October, late – Sam wrote up his visit to the Spanish Mine and it was published in the Enterprise as “The Spanish Mine.” No copies of the Enterprise for that time are extant, but estimates from reprints make this time probable. An excerpt:

THE SPANISH MINE 
This comprises one hundred feet of the great Comstock lead, and is situated in the midst of the Ophir claims. We visited it yesterday, in company with Mr. Kingman, Assistant Superintendent, and our impression is that stout-legged people with an affinity to darkness, may spend an hour or so there very comfortably. A confused sense of being buried alive, and a vague consciousness of stony dampness, and huge timbers, and tortuous caverns, and bottomless holes with endless ropes hanging down into them, and narrow ladders climbing in a short twilight through the colossal lattice work and suddenly perishing in midnight, and workmen poking about in the gloom with twinkling candles—is all, or nearly all that remains to us of our experience in the Spanish mine [ET&S 1: 160-6].