OCR Text |
Show A Little E via the O. S. & L. Railroad ; Mining In Nevada. !f : When the late Carl Schurz was Secretary of ; ) i the Interior, he took up the idea that the miners ijijsljj, of Nevada were robbing the government of vast v sums jn stealing and consuming vast timber tracts. . i - He was helped on in this idea by certain New ; ' England and Middle States editors, who when ; short of subjects delighted in picturing the timber ! J thieves of Nevada, who not satisfied with obtaln- 1 ti ing vast treasures from the mines, had supple- r I mented that by stealing from the government, that j ' is all the people of the United States, unmeasured j wealth in growing timber. On the strength of that belief, Schurz caused a number of fool suits to i'tP be commenced to try to get back something from 'J' the wholesale spoliation. ijn j After his term of office expired, he came West, jfjl j After visiting California, he started east over the ' I j. Southern Pacific. He reached Reno in the morn-ing morn-ing and rode all day long through Nevada, reach- J ' ing this city about 11 a. m. the next day. He was disillusionized about tho timber reserves of Ne- ! J 1' vada. When asked how ho liked tho West, he ex- 1 ' pressed his admiration of California but, raising w I and dropping his hands several times, he repeated J ' in a half-paralyzed tone, "Nevada, Nevada, that '1. He had made a picture in his fertile brain o 11 '! what Nevada probably was. Its mountains ribbed i with silver, its valleys clothed with great forests, where the despoilers had not got in their work, j. I ; We suspect that as long as consciousness lasted 1 ! ho had a creepy feeling whenever he thought of I Nevada. Sneaking of it when here, he wondered L j 'j, how people could live there, people who had ever J I ,: lived in other lands. J Nevertheless, a good many people as strong and fl f bright and brave as Carl Schurz have lived there, fill more will live there in future, and one of the se- ij ?! crets has and will be that there are few lands I where the imagination has such play as in Ne- I I , vada. We mean people the opposite of those of i whom Iiuskin says: "In whose hearts tho great characters of the imagination lie dead, for whom the fancy has no power to repress the importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is ignoble and disguise what is discordant in a sense so rich in its remembrances, so surpassing in its b'eauty." There are no fairer skies than those of Nevada; Ne-vada; there is no healthier climate, and the man who has a cabin there with a prospect, who by day while he toils keeps in thought the days when John Mackey worked for $5 per day, when Marcus I; i Daly and David Keith worked each for ?4, and who by right sinks to sleep remembering that the Belcher, Crown Point and Con. Col. bonanzas product pro-duct steadied the finances of the nation when the great war was sore, and dreams what is to be when his prospect becomes a mine, and he realizes on it such a man would not change his residence if he could and would not change his hopes to be Secretary of the Interior; indeed thinks with a kind of pity of those who perspire in their hot of- 1 A flees and fight flies through the long Washington summers. It is giving play to the imagination in a new fleld and "there the imagination calls up flowers that do not fade with the summer, but shine on and on in celestial white and gold forever, and which can at all times bo exchanges for houses' and luxuries, and at the touch of which tears are dried and smiles grow warm on the pallid cheeks of despair. Men will tell you that there is nothing sentimental senti-mental about mining; that it is the most surely practical of all occupations, and in one sense that is true, but there is no occupation in which the imagination is led so far, none where the imagination imagina-tion makes the pillow on the ground so downy as mining. See a prospector with his donkey loaded with pick and shovel, a little bacon and flour and baking bak-ing powder and coffee and beans, starting out, and he seems an object of pity. Go up close to him and look in his eyes and you will see that there is a hope in his heart and a vision before his eyes that makes him pity you. That is the way Nevada Ne-vada was settled; that is the way bonanzas are found. To the genuine Nevada man there is nothing noth-ing barren there, only a mantle of serge drawn over a breast of gold. |