But the Comstock seems to me a more impressive
fact just as it stands, walled in by mountains and rooted



238 THE STORY OF THE MINE.
so deep that men may toil there through centuriea
to come without reaching the bottom of its "fissure
vein." After meditating upon the paths, lanes, alleys,
roads, crossroads, and highways of the great group of
mines, rising by stairs on stairs, from level to level,
one is ready to grasp the completed conception of the
labyrinthian wilderness, where, in the midst of aban-
doned acres of caves, pitfalls, and jungles of fungi-
overgrown timbers, lie masses of ore and yet-undiscov-
ered bonanzas.
Imagine, then, a city built by fallen angels or by
the jinn and genii of Arabian legend. They have riven
the Himalayas, the roof-ridge of the world, and in the
vast cleft they have builded with stones and metals,
cell by cell, as the honeybee builds. Millions of years
the dwellers have toiled until the cleft, from palm-
land levels to where deodars grow in the edges of snow
drifts, is full and running over. At last the kingdom
of the genii is overthrown by some superhuman hero.
