perceiving that I was still jealously watched, and being advised by some of the officers that I might be mistaken for a Yankee and get into further trouble, I put up my pencils and returned to Charlestown, determined to visit Harper's Ferry no more. Another incident occurred about this time which indicated the direction in which we were drifting, and revealed the precarious tenure upon, which life and personal liberty would depend hereafter. One morning General Johnston, at Harper's Ferry, received a telegram from Beauregard, at Manassas Junction, in these words: "Arrest Abraham Herr." Not a few finally joined made their escape. In the midst of the difficulties, both civil and military, which surrounded him I could not but admire the deportment of the Confederate commander; his reticence, calmness, firmness in essentials, easy acquiescence in non-essentials, his avoidance of all needless irritations of hostile political sentiment, of all needless severity in dealing with men not yet accustomed to arbitrary rule. In short, his judicious management of a power, not yet secured by the habits of military discipline and continually disputed by adverse opinion, marked him as a man of taken arms. Mr. Herr was a citizen of Harper's Ferry, a uncommon ability, and one likely to be dangerwealthy manufacturer, and universally esteem-ous to the Government against which he had ed. His Union sympathies were not doubted; but as he was uniformly acquiescent and oblig- May 28.-This afternoon I received some ining, and seemed only interested in saving his formation which filled me with alarm and disproperty, the most truculent Secessionists re-tress. A young kinsman, an officer of the Secspected his position. Johnston had him arrested ond Virginia Regiment, told me that on yesterimmediately; but as no charges were preferred, day, while in Martinsburg, he was accosted by and there appeared no reason for detaining him, a stranger who named himself Lieutenant Colhis case was turned over to the civil authority. onel Flagg, of the Morgan militia, and who On his trial before a magistrate's court, al- boastingly informed him that he had just rethough there appeared no charges written or turned from Harper's Ferry, whither he had gone oral, neither accusers nor witnesses, yet Mr. to denounce old Colonel Strother, of Berkeley Herr was put under bonds for thirty thousand | Springs, charging him with having several hundollars, to answer generally to any thing that dred muskets in his possession, and inciting the might turn up. Such was already the zealous citizens of the county to organize and take arms subserviency of a civil tribunal to a remote mil- against the Confederacy. He further stated itary whisper. that, at his suggestion, a body of troops had already been dispatched from Harper's Ferry to crush the movement and arrest the traitors. My cousin, to whom these statements were made, did not disclose himself to his informant, but immediately on arriving in Charlestown related them to me. When it came to be understood among the troops at Harper's Ferry that Virginia had been transferred to the Southern Confederacy the dissatisfaction was so serious that mutiny was apprehended. This feeling was especially strong among the Border companies, in which were found so many Union men who had been deluded and dragged into a false position. In view of my father's age and feeble health I could scarcely believe it possible that he had They had hitherto clung to the desperate committed himself by so rash and premature a hope that a refusal of the people to confirm the movement. I was aware that not long before ordinance of Secession would deliver them from he had visited Washington and offered his servtheir embarrassment. When it became appar-ices to President Lincoln. But as he was too ent that there was no hope from this quarter, old for active service, I construed this only as a many threw down their arms and went home. public declaration of loyalty to the Government It was said that one-half of the Border Guarda zealous demonstration, to show, amidst the from Martinsburg left their colors, declaring general defection, that there was, at least, one they would not serve in such a cause. As most Virginia gentleman who felt the dishonor done of these young men went to their homes in to his State, and the danger with which his Martinsburg, a force was sent to arrest and country was menaced by the late proceedings. bring them back. For better assurance in find- Yet I knew the Western Virginians were oring them the order was executed at midnight,ganizing and arming, and seriously apprehendand the victims were dragged from their beds amidst the shrieks and protestations of their families. That night Martinsburg recalled the words of Jeremy the prophet, "In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning." The prisoners were carried to Harper's Ferry and tried for desertion. One who was contumacious and defiant was condemned to be shot. This, however, was only intended as a menace. The time had not arrived when such extreme measures would have been judicious. Some of these men were persistent, and finally ed that my father had received arms and become involved in some movement from that quarter. Knowing the extent and quality of the force at Harper's Ferry, I felt that an attempt of the sort in Morgan, without external support, must necessarily be fatal to those who engaged in it. An officer, just from Harper's Ferry, confirmed the report that troops had been sent to Berkeley Springs, but he was enabled to give no details. May 29.-During a sleepless night I made my plans. Arming myself with a revolver I rode over to Duffields Dépôt, and there took the cars for Berkeley Springs. I determined and would be content for the present with havfirst to take summary vengeance on the wretch who had denounced my father, and then to join him and share his fortunes whatever they might be. At Sir John s I ascertained that the Confederate troops had actually visited Berkeley, and returned, carrying with them several hundred old muskets, which had been sent from Harper's Ferry two years before to arm the citizens during the excitement which followed the John Brown raid. There had been no collision between the troops and citizens, and no one could tell whether or not any arrests had been made. Arrived at home, I entered the house with breathless anxiety. My sister met me with her accustomed cheerfulness, and, thus reassured, I had the courage to inquire for my father. At the sound of my voice he entered from an adjoining room, looking well and calm as usual. He said the officer commanding the State troops had quietly marched over from Sir John's, got the arms which were stored in the court-house, and returned without questioning or interfering with any one. I did not tell him what alarming information had brought me up, but felt altogether so much relieved that I modified my plan of vengeance. Having quietly prepared a written paper, I took a friend and went in search of my LieutenantColonel of militia. We overtook him walking out with a companion. Ordering him to halt, I confronted him, and taxed him with his treacherous conduct. He responded by an absolute denial of the whole matter, declaring, on his honor, that he had not even visited Harper's Ferry. I silenced him, and went on to state when, where, and to whom he had unbosomed himself. He was struck dumb. After heaping upon him every outrageous insult that could be expressed in language, I produced the paper previously prepared, containing an acknowledgment of falsehood and an humble apology therefor: presenting it on the top of my hat with a pencil, I ordered him to sign it. Laying aside a large club which he carried, the stalwart Colonel obeyed the order with an alacrity that was creditable to his military education. I then told him that I intended to publish this note at army head-quarters and elsewhere, ing disgraced him; but I assured him that if he offended again in like manner he would not be allowed the opportunity of purchasing his life by ignominy. In the public square of the village I called together such persons as were in sight, and read the paper to them, after relating the circumstances under which it was exacted. I took the trouble to enact this little comedy with the hope that it might protect my father from treacherous dealings, which I apprehended from other quarters. From further conversation I learned that there was no foundation whatever for the reports which this pragmatical scoundrel had set afoot. In full confidence that the General Government was preparing an adequate force to crush the rebellion, my father had been using all his influence to prevent local disturbance, counseling the elders to pursue their avocations quietly and the young men to join the United States army, where their fighting propensities might be lawfully gratified and their prowess turned to better account than it would be in private brawls. Having satisfactorily disposed of this "ridiculus mus," the product of the mountains, I started next morning (May 30) to return to Charlestown. At Martinsburg I found every thing in confusion and excitement. The Second Regiment of Virginia Volunteers had been for some time stationed at a point opposite Williamsport to observe the National forces concentrating at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and whose advance already occupied Williamsport. Upon some alarming indications from the other side the Second Regiment was ordered to retire, and being composed of raw material, it passed through Martinsburg in a condition bordering on stampede. The Union citizens were jubilant in expectation of an immediate advance of the National army, while many Secessionists, in their terror, packed up their household goods and fled southward, with their families and negroes. Owing to detentions from this and other causes, I did not reach Duffields until after nightfall, and was obliged to make my way to Charlestown, five miles distant, on foot, through mud and darkness. I THE REESE RIVER COUNTRY. WILL not subject the reader to the perils of another trip across the mountains. The road is familiar to him by this time. He has seen it in winter, spring, and summer-by daylight and by moonlight-on foot and from the front seat of a pioneer stage. On a pleasant morning in the month of May last, I took my seat in the stage for Austin. My fellow-passengers were a couple of Israelites in the ready-made clothing line; three honest miners, deep in ledges; and a motherly female, with five small children, including one at the breast. We were not to say crammed, but there were enough of us for comfort, considering the heat of the weather and the length of the journey. I do not wish to convey the idea that there is the slightest inconvenience in sitting bolt upright on a narrow seat between two heavy men, one of whom persists in telling you all about a patent amalgamator; and the other in smoking bad cigars, going to sleep at brief intervals, punching you with his elbows, and butting you with his head; or any thing to complain of in the boots of your opposite neighbor which have a propensity for resting on your toes, ranging over your shins, getting up on your seat, and airing themselves on the adjacent window-sill; or cause of mental disquietude in the suspicion of being greased all over the back of your only coat by a numerous family of children whose hopeless attempts to appease their appetites by means of sausage, bread and butter, and mince-pies, are constantly impressed upon you; or any thing short of agreeable sensations in breathing clouds of alkali-dust, and fighting whole armies of gnats. With special reference to stage-passengers who travel along the banks of the Carson in the early part of summer these afflictions are of too serious and complicated a nature to fall within the range of ordinary comprehension, unaided by an enlarged practical experience. A trip to Austin is something to look back upon with pleasure in after-life. It is always a source of happiness to think that it is over; that there are no more gnats and alkali-clouds to swallow; no more rickety and forlorn stations to stop at ; no more greasy beans and bacon to pay a dollar for; no more jolting, and punching, and butting of heads to be endured on that route at least. And yet it has its attractive aspect; the rich flood of sunshine that covers the plains; the glorious atmospheric tints that rest upon the mountains, morning and evening; the broad expanse of sage-desert, so mournfully grand in its desolation. The whole journey of a hundred and seventy miles from Virginia City may be summed up thus: Forty miles along the Carson, picturesque and pleasant, though rather dusty and somewhat obscured by gnats; station-houses built of boards, posts, and adobes where the horses are changed; occasionally bars and bad whisky; bacon and beans, with a strange dilution of coffee three times a day; excellent drivers and the best of pioneer stages; sage-deserts and alkali-deserts, varied by low barren mountains; teams with heavy wagons, heavily laden with machinery and provisions for Reese River, slowly tugging through the dust; emigrant wagons filled with women and children, wending their way tediously toward the land of gold, and empty freight wagons, coming back from Reese, such are the principal features of the journey. sunshiny afternoon takes us rattling up the slope of a cañon, near the mouth of which stands the famous city of Clifton, or rather its ghost; for Clifton was the father of Austin, and died a sudden death about two years ago. All that remains of it now is a broad street flanked by the wrecks of many frame shanties, whose lights are fled and whose garlands must be dead, for they are nowhere seen, unless the everlasting bunches of sage that variegate the scene should be regarded in that metaphorical point of view. It is said of the citizens of Clifton that they were blind to their own interests when they started the city. With florid imaginations in reference to the future, they established florid miners higher up the cañon. The nucleus of a new town called Austin was formed; but the way to get to it was hard-like the way of the transgressor-and the Cliftonites chuckled much, believing they had the thing in their own hands; when lo! the Austinites suddenly went to work and built a magnificent grade, and down went Clifton, as if stricken by the fist of a mighty pugilist, with a cloud of mourning around its eye! Of the country I shall only add that it is the most barren, desolate, scorched up, waterless, alkali-smitten patch of the North American continent I have ever yet seen-a series of horrible deserts, each worse than the other. Parallel ranges of naked mountains running near-prices for town-lots, and thus drove honest ly north and south, with spurs or foot-hills running east and west, form a continuation of valleys through which the road winds. These valleys sink in the middle, where there is generally a dry white lake of alkali in which even the sage refuses to grow. Very little wood is to be seen any where on the route-none in the valleys, and only a few dwarfish nut-pines on the sides of the mountains. I know of no reason at all why any human being should live in such a country; and yet some people do, and they seem to like it. Not that they are making money either, for very few are doing that, but they get a sort of fondness for alkali in their food and water, and seem to relish flies, gnats, bacon, and grease as standard articles of diet. After two days and a night of concentrated enjoyment in this kind of travel, our last driver cracks his whip, and our stage makes a dive into a little rut and out again. There is a faint show of water on the wheels. "What's that?" cries every body in astonishment! "Gents!" says the driver, "I didn't like to alarm you; but that's REESE RIVER, and there's Jacobsville!" No wonder we were startled, for Reese River is a source of astonishment to every traveler who passes over the road to Austin for the first time. It derives its name from an emigrant, who must have had a humorous turn of mind when he called it a river. That it is not so long as the Missouri or so majestic as the Mississippi is very generally understood; but when the expectant traveler comes to a sort of ditch in the desert about six feet wide, with the slightest glimmering of a streak of water at the bottom, he is naturally astounded at the frolicsome audacity of Reese. A jolly old Reese he must have been, to embark his name on the smallest river in the world, which sinks in the desert a few miles below the crossing, and thus undertake to float down the stream of life into an enduring fame! May you never be forgotten, Reese, while Reese River flows through the sage-deserts of Nevada! May you never be thirsty, even in the thirstiest region of futurity, when you think of that noble stream which bears your name forever onward over the upper crust of earth! But we anticipate history. It behooves us first to explain why Clifton and Austin ever came to be built at all, there being nothing in the general aspect of the country to encourage settlement from any indication it presents of social, agricultural, or commercial advantages over other parts of the world. The present site of Jacobsville, seven miles from the mouth of the cañon, was an overland station prior to the discovery of the silver mines. Its principal feature was then, and still is, a fine spring of water, which is a notable attraction in that dry country. The town of Jacobsville was started on speculation after the Reese River excitement commenced; it being the only place within a hundred miles where whisky could be had in any considerable quantity. Like Clifton, however, it received a black eye when Austin was started; and now stands a melancholy monument of human hopes frustrated. In May, 1862, William Talcott, an employé in the Pony Express service, went to look for his ponies in the nearest ranges of mountains, which, as fortune ordained, was the Toyahe range. He took with him an Apache boy, purchased by James Jacobs in Arizona for a jackknife and pair of blankets. Talcott and the Apache thus became the pioneers of civilization. They struck for the nearest cañon-and they struck up this cañon in search of the ponies-and while they were looking about them they struck a streak of greenjsh quartz, which Talcott thought resembled some quartz he had seen in Gold Hill. It was of a bluish green color, with a strong suspicion of mineral in it, but what kind of mineral nobody knew up to that date-not even the Apache who was born in a mineral country, and whose range of obSeven miles more in the pleasant glow of a servation had been confined almost exclusively to mineral deserts from the time he was born up to the date of his purchase by Jacobs for a jack-knife and pair of blankets. It is a remarkable fact that Frémont might have distinguished himself by this discovery, many years before, had he not passed a little too far to the south. His route lay through Death Valley and the southern rim of Smoky Valley, crossing by Silver Peak to Walker's Lake, and thence up the Walker River Valley. He left some of his men at Owen's Lake and crossed the Sierras into California. The great Pathfinder, unfortunately for himself, took the wrong path and missed the Reese River Mines by about 170 miles. Of course no blame can be attached to him for that, though there are people in Central Nevada who, having availed themselves of other people's discoveries, rather incline to the opinion that Frémont ought to have gone the Reese River route and opened up the mines. If mining speculations be a test of merit, is it not enough to have opened up and sold out the great Mariposa estate? And yet there may be people in New York who could wish that the famous Pathfinder had missed the Mariposa trail by 170 miles north or south, east or west-so it seems quite impossible to select a path that will suit every body. On the 10th of July, 1862, the first miners' meeting in the Reese River country was held, and the district of that name was established. William Talcott, James Jacobs, Wash. Jacobs, and a Mr. O'Neill located a claim on a ledge, which was called, in honor of the pony express, the "Pony Ledge." It is a mooted question whether Talcott or the Apache boy can justly claim so much as the ponies they were in search of, which were thus summarily disposed of with a name and the four feet they happened to carry about them. This company located three other claims in the lower foot CITY OF AUSTIN. hills, but none of them turned out very well. The ores first discovered were chiefly antimonial. Mr. O'Neill had a ranch on Truckee River, where he lived when he undertook to live in any particular locality. On his return from Reese River he took home with him some of the ores from the newly-discovered mines.. Mr. Vanderbosch, an intelligent Hollander, who had some knowledge of minerals, happened to see these specimens at the house of O'Neill, and immediately pronounced a favorable opinion as to the "indications of silver" contained in them. They consisted, in great part, of the metals usually found in connection with silver-copper, iron, antimony, and galena. The traces of silver were but slight; still sufficient, with the indications mentioned, to encourage the idea that there were deposits of rich silver ore in the vicinity. Specimens were subsequently taken to Virginia City and tested by assay, with such results as to attract immediate attention. In October, 1862, Daniel E. Buel, an enterprising miner and frontiersman, who had spent much of his life among the Indians of California, started for the Reese River country with two friends, William Harrington and Fred Baker. Buel was a man of indomitable spirit, great energy of character, and superior intelligence. He had served in various official capacities in California-for several years as Indian Agent in charge of the Klamath Reservation, where I first met him. And here let me say, as Ex-Special Agent of the Government, that I found Buel a remarkable man in more respects than one. He was an honest Indian Agent-the rarest work of God that I know of. This party prospected about two miles south of the present city of Austin, in the foot-hills. Nothing that could be properly denominated a ledge had been found at that time above the Pony Ledge. The only work done was the running of a tunnel, called the Highland Mary, which failed to strike any thing except a good place for burying money. San Francisco parties, I believe, were engaged in this. Buel and his friends made several locations, some of which turned out well. They had a hard time of it, without shelter and with but little food. The town of Austin was named by Buel, who, if not its only father, was at least its biggest and ablest father. As an independent historian I am greatly |