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[portion of letter from San Francisco written October 20, 1865]
SAN FRANCISCO LETTER
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 20.
This somewhat famous mine--famous now, though a placidly-worked and almost unknown
concern for the past ten years--is situated in Tuolumne county, California,
near Sonora; near Tuttletown; near Jimtown; near Jackass; near Chaparral Hill;
near--well, near forty places, but in the immediate vicinity of none. It is
exceedingly rich in gold. It has been worked in the most easy-going, primitive
manner for years past by its five original owners, with a tranquil old rattle-trap
of a ten-stamp mill and a hoisting apparatus, consisting of a serene and unimaginative
old horse by the name of "Cotton," so called because of a remarkable
white spot which ornaments his person near his tail. The original cost of this
hoisting apparatus was not extravagant, and with that original cost all expense
connected with it ceased, because it lived on refuse rock and the pleasures
of contemplation, and its running gear was repaired and renovated from time
to time with strips of rotten raw-hide from the fence which enclosed the Rawhide
Ranch, and which substance, as you will readily infer, gave the ranch and the
mine their names. The Rawhide Mining Company--(which designation always included
"Cotton")--always did their own work without hired assistance. One
of the men used to go down in the mine about 10 o'clock in the morning to dig
and blast and sweat and swear; Cotton and another partner would remain above
to hoist out a bucket of ore once an hour and then pass away the balance of
the time in wholesome recreation--Cotton in profound meditation and the other
stockholder asleep; the third proprietor would tend the mill to keep it from
going also, and the two remaining proprietors would stay at the cabin and draw
all their energies into preparations for dinner. After four or five hours of
exhausting labor, Cotton would be turned loose among the refuse rock, and all
hands would knock off for the day and adjourn to their dining hall with desolating
appetites and the happy consciousness of having done their duty. In this pleasant
way an average of about eight tons was daily put through--four tons of ore and
four tons of bacon and beans--and the Rawhide mine prospered, and its owners
slowly but surely progressed toward affluence.
Last winter this mine could have been bought for twelve or fifteen thousand dollars. Afterwards somebody got the refusal of it for a certain length of time, at fifty thousand, for the purpose of attempting a sale of it in New York. But before this, as I forgot to mention, the property was placed in the hands of a broker here, and numerous efforts were made to dispose of it at twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars. Well, as soon as it became known that the above-mentioned refusal had been given, of course everybody wanted the mine. Johnny Skae and Gashwiler went up there to look at it, and found it in the condition I have described--or at least I have been told they did, by a man who always speaks the truth when he tells what is so, and which is not so frequent as to give his friends uneasiness. They looked down the shaft and could see no bottom; and they looked at Cotton and liked his style, but they hesitated to put their trust in his harness; his "breeching" had a portentously unseaworthy aspect. So they rode over to Sonora and bought four dollars' worth of reliable breeching and came back and repaired the hoisting gear. They got in the bucket and descended some eighty feet without accident; but from this point the character of the shaft changed a little--changed to an incline instead of a perpendicular--and the bucket went rasping and jolting over the rough wall-rock in the most threatening manner, and finally the bucket broke loose and went thundering down to the bottom, apparently seventy or eighty feet, leaving the two adventurers clinging desperately to the rope, and glaring in each other's faces by the weird light of the candles held between their teeth--and just then Cotton stopped to meditate, and so did they--that is, they stopped, but I don't mean, to meditate.
Gashwiler said "G-r-eat Geeminy!" and dropped his candle.
Skae said, "I'm opposed to this," and dropped his candle also.
Gashwiler shouted; "Drive on! what the h--l did you stop for?--drive on
quick!" No answer. "Johnny, I can't hold on long--I'm bound to lose my
grip directly. Johnny, this is dangerous--you bet it's mighty dangerous--it's
fifty feet down to the bucket--may be a hundred and fifty--Lord! I begin to
weaken! Johnny, could you hyste up a sort of a prayer?"
"No, Gash, but you holler--loud as you can. I'm weakening, too. Holler at the horse, Gash; the Lord might hear us, but--no time now to take any chances; holler at him, Gash--if we get out, it's him that's got to do it, anyhow--as well tackle him first as last. My left hand's letting down. I don't admire to hang this way."
Then Gash shouted at the horse still louder, but produced no effect. So he said: "Johnny, I've not lived as I ought to have lived. D--n that infernal horse! But, Johnny, I have always tried to do right, and never wronged no man. Johnny, if we are saved I mean to be a good man and a Christian. D--n your thieving hides, I'll cut the lungs out of some of you if I ever get out of this! Oh Lord, Johnny!--we've got to die in this dark hole--kiss me, Johnny." And so he went on, swearing and praying by turns, until their strength was nearly gone.
But at last Cotton appeared to have come to a conclusion in the matter he was
thinking about, and started on his round again. In due time Johnny and the incipient
Christian reached the bottom of the shaft safely, and the incipient Christian
lifted up his voice and swore till the confined atmosphere was foggy with blasphemy.
When they were hoisted to the surface they found out the real reason of Cotton's
untimely halt. His hame-straps had broken, and the lives of the two prospectors
hung entirely at the mercy of the new breeching purchased in Sonora. Consequently
the hoisting works had to stand still and meditate while new hame-straps were
manufactured out of the universal raw-hide. Altogether, it was a funny adventure
to all save those most particularly interested in it--and yet it was a happy
adventure, since it made at least a sort of jack-legged Christian out of Gashwiler.
Messrs. Gashwiler, John Skae, John Keening, Land, De Land and Sloss bought the
mine, and paid $75,000 in gold for it. The payment was made the moment the "refusal"
contract run out; the money for the latter was deposited here at the same time,
and a telegram to that effect was sent to Jimtown, but it was of no effect,
because the terms of the contract were that the money was to be paid to the
owners of the mine in Jimtown itself within the specified time. Cotton and his
confreres took $7,000 from the mine the last month they were in possession,
at no other outlay than the usual ruinous expenditure for company food. The
new company are building a forty-stamp mill on the premises now, and it will
be completed in the course of eight or nine weeks, when they will proceed to
take out two or three millions a month, as I am informed by one who is something
of an artist in imbuing his statements with an attractive interest.
[reprinted in
Sonora (Calif.) Union Democrat "A Scene from Rawhide Ranch'' (11
Nov 65, 1). The extract is all that is known to survive from this early example
of Mark Twain's daily "San Francisco Letter'' to the Enterprise. In 1984
it was found and reprinted by Carlo M. De Ferrari of the Tuolumne County Historical
Society in Sonora. -- information courtesy of Dr. Robert Hirst, Mark Twain Papers,
University of California, Berkeley.]
