Newspaper Clippings, 1883 - "From Eastern Nevada"

TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE

Tuesday……….September 4, 1883

FROM EASTERN NEVADA.

Cloudburst Hopes and Prospects—Waterspouts Analysis—The "Washoe Seeress" Slandered—Detrimental Deafness—Red-hot Fallacies—Piute Reservations, Theology and Providence—A Chinese Fighting Proposition—A Man licked by a Dog—Some Select Society Siftings.

[Correspondence of the Enterprise.]

AUSTIN, Nev., August 31, 1883.

Yesterday sullen thunder growled ominously along the Toiyabe range, and great kidney-shaped clouds wrestled with each other till they were black in the face, trying to produce a big rain, but their constipated condition would only allow of a few respectable showers, enough to lay the dust in the streets pretty well. Down in the valley, however, the rain poured heavily, as is required in order to keep famous Reese river up to its normal standard among running streams. The old pioneer took a fresh chaw of tobacco, and shook his head reminiscently as the big rain drops fell, and Tony Gandolfo smiled hilariously over the prospect of a regular '78 cloudburst and flood. All up and down Main street everybody got their little floodgates ready to place in the doorways, and all seemed a little disappointed when the threatening storm rolled by with no adequate result. A genuine cloudburst and flood, like that of August, '78, would create a sensation here now equal to a first-class circus. Mr. Dadd sagely remarks that it's getting a little late for the August cloudburst, yet that all hope need not be abandoned for the next two or three weeks. There is considerable difference between a cloudburst and a waterspout, although they are frequently spoken of as one and the same thing. The first is merely the meeting collision of two overloaded thunder storm clouds and a consequent sudden letting go of their watery contents down upon the earth beneath. This is naturally liable to occur about the heads of mountain canyons or ravines. A waterspout is simply a whirlwind of great or lesser magnitude which goes sweeping along over sea or land, licking and drawing hungrily upward anything it meets on the surface. At sea they thus form a fiercely seething column of water, dangerous to encounter, and on land, as they sweep across the plains, whirling sand and dirt skyward, if they encounter a river, pond or lake they pause in their reckless career to take a good, congenial drink for distribution elsewhere. The Mexicans call them "culebras de agua," or water snakes, from their wavy, snaky motion as they sweep their tails along the surface. The greater weight of water met with in passing along is what causes them to go slower than when sweeping across sandy plains or valleys. Now if their course could only be managed or controlled by artificial means their immense power might be turned into practical use. For instance, if one good, healthy waterspout could be induced to drop its suction down the main Yellow Jacket shaft, all the water in the flooded Gold Hill mines would be drawn up into the clouds in five minutes, and those submerged lower levels left as dry as a sucked orange.

THE WASHOE SEERESS

The Reno Gazette does Mrs. Sandy Bowers a rank injustice in stating that she deserted the famous Bowers Mansion a month or two after her husband died, and "moved into a little cabin hard by, where she made her living telling fortunes." Hundreds of people can tell the Gazette that the old lady did nothing of the ort. She occupied the Mansion itself for years afterward as landlady, receiving paying visitors, renting it out to picnic parties and making it a source of private revenue to a considerable extent. And many a thirsty picnicker remembers the cups of tea and coffee they succeeded in procuring from her, as a special favor, at two bits each; water free, but predominant. If Sandy Bowers had left his financial affairs better regulated, the old lady would be in the same line of business yet. It is true that she has, since evacuating the Mansion, established quite a lively reputation as a Spiritualistic fortune teller, seeress and all that sort of thing, and is still at the same, but she picks up plenty of pocket money at it, and anything but a "precarious living." Some of her predictions have been literally, squarely (and unavoidably) verified, but numerous others have not, by a long chalk, and never can be, but then she is very hard of hearing, not being able to distinguish the jingle of a quarter from the ringing of a church bell for the last thirty years.

HEALTH PROPOSITIONS.

The thermometer here in Austin has stood at about ninety degrees for the last three months, and quite often nearer 100, yet everybody has seemed healthier for it, and no doubt the heat could have been gradually increased 100 degrees more without material discomfort, and only to be recognized and appreciated as a preparatory seasoning for the hereafter. There is no doubt of the efficacy of heat as a purifier. We never hear of diseases in Tophet. But Pasteur, the famous French physiological savant, carries the idea too far for this world. He sets forth that all water for drinking or toilet purposes must be boiled, in order to kill the disease germs with which it is saturated. Even the cooking utensils, eating apparatus, etc., he insists should be roasted in an oven before using. Would such a style of life be worth living? Better defer it for the hereafter. Hot whiskies, etc., are correct enough in cold weather, the disease germs in the water being properly disposed of, but the idea that a man must drink boiling water, eat red-hot food and breathe air from a blast furnace in order to eternally avoid disease germs is simply and uncomfortably ridiculous. It is infernal nonsense.

PIUTE RELIGION.

Speaking about the hereafter, "Stillwater Thompson," one of our Austin Piute savants, tells me that the Piutes do not believe in the "happy hunting grounds" proposition at all. They have no faith in any such felicitous reservation being set apart for them in the next world. They have seen too much of this reservation business in this world already to have any sort of affectionate confidence in it as an after-death resort. The sum and practical substance of the Piute religion consists in standing off the devil. When sickness comes they know the devil is among them, and they put all their medicine men, good, bad and indifferent, upon his track. If they can succeed in howling him off, or neutralizing his infernal influences, by their "howly" rites and efforts, these aboriginal medicos feel creditably triumphant. They say the Shoshone have no God, and must all eventually be absorbed and wiped out by the devil, who has already secured a vast majority of them, so that very few are not to be seen among us. Thompson says the good God of the Piutes is named Pah-ka. I thought, perhaps, he mistakenly referred to Hub Parker, of Carson, but he earnestly protested that, although Carson was "pooty good," there was no God at all there, and never would be.

CELESTIAL CELEBRATION.

Sunday evening the Austin Chinese residents wound up a three-days' celebration of the closing of the Triennial Conclave at San Francisco, and the whipping of the French by the Chinese troops in their raid on the Flowery Kingdom. Sam Kee, the well-known washman, says the French have no show whatever; that the Chinese outnumber them a thousand to one, and will simply pile on and overrun them like the fatal swarming lice in Egypt. Even as a last resort, a million or two can go and commit suicide in the French camp and just stink the confounded frog-eaters out of the country. The French have a very bad job on their hands, filthy and discouraging. It is worse than fighting skunks.

CRUMBS.

Spykens says the crumb-pickers, here in Austin, remind him of thousands of people who get a good living picking up the crumbs which fall from the rich man's table. Lazarus is the first instance of the kind on record. He is also recorded as the first man licked by a dog. He had his reasons for this, however, for although he doubtless had "sand enough in his craw," he had too many sores on his back, therefore being licked by dogs was simply an economical sanitary proposition for him, although perhaps a little rough on the dogs. Spykens was not a success as a dump-picker, and is now busily engaged in trying to invent a new motive power to wind up his Waterbury watch.

SOCIETY NOTES.

Captain Charley and wife, and their daughter Hattie, are gathering pine-nuts down near Stillwater. Other Piutes state that they dare not come back to Austin again by reason of their family meanness and disreputable conduct.

Some of the Conclavers from Austin are getting back, and look as if they had been well treated by the shrimp and doughnut pirates of the Bay.

TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE

Sunday..........October 7, 1883

FROM EASTERN NEVADA.

Hard Winter Predictions—Piutes and Pine Nuts—Brutal Practice—Postal Annoyances—Boys Playing for Even—"Howly Moses"—Some Political Howls, Speculations and Propositions—Not for Daggett—The Winning Party Must Have the Winning Men—Mining Matters—Social Sensations.

[Correspondence of the Enterprise.]

AUSTIN, Nev., October 5, 1883.

The regular "October flurry" of the last two or three days has set the weather prophets at work, as usual. And as usual they predict a "hard Winter." They tell how the chipmunks are building their nests among the higher rocks, and in the dryest, warmest locations, and are also laying in an unusually heavy supply of pine-nuts. The Piutes also happen to be doing the same thing in the matter of nuts, for the reason that the harvest of that staple commodity has been unusually good this season. Then they go on to mention the significant superabundance of flies, which circumstance is also correct, for during the last three or four months of unremittingly hot weather the flies have improved their time, multiplying crop after crop, until the air and everything else was thick with them. But this Wintry snap has laid them out cold, although a possible spell of warm weather may temporarily thaw them out of their retirement. Anyhow the pine-nut crop has been splendid this season, and the Piutes are returning from their nut orchards out in the high mountain ranges loaded with numerous sacks and baskets of them, and they are both happy and independent. They will feel like bonanza folks until their nuts are gone and they have come down to the refuse grub and slop barrels of the white folks.

A CRUEL AGGRAVATION.

The other day Spykens received a strange newspaper, one he had never heard of before, and he nearly worried himself into a fit, reading it carefully through, and looking it over and over to find out why anybody had sent it to him. He saw no item or paragraph which referred to him, or was of special interest to him, so he finally arose in wrath and cremated it in the stove. It was not the first of his experience in that line, however. The news editorial fraternity can appreciate this exasperating annoyance to the most complete extent. Any person who will thus send unmarked a strange paper to a newspaper office is a depraved, heartless brute. The ever faithful and vigilant news editor grabs his trusty shears and runs his weary eyes eagerly through each column and all over every page after some marked article or paragraph of special interest, and waxes profane as he finds it not. Then he curses the blundering ass who sent it, and impatiently chucks it into the waste basket. Speaking about

ANNOYANCES,

Wright, of the Postoffice Bazaar, has recently had a peculiar experience in that line. He had four real nice awning posts, made of iron piping the size of a horse's leg in front of his establishment. They were good to lean against or hitch animals to, and were quite useful in a variety of ways, although not particularly needed, as the awning was well braced and self-supporting. But every passing schoolboy, street gamin or juvenile Piute felt it incumbent upon him to take a climb at those posts, shinning up and sliding down them, performing numerous gymnastic varieties until they had them polished smooth. After much scolding, and adopting various devices, Wright finally put a stop to the annoyance by smearing the tops of the posts with a compound of coal tar and patent axle-grease—above where people would be liable to soil their clothes in leaning or rubbing against them. The first experimental boy came down with his hands beautifully bedaubed, but he passed no remarks. He had lots of fun watching how other boys "caught on to the racket," and Wright felicitated himself upon his ingenious success. But that very night he caught half a dozen boys industriously finishing up his job by tarring the lower part of those posts. Next day he had them taken down and put in use as sewer pipes at his residence, consequently there are now no posts in front of the Austin Postoffice, and the trouble has totally ceased.

HOWLING ANNOYANCES.

The howling Piute doctor, heretofore mentioned in these letters, still continues faithful to his trust, and from the little Indian village on the hillside south of town his loud, doleful howlings can be heard night and day, curing the sick, bewailing the dead, and trying to stand off the devil generally. He howls himself to sleep, and wakes up with a fresh howl. Some of our Celtic fellow-citizens have dubbed him "Howly Moses." There are several dogs about town, however, which can match the doctor pretty well in the matter of howling. The ringing of a church bell brings out their talent in that line to perfection. They immediately cross themselves, as it were, sit down, and with eyes closed and noses high in air, they send forth some of the most doleful howls anybody ever heard. Yet they seem to enjoy it.

POLITICAL HOWLING.

Wherefore the present disturbance in the political lodge? The aspirants have not tapped their bells or tooted their horns, yet a wild howl goes upward from the press of the State. One after another is asserted to be in the Senatorial or Congressional field, and in a politically mongrel variety of ways. Some see fit to deny the soft impeachment, while others merely pass it by as interested editorial speculations. Daggett treats his still-born nomination for United States Senator as a friendly joke, quietly gets married and goes back to far more congenial pleasures amid the yams, sugar canes and banana shades of Hawaii. He has had his experience as a Congressional nominee, and paid for it. He wanted to be Governor, subsequently, but was expressedly confident that the Central Pacific folks would not allow him the honor, and, anyhow, most infinitely and sensibly preferred the greater emoluments, financial chances and quietly effective honors of his present comfortable and influential position to any chances in that line which Nevada could offer him. Daggett learns wisdom from experience, and you could neither run nor sail fast enough to give him a Nevada nomination of any sort, neither for his own benefit nor that of the Republican party. As a straightforward Republican, he has no desire to even assist in putting up a ticket for the Democracy to beat. In the bright lexicon of partisan politics the strongest men must be placed in nomination in order that there shall be "no such word as fail." As we have before remarked, however, geographical considerations in that respect must not be ignored, and the political claims of Eastern Nevada cannot be set aside with impunity.

MINING MATTERS.

There is never any great howl about the mines of Austin. They are simply and regularly worked right straight along, paying their way well without any assessments, and supporting a very respectable sized and conditioned community. The ore veins are small and unreliable, but there are lots of them, and they average finely in the matter of bullion yield, as shown by the regular shipments. Thoroughly systematic, vigilant and effective management is the rule and the beneficial result. The mines of the Eureka section are stated to be showing considerable improvement of late, both in the old workings and prospecting mines.

SOCIETY NOTES.

Houses are plenty in Austin, but they are all occupied. Nobody seems to care to risk building small houses, for fear he may not get rent enough, or large ones, for fear he may not be able to rent them at all.

For a man who is well fixed, or even reasonably so, Austin offers better inducements than any other town in the State—for matrimony. We have numerous eligible young ladies, and some of them have a little coin laid away in the toe of their stocking. Fuller information furnished for a liberal consideration.

Most of our Piute ladies are laying in their Winter stock of ginghams, from the proceeds of their pinenut sales. Calicoes are set aside for future reference.

Playing the catarrh has been chief among musical notes of late, and Mr. Dadd sings a beautiful song about:

Jod Backay was a billiondaire;

Jib Fair he was his pardder;

They both became bodadza kigs,

But Job rose to be Seddador.

Mr. Dadd proposes to make a campaign song of this thing as soon as his nose gets up to concert pitch again. ALF. DOTEN.