Douglas Island news., 1908-10-14
Looked for Water, Found Gold

LOOkeQ TOT w dtGr, EOullo SOlo
 Gold is where you find it, is favor ite saying of the gold prospectors, and history comes very near proving it's correctness. It is one of the strange freaks of events that every great dis covery of gold has been purely an acci- dent. Men were not looking for gold, their sho0ghts were far from the precious metal when the blow of pick or the turn of shovel revealed to them fortune. Thus the greaS gold fields of new South Wales in Australia, the mines at Bendigo and Ballarat and at Colgoorie, the Rand in South Africa | the Sutter milIrace find in California, Stratton's discovery in Colorado, the rich diggings of the Klondike, the Nome country and the Tanana were discovered by accident. The goddess of luck is tickle indeed when it comes to rewarding the tireless patient pros- pector. She bestows her favors upon some one who may be yet child, a lunatic, or even four.footed animal, as was the case of the famous Bunker Hill-Sullivan discovery in northern Idaho.
 Wherever mining men gather there are stories of the lucky finds. And per- haps nowhere will there be more fan tastic collection of stories. than will be told next summer when the "old sour doughs" gather at the Arctic Brother hoods club house on the grounds of the Alaska .Yukon-Pacific exposition which opens in Seattle on June l. They will tell of the Carmack discovery which opened the Klondike, the Swede's find on Nome beach, the strike that made Tanana famous.
 One of the most interesting stories that Alaskans tell, is that of the poor we'll. digger who had been hired by the city fathers of Fairbanks, the capital of the Tanana country, to find a supply of fresh water for the young city. There were not many people in the place and the town did not have much money. 1t was figured, however, that few weeks work and several thousand dollars would do the work, and man who had just arrived in the camp was hired to do the work He was new and green to the ways of the north and he did not appreciate as the old timers did, that he was undertaking an almost hopeless task at the price. But hesoon discoV- cred it. Labor was high, supplies were expensive, the ground frozen solid for many feet His money which had looked like big pile when he started for Alaska, soon dwlndled to few dol lars But he struggled on. He was not discouraged, only disgusted witE lois lack of foresight However, there were indications of the water level being not many feet below and he secured enough credit to continue the work himself. For two weeks be kept at it. The water level was reached but there was ,.ne water Through the gravel aud down to the hard pan bottom he worked with pick and shovel, filling each bucket and then clim bing to the top and pull ing it up. He repeated this hundreds of times. But when he struck that hard pan he gave it up. Disguised at himself, mad at things in general, he angrily hurled the pick into the gravel and started to climb to the top, deter mined to go to work for wages. As he happened to look down after climbing half dozen steps, he was held fast, al most petrifed as he said afterward, bysT the sight. The steel of the pick had sunk deep right into big pocket of of gold Nuggets as big as acorns and scores of little particles like wheat were imbedded in the half frozen earth. He had struck real bonanza. 1t did nov, take him long to get to the top, to get the claim staked and properly recorded. It was all his and he make round million out of it. Incidently he dug we'll for the town, paying for it himself just to show that he had no hard feel ings.