McClellan, as superintendent of the Chitina Company, used, with that company's horses, four of the McClellan party's horses during the entire season, sending them to and from Valdez, packing supplies.
In the meantime, upon reaching the Nicolai Mine, on the 1st of July, Warner and Smith, packing supplies on their backs, set out to prospect. The Chitina Company, in the famous and bitterly contested lawsuit which followed, claimed that they were supplied with the Chitina Company's "grub"; while Smith and Warner claimed that their provisions belonged to the McClellan party.
Copyright by J. Doody, Dawson
Steamer "White Horse" in Five-Finger Rapids
After a few days' aimless wandering, they reached a point on the east side of Kennicott Glacier, about twenty miles west of the Nicolai Mine. Here they camped at noon, near a small stream that came running down from a great height.
Their camp was about halfway up a mountain which was six thousand feet high. After a miner's lunch of bacon and beans, they were packing up to resume their wanderings, when Warner, chancing to glance upward, discovered a green streak near the top of the mountain. It looked like grass, and at first he gave it no thought; but presently it occurred to him that, as they were camped above timber-line, grass would not be growing at such a height.
They at once decided to investigate the peculiar and mysterious coloring. The mountain was steep, and it was after a slow and painful climb that they reached the top. Jack Smith stooped and picked up a piece of shining metal.
"My God, Clarence," he said fervently, "it's copper."
It was copper; the richest copper, in the greatest quantities, ever found upon the earth. There were hundreds of thousands of tons of it. There was a whole mountain of it. It was so bright and shining that they, at first, thought it was Galena ore; but they soon discovered that it was copper glance,—a copper ore bearing about seventy-five per cent of pure copper.