It was also a remarkable peculiarity of the country that the great “Comstock Lead” was discovered to exist in almost every locality, however remote or divergent from the original direction of the vein. I know a gentleman who certainly discovered a continuation of the Comstock forty miles from the Ophir mines, and at an angle of more than sixty degrees. But how could the enterprising adventurer fail to hit upon something rich, when every clod of earth and fragment of rock contained, according to the assays, both silver and gold? There was not a coyote hole in the ground that did not develop “indications.” I heard of one lucky fellow who struck upon a rich vein, and organized an extensive company on the strength of having stumped his toe. Claims were even staked out and companies organized on “indications” rooted up by the squirrels and gophers. If they were not always indications of gold or silver, they were sure to contain copper, lead, or some other valuable mineral--plumbago or iridium, for instance. One man actually professed to have discovered “ambergris”; but I think he must have been an old whaler. The complications of ills which had befallen me soon became so serious that I resolved to get away by hook or crook, if it was possible to cheat the----corporate authorities of their dues. I had not come there to enlist in the service of Mammon at such wages. Bundling up my pack one dark morning, I paid “Zip” the customary dollar, and while the evil powers were roistering about the grog-shops, taking their early bitters, made good my escape from the accursed place. Weak as I was, the hope of never seeing it again gave me nerve; and when I ascended the first elevation on the way to Gold Hill, and cast a look back over the confused mass of tents and hovels, and thought of all I had suffered there in the brief space of a few days, I involuntarily exclaimed, “If ever I put foot in that hole again, may the--” But perhaps I had better not use strong language till I once more get clear of the Devil’s Gate. II 1864 I was prepared to find great changes on the route from Carson to Virginia City. At Empire City--which was nothing but a sage-desert inhabited by Dutch Nick on the occasion of my early explorations--I was quite bewildered with the busy scenes of life and industry. Quartz-mills and sawmills 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 grog-shops.