Business & Finance: Surprise Package

The Comstock Lode on the side of Mt. Davidson at Virginia City, Nev., has always been a surprise package. Discovered in 1859, its glory holes enriched Sandy Bowers, an illiterate Missouri teamster, made his washerwoman bride, Eilly Orrum. Queen of the Comstock. Its abandoned workings, bought in 1872 for $100,000, in four years yielded $100,000,000 to its four new owners—Irishmen William S. O'Brien, James C. Flood, James G. Fair and John W. Mackay—father of Postal Telegraph's Clarence Mackay. In 1907 a fall of rock disclosed a $1,000,000 pocket of gold and silver. In...