This is the ninth in a series of posts detailing my 2010 photo series ‘Roughing It.’ The images are based on characters and scenes from Mark Twain’s eponymous volume about his travels and adventures in Nevada and other Western states.
“One assayer got such rich results out of all specimens brought to him that in time he acquired almost a monopoly of the business. But like all men who achieve success, he became an object of envy and suspicion. The other assayers entered into a conspiracy against him, and let some prominent citizens into the secret in order to show that they meant fairly. Then they broke a little fragment off a carpenterʼs grindstone and got a stranger to take it to the popular scientist and get it assayed. In the course of an hour the result came–whereby it appeared that a ton of that rock would yield $1,184.40 in silver and $366.36 in gold!”
Credits: Scott Reeves as the assayer.