Daily camera. [volume] (Boulder, Colo.) 1891-1928, 1897-11-12
THE YUKON HINES.
~a1d to. Hold Billions Of Dollars in
Gold.
ne Opinion of n Mining Engineer
Concerning the Mineral Wealth
of the Northern Gold
Fields.

The interior department has received
pcopy of an article from the pen OF
Russell L. Dunn, an eminent mining
engineer Of the Pacific coast, dealing
with the theory of the auriferous de-
posits of the Yukon basin. The views
of Mr.. Dunn. are regarded with great
respect by those in the department who
hare familiar with the subject, and they
will probably be referred to the geolog
zeal survey for confirmation. Mr..
Dunn says that the placers in the Yu
hon basin are similar to those of Aus
tralia, Idaho and Montana, except for
the perpetually frozen condition of the
had little to do with the formation of
placers or the liberation of gold from
its matrix. In California the evidence
of the placers themselves is conclusive
as to their almost exclusive formation
by frost and steam erosion. Siberia
and Alaska present precisely the same
relative. glacial phenomena, the placers
being all formed before the period of
glacial action. AS the result of long OBJ
servation, Mr.. Dunn says that if accu-
rate records of placers were kept it
would be shown that they increased as
they went upstream to point near the
head, where the maximum was reached.
Going above this it would be found that
Ne p1acers diminished until at a GER
tain point they suddenly disappeared
altogether. There is nothing phenome
nal in the yield of gold in the Klondike
region. There is no reason to doubt
that in Alaska there are lodes as rich
as those in California and Idaho, Mon
tana, Nevada. and elsewhere. From one
of these lodes, corroded by frost and
washed by a stream, there might be
made placers which would yield in a
sew years what would take ten times
AS long to mine by the hand of man.
This craft of nature" he says, put
more than thousand millions into the
California placers, and there is, in my
opinion, reason in the participation that
in the Yukon placers another thousand
millions will be found, all things con-
sidered, as easily and even quicker than
was the thousand millions of the Cali
fornia placers."
Mr.. Dunn believes with many others
that the richness of those deposits has
been only scratched, and that there is
good ground for believing that there
are others as rich or even richer. The
conditions are unlike those of Califor-
MIA in the early days, in that in those
days all man needed was stout heart
and heavy pick, while in the Yukon
every miner must be a small capitalist
in order to be able to mine at all. Yet
he concludes that a man in search of a
fortune stands larger chance of find
ing it in the frozen regions of Alaska
than in the mines of South Africa or
western Australia. 1t is not necessary
now to depend on blind luck for dis
coveries. for technical knowledge of the
occurrence and distribution of gold is
reasonably exact and comprehensive.
II is now possible to explore without the
expenditure of the enormous amount
.of waste work formerly an unavoidable
Incident of the business. The placers,
N>st found form guides to the lodes,
and some idea can be formed from the
placers regarding the probable values
of the slodes and the risk and uncer-
tainty of quartz mining brought to a
minimum.
One reason why miners have not al
ready located more placers is that in
many instances they are covered with
silt TO depth of eight to 90 feet,
brought down by the stream after it
A,d passed that period when, rushing
Torrent, it had torn from the quartz the
specks of gold. In these cases there are
70 indications of the richer deposits
to be found lower down, and the miner
must do more than prospect the sur
face. The prospector must remember
that the surface of The country, valley
and mountain is covered with a deep. |
strong growth of moss; that the silt
and auriferuS sands of the valley be-
meath the moss are perpetually frozen
to the bedrock; that from these phys
ical conditions the methods of pros
pecting for placers and lodes employed
elsewhere are impossible of application
here. There is no special industrial or
economic reason why the exploitation
of the Yukon gold fields should not be
highly profitable to both labor and
capital, with less. risk of failures of in
dividual enterprises, part of the history
of gold mining elsewhere-N. Y. Sun
Gold Field Justice.
just before we arrived young fellow