The Cordova daily times., 1923-01-05
FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1923
THE LURE OF GOLD

The editor of this page has been frequently questioned if the lure of gold is entirely re- sponsible for people coming to Alaska and if it g why those who have been here since the early gold rush days still remain.
 Iris a much mooted question. Rex Beach, Robert Service, Jack London and all those who ever wrote about conditions pertaining to this wonderful Northland of Alaska, have been unable to satisfactorily explain this question.
 It is claimed by many that the lure of gold does not bring people to Alaska nor is it the love of the primitive Several of our states have produced at different annual periods more gold than Alaska and there are still many places near our great metropolitan cen ters where one can within a few hours ride find conditions as primitive as most places in the nortl
 If the question were asked resident of Ketchikan, he would probably laugh and think the idea emanated from the fertile mind of checacho. Fish, fur, lumber, and other of the many resources ad jacent to ketchkAn are what make his stay in Ketchikan, and in all probability if any other Alaskan along this great coast line of were asked the same question and he happened to reside in part cf the Territory wherein there was little min ing he would think as we do in Ketchikan- something else beside gold. Yet, is 1t some thing else?
 After all, it resolves itself into gold. It's what we strive for and try to achleve-the mecca of ai' ambitions and desires Speak of Alaska outside to the average man who has never been here and who, though he may never have lad a thought of coming north, if you question him closely you will make him admit that in his minds eye there is vision of gold and it has been so for hundreds of wears when those of the older countries spec ulatcd on rcw or undiscovered lands. Gold was the sort of riches which the successors of Cortcz and Pizarro ever hoped to find and in their minds the entire undiscovered world was tin2cd with yellow.
 They believed in an Eldorado in the Ea2t in t.c valleys of the Orinoco and the Amazon wither Peruvian Incas had escaped with much gold. And they believed also in an lI7- dorado in the West, to which the Incas had voya@cd, and whence they had got much gold And this Fldorado of the West must obvious}v be situated in the MagelIanican continent, which Mcrr"ator had drawn in his map. This was the foryent belief of famous Spanish knight, Pedro de Gamboa, who had gone to Peru ill 1857 He was as brave as he was "ruel he was accused of knowing a magic ink which no woman could resist, and of using magical rings in navigating; for which crimes he was sentenced to hear Mass in the cathed- ral. stripped to the bare skin.
 When, with Mendana he discovered the Solomons, |'the soldiers, seeing everything vel low, noted the heavy iron-tone clubs of the natives and insisted that they were heavy by weight of gold, and they refused to give up the pleasant belief even when the clubs were broken in pieces and no gold was to be seen." Sarmiento, the optimist says that he actually saw mineral containing gold The miners reported that there was gold in t;le soil but they could not get it owing to the hostility of the natives. The natives talked much of gold and pearls, but none were actu- ally handed; also of cloves, ginger and nut megs; but "they brought only little ginger '