I trudged back nine miles to Sonora, my pockets full of “specimens” from the newly discovered claim, my head a cyclone of copper-hued air castles. I saw the “boys.” I was mysterious. I beckoned them to retired spots. I showed them the ores. I told them of the find. They were wild with excitement. They were half crazed with delight. And in ten minutes some of them went just as far into the domains of unrest and unhappiness for fear some one might find and jump the claim ere I got back to guard it. The Copperhead Company was organized that night. The “Enthusiast,” a man who lived in the very top loft of copper insanity, was sent down with me to superintend the sinking of the shaft. The secret was soon out. Shares in the vein were eagerly coveted. I sold a few feet for $500 and deemed I had conferred a great favor on the buyer in letting it go so cheaply. I lived up, way up, in tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars. The “company” in Sonora met almost every night to push things while the Enthusiast and myself blasted and burrowed in the rock. By day they exhausted their spare cash in horse hire, riding down to the claim in hope of being on hand when the next blast should reveal a bed of ore, immense in breadth and unfathomable in depth. My Company was made up chiefly of lawyers, doctors, politicians, and editors. They never realized how much they were indebted to me. For four months I made them feel rich,--and if a man feels rich, what more should he want? For a millionaire can do no more than feel rich. Feeling certain that the Copperhead was a very rich claim, and that other rich claims would be developed from the “extensions,” and that a bustling town would be the result, I pre-empted a section of the land which I deemed most valuable, on which it was intended that “Copperhead City” should be built. This “city” I partly laid out. I think this was the third city I had laid out in California. There is a sepulchral and post-mortem suggestion in the term “laid out” which is peculiarly applicable to all the “cities” which I attempted to found, and which “cities” invariably foundered. Actuated, also, at that time, by those business principles so largely prevalent in most Christian communities, I “claimed” the only spring of good drinking water in the neighborhood of my “city.” My intent in this was in time to realize a profit from the indirect sale of this water to such of the future “city’s” population as might want water--not to sell it by the glass or gallon, of course; but if there was to be a “city” it would need water-works. The water-works would necessarily lie on my land. I would not be guilty of the inhumanity of selling water to parch-tongued people, but I proposed that the “city” should buy of me the ground out of which came the water.