My salary was increased to forty dollars a week. But I seldom drew it. I had plenty of other resources, and what were two broad twenty-dollar gold pieces to a man who had his pockets full of such and a cumbersome¹ abundance of bright half dollars besides? [Paper money has never come into use on the Pacific coast.] Reporting was lucrative², and every man in the town was lavish³ with his money and his “feet.” The city and all the great mountain side were riddled⁴ with mining shafts⁵. There were more mines than miners. True, not ten of these mines were yielding rock worth hauling to a mill, but everybody said, “Wait till the shaft⁶ gets down where the ledge⁷ comes in solid, and then you will see!” So nobody was discouraged. These were nearly all “wild cat” mines, and wholly worthless, but nobody believed it then. The “Ophir,” the “Gould & Curry,” the “Mexican,” and other great mines on the Comstock lead in Virginia and Gold Hill were turning out huge piles of rich rock every day, and every man believed that his little wild cat claim was as good as any on the “main lead” and would infallibly be worth a thousand dollars a foot when he “got down where it came in solid.” Poor fellow, he was blessedly blind to the fact that he never would see that day. So the thousand wild cat shafts burrowed⁸ deeper and deeper into the earth day by day, and all men were beside themselves with hope and happiness. How they labored⁹, prophesied¹⁰,

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