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Popular Culture Review
constructing canals. His greatest work, The Big Bonanza, was published in 1876
to accolades not only in the territories but also on the East Coast, and it is still
considered the “bible” of Comstock mining history. De Quille’s friend and
colleague, editor Wells Drury, attested to De Quille’s preoccupation with mining
journalism:
...his conscience never swerved from the firm conviction that
the true calling of a first-class newspaper is to publish items
concerning prospects, locations, mines and mills, shafts,
tunnels, drifts, ore developments, stopes, assays and bullion
outputs. All other matters to him appeared inconsequential and
of no material interest. If there was a murder, a sensational
society episode or a political contest, any of them were
welcome to space after his mining notes were provided for.
( 211)
In addition to his mining reports, De Quille wrote popular science news
in at least three distinct registers: a “high style” that academically reported
scientific history and discoveries, a more sensational “wonders of the world” style
reserved for pseudoscientific and curious natural phenomena, and finally a
humorous style in which down-home pioneers confronted marvelous scientific
findings in Nevada with a mixture of “gol-dang” amazement and shrewd
appreciation. De Quille’s humorous register is easily identifiable even today, as
in the following job description for the state mineralogist of Nevada published in
the Enterprise: “He is to discover earthquakes and provide suitable means for the
extermination of the same; also, for book agents, erysipelas, com doctors,
cerebro-spinal meningitis, and the Grecian bend” (ctn. 1, fldr. 8).
The impact of De Quille’s many-layered scientific writing on his
hoaxing cannot be underestimated. Clearly, if he often wrote humorous pieces,
his readers knew him to be just as capable of spinning a yam as giving them a
“true” report of what was going on in the mines. While Mark Twain helped his
readers out by writing his humorous pieces under that nom de plume but signing
his serious journalism “Sam Clemens,” De Quille granted his readers no such
boon. C. Grant Loomis writes in his extensive survey of De Quille’s modes of
journalism, “With no distinction between a true story or a fanciful one, he inserted
the real and the false item into his daily public offering” (30). However,
according to contemporary reports, this intermittent reinforcement only served to
cement De Quille’s reputation as a scientific “savant” with his readership.
Attested De Quille’s friend C.C. Goodwin, “ . . . what he wrote, everybody
believed implicitly. This or that expert might make a report, and men would say,
‘He may have been mistaken.’ This or that owner of heavy shares might express