"Oh, for one reason or another."
If I owned a claim on the tundra back of Nome, nothing save sudden death could prevent my digging.
New strikes are constantly being made, to keep the people of Nome in a state of feverish excitement and dynamic energy. When we landed, we found the town wild over a thirty-thousand-dollar clean-up on a claim named "Number Eight, Cooper Gulch." Four days later an excursion was arranged to go out on the railroad—for they have a railroad—to see another clean-up at this mine.
We started at nine o'clock, and we did not return until five; and it rained steadily and with exceeding coldness all day. There was a comfortable passenger-car, but despite the wind and the rain we preferred the box-cars, roofed, but open at the sides. The country which we traversed for six miles possessed the indescribable fascination of desolation. Behind us rolled the sea; but on all other sides stretched wide gray tundra levels, varied by low hills. Hills they call them here, but they are only slopes, or mounds, with here and there a treeless creek winding through them. The mist of the rain drove across them like smoke.
We were received at the mine by Captain and Mrs. Johnson and Mr. Corson, the owners. The ladies were entertained in the Johnsons' cabin home and the gentlemen at a near-by cabin, there being twelve ladies and twenty gentlemen in the party. An immense bowl of champagne punch—the word "punch" being used for courtesy—stood outside the ladies' cabin and was not allowed to grow empty. Late in the afternoon the heap of empty champagne bottles outside the gentlemen's cabin resembled in size one of the numerous gravel dumps scattered over the tundra; yet not a person showed signs of intoxication. They told us that one may drink champagne as though it were water in that latitude; and this is one northern "story" which I am quite willing to believe.
At noon a bountiful and delicious luncheon was served at the mess-house. It was this same fortunate Captain Johnson, by the way, who opened fifteen hundred dollars' worth of champagne when bedrock was reached in his Koyukuk claim.
Sluicing is fascinating. A good supply of water with sufficient fall is necessary. Some of the claims are on creeks, but the owners of others are compelled to buy water from companies who supply it by pumping-plants and ditches. Boxes, or flat-bottomed troughs, are formed of planks with slats, or "riffles," fastened at intervals across the bottom. Several boxes are arranged on a gentle slope and fitted into one another. The boxes at "Number Eight" were twenty feet in length and slanted from the ground to a height of twelve feet on scaffolding. A narrow planking ran along each side of the telescoped boxes, and upon these frail foundations we stood to view the sluicing. The gravel is usually shovelled into the boxes, but "Number Eight" has an improved method. The gravel is elevated into an immense hopper-like receptacle, from which it sifts down into the sluice-boxes on each side, and a stream of water is kept running steadily upon it from a large hose at the upper end. Men with whisk brooms sweep up the gold into glistening heaps, working out the gravel and passing it on, as a housewife works the whey out of the yellowing butter. The gold, being heavy, is caught and held by the riffles; if it is very fine, the bottoms of the boxes are covered with blankets, or mercury is placed at the slats to detain it.
The clean-up that day was twenty-nine thousand dollars, and each lady of the party was presented with a gold nugget by Mrs. Johnson. We were taken down into the mine, where we went about like a company of fireflies, each carrying his own candle. The ceiling was so low that we were compelled to walk in a stooping position. On the following morning we went to a bank and saw this clean-up melted and run into great bricks.
The lure and the fascination of virgin gold is undeniable. It catches one and all in its glistening, mysterious web. A man may sell his potato patch in town lots and become a millionnaire, without attracting attention; but let him "strike pay on bedrock"—and instantly he walks in a golden mist of glory and romance before his fellow-men. It may be because the farmer deposits his money in the bank, while the miner "sets up" the champagne to his less fortunate friends. Be that as it may, it is a sluggish pulse that does not quicken when one sees cones of beautiful coarse gold and nuggets washed and swept out of the gravel in which it has been lying hundreds of years, waiting. If Behring had but landed upon this golden beach, Alaska—despite all the eloquence and the earnestness of Seward and Sumner-might not now be ours.