In his account of the summit’s penetration, superintendent Crocker stated: ‘We had a shaft down in the center. We were cutting both ways from the bottom of that shaft….[We] got some Cornish miners [from Virginia City] and paid them extra wages. We put them into one side of the shaft…and we had Chinamen on the other side. We measured the work every Sunday morning; and the Chinamen without fail, always outmeasured the Cornish miners….The Chinese are skilled in using the hammer and drill; and they proved themselves equal to the best Cornish miner in that work.’
A History of Asian Americans: Strangers from a Different Shore
by Ronald Takaki
