ltimate form. An extract from a
letter of April is a fair exhibit:

Work not yet begun on the "Horatio and Derby"--haven't seen it yet.
It is still in the snow. Shall begin on it within 3 or 4 weeks
--strike the ledge in July: Guess it is good--worth from $30 to $50
a foot in California....

Man named Gebhart shot here yesterday while trying to defend a claim
on Last Chance Hill. Expect he will die.

These mills here are not worth a d--n--except Clayton's--and it is
not in full working trim yet.

Send me $40 or $50--by mail-immediately. I go to work to-morrow
with pick and shovel. Something's got to come, by G--, before I let
go here.

By the end of April work had become active in the mines, though the snow
in places was still deep and the ground stony with frost. On the 28th he
writes:

I have been at work all day blasting and digging, and d--ning one of
our new claims--"Dashaway"--which I don't think a great deal of, but
which I am willing to try. We are down, now, 10 or 12 a feet. We
are following down under the ledge, but not taking it out. If we
get up a windlass to-morrow we shall take out the ledge, and see
whether it is worth anything or not.

It must have been hard work picking away at the flinty ledges in the
cold; and the "Dashaway" would seem to have proven a disappointment,
for there is no promising mention of it again. Instead, we hear of
the "Flyaway;" and "Annipolitan" and the "Live Yankee" and of a dozen
others, each of which holds out the beacon of hope for a little while
and then passes from notice forever. In May it is the "Monitor" that
is sure to bring affluence, though realization is no longer regarded as
immediate.

To use a French expression, I have "got my d---d satisfy" at last.
Two years' time will make us capitalists, in spite of anything.

Therefore we need fret and fume and worry and doubt no more, but
just lie still and put up with privation for six months. Perhaps 3
months will "let us out." Then, if government refuses to pay the
rent on your new office we can do it ourselves. We have got to wait
six weeks, anyhow, for a dividend--maybe longer--but that it will
come there is no shadow of a doubt. I have got the thing sifted
down to a dead moral certainty. I own one-eighth of the new
"Monitor Ledge, Clemens Company," and money can't buy a foot of it;
because I know i