I had been content with vulgar silver! I was so excited that I half believed my overwrought imagination was deceiving me.Then a fear came upon me that people might be observing me and would guess my secret.
