When I was living in Nevada, in 1864, I became closely associated with an old Mormon by the name of Rose. He had been a settler in the Washoe valley long before the discovery of the rich silver mines at Virginia City, known as the Comstock lode, and necessarily at a time when no one inhabited the country but Mormons and Indians. The principal tribe of Indians were the Piutes, whose head chief was Win-ne-muc-ca. These Indians inhabited the country around Pyramid lake, about a hundred miles to the northeast of Carson City, where I resided. Rose was known to have been an intimate friend of Win-ne-muc-ca in times past, and to have performed some important service for him, which had placed the chief under lasting obligations to him, and rumor said that in compensation he had disclosed to Rose the whereabouts of the most valuable gold mine on all the Pacific Coast, and that Rose was the only white man who knew anything about it. The truth of these rumors was fortified by the existence of three old and abandoned arrastras and a twenty-five foot overshot waterwheel, which had evidently been erected to drive the arrastras, that stood on one of the back streets of Carson City, and were known to have been constructed by Rose, and as there was no stream in the neighborhood to propel the arrastras, it was generally believed that, when Rose built these works, he had a mine, the ore of which was so rich that he could bring it on pack animals, crush it with these machines, and divert a stream to propel them. As quite a large sum had been expended on these works, it was evident that they were intended to carry out some such purpose, which had been interrupted for sufficient reasons. At any rate, I caught the mine fever, and after many conferences with Rose, I and my associates, William S. Chapman and Judge Atwater, got far enough into his confidence to obtain an admission from him that he knew the exact location of the mysterious mine, the secret of which he had learned from Win-ne-muc-ca, and dare not disclose without the consent of that chieftain, but he assured us that it was fabulously rich. It was then learned that the mine was within the limits of the Piute reservation, and even if we had the consent of the Indians to work it, we would not be allowed to do so by the United States government. Here were presented two formidable obstacles, but we were so well satisfied that we had a fortune within call that we determined to remove them both.