Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/140

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Photo by Sidney Paige

The Tanana Gold Fields

then Seattle and all that goes with it, and broke in a short six months.

The hospitality of the old Alaskan pioneer is proverbial, and in the Fairbanks camp there is many a proof of it. When noontime and a stranger come about the same time the result is a stranger before a full table heaped with all that money and a generous hand can procure in that far-away land; and even if the miner's ground happens to fall where the bed rock was smooth and the pay had slipped to the claim below and his shelf showed but few fresh cans of "carnation cream," the same hearty welcome would await the newcomer as if the poke were full and hopes high — a meal to share and a blanket in the cabin on the floor. Strong, healthy,

cheerful, mostly hopeful, seldom rich, but always hospitable, defines the Alaskan miner.

Clearly, Fairbanks, and Pedro Creek are yet the mainstay of the camp. One claim on Cleary yielded $1,000 a day from the solidly frozen gravel 20 feet below the surface. Confidence is ex- pressed by the fact that several claims during the past summer changed hands at as high a figure as $60,000.

Underground mining, or drifting, as it is termed, is probably the most economic method of extraction on Cleary and Fairbanks Creeks, for the deep, barren overburden of muck and gravel places open-air work out of the question.

The primitive hand windlass is disappearing, its place being taken by the