about "trains" across the plains. Because I am down on that arrangement.
That sort of thing is "played out," you know. The Overland Coach or the
Mail Steamer is the thing.

You want to know something about the route between California and Nevada
Territory? Suppose you take my word for it, that it is exceedingly
jolly. Or take, for a winter view, J. Ross Brown's picture, in Harper's
Monthly, of pack mules tumbling fifteen hundred feet down the side of a
mountain. Why bless you, there's scenery on that route. You can stand
on some of those noble peaks and see Jerusalem and the Holy Land. And
you can start a boulder, and send it tearing up the earth and crashing
over trees-down-down-down-to the very devil, Madam. And you would
probably stand up there and look, and stare and wonder at the
magnificence spread out before you till you starved to death, if let
alone. But you should take someone along to keep you moving.

Since you want to know, I will inform you that an eight-stamp water mill,
put up and ready for business would cost about $10,000 to $12,000. Then,
the water to run it with would cost from $1,000 to $30,000--and even
more, according to the location. What I mean by that, is, that water
powers in THIS vicinity, are immensely valuable. So, also, in Esmeralda.
But Humboldt is a new country, and things don't cost so much there yet.
I saw a good water power sold there for $750.00. But here is the way the
thing is managed. A man with a good water power on Carson river will
lean his axe up against a tree (provided you find him chopping cord-wood
at $4 a day,) and taking his chalk pipe out of his mouth to afford him an
opportunity to answer your questions, will look you coolly in the face
and tell you his little property is worth forty or fifty thousand
dollars! But you can easily fix him. You tell him that you'll build a
quartz mill on his property, and make him a fourth or a third, or half