Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1897-11-04
BACK FROM The KL0NDIK6
Not Much About Gold But Some Little Things
about the Country that will Interest the
Reader-From a Reliable Source.

James Elwell, OF CasSYllle. the gem
tleman who wrote a number of inter-
esting letters to the Herald about the
Klondike some months ago, has re-
turned to Grant county to pass the
winter and will 60 back to Alaska
next spring.
He was in Lancaster last Saturday,
at which time he good-humoredly
and intelligently answered numerous
questions put by Chas. Harvey, Reub
Showalter, Charley Dickinson, the
Herald reporter, and a number of
other gentlemen who gathered about
him eager to learn facts which they
knew would be reliable coming from
such a source.
Mr. Elwell is a modest, intelligent
gentleman, past 30-years of age,
rugged of body, and seemingly with
out a suggestion of the wild and
woody western boomer in his make
up. He looks at things in practical
way-from the dollars and cents
standpoint-and his every movement
denotes cool calculation undisturbed
by golden visions.
To begin with, Mr.. Elwell said he
had been in Alaska several years and
knows there is plenty of gold there.
. To fin hn yhnl
face of the country is covered with a
coarse, tough moss, that hides the
stones and the nature of the land
under it, and which is about eighteen
inches in thickness from the top to
the bottom of the roots. If you want
to get at the ground for any purpose
you have first to do a great deal of
work at cleaning off the moss. In
Wisconsin, if one is going to dig for
mineral he gets some sort Of an idea
from the nature of the surface of
what lies underneath; but in Alaska
one place looks almost like another,
as on an arid waste of sand, and the
miner starts in blind.
1.-The ground is frozen, nobody
knows how deep down. said Mr..
Elwell 1.-The people at Dawson City
decided to dig a well. They dug
down over sixty feet and then gave it
up. The earth was frozen solid all
the way down with no signs of thawed
earth when they quit. We get our
water out of the creeks and there are
plenty of them flowing over the top
of the ground in summer"
4'In digging for gold you gather
wood (there is plenty of iD lay it on
top of the ground and burn it. After
the fire has burned for a number of
hours and goes out, a foot or two of
thawed ground can be taken out.
Then the process is repeated until
you strike pay dirt that is, dirt with
gold mixed through it. There is
about two feet of this pay dirt and
after getting the discovery shaft sunk
through it the miners drift along the
pay dirt level to the limit of the
claim, which is 500 feet. We dig out
this pay dirt and put it in a pile by
itself. Can dig as long as it is freez-
ing weather. When the thaw sets in
in the spring we quit digging-as the
surface water runs into the hole-and
go at washing the gold out of the pile
of pay dirt. There is a great differ
ence in the capability of men at wash
ing dirt. One man will get almost as
much again gold out of a pan of the
same dirt as another man, and some
men cannot get dollar day out of
the pile of dirt that would yield an
expert washer large wages. have
come to be quite skillful in separating
the two. New corners often get dis
couraged and leave their pile of pay
dirt after trying in vain to get the
yellow metal out. If don't find any
more gold | am perfectly satisfied
with what l already have"
Said one of the questioners: I'VE
read in the newspapers that they can
raise all kinds Of vegetables in Alaska.
How is it?''
Il never saw anything grow there
but lettuce and rata bagas. The sea-
son is too short. In summer the sun
shines on the ground nearly "a hours
a day, but it only thaws the ground
down about IS inches during the
whole warm season. There is no
warmth coming up from underneath
the surface to help thaw the ground
as there is in Wisconsin, and the water