Then he showed the property to
a simpleton and sold it to him at a high figure. Of course the wagon
load of rich ore was all that the victim ever got out of his purchase.
A most remarkable case of "salting" was that of the "North Ophir."
It was claimed that this vein was a "remote extension" of the original
"Ophir," a valuable mine on the "Comstock." For a few days everybody was
talking about the rich developments in the North Ophir. It was said that
it yielded perfectly pure silver in small, solid lumps. I went to the
place with the owners, and found a shaft six or eight feet deep, in the
bottom of which was a badly shattered vein of dull, yellowish,
unpromising rock. One would as soon expect to find silver in a
grindstone. We got out a pan of the rubbish and washed it in a puddle,
and sure enough, among the sediment we found half a dozen black,
bullet-looking pellets of unimpeachable "native" silver. Nobody had ever
heard of such a thing before; science could not account for such a queer
novelty. The stock rose to sixty-five dollars a foot, and at this figure
the world-renowned tragedian, McKean Buchanan, bought a commanding
interest and prepared to quit the stage once more--he was always doing
that. And then it transpired that the mine had been "salted"--and not in
any hackneyed way, either, but in a singularly bold, barefaced and
peculiarly original and outrageous fashion. On one of the lumps of
"native" silver was discovered the minted legend, "TED STATES OF," and
then it was plainly apparent that the mine had been "salted" with melted
half-dollars! The lumps thus obtained had been blackened till they
resembled native silver, and were then mixed with the shattered rock in
the bottom of the shaft. It is literally true. Of course the price of
the stock at once fell to nothing, and the tragedian was ruined. But for
this calamity we might have lost McKean Buchanan from the stage.

CHAPTER XLV.

The "flush times" held bravely on. Something over two years before, Mr.
Goodman and another journeyman printer, had borrowed forty dollars and
set out from San Francisco to try their fortunes in the new city of
Virginia. They found the Territorial Enterprise, a poverty-stricken
weekly journal, gasping for breath and likely to die. They bought it,
type, fixtures, good-will and all, for a thousand dollars, on long time.
The editorial sanctum, news-room, press-room, publication office,
bed-chamber, parlor,