The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1900-07-28

we had to scoop away seven feet of
snow and ice, when the wind blew a
dreadful hurricane from the sea, and
when the mercury was certainly twenty
degrees below zero. For exactly ninety
six days we had to merely exist there.
Seeking locations for our mining claims
was utterly out Of the question in that
awful winter weather. How we ever
managed to survive, and in good physi-
cal condition, too, will always be
problem to me.
''At the very first hour of compare
lively respectable weather we went out
prospecting. A man in the very first
party on Cape Nome gave me tip as to
where he had found gold most plentiful
before the winter snow and ice covered
it. To make a long story short I had
my pick of all the benches on Glacier
creek.
I'm fact I named Glacier creek My
four mines there were the original claims
OH that stream. 1t was hard and pain
full work, panning gold from the gravel
OF: the creek those bleak wintry days.
The ice had to be chopped away and the
snow melted, while sllivered and chat
tered i'll a gale of wind and snow that
blew down the gulch from the very
north pole. But the results were so
wonderful that we could endure almost
anything. / sometimes got a quarter.
and even half an ounce of gold in a
single pan of gravel, and an ounce of
gold, you know, is worth $3.50 up there
and SIS in the states. If it had been
warm weather and I had not to con-
tend with the snow and ice, I might
have PANIED out gold worth $50 and $40
a day. AS it was l made SIS and $40
day, difficult though my crude mining
operations were. Then we pioneer min
ers got rockers and when spring came
and the Innuits came down from Cape
Prince of Wales to watch the crazy
white men work, we hired the natives
to work for us at the rate of 81 per
hour. While an Innuit shoveled and
picked the gravel into the rocker for me
7
the water. In one week 1 rocked out
over a pound and a half of gold. Then
we went to sluicing for gold, and with
our capital of gold dust and nuggets
were able to get the best of sluices
Mine was 40 feet long and took two
lusty Innuits to keep the thing full of
gravel We cleaned up gold every day
and dried it in a frying pan over
bonfire at night. AS the spring adj
vanced the daylight became as per-
manent as the darkness had been all
winter. In June there was only about
four hours out of the twenty-four that
we could call night. I was clean gone
daft over the riches 1 had tumbled into
So worked for weeks almost day and
night I got along with three hours of
sleep in one night, and all the rest of
the time was bossing the men on my
claims, Weighing my daily cleanup of
gold, and making money on outside in
vestments and schemes.
with eighty pounds of gold in my
tent, I had capital to make q lot more
money. 1 knew that Nome would be
another Dawson. So / bought for 5000
a lot of acre property close to the land
ing place from the steamer lighters
there. It was marshy and malariOus,
and I was timid about my investm ent.
Now the land has been drained, and it
is almost the heart of the 900 popu-
latiOn of the city of Nome. have sold
ten lots for SO, 900 each, and am now
considering an offer of $4,000 from
Chas D. Lane of California for seven
more of the lots.
on the beach sands at Nome for ST 900
That was in the earliest days of that
unique form of gold digging, and how
I was jeered for my rash purchase!
But 1 subsequently leased the property
to company of six men for four
months for 81 goo, and got 20 per cent.
also on all the gold they got out there.
That amounted to slS,S00 altogether,
and my share of it was $3.50. Then
bought another beach claim seven miles
beyond for So, 500. and that 1 leased to
another company who agreed to give
me 65 per cent. of all the gold they
washed out That netted me some So
600, and the claim was not one-eighth
worked last year. have since sold the
San F'ranciscans for $4,000. Oh, 1T was
a ceaseless round of work last sum
mer I was so wild and nervous /
could not sleep. Last July alone my in
come was over $4,000. Wasn't that
enough to turn anyone'S head? A year
before that I was working for my living
in Mount Michaels, and two years be-
fore I was braking on a Santa Fe rail-
road cattle train. Lots of times L did
not sleep for thirty-six hours at a
stretch I was busy with my rising tide
of fortune all the time"