Imagine such a framework two miles long, sixty feet wide, and higher than any church spire in America.

Imagine this stately lattice-work stretching down Broadway, from the St.Nicholas to Wall street, and a Fourth of July procession, reduced to pigmies, parading on top of it and flaunting their flags, high above the pinnacle of Trinity steeple.

One can imagine that, but he cannot well imagine what that forest of timbers cost, from the time they were felled in the pineries beyond Washoe Lake, hauled up and around Mount Davidson at atrocious rates of freightage, then squared, let down into the deep maw of the mine and built up there.

Twenty ample fortunes would not timber one of the greatest of those silver mines.

The Spanish proverb says it requires a gold mine to "run" a silver one, and it is true.