The town is booming. The beach claim trouble is not settled yet, and everyone is working where he pleases. Claim owners up in the gulches are looking for men at $10 per day and board, and cannot get them. A $310 nugget was taken from a sluice box the other day, and one man cleared $20,000 for four days' work. Our boys have been up to see, and I ought to go. A fellow hasn't a chance every day in his life to see such a lot of gold in the rough, at its birth as it were, before it is washed or dressed or alloyed. Most of the lucky ones are Swedes or Laplanders, they being on the ground at the beginning of the rush last spring.
Gold can only bring $15 per ounce at the highest, and only $14 at some stores. In other words, coin is at a big premium. The beach gold runs very high, being much purer than that from the hills. Some was sent to St. Michaels and assayed $18.40 per ounce. If one had the cash he could buy up the raw gold and sell it. That is where the companies make the bulk of their money. It is a great temptation for some of our party to desert and start into private enterprises. But I, and most of the boys, will stay together and I believe will come out better in the long run.
They say Dawson is played out and that this is the next place for a boom. But I wouldn't advise anyone to come here if they have any way of making a living at home. Ten dollars a day sounds big, but when one pays $90 each way for transportation and then prices for things here, there isn't much left from the short period of three months' work, and one is not sure of that.
We have a short fish net set out beyond the surf. This morning I found four salmon in it, the first we have had since leaving Kotzebue. Only four of us are here to-day, but I had three "boarders." Three dollars in "dust" was paid.
I have forgotten to describe what "rocking" is. A rocker runs just like a baby's cradle, from side to side. At the top is a hopper with holes in the bottom to keep out the coarse stuff. The sand falls through the hopper-holes and washes over two "aprons" slanting back and forth to the bottom, where it runs out through a sluice-box. The aprons, and sometimes the sluice-box, have "riffles," or strips of cloth fastened in crosswise, to catch the gold. The aprons and the whole bottom of the box and riffles are of blanket, so that the finer dust catches in the nap or wool. A man stands dipping water into the hopper with one hand and rocking with the other, while the other man puts in a shovelful of the pay dirt every now and then, and keeps the water tub full and the tailings cleaned away. Two men run a rocker, though when the "Penelope" crew is ashore there are three men to each of our four rockers. We have to carry all our water from the surf. Some of the rockers have copper plates amalgamated with mercury on the upper sides. These are better, as the finer particles are caught and amalgamated. To "clean up" a rocker, the aprons and blankets are taken out and washed in a tub and the resulting debris panned out. I am amalgamator, and have nothing to do with the rockers. I pan out the previous day's clean-up and amalgamate the dust, squeeze "dry" the amalgam and weigh it. We have no retort as yet and I have on hand nearly ten pounds of dry amalgam. I have experimented with it and find that the amalgam is one-half gold by weight. Oh, the boys have a little joke on me. It was the result of my first experiment and I shall never hear the last of it. There must have been something else in the spoon I was using, nickel or silver, for the gold melted right into the spoon. I poured the stuff out on to a shovel-blade to save what was left. What did it do but melt right into and all over the shovel! The result of this is that the L. B. A. M. & T. Co. has a gold-plated shovel. We are a wealthy company and can afford it.
Cape Nome.
Later. Anvil City, Cape Nome.—I came to town after supper and am writing in our "city cabin," which is just back of the A. C. Company's store. We own a very fine residence in the city 12 x 10 feet, on a 150 x 300 foot lot. It is a good eight miles from our beach claims here, and as I walked it I thought it twenty. I wore heavy shoes, and the best walking I could select was on the wet sand along the surf. For the entire eight miles there is scarcely one hundred feet without one or more tents on it. The beach is riddled with ditches and holes, and hundreds of rockers of all descriptions gyrate in various rhythm. I spoke to many Kotzebue people whom we knew last winter, and all are doing well. The beach is still being worked by everyone, irrespective of original locators, a dozen or more on our own claims. The officer arrested several, but discharged them again. The townspeople, saloonkeepers and transportation companies are against claim owners, as it is to their own interest to keep the mob taking out money. And they're doing it, too. Anvil City is booming. Dozens of frame buildings are being erected. Three big two-story sheet-iron buildings are going up, which comprise the government barracks. Several steamers have gotten over the bar and are in the mouth of Snake River. About two dozen saloons are raking in the money. This is a speedy place. I wish I had my time for the next two months here. Ptarmigan are $1 each for eating. Wages are $1 per hour.
Rocking Out Gold at Cape Nome.