"No, we have just staked claims—quartz claims on the ridge up there—and intend working them."
"Quartz! this country is full of quartz. There ain't nothing in it; see all the quartz in the wash here?" and the foreman pointed to the white pebbles among the rocks on which he was standing. "You can crack these all day and never find a colour."
"Where does the gold come from if it does not come from the quartz?"
"Where does it come from?—just grows, I guess. Gold is like potatoes in this country. It was over there, just under the bluff, that Carmack made discovery. He found a bunch of high-grade pay in the creek bottom and worked it out; and then he had to go twenty feet through the muck to bed-rock before he got the real thing. Now, how did the gold get on top of the muck where Carmack first found it? There has not been a good-sized colour found above bed-rock on any other claim on the creek. I tell you if you try to figure where gold in this country comes from, you'll go bughouse before you find out. Gold is where you find it. It's a blooming conundrum. Take me; I came up here and could have staked in on Eldorado. Well, I couldn't find a colour in the creek; but what I could see was a sign stuck up readin', 'This creek is reserved for Swedes and Moose.' Now, I weren't a Swede, and I sure weren't a Moose! So I passes her up. What happens? Why, a lot of fools take her up and she's the richest ground in the country. Nice, ain't it!—and me working for wages?"
"Well, how do you know I won't strike it rich on my quartz claim?"
"You may, stranger, you may; I've given up calling people fools for having different notions from me. Hope you will!"
They found the trail as bad as it had been described to them. It did indeed make the "slough of despond" look like the rocky road to Dublin.
Few men they met but had some humorous remark to make; and there is probably no toil greater than wading, with pack on back, from stump to stone, from stone to stump, in the course of that desperate journey. Humour was the saving grace; it was an effective barrier against despair. Occasionally men were met, blaspheming, cursing the land, the gold, the Government, but generally it was humour which made the path passable.
A led horse waded into a bog-hole. He stopped, and seemed to hesitate. "Throw a stick at him," shouted the man leading him to another who walked behind. A stick was thrown. The horse plunged, and the bog being deeper than the men had imagined, was more in the mire. "Keep him going, it's the only way to save him," was shouted. Stick after stick was hurled at the struggling animal, which became more and more bemired. It gave up the struggle. The report of a rifle soon after told that the horse was dead.