[Nevada Mining]:

$1,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

ARGUMENT OF JUDGE JAMES H. HARDY, IN THE CASE OF THE POTOSI G. & S. M. CO. VERSUS THE BAJAZET & GOLDEN ERA GOLD AND SILVER MINING CO. BEFORE R.S. MESICK, ESQ., ... A very rare and early Nevada mining imprint, regarding a contentious legal struggle over the Comstock Lode. The Potosi Gold and Silver Mining Company was one of the earliest successful mining concerns on the Lode, and they often ran into trouble with their neighbors. The Bajazet & Golden Era Gold and Silver Mining Co., the defendants in this case, were a particular nuisance – the legal altercation actually grew out of a physical one, occasioned when workers of the two companies scuffled over territorial boundaries. The Potosi claimed that the Bajazet in fact had no independent vein at all, and that its workers were mining a spur of the same lode. Despite this this fiery and extended speech on behalf of the defendants by Judge James H. Hardy, the case was decided in the Potosi's favor in early 1865; the Potosi in turn lost their own battle against the Gould & Curry Silver Mining Company the same year, on much the same grounds.The Bajazet & Golden Era was likely joined with the Potosi after their defeat in this case - in fact, Mark Twain himself suggests their fate in an 1868 letter published in the Chicago Republican, asking: "Where is the Union? The Rovers? The White and Murphy? The Shamrock? The Bajazet and Golden Era?...Ah me, not one of these mighty treasuries of virgin silver is ever heard of now-a days, and ma

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