The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-12-31

from S2O,OOO,OO0 to $so.OOO O0O The re-
 maining 270O acres carry more or less gold, and the company has enough
 work in sight to keep it busy for gen erations to come.
 But before describe my trip | through the mines let me tell you something about the great gold re- gions of the Seward peninsula, in which they are located. This peninsula is the Golden Horn of the North Amer | ican continent. It forms the extreme western end of Alaska. It is 2700 miles i from Seattle and only 60 miles from ] Asia, across Boring strait. It consists 1 of a body of land 200 miles long and in places 150 miles wide It is twice i as big as Maryland and half the size of Ohio and great part of it is peppered with gold. The district has already produced more than S70,00O,000 worth
 oi gold dust and nuggets and the coun- ' try has hardly been scratched. Dr. AL fred II. Brooks, the head of the Alaska division of the geological survey, has estimated that there is more than l $500 ,000. 900 worth of gold mixed with it's gravels and the probability is that the total output of minerals will be equal to 50 times the amount we paid for Alaska.
 The first rich gold finds were made not far from this city of Nome, and for some years men were washing gold from the sands of the seashore, not a stones throw from where I am writing. You can make good wages by doing that now and the country in the rear, running from here back to the moun- tains, is covered with mines where they are now taking out gold. There is onetlarge company which has an out put of s1,000,000 year, and there are others that are paying large dividends. All along the southern coast of the peninsula, from here to Golofnin bay, they are mining gold, and rich gold creeks are to be found on the north ern slopes not far from the Arctic ocean. In addition to the gold, they have discovered valuable deposits of ! tin, and they are mining also anti mony, galena and graphite.
 The Seward peninsula is a part of arctic Alaska It lies right under the Arctic circle. and on the north it is | washed by the Arctic ocean. The coun- | try is underlaid with prehistoric ice, l and the most of the gold has to be l thawed out of gravel that has been 1 locked in ice for thousands of years. l The peninsula is ice bound except from
 June to November. It has more than 1 l ocean is frozen far out from land and
 the smaller streams freeze to the bot tom. The thermometer goes down at | times to 50 and even more degrees be- l low zero. The country is covered with l snow and the only means of travel is
 by foot or with sleds drawn by dogs. The mails come weekly by dog-sled ] from Fairbanks. a distance greater | than from New York to Chicago.
 |
 1 Navigation is open only during the summer, when two lines of steamers i have monthly sailings between Nome
 and Seattle. and when there is regular communication with interior Alaska by
 way of the Yukon.
 There are but few wagon roads on ! the peninsula, and the country has only two little railroads. One of these l is on the south coast, running from Nome back to the mountains. The other is not far from the Arctic ocean, connecting the town of Candle with the gold bearing creeks. Both lines are of
 a narrow gauge. At, this writing neither is working.
 1 The summers of the Seward peninsula are delightful. As I write this the air 1 is full of ozone and the thermometer is l about 80 degrees above zero. The coun- l try is covered with green. There are 1 wild flowers everywhere, and the low l lands have thick mat of vegetation com l posed of mosses, grass and flowers. There are many bushes and blueberries and l salmonberries are to be had for the pick 1 ing. The greater part of the country 1 is rolling, and there are rounded hills 1 that rise to a height of from 800 to 250O { feet above the sea. So far the most 1 of the gold has been found in the beds l of the creeks and in the coastal plains,
 consisting of old sea beaches. This gold l is all free gold, but it is believed that ] quartz gold will yet be found in the mountains.
 \ Until 1S9S when the gold fields of Nome
 were discovered the Seward peninsula
 was one of the least known parts of the world. It was looked upon as a barren waste. and it's only population 300 or 400 | Eskimos and score or more of whites i who came here to engage in whaling. | This was so notwithstanding the country 1 was one of the first to be discovered by 1 the Russians. It is now two centuries since they learned 1t existed, and, two years after our Declaration of Independ- 1 ence was signed, Capt. James Cook trav-
 eled along the coast and surveyed 1t. 1 The Russians established a fur trading