"It is then squeezed through a buckskin bag, all the mercury that comes through the bag being put into the barrel to serve again, and what remains in the bag is placed in a retort, if the miner has one, or if not, on a shovel, and heated until nearly all the mercury is vaporised. The gold then remains in a lump with some mercury still held in combination with it.
"This is called the 'pan,' or 'hand-method,' which is only employed when it is impossible to procure a rocker or to make and work sluices.
"The latter is the best method of placer-mining, but it requires a good supply of water with sufficient head or falls. The process is as follows: Planks are secured and made into a box of suitable depth and width. Slats are fixed across the bottom of the box at intervals, or holes bored in the bottom in such a way as to preclude the escape of any particle of gold. Several of these boxes are then set up with a considerable slope, and are fitted into one another at the ends like a stove pipe. A stream of water is then thrown into the upper end of the highest box, the dirt being shovelled in and washed downwards, at the same time. The gold is detained by its weight, and is held by the slats or in the holes aforementioned. If it be fine, mercury is placed behind the slats or in these holes to catch it. After the boxes are done with they are burnt and the ashes washed for the gold held in the wood."
These methods seem simple enough and, no doubt, would be in more temperate regions, but the mines of the Yukon are of a class by themselves, and the rigorous climate here necessitates entirely new methods for getting the gold. It was formerly considered impossible to work after the month of September, but experience has now conclusively proved that much may be accomplished during the winter months. The working year is therefore three times as long as it used to be, and the time formerly wasted in idleness is now profitably employed. The difficulty of winter mining is, of course, enormously increased by the fact that the ground is frozen. Every foot of it must be thawed, either in sinking or drifting, by small fires. The shallower mines are worked during the summer in the open air, but when the gravel is more than six feet deep a shaft is sunk, and dirt enough removed to allow space to work in. Thus the gold seeker with a log hut close to the mouth of his shaft and provided with plenty of food and fuel may pass a whole winter in comparative comfort. About a ton of dead ground can be dumped daily, and a few hundred pounds of pay gravel. The latter is piled up until the spring when the thaw comes. It is then "panned" or "rocked" without difficulty, for here, unlike Western Australia, there is no lack of water.[81]
[81] For further particulars anent gold-mining in the Klondike, see "Through the Gold Fields of Alaska," by Harry de Windt.
Steam power has now supplanted these more or less primitive methods on the most important claims, but here again the enormous duty levied by the Canadian Government on machinery of all kinds, was, while we were at Dawson, causing universal indignation. A single visit to the creeks sufficed for me, for although Dawson was free from mosquitoes, the diggings swarmed with them. And, talking of mosquitoes, no one unacquainted with Alaska can be aware of the almost unbearable suffering which they are capable of inflicting upon mankind. Brehm, the famous naturalist, has furnished about the best description of a luckless prospector caught in the toils. "Before a man knows," says the professor, "he is covered from head to foot with a dense swarm, blackening grey cloths and giving dark ones a strange spotted appearance. They creep to the unprotected face and neck, the bare hands, and stockinged feet, slowly sink their sting into the skin, and pour the irritant poison into the wound. Furiously the victim beats the blood-sucker to a pulp, but while he does so, five, ten, twenty other gnats fasten on his face and hands. The favourite points of attack are the temples, the neck, and the wrist, also the back of the head, for the thickest hair is of no protection. Although the naturalist knows that it is only the female mosquitoes which suck blood, and that their activity in this respect is connected with reproduction and is probably necessary to the ripening of the fertilised eggs, yet even he is finally overcome by the torture caused by these demons, though he be the most equable philosopher under the sun. It is not the pain caused by the sting, or still more by the resulting swelling; it is the continual annoyance, the everlastingly recurring discomfort under which one suffers. One can endure the pain of the sting without complaint at first, but sooner or later every man is bound to confess himself conquered, and all resistance is gradually paralysed by the innumerable omnipresent armies always ready for combat."
Although the climate of Dawson is naturally severe a man may live with proper precautions through a dozen winters comfortably enough in Alaska. Many people are under the impression that the winters here are of Cimmerian darkness, with no daylight for weeks at a time, whereas, even on the shortest day of December, there are still two hours of sunlight. 75° F. below zero is about the coldest yet experienced, but this is very rare, and here, unlike Canada, there is seldom the wind which makes even 20° below almost unbearable. Winter generally commences in October, but often much earlier, and the Yukon is generally clear of ice by the beginning of June. The snowfall is not excessive, three feet being considered deep. In summer the temperature often exceeds 90° F. but the nights are always cool and pleasant.
The Klondike district had, up to the time of the great gold strike, borne the reputation of being an arid ice-bound waste, incapable of producing anything more nutritious than trees, coarse grass, and the berries peculiar to sub-Arctic regions. On the occasion of my first stroll down First Avenue I was scarcely surprised to find all kinds of fruit and vegetables exposed for sale, the transit now being so rapidly accomplished (in summer) from California. But ocular proof was needed to convince me that potatoes, radishes, lettuce, cucumbers, indeed almost every known vegetable, is now grown around Dawson and on the opposite side of the river. Strawberries and nectarines (Klondike-grown) were served at the restaurants, of course at stupendous prices, as hundreds of acres of glass and costly artificial heat had been needed for their production. Hot-house flowers are now grown here and also sold at a ruinous cost, but the lucky prospector will cheerfully part with $5 for a rose, or five times the amount for a puny gardenia, and some of the market gardens around Dawson are almost as profitable as a fairly rich claim. High prices here even extended to the commonest furs judging from the price I obtained for a tattered deerskin coat which had cost me only eighty roubles at Moscow. But although the garment was now almost unpresentable I sold it to a bar-tender for its original price, and heard, on the same evening, that it had again been disposed of to a "Chechako" from up country for over $200!
Klondike is generally associated in the public mind with intense cold. We suffered from a perpetual and stifling heat which necessitated the wearing of tropical tweeds, a sartorial luxury here where a summer suiting costs about six times as much as in Savile Row. Once there was a sharp thunderstorm and the rain came down in sheets, somewhat cooling the atmosphere, but only for a short time, for when the sky cleared a dense mist arose from the swampy ground, and the air became as heavy and oppressive as I have known it during the hottest season of the year in Central Borneo. But the nights were always cool and delicious, and these moreover were now gradually darkening, an ineffable blessing which can only be duly appreciated by those who have experienced the miseries of eternal day. The English tourist who in July races northwards in the "Argonaut" to behold the midnight sun should pass a summer or two in Northern Alaska. He would never wish to see it again!