White Pine news weekly mining review. [volume] (East Ely, Nev.) 1910-1920, 1911-06-18


war; and now the deep mines of
South Africa are producing their
millions of dollars in gold each
month.
In 1896 the song of the gold siren
was heard in the Klondike-in the
lone, white silent land of the north.
seemed like a hooking gibe at
human cupidity. The Klondike was
not even the outer edge of civiliza-
ton. 1t was two thousand miles
farther. There was no road-noth-
ing but a choice between the river
way for those who preferred to drown
and the mountainway for those who
preferred to freeze. Yet men rushed
to the fozen valleys of the Yukon as
If 1t were the promised land. Half
came back or dropped by the trail;
but the others seemed immune from
either death or despair. They found
gold-scores of tons of it-built rail-
ways, and planted a city of ten thou
sand people under the shadows of
the Artic Circle.
Then the gold cry came from Cape
Nome. Not even the Pole could have
been much more remote than that
desolate spot. 1t was almost as far
from Seattle as London is from New
York-a bleak stretch of dark sand
on the shores of Behring Sea. Moth
ing could live there but gray moss
and mosquitoes. Yet a party OF five
hundred. led by a couple of mission
aries who had forgotten their church
es in the excitement of the gold rush,
trudged thither owe the Alaskan
snow fields. Hardships mattered
nothing. Fifty below zero mattered
nothing. There in the frozen land,
when they had thawed 1t with bon
fires of driftwood, lay the precious
dust that pays all debts and rewards
all labors. No matter what their
sacrifices had been, they were the
envied yictors of the world, for they
had found gold.
Following quickly after Alaska
came Nevada. AS if she were trying
to test the passion of men 90 the ut
most, the fantastic gold spirit next
sang her song in the Great Anne rican
desert. This particular region had
been the horror spot of the west
since the days of Pike and Fremont.
With its dry desolate valleys, its
purple-pink hills, and all the weird
ness of its painted scenery. it had
always been looked Upon as an un-
real. theatrical country. wholly un-
fit for any living creatures. except
its own horned toads and lizards.
But when the gold cry came, its
terrors were forgotten in the twinkl-
ing of an eye. The desert became
alive. The towns of Tonopah, Bull
frog, and Goldfeld sprang up by
magic. The sage brush wastes sur
rendered their treasurer; and today
the fatal land of drought and mirage
is so tanned that its new-made
m%illionaires and their wives travel
through it in Pullmans and automo-
biles.
Gold has always been a hide-and-
seek metal, hard to find and easy to
lose. Hundreds. possibly thousands,
have hunted for those two famous
lost mines of the west-the Brey-
fogle and the Pegleg; but the mystery
that hides them is as deep today as
fifty years ago. Some day. possibly
they will be r~ediscovered by a golf
player or post hole digger who had
never heard of them before.
No metal is so tricky and elusive
as gold, and yet the commerce of the
whole civilized world depends upon
it. Nations rise and fall. prosper or
become bankrupt, as the golden tide
ilOWo loNdlu lutIl VI tCcutS. w nat
is international trade, in fact, but a
tug-of-war with a rope of gold? If
the precious yellow stuff Is coming in,
what joy, If it is going out, what
trepidation, Like a group of misers,
the nations cram their treasures
with gold, and then toll and battle
like frenZied giants to get more.
There is nothing impressive about
a shipment of gold from the treasury
of one nation to another. A million
dollars, for example, appears to be
no more than a dray load of twenty
small kegs. Each keg contains ten
nineteen-pound bars. packed in saw
dust. The weight of the twenty kegs