They very easily found the desired victims in two Chinamen, with evident ample means and sufficient lack of experience.
The two prospectors had about a ton of dynamite on hand. This they lowered into the shaft and concealed it in a side drift just deep enough and big enough to hold it, calculating that the first shot fired by the Chinamen would set off the dynamite and, by completely demolishing the shaft, conceal their fraud.
The first blast made by the Chinamen did explode the dynamite, which not only wrecked the shaft, but also lifted the whole jutting bit of tableland—ice, earth, everything—sending it—an avalanche—down the mountain slope several hundred feet, exposing a thick stratum of glacial detritus, under where the ice had been, so full of gold that it proved to be one of the richest finds ever made in Alaska. The one blast had made the Chinamen millionaires.
CHINESE FIREWORKS
During the gold-digging days of California, before there was a restriction imposed upon the immigration of Chinese, a big American sailing vessel, while in Chinese waters, had taken aboard a large cargo of fireworks and a few tons of gunpowder of a special brand, which was safely housed in the hold, while all the sleeping quarters except those occupied by the crew, and all available deck spaces, were filled with a cargo of coolies to man California mines.
The vessel was one of those staunch, fast, sail-driven craft brought to their highest perfection in the shipyards of Maine just before the advent of the steamship.
When the ship was about a day out on its homeward voyage, the captain learned, through his faithful Chinese cook, that a big part of the Chinamen that he had picked up were half-breed Malay and Chinese pirates who had taken passage for the sole purpose of capturing the ship for piratical purposes, and that they were armed to the teeth, so that resistance offered by his crew of only twelve would be utterly hopeless.