NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. No. CLXXXI.-JUNE, 1865.-VOL. XXXI. I WAS prepared to find great changes on the route from Carson to Virginia City. At Empire City-which was nothing but a sagedesert inhabited by Dutch Nick on the occasion of my early explorations-I was quite bewildered with the busy scenes of life and industry. Quartzmills and saw-mills had completely usurped the valley along the head of the Carson River; and now the hammering of stamps, the hissing of steam, the whirling clouds of smoke from tall chimneys, and the confused clamor of voices from a busy multitude, reminded one of a manufacturing city. Here, indeed, was progress of a substantial kind. Further beyond, at Silver City, there were similar evidences of prosperity. From the descent into the cañon through the Devil's Gate, and up the grade to Gold Hill, it is almost a continuous line of quartz-mills, tunnels, dumps, sluices, water-wheels, frame shanties, and grogshops. Gold Hill itself has swelled into the proportions of a city. It is now practically a continuation of Virginia. Here the evidences of busy enterprise are peculiarly striking. The whole hill is riddled and honey-combed with shafts and tunnels. Engine-houses for hoisting are perched on points apparently inaccessible; quartz-mills of various capacities line the sides of the cañon; the main street is well flanked by brick stores, Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by Harper and Brothers, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. VOL. XXXI.-No. 181.-A hotels, express-offices, saloons, restaurants, groggeries, and all those attractive places of resort which go to make up a flourishing mining town. Even a newspaper is printed here, which I know to be a spirited and popular institution, having been viciously assailed by the same. A runaway team of horses, charging full tilt down the street, greeted our arrival in a lively and characteristic manner, and came very near capsizing our stage. One man was run over some distance below, and partially crushed; but as somebody was killed nearly every day, such a meagre result afforded no general satisfaction. Descending the slope of the ridge that divides Gold Hill from Virginia City a strange scene attracts the eye. He who gazes upon it for the first time is apt to doubt if it be real. Perhaps there is not another spot upon the face of the globe that presents a scene so weird and desolate in its natural aspect, yet so replete with busy life, so animate with human interest. It is as if a wondrous battle raged, in which the combatants were man and earth. Myriads of swarthy, bearded, dust-covered men are piercing into the grim old mountains, ripping them open, thrusting murderous holes through their naked bodies; piling up engines to cut out their vital arteries; stamping and crushing up with infernal machines their disemboweled fragments, and holding fiendish revels amidst the chaos of destruction; while the mighty earth, blasted, barren, and scarred by the tempests of ages, fiercely affronts the foe-smiting him with disease and death; scoffing at his puny assaults with a grim scorn; ever grand in his desolation, ever dominant in the infinity of his endurance. "Come!" he seems to mutter, "dig, delve, pierce, and bore, with your picks, your shovels, and your infernal machines; wring out of my veins a few globules of the precious blood; hoard it, spend it, gamble for it, bring perdition to your souls with it-do what you will, puny insects! Sooner or later the death-blow smites you, and Earth swallows you! From earth you came-to earth you go again!" The city lies on a rugged slope, and is singularly diversified in its uprisings and downfallings. It is difficult to determine, by any system of observation or measurement, upon what principle it was laid out. My impression is that it was never laid out at all, but followed the dips, spurs, and angles of the immortal Comstock. Some of the streets run straight enough; others seem to dodge about at acute angles in search of an open space, as miners explore the subterranean regions in search of a lead. The crossstreets must have been forgotten in the original plan-if ever there was a plan about this eccentric city. Sometimes they happen accidentally at the most unexpected points; and sometimes they don't happen at all where you are sure to require them. A man in a hurry to get from the upper slope of the town to any opposite point below must try it under-ground or over the roofs of the houses, or take the customary circuit of half a mile. Every body seems to have built wherever he could secure a lot. The two main streets, it must be admitted, are so far regular as to follow pretty nearly the direction | Smoking hot, reeking with sweat, dripping with of the Comstock lead. On the lower slope, or liquefied dust, they pull, jerk, groan, fall back, plateau, the town, as viewed from any neighbor- and dash forward, tumble down, kick, plunge, ing eminence, presents much the appearance of and bite; then buckle to it again, under the a vast number of shingle-roofs shaken down at galling lash; and so live and so struggle these random, like a jumbled pack of cards. All poor beasts, for their pittance of barley and hay, the streets are narrow, except where there are till they drop down dead. How they would welbut few houses, and there they are wide enough come death if they had souls! Yet men have at present. The business part of the town has souls, and work hard too for their miserable pitbeen built up with astonishing rapidity. In the tance of food. How many of the countless millspring of 1860 there was nothing of it save a few ions of the earth yearn for death or welcome its frame shanties and canvas tents, and one or two coming? Even the teamsters that drive these rough stone cabins. It now presents some of struggling labor-worn brutes seem so fond of life the distinguishing features of a metropolitan that they scorn eternity. Brawny, bearded felcity. Large and substantial brick houses, three lows they are; their faces so ingrained with the or four stories high, with ornamental fronts, dust and grit of earth, and tanned to such an have filled up most of the gaps, and many more uncertain hue by the scorching suns and dry are still in progress of erection. The oddity of winds of the road, that for the matter of identity the plan, and variety of its architecture-com- they might as well be Hindoos or Belooches. bining most of the styles known to the ancients, With what malignant zeal they crack their leatherand some but little known to the moderns-give thonged whips, and with what ferocious vigor this famous city a grotesque, if not picturesque, they rend the air with their imprecations! O appearance, which is rather increased upon a Plutus! such swearing-a sliding scale of oaths close inspection. to which swearing in all other parts of the world Immense freight-wagons, with ponderous is as the murmuring of a gentle brook to the wheels and axles, heavily laboring under pro- volume and rush and thunder of a cataract. The digious loads of ore for the mills, or groaning fertility of resource displayed by these reckless with piles of merchandise in boxes, bales, bags, men; their ready command of metaphor; their and crates, block the narrow streets. Powerful marvelous genius for strange, startling, and teams of horses, mules, or oxen, numbering graphic combination of slang and profanity; from eight to sixteen animals to each wagon, their grotesque originality of inflexion and climake frantic efforts to drag these land schooners max; their infatuated credulity in the underover the ruts, and up the sudden rises, or through standing of dumb animals; would in the pursuit the sinks of this rut-smitten, ever-rising, ever- of any nobler art elevate them to a niche in the sinking city. A pitiable sight it is to see them! temple of fame. Surely if murder be deemed "Frisco ;" and the inevitable Wells, Fargo, and Co. are distributing letters, packages, and papers to the hungry multitude, amidst tempting piles of silver bricks and wonderful complications of scales, letter-boxes, clerks, accountbooks, and twenty-dollar pieces. All is life, ex A strange city truly, abounding in strange exhibitions and startling combinations of the human passions. Where upon earth is there such another place? One of the most characteristic features of Virginia is the inordinate passion of the inhabitants for advertising. Not only are the columns of the newspapers filled with every possible species of advertisement, but the streets and hill-sides are pasted all over with flaming bills. Says the proprietor of a small shanty, in letters that send a thrill of astonishment through your brain: Entering the main street you pass on the upper side huge piles of earth and ore, hoisted out of the shafts or run out of the tunnels, and cast over the "dumps." The hill-sides, for a distance of more than a mile, are perfectly honey-citement, avarice, lust, deviltry, and enterprise. combed. Steam-engines are puffing off their steam; smoke-stacks are blackening the air with their thick volumes of smoke; quartz-batteries are battering; hammers are hammering; subterranean blasts are bursting up the earth; picks and crow-bars are picking and crashing into the precious rocks; shanties are springing up, and carpenters are sawing and ripping and nailing; store-keepers are rolling their merchandise in and out along the way-side; fruit vendors are peddling their fruits; wagoners are tumbling out and piling in their freights of dry goods and ore; saloons are glittering with their gaudy bars and fancy glasses, and many-colored liquors, and thirsty men are swilling the burning poison; auctioneers, surrounded by eager and gaping crowds of speculators, are shouting off the stocks of delinquent stock-holders; organ-grinders are grinding their organs and torturing consumptive monkeys; hurdy-gurdy girls are singing bacchanalian songs in bacchanalian dens; Jew clothiers are selling off prodigious assortments of worthless garments at ruinous prices; billstickers are sticking up bills of auctions, theatres, and new saloons; news-boys are crying the city papers with the latest telegraphic news; stages are dashing off with passengers for "Reese;" and stages are dashing in with passengers from LOON!" "LOOK HERE! For fifty cents YOU CAN GET A GOOD SQUARE MEAL at the HOWLING WILDERNESS SAA square meal is not, as may be supposed, a meal placed upon the table in the form of a solid cubic block, but a substantial repast of pork and beans, onions, cabbage, and other articles of sustenance that will serve to fill up the corners of a miner's stomach. The Jew clothing-stores present the most marvelous fertility of invention in this style of advertising. Bills are posted all over the doorways, in the windows, on the pavements, and on the various articles of clothing hung up for sale. He who runs may read: "Now OR NEVER! Cheapest coats in the world!! PANTS GIVEN AWAY!!! WALK IN, GENTS." And so on without limit. New clothes and clothes doubtful are offered for sale at these prolific establishments, which are always selling off at cost or suicidal prices, yet never seem to be reduced in stock. I verily believe I saw hanging at the door of one of these shops the identical pair of stockings stolen from me several years ago at Strawberry. ter. Drinking establishments being rather numerous, the competition in this line of business gives rise to a very persuasive and attractive style of advertising. The bills are usually printed in florid and elaborately gilt letters, and frequently abound in pictures of an imaginative charac"Cosy Home," "Miner's Retreat," "Social Hall," "Empire," 99 66 Indication," "FancyFree," "Snug," "Shades," etc., are a few of the seductive names given to these places of popular resort; and the announcements are generally followed by a list of "choice liquors" and the gorgeous attractions of the billiard department, together with a hint that Dick, Jack, Dan, or Jerry "is always on hand, and while grateful for past favors will spare no pains to merit a continuance of the same. By catering to the public taste he hopes to make his house in the future, as it has been in the past, a real HOME for the Boys!" Nice homes these, and a nice family of boys that will come out of them! Where will they live when they grow to be men? A good idea it was to build a stone penitentiary. "Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh yes!" "AUOTION SALES EVERY DAY!" This is another form of advertisement for a very prolific branch of trade. Day and night auctions are all the rage in Virginia as in San Francisco. Every thing that can't go any other way, and many things that can, go by auction. Stocks, horses, mules, boots, groceries, tinware, drugs and medicines, and rubbish of all kinds are put in flaming bills and auctioned off to the highest bidder for cash. "An'af! an'af! an'af! shall I have it ?" is a part of the language popularly spoken on the principal streets. A cigar store not much bigger than a drygoods box must have its mammoth posters out over the town and hill-sides, displaying to the public eye the prodigious assortments of Regalias, Principes, Cheroots, etc., and choice brands |