But Silverado itself, although now fallen in its turn into decay, was once but a mushroom, and had succeeded to other mines and other flitting cities.  Twenty years ago, away down the glen on the Lake County side there was a place, Jonestown by name, with two thousand inhabitants dwelling under canvas, and one roofed house for the sale of whiskey.  Round on the western side of Mount Saint Helena, there was at the same date, a second large encampment, its name, if it ever had one, lost for me.  Both of these have perished, leaving not a stick and scarce a memory behind them.  Tide after tide of hopeful miners have thus flowed and ebbed about the mountain, coming and going, now by lone prospectors, now with a rush.  Last, in order of time came Silverado, reared the big mill, in the valley, founded the town which is now represented, monumentally, by Hanson’s, pierced all these slaps and shafts and tunnels, and in turn declined and died away.

“Our noisy years seem moments in the wake Of the eternal silence.”

As to the success of Silverado in its time of being, two reports were current.  According to the first, six hundred thousand dollars were taken out of that great upright seam, that still hung open above us on crazy wedges.  Then the ledge pinched out, and there followed, in quest of the remainder, a great drifting and tunnelling in all directions, and a great consequent effusion of dollars, until, all parties being sick of the expense, the mine was deserted, and the town decamped.  According to the second version, told me with much secrecy of manner, the whole affair, mine, mill, and town, were parts of one majestic swindle.  There had never come any silver out of any portion of the mine; there was no silver to come.  At midnight trains of packhorses might have been observed winding by devious tracks about the shoulder of the mountain.  They came from far away, from Amador or Placer, laden with silver in “old cigar boxes.”  They discharged their load at Silverado, in the hour of sleep; and before the morning they were gone again with their mysterious drivers to their unknown source.  In this way, twenty thousand pounds’ worth of silver was smuggled in under cover of night, in these old cigar boxes; mixed with Silverado mineral; carted down to the mill; crushed, amalgated, and refined, and despatched to the city as the proper product of the mine.  Stock-jobbing, if it can cover such expenses, must be a profitable business in San Francisco.

I give these two versions as I got them.  But I place little reliance on either, my belief in history having been greatly shaken.  For it chanced that I had come to dwell in Silverado at a critical hour; great events in its history were about to happen—­ did happen, as I am led to believe; nay, and it will be seen that I played a part in that revolution myself.  And yet from first to last I never had a glimmer of an idea what was going on; and even now, after full reflection, profess myself at sea.  That there was some obscure intrigue of the cigar-box order, and that I, in the character of a wooden puppet, set pen to paper in the interest of somebody, so much, and no more, is certain.