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DAN DE QUILLE (William Wright, 1829-1898)' remained in Virginia City, Nevada, nearly thirty years after his friend, Mark Twain, had left for larger and greener pastures. The world of the Comstock Lode shrank into comparative oblivion after the Bonanza days were over, and nearly all the names of the mining newspapermen have faded into the ghostly silence of the empty mines. The literary historians who trace Mark Twain's Nevada days have fairly exhausted the existent records which deal with their author's contact with

A "DIARY OF AN UNKNOWN SCOUT,"1 which throws interesting light on the covered wagon route from Missouri to California in 1852, has recently been made available to historians.' The diary was found by Mr. Matt McGuirk of Virginia City, Nevada, between the partition walls of the old carriage house behind his residence on historic B Street, a street which in early Comstock days was lined with the mansions of the mining aristocracy. This is one block uphill from the main business and museum street today, or C Street, which followed the line of the early Comstock Lode discoveries from Virginia City over the Divide to Gold Hill and Silver City. These streets have in late years been paved, but have not changed in location since the earliest boom days of the 186o's, when the young Mark Twain was a reporter on the Enterprise. The present McGuirk residence was formerly known as "Graves Castle" after its onetime owner,8 and stood in the southwest section of the mining town where it escaped the disastrous fire of 1875, which destroyed the greater part of the city. The residence still preserves most of its furnishings of the 1870's, a large part of which were imported from Europe, in which respect it remains unique in the Comstock area. Many similar mansions were removed in sections by train to Reno toward the turn of the century, at the decline of the mines.

CALIFORNIA, suffering from a business recession in 1858, was again bitten by the gold bug on the startling news of the discovery of the precious metal on the Fraser River.1 Few knew the extent of the strike; few knew of the climate and terrain of British Columbia. Yet the news, reportedly the result of a shipment of eight hundred ounces of gold bullion to San Francisco's mint in April, 1858, caused an exodus to the "greatest strike since the American River." Reports of the location of the new find varied. Mention was made of a rich lode on Queen Charlotte Island; another rumor placed the strike on the Fraser River itself. The first authentic information spoke of Hill's Bar on the lower Fraser as rich in gold deposits.2 An American company of miners had worked the bar with high returns; an average daily yield for each man was asserted to be approximately twenty dollars. San Francisco in 1858 was an established metropolis beginning to feel the impact of a decline in the "diggings" of the interior and was ripe for a change. Contemporary reports speak of the "serious shock.., temporarily given to business throughout the interior of the state by the migration to the Fraser River."' During the summer the migrants, in spite of warnings from the north, pulled up stakes in large numbers.' The listings of ships sailing and passengers aboard are evidence of the galvanic effect of the news of the Fraser discoveries. Nearly 30,000 Californians left San Francisco during the summer of 1858." In