YOU CAN STILL SEE James J. Ott's establishment in historic Nevada City, California. The sign out front reads Assay Office, same as it has for 150 years. It was there, in 1859, that two weather-beaten prospectors showed up after having crossed the Sierra Nevada (Snowy Mountains) with samples from their modest gold diggings in the godforsaken wilderness beyond. They complained to the assayer that this heavy black sandy muck was clogging their rocker (gold washing device) and what the heck was it anyway? They'd been shoveling away mountains of the stuff to get at the few meager flakes of gold that bought them their beans... Ott did a few tests and then told the argonauts that the heavy black muck was the purest silver ore he'd ever seen. Per ton, they had about $8 worth of gold versus $3,000 of silver... THE SAME YEAR that James Ott was missing out on the Comstock Lode, another poor prospector named Wakeman S. Bodey froze to death in a Eastern Sierra blizzard soon after finding his own..