There were some paying claims already on this creek—it was a little stream which one could leap at almost any point—and on the day we arrived we saw the clean-up in one of them. It was very dazzling to see the coarse gold that was scraped from the riffles of the sluice-boxes into the baking-powder cans which were used to store it. There was gold of all sizes, from fine dust up to pieces as big as pumpkin seed; but this was the result of a week's work of several men, and much time had been spent in getting the claim ready before work could begin. Still, the results were very good, the clean-up amounting, I was told, to "thirty dollars to the shovel"—that is, thirty dollars a day to each man shovelling gravel into the sluices.
On the edge of the stream the rock, a rusty slate, lay loosely; one of the miners was thrusting his pick among the pieces curiously, and on turning one over showed the crevice beneath filled with flat pieces of yellow gold of all sizes. They were very thin and probably worth only about five dollars in all, but lying as they did the sight was enough to give one the gold fever, if he did not yet have it. The Harvard man and his companion were immediately seized with a violent attack, and set off down the stream to stake out claims, meanwhile talking over plans of wintering here, so as to be early on the ground the next spring.
I slept on the floor of a miner's cabin that night and the next morning made my way back to our camp on the Yukon.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BIRCH CREEK DIGGINGS.
The next night we reached that part of the river where Circle City was put down on the map we carried, but not finding it, camped on a gravelly beach beneath a timbered bluff. When we went up the bluff to get wood for our fire the mosquitoes fairly drove us back and continued bothering us all night, biting through our blankets and giving us very little peace, though we slept with our hats, veils, and gloves on. We afterwards found that Circle City had at first been actually started at about this point, but was soon afterwards moved further down, to where we found it the next day.
We had been looking forward to our arrival in this place for several reasons, one of which was that we had had no fresh meat for over a month, and hoped to find moose or caribou for sale. As our boat came around the bend and approached the settlement of log huts dignified by the name of Circle City, we noticed quite a large number of people crowding down to the shore to meet us, and as soon as we got within hailing distance one of the foremost yelled out:
"Got any moose meat?"