SLUICING FOR GOLD, OTTER CREEK, B. C.
AN ATLIN GOLD-DIGGER.
To-day H——, Sutton and I have driven for hours along the valley of Spruce Creek, visiting another industrious gold-washing section. We picnicked for lunch in an abandoned miner’s camp, and H—— saw her first real washing for gold. We took the picture of one old man, a Mr. Alfred Sutton, in whose cabin we had sought shelter from a passing rain squall. He had hoped to return to England for the winter—he left there many years ago—but the gold had not come in as rich as he had hoped, so he must delay his going for one more year. Poor old fellow, his beard was long and white, so, too, his uncombed hair. He had not yet made his yellow pile, but was as hopeful as a boy of twenty. I promised to send him a copy of the photograph and he thanked me joyfully, saying, “And I shall send it to my family at home”—in England.
We are here two days longer, when we move on to Dawson and I mail these lines to you.
September 2, 1903.
This is our last day in Atlin. The morning was cold like late November in Virginia, the air keen and frosty. Ice has formed in the pools, though the aspen and scrub willow and a sort of stunted alder are only turned yellow in spots and patches. The mountain-tops are now all whitened with the delicate early snows, extending like blankets of hoar-frost out beyond the margins of the snow fields that never melt.