Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/658

642 Glacier Creeks (with Snow Gulch as an affluent of the latter), tributaries of Snake River, and Dexter Creek, a tributary of Nome River. My time and the conditions of weather permitted only of a visit to Anvil Creek, and an examination mainly of the properties about "Discovery." The diggings here are all shallow, from four to seven feet, when bed-rock, a steeply pitching and highly fissile slate, is reached. As before remarked, the gravels are not frozen, and thereby present a marked contrast to the condition that prevails in the Klondike region, and one, it is hardly necessary to state, which is eminently to the favor of economy in mining. A layer of ice, about eight inches in thickness, covers one side of the layers in claim "No. 1 below," but beneath this the matrix is



again open. In all these claims the pay-streak was at first reported to be very broad, but it seems that the later work has narrowed down the probabilities of extension very measurably—at any rate, in the condition of a rich producer. Of the wealth contained in these claims there is no question, but it would probably be straining the truth to say that it is the equal of that of the best or even the better claims of the Klondike region. A two days' clean-up from "No. 1 below" is reported to have yielded thirteen thousand dollars, while the entire product of that claim from July 26th, when the first wash was made, to September 21st, was placed at one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Claim "No. 1 above" appears to be equally good, and "Discovery" falls perhaps not very far below either. A nugget of the value of three