Montour American. (Danville, Pa.) 1866-1920, 1900-07-19
GOLD FIELDS DANGERS .
A Warning to Adventures Bound
For Cape Nome.
OUTLOOK VERY DISCOURAGING.
Little Chance of Finding the Precious
Dust, and Epidemics of Typhoid and
Smallpox Threatened Fabulous
Prices For the Necessitics of Life.


Washington, July 1.-THE secretary
of the treasury has received letter
from Mr.. G. Rudolph, living at 626
Broadway, Brooklyn, on the situation
at Cape Nome, Alaska. The depart
ment sees no reason to doubt the trust
worthiness of the story told by Mr..
Rudolph, and suggests its publication.
1t is becoming daily more apparent
to the officials that the conditions in
the new gold fields are almost certain
to result in great suffering during the
coming winter, especially as epidemics
of smallpox and typhoid fever are
threatened The letter is in part as
follows:
81 left Nome on June 20, and being
an old miner, l am fully capable of
sizing up a new mining camp in a
few days. l and my partner tried
working the beach for gold in several
places, and | personally saw others by
the hundreds do the same, but not in
one instance did we see a man take out
enough gold to pay for his grub. The
only place where any gold was being
taken out was between the beach and
the tundra There they were only
udhluS udN y NdSGS VI IlOlIl 9t " plO
a day. This place is only about three
quarters of a mile long, and it is all
taken up by about 500 men. Like the
beach, it is now nearly all worked out
At Nome | talked with men who had
come from points as far as so miles
below the camp. They told me they
had found nothing, and they were go
ing further north. 1 talked, too, with
men who had come from points far
up the beach, but they declared there
was nothing up there. So it seems that
the whole stretch is nearly all worked
out
Nov, concerning the creeks. Anvil
creek is the richest. Having sprained
my knee | could not go up, but my
partner went the full length Of it,
looking for work or for a lay. He could
get neither, for at that time-June Is
the creeks were still frozen. All that
he could discover was that the miners
there were beginning to strip-that is,
to take off the top layer of moss and
loose dirt, which is left to dry while
they begin again at another place.
Meanwhile the first hole would be
thawed out. BY that means they man
dStu " NOI II dllti iiSilC HOlNS- hSlS
is no wood in Nome, as there is in the
Klondike, and coal is $50 a ton on the
beach, while the cost of re-freighting
it over the Anvil creek is II cents a
pound. You can figure how rich the
ground must be to stand such costs of
mining.
mo one estimates that more than
800 hands are at work on Anvil creek,
with as many more each on Snow,
Glacier and Dexter creeks-a total of
perhaps |, 500 men. When | left 20, 900
men were in the district, and the only
work was in unloading or putting up
new buildings. The former task kept
about 500 men busy, and the building
employed about 300.
There are far more destitute people
at Nome than people on the outside
know of. A meal costs from 81 to
$1.50, coffee and pie or three crullers,
20 cents; a bed from 81 to SO, or when
you furnish your own blakets from
81 to $15O. Canned goods are 80 cents
can; bread, % cents a loaf; fresh
meats from 75 cents to 81 a pound,
and other things in proportion. There
was only one toilet for the public, and
there you had to pay. For water the
cost was 25 cents for four buckets and
wood was nearly all gone except at
point several miles down the beach.
Even the little to be found there was
half rotten and watersoaked. Coal
oil is 81 a case and lumber $50 for
dry and 1925 for green per thousand,
and is scarce at that When | left there
were tents 20 deep and about three
miles long"