Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/650

634 receipt of the reports, and prepared to buffet the still ice-bound waters of the Pacific to gain early access to the new land of promise. In a brief period the fame of Golovnin Bay had been spread broadcast, only to be again dimmed by the later announcements that the earlier reports of finds were only "fakes." Making and unmaking



are a part of all new mining centers, and in an incredibly short time all manner of conclusions are arrived at regarding the possibilities of a location.

New reports of finds made along the coast of Bering Sea, about fifty miles west of Golovnin Bay, called renewed attention to the region, and those who in the early summer of the past year (1899) timidly ventured their fortunes to share in a possible discovery, found, on their arrival at the tundra-bound shores about Cape Nome, that miles of territory had already been located as claim sites, that sluice-boxes were in full operation, and that sackfuls of gold dust and nuggets had been carefully laid to one side, representing "outputs" of tens of thousands of dollars. At this time many of the journals of civilization in the East, repeating the warnings that they persistently threw out following the discovery of gold in the Klondike, jealously guarded the secrets of the earth by doubting, or even denying, the claims to discovery, but, withal, wisely counseling against that haphazard and purseless rush which is one of the invariable accompaniments of gold announcements. A new mining district had suddenly sprung into existence, and before two months had passed—i. e., by the early days of