The ores of the mines in this district somewhat resemble those of the Sheba mine in Humboldt.  Sheba Hurst, the discoverer of the mines, with his friends corralled all the best leads and all the land and timber they desired before making public their whereabouts.  Ores from there, assayed in this city, showed them to be exceedingly rich in silver and gold—­silver predominating.  There is an abundance of wood and water in the District.  We are glad to know that New York capital has been enlisted in the development of the mines of this region.  Having seen the ores and assays, we are satisfied that the mines of the District are very valuable—­anything but wild-cat.

Once more native imbecility had carried the day, and I had lost a million!  It was the “blind lead” over again.

Let us not dwell on this miserable matter.  If I were inventing these things, I could be wonderfully humorous over them; but they are too true to be talked of with hearty levity, even at this distant day. [True, and yet not exactly as given in the above figures, possibly.  I saw Marshall, months afterward, and although he had plenty of money he did not claim to have captured an entire million.  In fact I gathered that he had not then received $50,000.  Beyond that figure his fortune appeared to consist of uncertain vast expectations rather than prodigious certainties.  However, when the above item appeared in print I put full faith in it, and incontinently wilted and went to seed under it.] Suffice it that I so lost heart, and so yielded myself up to repinings and sighings and foolish regrets, that I neglected my duties and became about worthless, as a reporter for a brisk newspaper.  And at last one of the proprietors took me aside, with a charity I still remember with considerable respect, and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth and so save myself the disgrace of a dismissal.

CHAPTER LIX.

For a time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era.  C. H. Webb had established a very excellent literary weekly called the Californian, but high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he sold out to three printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a week, and I was employed to contribute an article a week at $12.  But the journal still languished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden, a rich man and a pleasant gentleman who chose to amuse himself with such an expensive luxury without much caring about the cost of it.  When he grew tired of the novelty, he re-sold to the printers, the paper presently died a peaceful death, and I was out of work again.  I would not mention these things but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs that characterize life on the Pacific coast.  A man could hardly stumble into such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country.