The Gold Mines.
Not many years ago it was found that not only furs and salmon could be obtained in Alaska, but in some places the rocks were rich with precious gold. The Treadmill gold-mine is one of the most valuable in the world. The men who work there do not have to leave the sunlight and dig far down under the earth, for the mine, or rather quarry, is above ground, and there the workers are kept busy, breaking away the masses of rock which are afterwards crushed in heavy stamps, to separate the gold from the quartz. When darkness falls, electric lights make everything as bright as day. There are more than two hundred of these stamps at the Treadmill mine, so you can imagine that when all are at work crushing the great masses of rock, the noise is enough to deafen one’s ears.
As the gold is separated, it is made up into bricks, each one of which is worth between fifteen and eighteen thousand dollars! These bricks are afterwards sent in ship loads to the mint at San Francisco.