The Miner's Sluice.
The Miner's Sluice.Such a device as this was being worked by Jim's father when the Comstock Lode was discovered.Courtesy of Netman & Co.
The Miner's Sluice.
Such a device as this was being worked by Jim's father when the Comstock Lode was discovered.
Courtesy of Netman & Co.
Panning Gold on the Klondyke.
Panning Gold on the Klondyke.Typical summer scene on the junction of the Eldorado and Bonanza Creeks; "color" showing in both pans.
Panning Gold on the Klondyke.
Typical summer scene on the junction of the Eldorado and Bonanza Creeks; "color" showing in both pans.
"Now a prospector'll wash any durn dirt he sees, an' O'Riley, while waitin' for some bacon to fry, chucked some o' the yellow an' black sand in a pan an' give it a twirl or two. You can reckon he jumped some when the pan showed color. He yelled to McLaughlin an' the two o' them got busy. Every pan showed color, not big, but enough. The cleanin' up wasn't what you'd call rich but it was steady, an' there was any amount o' pay dirt in sight. The two begin to fill their buckskin bags wi' dust, right smartly.
"Then a low-down, dirty, ornery coyote of a man, Henry Comstock by name, come amblin' along. A shifty critter was Comstock, trapper, fur-trader, gambler, claim-jumper, mine-salter, sneak-thief, an' everything else. He see O'Rileyan' McLaughlin cleanin' up the cradle an' guessed they'd struck it rich. Lyin' glibly, like the yaller dog he was, he told the prospectors he was the owner o' the land, an' made 'em give up their claims. They went on workin', but on small shares. The hole got deeper, but by-'n-by got hard to work because this seam o' black rock got wider'n wider as it went down. Riley an' McLaughlin dodged the rock, the best they knew how, findin' gold enough to pay for workin' in the loose dirt on either side.
"One or two other prospectors drifted up that way, though the pickin's was small. One o' them, wonderin' what the black rock might be, an' havin' a hunch it might be lead it was so heavy, put a chunk in the hands of an assayer in Placerville.
"The expert couldn't believe his eyes, at first, an' thought some one was playin' a joke on him. His assay showed a value o' $3,000 per ton in silver an' $800 per ton in gold. He assayed one or two other bits, wi' the same result. Here was millions, jest beggin' to be picked up! Folks got wind of it, right away. That was in November, 1859, too late in the winter to cross the high Sierras into Nevada.
"The rush started a-hummin', early in 1860. 'Frisco was fair frothin' at the mouth. It was a long trail, an' the silver-hungry crowd couldn't wait. Some o' the craziest got away as early as January. They caught it heavy!
"From Sacramento up the old emigrant trail to Placerville weren't no gentle stroll in winter time! From Placerville to the bottom o' Johnson Pass was a trail for timber wolves, not for humans. Snow lay thick. Winds, fit to freeze a b'ar, come a-howlin' down the high Sierras. A few men got through an' froze to death on Mount Davidson, the silver actooally ticklin' the soles o' their feet. Some got caught in slow-slides in the Johnson Pass an' their bodies didn't show up till June. A lot more died o' starvation an' exposure on the way.
"That didn't keep the rest from comin'. They fair stormed the Pass. In March there was a thaw, an' the flood o' men broke through.
"It was a bad crowd. Aside from decent prospectors and miners, there was a pack o' gamblers, saloon-keepers, 'bad men,' fake speculators, an' all the rest o' the human buzzards that follow on the heels of a rush. They remembered the first days o' the forty-niners, an' every bad egg inCaliforny wanted to be the first to murder an' to rob. In three weeks, the silent an' deserted slopes o' Mount Davidson was peppered wi' tents. Virginia City had been started an' had become a roarin' town.
"That wasn't a minin' camp, it was a hell-hole. I've seen tough joints in my day, but Virginia City beat all. It wasn't jest the miners lost their heads, but experts, geologists, an' all, went plumb crazy. 'Twasn't much wonder. That black rock was jest one continooal bonanza. A gold mine was a fool to it.
"The ore in one of the shafts—the Potosi Chimney, it was called—was rangin' steadily over a hundred dollars a ton silver, an' that shaft alone was bringin' up 650 tons a day. Three prospectors tapped the big lode at another point, near Esmeralda, worked a week an' took six thousand dollars apiece for their claims. The man who bought first rights on Esmeralda, sold them before the end or that summer, for a quarter of a million. An' yet McLaughlin an' O'Riley havin' given up their claims to Comstock, got nothin' out of it. As for Comstock, he filed a false claim of ownership which the courts wouldn' give him, an' he went down an' out.
"The Gould & Curry mine, one o' the richest, was bought from its finders for an old horse, a bottle o' lightnin'-rod whisky, three blankets, an' two thousand dollars in cash. After four millions had been taken out of it, an Eastern syndicate come along an' bought it for seven millions o' dollars—an' they made money out of it, at that! Six years after the openin' o' the Gould & Curry, there was 57 miles o' tunnels, all in rich ore, an' the owners had to work it like a coal mine, leavin' great pillars o' silver to prop up the roof!
"A telegraph line was run through an' that made Virginia City ten times worse. It weren't a town o' miners, rightly, not like a gold placer camp. Silver ore needs capital to work it, an' Virginia City become a town o' loose fish, speculators, crooked brokers, an' suckers. One man sold the Eureka mine to eight different people at the same time, an' he'd never even seen the place an' didn't own a claim in it. He pocketed eighty thousand dollars in eight days an' was strung up to the limb of a pine-tree the ninth!
"There was some good work done, though. Durin' 1861 an' 1862 road-makers was busy, though laborers was gettin' fancy prices. Butthe engineers kep' at it, an' afore the winter o' '62, there was a wide road where two eight-mule coaches could cross each other at full gallop without slacking the traces. Tolls were high, so high that the road-makers got all their money back in the first year. Crack coaches with relays made the trail from Sacramento to Virginia City in twelve hours, instead of six weeks, like it was first. Hold-ups were frequent an' plenty, but a 'road agent' didn't last long where every one carried a gun.
"Then come the 'year o' nabobs,' that was '63. The Comstock Lode put out over $26,000,000 in silver bullion alone, half-a-million dollars o' silver every week in the year. By that time there was forty big minin' plants operatin' wi' steam machinery. There weren't no place for a small man any more, unless he wanted to do minin' on days' wages, an' mighty few o' the early prospectors ever got any o' the later wealth o' the Comstock. Father, he wouldn't touch silver, nohow, but he made more'n the miners did by pannin' the dirt the mines were throwin' away. They were makin' so much money out o' silver that they wouldn't bother to take out the gold.
"Then come the first big smash. Half o' the mines sold to the suckers weren't worth shucks. Wild-cat mines, they called 'em. There was one, the Little Monte Cristo, which give the promoter half a million dollars in shares which he sold to folk in New York an' Philadelphy. An' they never made more'n an 8-foot pit in it an' didn't take out enough bullion to melt down into a silver spoon!
"What was worse, the big mines got down to the rock water-level. At first, they run little tunnels, what they called 'adits' from the side o' the mountain an' drained that way. That wasn't no good, much. They soon got below that. The lode got richer the farther down they went an' some o' the big companies took to pumpin' out the water. Right away, they started in to lose money. It cost more to pump than the silver was worth. The boom dropped with a thud.
"Then Adolph Sutro come along. He was a big man was Sutro, one o' these here engineers folks talk about. He offered to build a drainage tunnel from the foot-hills o' the Carson Valley, just above the river smack into the heart o' the lode, a distance o' four miles, tappin' all the mines. He figured that, if it weren't done, allthe mines'd get flooded an' all the wealth o' Comstock'd go to smash.
"Seein' things were going' so bad, the mine-owners balked at first. After a while, though, the water come in so free that they all agreed to give him two dollars a ton for all the ore raised from the mines, providin' his tunnel drained 'em all, an' providin' he fixed it so that they could get men an' material through the tunnel, instead o' having to pull it all up the shaft. It took Sutro six years to get the capital, but he got it. He begun work in '71. Toward the end o' the job the work was so hot an' tough that he doubled his rate o' wages, an' in '77, bein' eighteen years old then, I started operatin' a drill in the tunnel. I was thar on the day that we broke through."
Few engineering feats in the history of mining are more famous than the making of the Sutro Tunnel. In one of the publications of the U. S. Geological Survey, Eliot Lord has told its story of perseverance and triumph.
"Sutro's untiring zeal," wrote Lord, "kindled a like spirit in his co-workers. Changing shifts urged the drills on without ceasing; skilled timberers followed up the attack on the breast andcovered the heads of the assailants like shield-bearers.
"The dump at the mouth of the tunnel grew rapidly to the proportions of an artificial plateau raised above the surrounding valley slope; yet the speed of the electric currents which exploded the blasts scarcely kept pace with the impatient anxiety of the tunnel owners to reach the lode, when the extent of the great Consolidated Virginia Bonanza was reported; for every ton raised from the lode was a loss to them of two dollars, as they thought.
"Urged on by zeal, pride, and natural covetousness, the miners cut their way indomitably towards the goal, though, at every step gained the work grew more painful and more dangerous.
"The temperature at the face of the heading, had risen from 72° (Fahr.) at the close of the year 1873 to 83° during the two following years; though in the summer of 1875 two powerful Root blowers were constantly employed in forcing air into the tunnel. At the close of the year 1876, the indicated temperature was 90° and, on the 1st of January, 1878, the men were working in a temperature of 96°.
"In spite of the air currents from the blowers,the atmosphere before the end of the year 1876 had become almost unbearably foul as well as hot. The candles flickered with a dull light and men often staggered back from their posts, faint and sickened.
"During the months preceding the junction with the Savage Mine, the heading was cut with almost passionate eagerness. The miners were then two miles from the nearest ventilating shaft, and the heat of their working chamber was fast growing too intense for human endurance.
"The pipe which applied compressed air to the drills was opened at several points and the blowers were worked to their utmost capacity. Still the mercury rose from 98° on the 1st of March 1878 to 109° on the 22nd of April, and the temperature of the rock face of the heading increased from 110° to 114°. Four shifts a day were worked instead of three, and the men could only work during a small portion of their nominal hours of labor.
"Even the tough, wiry mules of the car train could hardly be driven up to the end of the tunnel and sought for fresh air not less ardently than the men. Curses, blows, and kicks could scarcely force them away from the blower-tubeopenings, and, more than once, a rationally obstinate mule thrust his head in the end of the canvas air-pipe. He was literally torn away by main strength, as the miners, when other means failed, tied his tail to the bodies of two other mules in his train and forced them to haul back their companion, snorting viciously, and slipping with stiff legs over the wet floor.
"Neither men nor animals could long endure work so distressing. Fortunately, the compressed air drills knew neither weariness nor pain, and churned their way to the mines without ceasing.
"A blast from the Savage Mine tore an opening through the wall, in the evening of that day. The goal for which Sutro had striven so many years was in sight. He was waiting at the breach, impatient of delay, and crawled, half-naked, through the jagged opening, while the foul air of the heading was still gushing into the mine."
Meanwhile, over the heads of the workers of the Sutro tunnel, a not less marvelous change had come over the Comstock Lode. This was the discovery of the Great Bonanza. After the slump of 1864 and the terrible handicap of thewater, mine-owners on the Comstock fell deeper and deeper into despair. Gone were the wild days of riot and extravagance. Only by extreme care, by the use of every modern appliance, by the lowering of wages—some thirty pitched battles, with six-shooters, marked this period—were they able to keep going at all.
Then, just as two Irishmen had first found the Comstock, two other Irishmen forged to the front. These were John W. Mackay, who had begun work as a day-laborer in the mine, and James G. Fair, a young fellow who had come to Virginia City with only a few hundred dollars' capital. They made a daring team. Seizing the opportunities of the dull times, they bought property after property as it was abandoned by the owners, who declared that the great lode had "pinched out." With a third Irishman, Wm. O'Brien, and a 'Frisco miner, James C. Flood, they bought the entire stretch between the two famous mines—the Ophir and the Gould & Curry—thus forming what became known to history as the Virginia Consolidated. The four men paid $50,000 for this huge property; risking their all on the chance that deeper mining might reach the supposedly "pinched out" vein.
They sank a shaft, down, down and down,—nothing! They ran a drift to meet it from one of their purchased mines, and drilled for weeks—nothing! Then a thin seam of ore appeared, but so small as to seem insignificant. Fair pursued this vein. A quarter of a million dollars were eaten up in chasing this elusive line of ore but the vein would neither disappear nor get wider. Fair's partners tried to insist on running galleries in various directions to explore—and did so for one month while he was ill—but Fair returned insistently again to that thin thread of silver. There was one place where it was only two inches thick. And then, in October 1873, the miners cut suddenly into the Big Bonanza.
"No discovery," wrote Lord, "to match this one had ever been made on this earth from the time when the first miner struck a ledge with his rude pick. The plain facts are as marvelous as a Persian tale, for the young Aladdin did not see in the glittering cave of the genii such fabulous riches as were lying in the dark womb of the rock.
"The wonder grew as the depths were searched out foot by foot. The Bonanza was cut at a point 1167 feet below the surface, and, as theshaft went down, it was pierced again at the 1200-foot level. One hundred feet deeper and the prying pick and drill told the same story, yet another hundred feet, and the mass appeared to be swelling. When, finally, the 1500-foot level was reached and ore richer than any before met with was disclosed, the fancy of the coolest brains ran wild. How far this great Bonanza would extend, none could predict, but its expansion seemed to keep pace with the most sanguine imaginings. To explore it thoroughly was to cut it out bodily; systematic search through it was a continual revelation."
The wealth revealed was beyond believing. This Bonanza, alone, yielded $3,000,000 of silver every month for the first three years.
Yet it was hard to win. Mackay believed in high wages and paid more than double the wages given to any miners in any place in the history of the world. All were picked men, who had passed a severe medical test. The hours were short. The men worked naked save for a loin-cloth and shoes to protect them from the hot rocks. The heat reached 110°. Three men, who stepped accidentally into a deep pool of water, werescalded to death. The air was foul. The toil was severe.
Yet ever, the deeper they went, the richer grew the ore. When, at last, Mackay, Fair, O'Brien, and Flood sold their holdings, the Bonanza had yielded more than $150,000,000 worth of silver, one-third of which had passed directly into the pockets of the four men.
But what of the first discoverers, McLaughlin and Riley? They had found the silver, but the Bonanza was not for them. McLaughlin worked for a while as a laborer and then was thrown out of the mine by a foreman who said he was too old. He tried a dozen small ventures and not only lost in everything he touched, but caused his partners to lose, also. Bad fortune dogged him steadily. An old man, worn out and hopelessly dispirited, died in a hospital and was buried in a pauper's grave. Later, it was learned that this was McLaughlin.
O'Riley fared no better. He refused to work for others, believing that luck would turn, and that he, who had once discovered so rich a prize, would, some day or other, discover another. One night, in a dream, he heard what he took to be the voices of the fairies of the mountain bidding himdig at a certain barren spot on the hill-slopes of the Sierras, many miles away from the Comstock Lode.
For days, for weeks, for years, he dug, ever hearing the fancied voices leading him on, deeper and deeper still. Mackay offered him money, but O'Riley refused to accept it, demanding that he be given an equal share in the mine, or nothing. He starved and suffered, sometimes finding pieces of pure silver and pure gold in his tunnel, which he ascribed to his fairies (but which rumor says Mackay had arranged to be placed there) and, in old age, his tunnel fell in and crippled him. From the hospital he was taken to an insane asylum, where he died.
Henry Comstock met the fate he deserved. For years he swaggered about Virginia City claiming to be its founder and the discoverer of the Comstock Lode, living on the charity of luckier men who threw him a bar of silver as one throws a bone to a dog, or else selling wild-cat shares to greenhorns. More than once he was justly accused of being in league with the disorderly elements of the city and having taken part in robberies. But a certain rough sense of pitykept him from being strung up to a tree as he deserved a dozen times over—and he died, at last, a suicide.
"You won't be achin', none, to hear all o' my roamin's after I quit the Sutro Tunnel," Jim resumed, a couple of days later, when Owens and Clem came to hear the rest of his story, "so I'll cut 'em short. But you'll be wantin' to hear how it was I got into that queer part o' the country where I made my strike.
"It was Father's doin's more'n it was mine. I reckon I'd ha' stuck around the Comstock Lode an' got into reg'lar silver-quartz minin' if I'd gone my own way. But Father didn't have no use for silver. He was a gold prospector, he was, an' he didn't want to do nothin' else.
"After the Comstock got goin' good, with big stamp-mills poundin' an' roarin' night an' day, an' when Virginia City begun to settle into a sure-enough town, Father begun to itch to be away. Folks worried him. Gold, he used to say, had savvy enough to hide itself when a mobcome around, an', accordin' to Father's ideas, a placer wasn't no good, anyhow, after two seasons' pickin's.
"He jest wanted to come along an' skim off the cream o' some new find, clean up enough dust to keep him goin' for a while, an' then pick up his stakes an' git! It wasn't jest the money Father was after. He liked huntin' after gold, jest for the sake o' huntin'. I've seen him quit a claim that was makin' a fair profit an' start off prospectin', for the sake o' the change. The wilder the spot, the more chance there was o' findin' gold, he used to say; the fewer the folks, the bigger the clean-up. Looked like he was right, too, placer fields peter out mighty fast when a gang gets there."
"They are bound to," Owens agreed.
"But why? There ain't no rule about gold. One placer'll give up millions in dust, an' another ain't worth pannin'."
"There's no rule that will tell you where to find placer gold," the mine-owner corrected, "but don't run away with the idea that gold deposits are all freaks. As a matter of fact, there is a regular science to help a good prospector in hunting for reef or quartz gold. Whether he willfind it in sufficient quantity to make the deposit worth working is quite another matter.
"You mustn't think, Jim, that gold happens to be in one place and happens not to be in another as a result of mere chance. There's no chance in Nature. We think there is, sometimes, merely because the factors are so terribly complicated that we can't follow them all.
"What makes the finding of gold seem so much a matter of luck is not because we don't know how the gold came to be where it is, but because we can't know the whole history of the Earth before Man came, and we can't read everything from the rocks which crop out on the surface. But we have some clues, and if you studied out the big money-making gold-mines of to-day, you would find that chance has played but a small part in their discovery and no part at all in their working.
"A lucky prospector may have been the first to find signs of gold in the region, but most likely, he got but little out of it. It was the scientific search which followed that revealed the location of the great rock deposits below in which the gold was thinly scattered, and it was highly specialized mining engineering which made them possible towork. There are mines where ores containing only two dollars' worth of gold (48 grains, a tenth of an ounce) to the ton are successfully handled, and the greater part of the big gold-mines run along quite comfortably on five dollars' worth."
"You mean on a quarter of an ounce o' gold to the ton!" exclaimed Jim, amazed. "I've often got ten times that much in one pan!"
"Exactly. Yet you're not a millionaire, are you? Most gold-mines run on a narrow margin of profit, a dollar or two to the ton of ore crushed. So, you see, the works must be on a huge scale in order to return a dividend on the investment. What's more, you can't afford to establish a big plant unless there's an enormous amount of ore available.
"It's an old rule of wise investors not to put money into a mine that looks too rich. Why?
"Because rich ore generally peters out fast. The rich mines always catch the suckers easily, and they're the ones who lose. A few cents a ton profit on an immense deposit of low-grade ore means a sure return, because, as a rule, such ore comes from a very old geological formation where the gold is evenly scattered, and labor-savingmachinery can be put in with a certainty that those few cents of profit will continue indefinitely.
"Gold, as you know, Jim, is always the same price. This has been agreed upon by all nations. It is the one standard of value. It is worth a fraction over $20 an ounce. Year in, year out, all over the world, gold is worth the same.
"As a result, a gold-mine manager who knows the exact proportion of gold per ton in the ore of his mine, can calculate to a cent how much he can afford to pay for mining the ore, crushing it, and separating the gold by chemical processes. He must figure on the cost of installing his machinery, on his interest for original outlay, on depreciation, on the cost of power for his machinery, on the water power needed for crushing and washing, on transportation for his supplies and on wages. Usually he will have to build his own railroad and his own aqueducts. A little saving in one place—even a few cents per ton—will enable him to make a big profit; a little extra cost, such as an increase in the price of fuel, of chemicals, or of wages, will make him bankrupt.
Where Deserts Yield Millions.
Where Deserts Yield Millions.Mill of the Pittsburg-Silver Peak Gold Mining Co., Blair, Nevada.
Where Deserts Yield Millions.
Mill of the Pittsburg-Silver Peak Gold Mining Co., Blair, Nevada.
The Eater of Mountains.
The Eater of Mountains.A hydraulic jet of high pressure, washing away a hill of gravel and sending the pay dirt through a sluice.From "The Romance of Modern Mining," by A. Williams.
The Eater of Mountains.
A hydraulic jet of high pressure, washing away a hill of gravel and sending the pay dirt through a sluice.
From "The Romance of Modern Mining," by A. Williams.
"That is why, Jim, even the richest-ored mine in the world—if it be uneven in its yield of goldper ton—may be worthless, and why a low-grade mine with an unchanging percentage may be worth millions, so long as there is plenty of it. It all depends on the cost of extracting the metal. There are scores, yes, hundreds of gold-deposits well known to-day, which cannot be worked as long as gold stays $20 an ounce, because it costs almost as much as that to get it out, but which would be big money-makers if the gold were worth $25. Three-quarters of the gold-mines of to-day would shut tight like a clam, if gold were to drop in price even a dollar or two. What a capitalist wants to-day is ore, and he is not interested in free gold. What a prospector looks for, is free gold, and he ignores the rock. I'm telling you all this, now, Jim, because it's what will be the important thing when we get to talking, later, over your find."
"That's all right," the old prospector answered, "but how can a man tell when he's tappin' a big lot o' rock or jest a little, if it ain't the free gold what shows him?"
"He can't tell, as a rule," the mine-owner rejoined. "It takes a geologist to do that. As I was saying, there are some rules to go by. Here,I'll give you a notion of how gold came to be in the rocks, and then you'll see what a geologist can tell and what he can't.
"To start with, you've got to begin 'way at the beginning of things, before the crust of the earth was solid and when all the rocks of the crust were in a melted and half-liquid state. So far as we can make out, the metals seems to have classified themselves at that time, more or less, according to density. The lighter elements came to the surface, the heavier ones stayed at the bottom. It wasn't merely a question of weight, but of gravitation, centrifugal action and a lot of things I won't stop to explain to you now. Gold, as you know, is heavy, that is, it possesses extreme density. It stayed therefore, mainly at the bottom of this semi-molten sea.
"But this sea, which covered the whole of the earth's surface, wasn't altogether liquid, as the oceans are to-day. It was a seething mass of different densities, some of it liquid, some of it slimy, some of it thick like sticky mud, acted upon by fearful whirlwinds of electric forces such as astronomers see in the sun to-day, and by powerful internal currents which created vast churning whirlpools of super-heated matter.
"It's impossible for us to tell where these electric whirlwinds passed or where these currents were. So, since the original separation of the metals was highly irregular, no geologist can say with certainty where gold or silver, lead or tin, will be found in the greatest quantity.
"Then there's another complication. As you know, most of the metals have chums or affinities with other substances, just as gold has with mercury. These chums of the metals were also in that molten ocean, but not always in the same proportions, nor yet distributed regularly. So metallic compounds were formed at different times and in diverse places. These compounds had varying densities, with the result that in later ages they behaved in a way quite different from the pure metal. You see, Jim, long before the crust of the earth was even formed, gold was scattered far and wide, and already was in different forms.
"Then, little by little, the crust began to form as the earth cooled. It was just a scum, at first, and was constantly broken up from below. As it got thicker, it resisted more and more, until the upheavals of the crust formed the mountains of the earliest or Primary Age. This crust, whichwas now solid rock, contained gold, but, naturally, nowhere in the same proportions. Some had much metal inclusion; some, little; some, none at all. Besides, between the mountains or in them, were vast volcanic craters, pouring up molten matter which became what are known as the eruptive rocks, and these, too, carried up gold from below. These rocks crystallized and the gold remained in them.
"But even that wasn't complicated enough for Mother Nature. In those same eruptive rocks, both of the early and later periods, gold is mainly found in veins. These veins are of dozens of different sorts, depending on the rock in which they occur and on Nature's ways of putting them there.
"To make it simple to you, I'll only mention two. The most general method was by fumaroles. These are subterranean blow-holes of vapor containing sulphur, tellurium, and chlorine compounds, as well as super-heated steam. These vapors, projected from deep down in the earth with incredible pressure and energy, acted on the new-made rocks, formed compounds with the metals, or, when united with hydrogen in the steam, separated the metals from solutions oftheir salts, and forced the metals into cracks in the new-made and cooling eruptive rocks. According to the kind of rock and the nature of the chemical agent, a geologist will know for what type of vein to search. The other most general agent of vein-making was hot water—generally heavily saturated with sulphur and other chemicals—which dissolved the gold. This hot water, with gold in solution, seeped into the cracks and crevices made by the rock as it cooled, thus forming other types of veins."
"Hold on a minute, there!" protested Jim. "Water won't dissolve gold."
"It will and does," was the retort, "especially when certain chemicals are in the water. As a matter of fact, even to-day, the geysers at Steamboat Springs, California, and at several places in New Zealand, deposit gold and silicon in their basins. But let me go on.
"After the gold was placed in veins in these primary rocks, there came a period of erosion, and the mountains were worn away. The gold being harder than rock, it remained and made alluvial deposits of a very early age. Some, of these old 'placers' are several miles below the surface, now, others have come again to the surface by all the superposed rock having been washed away, anew. Some of the gold was dissolved, as before, and got into the crevices of the newly deposited rocks made by erosion, known as sedimentary rocks. So, you see, Jim, even millions of years ago, there was gold in the crystallized eruptive rock, gold in veins of igneous rock, gold in alluvial deposits, and, again, gold in veins in the sedimentary rocks.
"Then came another period of elevation, with a second raising up of mountain ranges, and with a renewal of violent volcanic action. The crust was getting more and more unequal, the way in which the metals were distributed became more and more scattered. Mountains of the Secondary Age were often made of Primary sedimentary rocks, or of Primary igneous rocks, so much changed that geologists call them metamorphic rocks. And, Jim, every time that the rock was changed, the gold changed either its place or its compound character, or both. Then came another period of erosion, lasting millions of years, the gold was washed away to form new placers, or made its way into veins in the Secondary sedimentary rocks.
"Then came the great upheaval of the Thirdor Tertiary Age, in which new mountains rose, new volcanic vents were opened, and, once more, much of the gold was acted upon by chemicals, mainly sulphur and tellurium. In many places silver showed a strong affinity with gold, forming deposits where the ores were commingled. Once more the hundreds of centuries of erosion came, to be followed by the upheaving of the newer mountains of the Fourth or Quaternary Age. So, you see, Jim, as I told you before, gold can be found in almost every rock and of every geological period."
"I don't see that it helps much, then!" declared the old prospector. "You can go lookin' where you durn please."
"There's nothing to stop you," agreed Owens cheerfully, "but that's a hit-and-miss method. And I can show you just how even this little bit of geology comes in to help the miner.
"Get this clearly in your head, Jim! Three-quarters of the present gold production of the world comes from gold that is mixed with pyrites—which is a sulphide of iron, or from tellurides—in which a tellurium-hydrogen compound has been the chemical agent. A prospector, therefore, who uncovers a new field where the gold isin the pyritous or the telluride form has ten times more chance of attracting capital than one who finds lumps of native gold lying around loose.
"It is when a prospector strikes a section where all the gold-bearing rock has been eroded that he is apt to find the 'pockets' so dear to his heart. The amazing riches of the Klondyke lay in the fact that prospectors found, first, the alluvial deposits from the present age in the sands of the running creeks, and, on ledges high above the creeks and running into the rocks on either side, the alluvial deposits, even thicker and richer, of a bygone time."
"You've got it right," declared Jim, emphatically. "I know 'cos I was there!"
"Was it on the Yukon, then, that you made your famous strike?"
The prospector winced. Evidently, he intended to reach that point in his own way.
"I'll tell you about that, after a bit," he answered evasively. "But you ain't said why placer claims peter out."
"Can't you see? A placer claim doesn't show where the big store of gold is, but where it isn't! It shows that the gold has gone. A placer is just a spot where a little heavy gold, that hasn't beenacted on by chemicals, happens to have been deposited during the erosion of a mountain which was composed of gold-bearing rock. The rock has been washed into sand and gravel and a great deal of it taken out to sea. There's plenty of gold in the sea, as I told you before.
"But the amount of sand or gravel to be panned along a creek or river is limited. When that's washed over, there's no more to find. A prospector gets down to bed-rock and he's through. Then he's either got to pack up and hunt some new spot where the same erosion has happened, or, if he's clever enough, he's got to find the rock or reef from which the gold was washed out. If he doesn't know his geology, he's apt to waste his time.
"Then the scientific expert and the capitalist come in. It's the man with money who profits most by a poor man's strike. He can afford to sit back and wait. Presently the expert will come back and report where the gold-bearing rock lies. The capitalist arrives with huge machinery for mining and crushing the rock, for turning on enormous water-power, in short, for performing a sort of artificial erosion in a few days which Nature took hundreds of thousands of years todo. He pockets millions, where the prospectors who did the first work only get thousands, or even hundreds, or, sometimes, nothing at all.
"Your father was perfectly right, Jim, in saying that the prizes of prospecting are for the man who gets there first. Placers are bound to peter out quickly. They are Nature's purses, and a purse hasn't any more money in it than you put in. Even the Klondyke, that astounding pocket of riches, lasted only three years and then dwindled down.
"Some of these days, all the available places of the earth will have been worked over by the casual prospector, and then his day will be done. The ever-hoping rover of the pick, shovel, and pan is becoming extinct. Even now, the only spots which hold out any chance of pockets of gold are in the almost inaccessible section of the globe.
"The daring seeker for gold must go to the bleak ranges of the frigid North, where, even in the middle of the summer, the ground is frozen as hard as a rock a few inches below the surface; or else to the jungle-clad slopes of the tropics, where fever and stewing heat menace him with ever-present death; or yet to regions so far removedfrom civilization that the white man has not yet penetrated there. The shores of the Arctic Ocean, the steaming equatorial forests of the Eastern Andes, or the untrodden valleys of the inner Himalayas offer the most hopes to the prospector. But he may spend all the gold-dust he finds, and more, to go there and return.
"The tundras of Alaska and eastward to Hudson Bay still contain placer gold, to a surety, gold not difficult to find if a man is willing to face an Arctic winter and a mosquito-haunted summer to work there. It's a wonder to me, Jim, that your father didn't join the great rush to the Fraser River, in British Columbia, in 1856. That was a mad and sorrowful stampede, if ever there was one!"
"He was crazy about the Fraser," Jim answered. "All that kep' him from goin' was the smash-up o' the Kern River rush, which lef' him dead-broke an' nigh starvin', like I told you. But he never forgot the Fraser. That's what took us up north, to wind up with.
"It was in '79, when I was twenty years old, that Father comes into the cabin, an' says, point blank,
"'We're a-goin' to the Kootenay.'
"'Where's that?' I asks.
"'Somewheres up near the Fraser River. There's gold there, so they're sayin', like there was on the Sacramento in '49. An' thar ain't no one, hardly, thar! Fust one in gits it all.'
"I tried to reason with him. So did Mother, but it weren't no manner o' use. A week later, we was gone."
"I shouldn't have thought he'd have found much on the Kootenay," said Owens reflectively, "it's all vein mining there. That needs heavy crushing machinery."
"Not all," Jim corrected. "There's some glacial gravel there an' we washed out enough to pay our way. But Father wanted something bigger.
"We struck out from West Kootenay an' hit the trail for Six Mile Creek, near Kicking Horse Pass, in Upper East Kootenay. We stayed there a while, but some one, who had a grudge agin the Mormons, pulled his gun on Father. A 'forty-niner' ain't apt to be lazy on the shoot, an' Father's gun spit first. We didn't wait for the funeral, but moved on, an' lively, at that, strikin' for the Fraser."
"Good thing for you the N. W. M. P. (NorthWest Mounted Police), didn't strike your trail!" commented Owens.
"It was a straight-enough deal," protested Jim, "an' the N. W.'s ha' got plenty o' sense. But that wasn't no reason for hangin' around, lookin' for trouble. We thought the Fraser'd be healthier. As it turned out, it wasn't.
"The Fraser boom was dead. The shacks in the ol' minin' camps was rottin' to ruin. The machinery—what little there was of it—was lyin' there, rustin'. The sluices had all fallen to bits, except on Hop Rabbit Creek. A couple o' hundred men was there still, workin' over the tailin's, but they was all Chinamen. Up the creek a ways some o' them was pannin'.
"Second day we was there, a big Chink comes up to me, an' says, very quiet like,
"'You plenty sabbee? Run away quick!'
"It didn't look that way to me, for I don't take to orderin'. I was good an' ready to drop that Chink in his tracks, but I did a little thinkin' first. Two hundred agin two is big odds. I nodded, an' the big Chink turns away.
"I didn't say nothin' about the warnin' to Father, for he was that stubborn he'd ha' waded right in an' tried to clean up the whole camp.He wouldn't ha' had the chance of a rat in a trap. He'd ha' got himself carved up in little slices an' that was about all. So I jest told him that one o' the Chinks had reported there was a new strike on the Cassiar. Father took the bait like a hungry trout an' we was off in an hour."
"But I always thought Chinamen were such a peaceful lot!" exclaimed Clem.
"If a Chink comes into a white camp, he's willin' to sing small an' do what he's told. But in a boom camp that white folks have given up an' quit, if Johnny Chink comes in, he won't let nary a white come back. I know! One o' my pardners was in the massacre o' Happy Man Gulch in '87. That's a yarn worth hearin'! I'll tell it you, some time.
"Out we trailed to the Cassiar, an', funny enough, though I'd only been bluffin' to Father about the strike there, we landed on the pay gravel the very day after French Pete had struck a pocket. He was a good prospector, was French Pete, an' knew more'n most, but he was timid like, an' glad to have us there. He could handle Indians—he was a half-breed himself—but he was that superstitious, he was afraid o' the dark, alone. He was religious, too, an' Father an' himgot along together famous. We staked out a claim, right next to his, an', for a few weeks, cleaned up a good fifty dollars a day.
"Then, one fine mornin', a bunch o' redskins come down, friends o' French Pete. They palavered some, an', after a while, French Pete he comes over to us an' says:
"'We got three days to get out!'
"Father he put up an awful howl an' was for plugging the redskins full o' holes, pronto. But French Pete puts it to him that these Injuns was his friends, an' shootin' wouldn't go. There'd been some kind o' deal between this tribe an' the Chilkoots, an' every miner on the Divide knew more'n plenty about the Chilkoots. They'd tortured to death Georgie Holt, the first prospector that ever went over the Chilkoot Pass, an' more'n one miner that got into their country wasn't never heard of no more.
"So Father puts it up to French Pete where he's goin' next. French Pete is a good pardner, an' tells a queer tale, but he tells it straight. He allows there's gold on the islands off the coast an' shows the lay.
"Some years afore, so he says, Joe Juneau, an old-time Hudson Bay trapper, an' Dick Harris,one o' the forty-niners, had found color on Gold Creek, near the coast, an' had made a pile. Juneau went on prospectin', though he was rich, an', havin' a generous streak, grub-staked any man what asked him. That way he got a big share in the placers found on Silver Bow and doubled his pile. Some other prospectors what he'd grub-staked reported havin' found gold on the islands, but nothin' extraordinary. Harris, havin' a business head, stuck around Gold Creek (the present town of Juneau was formerly called Harrisburg) an' got rich a-plenty. Juneau an' Harris had more'n enough to look after, an' never got over to the islands.
"French Pete, he's an old friend of Juneau an' he knows about this island game. He reckons it'd be worth pannin'. There's sure-enough gold up thar to pay for the workin', an' there might be a chance for a big haul, seein' no one is prospectin' thar. He offers to show Father where the placers are supposed to be, if he's willin' to come along. Father likes to stick by his pardner an' agrees.
"From Cassiar we hoofed it back to Juneau—a long an' a hard trail—an', after buyin' a small sailboat an' grub enough for threemonths, we struck out for Douglas Island. French Pete handled that boat like a cowboy does a buckin' bronc. We was green wi' scare in that wild sea, full o' chunks o' ice clashin' all around, but the old trapper never turns a hair. Presently we landed on a beach which looked like it was a seal rookery, once, an' works our way to where a good-sized creek comes plungin' down to the sea.
"Juneau had it right. The sands along the creek were full o' color, but the dust was small an' it was slow pannin'. It was all we could do to make fourteen dollars a day in dust, workin' fourteen hours a day, maybe; poor pickin's for a spot costin' so much cash an' trouble to get to.
"French Pete, though, had plenty o' savvy. From the lie o' the rock, he reckoned this thin placer gold must ha' been washed out o' the little mountain what sticks up in one corner o' the island. He let his placer claim go for a while and prospected for ore. At last he found what he thought looked like the best spot. The ore was poor in color, but so soft an' rotten that it could be smashed into dust with a hammer, an' the gold—what little there was of it—separated out easy.
"We all staked out half-a-dozen claims, doin'enough work on each to hold title. Since French Pete had brought us to the island, an' shown the rock besides, Father an' I promised to give him a quarter o' whatever we got for our claims, if we ever sold 'em.
"Off went French Pete in the sail-boat, leavin' us marooned on Douglas Island, an' in a pickle of a mess supposin' he shouldn't return! But he come back, sure enough, after about six weeks, havin' found John Treadwell, a minin' man, who undertakes to buy our claims if Juneau, after havin' looked 'em over, says they're all right.
"Juneau an' Treadwell come, a couple o' days after, wi' one o' these up-to-date engineer Johnnies. The ore's low-grade, but there's head enough in the creek to run stamp mills by water-power, which makes cheap crushin'. Treadwell pays French Pete $15,000 for his claims an' Father an' me $10,000 apiece. Then he buys up the rest o' the island for next to nothin'. The Treadwell mine's a big un, now, workin' 540 stamp mills, an', as Mr. Owens says, it's makin' millions out o' low grade ore.
"Father had promised Mother, as soon as he got $10,000 clear, he'd go back home. She holds him to it. After payin' French Pete what wepromised, there's $10,000 for Father an' $5,000 for me, besides what was left from the Cassiar an' Douglas Island placer clean-ups. Father an' Mother went back to Utah, leavin' me wi' French Pete an' Treadwell.
"But Father couldn't stand it long. While he was prospectin', all hours, all weathers, he was tough an' strong. Back in town, he begun to pine. In less'n a year he was dead. Mother didn't live long after him. That lef' me on my own hook. Douglas Island was too slow, though Treadwell offered me a good job as long's I cared to stick it out. But I wanted to be off an' away, feelin' sure, some day, I'd make my big strike.
"I was foot-loose, now, wi' five thousand in dust an' the whole world to roam in. Where was I goin' to find the place where the sands was nothin' but gold? Somewheres, I was sure! Some day I'd strike it rich an' never have to work no more. Out in the wild beyond, where no one else was, millions was waitin' for me!"
"I was young an' tough in them days an' liked to buck agin hard goin'. If gold was gettin' scarce where folks was, it was plenty an' free in the lands that folks didn't dare go to. Naturally enough, I begun to think o' the Chilkoot country.
"Ever since Georgie Holt had been tortured to death in a Chilkoot Indian camp, prospectors had been leery o' that huntin' ground. But French Pete had heard from a pard o' Juneau's that Dumb MacMillan had got over the Chilkoot an' struck it rich on what he called Dumb Creek, runnin' into the Tanana. He'd come back an' cashed his dust, blowed it in on one wild spree, an' gone over the Pass again. He hadn't never been heard of no more.
"Since his second trip, though, the Canadian Government had got a strangle-hold on the Chilkoots an' was makin' 'em behave. It had forced 'em to make peace wi' the Stick Indians o' theinterior, an' thrown the fear o' the whites into 'em good an' plenty. So I wasn't worryin' over Injuns none. The Chilkoot Pass, though, was said to be something awful to cross, but that wasn't goin' to stop me, when I knew there was good goin' on the other side an' all the creeks full o' gold.
"So I quit Treadwell an' French Pete an' got back to Juneau. There, I heard that a bunch o' prospectors led by the Schiefflin Brothers had taken a steamboat, got as far as St. Michael, gone up the Yukon, wintered at Nuklukayet an' found gold all the way. They'd struck good placers on Mynook, Hess an' Shevlin Creeks, but the Schiefflins found the ground always frozen an' terrible hard to work, an' the summer was so short they figured pannin' on the Yukon wouldn't pay.
"Think o' that, will you! The Klondyke an' the Eldorado wouldn't pay!
"That same summer, we heard that there was new gold strikes on the Lewes an' Big Salmon Rivers, which run into the Upper Yukon. Dumb MacMillan had found payin' color on the Tanana, flowin' into the Middle Yukon. The Schiefflins had located plenty o' placers on the Lower Yukon.
"It didn't take much figurin' to guess that therewas gold all the way along. I made up my mind to strike over the Chilkoot into the Stewart River section, jest about unknown then; preparin', durin' the winter, for an early start.
"Early in the spring o' '84, eight of us was ready. We had a sure-enough outfit an' plenty o' grub. We was well fixed for shootin'-irons, too, for we was goin' up into hostile Injun country.
"Joe Juneau, who knew a lot about the mountains, tried to head us off, tellin' what happened to Holt an' MacMillan, but we was sot on goin', an' struck out for Dyea along the canal trail. There we headed for the interior.
"I've seen some rough goin' in my time, an' I come of a stock o' tough uns, but, I'm tellin' you, that first trip over the Chilkoot Pass was more'n horrible. I dream about it, yet—an' it's over thirty years ago!
"From Dyea to Sheep Camp was bad enough goin', half-frozen muskeg (mucky swamp), lyin' under soft snow an' all covered with a tangle o' thorn-vines climbin' over spraggly berry-bushes. There warn't no trail. It was cut your way, an' drag! We didn't have no dogs, but lugged the sleighs ourselves. It's only nine miles as thecrow flies, but it took us four days to make it, with our loads.
"An' then the Chilkoot Pass stuck up in front of us, all black rock an' white snow, reachin' to the sky, an' clouds hidin' the top. It seemed like it was a-defyin' of us, well-nigh impossible.
"We'd ha' gone back, sure, but we knew two men had climbed it a'ready, Georgie Holt in '72, and Dumb MacMillan, in '80. What they'd done, we reckoned we could do.
"Sheer rock, she was, all slick an' icy, to begin with; above that, stretches o' snow-fields on so steep a slope that a false step meant a snow-slide an' good-bye! crevasses in the snow goin' down below all knowin', an' mostly covered over wi' light snow so's you couldn't see 'em; an', near the top, a pile o' loose an' shaky rocks built up like a wall, straight as the side of a house, an', in some spots, leanin' over. That was the Chilkoot Pass!
"The cold was cruel; a steady wind, nigh to a blizzard, sucked through the Pass continooal, tearin' a man from his footin.' There was no shelter, an' high up, no fire-wood.
"There was no trail, neither! We had to go it, blind. An', up that rock, over them snow-fields,across them crevasses, an', fly-like, crawling up that wall o' bowlders, we had to drag our dunnage! The sleighs had to be pulled up, empty. Our sacks o' flour had to be toted on our backs! An' our bacon an' groceries, enough to last us months! An' our tools an' cradles! I made five trips to get my stuff across—an it took me five weeks. Between whiles, I rested, if lyin' exhausted means rest!
"There was eight of us that started. There was only three when the stuff was on the summit o' the pass! Two had been crushed by fallin' rocks. The other three had all disappeared sudden in a crevasse, what they thought was solid snow givin' down under 'em. Only Red Bill, Bull Evans an' me was left.
"Mind, there was no trail an' no guide! Holt had been over years before, but the Indians killed him. Dumb MacMillan went over it twice, an' never was heard of no more. Me an' my pardners was the third, an', as I was sayin', o' the eight that started, only three got to the top."
"Yet how many thousands climbed that Pass after gold had been struck on the Klondyke?" queried Owens.