Publisher's Synopsis
This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dis-sertation. It is a record of several years of varie-gated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in the vol-ume; information concerning an interesting epi-sode in the history of the Far West, about which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes. I allude to the rise, growth and culmination of the silver-mining fever in Nevada-a curious episode, in some re-spects; the only one, of its peculiar kind, that has occurred in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likely to occur in it.
