I said to myself: “This Halsey lead, like all the leads of this section, runs northeast and southwest.” (N. B.--Three years afterward we found there were no leads at all in that section.) “The Halsey lead must run under Table Mountain and come out somewhere on the other side.” So I took the bearings of the Halsey lead, or what I then supposed were the bearings, for there wasn’t any lead anyway, with a compass. I aimed my compass at a point on the ledge of the flat summit of Table Mountain. I hit it. Then I climbed up over the two water shelves or banks to that point. This was on the honey-combed lava crags. From these crags one could see afar north and south. South, over Tuolumne into Mariposa the eye following the great white quartz outcrop of the Mother or Mariposa lead. North was Bear Mountain, the Stanislaus River and Stanislaus County. This view always reminded me of the place where one very great and very bad historical personage of the past as well as the present showed another still greater and much better Being all the kingdoms of the earth. For the earth wasn’t all laid out, pre-empted and fenced in those days, and its kingdoms were small. Then I ran my lines over the flat top of Table Mountain, southeast and northwest. So they said ran all the copper leads, commencing at Copperopolis. So then we believed, while tossing with the copper fever. Certainly they ran somewhere, and ran fast too, for we never caught any paying copper vein in Tuolumne County, at least any that paid--except to sell. I aimed my compass down the other side of the mountain. There, when the perpendicular lava rock stopped pitching straight up and down, sometimes fifty, sometimes two hundred feet, was a dense growth of chaparral--the kind of chaparral we called “chemisal.” I got into the chemisal. Here the compass was of no more use than would be a certificate of Copperhead copper stock to pay a board bill. It was a furry, prickly, blinding, bewildering, blundering, irritating growth, which sent a pang through a man’s heart and a pricker into his skin at every step. At last, crawling down it on all-fours, for I could not walk, dirty, dusty, thirsty, and perspiring, I lit on a rock, an outcrop of ledge. It was gray and moss grown. It hid and guarded faithfully the treasure it concealed. Like Moses, I struck the rock with my little hatchet. The broken piece revealed underneath a rotten, sandy-like, spongy formation of crumbling, bluish, greenish hue. It was copper! I had struck it! I rained down more blows! Red oxides, green carbonates, gray and blue sulphurets! I had found the Copperhead lead! I was rich. I got upon that rock and danced! Not a graceful, but an enthusiastic _pas seul_. I deemed my fortune made. I was at last out of the wilderness! But I wasn’t. CHAPTER XXIV. RISE AND FALL OF COPPERHEAD CITY.