The Alaska sourdough., 1911-12-05
Continued from Page Five)

hundred feet one way from discovery and thousand feet the other on the lode. Of course he knows he must stick to the vein and not try to locate there may or may not be "mineral in place."
 The theory. of the mining law is that all mineral deposits once belonged to the crown. We have no crown in this country, but our government establishes a few simple preliminaries before it will pass title of the people $ common property to an individual. That in dividual, if a skilled prospector, is full ly familiar with the law and with the physical requirements of his calling at this stage of the operation. Therefore if, in his pin, or his horn spoon, or in his iron or rock mortar, he finds a rich showing, he does not rush off hotfoot to the nearest camp, put proves out and locates his mineral in place, taking care that he can legally hold his find The blocking out of the ore in place s properly a matter for an engineer, but the prospector who cannot come back with definite description and definite proof of everything he says regarding his mineral find is not apt to get the attention either of an investor or of an engineer. In short, 1t is a business that he is following, and he must use the business principles of caution and good judgment, as we'll as of initiative and daring.
 The glory of the prospector, however was in the romantic days of adventure, when each man had the right to think he could grow rich by merely going West and working at this or that call ing for time, as did the three men of our story. No more thrilling reading ever will be written than the history of the prospector s life-his many ad venturing, his sudden wealth or his narrow escapes therefrom. His is a life remote, devoted to the wilderness, and his are the ways of the open. He sees what perhaps the big game hunt CT does not see or does not value. Thus, in the far Southwest where our three prospectors above mentioned fore gathered, the writer once, while out deer hunting, discovered clean cut six-foot vein of coal. There is rail road within six miles of that place to- day, though there was none within a hundred at that time. Since we could all burn pinon wood and did not need coal, but did need venison, the hunter passed on, finally killed his buck and for long time forgot the vein of coal. Very likely it is there today. Again, while bear hunting above the great bend of the Columbia, our party once picked up certain pieces of otten quartz which later assayed in very de- cent values. We were hungry and hur- ried, and did not pause to follow up the float. Yet even on that hunt we found far back where no man belong ed, two silent men, with picks and shov els, who were leading the water of little spring some hundreds of yards to a certain fiat, near which stood their little tent. And when we came out of that wilderness region, we did so down a stream which, in 1867, was occupied by an army of the boldest and hardest gold seekers of the West-the men who left the Fraser and tried the Col umbia, on French creek, Gold creek, and many others, leaving behind them, on certain pieces of bad water, the gruesome name, Death Rapids, where scores of them were drowned when they tried to get out of that country on rafts.
 Those days were long before rail way transportation, when supplies had to come in over incredibly difficult country. The adventurings of great bodies of men into so remote and for