No sooner had Comstock been made a partner in the mine than he placed himself at the front in everything about it. He constituted himself superintendent, did all the talking and none of the working, and was always ready to tell strangers about the mine. When visitors came it was always _my_ mine and _my_ everything. Thus people came to talk of Comstock’s mine and Comstock’s vein; then it was the Comstock vein—as persons making locations asserted that they were on the same vein as Comstock, _i. e._, the Comstock vein—and in that way the name of Comstock became fastened upon the whole lode. As the first claim was called the Ophir, that would have been a more fitting name for the whole vein than the one it now bears. For a long time Comstock no more appreciated the heavy black material that accompanied the gold, and in lumps of which much of the gold was embedded, than did O’Riley and McLaughlin. It was not until returns had been received from samples of it sent to California for assay that anyone in Nevada knew that the “heavy black stuff” was almost pure silver. The Grand Rush over the Sierras With the returns of the assays came a rush from California. The assays were made at Nevada City, California, and the result so astonished the assayer that he could hardly believe his figures or his eyes. But other assays verified those first made, and the immense richness of the ore in both gold and silver could no longer be doubted. A few men were let into the secret, they let in a few more, and at once the great news spread far and wide. Soon miners, speculators, and adventurers of all kinds came over the Sierras to the silver mines in swarms. A town of tents, brush shanties, and canvas houses began to appear on the side of Mount Davidson—then known as “Sunrise Peak,” as it caught the first rays of the morning sun. It was about the 1st of June when the silver was first struck, and, the weather being warm, many persons camped in the open air—cared for neither tent nor brush shanty. There were about 1,000 persons in Western Utah at the time silver was discovered, and all were living under Mormon rule. Most of those in the country at that time were engaged in farming and cattle growing, in trade with the emigrants, or in gambling and running off stock; only about 200 were engaged in mining, and all these were working gold placers. A number of ranchers from surrounding valleys took up claims on the line of the lode when they heard that it was a silver vein, but neither the placer miners, the ranchers, nor any one else that was in the country at the time the great discovery was made, ever got more than a few hundreds or thousands of dollars out of it. The Fate of the Discoverers.