The Alaska citizen., 1910-08-06

IuO"nWafd III the maelStrOm, an
 when he could get his bearings h
 was S1200,0 900 in debt He sold hi paper for a nominal sum to thre young friends, one of whom. Fred j l Grant. former minister to Bolivia sailed away on q health cruise ant the vessel was never heard iron again. Ownership of the paper seem ed unlucky; another of the trio com mitted suicide. Hunt left Seattle saying to his creditors:
 T am going to leave America though I don't know where another year will find me My health i. shattered But I feel sure I vii restore it, and my fortune as well Then I will return to pay all owe"
 A friend lent the bankrupt and broken man 5000, This carried him to Japan thence he went to China Subtle opposition prevented his get ting a foothold in either country.
 Try Korea was the advice of a Chinese mandarin.
 So Hunt next was watching the Koreans and their Chinese employees grind out the gold by hand in their mines. A thousand coolies worked in one mine.
 T have a machine in America that. operated by two men, will extract more gold in a day than your thous- and workmen," Hunt commented to the representative of Korea's em. peror in charge of the district.
 Let me prove what l say" urged the American. If I win, the Emperor may give me a concession to mine his gold, with as big royalty as he likes for his own treasury
 Hunt got a ten-stamp mill from San Francisco, set it up partly with his own hands, and easily made good his boast. The Korean crown gave him a district to mine about as large as the State of Rhode Island The first stamp mill paid for others, until Hunt had 100 in operation.
 But even with his mines the Kor- can ruler was impoverished. The American newspaper man essayed the task of relieving the situation.
 How much do you need, Your Royal Highness? ?" he asked The unhappy monarch thought 5000, ,O00 would tide over the embarrassment. Hunt did not Waver at the COmmis- sion. With an eye to the political situation, he set out for St Peters burg, and negotiated a loan for the five million with the Czar of Russia. After that Hunt was the intimate friend and adviser of the Korean ruler, and from another cause came to be idolized by the Korean people.
 For untold generations the Kor- cans had been sitting around smudgy fires in their rude huts, and had contracted a peculiar disease of the eye. Hunt sent to Europe for a corps of eye specialists, treated the Koreans free of charge, and estab- lished hospitals at each mining camp. Then he taught the people how to build sanitary, comfortable houses.
 The grateful Koreans carried the white man gifts; they came to reVer- ence him as a near relative of the Deity. When he travelled about the country it was necessary to draw lines about his camp, across which the superstitious Mongolians dared not cross,-otherWise his tents would have been overrun. The faVOrite gifts were eggs, tied one by one on bamboo sticks-hundreds and thous- ands of them These eggs Hunt dis tributed among the poor.
 Hunt came to be known all up and down the Oriental shore. He gave the Shanghai Jockey Club cup to race for that stands as high as a table. His expenditures were enor- nous. Soon he sold the controlling interest in his Korean mines to an American syndicate that included H. c. Perkins, Ogden Mills, and J. Sloat Fassett, of New York. He sped homeward with money in his pocket.
 to pay those Seattle debts.
 For three weeks he held a perfect orgy of debt-paying. He gave money to anybody who would take it, pro