There was a Dublin-born youth of eighteen named
Mackay, a shipbuilder's clerk in New York, who was
placer mining in California in 1852. He saved a little
money and lost it, saved a little more, and moved to
Virginia City in 1860. Here he began to run a tunnel
on a claim, used up his available funds, and went to work
in the Mexican mine as a timberman underground at
four dollars a day. That job finished, he swung a shovel
and pick for the same wages.
James G. Fair was a Tyrone lad of eighteen when
he took the California gold fever. He mined on the
Feather Eiver bars for several years, with little success.
Then he tried quartz, and became superintendent of
a Calaveras mine. In 1860, like Mackay, he went to
the Comstock, and was made superintendent of the
Ophir, on a good salary, of course, but otherwise, seem-
ingly, as far from the ultimate ownership of any mine
on the lode as the most ordinary miner under his super-
vision.
In 1860 both Fair and Mackay (like John P. Jones,
the discoverer of Crown Point bonanza) were poor and
obscure men. Finney, Comstock, O'Eiley, McLaughUn,
and the rest of the first owners of the lode had much
more money and far better opportunities than Mackay,
Fair, or Jones, who became the three most famous
miners of the district, and, it is no exaggeration to add,
the three leading silver miners of America. Flood and
O'Brien were mere speculators, not miners. They
paid assessments, but did nothing else to find and gather
the golden harvest. Flood developed great financial
ability, but O'Brien was, and remained till the day of



DATS OF THE GREAT BONANZA. 175

his death, a very commonplace individual of mediocre
talents.
