The Montana Post from Virginia City, Montana • Page 5

Montana Supplement. Virginia City, Montana Territory, March IO, 1866. A Picture of Tion tana Letter off part Albert D. Richardson to the New tion York Tribune. belt, The The following most interesting and graphic des- tion cription, which embodies the result of Mr.

Richard- erve eon's observations during his sojourn in Montana, will be read with grest interest by all residents in the A mountains, and enable us to see ourselves as others uaih coai see us Helena, Montana, October 26th 1865. I Virginia, capital and metropolis of Montana, must not be confounded with Virginia, Nevada, a thousand miles to the South- West. It was settled in fUIn July, 1S63, and has 6,000 people, including Nevada and' Junction. Environed by mountain crests, dot- ted with a few lonely cedars, it lies like a huge ser- pent the head Virginia, the tail these two suburbs, winding for nine miles down Alder Creek, a crooked I strip of low log houses. Most are empty, their own- ers have gone to the Blackfoot Country.

The Amer- ican miner is a migratory animal, who will always leave the certainty of $5 per day for the possibility of $20, especially when the new diggings are very remote and difficult of Alder Gulch has yielded many millions of dollars. For its length (thirteen miles) it was probably the richest gold deposit ever found ia the world. Com- pletely cut to pieces, it is honeyVeombed with shafts, ridged with ditches and disemboweled with tunnels. A few miners are still washing tbe yellow flakes and grains from the brown earth upon claims that con- fe tinue to yield largely. The heart of the town is i within one hundred yards of the iiggings.

In the of times it was a crowd of people aud a rush of business. The banking house of Allen Millard sold one hundred and fifty Eastern drafts orka single Sunday for then Sunday was what the call the Big Dsy. Streets were storesVhoked with a stream of commerce, sidewalks occupied by rival rut auctioneers hoarsely shouting the merih of horses, mules, oxen, wagons and household goods, drinking saloons crowded, theatre closely packed, beds hardly attainable lor love or money, while gamblers clinked their coin and heaped their dust, hurdy-gurdy houses from open doors poured forth alluring music. Ail jj this in a town of a few months old, in the heart of jj the Rocky Mountains, a thousand miles from every- where! loi Virginia's trade is still heavy, and the business streets are always lively. The buildings are of logs, lumber and granite, with the wooden signs of many irrepressible Jews, overhanging the pi ink side-walks.

Here, they are free from the novel circumstauces which make their brethren of Salt Lake, whenever excited against the Mormons, talk about us Shen- w. The lowerstory of a stone block, 35 by 70, rentes for $400 per month, gold. Greenbacks pass (j readily at ninety cents, really higher than anywhere else on the continent, but the established currency is told dust at $18 per ounce. Every one carries a nine oucKskm purse, Iroin which, stssskjsss cigar, a hoop-skirt, or a house and lot. payment is weighed out upon the brass scales standing on every counter.

In small purchases, it involves a waste, or deficit, of about 25 per cent to the buyer. Every morning little boys, with shovels and pans gather and wash out the sweepings from the store, some- times realizing five dollars each for the day's work. At the leading hotels, wooden benches serve for chairs. The fare is good, but the lodgings open to' the objection of that Illinois traveler, who, promised an excellent apartment which Douglas had just left, found two men each in three of its beds, and one in the fourth. said he, room is good, and I should feel honored to sleep in one so.

lately occupied by Senator Douglas; but I'll be if I sleep with the whole Democratic At the theatre, the other evening, I saw the of A deposit of $1 50 at the box office, admits one to a hall, capable of holding two hun- dred and fifty persons, with a rude little rear gallery, long wooden benches, a great wood stove, an orches- estra of four, five tallow candles for foot-lights, a green cambric drop-curtain, and a stage the size of a small bed-room. During the performance, several babies and an enterprising dog were running about the floor, and occupants of the gallery amused them- selves by tossing apples over the heads to their friends below. Like most of the male spectators, I my companion and guide had a navy revolver by his side. It was a mixed crowd, often boisterous, but never indecorous for there were half a dozen wives and sisters present, and nowhere in the world are women treated with more considerate respect than among mountaineers and miners. The beautiful die- tion of the play was rendered in a style which the fastidious and snobbish author would hardly have survived had he been there to see it.

Some writers assert that mining regions consists of Ophir-holes, gopher-holes and loafer-holes. Most popular aud characteristic of the last is the hurdy- gurdy house. I found a large hall crowded with visiters, of all ranks, from judges to blacklegs, in every costume from broadcloth to buckskin. At one end, a well-stocked bar, and a monte bank in full blast; at the other a platform, occupied by three musicians; between, many lookers-on, with cigars and meerschaums. Take your ladies for the next shouted the orchestra leader; and half -a- dozen stalwart fellows, fresh from the mines, ed partners from the ordinary, bedizened women who stood waiting.

Among the latter was our late stage passenger of the red hair, now full blown from her chrysalis condition of soiled hands, and worn calico, into a shining butterfly of kids and silks, ribbons and laces. The dance finished, the miners led their partners through the crowd to the bar for whisky, at twenty-five cents a drink, or champagne at twelve dollars per bottle (gold); then a short pause, lowed by another diversion and thus the sorry elry continued until nearly daylight, interrupted only by two fights. For every dance, each male participant pays one dollar, one half going to his partner, the rest to the proprietor. This function- days; tionary, who was dealing monte, with revolver at his ten tc belt, assured me that his daily profits averaged $100. cents The women are of questionable or rather, unques- or qu tionable reputation, but public decorum is pres- inal erved and to the miner, who has hardly seen a fe- great male face for six months, they represent something from of the tenderness and sacredness of their sex.

Fort i At three in the morning, I started for Helena (125 comp i miles northward) by Oliver A Company's daily mail Yello I coach. Another passenger, an old Colorado acquaint- ing ance, was also fresh from the hurdy-gurdy. Ual.it- of st ually sober and industrious, he had just paid off his sure I workmen at the close of a successful season, and vemb joined them in a little hilarity, wherein many drinks great and one or two fights had proved too much for him. each, With each lucid interval, he exclaimed Mr. const really you must excuse me you know this is not my river habit I was never so infernally drank in all my forty I life, and I never will be again that is, if I ever can St, 1 get over Then he relapsed into drowsiness $100 and bewilderment.

At our fifteen-mile station, Th espying four weary miners, rolled up in their blank- wage ets on the floor, he dragged out each by the collar, soun with Get up and take a drink with me If any of iu you don't like it, I will fight him afterwards, but ons you must drink The astonished sleepers woke, can rubbed their eyes, stared at the cheerful log fire on nine the hearth, imbibed their cock-tails with a gusto, hunc and then returned to their slumbers. I have not en- four countered the man, west of the Missouri, who deems Atcl being asked to drink a personal indignity. Is it Dr. trou Bellows who says the new countries borrow money erly two per cent a month, to buy champagne with cific We crossed the main fork of the Great Missouri dest: upon a log bridge, two hundred feet long legal toll dire charges, $4 50 for a wagon and six yoke of cattle, mini The house is beside the shining river, in a broad and lze. beautiful valley, mountains and man snow-clad.

Along the read are frequent ranches, and with great hay stacks. At one, a cinnamon bear was of running in a circle, with that eamtfft purposeful, colt perpetual motion which Bruin, tiedtto a stake, al- A ways exhibits. At our right, in canons of Pen a rugged mountain, we viewed jtJrC junction of the Jefferson, Madison, and QalladK forming the Mis- mill souri. If navigable to the Jhree forks, as many be- hun lieve, it would prove of iriunite value to Montana, gat The soft afternoon air of Indian Summer changed, the instantly, to polar atmosphere as we entered bull the White-Tailed Deer Canon. If is twenty miles ag long, with scenery grand and startling.

Immense tani granite boulders, some as large as a railway car, lie Fra upon and against each other, piled in all positions, as if in battle the gods had torn up vast rock to hurl fou a't at each other. Some walls of the narrow canon are Roi gray rock others, firs and pine of dark green and plu purpleish brown, mottled with yellow cottonwood. too Behind, through the gorge's mouth, snowy moun- bro tains were glorified by the dying sun till they shone and dazzling like battlements of the Celestial City. Be- flal fore, through the opposite gateway, some peaks were opt obscured by slabs of lei.den clouds, dark and sullen, bridging the gaps between them. Others, scarred and the gashed, were robed in drajiery wnue as mint ana fee as down a fleece more beautiful and precious than wa 0y that for which Jason and the Argonauts traversed the by world.

wi( Alter dark we sought refuge from the sharp hills, on! slippery banks and biting air, at Duston's station. af Near it, a hot spring, eight or ten inches in diame- ter, gushes from the hill side. At the mouth, it will or boil an egg; but in flowing two or three hundred yards, of it cools sufficiently for a delightful bath. Hot springs, 0u with various mineral ingredients and often of rare Th medical virtues, abound from the Rocky Mountains lar to the Pacific. Some believe them to modify the Mi the temperature of the Pacific side, usually as warm rie as points from six to ten degrees further south on the sii Atlantic.

But the more prevalent theory imputes Hi this difference in temperature to a current of warm tui water and air from the Indian oce via the Island ex, of Borneo, striking the coast at an acute angle near eai San Francisco, and thence flowing northward. The ab Coast Range and Cascade Mountains arrest and con- dense its clouds, forming the Oregon coast Winters, where the sun seldom shines, even on the good or the evil, and the rain steadily falls both upon thejustand gi Ta unjust. From Duston's to this city is about fifteen bu miles. During the summer Oliver A Company have sh sometimes run the whole distance from Virginia, 125 fri 1 miles, over mountain roads, in fourteen hours the best staging in the United States. cl JJ Recently there has been a grand rush from Idaho ol and other quarters to the rich placers of ths Black- in Aes foot region.

These and other mines of Northern te Montana are all fed from Helena. Their yields are th v-an surer and richer than any other tract of equal size re has ever produced. In McCllellan Gulch (named de not for George but another man claims a with six or eight workmen have paid $25,000 in a ti single month in Confederate Qulco, per day. st One nugget, worth $2,075, and another worth $4,000 tl have been taken out. I have seen a piece of quartz ti from the Deadwood Gulch, ns large as tu-: crown of Ji a hat, whose dark brown sides were completely mot- ln tied with yellow gold.

Some of the flakes as large in area as peas. This rich ore was found only in a narrow streak of the quartz vein. Helena, only one year old, with three thousand people, forms cross by its two principal streets. In addition to its lough log houses, are a few spacious frame buildings aud a pleasant cottages with latticed verandahs. Do not infer from paragraphs above, that Montana is made up of whisky saloons, monte-banks and hurdy-gurd- ies.

I have seen nowhere more enterprise, and sterl- a ing worth, than among its leading citizens, who have come here to stay. But the visitor's attention is drawn to life's peculiar and unusual phases, rather I than its common routine, to its water-spouts and 11 'elve not t0 ana quiet springs. fol- prices of provisions, etc, which fol- rev. lows in the original letter, ig here omitted. pted Montana is more difficult of access than any other i male State or Territory.

Most freights come overland his from the Missouri border; average time ninety a- days cost per pound from Atchison or Omaha, gold, 1 is ten to twenty-five cents from New York four to six 0- cents additional. The Missouri River brings nearly, So a- or quite, half the freight. Fort Benfon, the nom- tion i inal head of navigation, twenty miles below the held i e- great falls, is U0 miles from Helena, and 265 miles ing ig from Virginia. This year only a few boats reached Pos Fort Benton, owing to overloading. Most were popu 25 compelled to stop at Fort Union, at the mouth of the natio ul Yellowstone, four hundred miles at interven- all ci it- ing points.

If their owners had half the enterprise Th it- of steamboatmen oa the Pacific side, there would be the 1 lis sure navigation to Fort Benton from May until No- squat Jd em ber. Above Fort Union, light-draft boats, of 1.50C ks great power, carrying say one hundred and fifty tuns tn. each, are required. I heard that several are being constructed below i'or next year's trade. By the ny river, goods from St.

Louis should reach Helena in othe ny forty-fire days. Usual Spring prices for freight from even an St, Louis to Benton, eight to ten cents passage, spac ess $100 to $200. sach The last Congress appropriated $50,000 for a new that ik- wagon road from Montana directly east to the Mis- ing I ar, soury. Col. Sawyer, Superintendent, has just arrived tical of iu Virrtnia after opening the road, with eighty wag- afte ons spa a military escort.

He reports that Virginia the ke, can he reached from Niobrarah, on the Missouri, tiret on ninety miles above Council Bluffs, Iowa, in nine wall to, hundred and thirty miles of good road a saving of fice, en- four or five hundred miles on present routes from wor Atchison and Omaha. But the Indians are very the Dr. troublesome, and before the new route ean be prop- hun iey erly protected, the Completion of the Central Pa- leve cine Railway to the Rocky Mountains will probably upo uri destroy its superior advantages. Sawyer's road passes of directly through the proposed Territory of Wyo- pair. tie.

ining, which the next Congress will probably organ- ind lze. I trust will be dropped. One sow and man is commemorated in the name of a future State, post ies. and one other ought to be. We have the Territory peri was of Washington let us have the Territory of Lin- side ful, coin.

lab. al- A wagon road can be opened from Helena, via mei of Pen d'OreilleLake, te the navigable waters of the dot the Snake or Columbia Rivers, in les3 than four hundred dis- miles, exclusive of stream ferriage for fifty to one old be- hundred and fifty miles. The Oregon Steam Navi- 1 na. gation Company are already building a boat upon of the lake, to be completed in March. If the road is den pred built speedily and thoroughly, half the goods and gen dies machinery, and two-thirds of the travel for Mon- wit tana, will come from Portland, Oregon and San Sur lie Francisco.

ons, Yesterday I visited the Roosevelt quartz district, res hurl four miles from Helena, named for the Messrs. are Roosevelt of New York. The falling snow, which gty and plumed and tassled great pines, was already a tht jod. ioot deep on the mountains, though cattle were boi browsing in the valleys three miles distant, sot nine mid three hundred feet lower, where not a single Be- flake had fallen. Half a dozen good gold lodes are sen srere opened, including the and lien, Into the first I descended by one of kil and the three shafts already sunk, to the depth of fifty en noli feel.

At tbe Uutloiu, workmen tunooling both sei ways, taking out the pay ore, which is hoisted na 1 the by rope and windlass, llere the crevice is three feet th wide, and the pay which at the top was jni tills, only a few inches, has widened until it ranges from a foot and a half to two feet. The lode frequently th ime- dipn at an angle oi: forty-five degrees, and in one will or two sharp bends is almost horizontal. The ore is a I prds, of a dirty white, and nearly every fragment I took ings, out with the pick contained visible specks of gold. Et rare The Superintendent thinks il will average sixty dol- lars to the tun, very rich for ore exclusively gold, ga the Mr. Whitlatch, the discoverer, has had much experi- cVj Turin rience in quartz minin and also discovered the rich ns the silver lode still bearing his name in Austin, Nevada, bi autes He wisely determines to take out fully one thousand ti tarm tuns of ore before erecting a mill, that he may know gh iland exactly what to depend upon.

It promises to be in near easy of reduction, and wood, water and grass are 01 The abundant. The adjacent lodes seem to resemble it at con- closely in size and ricbuess. iters, irthe A Fenian Denied Burial. Bartholomew Hig- it and gins, a promising young lawyer of Waterford, was fteen buried yesterday. He died of consumption, after a have short illness.

The deceased had a large circle of al friends, who sincerely mourn his early demise. He I the was a prominent Feniaa a circumstance which ex- eluded his remains from being received in the Cath- ir idaho olic church of the village. Arrangements had been Slack- made for the funeral services in the church, when a thern telegraphic dispatch was received from the bishop, Is are the tenor of which is not known but as the reve- il size rend father in charge, who was a warm friend of the a tamed deceased, declined to open the building for the cere- luims mony, it is supposed th.tt the bishop refused his sane- 1 in a tion to the occupation of the church for the purpose a rday. stated. From this it would seem that the heads of a 54,000 the Romish Churca are determined in their opposi- luartz tion to Fenianism in this country.

Troy tvn of Jan. 26, a mot- large Beturn to Reason. The Bishop of Mississippi, in a after commenting upon the excellent spirit shown ly one by the late General Convention of the Church in Phil- cross says In order to show a becoming desire iough to meet the wishes of our Northern brethren, and 's aud to relieve our people from the suspicion of dis- )o not loyalty to the powers that I now request my made brethren of the clergy to return to the use of the -gurd- 'prayer for the President of the United States, and I sterl- in civil The Detroit Tribune says that one case of the rather disease called trichina, which bus recently excited ts and mucb alarm at Berlin, Prussia, has appeared in that rg city, and proved fatal. The victim was a young German lady. The Trichina Spiralis is a small mi- i fol- crosc0pic worm or animalcula which is the found in i the muscles and intestines of various animals, I other ially pigs and rabbits, in such enormous quantities I erland that in a single ounce cf pork one hundred thousand ninety of these animalcula bare been found.

Id, The French Exhibition off 1867. ix ly, So many of our citizens have signified their inten- m- tion of being present at the great exhibition to be he held at Paris next year, that we publish the olio w- les ing syuopsis of an article in the New York Evening ed of the 24th of January, which describes the ere population for this wonderful and most useful inter national exposition of the industry and products of in- all countries. ise The French part of the building will, of course, be be the largest, the works of art alone will occupy 8,800 To- square yards. The thread making department has of 1,500 yards alloted to it ornamental furniture takes ans 1,300, mineral products 1,200, thread and cotton twine ing 1,200, bronzes and works of art 1,200, silk and shawls, the 1,100, wool and woolen fabrics 1,100. So.

far, all in other classes are confined to 1,000 yards, machinery om even being allowed but 865. In addition to tbe floor ge, space there will be considerable hanging room for such articles as can conviently be displayed in jew that manner. The general arrangement of the build- lis- ing and grounds i3 iidmirable being built in an elip- ved tical form, each subject is taken up by one nation ag- after another, and carried continuously all around inia the building, while each nation still retains its en- uri, tirety from the centre of the building back to its line wall. A gallery will be built around the entire edi- of fice, which will afford a most complete view of the rom world's progress. The contractors now in charge of rery the building are busy at work, employing some eight 'op- hundred men, with temporary railways, engaged in Pa- levelling and placing the foundation, which, based ibly upon piles and cement, already traces out the form isses of this immense structure.

Almost the first visit ryo- paid by the Emperor on his arrival was to see the ran- progress made here. He is said to take so great a per- One sonal interest in the enterprise that it is quite ate, possible he may himself act as President of the Im- tory perial Commission. The Imperial Commission, pre- Lin- sided over by Mons. Le Play, a voluminous writer on labor and industrial matters, is composed of Govern- via ment officers and representative workmen, who will the do their best to raise the standard increase the dred display ot industrial products. Their office is in the one old Crystal Palace, in the Champs Elysees.

avi- The grounds of the Grand Exposition will be made ipon of great interest. It is proposed to have the resi- td is dences or dwellings of every modern nation repre, and sented in shape and material as exactly as possible. Hon- with the natives ennaged in their daily occupations- San surrounded by the animals, trees and plants ing to each country. There are also to be established rict, restaurants for each country, in which shall be served the food appropriate to and cooked in the national 'hich style. An ingenious French editor is delighted at dy a the prospect of enjoying the sight of the French were bourgois with the pot au feu side by side with the tant, sour krout of Germany, the roast beef of England, mgle the olla podrida of Spain, the maccaroni of Italy, the are sea slug of China, the couscouscou of the Arabs, and, and heaven save the the famous Cincinnati hog ie of killers, who will kill, cut up, salt and pack away an fifty entire hog in the winking of any eye.

This repre- both sentaiion of the alimentary products of different listed nations must be of great service to all the world. In feet the successful introduction of the use of Indian corn 1 was into Europe as an article of food, a sufficient result from would be arrived at to more than compensate for all ently the trouble and expense. one Another section of the ground is to be laid off for ore is a display of national amusements, which will give took us an opening for ten pins and base ball, against the gold. English games of croquet and cricket. Another es- dol- pecial feature in our department would be an Ameri- gold, can barber's shop complete, with its comfortable xperi- chairs, indicative of our advance beyond other rich nations in the comforts of life.

These, however, are ivada. but minor matters, and I now wish to invite atten- usand tion to the subjects of actual utility, where America know gbould stand first and foremosj. I am now engaged to be in a detailed examination of the prominent branches ss are 0f French industry, so far as they can be seen in Paris. bie it and will in a future letter refer more fully to each. In steam engines and machinery, in fire arms, cultural implements, printing presses, sewing ma- Hlg- chines, furnaces, gasometers, stoves, clocks, rubber 1, was goods, axes, we stand ahead, and in all these fter a we shall doubtless be well represented; but it is in sle of articles that we have looked to other nations for that He I wish to invite competition.

Send over pins, needles, ch ex- buttons, sewing-silk, cutlery, wire, scientific instru- i Cath- ments, furniture, paper hangings, ribbons, clothing, been -hoes, and especially articles of domestic economy. rhen a guch a thing as a decent broom or an accountable lishop, rat trap is not known in Paris. Let us have a first reve- daw wooden house erected, with doors that will shut of the and windows through which the air will not whistle cere- washing machines to take the place of the button- sane- smashers now used on tbe Seine all the thousand and urpose articles of domestic economy should be on exhibition. ads of and being there, will become a source of profit to ipposi- the inventor and his country. It is proposed to httve an exposition of the methods and results of the system of education in vogue in the different countries.

The foreign governments un- dertake the expense of forwarding specimens and pLTl noPe our government will do the same. The Ameri- nH cans in Paris take a lively interest in the matter. Doctor Evans will see that the Sanitary Commission ls represented. As we must be largely the guiners, we trust we shall be adequately represented. At the Ihy termination of the Exposition Universelle, there will 6 be arrangements for the continued display and sale es, and BOt disposed of during the exhibition.

of the Improvement. The Emperor of Austria, who is excited winning hearts in Hungary by his frank manner and in that liberal principles, is to make his Corona- young I tion unusually brilliant and commemorable by pass tall mi- ing a general act of amnesty, which will allow ound in every political exile to return to Hungary, rehabili- a-pec- 1 tated as to his citizenship, and with the whole of his untitles I forfeited property at once restored. It is said that lousand Kossuth's name will head tbe list. It is to be hoped that this on dit may be correct..