Virginia City, Nevada Summer 1880
The letter began, “Dear Sally—though I suppose you go by Sara now—I know I have been a poor sister to you. I am unwell, and I have no one else to turn to. Can I beg that you attend me here until I have recovered?” I put it down for a moment to catch my breath, then continued to read: “I ask not just for my own welfare, but for the chance to make amends for my neglect in the past.”
Nancy was 12 years my senior and had moved out of our house when I was 13, and after my first marriage three years later I hardly saw her. She had followed her husband Thomas in his pursuit of mining riches into the high hills of Virginia City, Nevada. Adolphe insisted I would be happiest if my sister and I reconciled, and arranged my travel for me as he could not take extended leave from work.
The rail lines I took on my journey west had their last spikes hammered in only recently, and on the way I passed long stretches of undeveloped land not yet claimed by homesteaders and speculators. I came to understand I had seen nothing of the true American West. Towns like Virginia City were not like quiet little Somerset, Ohio. These were rough places that catered only to miners, with taverns for miners and brothels for miners, served by railroads that brought miners in and silver out.
Nancy and Thomas lived on North Street, a sandy, desolate road skirting the valley, where the houses overlooked dry scrub all the way to the horizon. I had not seen her in more than a decade, and I suspect we were both equally shocked by how time had affected us. I do not know whether it was her illness—a prolonged influenza she could not shake—or the burden of so many failed births until her daughter Henrietta, but she looked infirm to me.
“And where is your dear Ettie?” I inquired.
Nancy flushed and did not meet my gaze. “She is married to a nice young man from Gold Hills.”
“She is only sixteen,” I said sadly, but did not reproach her further. What was done was done, and besides, Nancy’s treatments left no time for quarrelling. I stayed with her for many weeks that summer.
“This must be very tiresome for you, tending to me,” she said, one afternoon while abed. “I have been feeling stronger and miss my solitude. Perhaps you would like Tom to take you to see the mine?”
Such a thought had not occurred to me. “Isn’t it dangerous?”
“The mine offers tours to visitors so they can tell their friends back home of their bravery.” She said the last bit with some derision, though admitted she herself had not been so brave.
Thomas had made little impact on my visit until now; I saw him at dinner and rarely otherwise. He had an air of grievance about him, with the demeanor of someone who once had thought he’d be rich and had to settle for being merely employed. He did not relish the notion of bringing his sister-in-law to work, but I had felt my natural curiosity stirring when Nancy first suggested the idea, so I pressed him into agreeing.
I pictured the mine as some kind of crude hole in the side of a mountain with donkeys and carts weaving in and out, but this was wrong. We arrived at an industrial structure resembling factories along the Mississippi—a wide brick edifice with a vaulted ceiling and many outbuildings behind it. Clouds of black smoke and steam rose from densely packed chimneys, more chimneys than I’d ever seen crowded into one place. Thomas explained that each outbuilding had a singular purpose: here was the planing mill, there the machine-shop, those were forges for shaping the picks and drills used on site. One wing was surrounded by stern-looking men holding rifles; that was where Thomas worked, guarding the assay office where the silver bullion was melted, molded, and graded.
The main building was a hangar with no rear wall, having been built directly up against the hillside, and no ceiling save the roof, which was crisscrossed by imposing metal girders. Carts and trolleys attached to immense chains were dragged or winched in all directions. Everywhere were pale and serious men in blue overalls, appearing from and vanishing into clouds of white steam like industrious angels, if angels emerged from what appeared to be the deepest bowels of the earth.
Thomas turned to me. “Soon we will go in and descend, and returning may take some time as we are subject to the whims of the supervisors. It’s common for visitors to want to turn back once they get a glimpse of what’s ahead. Are you sure you’re ready for this, Mrs. Weiss?”
I readily admit I was intimidated by the cacophony and chaos of the mine. It’s one thing to not believe in Hell, but quite another to be asked if you’d like to drop in for a visit. I stiffened my resolve—when else would I get a chance to see such a place?—and agreed.
We joined a small group of other visitors by a dressing-room. The men were instructed to change into the same overalls as worn by the workers. There were no workclothes suitable for women, but Nancy had lent me her simplest day dress and work boots. A kind young miner gave me a clean apron to tie around and protect my skirts.
A foreman herded us into one of many elevators in a bank up against the earthen wall. A placard running across read: "NO PERSON IS ALLOWED TO SPEAK TO THE ENGINEERS WHILE ON DUTY." He gave us brief safety instructions: we were to hold on to the cage while descending, obey the workers at all times, and touch nothing. Observing my unease, Thomas said, “Understand that these engineers have the utmost reputation for sobriety and vigilance, or else the men would not trust them with their lives.” I nodded even while a knot of fear coiled inside me.
Inside the elevator we took positions around the edge of the cage and held
on. The foreman secured the gate and nodded to an engineer on the platform.
We began to
The motion was as smooth as any city elevator. The weak lanterns inside the car were not bright enough to illuminate the shaft and I could not easily guess our speed. As we descended we caught glimpses of shirtless men working machinery; I think my companions were discomfited by my presence in these moments.
Finally, our elevator stopped with a clang. The whole car bobbed as its safety cable caught and recoiled, and a few of my companions stumbled, but I had been holding on for dear life with both hands. Everyone hurriedly filed out of the cab except for me, as I found I was having difficulty breathing.
“It’s normal to be afraid at first,” Thomas said. He put his hands on mine and uncurled my fingers that still clenched the elevator cage. I was moved by the unexpected gentleness of this gruff man. I nodded and somehow put one foot in front of the other.
The landing at the bottom was surprisingly comfortable, with ample seating, newspapers, and buckets of ice water. There was even a cabinet of curiosities containing spectacular crystal formations in every color of the rainbow, and fool’s gold and other pretty but valueless ores.
We moved as a group into the tunnels. The miners dodged effortlessly between us, hurrying on their business. One of our group commented that the air down here was notably cool and fresh.
The foreman said, “There are ventilation tunnels that connect to this one, and air is always flowing through them. Where the air moves into a shaft we call it the downcast, and where it exits we call it the upcast.”
“It can be quite pleasant,” the foreman continued, “Unless there’s a fire. If that happens, the upcast becomes a pillar of flame.”
I listened with horror as he described the time when a stray spark in another mine lit a column of flame. The fire snaked through the tunnels in an instant, exploded out through the upcast shaft, and burned a hundred feet into the air and with a roar that could be heard from a mile away. The inferno was impossible to put out, and the conflagration ended only when the tunnel collapsed on itself. Many miners died that day, though the foreman hastened to reassure us that many adjustments had been made to prevent such a calamity.
“Are you well?” Thomas asked me. Apparently I looked as pale as the miners.
I knew then that our planet was as much a living thing as I was—that it needed to breathe, that it built up and relieved pressure, that fire and ice coursed through it as blood and bile coursed through me. It was a thoroughly corporeal experience. Trembling there in the mines I felt the improbable kinship between my fragile form and the whole of the planet. I wished it were true that I possessed an eternal Spirit, when the alternative was to be crushed or immolated by the implacable and indifferent forces of nature.
We now are in another great cavern whose floor slopes abruptly to this precipitous elevation and, standing on its edge, we look down upon a very hell of tumultuous flames… Up, up, toward the vaulted roof it climbs, twisting, curving, writhing like a gigantic serpent; now it slowly sinks downward and is engulfed. Now in the distance a storm is raging. See how the fiery billows are rising; higher, higher, leaping and curving their angry crests they madly rush toward us as though they would overwhelm us and as they burst against this precipice, involuntarily one shrinks back from their hot, mephitic breath.
Observe that pyramidal fountain near the centre. Is not it grandly, wonderfully beautiful? See how it forms itself into a rose shape, while from its heart numerous jets shoot upward. A moment and it is gone and all over the surface of the fiery lake myriad fantastic shapes of many hued flames are glowing, scintillating and projecting themselves toward the lofty roof, forming a magnificent pyrotechnic display.
The noise is indeed deafening and the ever changing spectacle so awe inspiring that words cannot adequately describe its terrible, but wondrous beauty.
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"I will be all right," I replied, shaken. "But I think
Nancy extolled my bravery when we returned to her, and after another week of convalescence she felt well enough to order me to return to St. Louis. I had been away from home all summer and acutely missed Adolphe, so I did not require much suasion.
On the morning of my departure, I received a telegram from Ohio, forwarded from Missouri after a long delay. The telegram said that my first husband had died. It had happened months ago, most likely while I’d watched the land roll by on my journey west.
I asked Nancy to write to Ada and Bernard to let them know, though probably they had already heard and sought to spare me by not mentioning it. I’ve never asked them. The news roused in me no feelings at all, and I boarded a train back to the man who I love.