Arizona republican., 1897-10-30
ALASKA GOLD.
Facts About the Situation Presented
 By the Alaska Miner

ALASKA GOLD.
 Facts About the Situation Presented
 By the Alaska Miner.
 Every mail brings us demand fol news from the interior We have to think of this when preparing the news of the week. We cannot at any one time publish all the information in our possession, and it quite often hap pens that the most important items are already known to our local read CTS. But we have many patrons far from Alaska who have friends and relatives here who are anxious at all times to read of what is going on at the diggings.
 It would appear thhect expert opinion of every kind and quality is in favor of the proposition that gold exists in enormous quantities in Alaska As the result of long observation Pro- lessor Dunn, a noted Pacific coast eX- pert, says that if accurate records of placers were kept it would be shown that they increased as they went up stream to point near the head where the maximum was reached. Going above this it would be found that the placers diminished until at certain point they suddenly disappeared al- together.
 This is remarkably true of the Klondyke placers. From records now in this office of the surface washings of number of the claims it is evil dent that they increase in value up tn fnSv 1v,f@ e. again. The professor also says that there is no reason to doubt that in Alaska there are lodes us rich as those in California, Idaho. Montana Nevada and elsewhere. From one of these lodes, corroded by frost and washed by stream, there might be made placers which would yield in a few years what would take ten times as long to mine by the hand of man.
 "The craft of nature," he says, "put more than thousand millions into the California placers, and there is reason in the anticipation that in the Yukon placers another thousand mill lions will be found, all things consid- cred, as easily and even quicker than was the thousand millions of the Cal ifornia placers.''
 MT. Dunn believes with many oth- CTS that the richness of the deposits of the Klondyke has been only scratched, and that there is good ground for believing that. there are others as rich or even richer. The condition, however, in Alaska is vast ly different from that in California in the early days, in that in those days the chief requisites were stout heart and a pick, while in the Yukon every miner must be small capital ist in order to be able to mine at all, or even get anywhere near where the placers are. When he reaches the interior money is the last thing he requires, and provisions the most i'm portant.
 It is not so necessary now as it used to be to depend upon blind luck for discoveries, for technical knoWl- edge of the occurrence and distribution Of gold is reasonably exact and com prehensive- 4 strange fact about the Klondyke, however, was that the rich est claims were located by tenderfeet /: they simply followed up the discovery and located the next claim available.
 Very few of the claims so far dis covered have been opened up to bed rock. The richness of the ground so near the surface is accounted for bv the severity of the winters which freeze the ground so hard that it takes tune for the gold to percolate to bed rock, and in consequence of this the upper workings of the interior placers are found to be very rich But. the man who wants to make the most of his time should go to bed rock as
  ground above prove to be rich he will ind it correspondfngly richer in depth.
 The conditions of mining in the in- terior are constantly changing. Last winter it was often the custom to give up half the proceeds for men to help work them. From that the custom changed to the giving of what was known as lay; this was a proportion or the returns, sometimes half, some times less; then came the period of high wages which has been maintain ed ever since.
 There can be no question about the scarcity of provisions in the interior and this condition of things will not be remedied as it was hoped it would m the early spring owing to the Wreck1ng of the steamer Hueneme which was chartered by the North American Transportation and Trad ing company. She had on board the lumber for two river steamers, one lighter and a steam launch complete the machinery for these boats being on the steamer Portland Forty men under charge of Moran Brothers, on the Portland en route to St. Michaels had been engaged under a five months contract to put the boats together and have them in readiness as soon as navigation opens in the spring.
 A correspondent flor the Post-Inte1- hgencer says that Captain Hayes o1 the Bertha reports the arrival of the steamer Hamilton at St. Michaels on