Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1916-07-23

its machinery for more than seven months
of the year. The most Of the profits are
made in the open season OF 40 Gays, ana
then the work is shut down until he eie
present is that of the far distant past IN
other placer mining regions the earth ana
rock are free from frost The gold Is
sprinkled through them and you have only
to dig and wash to get the gold out. Here
the whole country, with the exception OF
foot or SO at the surface, Is one mass
of ice mixed with boulders. pebbles and
sand that has been perpetually frozen 1or
thousands of years. Its condition dates
back to the ice age OF the prehistoric
past. The ice goes down to no one
knows where. They have sunk diamo oad
drills in some places to a depth OF 300
feet and found the earth frozen solid all
the way through. The gravel is bedded in
the ice, and the ice. sand and earth re-
the summar The conglon1erate or frozen
mixture is covered by a thin bed OF
muck, on the top of which grows layer
of arctic moss. the two forming an IN
sulator that preserves the frozen condi-
tons beneath 1t is only when the moss
and muck are stripped off that the hot
summer sun makes any impression on the
glacial ice cap below
and rock that the gold values lie. There
is a little not far from the surface.
but the most of the gold is at bed
rock. which may be thirty forty or
to be thawed out, inch by inch, and
foot by foot. in such a way that it can
be swallowed by the dredges that gulp
1t down at the rate of twenty-six pltes
to the minute and about one-third of
ton to the bite. They take up the
stuff in great buckets which run on
an endless chain and throw 1t into
revolving screens. These screens roll
the rocks over and over and sift out
the d-bearing sand. They take away
the pebbles and great boulders and turn
the sand out upon plates covered with
mercury which catches the gold the
dredges will handle something like
100000 tons of material this year ana
the amount of gold saved will be sew
eral millions Of dollars.
Before any such work can be done
Jack Frost must be taken out OF the
ground to be mined The dredges cannot
work In frozen rock, and the dimcuities
of the ice strata are far greater Tor
them than they were for the individ-
nal miners In the first mining Of the
Klondike the perpetual ice really aided
the men by saving the trouble Of tim
bering. They could dig down through
1t to where the great gold pockets iay'
and then drift off along the bed rock;
thawine only the strata that contained
the most of the gold. The frozen eaItn
was as firm as so much SOHO rock anu anu
they were able to work without the
wooden supports necessary to hold up
the roofs Of the mines of other parts
of the world. =, a..
The dredges have to have all the
earth free from frost. The region they
work. must be thawed down to forty or
fifty feet from the surface, ana that IN
great blocks as big as house, beiore
the excavation can even begin
The methods of thawing the earth
have been reduced to a science The
kent burning until they had thawed
shaft down to the gold. Other hres
were then built along the bed rock and
the earth taken out until they had
made great caverns and tunnels far
down under the thirty or forty feet OF
ice overhead. They used hot stones to