a!^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 - m w m \^ as. 22 M 1.8 1-4 IIIIII.6 Photographic Sciences Corporation £: if V # :\ ^v \ ^ix-Mile eek, on i Kusk- ers fall- River, Beaver eek, on Mission Yukon Lind on . on on the Creek, on the Stew- Ue Sal- Le\ves Liard ayson es not nuich )f gold CvSume 13 II. TELLING OF THE MINES ABOUT JUNEAU AND SITKA AND THENCE ON TO YAKUTAT. ^TpHE country about Juneau is better known than -*■ any of the other Alaskan districts mentioned. Since the autumn of i8So^ miners have been pros- pecting a mountainous strip about one hundred miles long running northwesterly from a few miles south of Juneau and skirting the sea and embracing the islands hard by the coast. At first auriferous gravel- and afterward gold-bearing quartz =' in situ were found, and at present placer mining is carried on to a limited extent and reef mining is prosecuted on a large scale. Granites,"* gneiss, slates, serpen- tines, and other igneous and highly metamorphic rocks abound in the district, and are cut by quartz veins bearing gold, the yellow metal being as a rule associated with iron pyrites. Most of the ore is low grade : for instance, 1,775,987 tons,-"' milled by the Alaska Treadwell Gold-Mining Company, yielded an average of $3.40 to the ton. However, some ore bodies there are producing |io to the ton," and in the Comet group of mines " the quartz is so rich in places that it is moiled down witli sledges and bars upon canvas spread on the floors of the drifts, the ordinary process of releasing the ore by blasting being deemed too wasteful of the precious particles ; moreover, a lode was discovered on Berners Bay*^ last October which shows ore as rich as the best of the output of the Witwatersrand. Although not much of the quartz yet discovered is heavy in gold and although practically all of it has to be subjected to chemical treatment, the accessibility of the mines of the Juneau district enables the mining to be conducted easily and cheaply, deep-water vessels 14 finding no difli cully in mooring alongshore, so that low-grade ore is handled by capitalists with much profit, as witness that on the 1,775,987 tons of ore already cited the Alaska Treadwell Company" reaped a net profit of 12,980,286, with the gross 3'ield 15,843,116. Indeed, it is claimed^" that at present this concern is able to work I3.68 ore at a cost of $r.o7 a ton, the output covering the cost of mining, milling, chlorinalion, and transportation. It is not known how deeply the lodes are profit- yielding ; but a tunnel in one of the principal mines on Berners Bay^^ taps the quartz vein at a depth of 1,000 feet, and the ore at that level gives no evidence of failing value nor the lode of pinching out. About a dozen quartz mills, approximately 550 stamps, are in operation this season, and within the year at least 300 additional stamps' ^ will be installed. Not much is heard of the mines about Juneau, but it is a fact that th^y have produced about $12,000,000, 1'' and it is true that in 1 897 they yielded more than one-half as much wealth as was mined in the same period from the placers of the Klon- dike^^ and gave a much greater profit' '' than the diggings of that famous district. In 1873 gold-bearing quartz was discovered near Sitka, ' •' and a five-stamp mill' " represents the pro- gress since then in minmg thereabout. Sitka has been inhabited by white men since the dawn of the present centur)' ; but from the day the flag of the Czar was given to the winds that shrieked about the castle of Baranoflf the type of gold-hunter pecul- iar to the place has been wanting in activity. The region' ^ has not been thoroughly prospected. Along the sea from below Lituya Bay to Yaku- tat'" some prospecting has been done : vSay as one day in a million years, comparing the territory to be studied with the time expended in exploring. Deposits of auriferous sands have been sluiced, and the outpuf^" for 1897 was about |:io,ooo. 15 III. PRESKNTING RECENT INFORMATION OF PRINCE WILUAM vSOUND, COOK INLET, AND UNGA ISLAND. T) EPORTS of the discovery of rich gold-bearing -^-^ quartz veins on the mainland of Prince Wil- liam Sound and on island > near the shore have only this basis : prospectors have recently located what they believe to be profitable lodes of copper-bearing rocks, ^ and the ore shows traces of gold. The placers of Cook Inlet ruined a few hundred men,'- in the season 1895-6, who were persuaded to flock thither by misleading reports of their wealth and the conditions governing prospecting ; but the country apparently is as promising so far as pros- pected and as nearly unknown-' as the Yukon dis- trict , if in the case of the Yukon we except a few branches of the Klondike and the Indian. Explor- ation of the region has been confined to the valleys of four streams, tributaries of the Inlet : Six-Mile Creek, Resurrection Creek, Bird Creek, and the Sushitna River. Very little careful prospecting has been done save on Six-Mile and Resurrection Creeks,-* for the reason that prospecting in that latitude is exceedingly slow, labounous, and conse- quently expensive, and not many can afford to persevere long enough to prove the character of a claim. The percentage of the men who have suc- ceeded is low ; but most of the thorough prospect- ing''* has revealed gold in profitable quantity. On Canyon, . dcli, and Lynx creeks, branches of Six- Mile, paying placers are worked ; and Bear and Palmer creeks, affluents of Resurrection, are yielding well. Both the main streams are really small rivers, the Six-Mile" for example being nearly 200 feet wide at its mouth and carrying a depth of three feet of water rapidly. It is said that one claim on Lynx Creek ^ yielded 130,000 last year. On Bear Creek "^ as high as |8o a day to the man is reported. As a i6 rulv.', however, the yield has not left much profit- margin to claim-holders who have worked the de- posits with hired men, although wages" have been only $4 a day and the freight rate^" on supplies is only one-half a cent a pound from Puget Sound to the diggings. Rich finds are reported from Bird Creek/ * 80 cents to ^1.25 to the pan being the best yield, but no bedrock mining has yet been done. The Sushitna River has been only hastily examined by a few prospectors. It is nearly as large as the Copper River, ^ - traverses an exceedingly wild and difficult region, and seems worthy of careful inquiry. Mr. ^V^ A. Dickey,!'^ who has gone far up the Sushitna twice, gives this summary of the latest exper'ence: "At the mouth of the river twenty men encamped, and early in March, 1S97, went up the river, on the ice, as far as the canyon [200 miles above the mouth]. Nine, led by Captain Andrews and Mr. Jacks, penetrated far into the interior, and have not yet been heard from. We found no gold worth working, though indication.s were good. In the lower river pans showing 200 and 300 colors have been taken." The production of the Cook Inlet placers has been about 1400,000, ^ •* of which $200,000^ "■ were mined last year. Spread on your reading-table a map of Alaska, and find the pin-point called Unga Island. It is of an archipelago, and to the eye of the passer-by there seems reason to believe that the mineral form- ations of Unga are not materially different from those of the peninsula and the neighbouring islands. A forty-stamp cjuartz milP" is operated on Unga. The ore^ "^ contains free gold and native copper, and is present in great quantity. In 1896 41,000 tons^ '* 3'ielded between $300,000 and $400,000 in bullion. During 1897 the bullion shipments were about $30,- 000 a month. There has been scarcely any pros- pecting^ " on other islands of the group or on the peninsula. I li profit- [ the (le- ave been pplies is ■^ound to 0111 Bird the best 111 done, xaniined ^e as the wild and inquiry. • up the tie latest r twenty went up >oo miles Andrews interior, :ound no sregood. oo colors cers has '• were Alaska, It is of asser-by al fonn- nt from islands. 11 Unga. 3er, and tons^ ^ bullion, ut I30,- y pros- on the IV. INDICATING THE DEARTH OF KNOWL- EDGE AS TO THE KUSKOKWIM, NOR- TON SOUND, AND THE NORTH COAST OF ALASKA. ^T^HE Kuskokwim River is one of the great ■*- streams of the North ; but perhaps not half a dozen white men now living have any directly acquired knowledge of it beyond the Roman Catholic mission, Oknagamute, and certainly no man who has been heard of is qualified to speak with authority of the possibilities of the country it traverses, so far as mining reaches. All that can be said truthfully is that colours^ have been found on its bars by three or four prospectors, who were not favourably impressed b}' the general indica- tions they observed during undul}' hasty examina- tion of the region. One of the few who have per- sonal knowledge of this river, Mr. E. Hazard Wells, says, in a report issued last month^ by the War Department of the United States : To the westward of tlie Tanana rise gigantic chains of mountains which v-iH make prospecting toward the Kuskokwim and Sushitna rivers extremely difficult. From a good point of vantage upon a high mountain near the head of Copper River I obtained a bird's- eye view of the country to the westward, and beheld Titanic masses of rock upheaved in much the same fashion as the Andes in South America. • A range of very tall mountains parallels the Tanana on its westward side, joining at an acute angle with the high Alaskan range which sweeps across from the Tanana near Robertson River to the mouth of the Sushitna and beyond. To the westward of this V-shaped arrangement of the mountains lies the vast unexplored territory of the Kuskokwim. I have descended the Kuskokwim 800 miles to the sea coast, and found it a broad, deep, and some- what sluggish stream flowing in from the unknown east. Indian reports state that the Kuskokwim heads within three days overland march of the Lower Tanana. A pass is reported to exist by which it can be reached from the Tanana. My observation on the Lower Kuskokwim does not induce the belief that it flows out from a gold- bearing region ; but it is possible, nevertheless, as its sluggish waters would hardly carry colors very far down stream . im i8 In the coast region about the mouths of the Yukon practically no prospecting has been done, excepting on the shore of Norton Sound, and not much even there. Silver' has been discovered on this sound, the ore yielding 143 ounces'* of the white metal to the ton, and a ten-stamp mill is kept thundering. Gold^ has recently been found there in the sea-sands. A few years ago Lieutenant Stoney, U.vS.A.,^ found a few grains of gold on bars of the Buckland and Selawik rivers, and Mr. Miner \V. Bruce" in the summer of 1894 saw in possession of an Eskimo near Fort Morton an ounce of coarse gold said to have been washed from gravel of the Kowak Rive Last year the Indians'* of the same district brougl i to the seaboard more gold, said to have come from the Buckland and the Kowak, and also some said to have been yielded by the Noatak, another river falling into Kotzebue Sound A number of placer claims have been staked, with what result is not known. Further than this. Northern Alaska remains a terra incognita to the miner. Even the length of the streams has to be mapped by guess and their course by imagination. V. DEALING WITH THE RIVERS KOYUKUK, TANANA, BEAVER, AND PORCUPINE, LIKEWISE WITH MINOOK CREEK. r\ ORDON C. Bettles, ^ who knows more about ^-^ the Koyukuk River than any other miner, admits that he knows nothing thoroughly as to the Aast territory drained by it, and declares that years 19 of careful and extensive exploration will be required to learn the mineral resources of the Koyukuk country with anything approaching accuracy. Gold has been found in small quantities in the bars of the Koyukuk- and on some of the river's tribut- aries, and the indications point to valuable deposits of auriferous gravel. No white man has made his way to the source of this branch of the Yukon — perhaps the most considerable of the affluents of the Great River, and only a few traders and miners have gone far above the confluence of these bodies of water. One hears the Tanana spoken of as a river with which men have grown familiar, yet it is within the truth to say that no white man has travelled from the mouth to the source of the Tanana and that the greater portion of the region through which the river flows is as little known as in the days when the golden sands of the Pactolus were gladdening the heart of CrcEsus. A few prospectors have ob- tained promising colours'* from bars near the mouth of the stream, and only a few have tried. If more than two miners have made their way far up the Tanana and if more than two men have prospected the headwaters of the river, w-e have not heard of them. Messrs. Frank Densmore and John Bourke^ are known to have prospected for five hundred miles above the mouth of the stream, and these accom- plished miners believe rich gravel will be found in the reach they examined. Colours were found constantly, and some of the prospects were so good that the latter gentleman made affidavit' a few days ago that he believed diggings as rich as the best in the Klondike Division would be located there. That this conclusion may not be ascribed to envious Americanism it may be added that he is a loyal citizen of Canada and a native of the Dominion. The miners who have prospected the headwaters did not travel up the Tanana, but jour- neyed together up Forty-Mile Creek and crossed 20 the mountains between the source of Forty-Mile Creek and the source of the Tanana. One of them, Mr. J. G. Davies/' an expert mineralogist, says they prospected the Tanana from the point at which they encountered it on crossing the divide until the source was reached. Light prospects were found at first, diminishing as they advanced, and at the source not even colours were obtained. The indi- cations in the prospect-yielding reach were favour- able for the presence of valuable deposits of aurif- erous gravel. In a letter written recently from Circle City, by a trustworthy gentleman," this passage occurs: " Fifteen or twenty of our miners are §oing to spend the winter in systematic pros- pecting on the headwaters of the Tanana. They will leave here during the next ten days. The Indians bring in some marvellous stories of the richness of that country, and it is possible we may have a big strike to report in the spring." It seems feeble to stop here, considering that so many enterprising correspondents and brokers are juggling the word Tanana as though the Tanana were a known quantity ; but this is an outline of all that is known to date. A mighty river in a wild and rigourous land where prospecting is almost as harrowing as crucifixion ; a few scratches in its gravel-beds by men who could not tarry to do more ; colours and golden promises that may or may not be fulfilled : such is the Tanana. Minook Creeks is indicated on few maps of Alaska. It is a small tributary of the Yukon, and joins that river about 250 miles below Fort Yukon. During the season 1896-97 a prospector mined gold-dust there to the value of several hundred dollars, and about 500 men who left home during July, August, and September last year, with the intention of going to Dawson by way of St. Michael, are win- tering on Minook Creek, a few by choice, the others because they could not obtain passage to the Klondike. The latest reliable reports received 21 from Minook indicate that the creek closely re- sembles the streauis of the Birch Creek district, that no bedrock results had been obtained when the Yukon closed for the winter, that colours have been found in surface gravel by many miners and good prospects by a few, and that thoro\igh pros- pecting is m progress. Of Beaver River^*, a considerable tributary of the Yukon entering from the south between Minook Creek and Birch Creek, nothing definite is known. Colours have been found in surface gravel. The only time many miners^'' sought this stream for gold not anything of value was found. Their pros- pecting, however, was superficial. The Porcupine River heads within thirty miles of the Yukon, according to Mr. R. G. McConnell, ' ' the Canadian geologist, approximately in latitude 65°, 30^ N., and after describing a great semi- circular curve to the northeast, falls into the same river 150 miles further down. At its most easterly point it approaches within 80 miles of the Macken- zie, but is separated from it by the main range of the Rocky Mountains. The total length, he esti- mates, approximates to 500 miles. The mouth and much of the course of the stream, accordingly^, are in Alaska. In the summer of 1888, Mr. William Ogilvie,^^ the distinguished Dominion surveyor, explored the headwaters of the Porcupine, and during the same year Mr. McConnelP'' explored the lower reaches of the river below the point at which Mr. Ogilvie's researches began. Nothing is said in Mr. Ogilvie's official report suggesting that he found gold or indications of gold. In his re- cently published Klondike Official Guide ^ ^ * however, Mr. Ogilvie reports that as early as 1873 Mr. Arthur Harper found prospects on this river. Mr. McConnell i"* says this: "Gold in paying quanti- ties has not been found on either the Mackenzie or the Porcupine, and the rock formations bordering these rivers do not appear to be gold-bearing." 22 Mr. Davies/" already mentioned, put in a few months washing surface gravel taken from the channel of the Porcupine, and went ninety miles above the mouth. Light prospects were found, but nothing which tempted him to spend a season at any of the points where gravel was tested. VI. TREATING OF BIRCH CREEK DISTRICT AND THE YUKON COUNTRY BETWEEN THERE AND THE BOUNDARY. A GRE)AT deal of hard work has been done -^"^ along Birch Creek, and the results have been gratifying. Since 1891^ miners have been explor- ing the region, and at the time of the finding of gold on Bonanza Creek there were nearly 2,000 persons in Circle City- and the mines for which it IS the base of supplies. Only a handful resisted the glamour of the Klondike, and by the close of last summer Circle City had a population^ of thirty souls, and the Birch Creek diggings were deserted. At present there are approximately 200 persons-* in the district. Birch Creek is a larger stream than the Klondike River. It is more than 300 miles^ long, and has an extensive network of tributaries, some of them large creeks. No earnest prospector*^ who has delved in the Birch Creek district has failed to find placer gold in wage-yielding quantity, and there are many miles of creek country there which have not been touched by the pick. Eagle, Preacher, Mastodon, Deadwood, and other branches of Birch Creek have yielded well, and there are expert miners who believe that in output of gold the Birch Creek placers will give the Klondike Min- > i : 23 ing Division a close race. The conclusion of Mr. Samuel Dunham," the gravel-mining expert sent by the United States Commissioner of Labor to ex- amine the Klondike and Vukon-Alaskan gold-fields, is that there are hundreds of acres of gravel in the Birch Creek country which will pay ^6 a day to the man, even under present conditions. Undoubt- edly a score ** of claims there were paying well enough, when the rush to the Klondike began, to justify their holders in working them with miners who were paid |io a day for their labour, and as will appear in the chapter dealing with the yield of the Klondike, there are not many Klonkike claims which are known to be able to stand such wages. That the diggings along Birch Creek were deserted signifies nothing more than that miners are prone to stampede to any district which has the appear- ance of greater richness than the one wherein they are at work. The reports borne to Circle City from Bonanza Creek were so wondrously exaggerated that to anyore familiar with miners there is nothing disproving v ealth of Birch Creek in the exodus up the Yukon. Many disappointed Birch Creek men^ at present in Dawson intend to return to the claims they deserted. The placers of Birch Creek are like those of the Klondike, except that timbering is advisable or. Birch Creek, in drift mining, whereas it is not necessary on the Klondike, and except that the paj'^ is less concentrated on Birch Creek than on the Klondike. There have been no world- startling pans in the Circle City country ; but the deposits of fair-pay gravel are extensive. The total output ^« of Birch Creek and its tribut- aries has been about $2 000,000. Sheep Creek^i has yielded colours, and remains to be prospected. It is all but unknown. Some surface prospecting — not much — has been done on Seventy-Mile Creek, ^^ with encouraging results, but the real character of the stream remains to be demonstrated. Mission Creek ^=' has been some- mmmm 24 what prospected, and miners think well of it. Recently American Creek, ^^ its principal tributary, has attracted much attention amongst men of the Klondike, because of a report that a rich strike had been made in its channel. Mr. Charles Kreling^"', a careful inquirer, writing from Dawson under date January 19, 1898, says that while the report has not been fully confirmed, all the indications point to the conclusion that it is true. He adds: "From all accounts American Creek will rival the Klon- dike, and if the news is confirmed, there promises to be an exodus from Dawson. ' ' Forty-Mile Creek rises in Alaska and discharges in Canada. It is between 100 and 150 yards wide^ •• at its mouth, and has a length of about 200 miles. Mr. Ogilvie reports that twenty-three miles of the channel lie on the Canadian side of the Internal:; onal Boundary.!* "The most productive part of the stream," adds Mr. McConnell, ^ "^ "is west of the Alaskan boundary." There is scarcely any differ- ence between the Klondike district and the Forty- Mile district, in a general way ; and the deserted nllage of Forty-Mile is on the Yukon, only forty- seven miles below Dawson. Coarse gold was found on the Yukon in 1886 ;!^ and, to quote Mr. Ogil- vie,'^" ** as soon as the news of the discovery spread to the other mining camps [along the Yukon], where nothing but fine or dust gold had 3'^et been found, the miners all repaired to the coarse-gold diggings on Forty-Mile. ' ' Since 1887 placer mining has been carried on there by a small band of reso- lute men-! ^^o have taken the best pay from the lower reaches of the main creek and from some of the branches, but who have not touched the head- waters and wlio have not carefully prospected all of the tributaries. The Klondike excitement emptied the Forty-Mile diggings of their population, and at present not a score of men are at work there. Nevertheless, c. considerable number of the Klon- dike miners are keeping an eye on their old claims 25 in the Forty-Mile country, and will see to it that their titles shall not lapse. Some of them believe Forty-Mile will yet yield handsomely. The output^a of gold from Forty -Mile Creek has been about |i,ooc,oou. With the Forty-Mile ends the list of Alaskan gold-fields of which white men have any knowledge worth mentioning. VII. CONCERNING THE CHANDINDU RIVER AND MOOvSE-HIDE, DEADWOOD, DION, BRYANT, MONTANA, BAKER, AND INS- LEY CREEKS. /^\N the Canadian side of the line the first import- ^-^ ant stream lying wholly in Canada is the Chandindu, or Twelve-Mile, River. It joins the Yukon about nineteen miles ^ below Dawson, is thirty to forty yards wide at its mouth, and its length is unknown. Last fall there was a stampede from Dawson to the Chandindu, and some claims were located"; but there has been no prospecting along its channel — that is, nothing on which any estimate of its value can be based. Colours were found, but nothing better. No miner was working on the Chandindu when we left the Klondike. Moose-Kide Creek falls into the Yukon two to three miles below Dawson. It is a short stream, on which no work had been done, other than the most supe -ficial prospecting, at the date of our latest advises, that is, Januar}' 19. Of this stream Ml. Ogilvie 2Py« in his Klondike Official Guide :'^ 26 Several other creeks have been prospected, flowing directly into the Yukon between Klondike and Indian ; and rumour says they are good. One creek, known as Mooseskin Creek, which flows into the Yukon about ij^ miles below Dawson, is reported good. Rumour asserts that from four to six feet ill depth of pay-dirt has been found, but no definite width had then been determined, ranging from eight (8) or ten ( lo) cents per pan to as high as eighty (80) cents. With this depth and richness and a reasonable width, say from forty (40) feet upwards, this creek is good enough to rank with *^» best. How much of it is gold-bearing is not yet determined. In my opinion not more than a few miles at the mouth will be found so. It comes out of a range of high limestone mountains, which are of such recent geological formation as to preclude the idea of gold being found in them. The rumours thus reported were current in Daw- son for a few days, and led to a stampede ; but truth obliges us to say they are untrue. Months agone a little prospecting was done on Moose- Hide, but merely colours were found, and the work was abandoned. Recently only an occasional washing of surface gravel has been attempted. No mining proper has been done on this little watercourse, and whether there is or is not pay-dirt there cannot be afHrmed. Dion Creek, a mere brook giving its waters to the Yukon a short distance above the Klondike River, has not been more than superficially prospected. All vSorts of rumours are current concerning it, but if anything better than light prospects have been found in its channel we were unable to obtain any evidence to that effect. It may or may not be worth working. The same observations apply to Dead wood, Bryant, Montana, Baker, and Insley creeks, all vSmall affluents of the Yukon, joining the mighty stream within several miles of Dawson. In this regard, and also as tending to confirm what has been said of Moose-Hide, we quote as follows from the sworn statement of Mr. Alexander McDonald^ , made in Dawson on the 26th of November, 1897, for presentation to the Government : 27 On * * * Deadwood Creek, Bryant Creeek, and in short all creeks of said [Yukon] District other than Bonanza, El Dorado, Hunker, and their branches, so little has been done that nothing can be said with certainty as to their richness. They are practically unknown quantities. Mr. McDonald, a Canadian, is one of the best- informed miners of the District, and his interests are of such scope that there is little chance of an important gold-find escaping his attention. VIII. GIVING WITH SOMEWHAT OF DETAIL THE TRUTH AS TO THE KLONDIKE AND IN- DIAN RIVERS. tT HAS grown customary on "the outside," as -*^ folk along the Yukon call the world beyond the splendours of the Northern Lights and the wearying glory of the Midnight Sun, for men to speak of the Klondike and the Indian as though t/iese rivers could be ticketed as thoroughly exam- ined, whatever might be thought as to others in the sub-Arctic gold-fields. But here, again, we must place ourselves in opposition! to the accepted notion ; and to indicate how little known even these important rivers are, we quote from a sworn statement! made in Dawson on the 27tli of Novem- ber, 1897, for presentation to the Government, by Mr. Charles Hill, an intelligent miner of the Dis- trict, whose journeys in the country concerned have been much more extensive than those of Mr. Ogilvie : I, Charles Hill, do solemnly declare : That I am a resident of the Klondike Mining Division of the Yukon District, North West Territories, Dominion of Canada, and liave been since November, 1896. 98 That I am the owner of interests in placer-mining claims in said Klondike Mining Division and in Indian Mining Division of said District. That I am a miner by occupation, and have been engaged in gold-mining in British Columbia, Idaho, the Hirch Creek district of Alaska, and the placers of the North- West Territories. That I am f- miliar with winter and summer mining in the Klon- dike and Indian Divisions, having personally engaged therein and having observed the methods and work of others. Tnat I have travelled extensively in the region about Dawson, bent on gaining the information a prospector seeks. That next to nothing is known of the district drained by the Klondike River above the point where Hunker Creek joins the Klondike. Too-Much-Gold Creek and All-Gold Creek, which lie beyond Hunker and are tributaries of the Klondike, are little more than names so far as the miner is concerned. They have not been thoroughly explored and it cannot even be said of them that either has been moderately prosjiected. That beyond these tributaries lie others which have not yet achieved even the dignity of names. I have stood on lofty moun- tains tar up toward the source of the Klondike and have seen several such unnamed and untouched streams. Some ot them appeared to be fully fifty miles in length ; others seemed half as long It has appeared to me that 125 miles above its mouth the Klondike was as lar^e in volume of water as where Bonanza meets it, and in my opinion, based on personal observation and rough computation of the volume of water at such points as I have visited, the river is 250 miles long ; whereas the prospector has not as yet pursued his way as matter of practical prospecting beyond the confluence of Hunker and the Klondike, that is to say, beyond twelve miles above the river's mouth. That Indian River and its tributaries are less known than the Klondike and its branches. Dominion Creek, Sulphur Creek, Quartz Creek, and other tributaries of which somewhat is known all lie within forty-five miles of the mouth of the stream, and beyond that distance no prospecting has been done. Very little that is definite is known of any of the creeks just named. The prospecting has not been thorough or extensive. From high peaks I have looked well up the Indian, and know that there are, beyond Dom- inion Creek, branches considerable in volume which have not been explored or named. So, too, below Quartz Creek there are unex- plored and unnamed tributaries. That, excepting a district within a radius of twenty miles of Dawson scarcely anything has been proved in said Klondike or Indian Divisions of said Yukon District ; and nothing at all beyond a radius of fifty miles. Confirmation of the statement that little is known of the Klondike and Indian rivers is negatively afforded by the silence of Mr. Ogilvie. As be says in the preface of his recently issued Klondike Official Guide, ^ he was directed by the Honourable, the 29 the .1, Hes of ke or pyond )wn rely lys icial the Minister of the Interior, to prepare " « handbook containing the conipletest possible information " as to the Klondike. Yet anyone examining the Guide must be struck by the poverty of information con- cerning the Klondike and Indian rivers. Mr. Ogilvie is one of the Dominion's most accomplished and conscientious explorers. His accounts^' of the Lewes, the Tat-on-duc, the Porcupine, the Bell, the Trout Peel, the Mackenzie, and the Peace rivers are detailed and valuable ; and in his Guide there is no dearth of exact information concerning the district he traversed in reaching the International Boundary, But Mr. Ogilvie is silent as to the Klondike and the Indian to the extent that an explorer should be silent. He did not at all explore the Klondike beyond a point readily accessible, and has never stood on the banks of the Indian ; and therefore he does not definitely report as to either stream or the country drained by it. He did not meet during his stay in Dawson anyoiie who coidd speak with authority of the country unvisited by himself, and therefore he is chary of hearsay pre- tending to be definite or t' lorough. Topography and Geology,^ The Klondike is swift, shallow, and exceedingly clear, and near its mouth has a width of less than 200 yards. The bed is covered with coarse gravel, but to what depth is not known, for no attempt has been made to sink a shaft in or near the channel of the stream. No white men have gone to the source of the Klondike, and only two or three have gone more than 100 miles up stream ; so that the length of the river is unknown. Probably it is between 200 and 300 miles. The lower reach of the river lies between low, wooded mountains dipping into the transparent waters. Beyond the named creeks the valley broadens into a plain, and further along the mountains creep back to the crystal flood. How the stream fares far away cannot be written. 30 The general course of the Klondike appears to be from the north-east to the south-west. There are small unnamed tributaries putting into the lower Klondike on its northerly side, but no gold has been found along them. However, the prospecting has been anything but careful. The gold-bearing branches of the river enter from the southerly side, and take their rise toward the east. First comes Bonanza Creek, about twenty-three miles long, joining the Klondike one mile and one-half above the junction of the Klondike and the Yukon. Next comes Quigley Creek, five or six miles long, flowing into the river about three miles and one- half above the mouth of Bonanza. Three miles further up. Bear Creek, about twelve miles long, discharges into the Klondike. Hunker Creek empties four miles above Bear, and is about twenty miles in length. Slate Creek, supposed to be about the length of Bear, meets the river fourteen miles above the mouth of Hunker. Fourteen or fifteen miles beyond Slate Creek is the confluence of Too- Much-Gold Creek and the river. The length of this creek is not known, but it appears to be much larger than Bonanza. Between Too-Much-Gold and the higher stream, All-Gold Creek, which empties about ten miles above the junction of Too- Much-Gold and the Klondike, the river fofks — a considerable and wholly unknown stream flowing from the north-east. The length of All-Gold Creek is unknown, but it is supposed to be more than twenty miles. A short distance above All-Gold Creek the river forks again, the main stream con- tinuing to come from a north-easterly direction and the fork putting in from the south-east. The country drained by these tributaries of the Klondike is all on edge, the stream-valleys being the only valleys, and they being as a rule very nar- row. Bonanza Creek makes its way between slopes that leave the miner only 300 to 1,200 feet from rim to rim, and less than 700 feet as an average. Its ;|i!i 31 famous affluent, El Dorado Creek, eight miles long, is walled by liills having only 200 to 800 feet be- tween their bases. Hunker Creek has a wider valley than Bonanza, and for a few miles above its mouth is not much lianipered by the hills, which keep afar for that part of the world. Quigley and Bear creeks have a hard scramble to hold their waters from the base of the hills, but Slate, Too- Much-Gold, and All-Gold fare better. Hills and mountains are wooded with birch and stunted spruce, mainly the latter, and range from low foot-hills to 3,500 feet above sea-level. Dawson, which is near the mouth of the Klondike, is 1,012 feet above sea- level. Indeed, the country of the lower Klondike is so rugged that the eye is startled on surveying it from some commanding peak. Hill crowding hill, mountain jostling mountain, on and on they sweep to the uttermost reach of the vision. It is as though God didn't want a valley there, and suf- fered the hills to be creased simply because He couldn't see any other escape from a table-land. These hills and mountains where they bare their rocks show granite as their central mass, with much quartz, coUvSiderable metamorphic slates — especially talcose and chloritic slates, — gneiss here and there, and occasionally serpentine. The bedrock of the gold-fields of the Klondike tributaries, so far as shown, is metamorphic slate, and the gravel resting on it has been washed from rocks identical with those one sees in the neighbouring slopes. Con- cerning the ground with which the placer-miner deals, we quote from the sworn statement of Mr. Alexander McDonald^, already mentioned : The pay dirt on Bonanza Creek, El Dorado C'reek, and Hunker Creek averages four feet in depth. * "■■ * The term pay dirt is meant to include so much of bedrock as is worked. The pay dirt rests under gravel, muck, and moss, as follows : On Bonanza Creek there is on the earth's surface about two feet of moss, and between the moss and the pay dirt is a depth of about thirteen feet of muck and gravel, in the proportion of eight feet of gravel to five feet of muck ; on F' Dorado Creek the surface moss is about two feet deep, the muck and non-pay gravel between moss and pay are 32 together about thirteen feet in depth, and the proportion between muck and non-paj- gravel is about as 6^4 to 6^ ; on Hunker Creek the conditions in this regard are about as on El Dorado Creek ; of the other creeks of said [Yukon] District too little is known to enable me to say anything in general as to depths — they are practi- cally untouched. * * * All of the depth between moss and the lowest known pay point is frozen throughout the year. Very riucli less is known of the Indian River Mining division than of the Klondike IMining Division. The length of the river is unknown, but its course appears to be generally parallel to that of the Klondike, and it enters the Yukon over a coarse- gravel bed, about thirty miles above the junction of the Klondike and the Yukon. It is not so rapid a stream as its neighbour, is somewhat less wide, and near its mouth drops most of its waters into the sands, giving only an mconsiderable volume, visi- bly, to the Yukon. Five of the branches of Indian River have been named : Dominion Creek, Eureka Creek, Quartz Creek, Opliir Creek, and Nine-Mile Creek. Dominion Creek has two forks, uniting eight or ten miles above its mouth, each about the same in length, and from either source to the Indian measures not less than twenty miles. Its principal tributary, Sulphur Creek, is at least fifteen miles long, and joins it not far from the point of con- fluence with the Indian. A few miles nearer the mouth, Eureka Creek falls into the river. Its length is supposed to be about twelve miles. Fur- ther down, Quartz Creek discharges. It is about eighteen miles long. Ophir Creek, ten or twelve miles in length, unites its waters with those of the Indian below Quartz Creek, and a little nearer the Yukon Nine-Mile Creek, a small stream, puts into the Indian. All of these creeks excepting Eureka flow from the watershed between the Klondike and the Indian, entering the Indian on its northerly side and pursuing e generally south-easterly course. Eureka Creek flows in on the southerly side of the river. 33 The country drained bj- Indian River is, so far as examined, as mountainous as that of the lower Klondike, and the creeks just written of flow through narrow valleys, with wooded hills and mountains much as along Hunker Creek. What has been said of the rocks of the Klondike applies perfectly to the Indian River country, with this change: there is more quartz along the Indian than along the Klondike. In the sworn statement of Mr. McDonald,*' already cited, this candid avowal is made : ' ' The pay dirt on -^ * * Sulphur Creek, Dominion Creek, and creeks other than those aforesaid [Bonanza, El Dorado, and Hunker] is of depth as to which too little is known to enable me to say anything." And he makes a similar observation concerning the depth of muck and non-pay gravel lying above the auriferous deposits. The bedrock of the Indian River placers, where disclosed by natural erosion ( for up to the time of our departure from the mines no prospect shaft had reached bottoni ) , is similar to that of the Klondike diggings. The summit of the main watershed between the Klondike and the Indian has an average height of about 2,500 feet above sea level, and from All- Gold Creek to the head of Carmack's Fork of Bonanza roughly parallels the Klondike, keeping much nearer the Klondike than the Indian. From these Bonanza headwaters what appears to be the main watershed runs southeasterly to the Indian, and a spur strikes from the headwaters of Carmack's Fork and terminates within a mile of the Klondike, forming a watershed between Hunker, Bear, and Quigley, on the one side, and Bonanza. Creek on the other. Another spur »^xtends between El Do- rado Creek on the one side and Nine-Mile Creek and an unknown tributary of the Indian on the other, thence roughly parallels Bonanza to its mouth, and thence continues to the Yukon, hug- ging Bonanza closely. The highest peak of the main watershed is known as the " Dome," and is generally thought to be about 3,500 feet above the level of the sea. Near this peak Hunker, Dominion, and Sulphur creeks take their rise, while in the main watershed extending thence to the Indian, Bonanza, El Dorado, Quartz, and Ophir creeks head. Extent of the Gold Deposit. It is very easy to fall into exaggeration of the wealth of "the Klondike." We know from expe- rience the difficulty of gaining reliable information concerning the actual yield, and the probable ex- tent of the unmined gold, of the uoitheru placers. One's first impressions are likely to be very wide of the truth, so prone are miners to talk loosely of their earnings and so loud is the clatter made by a few generously circulating gold-sacks in a small camp with few avenues for the expenditure of wealth. We can, therefore, readily understand how, without any intention to put into his state- ments a bit of glitter that should not be there, Mr. Ogilvie went much astray in his early reports to the Minister of the Interior ; and it is quite in keeping with the superior character of the gentle- man that scarcely any of the matter contained in them has been reproduced in his recent work. Un- fortunately for the Klondike, however, public opinion in the Dominion rests largely on those early reports, so far as relates to the wealth of claims, as witness this excerpt from a typical leader in one of the most responsible journals of Canada, the Toronto Globe :^ While there is probably much exaggeration in the stories that are brought back from the Yukon, it is only necessary to read the calm official reports of Mr. Ogilvie, the well-kncwn officer of the Geological Survey, to realize that it is equally possible there is no exaggeration in them at all Mr. Ogilvie's notes read like passages from Monte Cristo. Writing on December 9, 1896, he said: " Bonanza Creek and tributaries are^ increasing in richness and extent until now it is certain that millii. ns will be taken out of the district in the next few years. On some of the claims prospected 35 e IS no issages said : >s and of the pected the pay dirt is of great extent and very rich. One man told me yesterday that he had washed out a single pan of dirt on one of the claims on Honanza and found $14.25. Of course that may be an exceptionally lich pan, but $5 to $7 per pan is the average on that claim, it is reported, with five feet of pay dirt and the width yet undetermined, but it is known to be thirty feet. Even at that, figure the result at nine to ten pans to the cubic foot, and 500 feet long— nearly $4,030,000 at $5 per pan. One-fourth of this would be enormous. Another claim has been prospected to such an extent that it is known there is about five feet pay dirt averaging $2 per pan, and width not less than thirty feet. Enough prospect- ing has been done to show that there are at least fifteen miles of this extraordinary richness, and the indications are that we will have three or four times that extent, if not all equal to the above, at least very rich." This is the language of an ofiicial report, not of a claim boomster. It will be observed that he is .speaking of Bonanza Creek. These are the claims which are usually spoken of as the Klondike claims. * * * Wealth such as this is national wealth, and the nation should get some advantage from its exploitation. At present there is a fee of $15 for each claim located. It is evi- dent, however, that this is inadequate. A system of royalties would undoubtedly best cover the case. And, in passing, it may be observed that in the identical report quoted by the Globe with so much commendation and suggesting to it the need of " a system of royalties," Mr. Ogilvie was very much misinformed ; for, dismissing the thoroughly im- practical multiplication by which I4, 000,000 were figured into one claim, not anywhere in the Klon- dike country has pay of such amazing richness been found — no, nor elsewhere in this world, so far as records tell. It is safe to say that up to the beginning of sum- mer w^ork last year all the placers of the Klondike and Indian Mining Divisions had not yielded more than $2,000,000. We have devoted much time to probing for the figures representative of the output of the various claims, and have to leave a consider- able margin for possible hidden gold-sacks to bring the total to the two-million mark. There was in excess of $2,000,000 in the Klondike region at the close of the sluicing of the dirt mined during the winter 1896-97 ; but it should be considered that gold dust, coin, and currency' to a large value were taken to the Klondike from the Birch Creek, Forty- \r^ 36 Mile, and Sixty-Mile diggings, and that miners who journeyed thither from this side the Chilkoot did not arrive there penniless. Last summer the total yield was well within $1,500,000. The winter work for the season 1897-8 will not yield more than |6,ooo,ooo. Probably $5,000,000 will prove nearer the output. Mr. Alexander McDonald, the principal individ- ual mine-owner of the Klondike and the best authority there on the wealth of that district, esti- mates that when El Dorado and Bonanza and their tributaries are exhausted, rim to rim and summit to base, their aggregate yield will have been about $50,000,000. No estimate of the wealth of other creeks of the Klondike and Indian Divisions could have any value. Too little is known of them to enable estimates to be made. Touching the richness of the Klondike placers we quote from a sworn statement obtained from Mr. John D. McGillivray^ for presentation to the Government : I, John D. McGillivray, do solemnly declare : That I am residing temporarily in the Klondike Mining Division of the Yukon District, North-West Territories, Dominion of Canada. That I came here as mining expert of the 1/670 York Herald's expedition to the Yukon gold-fields, last August, commif^sioned fairly and fully to investigate the conditions prevailing and to report upon them for the readers of that journal. That I am a graduate of the University of California, and studied mining in the School of Mines of that institution ; but that my knowledge of placer or gravel mining has been derived largely from practical experience in the mines of CaUfornta, where I was associ- ated with my father, Joseph McGillivray, wbcj did much to perfect the systems of gravel mining in Californl-i which are now standards. That I have, in my capacity as correspondent for the New York Herald, examined a great many of the mines of this District ; have looked carefully into the values of the pay deposits in various creeks ; have estimated the p>ossible wealth of the known diggings ; and have obtained thu opinions of most of the best-informed miners and prospectors of the District relative to the presence of pay deposits in other than those parts of the District which have been fairly explored . These inquiries have been made with a view to 37 York have irious ;mgs ; liners If pay been liew to formine an opinion as to the actual value and extent of the placers of the Yukon District, especially those about Dawson. That while the gold-bearing platers of the Yukon District have already been shown to be exten; ive, they cannot, so far as proved, be said to be very rich, excepting a few claims — less than thirty on El Dorado and less than twenty-four on Bonanza Creek — covering about five miles of creeks ; that the pay ground contained in these excepted claims does not exceed 275,000 cubic yards, if the average depth of th« pay be taken as one yard and the average width of the pay-channel as thirty yards, and these figures, I believe, are about right ; and that a number of other claims — about seventeen on El Dorado and about ninety on Bonan/a — are believed to be of good value, and many of them are likely to prove rich. That the richest claims on Bonanza and El Dorado creeks are not nearly so rich as have been creek claims in the richest districts of Australia, California, and Montana; and that the conditions here, especially the climatic conditions, will ever make the cost of working claims comparatively expensive and profits comparatively small. That there have been loc --'.ad in the Yukon District more than 3,000 claims — more than 250 miles of creeks ; and a very small portion of the territory located — not more than fifty miles — is gen- erally believed to be workable with profit by present methods and with present values — and hy "generally believed" I mean generally believed by the mineis of experience with whom I have spoken in this regard. Somewhat more specific is this excerpt from the sworn statement of Mr. Alexander McDonald,^ already cited : On Too-Much-Gold Creek, All-Gold Creek, Sulphur Creek, Dominion Creek, Quartz Creek, Henderson Creek, Deadwood Creek. Bryant Creek, and in short all creeks of said District other than Bonanza, El Dorado, Hunker, and their branches, so little has been done that nothing can be said with certainty as to their richness. They are practically unknown quantities. So far as known to me, and I am familiar with said creeks, there are not on Bonanza, El Dorado, and Hutiker creeks combined, more than twelve claims which have yielded an average of $35 per cubic yard of the dirt handled during the sununer season last past. This is on a basis of working a cut thirty feet wide, taking the very richest of the pay-streak. The pay-streak is narrow, and runs to colours or no colours before the rims are reached, even where the bottom from base to base of hill is less than %oo feet wide. Prospects and "winter work" indicate that there are on said three creeks about thirty other claims which will yield an average t>f $35 per cubic yard of the dirt handled in a summer cut thirty feet wide in the richest portion of the deposit. So far as known to me after careful incjuiryand prolonged travels and inspections, there are about 200 claims in said District which, in the absence of royalty, can be worked under existing conditions and yield expenses but nothing beyond with certainty, and which 3S could be worked so as to yield fair profit with modification of bardensome conditions a; to cost of supplies and absence of modern methods of mining. Three other expert miners, Mr. Alexander Calder, Mr. Skiffington Mitchell, and Mr. John Lind, in sworn statements'^ fully corroborate Mr. McDon- ald's language. IX. REIvATING TO THE QUEST FOR GOLD AIvONG SIXTY-MILE CREEK AND THE STEWART RIVER. 'T^HE headwaters of Sixty-Mile Creek are in -*- Alaska;' but nearly all of the stream is in Canada, and no mining has been done beyond the Canadian limit. About aidway between the Indian and the Stewart this body of water flows into the Yukon, from the west, after a ver)'^ crooked course- at least loo miles in length. It vStrongly resembles the Forty-Mile in character, =' and at one point ap- proaches so near to that stream that it has been customary for miners to reach its worked tributaries by travelling up the Forty-Mile for twenty-six miles* and crossing by land to the sources of Sixty- Mile branches. Since the early nineties'"' mining has been carried on in the Sixt3'-Mile country, mainly on two short affluents of the Sixty-Mile — Miller and Glacier Creeks — flowing from the north, and the gold yield" has been about |2oo,ooo. Many a mile of the channels of the Sixty-Mile and its tributaries has not been well prospected, and the district is believed to contain niucl^ unmined low- grade alluvial gravel''' that will sooner or later be worked. The diggings are abandoned because of 39 the Klondike, but several who own claims there intend to keep their titles alive'* and ultimately to resume gold-washing. The prevalent belief that the Stewart River has been well explored and much mined is not in shouting distance of the truth. If any white man has made his wav from the mouth to the source of ml the Stewart^ we do not know of him, although we have inquired diligently amongst the pioneers of the Yukon ; and Dr. George Dawson, the eminent explorer, has had no better fortune, for he reports^ *' that no part of the headwaters of the Stewart have yet been prospected ' ' or even reached ' ' by the miners. It is a large stream, putting into the Yukon nearly seventy miles ^ ^ above the Klondike, and seems to parallel the Klondike and the Indian; but it must be 400 ^ ^' miles long, judging from the vol- ume of its water 200 miles above its mouth, as re- ported by the only person we have found who has been that distance up the stream — Mr. Charles Houser. ^ '^ In the words of Dr. Dawson, ^ ■* " scarcely anything is known of the character of the country drained by the * * * Siewcrt." Bar mining, the only sort yet attempted, was begun near the mouth of the stream in 1885.^" The extent to which it was carried on might easily be misunder- stood by the careless reader of Mr. Ogilvie's recent Klondike Official Guide : for comparisons of some loOvSely framed statements with definite information elsewhere given isc'isenl'al to 'wuderstaud precisely what he intended to convey. For example, in a recently written chapter he says, referring to the Stewart :i'' '* When it was first mined on, many miners took from $30 to |icx3 per day out of the bars along the river, by ordinary rockers." But in order to avoid a misapprehension of the scope of the w^rd '* many " the reader should know, as Mr. Ogilvie sets forth in another chapter, ^ " that during the years 1885-6 the whole number of miners em- ployed on the Ste"'art was only forty, and, as he 1; i nr 40 told in a lecture^ ^ recently delivered, that the Stewart was deserted on the discover}' of coarse gold on the Forty-Mile, in x886.i» The stories of results on the Stewart have been sadly exagger- ated. Mr. Ogilvie of course knew nothing of the jdeld of the Stewart's bars as a result of personal observation, and justly acknowledges*^ "^ the unre- liability cf mining-camp hearsay evidence, on which his reports rest. Probably the most trustworthy information on the subject was possessed by the late Mr. Arthur Harper, ^ ' who conducted a trading-post at the mouth of the river during the washing of bars thereabout ; and this exceedingly scrupiilous gentleman, in discussing the wealth of the Yukon placers with one of us, last autumn, declared f 50,000 to be a liberal estimate of all the gold taken from the Stewart up to the abandonment of the diggings. A little computation will show that the average returns to the miners Mr. Ogilvie tells us were em- ployed during the two years concerned will show that the yield was not startling, considering the conditions surrounding life in that savage region. Since tlie desertion of Stewart River at the close of 1886, no gold has been mined on that vStroam or any of its affluents. Mr, Henry Ferguson =^ * and a small party of miners went up the Stewart to the Mc- Questen, icx)milesabovethe Yukon, and prospected the bars and banks of the McQuesten for forty I'iles up that large tributary of the Stewart, in the sum- mer of 1896. Good prospects were found, but there was so much .surface water that a shaft could not be sunk deep enough to prove anything, and short- age of food obliged them to desert the country before the cold had made shaft-sinking feasible. Mr. Houser, heretofore written of, reached Dawson lavSt August, after a full year of prospecting on Mayo Creek, a tributary of the Stewart which joins the river 200 miles above the Y^ukon. Twelve miles up the Mayo Mr. Houser put a prospect shaft to bedrock, and that shaft appears to be the only one 41 any mall Mc- cled iles Isuni- here not lort- ntry ible. vson on oins iles tto one sunk to bedrock in the Stewart River country in all the time preceding our departure for the capital, excepting one on Henderson Creek. He found no gold. Nevertheless, he said his faith in Stewart River remained unshaken ; and, after all, one pros- pect shaft may mean nothing. We have known ten shafts to reach bedrock on one Bonanza Creek claim without yielding heavy colours. The eleventh found the pay-streak, and gave excellent returns of gold. Since these prospectors left ,*:he Stewart nothing has been struck. The stories cf important gold-finds on that stream are fabricatio.is. We do not intend to intimate that the Stewart is not a promising river, for it is ; but that it is about as little known as in the morning twilight of the orld. At present about 250 persons are wintering on the Stewart River and Henderson Creek, near the Yukon. Most of them were bound for Dawson, but were driven ashore at the Stewart by the dan- gers of boating in the ice-jammed Yukon. They are making the best of the situation by prospecting along the lower Stewart and on Henderson Creek. Some say Henderson Creek is a tributary of the Yukon, others declare it is a feeder of the Stewart. If it is a branch of the Stewart it came near escap- ing that relation, for the junction is on the edge of the Ynl on. The Henderson is a two-forked stream, with a''' j\it thirty miles for its greatest length. At the iv !ie \ c last visited the settlement in the Stew- art ^rA:r Division, '^^^ prospectors were at a stand- still Tf " ! eek, but, despite rosy rumours of a fabulous find, nothing better than colours had been found. w 42 X. bp:ing a brief summary concerning THE PEI.LY, LlTTlyE SALMON, AND BIG SALMON RIVERS. ^T^HIv headwaters of the Pelly^ have not been -*- explored. Dr. Dawson's^ journey down the river began at a point in latitude 61°, 48^, 52'^ and longitude 131°, oi'', 06''', and there, in about mean stage, it was a stream 326 feet wide, with a middle depth of seven feet. Thence to the confluence of the Pelly and ti . ' ves^ is 320 miles, measured along the course ^ ^le stream. Until Dr. Daw- son's examination of die river, practically nothing was known of it, and of course the examination then made was necessarily hasty. Since its con- clusion, the Pelly and all its tributaries have been unvisited by white men. How unbroken the soli- tude of those wilds, is suggested by this quotation-* from Dr. DaWvSon's interesting account of his ex- perience amidst them : " Ten miles above the mouth of the Macmillan we encountered a couple of Indians, father and .son, working their way up the Pelly with a small dug-out canoe. They were the first human beings we had met with in the country since leaving the mouth of the Dease River, forty-three days previously." The Macmillan, by the way, joins the Pelly seventy-four miles^' above the Yukon, and at the junction is about as large as the main stream''. The upper part of the Mac- millan has never been explored" ; and, for that matter, although tlie Pelly has been shown to have some considerable tributaries, one cannot read Dr. Dawson's report** on that stream without concluding that all of them are, to be quite honest, well-nigh utterly unknown. White men have not gone much beyond the n.auths of these streams, and scarcely anvone has done more than see so much of them as ge as Mac- that have 11 Dr. ding nigh iiuch cely Ini as 43 one may see while boating past the points ^vhere they discharge. Such information as we have been able to gather indicates that about a dozen miners prior to this winter prospected for gold along the Pelly, and that not more than half the number found better than colours. Mr. Arthur Harper.'-^ whose trading-post near the mouth of the Pelly is yet in existence, estimated that two or three bars had yielded between I500 and $750. Dr. Dawson met two prospectors'" who had ascended the Mac- millan for several days, in a boat, and had found no encouraging prospects. His own experience on the Pelly is summed up in this language : " Small colours of gold may be found in almost any suit- able locality along the river, and ' heavy colours ' in considerable number were found by us as far up as the mouth of Hoole River, in the bottom of a gravel -bed there resting on the basalt." The Hoole ^- is 2S7 miles above the Yukon. At its mouth the Little Salmon River, which flows into the Lewes rn the east side, fift3'-tliree niiles^^ above Rink RapiOs, is approximately 100 feet wide, ' •* with an average depth of three feet. Candidly, this is about all that is known of it. Neither Dr. Dawson nor Mr. Ogilvie appears to have ascended the stream. Dr. Dawson makes no mention of prospecting on the Little Salmon, and Mr. Ogilvie leaves the reader in doubt as to his in- formation ; for, whereas in one part^ " of the Klon- dike Official Guide he observes: "It is said that some miners have prospected this stream, but I could learn nothing definite about it," on another page'" he says: "Big and Little Salmon rivers have also been prospected, with the usual result that more or less gold has been found everywhere." We have been unable to obtain any evidence from the miners of the Yukon showing that anything of value has been found on this stream. When we passed it, recently, two men temporarily there were prospecting a little, but they had found only a few light colours. Mi' 44 Thirty- six miles and a quarter^' above the Little Salmon the Big Salmon enters the Lewes, also on the east side. It has a width ^^ of about loo yards at its mouth, and a depth of four to five feet. Neither Dr. Dawson nor Mr. Ogilvie has explored this river, but several miners are known to have gone considerable distances up stream, and four,i^ at leavSt, have ascended to its source. It is about 200 miles long. Dr. Dawson records-"^ that in 1 88 1 four miners crossed the Chilkoot Pass and went, according to their estimate, 200 miles up the stream, " finding a little gold all along its course and meeting with some remunerative river-bars." "This," he adds, "may be characterized as the first discovery of paying placers in the District." The four miners who went to the source of the Big Salmon did so in the summer of 1887, and one of them told Dr. Dawson^^ that they " found 'fine ' gold all along the river, but no good-paying bars." " They were in search of ' coarse ' gold," pursues Dr. Dawson, '* but did not discover any." Except- ing these four miners, he says, 2 a no persons were at work on the stream in 1887. Nothmg of signif- icance has been done there since then. Mr. Ogil- vie reports-^ that none of the miners he met could give him any Information concerning this stream. In our journey from Dawson to the sea, this winter, we found forty or more Puget Sound men at work on the Big Salmon. Like the mine fa on Stewart, they were castaways who left home too late to reach their destination, Dawson, during 1897. They had foimd nothing better than flour gold, but had been unable to reach bedrock, be- cause of inflow of water. 45 XI. .sea, )und inca lome [ring lour be- PRESENTING THE FEW BITvS OF INFORMA- TION EXTANT WITH REGARD TO AURIF- EROUS DEPOSITS ALONG THE LEWES AND HOOTALINQUA RIVERS. ^TpHE Yukon above the mouth of the Pelly is -*- known as the Lewes River ; and, in that it is the waterway used by all persons who penetrate the Yukon District by way of the Chilkoot or the White Pass, its general features have been too much exploited for comment here to serve our purpose. But there seems to be misunderstanding of the extent of mining operations along the stream, so that a mustering of the facts as to the work of the miner appears desirable. Dr. Dawson thus speaks ^ of the earliest prospect- ing on the Lewes : The first white man who crossed from the coast to the headwaters of the Lewes appears probably to have been one George Holt, who did so with the object of prospecting the country. The date of Holt's journey was, I believe, 1878. He was accompanied by one or two Indians, and crossed by the Chilkoot or by the White Pass to the head of the Lewes. He followed the river down to the lower end of Lake Marsh and walked over ihe Indian trail thence to the Tes-lin-too [HootalinquaJ, returning to the coast again by the same route. On his return, he reported the discovery of " coarse gold," but none of the miners who afterward prospected the region men- tioned, have been able to confirm his statements in this particular. ****** Some years later, in 1880, a prospecting party of nineteen men was organized at Sitka, under the leadership of one Edward Bean. Amicable relations were established with the Chilkaf and Chilkoots through the kind offices of Capt. Beardslee, U.S.N., and the Chilkoot Pass was crossed to Lake Linderman. The party had, by this time, increased to twenty-five in number. Boats were built on Lake Linderman, and on the 4th of July the prospectors ^.et out down stream. * » * No encouraging "prospects" were met with at this time, though Steel [a member of the party] states that he found bars yielding at the rate of $2.50 a day m a small stream which joins the Lewes fifteen miles above the canyon. ' ill 46 It is not certain that anything further was ac- complished until 1886. Dr. Dawson says- that ' ' possibly ' ' a little mining was done on the Lewes in 1884 ; but we have been unable to find evidence more definite. In i886-' gold was found on Cassiar Bar, which lies about twenty-seven miles below the junction of the Hootalinqua and the Lewes. There IS much doubt as to the yield of this bar. Dr. Dawson heard it said^ that "in some cases" the output was " I30 a day to the hand," and that *' gold to the value of many thousands of dollars " was obtained from it, chiefly in 1886. Mr. Ogilvie reports'^ that when he passed the bar in August, 1887, four men were at work, and the diggings were about exhausted. These four, he adds, are the miners who were washing gold there in 1S86. He was told that in 1886 they had taken "|6,oooin thirty days " but that in 1887 *' |io per day " was all they could get. It does not appear, however, what was the average of their earnings for the whole time they worked, nor what the total yield. Pioneer miners with whom we have spoken think the yield of the bar in both years was not in excess of $5,000. On our journey hither we found one castaway at work on otherwise deserted Cassiar. He was getting flour gold at the rate of fifty cents a day, consuming provisions worth five times as much, and hoping for better days. Dr. Dawson's summary" as to the Ivewes is as follows : ' * Though some small bars have been worked on the upper part of the Lewes, and * pros- pects ' have been obtained even in the stream flowing into Bennet Lake, paying bars have been found in this river only below the mouth of the Tes-lin-too [Hootalinqua]. The best of these are within a distance of about seventy miles below this conflu- ence, and the richest so far has been Cassiar Bar. -> * -X- ^i\ along the Lewes below the Tes-lin-too many bars occur which, according to the reports of prospectors, yield as much as |io a day. * * * was ac- ys' that le Ivcwes evidence 1 Cassiar elow the • There ar. Dr. es" the nd that lollars" Ogilvie August, gs were are the 56. He 3,000 in '" was )wever, i whole ^ioneer e yield ^5.000. way at e was 1 day, h, and > is as been ' pros- owing nd in in-too hin a 3nflu- Bar. n-too rtsof 47 Bars of this kind are hr. remunerative at pr^nr'^T' ^^"^^^^^^ed scarcely niaiy It is well to kte ''i,, ,},^ r'?l"ng this sum^ has said of mining-camn ^"^l^'^at Mr. OgilvTe ;n;mng population ffthe^JfP^^^^ ^id thafthe Dr. Dawson's report was rt "K""" District when .250,^ the camps on the Sti^ ^^.'"''^'^ "^'^'^ ^"^^ about included, so that he D?o.r'.^-^"^ ^^^ Forty-Mi e ma es of the average vieid^^'^S'"^ supporting est^! could not Imve hLn ifj^r '^^yof -many^^^^ country frau^hl vvitl" .^"^^c^ently extensive in ^ Kive to^themtuch vSue """^''^^^^^ difficuulks" t^ ^^r^t^^?^;^J^^^}^ his examina. ^waters. Until after he fJi^^ '^H'*'^^ ^'^ its head- hpwever, colours v'erL fomir?T?^ ^"^^ ^^^arge, feix miles below the l.k^" "^^ ^" ^^'^ Placis pan " were found in A. f J' ^"^">^ colours to the that from that pohu ^ T^'^'"' P^^^vieobseVes. be washed " anywhere on th.""'^^^^' ^^^«^^^s may probably is too Cad ^ word TA" "'^"ywhere'"^ Jl T.^ gravel that haveXwn , ^i"""''' ^^ Pa"« of doubtless true that .Tot^^ f^? "^ colours ; but it i^ and the Yukon prope^^^^^^ '^^ ^ars of the iewes When Dr Dawson ^ ^ ,^?Jo"rs readily "^ District and BrftLh cT"" I'-' ^"^^^ ^" the Yukon moved to sav^o o? tif^^i^^b^^'" in 1887, he to^ still remain'^ be'lSdlnd"^"^ '' '^^^rU^ drains a country with a r«f?,f ^ tapped, and as it of Its basin is proba bK . ^J ^^^ climate, the area prospected to fome exi^^^^^^^ ^t has been js difficult, from the accounV. ^ (^^,^i"ers. but!" t to give, to ascertain S "5 Ti'V?'^^^ are able respecting it " Mr rJ -t - ^ definite character attempted^„i'-^3,^^^- Ogilvie, ^^^e Dr. Dawso^' true that Mr. Arthur St r '^^"^ ' ^"^^ whilsTiUs «^^fvey of the Hoot^Hn' ua at T^^^'^^ "^^^^ ^ rack adian Government he has not h'^u^^^ ^^ ^he Can- from a point of v ew aS,?^^^^ ^^^^h the stream mineral wealth. Th^ ^aTue ^ f he"T ^'^^' «" its value ot the stream, accord- 48 l^'i: ingly, can only be gauged at present from general knowledge of the region and the tales of a handful of wandering prospectors. It rbould be said that Mr. St. Cyr's survey shows the river to be about 135 miles long, and that its confluence with the Lewis is about 330 miles ^^ above the Klondike River. Dr. Dawson reports ^^ that three miners whom he met at the mouth of the Hootalinqua had spent most of the summer of 1887 on the river. They told him they had found fixie gold all along the stream, and impressed him as having done * ' fairly well. ' ' No bedrock prospecting^ ^ ever has been done there, and not more than a dozen miners attempted more than occasional panning of bar gravel in all the years prior to 1897. In the autumn , last year, some of the pilgrims bound for the Klon- dike were obliged by stress of weather to go into winter quarters this side the Pelly ; and several of them are ' * killing time ' ' sinking shafts on the Hootalinqua. When we passed them, early in January, no shaft had reached bedrock, and nothing more valuable than average colours were reported. Accomplished miners who have considered the relation borne by the Hootalinqua to the Cassiar country believe important placer finds will be made on that stream ; and some think well of the outlook for auriferous quartz along the Lewes : but it is altogether erroneous to hold that men have definite knowledge of the future of mining on either stream. till general handful aid that e about ^ith the londike miners ^ua had e river. 1 along f done ver has miners of bar itumn, J Klon- ?o into aral of m the rly in 3thing 'orted. id the 'assiar made itlook t it is ^finite ream. 49 XII. RHSPEJCTING THE UPPFp t r . x, AND FINI.AYSoT|i\^R^s^^^^^^ FRANCES AND FIN™ o/ "" ''^^^^ f We'lt'^oi;^^^^^^^^^ ^^ «- North- that stretch of the ?^Ppe^£ii;^" ?«-de to examine the Yukon District IndthT ^'''^^ ^^i^h lies in shows that the effort then m.!?^^^ ^^ ^^- I>awson" information concerning i^^'^^i^^^ther authentic results, save for the fori fi ^'^^^^^ "nsatisfactorv served by the emfneS '^r^-S^^l^^^ Personally T of this important affluem of^'^iv^r ^7*^^ ^^^^ ^en^h undetermined • but Dr f? ^^^ Mackenzie remam^ just above the mouth o^'tC^^^""^^ the S' Kse^cld^^r^^^^^ washed ^oTt^e s eaL\Tt"h ^^^ ^°^^^^« "ee" subject is very s^niV'syT^'T'^^'' ^^ '^- worked some of the bar*; r3 fi '^V ^^ssiar miners ascended the river a lon^^?/^^ ^^^^ I^iard and Creek which put^'u^tltl'nW. ^" ^'75« S^ayyea m les above the mouth of t "^^^ ^bout fiftv-five niiued, and good°ir~ was si ^htly bars and the%hor?s o?the rT^^''""^- ^^^gravel a most half comnoseH ^f ^ i?*^ Dawson « to be which have evidenfl V h ""^^^^.^ed quartz pebbles -«ng soft schisre^^o\^^f,"vg^^ . the great quantitv of ^nol; • observes that u this distinct mav hi ^ ^f '" material present indication in resS.rT i ^.^g^^^ded as a favou2h?i adds : << SomeTS bar? hf"' ^--^opmem" 'td this part of tb. river anS^nfJ ^ ^V^ ^^ work alon^ payers of the older rocks afont Jh^^'^ ^^""^ ^"«omf ^outh of the Dease] and abfv, f^^^ f^^^^the $4 a day can be made. The amount n?''" ^"^^« ^' "c amount of cover which 50 it soon becomes necessary to remove in following the paying layers, has prevented extensive mining, but probably these gravels might be advantageously worked as a whole, by sluicing or by the hydraulic method." Beyond this only the vaguest mining- camp rumours are available. The Frances and Finlayson rivers and the lakes bearing the same names have been examined by Dr. Dawson. About ninety miles" above the point where it joins the Liard, the Frances River heads in Frances I^ake. Its average midsummer width *^ near the point of discharge is 600 feet, and its cun-ent about four miles and one-half an hour. Its tribu- taries are unexplored." Dr. Dawson says nothing to suggest that gold has been found along this stream. Frances Lake, 2,577 feet above the sea, 10 is more than thirty miles long and .several miles wide, "held in," Dawson concludes, ^^ "by mor- ainic accumulations. ' ' Continuing, he observes : ^ ^ '* In general appearance the rocks of Frances Lake very closely resemble those from which the rich placer gold deposits of Dease Lake are derived, and they are probably of about the same age. Several * colours ' to the pan were obtained from surface gravel at the mouth of Finla5'son River, which struck me as specially promising in aspect, and there seems to be no good reason why some of the streams flowing across the schistose rocks into the lake or its vicinity should not prove to be richly auriferous. This entire district well deserves care- ful prospecting. After my return to the coast in the autumn of 1887, I ascertained from Charles Munroe that he and some other miners had actually done some prospecting in the vicinity of the lake at the time when the Cassiar mines were yielding largely, and the more enterprising men were scour- ing the country in search of new fields. He reached the lake from Cassiar by the same route we had followed. On comparing notes we found that he i^ad worked for a short time at the mouth of the -f. ol lowing mining, ageously lydraulic mining- he lakes lined by he point heads in th^ near current ts tribu- nothing )ng this e sea, 10 il miles ^y mor- jrves :i2 es lyake he rich ed, and Several surface which ct, and of the nto the t richly is care- oast in ;:^harles ctually le lake ielding ; scour- eached we had hat he of the ^Tp^^Z S^^lr''.^™ *<> pay at the inir cf,.^' ^ i! *• ^^nlayson Rivpr m, V "" showed mg stream between I ntJo Vv ' "^^ short conni-rf "»s- ell "■ > ^ s Tr>£| 3. '05 feet aboves^,. e!e °"?r/"'^«"'''^>n form aVd ance enters it. * »"'^°S' '"tS" ^^-eam of ,Wrt Dr. Dawson says 1 « an,n« f ^^^ ^^^^^ of the region vein cfi,ff • -'^ ' ""longest othf»rfV.:^ '^"^ '^egion terra^i 5'^ fverywhere v%rv abu'i "P ' P"artE- =^i ! overlooking the kZi "''""'. and -m the side three miles blow tlfl",'T°"' °" the north quartz occurs in p,a'i°«' tjie lake, a large mass of SeSt^ste^-?, -^ P-rto^^c=n^ XIII. EXPLAINING WHY THt^ WHITE RIVERS wS No?'''''^^ ^ND ^N THE Usr OF r^rl^'^^UI'ED STREAMS. ^ GOLD-BEARING 52 ::ii discoveries on them. The late Mr. Arthur Harper, who, little though he knew the White River, knew it better than any other white man has known that Yukon affluent, and wbo journeyed ^ fifty or sixty miles up the stream, saio^ in Dawson last summer that if gold had been fou.'.d on the White he had no information to that effect ; and Mr. Davies, the only person of whom we have heard who has pros- pected the headwatetii of the White, wrote^ recently that not ever, a colour was washed there. We have no knowledge that any white man has gone from the mouth to the source of this river, ^ and no min- ing has been attempted anywhere in the district it drains. The length of the White must be consider- able ; for at its mouth the river is 200 yards wide,^ and it tosses its large volume of water into the Yukon, ten miles above the Stewart *i but from the opposite side, with force' enough to drive the ashen flood v, ell toward the farther shore of the receiving stieam. Gold has been sought but never found near the mouth of the Copper, and Mr. Davies, the only living white man who has journeyed from the source to the mouth of the river, declares^^ positively that surface prospecting all along that stream failed to show any trace of gold. Like the White, the Copper remains to be explored. A few men have seen its upper waters and the reach from its mouth to the glacier ( twenty miles above ) under which it pours ; but of the long stretch between, only the testimony of Mr. Davies is available. Where the Copper gives itself to the sea it breaks into shallow channels^ separated by sand bars, and has a width of more than two miles. Its source^*' is hard by a greac glacier in which the Chittystone, the White, and the Tanana takv^ their rise, it traverses an exceedingly savage ctuntry, is for much of its course utterly unnavigable by any sort of canoe, and has a length of not less than 400 miles. The White has its source in Alaska, but most of its course lies in Canada ; whereas the Copper is all in Alaska. 53 veen, able, eaks ,and irce*" tone, ', it for sort liles. )f its ill in Whilst no gold has been found on these streams, they are nevertheless worthy of careful examination. Mr. Harper* 1 observed indications of copper on the lower White, and Mr. Davies'- ^ound placer copper on the upper White and at several points along the Copper. Mr. John Dal ton, also, has found copper on the latter stream. XIV. BRINGING TOGETHER THE DATA BEARING ON THB: PRESENCE OF AURIFEROUS QUARTZ IN PLACE. tT is to be regretted that truth compels denial of ■^ the several pretty stories showing discovery of lodes of rich gold-bearing quartz along the Yukon. Reduced to their lowest terms, the facts are these : Prior to the washing of gold on Bonanza Creek, a vein of what was believed to be auriferous quartz was found on the Alaskan reach of the Forty-Mile and another below Birch Creek. Samples of the quartz were sent to San Francisco^ to be assayed. No trace of gold or anything else of value was found in either lot. About the same time Mr. G. C. Hoffmann, =^ of the Geological Survey of Canada, assayed 'our specimens of quartz taken from the Yukon Distiict, with the following results : Specimen from oank of the Yukon, opposite the Klondike — gold, a trace ; silver, 3.64 ounces to the ton ; specimen from near the foot of the Forty -Mile — gold, a trace ; vSilver, 38.64 ounces to the ton ; specimen from further down the F^orty-Mile — neither gold nor silver ; specimen from near the Chandindu — gold, a trace ; silver, .117 of an ounce to the ton. It should be 54 considered, however, that the assay appears to have been confined to a single specimen not known to be average,"' in each case, and that none of the specimens came from an even roughly defined** lode. It is not uncommon for such an assay to bear very little relation to the value of an ore body, as witness the case of mines in the Wynaad^ where individual assays have given more than 200 ounces of gold to the ton, whereas milling on a working scale has rarely given better results than from three to five pennyweights. Moreover, as observed by Mr. J. W. Anderson:'" "That a lode carries gold and silver or any other valuable metal in some form or other, is not suffiv:ient data to lean upon in the estimation of its worth. Oftentimes the gold, for instance, is distributed in the form of very fine powder invisible to the eye and covered with a rusty film (due to svilphides or arsenides, oxide of iron or manganese, and sometimes to sulphate of copper and iron) ; and in consequence, though the ' aSvSay ' may be favourable, the extraction of the precious metal from the ore by the amalgamation is not satisfactory, as the mercury ' sickens ' or 'flours.' Again, the value of a body of ore, though it may be rich in precious or valuable metals, depends in a measure upon the nature of the other constituents, especially when the ore has to be smelted. Anti- mony or arsenic, in not very great quantities either, may render an otherwise valuable ore useless so far as profitable smelting is concerned. ' ' And, to quote Mr. ly. R. Grabill," "from one-half an ounce to one ounce of gold per ton of ore is required under ordinary circunistamcs to pay the expense of mining and milling ' ' although less is required under the favourable circumstances of a large ore body and cheap treatment, as on Douglas Island, for instance. Soon after the Klondike came into notice Captain John Healy *^ found indications of gold in a moun- tain opposite Dawson and dipping into the Yukon. A tunnel was drifted a short distance into the quai^^^z. have m to f the lode, very itness idual .Id to le has five »Ir. J. 1 and rm or 11 the d, for Y fine I rusty ron or :opper aSvSay ' ecioiis is not ours.' tiay be in a uents, Anti- ither, so far quote oone imdi'r lining er the y and ance. iptain iioun- bkon. lat^.z, 55 but the results were not of a character to justify development. Captain George Ellis, one of the most accom- plished miners of the Klondike, recently located a quartz lode in the mountain on the left bank of El Dorado Creek. No trace of gold is visible in any of his specimens ;'• and no assay had been made when we left Dawson, for the reason that the only as.saying outfit on the Klondike is in possession of the Alaska Commercial Company, and up to the close of last December had not been unpacked for use. Captain Ellis, when we last spoke with him, was holding his specimens, awaiting the setting up of the Alaska Company's outfit. He thought the ore looked as though it contained gold, but said he felt no certainity in that regard. Some good-looking quartz strikes well into view along the watershed between the Klondike and Indian rivers, especialh' in the Dome ; but no gold can be seen, even with the aid of a glass, in the croppiiigs there, and no assays have been mad^ . The only specimens showing gold to the eye are not known to liave come from a lode nor 'tuleed, from Alaskan or Canadian " stringers." ■ may have traveled from South Africa or California , and not in the grasp of a glacier, necessarily, for the speculator is abroad in the land, consider. Until more is known of the Yukon country it will not be safe to say much as to auriferous quartz. Scarcely any prospecting for gold-bearing quartz has been done there, and there are not in the region more than a few miners who are qualified to pros- pect for such ore. It is true that quartz is scattered abundantly throughout those portions of the Yukon District which have been explored and along the Yukon River for a long distance after it enters Alaska ; but this may or may not be significant ; for, after all, quartz is the commonest rock in the uni- verse. However, in the Klondike and Indian Divisions, along the Forty-Mile, and in some other 56 districts the quartz is elbowed by slaty rocks sug- gestive of the precious metal ; and the developments in all the Cordilleran belt and especially the quartz- mining in British Columbia and along the Alaskan coast, are of a character inviting careful prospecting of the Yukon region. We do not mean to speak discouragingly of the outlook, but to place our testimony in opposition to the rumours which have represented much as known, whereas next to nothing is known. XV. REVERTING TO AN EARI.IER STATEPIENT, NAMELY, THAT THE NORTH-WEST RE- MAINS WELL-NIGH UNKNOWN. /"CONSULT your map, now, and observe over what ^^ a mighty domain this brief survey has taken us ; consider that only a few hundred miners have been toiling about in those pathless wilds, and they ill-equipped for dealing with the indescribable dif- ficulties of exploring them ; bear in mind that as a rule even the streams included in our list of gold- bearing creeks and rivers are scarcely more than known to exist and have not been followed from mouth to source, much less carefully prospected ; keep in view that there are thousands of miles of rivers and millions of acres of watersheds in those forbidding lands which are utterly unexplored ; and then say whether the man who runs on and on de- fining the boundaries and values of the ' ' gold belt" of Alaska and the Provisional District of Yukon ought to be taken seriously. 57 Ithau From Ited ; \s of liose land de- ilt" :on It must be concluded by thoughtful minds that from a practical standpoint very little has been proved, and that what these vast regions preemi- nently require in our day is thorough prospecting, u'lhampered by illiberal laws and senseless regula- tions. It should not be assumed that because * ' colours ' ' have been found here and there in an immense territory a time has come when Govern- ment can afford to withdraw from the prospector its most earnest encouragement of his labour. Colours are only valuabl e as indi cia . Of themselves they prove nothing, eager though the miner is to find them ; for gold is found in some quantity in every land beneath the stars, and colours are obtain- able in ma^iy a district wherein mining will never be carried on. One can wash colours along the Rhine, yet the gold output of that river since the earliest ages cannot be regarded as considerable ;^ sOj there are rivers in Portugal running over sands yielding colours, but the miner regards them as of no value ;~ and it were hard to find a stream in India'' to grudge a man a colour, although it were as hard to find a stream there rich enough to yield more than a few pence for a day of industrious panning. The experience of British capital in the vVyiiaad is indicative of the imprudence of taking it for granted that the finding of gold is necessarily the finding of gold in quantity worth winning. * ' In 1827," relates Mr. J. A. Phillips,-* " Mr. vS. Young stated that fine specimens of gold had been found to the west of the Nilgiri mountains in the beds of various streams, and in 1830, Mr. F. II. Barber, who was examined before the Lords Committee on East Indian affairs, asserted that gold was obtained not only in Coinibatore, but throughout the tract of country lying west and south of the Nilgiri and Kunda mountains. He had often witnessed the process of gold-washing, and estimated the area over which the soil was impregnated with gold at 2,000 square miles." Some inquiries followed, and I 58 in the end England sunk four millions and a half sterling^ in the Wynaad. Scarcely any of the companies then investing survive, the results hav- ing been uniformly disastrous, and the 3'ield of twenty years of mining has been estimated at less than 18,000 ounces*' of gold. "The Indian Gold Mines Company, Umited, in 1892, crushed 11,125 tons of quartz," observes Mr. Henry Louis,' " and got ninety ounces of gold!" Instances could be multiplied showing that the finding of ** colours " or even ' ' fair prospects ' ' does not of neceSvsity indicate value. In the case of the streams of Alaska and the Yukon District, colours may turn out to mean even less to the miner than colours usually mean ; for whilst the best pay of the Yukon placers is found in ancient stream channels antedating the glacial period the C'->nclusion of I)r, Dawson^ is that "the greater part of the ' fine ' gold found along the river-bars and banks of the larger streams in the Yukon District is douV)tless proximately derived from the gravels and other superficial de- posits in which these streams have re-excavated their beds since the period of glaciation." And he adds : "By the general dispersion and intermixture of these materials, composed of the (/t'/>ris of the older rock formations, it is even possible that the existence of a few comparatively limited areas of great richness might account for the widespread auriferous character of the alluviums of the Upper Yukon basin. " So that these colours may be indic- ative of a loc^ ; far to the south but in the course of the great Cordilleran glacier, rather than of a pay- streak ten or twenty feet below the modern channel yielding them. It is hoped what has been said suggests the thought that the i4Tst meridian does not divide the good opportunities from those which are not good. We submit that Alaska offers as promising a field for the prospector as the Yukon District, and that if the conditions imposed by Government are more 59 difficult in Canadian than in Alaskan territory it is unreasonable to believe that prospecting will pro- gress so vigorously in the Yukon District as in AlavSka, when men may in a few hours go from Dawson across the line. Miners care little under what flag they toil, but are sensitive of governmental rules bearing on their labour. The army of pros- pectors trails hither and thither where the rain- bow seems most beautiful — to California, to the Fraser, to Australia, to Montana, to South Africa, to Colorado, to the Klondike ; but it knows the pot of gold when it sees it, and cannot be held by colours, nor checked by meridians unmeaning in geology. If the Canadian gold-fields are to be developed promptly nothing should be done 1)y Government to encourage an earlier development of the gold-fields of Alaska. XVI. vSETTING FORTH THE RELATION OF THE CLIMATE ALONG THE YUKON TO THE WORK OF THE MINER THERE. pay- kmnel the the food. field that more ^T^HE Yukon country has remarkable variations of •*- temperatvn-e. Last July the mercury registered as high as 90° in the shade in Dawson, ^ and late last November a spirits Ihennometer indicated 64 degrees below zero on Bonanza Creek. 2 In Circle City'^ the variation has been from 100° in the shade to more tlian 70° below zero — how much more could not be accurately determined. At Forty-Mile, Perry Davis's pain-killer has been seen in solid form, and on the lakes near the Chilkoot -60° has been experienced. Almost anywhere along the Yukon 6o there are summer days as oppressive as in the tropics, and the winters yield lower temperatures than any Nansen experienced in Greenland, or in his more recent Polar explorations. However, there are times as delightful as the autumn in Acadia ; but they are wonderfully brief. One exclaims, "How exquisite!" and lo ! they are gone. The glory of the golden-tinted birches, the sparkle of flashing waters, and the radiance of the lingering sun die with amazing suddenness, and the earth puts on a shroud of snow. In what is called the summer about Dawson (June, July, August, and September) the mean temperature is about 65°, and in what is termed the winter (all the time that is left) it is approximately 15° below zero. In midwinter the day is four hours lon^. In a land with such a climate and saddled with soil that never thaws if it can help itself, the outlook for the farm- er is not conspicuously bright, even though a few stunted potatoes have been nursed into being at Forty-Mile and further up the Yukon. Doubtless man could raise bananas on an iceberg if he were to try hard enough ; but doubtless they would be pretty expensive bananas : and, in the same way, we suppose, some good gentleman will make figs ripen and violets bloom on the Arctic Circle ; but the fortunes which will be earned at farming on the middle Yukon within the next dozen years will not unsettle the money markets of Europe or America. The climate divides placer mining in Yukon gold- fields into two distinct classes — summer mining and winter mining, the characteristics whereof will be explained in the succeeding chapter. It also makes prospecting more difficult than elsewhere on the earth, Siberia possibly excepted. The difficulties which beset the placer prospector, about Dawson, for example, are well expressed by the accomplished expert, Mr. McGillivray,4 in this portion of his already-cited sworn statement : ■ -/»!t:».'!Kn»^1| 6i be his Prospecting cannot be done herewith the ease that governed in Australia, California, or most of the other gold- ields of the world . A man here will accomplish no more in a year, at present, than the California prospector accomplished in a few weeks. In order thoroughly to prospect any creek here, as matters stand, the cold season must be taken as the time for work, because surface washing proves nothing and holes cannot be put to bedrock in summer without elaborate pumping appliances. Two men must go together; they must take with them food enough to last several months, a tent, robes, tools; they must carry their outfit on sleds, and to reach any creek not now located must travel a most difficult country' about fifty miles from Dawson, the only supply point ; they must, when at their destination, spend ten days or a fortnight in preparing for work ; they must then, in order to determine whether there is pay in the creek, sink a line of shaft? across the creek bottom at inter- vals of twenty to thirty feet, for, whereas the pay-channel may be struck through the first shaft, it may require half a dozen shafts to prove its whereabouts or demonstrate its absence ; they must devote ten to thirty days in sinking each shaft, hence a whole season may be lost in sinking at one or two points without success. And when the surface water returns again, the work must be abandoned. In Australia and California a man with pick, shovel, and pan could, in the days of shallow-placer mining, prospect in all seasons, was nearly always within easy reach of supplies, and could prospect many miles of creek in a few weeks ; for there the ground was not frozen and was not covered with muck, and the pay was in most cases found along the present streams, something that is not true here . The gold in all creek claims here is mined from what is called a pay-char 1, or, sometimes, two pay-channels. The pay-channels do not f JW the lines of the present streams at all, though confined by the same walls ; and prospectors endeavouring to locate the pay are in no way guided by the course of the present streams nor assist- ed by modern erosions, except that in summer they may find evi- dence that there is a rich pay-channel, in the presence of gold in the bed of the stream, washed from such pay-channel ; but in order to find the deposit the prospector must wait until the surface water is frozen, that shafts may be sunk. The ground everywhere is cov- ered with moss and muck to a depth of from five to twenty feet . Along the same line, and also touching the ab- sence of roads in the Yukon District, is this excerpt from the sv^orn statement of Mr. Hill, 5 likewise heretofore cited : There r.re no roads in said [Yukon] District — not even in the vill- age of Dawson. In the warm season there are trails of the rudest sort on the principal creeks (of " the Klondike "], and owing to the presence of surface water and deep moss these trails are as a rule mere zig-zag lines through muck, where the traveller flounders pain- fully. The progress beyond Bonanza and Hunker and their tribu- taries is the labourious progress through a wilderness ot woods, with 62 deep, wet moss everywhere under foot. Men who go out to prospect in the warm season have to carry on their backs their tools, food, and blankets ; and travelling under the circumstances is so slow and labourious that only strong men dare attempt it, and few men succeed in getting very far from Dawson. Prospecting here means sinking shafts through frozen muck and gravel to the depth of twelve to thirty feet. Very little can be accomplished with the quantity of food a man can carry on a journey even thirty miles from Dawson ; and there are no supply stations nearer the prospect grounds than Dawson. In winter, travelling is easier, the earth being covered with snow ; but the temperature ranges far below zero — often 40" and 50° below, and exceptionally 70" ; and there is no shelter after the proved creeks have been left behind. In the case of the quartz prospector it should be considered that the presence of thick growths of trees and deep carpeting of moss seriously hinders him in summer, and that in winter he has the additional embarrassment occasioned by snow. Moreover, climatic conditions in remote ages have given him a task he may never be able to perform. Those who fancy one may shoot an arrow into the air at almost any point along the Yukon and find an auriferous quartz lode have a great deal to learn. The presence of rich placers is not necessarily a sign that valuable gold-bearing quartz lodes are at hand ; for it may be that the placer gold has been ground from quartz of so low a grade as to be valueless with the processes man brings to bear, or, if otherwise, it may be that the lode of which it once was part lies in some very different latitude and gave its treasure to a glacier. 63 XVII. DESCRIBING GRAVEL MINING ALONG THE YUKON AND GIVING THiv COST OF EXTRACTING GOLD. ^T^HE methods and costs of working the aurifer- -^ ous gravel deposits of the Yukon country may be gathered from what has been said' of the strata of muck and non-pay gravel above the pay-channels and from the following sworn statement-^ of Mr. McDonald, prepared for presentation to the Gov- ernment : I, Alexander McDonald, do solemnly declare : That I am a resident of the Klondike Mining Division of the Yukon District, North-West Territories, Dominion of Canada, That I am the holder of several placer-mining claims in said Dis* trict, both in the Klondike and the Indian Divisions thereof. That I am a miner by occupation. Since 1880 I have been engaged in the business of mining, having mined within that period in Colorado, on Douglas Island, in the Forty-Mile Division of the Yukon District, and, since September, i8g6, in the Klondike and Indian Divisions of the Yukon District. My experience has been mainly confined to dealing with the precious metals, gold especially. That in said Yukon District I have had experience at mining for gold in summer and winter, have worked in, and had charge of, placer mines, and am familiar with methods pursued in said District, the cost of mining therein, and the yield in general of the mineral belt thereof. That what is kn>."/n in said District as "summer work" begins in June and ends in about the middle of September. Not much is accomplished in June, and the September work is uncertain. That " summer work" consists m opening pits or cuts lopen-cast mining] and sluicing the gravel. That all of the deposits between moss and the lowest known pay- point is frozen throughout the year, and this necessitates exposing surfaces for thawing by the sun's heat in summer working, and leads to corresponding slowness and difficulty in the working of pits. The muck thaws three inches a day, as an average ; the gravel, about ten inches. That my experience in mining in said Di-«tr?''t and my observa- tion of the mining by others in said District convince me that an effective ucdrock drain on Bonanza Creek would have to be at least 2,000 feet long ; on El Dorado Creek, 1,000 feet. 64 That there are not any steam pumps in the District aforesaid, nor any electrical appliances whatsoever for use in drainage of summer pits. The rule is for the claims to be drained by hand pumps of the most primitive order. There is not enough water available on more than a few claims to run water-power pumps. That the grade of the known creeks of said District is so slight that in damming wafer to a height requisite for ordinary sluicing, water is backed 200 feet. That during the last season of *' summer work " $1.50 an hour was the universal price of ordinary unskilled labour in this District. The better labourers commanded $2 an hour. The working day averaged ten hours of labour. That the cost of lumber, undressed, averaged forty cents a board foot, on the claims. That, as an average, 100 sluice-boxes are used on every claim worked as summer diggings, with dimensions as follows : length, twelve feet ; at top, ten by eleven inches ; at bottom, ten by thir- teen inches, the ten in each instance representing depth . That seventy-two sets of block riffles per claim are used during the " summer" season, as claims are worked at present in said Dis- trict ; and these cost as an average $5 a set. That the cost of sluice-boxes, riffles not included, averages $25 a box. _ That the cost of setting a line of sluice boxes and keeping said line set through the summer, averages $2,000. That the cost of building a rough dam sufficient for the ordinary working of the average 500-fooi claim in said District is about $i,oco. That the cost of constructing a waste-ditch on claim No. 30, El Dorado (one of the claims of which I am a holder), was about $1,200 1 think it an average ditch. That the cost of handling the dirt, " summer working," from the ground-sluicing to the cleanup, averages (labour bills) $5 a cubic yard on the entire quantity moved. That the cost of pumping for drainage of summer pits 400 feet long by thirty feet wide, averages $72 per twenty-four hours. That wheelbarrows cost $25 apiece; shovels, $3.50 apiece; mattocks, $5 apiece ; blacksmiths' portable forges, about $200 apiece ; average weight of grindstones, about $35 apiece ; hammers, sixty cents a pound ; saws, $5 . 50 apiece ; nails, forty cents a pound ; rope, fifty cents v. pound ; gold-scales of average capacity, $50 a pair quicksilver, $1.25 a pound; black powder, $1.25 a pound; fuse, two cents and one-half a foot. That what is known in said District as *' winter work " begins in September and ends late in July. In September the work is pre- paratory to sinking and drifting ; after May ist, it is wh.lly sluic- iiig. That said " winter work" is what is known as drift mining. That because of the frozen character of the dirt, as aforesaid, it is the practice to thaw the dirt to be handled— first by means of wood fires to release it from the breasts for hoisting to the surface, and again by means of the spring-sun's heat to free the gold in sluicing. 65 feet ^piece ; $20U imers, tound ; .pair I; fuse, jins in IS pre- sluic- ., tt IS (wood and Icing. That a fire banked twenty-five feet in length by two feet and one- half in height, one-half a cord of wood being used, thaws about Ave cubic yards of gravel as it lies in the deposit That the wood used for such fuel costs as an average $25 a cord, delivered at the mouth of the shaft That the cost of sinking untimbered shafts four by six feet surface dimensions, is about $10 a foot. That the cost of handling dirt from shaft sinking to clean-up, " winter work," averages (labour bills) $12 a cubic yard. That in drift mining in said District it is impossible with present methods properly to clean the bedrock ; and, in that the richest pay is on bedrock or in bedrock great losses ensue. ^ That the cost of a cabin twelve by fourteen feet, ground dimen- sions is about $600. Such cabin ordinarily houses three miners. That in summer it costs twenty-five to thirty cents a pound for trar.snortation of supplies from Dawson to the mouth of El Dorado CrttI;, fifteen miles; to the thirty-sixth claim above the mouth of £1 Dorado Creek and on said creek, thirty-five cents ; to the thirty- fifth claim above Discovery on Bonanza Creek, thirty-five cents ; to Hunker Creek, fifty cciits. That in winter it costs ten cents a pound for transportation of supplies from Dawson to the mouth of El Dorado Creek ; and other distances proportionately. It should, perhaps, be explained that Mr. McDon- ald's estimates are based on experience along Bo "at- a and El Dorado creeks. Not much work has been done elsewhere in the Yukon District, save on Hunker and Sixty-Mile creeks, where costs are somewhat higher than on Bonanza and El Dora- do. Naturally the proximity to Dawson of Bon- anza and its tributaries gives those streams some advantage. For example, last summer the charge for carrying supplies from Dawson to Dominion Creek was $1 to $1.50 a pound. Strongly corroborative of the statements of this responsible miner are the sworn declarations of three other pioneer and practical miners of the Klondike (like him Canadians, and like him men of large experience in gold-washing), Messrs. Alexander Calder, Skiff ington Mitchell, and John lyind, and the sworn statement of Mr. McGillivray, the able expert on gravel mining, all of which docu- ments we have filed with the Minister of the Interior. 66 For the year 1897*'' the Alaska Commercial Com- pany and the North American Trading and Trans- portation Company — the only trading concerns that have thus far succeeded in getting supplies to the Yukon placers, transported 600 or 700 tons of sup- plies to Andreafski, 300 tons to Rampart City (Minook Creek), alout 300 tons to Fort Hamlin, 400 tons to Fort Yukon, So tons to Circle City, 1,500 tons to Dawson, and probably cached consider- able quantities at points along the lower Yukon from which no definite information has been re- ceived. Nearly all of these supplies consisted of food-stuffs. Such other supplies, aside from live cattle, as were taken into the Yukon country last year were, with the exception of about 100 tons, transported over the Chilkoot or Skaguay trail, and thence adown the lakes and rivers. The cattle (more than 200 head) were driven over the Dalton trail from Chilkat to Fort Selkirk, there slaugh- tered, and thence conveyed in boats and on rafts to Jjci'.vson. The excepted hundred tons were carried in the May West and the St. Michael, tiny ri>rer steamers, up the Yukon from the sea. The St. Michael g^t no further than Circle City, and the May West seems to have been caught somewhere below F'ort Yukon. The two trading companies adhered throughout the year to a scale of prices adopted at the begin- ning of the season, and were not tempted by the scarcity of supplies or the co.^t of getting freight to Dawson by way of the upper Yukon to traffic in the needs of the men of the country. The prices charged by them in Dawson are sufficiently indi- cated by these quoti\tions : Wheat flou*-, good grade, $6 a fifty-pound sack ; oat meal, twenty cents a pound ; fair-grade ground coffee, in tina, fifty cents a pound ; tea of ordinary quality, $1 a pound ; cube sugar, thirty cents a pound ; rice, twelve cents and one-half a pound ; beans, twelve cents and one-half a pound ; well cured bacon, forty cents a pound ■111- the t to the ices ndi- ade, ts a nts ube and alf id 67 condensed vegetables, $9 a dozen cans ; standard brands of baking powder, $2 a pound ; dried fruits, medium quality, tnirty cents a pound ; cheap-grade calico, twenty cents a yard ; narrow canvas, |i a yard ; cheap-grade overalls, $1 a pair ; light woolen socks, $1 a pair ; woolen overshirts, light and poor, 52 . 50 a piece ; Indian-made moccasins, $^ a pair ; Indian-made mittens, $s a pair ; stoneware-china plates, $6 a dozen ; cheaply silver-plated tea-spoons, ^3.50 a set ; brooms, I1.50 apiece ; cheap smoking tobacco, 1 1 a pound ; spenii candles, $6 a box. The supplies brought to the Klondike by way of the mountain passes could not be sold for less than $1 a pound as an average without loss by the seller, if he counted his time as having value. No con- siderable quantity of such supplies changed hands. One thousand head of sheep brought to Dawson by way of the Chilkoot, sold for $1 a pound, by the carcass, dressed, until only 20,000 pounds remained. When we left Dawson these 20,000 pounds were a drug on the market, the demand having been sup- Elied. Another lot of mutton, 10,000 pounds, rought by anr-^^her route, also remained unsold. The cattle cost, delivered in Dawson, an average of thirty cents a pound, and sold at from eighty cents to I1.25 a pound. About 6o,oocj pounds of the beef remained unsold at the close of December, the de- mand for it at the ruling price having ceased. 68 XVIII. CONSIDERING THE OUTLOOK CHEAPER COSTS OF MINING YELLOW METAL. FOR THE "T^ITHOUT doubt time will bring modification ^^ of some conditions out of which have come high wages and costliness of supplies ; but even though the regulations whereof we especially com- plain would be just when such modification shall have been realized, it were unwise and inequitable to pursue them before the change. Laws should have regard to immediate conditions when they are to be operative presently. And the Government should not be deluded by the prospectus of this or that concern into the belief that substantial modifi- cation will be speedily effected ; for it is one thing to plan in a metropolitan office, and another to execute in a frozen wilderness. Those companies which promise great things as a result of navigation of the lower Yukon should be considered in the light of that experience which has shown the lower Yukon to have as many moods as a woman, and to present problems with which the most skilful river captains are often unable to cope. It may be worth while to remember that of more than 800 passengers whom the Alaska Com- mercial Company and the North American Trading and Transportation Company undertook to carry to Dawson last year by way of St. Michael, fewer than fifty were landed at destination, and that nearly all the efforts of the latter company to get steal ' Ts as far up stream as Dawson signally failed • yet these corporations have for years been studying the Yukon. So, the gentlemen who are seeking a franchise for a railway from the Stickine river to Lake Teslin should be considered in connection with these facts : 69 lat 'om- ^ding [ry to fewer that get iled: lying :hise ^ake Iwith 1. The Stickine Riveri usually begins to run ice about the ist of Novembe]^ and ordinarily is closed to navigation from then until between April 20th and May ist, although Dr. Dawson observes2 that in some years the ice is running by the middle of October, and in 1887 the first canoe from the upper river did not reach the coast until May i8th. 2. Lake Teslin and the Hootalinqua River are never navigable between November ist and the middle of May, by reason of ice, and in some years are closed even longer. For example, in 1887, when Dr. Dawson^ found that some of the lakes in similar latitude with the Teslin were not open for navigation until June loth, whilst as late as May 22nd the Hootalinqua could be crossed in places on ice-jams. 3. It is 150 miles'* from the mouth of the Stickine River to the point at which it is proposed the rail- way shall begin, sixty-five miles ^ from the head of Lake Teslin to the head of the Hootalinqua River, and 135 miles*' thence to the junction of the Hoot- alinqua and the Lewes — that is to say, 350 miles of waterway not navigable more than five months of the year, and some years not so long — 350 miles of waterway of which the railway is not designed to cut off one, its length ( 150 miles) being the distance between the Stickine River and the head of Lake Teslin. 4. From Skaguay to the junction of the Hoota- linqua and the Lewes is only 226 miles -J so that travellers might be expected to prefer the route they are now using, even with the railway a fact instead of a proposal, during at least seven months of every year. 5. The Lewes and the Yukon are closed by ice about the same months as the Hootalinqua, and in that for seven months, at least, of every year a person journeying from the mouth of the Stickine to Daw- son would, notwithstanding the aid of a railway such as is proposed, have to make his way by dog ^ 70 team or otherwise for 680 miles on the ice, the confluence of the Hootalinqua and the I,ewes being 330 miles^ from Dawson,* it is clear there could be no winter freight traffic by way of the Stickine ; for it has been abundantly shown by men of the Yukon and indeed by several distinguished ex- plorers of Arctic regions that he does well who can make a journey of that sort encumbered by nothing not essential to his maintenance eji route. 6. As to summer traffic, the advantage to the Yukon District of such a railway vadiy easily be overestimated ; for it appears unlikely that the gentlemen who contemplate constructing it have any present will for carrying freight at rates apt to invite reduction of the prices hitherto quoted by the two trading companies now selling supplies in Daw- son after having carried them in the companies' own bottoms by way of the Lower Yukon. On no other tenable theory are we able to account for this language of the BilP now before Parliament treat- ing of the railway : The tolls to be collected upon the said line of railway between the Stikine and Teslin Lake, whether by the contractors named in the said contract, or by the Company, and whether for passengers or freight, including Her Majesty's forces, police and others travell- ing on Government service, and Government stores an I freight, shall be first fixed by the Governor in Council, and the tolls so fixed shall not be liable to reduction until the said railway has b^en in operation for four years ; but such tolls shall be reduced bj' the Governor in Council by twenty-five per cent, from and after such four years, and after the said railway has been in operation seven years they shall be reduced twenty-five per cent, ofi" the tolls as previously reduced, and after the said railway has been ten years in operation the fixing of tolls shall be subject to the provisions of The Railway Act. True, it is to be presumed that the Governor- General in Council will consider the needs of the Yukon District, in fixing tolls; but it is certain the long annual period wherein nothing can be earned will justify unusual charges, and it is equally clear that tolls which can be cut fifty per cent, and leave a satisfactory profit margin on a railway hung up . between ice-packs for seven mrnthsof every twelve will have to be remarkably high. Moreover, the transshipment of freight frjm Stickine boats to the railway cars and thence to boats on Teslin will prove expensive ; whilst the charges for the 680 miles of carriage by water may necessarily be placed high, for boats and officers will be idle the greater part of every year, and there appears to be no evi- dence to support the belief that navigation of the Hootalinqua, the lycwes, and the Upper Yukon ( even supposing the Five Fingers and Rmk Rapids to present no substantial difficulties) is easier than navigation of reaches of the I^ower Yukon other than along the Yukon Flats. Furthermore, the Bill cited contains no provisions for regulating charges on the boats to be run, in connection with the railway, between the head of Lake Teslin and Dawson. The outlook, we submit, is hazy. 7. Practical men, it is suggested, will not depend on the railway for the transmission of supplies in- tended to reach the Yukon mining camps this year. The contract set forth in the cited Bill does not oblige the contractors to open the railway for busi- ness, as a common carrier, on or before the ist of next September, but to have it at that date at such stage of construction as " will permif'' of operation. Besides, no obligation is imposed with regard to lake and river boats. It seems improbable that the railway, if chartered, will be constructed soon enough to handle freight before the Yukon is sheeted with ice again ; and it seems unwise, there- fore, to consider it a factor in determining the cost of mining in the Yukon now or during the months between now and the opening of navigation in June, 1899. Whatever may be the success of various trans- portation concerns, however, human nature will not ch? nge ; and only as competition compels reduction of wages and the charges for supplies will reduction be made. Competitors are not so heedless of the ^^ 73 • conditions governing in new mining camps as to fight fortune from their doors unnecessarily ; and t!^c experience of mining districts shows that wages and prices drop slowly, no matter how excessive they may be at the outset. "Witness California, now a half -century from the finding of gold by Marshall, which to this daj^ declines copper coins and, for years after competition had actively begun in all her mining camps, preserved wages and prices that made her peculiar amongst the American States. But more important than all this, in estimating the probable modification of the present expensive- ness of placer mining in [he Yukon District is the value of properly weighing the relation borne by climate to the ruling costs. Careful study of the preceding chapters will persuade the inquirer that life can never be so cheaply supported in the Yukon District as in the Australian, Calif ornian, or South African gold-fields ; that prospecting at such cost as obtains in easier latitudes is an impossibility and will continue so ; and that the major part of the expensiveness of washing gold is due to the circum- stance that the ground handled is frozen all the year from the roots of the moss to the greatest depth yet reached — sixty feet. Here are conditions not to be modified. We urge that they be earnestly con- sidered. If it be suggested that inventions have been per- fected for mining frozen ground by less costly methods than those pursued along the Yukon, we reply that not any of them has been tested in a latitude like ours, and not any of them has assisted in freeing a grain of gold from ice-packed gravel. And in this regard we quote from the cited sworn statement of Mr. McGillivray, ' ^ the expert on gravel mining : Improved or more economical methods are sugg^ested for thawing the ground for drift mining ; bnt owing to the difficulties of transportation and the distance from {joints at which machinery for experiment may be obtained, it is not likely that any such methods will be made available, gener- ic }' 73 ally, sooner than two or three years hence, and in the mean- time most of the rich mines of Bonanza and El Dorado will be practically worked out. In Siberia, moreover, mining under the management of skilled engineers has been con- ducted in similar deposits and under similar conditions as to climate, with ample capital, and with means of experiment- ing, yet the manner of thawing the ground there remains the same as that in vogue here. I do not believe drift min- ing will ever be made economical enough to be preferred to sluice mining in such creeks as are now being worked. XIX. COMPARING THE YIELD OF THE KLON- DIKE WITH THE YIELD OF OTHER GOLD-FIELDS. TTTE feel assured that the present attitude of ^ Government toward the Yukon District is largely influenced by misinformation as to that region ; and we apprehend there is current amongst the honourable Ministers who have framed the regulations which have moved the miners to respect- ful protest a notion that in the Klondike this Domin- ion has a strip of land so much richer than other gold-fields of the world that the ordinary measures experience has proved to be proper in other mining districts should not be regarded as important pre- cedents in framing laws for the Yukon. But there are and have been gold-fields much richer than the Klondike, and with one exception they have not in modern times occasioned extra- ordinary regulations. We have shown in a preceding chapter^ that nothing is known of the Klondike, excepting the district bounded by the Klondike and Indian Rivers, the Yukon River, and a line paralleling the Yukon and drawn forty-five miles to the east of it. What- 74 ever gold has been mined "in the Klondike" has come from this territory, thirty by forty-five miles in area. In it 4,000 men are living, and most of them are mining. The output for the year 1898, winter and summer work, may reach $7,000,000. The Witwatersrand could fit in the space occupied by this known Klondike gold-field and have nearly room enough for two more like itself, its len^h* being about fifty miles and its width ten miles. The latest report 3^ we have had time to obtain shows the yield for 1895. It was 2,277,640 ounces of gold, or 147,082,918.55. In the nine years ending with 1895 this little district yielded* 8,858,039 ounces, of the value $183,111,610. It is the Transvaal we had in mind when we spoke of an exception. The narrow policy of the Boers has been so ill-adapted to the needs of the men who have been developing the mineral resources of the South African Republic that great friction has resulted. Gilpin County, 5^ Colorado, is a patch of ground only twelve by fifteen miles in area, yet in two years it has produced gold to the value of $37,500,000 and silver worth $3,500,000. The mining district of Leadville, Colorado, could be lost in the stated bounds of the Klondike, but the latest statistics within our reach *^ show an annual yield of silver and gold to the value $10,600,000. Bodie District, California, has one mountain about two miles long" which has produced more than $18,000,000'* of gold ; and the Comstock, Nevada, less than five miles long and twenty to sixty feet wide, "- had yielded up to iSSgi'' gold to the value $125,000,000, and silver to the value $195,000,000, and continues to yield. But Colorado, California, and Nevada have failed to impose on the mines of these rich regions any unusual regulations. So far as known no creek in the Klondike — not Bonanza, not El Dorado — will yield $30,000,000 ; but in three years Alder Gulch, * * Montana, pro- 75 duced gold to that value. A single mine*^ in the Witwatersrand yielded in 1895 gold to the value 12,750,478. The Klondike claims are exceedingly few, as Mr. McDonald shows, ^ ^ which yield $35 to the cubic yard, with depth from moss to non-pay bedrock say seventeen feet, and taking only the richest of the pay-channel, say a width of thirty feet. It will not be denied by anyone having familiarity with the Klon- dike that no claim has been found there which could average one-half that yield to the cubic yard, working the width miners are accustomed to work a pay-channel in other countries ; and these few rich claims bear no closer relation to the average value of Klondike gravel-mines than the few rich spots of Australian or Californian gold-fields have borne to the average value of the mass of auriferous gravel in such gold-fields. We urge that to base upon these exceptional spots a policy bearing upon the gold-bearing alluviums of the far-reaching Yukon District would be distinctly unjust and un- reasonable. But the rich spots of the Klondike do not excite the wonder of persons familiar with the records of mining. Nothing accomplished there can be com- pared with the result achieved by the Duke of Cornwall Company, at Ballarat, in washing from 3,200 cubic feet of dirt 5,000 ounces of gold,^* an average of more than $872 a cubic yard. Neither can the Klondike approach the record of a bit of ground in California,!^ fifteen feet square, from which gold worth $62,015.40 was washed. Very recently in Trinity County, California, * ^ gold valued at $12,000 was washed from one tub of gravel. Six hundred ounces ($12,403.08) of dust were taken from one pocket,!' near Red Hill, Victoria, and so respectable an authority as Mr. J. A. Phillips!** says the average yield thereabout was twelve ounces to the tub. At Sandhurst!^ dirt has been handled which averaged $248.06 to the ton, or more than w 76 $350 a cubic yard ; and in the Ararat district ^ " twenty tons of dirt have given nearly 360 ounces of dust, or nearly I500 to the cubic yard. The bottom of one Australian shaft has yielded 145 ounces of gold,'^! and a claim in the Cassiar,^^ British Colum- bia, has g^ven six to eight men 300 ounces in a week. Therefore, the Klondike is by no means a phe- nomenon amongst mining regions so far as yield is concerned, although we submit that our chapter on costs shows it to be phenomenal for expensiveness. In no other part of the world is mining so costly as along the Yukon ; and, after all, the value of a mine is not the value of the bullion it contains, but the difference between the worth of such bullion and the cost of mining it. Measured by this rule the Klondike's richest claims sink into insignifi- cance by comparison with the richest claims of foreign countries, whilst the average claims are shown to be of little or no present value. Consider for a moment that whereas the cost of summer mining, as set forth by Mr. McDonald, is several dollars a cubic yard, in the Klondike, the same quantity of gravel has been worked in California for a trifle over three cents. ^ ^ XX. ASKING BLUNTIyY, IS THE MINER TO BE LEFT STANDING - ROOM ON CROWN LANDS ALONG THE YUKON? ^' ^T^HE Answer of Apollonius to Vespasian is full ^ of Excellent Instruction," observes Lord Bacon ; '* Vespasian asked him ; What was Neroes overthrmv ? He answered ; Nero could touch and tune the Harpe well ; But in Go7>ernmcnt, sometimes he used 77 full ,ord roes line ised to winde the pins too ^lig/i, sometimes to let them do7vne too lo%v. And certaine it is, that Nothing destroieth Authority so much, as the unequall and untimely Enterchange of Power Pressed too farre, and Relaxed too much. ' ' Should the Dominion do as it is asked to do by Messrs. William Mackenzie and Donald D. Mann, and shou 1 it, on the other hand, perse- vere in its present laws as to the Yukon placer- miners, the world would have a strong example of the sort condemned by the great English philoso- pher. And in saying this we do not mean to insin- uate aught aspersing the motives of the public men of Canada ; tor we entertain feelings of distin- guished respect for the statesmen of this Dominion, and whatsoever we think we observe which is con- trary to justice and subversive of the common weal we attribute to imperfect understanding of the con- ditions governing in our distant land. Stickine and Teslin Railway. What are the chief features of the railway Messrs. Mackenzie and Mann are willing to construct ? An almost obsolete standard, gauge, and equipment, i quite unsuited to the cheap and expeditious hand- ling of large traffic ; a terminus only twenty-six miles2 nearer to Dawson than are the wharves at Skaguay ; one hundred and fifty miles ^ of rails so sandwiched between the ice-packs of the Stickine and Lake Teslin as to be useless for at least seven months^ of every year ; a scale of tolls which will be ten years ^ in getting down to a point where the Railway Act can reach it ; an absolute monop- oly6 of railway ingress to the Yukon District for not less than five years and may be for twice that period ; the right of having as an annex steam- ships'" on the Stickine, on Lake Teslin, and on the rivers of the Yukon District, but no obligations to establish such annex and no governmental control of tolls*^ on such steamships as may be operated. ^ 7» What is the price demanded for this absurd ex- cuse for a serviceable highway to the Klondike ? Extravagant tolls;*" the right to dawdle^ - indef- initely before opening the railway as a common carrier; the right to shuffle stock*' in a way to place shareliolders on unequal footings as to profits ; the right to have directors chosen* •'' by star-chamber methods ; the right to engage in nearly every form of trade** short of vending town-lots on the stars ; the right to raise the money wherewith to build the road by selling or pledging the lands*' to be granted as subsidy ; and, above all, nearly everything worth having in the Yukon District. It is with the last portion of the price that we wish especially to deal. The Bill in Parliament relating to this matter sets forth the following* *^ with regard to the extent of land grant : In aid of the construction of said lin« of railway from Stickine River to Teslin Lake the (Government shall grant to the contractors for each mile of said railway twenty-five thousand acres of land to be selected as hereinafter mentioned from the Yukon Provisional District and from that part of the North-West Territories of Canada lying west of the Mackenzie River and Liard River and north of the 6oth parallel of latitude, such land to become vested in the contractors upon the said railway being completed and accepted as complete by the Government and upon the said land selected as hereinafter set forth. That is to say, it is asked that 3,750,000 acres of land be given Messrs. Mackenzie and Mann. Yet the entire district about Dawson in which anyone is even prospecting is only thirty by forty-five miles* '' in dimensions, an area of 864,000 acres ; and it is not known at this moment that the Yukon District contains in all its length and breadth an area of mineral land worth working now or years from now aggregating anything like the empire sought by these good gentlemen as part payment for a railway worth}^ of Lilliput. What of the miner ? Where is he to turn ? What is to be left for him ? And as the Honourable, the Minister of the Interior observed*^ recently in addressing the Commons, ' * We know that for many years past upon this con- 79 res of Yet •neis Llesi^ it is strict :a of now It by [Iwa^ ;re is id as lerior ions, con- tinent there has never been so great a movement of population to any one place as seems to be imminent at the present time in what is known as the move- ment to the Klondike District." And he continued, *' It is such facts as these we have to deal with." How, pray, is the Government dealing with them ? The contract recited in this Bill gives*" three years from the ist of September, 1898, for selection of one-half the lands, and six years from the same date for selection of the remainder. So soon as any ten continuous miles- ° of the railway are complete two blocks of the land may be selected and reserved from the general public, and on completion of the entire railway the blocks thus reserved shall be confirmed to the contractors. The method of selection is provided for as follows :^* The lands shall be selected by the contractors along base lines, and the base lines may be of two kinds : First. The contractors may take as a base line a line which will correspond with the general course of any lake, river, stream or watercourse, such line to be determined by survey or approximate survey to the satisfaction of the authorized agent of the Minister of the Interior, and to follow the general course of the lake, river, stream or water- course for the required distance ; and Second. The contractors may take as a base line a line commencing at any point located by them and running from such ^int due north, eastj south or west. The land along a base line shall be divided into blocks, each block to extend three miles along the base line and to extend three miles backwards on each side of the base-line. On each bn.se line there shall be ut least eight of such blocks, but there may be more at the optic n of the contractors. These blocks shall be numbered fro.n oae up consecutively ; the odd-numbered blocks shall be the property of the contractors : the even- numbered shall remain the property of the Government. The contractors shall take at least four blocks on each base- line established by them for the purpose of selection, but shall not be bound to take more— but they may take as many more as they desire and as circumstances peimit. Thus upon each base line so e.stablished there shall be laid out a tract not less than twenty-four miles along the course of .said base line by three miles on each .side thereof in width, mak- ing eight blocks of three miles by six miles. Provided that if in the selections of lands along any base line the courses thereof prevent rectangular blocks being laid out, such blocks shall be adjusted to the required angles, preserving w 80 as far as practicable blocks of au are?, of thiee miles by six. Auy shortage or surplus o^ such area shall be adjusted by the prolongation or shortening of such base line. It has been suggested^- by the honourable Min- ister quoted that it is unlikely ten miles of the rail- way could be completed before the I5tli of June, so that, to use his own words, " from now until then any portion of that country can be taken up by any of the thousands of people who are going in." But this is misleading ; for no matter what efforts are put forth only a very small percentage of these thousands can reach the Klondike by June 15th, as the most superficial study of Mr. Ogilvie's reports must persuade. F'ew persons who intend to mine in the Klondike are likely to undertake the journey thither without a year's outfic of food, and no per- son witti such impedimenta can go from " the out- side " to Dawson between now and the breaking of the ice. In that they who go by boat cannot find safely navigable waters before the close of May the number who will arrive in the gold-fields before June 15th wir not be difficult to count. Moreover, it requires a six-month'^'' after one gets into the Klondike to do any such prospecting as should justify the recording of a claim. There is a great deal of difference between getting to Dawson and getting a claim if one be a real miner rather than a curbstone speculator ; and it is in behalf of the real miners we are pleading. But that is a sorrowful policy, frankly, which encourages the miner by saying : Beat the railway men to the Klondike, and you may get a place to dig without consulting them. It has been said - ^ by this honourable Minister that "if this companv [referring to MCvSsrs. IN.^ac- kenzie and Mann] wants \o get any gold-bearing territory at all, it is compelled to take its base line by following the general coarse of the stream, and to take this in blocks six miles wide ; " but a study oi" the contract^ "^ will show that whilst the contract- 8 1 real iiister ll\:^ac- iriiig line and itudy Iract- ors " may " take a base line so, they may preferen- tially take as a base line "aline commencing at any point located by them and running from such point due north, east, south, or west." However, assuming that base lines would be run as suggested by the honourable Minister, Messrs. Mackenzie and Mann's holdings would aggregate 960 miles of creek and river claims, and drag their way over about 2,000 miles. Yet Bonanza Creek is onlv twenty-three miles long and PU Dorado only eight. There could be no security, with the contract confirnu^d and ten miles of the railw" ^' complete, that a miner could avoid lieing en coi..' passed by Messrs. Mackenzie and Mann ; for the contract contains this covenant :-'' Any and all mining claims actually held and recorded pursuant to Government regulations by a free minor or free miners and beinu within a block of land taken or se' jcted by the contractors here- under shall be excepted from the grant and shall not pass to the contractors, provided that such claims have been so actually held and recorded prior to the base line, along or with reference to which such block is taken, being actually run and marked on the ground by the contractors * * * In case any if /y?rsc?iible to get water and sluice-box arrangements in so short a claim to enable them to work to a;iy .idvantage. Accordingly they peti- tioned for the 500-foot claim approved by their experience, and it was given them. That length is the shortest that is consistent with the grade there and the packed condition of the dirt to be handled. A aso-foot claim is nearly valueless. Men who under- stand mining will not prospect for so short a claim. It cannot be worked to profit ; and in some cases it cannot be worked at all. When the miners drew this line the world was giving them no heed, and they were dealing with the situation from the practical standpoint of men who were bent on working the claims located. Has Canada some better information than that these toilers of the north have starved and suffered to gain ? 'in I 93 XXI. URGING THAT THE TAXE SLAID ON YUKON PLACER MINES AND MINERS ARE UNJUST, OPPRESSIVE. PROHlblTlViS OF MINING. AND WILL NOT YIELD THE COSTS OF COLLECTION. 'TPHERE is widespread indignation in the Yukon -*' District b!ecause of the extravagant taxatibti imposed on miners, by recent regulations ; ana it does not spring from unwillingness to contribute reasonably toward the maintenance of government, for there is no such unwillingness, but from the knowledge bom of hunger and weariness and heart- ache that the taxation is cruelly unjust. The men of the Yukon respect the obligation I'o paj^ taxes, and will not murmur against any policy which is not crushing ; but they earnestly jM^otest against a course whi(^ must result in closing min- ing operations in all but the feW remarkably rich claims of their District, and in driving the average nliner into foreign gold-fields. Have the honourable gentlemen addressed care- fully considered from how many sides thfe Yukon mines are menaced by taxation ? Before a person can have any privileges in the District he must pay an annual tax of fio (com- panies must pay more) for a '* free miner's certifi- cate."^ Then, to locate a claim he must pay an •'entry fee "* of $15, and to hold the claim hemust thereafter pay an annual charge" of I15. In addition he must I)ay a royalty on the ^ross output of the claim. The regulations* as to royalty are as follows : .tit % A royalty of ten per cent, on the gold mined shall be l'ev^e<]l and collected on the ffross output ofeach claipi . The royalty may be paid at banking offices to be established •inder the auspices of the Government of Canada, or to the Gold Com- 94 tt I missioner. or to any Mininjgf Recorder authorized by him. The sum of |2,^oo shall be (^ducted from the gross antiual output of a claim when estimating the amount upon which rovalty is to be calculated, but this exemption shall not be allowed unless the royalty is paid at a banking office or to the Gold Commissioner or Mining Recorder. When the royalty is paid monthly, or at longer periods, the deduction shall be made ratable on the Ixisis of^ $2,500 per annum for the claim. If not paid to the bank. Gold Commissioner, or Mining Recorder, it shall be collected by the Customs offi- cials or police officers when the miner pa.sses the posts established at the boundary of a district. Such royalty to form iMirt of the consolidated revenue, and to be accounted for by the officers who collect the same in due course . The time and manner in which such royalty shall be collected shall be i>rovided for by regulations to be made by the Gold Commissioner. Default in payment of such royalty, if continued for ten days after notice has been posted on the claim in respect of which it is demanded, or in the vicinity of such claim, by the Gold Commissioner or his agent, shall be followed by cancellation of tlie claim. Any attempt to defraud the Crown by withholding any part of the revenue thus provided for, by making false statements of the amount taken out. shall De punished by cancellation of the claim in re.spect of which the fraud or false statements have been committed or made. In respect to the fact^ as to such fraud or f:e final. All this suggests the thought that there are limits to the right of Government to lay taxes, and invites reflection on the duty of the Dominion to examine relations borne by this taxation toward the miners upon whom, and the mines upon which, it is im- posed, and toward other persons and properties in Canada. Certainly there are things which the Government has no constitutional right to do, and not everything should be done which it is lawful to do. Taxation That Is Hurtful. We deny the existence of a right, in times of peace, to levy taxes so burdensome as to amount to confiscation ; and we charge that the present regulations will have the effect of rendering value- less miles and miles of placer claims already locat- ed in the Yukon District, and of depriving of value 95 ;s of ount sent lue- cat- lalue thousands of acres of auriferous gravel not yet claimed. In this regard we refer to the chapters of this plea wherein the character of the Yukon gold-fields has been laid bare so fi'.r as men yet know and in further confirmation of our position we (juote from the cited sworn statement"' of Mr. McGillivray : (^cild h;is becMi foiuid to exist in a tract of coiiiitrv extcnd- iiij^ iroin the ll(M)taliiuiua Kivcr, at least, to the boundary line below Forty-Mile, a distaiue of nearly 400 miles. It has been shown that in all this country, along nearly all streams Kold can be washed : but in no jxirtion of this vast district has^old t)een mined with more than the most n;eagre prolU except uiK)n a few claims in the Forty-Mile, .Sixty-Mile, and Klondike divisions of the Yukon Di.strict. * * * * * * There have been located in the Yukon Di.strict more than three thousjiud claims — more than 250 miles of creeks ; anil a very small jwrtion of the territory located — not more than 50 miles — is generally lielieved to be workable with profit i)y present methods and present values — and by "jfe lerallv believed," I mean generally believed by the niiu'-M-s of exi)erience with whom 1 have spoken in this regard. The royalty of ten and twenty per cent, will prevent the working of a great many mines — probably some even on HI I ;orado and many on Bonanza, and certainly all or nearly all so far as shown on Hunker. Bear, and other creeks of this District. It should be said that when we left the Klondike the regidations'' placed a royalty of twenty per cent, of grovss output on the richest claims. Since then* the Government has reduced the royalty on these most valuable claims, placing them on the ten per cent, footing of the average holdings. The testimony of Mr. McGillivray is entitled to great respect. The gentleman is one of the most skilful experts on gravel mining the great needs and resources of California placers have V)rought to the fore, and, having no selfish interests in the Yukon District, is an impartial witness. I^'or a long time Mr. McGillivray has had editorial charge of the leading mining journal'' of the Pacific Coast, and he was sent as a mining expert to the Klondike by Mr. 96 4: James Gordon Bennett, to tell the readers of the New York Herald the exact truth as to the character of the Yukon mines. Corroborative of this gentleman's statements is this excerpt from the sworn declaration* of Mr. Alfonso A. Tregedgo : I, Alfonso A. Tregedgo, do soleinly declare : That 1 am a native of Kngland, a resident of Dawson, Can.ida, and a mining engineer by profession . That I have been engaged in mining during the last twenty-one years, and have had charge of (luicksilver copper, silver, and gold (both quartz and placer) mines on the Pacific (..'oast. I am thoroughly conversant with mining in all its branches. That, in my opinion, the most recent changes in the mining regu- lations for the placers of the Yukon District are unjust to the miner and detrimental to the development of the mineral resources of the North-West Territories. I refer to the changes imposing a royalty, diminishing the length of creek and river claims, and re- serving claims from location in the common way. That the history of mining in other countries of the world shows that the average of profits derived from mining has been less than the royalty provided for in the aforesaid regulations. 'I'h:»t, whilst some rich placers have been discovered in the Klon- dike Mining Divivioti of the Yukon District, it is not likely that all creeks or many creeks in that Divisi'./n will prove to be as rich as Bonanza and El Dorado creeks are. And, after examination of Bonanza and El Dorado, the richest streams yet known in said District, I give it as my opinion that, taking as a basis the average value 01 the worked-out portions of said streams, the total product of both of them will not l)e m any sense a justification of a heavy tax. That mining in the Yukon District is much more expensive than in any other part of the world, the claim-owners having to pay excessively for labour and supplies, but, above all, having frozen ground to work in and being greatly impeded by the terrible severity of the climate. The circum.stances all considered, I can- not see how the average profit to the Yukon miner can be expected to be so great as the average profit has been to the miners of Cali- fornia, Russia, Australia, or South Africa = Withal, conditions in any part of these countries being easier than those governing in the Yukon District, the profit in any of them did not average the per- centage of gross yield now proposed to be collected hce as royalty. I cannot escape the conviction that should Canada persist in the determination to collect a royalty the effe' t will be to drive the miners from the North-West Territories — probably into Alaska. So, Mr. McDonald, the foremost miner of them all, says in his cited sworn statement i^* : Iti my opinion a royalty of ten or twenty per cent, of outinit i.s certain to render unworkable nearly all the claims in said [Yukon] District, and to keep capital out of the Klondike. 97 )f the racter ;nts is )f Mr. Canada, enty-one ind gold 1 am ipg regu- t to the ■esources iposiiiR a i, and re- Id shows less than he Klon- y that all as rich as ination of in said average roduct of ivy tax. sive than Ik to pay |g frozen terrible 1 can- ixpected of Cali- litions in ig in the I the per- [royalty. in the [rivt the Iska. them letit. of Iclaims lof the And in this he is corroborated by Messrs. Alexander Calder, John Lind, and Skiffington Mitchell^', all pioneer Canadian miners of the Yukon, thoroughly conversant with the output of the placers there. Perhaps the situation as to the low-grade gravel may be better understood by showing how it fares with the high-grade gravel. We quote from the sworn statement ^^ of Mr. Hill : I, Charles liill, do solemnly declare : That I am familiar with the output and expenses of Claim No. 5 above Discovery on Konanza Creek, in the Klondike Minin;^ Division of the Yukon District, Dominion of Canada, a claim generally regarded in said District by the mining; men thereof as one ofthe fairly rich claims of the Klondike. That during the season of " summer working," last {last, about five box-lengths of said claim were worked ; that is to say. a pit was worked from surface to non-t)ay bedrock, in the richest ijortion of the pav-streak, twenty-eight feet wide and an average of thirty feet long. That the said pit was opened in two cuts, and was in form as indicated thus : Jjjt. s s 14 ft t4ft> 14 ft. 14 ft. s s s That the said cuts were made in the nresent creek bed of Bonanza Creek, thus avoiding consiaerable .stripping of surface mo.ss and muck. That from the creek bed to bedrock in said cuts was between seven and eight feet, with an average depth of pay gravel of one lOot. That bedrock in said cuts was worked to a pay-depth of about two feet. That the gross yield of said summer working was as follows : • June, 1807 1 5..-^S.oo July, '• .S,7oooo Aujfust. 1.^97 16,537-25 Septcmlxr. 1897 6,4??. 25 Total $ 34,023.50 That an itemized account was kept of the wages paid the labourers who picked, shoveled, and bluiced the dirt from said cuts, and the af^j^regaie is $19,180.^0. This does not include anv of the labour items for the deadwork, such as building of cabins, building of dam, construction of waste-ditch, building of sluice-boxes, setting < it sluice- boxes, maintenance of riffles, and the like, n* r any items for materials or tools used or for provisions consumed. I'hat I have heard read the affidavit of Alexander McDonald as to cost of deadwork, and hereby declare that the figures therein a noted are approximately the figures representing die outlay for eadwork on said claim No. 5. The affidavit of Mr. McDonald is quoted in the preceding chapter dealing with the cost of mining in the Yukon District. Mr. Hill's statement should be amplified by the information that during the time mentioned claim No. 5 wasowned by three men, and that the 119,180.80 is not inclusive of any wages to them, although much of their time was spent in working the property. Will someone have the goodness to demonstrate that had every man employed on this claim been taxed $io a year for the right to work, and had a royalty of ten per cent, been collected on the differ- ence between ^2,500 and 134,023.50, and had the proper /w rata of the en9rmous cost of deadwork Deen charged against the yield — will someone, we ask, have the goodness to demonstrate that these partners oould Uav« bought beans and bacon at the close of a season's operatiox^ of their rich Klondike claim ? And suppose they had paid |ioo.,ooo for the property and hoped to earn return on the invest- ment and some d^y to get th^ir capital in hand again, what then ? But if it is thus with the Hch claim, what of the low-grade claim ? Can it be expected that with su^ch weight of taxes men could aiford to work the aver- 99 oo oo .2.S .25 ■50 id the t from include ding of iing of and the ovisions }nald as therein itlav for in the tuning should tig the emeu, of any le was istrate been had a idiffer- id the [work we these I at the tndike the ivest- hand >f the su,ch aver- age gravel even in the Klondike? And is it -not a fact that it is vast deposits of low-grade gravel and not the few high-grade spots which have yielded and are yielding the yellow nielal of the world ? Does Canada wish to pursue a course which leaves the Yukon as though its low-grade gravels had never been brought within the reach of pick and shovel ? If it be argued that the $2,500 exemption enables the poor gravel to be worked, we reply that at least two men are required to operate a claim, and that f round from wliich they cannot jjain more than 2,500 a year will not be workable, in that the living expenses of two men and the unavoidable outlay for mining would exceed the yield of such a claim, leaving a deficit instead of wages. Taxation That Discriminates. What does the Government desire ? Is the pur- pose to make the Klondike pay the taxes of Ontario and Quebec ? But the Government has no right to do a thing so palpaoly unjust. The true view was taken by the famous John Hardy, first gold-fields commis- sioner of Australia. He was testifying before the Gold Fields Com- mittee of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, in 1855, and these questions and answer.^** are instructive : Question 21 (by the ColonirAl Secretary). Has it occurred to yoo that over and above the revenue suiiicicnc to maintain the estab- lishmcnt for these [peace) piarposcs it would be desirable to obtain a revenue from the gold applicable to other and more general pur> poxes? Answer That involves the question whether the government ought to get »s much as they could, or whether they ought to be contented with less than they could get if they were to go to the extent of their power. Question at (by Mr. Wentworth). I take it that there can be no donbt bnt that the gold fields are the property of the public? Answer. Yes ; the gold field is, but the gold is not ; that is, the Kold brought to ^e surftice by man's hidustry . I cannot conceh'e the justice of taxing one roan mere tbai» another, o» why the gold- lOO i m li il:gger$b should be taxerl more than the rest of the community, always supposing that they repay the expense which the Govern- ment is put to by their occupation of the gold fields. I'he gold is under ground, and would remain there but for the work of these men. 1 heir industry brings it to lignt in the same way that the fleece of the flock is brought to the market by the industry of the squatter, and the produce of the field by the industry uf the farmer. Question 34. Do you not think that it should be our object to obtain as much revenue as can be obtaineeneficially ? Answer. Yes ; but beneficially is a word of wide meaning. You may get a large revenue, but it might lie more lieneficial to get a smaller one. Is not the Government aware that the average profits of the miner are no greater than the average profits of other men, and not nearly so great as the average profits of merchants and farmers? Cer- tainly the Honourable, the Minister of the Interior, must have this knowledge, for he observed in a recent speech** to the Commons of Canada, ** that in the aggregate it takes more money to find and take out gold than the gold amounts to after it is taken out. ' ' And he added : ** The total amount of money spent in taking gold out of placer-mining regions through- out the world, so far as known, is far in excess of what has been taken out." The rich spots are exceptional, and the enormous outlay of time and money in prospecting ought to be considered in weighing the relation of the gold- dust in the miner's cabin to the state of which the miner is a member. Moreover, taxation of ^^ross output is indefensible, whether the tax is laid on a gold mine or a lumber mill or an iron foundry. There is no fixed relation between the gross yield of any mine and the wealth of its owner ; and lust as a mill may turn out mil- lions of feet of lumoer in a year, and whilst so doing send its operator to the poor-house, a ^old mine may yield hundreds of ounces of dust without ad- vancing its owner an ell toward prosperity. Wit- ness a Bonanza Creek claim, regarded in the Klon- dike as rich, in which one of the representatives was interested, whose yield for a season's run lOl isible, imber lation wealth mil- |doing mine t ad- Wit- lon- tives run though pleasant to look upon fell |5,ooo short of paying the labour bills incurred in mining it. What would be thought of the Government which, on hearing a rumour that a few lumbermen were making extravagant profits, should leap to the con- clusion that every lumber mill must be as good as a mint, and, without waiting to inquire, impose on all lumber mills an annual tax of ten per cent, of the value of their gross output ? Even if the Yukon District should pay an aggre- gate sum such as the regulations seek to gather into the national treasury, there can be no justifi- cation of the system which splits it into a vexatious number of taxes and lays them all exclusively on miners. Why should the trading companies, the shop-keepers, the liquor-dealers, and the artisans contribute nothing to the maintenance of govern- ment, beyond the inland and tariff taxes which miners pay as well as they ? Are the toilers of the mines the only beneficiaries of government ? Nor, if the Yukon District should be taxed to the extent the regulations call for, is there apparent reason whv the twenty-second section of the Bill by which it is sought to give Messrs. Makenzie and Mann a valuable railway franchise, and the seven- teenth section of the "Schedule " of the same Bill, should become law. They are as follows : 22. The lands granted to the contractors or to the company under the said contract, shall be free from taxation for ten years from the granting thereof, except municipal taxation by an incor- ? orated city, town or village within the Provisional t)istrict of 'ukon. 17. There shall be payable to and reserved by the Government a royalty of one per cent, upon all gold mined by placer or alluvial or hydraulic mming upon the lands selected hereunder. The policy of making fish of one and flesh of another seems questionable ; and if various forms of taxes and a royalty of ten per cent, are excellent aids to desirable ends in the case of placer ground in the hands of John Doe, they should be equally good in the case of placer ground in the hands of m I02 Messrs. Mackenzie and Mann, especially in that the lands sought by Mackenzie and Mann will, should the Bill become law, be theirs in fee simple and therefore free of annual entry fees and the regulations requiring actual mining operations to prevent forfeiture of title ; whereas the miner who relies on the Crown leasehold must pay such entry fee and also carry on mining operations on his claim for at least three consecutive months of every year, as the Gold Commissioner's ruling now stands. But, it may be urged, how, in the absence of heavy taxes, is Canada to benefit by possession of the Klondike ? To which we make answer : As Cali- fornia, and Colorado, and Nevada, and Arizona, and Montana, and Australia, and British Columbia are benefiting by tlieir Klondikes, which is another way of saying what one of the ablest journals' '^ of the Dominion said recently : I'he chief benefit Canada can derive from the Klondike gold fever is indirect, rather than direct. ♦ ♦ * 'j'^g gain < anada must look lor from these gold-fiekls is the increased trade they will give her. Taxation That Is Odious. The royalty on gold is unjust and oppressive, and the miners are mindful of its qualities. They are, through us, seeking the repeal of the regulations imposing it ; and there is not in tlieir attitude any- thing disrespectful of authority, for they rest in the contentment that the tax was levied in ignorance of some things Government has hitherto enjoyed no means of knowing — things having to do with con- ditions under which mining is carried on in the ice- bound Klondike. Therefore, they confidently ex- pect repeal, having, as they have, the utmost faith m the solicitude of Canada for their welfare and the best interests of her north-western empire. But it may serve to silence opposition from the un thoughtful, if any such there are, to remind that the collection of odious taxes has invariably I03 the lind lably proved to be immoderately costly -so much so, in sooth, that the public revenue'3 have rarely profited in respect of them. British Columbia has given trial to a royalty on gold, and, although it was liberal ••• to the miner in comparison with that imposed on the men of the Yukon, experience led to abandonment. The revenue derived was slight ; the friction engendered was extreme. Australia has tried to collect excessive taxes from the miners, and has in her statute-books written the trial a failure, after great losses of money ^ " and much bloodshed. ' '* The Transvaal is now trying to prove Australia ti^ed in growing gentle to her miners; but we ail know of the dangerous under-current ever r' imiu^ there in con- sequeuon, and the terminiic.un of t!ie struggle between the Republic and the miners is not yet. Why should Canada enter on a.* illiberal policy? Why should she not profit by the experience of hsr own British Columbia ? Why should she not con- sider the meaning of Australia's inability to main- tain in the halcyon days of Ballarat and Bendigo a policy of taxation which asked the miner to give olily thirty shillings'" a month to Government? Why should she ignore the practice of the most enlightened nations in dealing with modern gold- fields, and return to the first crimson pages of history for her precedents ? In Australia to-day the miner pays only a few shillings a year to the state ; in the United States he pays as the merchant pays, as the farmer pays, a tax on the wealth he can command ; and in other lands where mines are no longer novelties the miner is not regarded as an interloper who may be despoiled of so much of his property as it pleases this or that ministry to find acceptable to its notions of propriety. To govern thfe Yukon gold-fields, with taxatioh reasonable (or even 'JxceSvSive short of the pal- pably oppressive ) , a score of police will be ample tor every 20,000 men, provided the Dominion shall I04 ^ve the Yukon District readier means of organiz- ing effective civil municipalities. To govern the Yukon gold-fields and make them "pay their way," with taxation odious, will require an army. How can it be hoped to keep an eye on the output of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of claims, all sluic- ing at the same time (many of them night and day), without a force of hundreds of spies and collectors, in a country whose auriferous placers are difficult marches apart, and with the Interna- tional Boundary on the edge of the richest gold- fields, so to speak ? And if the average cost to the state of maintaining a salaried officer in the Yukon District is $2,000 a year, how much of a deficit may the Government have ultimately to deal with should it pursue the royalty policy vigorously? We do not say this in a spirit of threat ; but history repeats itself, and we cannot but think of Australia's unfortunate experience in her early dealings with the miners. Conscious that the men of the Yukon are earnest workers v/ith no desire to shirk their duty to the state, we cannot but urge the adoption of some policy of taxation which while accomplishing all that the Government can with reason seek, will not crush the hopes of these toilers nor cause them to regard the Government as heedless of their rights and careless of their trials. There is no need of the slightest friction ; and we have the utmost faith there will be none. Besides, perseverance in the royalty policy might bring annoying and costly litigation. It is not clear that excessive taxes, discriminative in character and not required in the orderly enforce- ment of government, can be collected from the mines leased prior to the adoption of the regula- tions imposing vsuch taxes. The Government has duties as well as rights ; and it might develop that amongst its duties is respect for the terms of its contracts with claim-holders. The doctrine that the Government may by ex post facto laws, and I05 M without the consent of the grantee, vary in essence the terms of the grant cannot be accepted until the highest court of the Dominion shall have sanctioned it. It were a dangerous thing to meddle with mines if one could have no security that his grant from the Crown would not shift with the notions of every ministry. Yet, notwith- standing that the grants thus far made to Yukon miners assign '* the exclusive right to all the pro- ceeds *' realized from the placer claims conveyed, for the year specified in the conveyance, and not- withstanding the regulations with reference to which the locator took and the Crown granted, provided for renewals of these grants from year to year on payment of an annual fee, the Government now asserts itself possessed of the right so to amend the terms of the original grant ana renewals thereof as shall leave to the grantee not all but ninety per cent, of the proceeds of the mineral land conveyed. We cannot see that it has better stand- ing under the constitution in taking unto itself ten per cent, of the gold than ten per cent, of the land, unless the exigencies of Government really require inordinate taxation and the miner is not singled out to the exclusion of the general body of rate-payers. If we are mistaken in this, it were wise not to risk investments based on the probable profits of a mine operated under the terms of a Yukon grant ; for behold ! the basis of calculation is changeable at the will of a state body which may alter from year to year at the touch of con- siderations the furthest possible remove from min- ing. Surely the grants made by the Crown are not so like the chameleon. In essence they must have pennauence. Royalty cannot be so excessive as to rob thc:m of the qualities that led the miner to accept them and to place his time, his hopes, and his money in the balance. io6 XXII. OUTUNINO The PRINCIt»AL CHANGES THE YUKON MINERS PRAY THE GOVERN- MENT TO MAKE. /^^OMING now to the conclusion of our appeal, ^^ we beg to set down in order and brieflj' the recommendations we have been comthissiotied to make. As representatives of the miners of the Yukon District, we pray : 1. That the Yukon District be given direct repre- sentation in the Parliament of Canada. Before the close of the current year the population will num- ber many thousands ; and it is neither right nor prudent to reduce so important a portion of the Colony to the need of expressing itself in the ?at- liament through men who have never set foot within its boundaries. 2. That it be given the measure of home rule consonant with the general scope of government in organized portions of the Dominion, and popu- lar in character. To have its local government administered from a point so remote as Ottawa, or to have erected in its limits an autocracy such as the genius of British government has set its face against for many a century, cannot but prove in- jurious to its interests dnd the interests of all Canada. 3. That it be ^iven improved means of speedily organizing municipalities, to the end of saving the vexatious delays unavoidable as the laws stand. 4. That it be given such transportation facilities as shall place it in prompt connection with tide- water all the year. And in this regard we urge broad statesmanship having recognition of the mutual interest of the United States and Canada — the one because of Alaska, the other because of the Yukon District ; and we suggest an international I07 convention providing for improvement of the Yukon River and construction of a railway from the sea to some point far enough adown the Yukon to enable men to transport freight readily with horses to Dawson during the annual period wherein the Yukon is closed to navigation. 5. That it be given a postal service forthwith instead of the wretched thing Canada and the United States are dignifying with that name ; and we say it is shameful to both Governments that the mails so important to the District have been suffered to accumulate hundreds of miles from their desti- nation at times when private individuals have foimd it possible to move from end to end of the postal route. 6. That it be not menaced by the occasion for extravagant taxation afforded by the presence within its boundaries of a multitude of unnecessary officers. 7. That the regulations imposing royalty on the output of placer mines be repealed, and the scheme of taxation be revised in such manner as shall place taxation equitably on all classes of population rather than on one class. We advise an annual poll-tax, and a general tax on the net wealth of individuals and companies ; and we feel sure the Yukon District will not murmur against a poll-tax high enough to )neld the Government all the revenue it can reason- ably desire and very much more than the net returns from an)"^ royalty it can lawfully impose. 8. That the length of every creek, river, and gulch placer claim be made 500 feet. 9. That no placer claims be reserved from loca- tion in the usual way. 10. That the timber of the Yukon District be sold there instead of thousands of miles from there. And in this relation we point to the injustice of giving control of timber to men who are not miners but who design to batten on the necessities of miners : and we deem it cruel to sell in Ottawa at I! .!:! 1 08 times prohibitive of bids from the toilers of the Yukon the scanty forests so essential to winning the gold from frosted depths. 11. That regulatians be framed defining with certainty the laws applicable to water-rights in the District, and that these laws be made along lines adapted to the peculiar conditions obtaining there and permissive of the mining of hill claims. 12. That the reflations dealing with the use of dredgers in the District be supplemented by provi- sions for the granting of permits for mining river channels by the hydraulic processes used when streams are diverted from their accustomed beds. We submit it remains to be proved that the gravel of Yukon streams (frozen below a varying depth from water) can be mined by dredgers, dredge-mining having been confined to sea-sands and non-packed gravel, so far as we have knowledge ; and until it IS shown to be possible, we suggest, no more miles of Yukon rivers should be leased for dredging. 13. That the land grant sought by Messrs. Mackenzie ana Mann be not made. Above all, we pray promptness in the framing of a settled policy along broad, magnanimous lines. What could justify the state in hesitation ? It has, now, the testimony of pioneer miners, modern engineers, and Canadian officials as to the facts, so far as they are known to-da)% on which its policy must rest. Without reviewing the abundant and detailed information contained in the sworn statements we have filed in the Department of the Interior, much of which has been quoted in preceding chapters, we cannot pass to the last word of this appeal with- out speaking of the general conclusions of the three classes just enumerated. And first, the pioneers, those strong-souled men who have earned the right to be heard with the great- est respect when the state is hedging with laws the treasure they have found. Arthur Harper and I09 )licy liled we luch lers, [ith- iree len fat- the ind Frederick Hart, the pioneers of pioneers,^ have passed away ; but before the end each spoke — the one' in California, the other on his death-bed in Dawson — and both expressed pain at the ungener- ous attitude of Canada toward her gold-hunters, as shown in the regulations as amended last August ; and both said surely fairer laws must follow on the heels of fuller information. Henry Thibert, the discoverer of gold in the Cassiar ; Joseph Juneau, the man who first washed gold in the famous Alaskan district which bears his name ; Peter Erus- sard de Ville, who uncovered the celebrated Paris lode ; and all the other members of the little band of pilgrims who blazed the way to the Northland and were alive and in the Klondike when the news of Canada's changed policy was first proclaimed there, are signers of the petition accrediting us to speak in protest of the crushing changes. One or them, Mr. John Bourke, a citizen of Canada, who since early in 1886 has been facing the perils of a miner in the Yukon, concludes a strong aflfidavit, ® designed to inform the Govern- ment, with these significant words : In my opinion the development of Alaskan and Canadian - Yukon placer ground demands — not a cramped and exacting policy of government, but the utmost liberality from both the United States and Canada. The natural difficulties there are so great that if Government shall add burdens instead of conferring benefits the result cannot possibly be advantageous to anyone or to the state. And the mining experts who have recently made their way into the gold-fields confirm the discon- tent of the men with the picks and shovels as righteous, and the laws as unreasonable. If Canada were to call for testimony from a man eminently qualified by education and experience to give most enlightened data and draw just con- clusions as to gravel mining, she could not but accept the testimony of Mr. Augustus J. Bowie. The distinguished engineer is wintering in Dawvson ; and after examining the mines thereabout he gave no it as his couclusion^ that a royalty of twenty per cent, of output would kill the District ; that a royalty of ten per cent, would cripple the best claims and render valueless the average gravel ; that a 5oo>foot placer claim is none too large ; and that the mining regulations should be taken in hand by someone having knowledge of the country and rendered liberal and miner-like. So, another capable expert, Mr. Alfonso A. Tregedgo, has said** : I do not believe any practical miner would care to prospect thiii vast wildernesji unless more inducement is oflfered than is o ered by Canada since the changes of regulations ; and I am certain capitalists would not care to invest heavily in a district menanced by the new regulations. That men may even now be pressing Uuher does not disprove thU ; H)r prospecting here has come to a standstill so far as unexplored creeks in Canada are concerned, and the men who have not been here are likely on seeing the country to agree that it is nothing strange that this is so. I nrmlv believe the enlightened |}olicy for Canada will be one ol the broadest liberality to the miners; for this [Yukon] District shouM be explored, and carefully explored. I am satisfied as a result of my personal inquiry that the regulations [imposing royalty, reducing length of claims, and reserving claims from location in the usual way] will discourage devek>pment of the mineral resources of the District. The climate is uninviting, the soil is worthless, access to the District is difficult, every move is inordinately costly and labourious ; and if the policy of the Government be narrow and oppressive men will find it to their advantage to turn elsewhere. The Domiuion's officials in the gold-fields are cordially in sympathy with the opinion that the amendments the miners find objectionable are in truth unreasonable and not adapted to the mines of the Yukon. We feel certain the Honourable,^ the Mit^ister of the Interior, will so assure enquirers ; for he has in his keeping the reports aitd recom- mendations of Inspector Charles Constantine, the ilrst Gold Commissioner of thie District ; those of Mr. Thomas; Fawcett, present Gold Commiasioner o£the District ; and the reports of Mr. Og^lvie and knowledge gained from personal interviews with that gentlemaii,, who, it may be obsemred, otj: learning at St. Michael of the amendments of Au^^ust 8> 1897, scQutied the report as in€rediible». Ill for that he believed it impossible the Government could make changes so opposed to the interests of the Yukon and the Dommion. ' ' Show the rational governing faculty a contra- diction," said Epictetus, "and it will withdraw from it." Therein is our hope. Until now the Government has not been in possession of enough facts to know the present regulations for what they are ; and we have faith that the solicitude of Can- ada for the happiness and weal of all her people will lead to speedy relief of a District it could never have been her design to disadvantage. And when the relief takes form, we commend the scope consistent with this prophecy : that there, near the Arctic Circle, amidst primeval wildness, is sprin^ng a mighty province whose history shall be wnt in gold, and whose foundations should be laid with statesmanship and that sweet gentleness of spirit which is mindful of the rights and heedful of the petitions of even the least amongst men. of I ( c n t] tl b( R€ m .S« p. REFERENCESAND EXPLANATIONS. II. 1 Mining liecordn of HnrriN Mining DiHtrict, AlaKlca, vol. 1, p. 1. 2 Joseph Juneau and Ricliard Harris discovered gold at tbe moutli of Gold Creek. Hee Mining Records of Harris Dlntrict, Alaska, vol. 1, p. 1, and Bruce's Alaska^ ch. iy, p. 31. Mr. Juneau is mining on Hunker Greek, near Dawson. The town of Juneau was so named in honor of him. 3 N. A. Fuller was the first to locate a quartz lode. In October, 1880, he recorded a claim on Gk>ld Hill. 8ee Mining Records of Harris District, Alaska, vol. 1. The real discovery of paying quarte, hov^ever, was by Peter Erussard de Ville. in May, 1881. Then was located the famous Paris lode on Douglas Island. See Book B, Lode Claims, records of Alaska, p. 52. Mr. de Ville is a resi- dent of Dawson. 4 G. W. Qarside, Tbe Mineral Resources of Southern Alaska, Trans. Amer. Inst. Min. Eng., xxi, 1892, p. 815. 5 Fifth Annual Statement Alaska Treadwell Gold- Mining Company. 6 Alaska Mining Record, special edition, Jan., 1898. 7 Ibid. One of the representatives knows this to be true. 8 California and Scotia lode claims, located by J. G. Davies and E. P. Pond. 9 Fifth Annual Statement Alaska Treadwell Gold- Mining Company . 10 Alaska Mining Record, special edition, Jan. 1898, p.21. 11 Ibid, pp. 5.6. 12 Ibid, pp. 16, 21. 13 The Alaska Treadwell Company alone has mined more than $8,000,000, and the yieldiof the Alaska-Mexican Gold-Mining Company's Douglas Island claims is up- ward of $250,000 a year. See Annual Statements of these corporations. 14 This is assuming that of the Klondike's spring clean- up last year $1,500,000 was hoisted from the drilts in 1897, that the open-cast summer mining yielded $1,000,000, and that of the spring clean-up for 19&S $1,000,000 will have to be credited to 1897 winter mining. As to these estimates see SI cceeding chapters on the Klondike. In 1897 the mines of the Juneau district yielded about $2,000,000. See Alaska Mining Record, special edition, Jan., 189S, p. 21. 114 15 Compare the proflts already speciAed with thme given in the chapters on the Klondike. 16 Miner W. Bruce, Alaska, ch. iv, p. 31. 17 Alaska Mining Record, special edition, Jan., 1888, p. 6. 18 This statement is made on the authoritv of several miners in tne Yukon Disiriet who have resided in Hltka, Mr. Peter Erussard de Ville for one. 19 Miner W. Bruce, Alaska, ch. iv. p. 35. ao Alaska Mining Record, special edition, Jan., 1898, p. 21. III. I Francis Tagliabue, Deputy United States Surveyor for Alaska, in Tacoma News, Dec. 14, 1897. R' 2 Between 2,000 and 3,000 men, most of them poor, and many penniless, or nearly so, poured into the region, under the impression that prospecting could be done with somewhat the same rapidity as in Australia, Cali- tbrnla, orNew Zealand. Naturally, the majority were a0 eager to leave as they had been to go there. 8 This statement is made on the authority of Cook Inlet miners at present in the Klondike diggings. 4 W. M. Wheeler in Tacoma News, Deo. 14, 1897. 5 Ibid. tf Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. II Ibid, and Alaska Mining Record, special edition, Jan. 1898, p. 25. 12 W. A. Dickey in Tacoma News, Dec . 14, 1897. 13 Tacoma News, Dec. 14, 1897. 14 W. M. Wheeler in Tacoma News, Dec. 14, 1897. 15 Alaska Mining Record, special edition, Jan., 1896, p. 21. 16 On the Apollo Consolidated properties. 17 AlaskaMlnlng Record, special edition, Jan.. 1898, p. 3. 18 Francis Tagliabue, Deputy United States Surveyor fbr Alaska, in Tacoma News, Dec. 14, 1897. 19 Miner W. Bruce, Alaska, ch . iv, pp. ^(5, 36. IV. 1 Statement of John Bourke, a Canadian prospector wbo has found colours, but nothing satisfactory, along tUe KuskokwiiQ. Filed by the representatives with the Minister of the Interior, Ottawa. 2 Supplementaj'y Report issued in conjunction with the report of Capt. Kay» U.S.A. ; War Department, Wash., Feb^l898 3 Miner w* Bruce, Alaska, ch. iv, p. 36. 4 Alaska Mining Record, special edition, Jan. 1898, p. 5. m.k "5 thONe ., 1898, Jtor [along bhthe with lent, |, p. 5. 6 Ibid. 6 Miner W. Bruce, Alanka, ch. iv, p. 36. 7 Ibid. 8 Tacoma Mewa, Dec. 14, 1807. V. 1 Mr. Bettles, one of the pioneers of Alaska and the Yukon District, Is a resident of Dawson. He is tempo- rarily this side the Chlikoot and may be consulted readfiy. 2 Statement of John Bourke, on tile with the Minister of the Interior, Ottawa. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Mr. J. (i. Davies, now of Juneau, is an ansayer and an analytical chemist and understands prospecting thorouglily. He informed Mr. Livernash recently of the matters set forth. The examination of the Tanana was made in 1K89. 7 A contldontial Iriend of one of the representatives. 8 The information of Minook Creek was gained by the representatives from Mr. Max Newberry and others, in Dawson, who have been in Minook District since the rush there, and from the most recent private lettern re- ceived in Imwson from the Lower Yukon. 9 Statement of John Bourke. 10 R. G. McConnell In (ieological Survey of Canada, pt. d. an rep., vol. iv., 1888-9, p. i4ud. 11 Ibid, p. 122d. 12 Exploratory Survey of parts of the Lewes, etc., pt. vlii. Department of Interior reports, 1889, Ottawa. 13 Geological Survey of Canada, pt. d, an. rep., vol. iv, 14 The Klondike Official Guide, 1898, p. 86. 15 Ibid, p. 29. 16 A statement recently made in writing to Mr. Liver- nash. VI. 1 Wm. Ogilvle, Klondike Official Guide, p. 86. 2 Statement of John Bourke, filed by the representa- tives, Department of the Interior, Ottawa. 3 Based on reports sent to agents Alaska Commercial Company In Dawson, by their Circle City correspon- dents. 4 Samuel C. Dunham, U. S. Bureau of Labor, in letter from Circle City to one of the representatives. 5 Miner W. Bruce, Alaska, ch. vli. p. 57. 6 Statement of John Bourke, filed by the representa- tives. Department of Interior, Ottawa. Abundant testi- mony to the same efi!(ect is readllv obtainable from one- time Birch Creek miners who have journeyed nrom Dawson to " the outside " this winter. ii6 7 Kxpresscd in recent letter to one of the representa- tives. 8 ThiH 1h stated on the authority of dozenH of miners actually employed at $lUaday until they abandoned work on Birch Creek in order to try for a fortune on tho Klondike. » Home have already returned. 10 A couMervative estimate based on the most careful inquiries of the trading companien and miners. 11 Statement of John Bourke, filed by the reprehienta- tivPH, Department of Interior, Ottawa. 11! Ibid. l.{ Ibid. 14 A stream larger than Bonanza Creek. 15 San Francisco Examiner. Feb. 21, 1898. IH Wm. Ogilvie, Exploratory Survey of parts of the Lewes, etc., pt. viii. Department of the Interior reports, 1880, Ottawa, p. 29. 17 Ibid, p. 1«. 18 Geological Survey of Canada, pt. d, an. rep., vol. iv. 1888-89, p. 140d. 19 Wm. Ogllvle, Exploratory Survey of parts of the Lewes, etc., p. 10. 20 Ibid. 21 Based on statements of many former Forty-Mile miners now in the Klondike. 22 A conservative estimate made by the representa- tives from the best information obtainable in Dawson. VIL 1 Wm. Ogilvie, Exploratory Survey of parts of the Lewes, etc., pt. viii, Department of Interior reports, 1889, Ottawa, p. 29. 2 Unfortunately there is in practice no necessary con- nection between locating a claim and finding an aurif- erous deposit Hundreds of claims have been located in the Klondike region on which no prospecting has been done. The speculatively Inclined are easily satisfied. It In the real miner who, intending to earn money from his claim, does not use his right of location until he has found a deposit ot gold. 3 Page 88. 4 Filed by the representatives, in the Department of the Interior, Ottawa. This sworn statement is endorsed by the " solemn declarations " of three other expert Klon- dike miners, all Canadians, and these declarations are similarly filed. VIII. 1 Filed by the representatives, in the Department of the Interior, Ottawa. 2 Page 1 of Preface. 117 3 Exploratory Survey of parts of the Lewes, etc., pt. vlil. Department of Interior reports, IHSft, Ottawa; Re- port on tUe Peace River and Trfbutarles, pt. vll, Depart- ment of Interior reports, 1892, Ottawa. 4 The statements as to topography and rocks are nec- essarily laulty, but arn as near the truth as the rooresen- tatlv'^8 have been able toget with the pres«»nt lniia«'quate exploration. They are based on our personal otisorva- tlons, andon frugmentary Information gathered from the men of the Klondike. 5 StaUiment ot Alexander McDonald, tiled by the repre- sentatives, In the Department oi the Interior, Ottawa. H Ibid. 7 Toronto Globe, 1S97. 8 Statement filed by the representatives. In the Depart- ment ot the Interior, Ottawa. IX. 1 Maps contained In Wm. Ogllvle's Klondike Offlclal (iulde. 2 Wm. Ogllvle, Klondike OtHclal (Julde, p. .');?. ;{ This statement Is made on authorltj' of several Klon- dike miners familiar with tlie stream. I Wm. Ogllvle, Klondike (Jfflclal (Julfiie, p. '>{. .'» Miner W. Bruce, Alaska, ch. v'i, p. .>>. H Estimated by the representatives trom data obtained of Klondike miners from the Sixty-Mile. 7 The conclusion of nearly all the miners who have examined the region. 8 Elenewals of leases confirm this statement. See re- ports of (lold ('ommlssloner Favvcett to the Minister of the Interior, ( )ttawa. 9 Wm. Ogllvle in ^Exploratory Survey of parts of the Lewes, etc.. Department of Interior reports, pt. vili, 1HK9, Ottawa, pp. 27, 28, reports the travels of Alexander Mc- Donald, who went to the head of a large branch of the Stewart; but he evidently found no one who could say anything of the source oi the main river. 10 Geological Survey of t'anada, pt. b, an. rep., 1887, p, 18:^b, II Wm. Ogllvle, Klondike Official (Julde, p. 52. 12 Ibid, p. S8. 13 Mr. Houser Is at present in Dawson. He Is a typical prospector ot the best school. 14 (ieological Survey of Canada, pt. b, an. rep., 1887, p. I8b. 15 Ibid, p. 181 b. Irt Page 88. 17 Page 76. 18 Authorized stenographic report, published in Van- couver World, Dec. 31, 1897. 19 Wm. Ogilvlo, Klondike Official Guide, p. 86. ii8 ao Ibid, pp. 68, 60. 21 Ibid, p. 76. 22 Mr. Ferguson Is temporarily In New York, where he may be consulted as to this. 2S In December, 1897. 1. Geological Survey of Canada, pt. b, an. rep., 1887, p. 17 b. 2 Ibid, p. 119 b. 3 Ibid, p. 13S b. 4 Ibid, p. 129 b. 5 Ibid, p. 181 b. 6 Ibid, p. 128 b. 7 Ibid, pp. 128 b, 129 b. 8 Ibid, pp. 119b-141b. 8 An estimate given one of the representatives, last autumn, in Dawson. 10 Geological Survey of Canada, pt. b.,an. rep., 1887, p. 129 b. 11 Ibid, p. 1JJ4 b. 12 Ibid, p. 120 b. 13 Ibid, p. 147 b. 14 Ibid. 15 Pago 42. 16 Page 70. 17 Wm. Ogllvle, Klondike Official Guide, p. 42. 18 Ibid. 19 Geological Survey of Canada, pt. b, an. rep., 1887, pp. 161b, 152b. 20 Ibid, p. 180b. 21 Ibid, p. 152b. 22 Ibid, pp. 181b, 182b. '£i Klondike Official Guide, p. 42. XI. 1 Geological Survey of Canada, pt. b, an. rep., 1887, pp. 179b, 180b 2 Ibid, p. 181b. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Exploratory Survey of parts of the Lewes, etc., pt. vlii. Department of Interior reports, 1889. p. 40. 6 Geoloj^ical Survey of Canada, pt. b, an. rep., 1887, p. 18lb. 7 Ibid, p. 27b. 8 Klondike Official Guide, p. 68. 9 Geol(»gical Survey of Canada, pt. b, an. rep., 1887. 10 Ibid, p. 1.55b. 11 Wm. Ogilvle, Klondike Official Guide, p. 111. 12 Geological Survey of C'anada, pt. b, an. rep., 1887, pp. 155b, 156b. 119 where )., 1887, 68, last >., 1887, 887, pp. ^7, pp. [C, pt. B7, p. 13 This i^ said on authority of pioneer minern now in the Klondike. XII. 1 Geological Survey of Canada, pt. b8, an. rep., 1887 , p. l(X)b. 2 Ibid, p. i)8b. 3 Ibi«1, n. 97b. 4 ibid, p. 84b. 5 Ibid, p. lOOb. 6 Ibid, p. 101b. 7 Ibid, p. 98b. 8 Ibid. p. 102b. 9 Ibid, p. 105b. 10 Ibid, p. 108b. U Ibid. 12 Ibid, p. 113b. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid, p. 117b. 15 Ibid, pp. 117b, 118b. 16 Ibid, p. 119b. XIII. 1 Wm. Ogilvle, Klondllie Official Guide, p. 50. 2 Mr. Harper said this to one of tlie representatives. Mr. Ogiivie appears to have gained tiie impression that Mr. Harper found gold on the White ; but we believe the impression is erroneous. 3 The account of his experience in the region wherein the White, the Tanana, and the Copper head, is in writ- ing, and Is in the possession of one of the representa- tives, for whom It was prepared. 4 R. G. McConnell, (ieological Survey of Canada, pt. d, an. rep., vol. iv, 1S88-9, p. 144d. 5 Wm .Ogiivie, Klondike Official Guide, p. 50. 6. Ibid. 7 R. (i. McConnell, Creological Survey of Canada, pt. d, an. rep., vol. iv, 188S-9, p. 144d. 8 The narrative of his prospecting on the Copper is contained in the statement mentioned In note three. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Wm. (Jgilvie, in a lecture repor .ed by the Vancouver World. Dec. 31, 1S!>7, p. 9. 15 Statement mentioned in note three. |7, pp. XIV. 1 By an agent of the Alaska Commercial Company. 2 Wm. Ogllvie, Klondike official Guide, pp. 65, 60. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. f 1 20 5 J. A. Phillips and Henry Louis, A Trektiseon ore Depo8itR,1896, p. 567. 6 The Prospector's Handbook, 1«97, p. 9. 7 Henry N. Copp's Manual lor Prospectors, 1897, p. 1.>I. 8 Now in Dawst.a. He is manager of the North Amer- ican Trading and Transportation Company's Yukon business. 9 They have been examined by one of the represent- atives. XV. 1 J. A. Phillips and Henry Louis, A Treatise on Ore Deposits, 1896, pp. 326, 327. 2 Ibid, p. 513. 3 Ibid, chapter on The Indian Empire, beginning on p. 569. 4 Ibid, pp. .^2, 563. 5 Ibid, p. 567. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. S Geological Survey of Canada, pt. h, an. rep., 1887, pp. 42b, 43b. XVI. 1 Wm. Ogilvie, Klondike Official Guide, p. 62 2 At "Examiner Cabin," two miles above the Klon- dike. 3 Observations made by George W. Morgan . 4 Sworn statement of John D. McGiUivray, filed by the representatives, in tlie Department of the Interior, Ottawa . 5 Sworn statement of Charles Hill, an expert miner; filed by the representatives,in the Departmentof Interior, Ottawa. 6 Geological Survc^y of Canada, pt b, an. rep., 1887, pp. 42b, 43b. XVII. 1 Chapter vili. 2 Filed by the representatives, in the Department of Interior, Ottawa. Mr. McDonald is a native of Canada. 3 The facts given as to supplies were gathered by the representatives from the best authorities in Dawson. XVIII. 1 Geological Survey of Canada, pt. b, an. rep., 1S87, p. 60b. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid, p. 173b. 4 Wm. Ogilvie, Klondike Ofllcial (Uiide, p. HI. 5 Ibid. 121 154. Kloii- |nt or tada. the 1S87, »i Ibid. 7 Ibid, pp. 114,115,119. S Ibid, p. 111. !> An Act to conflrm au agreement between Her Majesty and William Mackenzie, etc. 10 Sworn statement of John D. McGillivray, tiled by the representatives, in the Department of Interior, Ottawa. XIX. 1 Chapter viii. 2 Phillips and Ixjuis, a Treal-ise on Ore Deposits, 1896, pp. 731, 7;}2. :J Seventh Annual Report of the Witwatersrand Chamber of Mines for 1895, p. 172. 4 Ibid. 5 Phillips and Louis, a Treatl'^e on Ore Deposits, 1890, p. 778. (> Report of t'le Director of the INllnt, upon the l*roduc- tlon of Precious Metals In the U.S., Washington, 1882, p. 416. 7 B. Sllllman, Report to the Empire (iold and Silver Mining Company. 8 Phillips and Louis, A Treailse on Ore Deposits, 189(), p 75:3. 9 Ibid, pp. 756, 757. 10 Eleventh Census, U.S., Mineral Industries, p. lis. 11 Raymond's Report, 1870. 12 Robinson Mine. See Directors' Annual Report. 1895. 13 Chapter viil. 14 Phillips and Louis, A Treatise on Ore Deposits, p. H27. 15 P. Laur, " Du Glsement et de I'Exploltation de I'Or en Callfornle," Ann. des Mines, 111, 18(i;{, p. 412. 16 At the Eastliclt mine, near Weavervllle. 17 Phillips and Louis, A Treatise on Ore Deposits, 1896, p. 624. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid, p. 6;^0. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid, p. 621. 22 (xeological Survey of Canada, pt. b, an. rep., 1887, p. 81b. 2;{ Augustus J. Bowie, Treatise on Hydraulic Mining, Table xliii. XX. 1 The contract calls for a road '* of the general standard and gauge of the Kaslo and Slocan Railway in British Columbia." See section l. The Kaslo and Slocan Rail- way Is narrow gauge. 2 From the head of Teslin liake, where the railway is to terminate, the distance Is U5 miles to the head of the Hootallnqua River ; thence to the licwes River, lli") miles ; 132 from the Junction of the Hootallnqua and Lewes rivers to Dawson, 330 miles. From tide-water at Bkaguay to the head of Lake Bennet the -iistance is 5^ miles; from the head of Lake Bennet to Dav;son, 518 miles. See Wm. Ogilvie's Klondike Official Guide, pp. HI, 114, 115, 119. 3 Section 1 of contract. 4 The Stickine River, Lake Teslin, and the Hootalln- qua, Lewes, and Yukon rivers are not navigable more tnan five months of the year, by reason of the ice. See authorities cited In chapter xxlil. 5 Bill in Parliament, "An Act to confirm an Agree- ment between Her Majesty and William Mackenzie and Donald D. Mann, and to incorporate the Canadian Yukon Railway Company," sec. 21. 6 Ibid. sees. 4 and 5 of Schedule. In this regard the case has l)een strongly summarized in tliese words: " For a coast and boundary line of over 1,(K)«) miles not a rail shall for five years be laid to compete with Messrs. Mann and Mackenzie. No matter what eligible passes may be discovered, no matter what citizen may wish to oulld and engage in lawful transport, there stands the flaming sword ol the (iovernment flushing in the mone- tary defence of Mann and Mackenzie." (Quoted in the Commons by the Minister of the Interior, Feb. 16, 1898.) 7 Sec. 12 of the Bill cited in note 5. 8 The Bill cited in note 5 is silent in this regard. 9 The Bill cited in note 5 fails to provide for fixing or regulation of tolls on steamships. 10 Sec. 2] of the Bill cited in noted; see also chapter xviii of this appeal. 11 The contract does not oblige the contractors to open the railway for business as a common carrier on or be- fore September Ist, 1898, or by any specified time: it re- quires thorn to have it in such stage of construction by September 1st, 1898, as " will permit " of operation. See sec. 1 of Schedule of Bill citocl in note 5. 12 Sec. 9 of the Bill cited In note 5. 13 Ibid. The holders of " preference sliares,' who need not be holders of a majority of the subscribed shares, may nevertheless be in absolute control of the aft'airs of the company. 14 The Bill cited In note 5 authorizes the company to conduct railways; acquire and operate steamers; ac- quire, maintain, and operate wharves, elevators, and warehouses; acquire and operate mines and mining rights: erect and manage works for generation and transmission of electric light, heat, or power; carry on business as vendors of merchandise, ores, and mineral products; and construct, acquire and operate lines of telegraph and telephone 15 Section 19 of the Bill cited »n note 5. 16 Sec 11 of Schedule, Bill cited in note 5. 17 See chapter viii. . ^ 123 my to ; ac- and lining and r/ on Ineral les of IS Speech in the Commono, Feb. 1«, 1898. 19 Sec. 13. 20 Sec. 18. 21 Sec. 12 of Contract. 22 Speech in the Commons, Feb. 16, 1858. 23 Sworn statomcni of John D. McQiliivray, filed by the representatives, in Department of Interior, Ottawa. 24 Speech in the Commons, Feb. 16,1898. 25 Sec. 12. 26 Sees. 16, 19. 27 Sec. 22 of Contract. 28 Sec. 35 of Regulations Governing Placer Mining in the Prvoisional District of Yukon. 29 Authority cited in note 23. 30 Sec. 16 of of contract recited in Bill cited in noted. " Held and recorded," is the language of the section. 31 Sub-division second of Sec 12 of contract recited In Bill cited in not« 5. 32 Speech in the Commons, Feb. 16, 1898. 33 In the summer of 1897 a rich find was made there by Kresky and I'eterson, and the slope has been shown to be exceedingly valuable. 3i For instance, adjoining the fifties, below Discovery, Bonanza Creek ; or on the left, side of El Dorado Creek. Jtt Second sub-division ol Sec. 12 of Schedule recited in Bill cited in note 5. 36 Speech in the Commous, Feb. 16, 1898. 37 Chapter viii. 38 Phillips and Louis, a Treatise on Ore Deposits, 1896, p. 886. 39 Ibid, p. 753. 40 Order-in-Council, Jan. 18, 1898. 41 Regulatio 1 16. 42 Phillips ai d Louis, A Treatise on Ore Deposits, 1896, p. 544. 43 Regulation 16. 44 GeologicalSurveyofCanada, pt. b,an. rep., 1887, p. 5b. 45 Regulation 17. 46 Mr. Ogilvie did not survey either end of Bonanza Creek or the upper end of El Dorado. 47 See his progress reports to the Minister of the In- terior. 48 Order-in-Councll, Aug. 8, 1897. 49 Sworn statement of John D. McGlllivray, filed by the representatives, in the Department of the Interior, Ottawa. 50 Regulation 10. 51 Treatise on Hydraulic Mining, p. 219. 52 I'Mled by the representatives, in the Department of the Interior, Ottawa 5;? Wm. Ogilvie, Exploratory Survey of parts of the Lewes, etc., pt. vill Dept. of Interior rep., 1889, p. 3^1. .>4 Klondike Official Guide, p. 7t. 124 55 Augustus J. Bowie, Treatise on Hydraulic Mlninji^, p. 219. 56 See note 49. 57 Ibid. 58 Augustus J. Bowie, Treatise on Hydraulic Mining, p. 234. 69 Sworn statements of Alexander McDonald, Alex- ander Calder, John Lind, and Sklffington Mitchell, filed by the representatives, in the Department of Interior, Ottawa. 60 Regulation 17. 61 See note id. 62 Ibid. 6;i See reports and recommendations of Inspector Con- stantine, N. M. P. 64 Sec. 2319 R. S. of U. S. 65 Sec. 2331 R. S. of U. a 66 One of the representatives has personal knowledge of the historical data here given. XXI. 1 Regulation 2 of the Regulations Governing Placer Mining in the Provisional District of Yukon. 2 Regulation 28, Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Regulations 30, 31, Ibid. 5 Sworn statement of John D. McGillivray, liled by the representatives, in the Department ol the Interior, Ottawa. 6 Order-in-Couucil, Aug. 8, 1897. 7 Order-in-Council, Jan. 18. 1898. 8 Mining and Scien title Press, San Francisco. 9 Filed by tlie representatives, in the Department of the Interior, Ottawa. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Rolph Bolderwood, in Cornhill Magazine, Nov., 1897. 14 Feb. 16, 1898. 15 Daily Nor'-Wester, Aug. 28, 1897. 16 Five per cent, of output. 17 At one time the deticit in Victoria was £1,000,0(JO. See Greville Tregarthen's work on Australia, pp. 242-259. 18 In December, 1885, at Eureka Hill, a captain of the 40th Regiment was fatally wounded ; thirteen soldiers were badly hurt ; not fewer than thirty miners were killed outright, and many other miners died soon after- ward. See Greville Tregarthen's work on Australia, pp. 242-259. 19 Ibid. '-m- 125 ning, ining, Alex- , filed erior, XXII 1 These old-time miners entered the Yukon Valley in 1882, having journeyed from the Casslar diggings in British Columbia. 2 Filed by the representatives, In the Department ot the Interior, Ottawa. 3 He thus explained himself to one of the represent- atives, with the knowledge that the views he was ex- pressing would be laid before the Government. 4 In a sworn statement tiled by the representatives, in the Dt^partment of the Interior, Ottawa. Con- ledge lacer y the 3rior, It of 1897. D.OOO. 5-259. ' the diers were ,fter- i, pp. THE table: PAGE. Introductory 3 I — Candidly Suggesting That Very I,ittle Is Known of the Icy Northland 11 II — Telling of the Mines about Juneau and Sitka and Thence on to Yakutat 13 III — Giving Recent Information of Prince William Sound, Cook Inlet, and Ungfa Island 15 IV — Indicating the Dearth of Knowledge as to the Kuskokwim, Norton Sound, and the North Coast of Alaska 17 V— Dealing with the Rivers Koyukuk, Tanana, Bea- ver, and Porcupine ; I^ikewise with Miuook Creek 18 VI — Treating of Birch Creek District and the Yukon Country between There and the Boundary . . 22 VII — Couceraing the Chandindu River and Moose- Hide, Deadwood, Dion, Bryant, Montana, Baker, and Insley Creeks 25 VIII— Giving with Somewhat of Detail the Truth as to the Klondike and Indian Rivers rj IX— Relating to the Quest for Gold along Sixty-Mile Creek and the Stewart River 38 X — Being a Brief Summary Concerning the Pelly, I,ittle Salmon, and Big 3almon Rivers 42 XI — Presenting the Few Bits of Information Extant with Regard to Auriferous Deposits along the I^ewes and Hootalinqua Rivers 45 128 PAGB. XII— Respecting the Upper l,iard, Frances, and Fin- layson Rivers, and I^kes Frances and Fin- layson 49 XIII — Explaining Why the Copper and White Rivers Were Not Included in the I^ist of Gold- Bearing Streams 51 XIV — Bringing together the Data Bearing on the Presence of Auriferons Quartz in Place . . . . 53 XV— Reverting to an Earlier Statement, Namely, That the North- West Remains Well-nigh Unknown. . 56 XVI — Setting Forth the Relation of the Climate along the Yukon to the Woric of the Miner There . . 59 XVII — Describing Gravel Mining along the Yukon and Giving the Cost of ] ;xtracting Gold . . . . 63 XVIII — Considering the Outlook for Cheaper Costs of Mining the Yellow Metal 68 XIX— Comparing the Yield of the Klondike with the Yield of Other Gold-Fields 73 XX— Asking Bluntly, Is the Miner to Be l,eft Stand- ing Room on Crown I^ands along the Yukon . . 76 XXI— Urging That the Taxes I^id en Yukon Placer Mines and Miners Are Unjust, Oppressive, Pro- hibitive of Mining, and Will Not Yield the Costs of Collection 93 XXII— Outlining the Principal Changes the Yukon Miners Pray the Government to Make . . . . 106 «d Fin- Id Fin- ■ Kivers fJearing in the /, That own.. along re .. rukon Costs hthe and- n .. acer Pro- osts PAGE. 49 51 53 56 59 63 68 73 76 Icon 93 106