e
it would take him six months to make $100,000 here if he had $3,000
to commence with. I suppose he can't leave his family, though.

Further along in the same letter his own overflowing Seller's optimism
develops.

Orion and I have confidence enough in this country to think that if
the war lets us alone we can make Mr. Moffett rich without its ever
costing him a cent or a particle of trouble.

This letter bears date of October 25th, and from it we gather that a
certain interest in mining claims had by this time developed.

We have got about 1,650 feet of mining ground, and, if it proves
good, Mr. Moffett's name will go in, and if not I can get "feet" for
him in the spring.

You see, Pamela, the trouble does not consist in getting mining
ground--for there is plenty enough--but the money to work it with
after you get it.

He refers to Pamela's two little children, his niece Annie and Baby Sam,
--[Samuel E. Moffett, in later life a well-known journalist and editor.]
--and promises to enter claims for them--timber claims probably--for he
was by no means sanguine as yet concerning the mines. That was a long
time ago. Tahoe land is sold by the lot, now, to summer residents. Those
claims would have been riches to-day, but they were all abandoned
presently, forgotten in the delirium which goes only with the pursuit of
precious ores.

XXXIII

THE PROSPECTOR

It was not until early winter that Samuel Clemens got the real mining
infection. Everybody had it by that time; the miracle is that he had not
fallen an earlier victim. The wildest stories of sudden fortune were in
the air, some of them undoubtedly true. Men had gone to bed paupers, on
the verge of starvation, and awakened to find themselves millionaires.
Others had sold for a song claims that had been suddenly found to be
fairly stuffed with precious ores. Cart-loads of bricks--silver and
gold--daily drove through the streets.

In the midst of these things reports came from the newly opened Humboldt
region--flamed up with a radiance that was fairly blinding. The papers
declared that Humboldt County "was the richest mineral region on God's
footstool." The mountains were said to be literally bursting with gold
and silver. A correspondent of the daily Territorial Enterprise fairly
wallowed in rhetoric, yet found words inadequate to paint the measureless
wealth of the Humboldt mines. No wonder those not already mad