The San Francisco call., 1898-01-16
NEWS OF THE MINES.

and brother had been working the claim steadily since August II. They had run 2l5 feet of main tunnel and had upraised and drifted in various directions for seve- ral hundred feet more, searching for the blue lead supposed to lie under Cement Hill, but which has heretofore never been found in that part of the country.
 After conference on the last day of the year they decided to work a few days longer. Next morning an impulse seized one of them to go into an upraiSe ten feet above the tunnel and drift west erly. He had gone but four feet when he struck rim carrying a thin layer Of genuine blue gravel and pitching to the west. Since then the rim-rock of the new-found lead has been broken through at various points for distance of forty feet and found to be uniform and regu- lar. Every foot of it prospects splendid ly, 10 cents to the pan being the poorest tried so far. IL extends almost parallel with and several feet above the tunnel, and the owners are satisfied that they have half a mile on the channel
 Arrangements will now be made for the thorough and systematic working of the claim. The cider Calkins has been a gravel miner in that locality since 1S49, and he regards the find as one of the best ever made on or above Selby Flat. which was a veritable Golconda to the pioneer placer miners. A number of oth- CT old-time gravel miners have visited the claim in the last few days, and they say they have seen nothing so good for thirty years or more.
 For many years past the search for this deposit has been carried on by pros pector after prosspector: and without avail till now. Tens of thousands of dollars have been spent in sinking and in running tunnels and cuts. One shaft was sunk a great distance into the ridge some three decades ago and struck a boulder twenty or more feet across the top. Here the shaft sinkers quit in dis gust Had they put an incline down past the boulder A few feet they would have found what they wanted for the boulder lies just over the channel, as the last few days have proven to the present owners. Such is the irony of the gold hunters fate very often"
 The San Bernardino Times-Index matches some of the tales of the Klon- dike thus:
 Louis Curtis, Dick Donahue and w. R. Radenburger are three partners doing business in the Virginia Dale District, and last evening the first two named gets as the result of less than two months work. And yet people will rush to Alaska and endure all kinds of hard ships in the search for gold in the icy north when untold wealth is to be had at our very doors. The claims from which the gold was taken have only been To- called the Rough and Ready and 'Klondike.' They are situated in the Virginia Dale District, and are placer | claims, being worked with dry washers. The largest nugget taken out Is worth $35 S4, and many others of smaller sizes
 were found Ofttmes the miners took out $972 per week while only two of them
 were working
 THE MOST RELIABLE ESTIMATE OF ALASKA'S GOLD PRODUCT. l The Alaska Mining Record gives the 1 following estimate of the Alaskan gold | product of 1S97 including the American l portion of the Yukon Valley:
 The output of the mines of Alaska ! is extremely difficult of estimation. The vastness of the mining territory the mi l gratory characteristic of it's population and the entire absence of reports and l statistics from great part of the small | CT camps render 1t a difficult matter tC
 arrive at statement approximately cor rect except by careful study and watch. full attention to every detail. The fol. 1 lowing estimate is believed to be as
 nearly correct as possible, and still rep l resents. fully, yet conseryatively tho
 production of gold in Alaska during the past season:
 Howell Gold Mining Company. 5t 1 stamps, $275,000; Berners Bay Mining anc
 Milling Company, 40 stamps, s26O GOO