Page:The Pacific Monthly volumes 1-3.djvu/771



Vol. III

HEN one realizes that the wonderful deposits of gold in the frigid and inhospitable region of the Klondike are covered with many feet of frozen muck and earth awd gravel, it is a never-ending cause of surprise that they should ever have been discovered, and is so even to him who has person- ally known the ferment produced in hu- manity by the sacri auri fames.

In the richer creek claims the depth to bedrock averages less than thirty feet, but shafts have been sunk through more than one hundred feet of earth frozen to that great depth. Inasmuch as in the coldest of modern winters the ground freezes for no more than six feet, and since throughout the Yukon watershed generally the frost reaches no greater depth than this, the only reasonable ex- planation of conditions as they exist on the Klondike and in other limited areas of the Yukon basin is that the ground has remained frozen ever since the gla- cial age in which the gold was deposit- ed where it is now found.

IMPROVEMENTS IN THAWING.

To reach pay gravel and the still richer bedrock the ground must all be thawed. In the past this has been done by the direct application of fires built upon (or in the drifts, against) the fro- zen muck or soil or gravel, a slow and tedious process expensive of labor and wasteful of fuel. In winter the danger of asphyxiation entails additional cost of sinking an air shaft if the work is rushed, and in summer the added risk of car-

bonic acid gas so intensifies the dan- ger that there has been almost no sum- mer work except where the shallow depth to bedrock permits of summer sluicing, a condition seldom existent in creek claims, but found in many "bench" claims.

Many and costly experiments have been conducted looking to the sav- ing of labor and fuel, and now these efforts have been crowned with success mrough the application of steam con- ducted by pipes from boilers on the sur- face down the shafts along the drifts, and allowed to escape through steel points driven several feet into the fro- zen earth. The new process has worked a complete revolution in many respects. Less labor is required at one dollar or more per hour. There is a great saving in fuel, which is a very important con- sideration in a sparsely settled region in some parts of which wood already costs $30 per cord.

One of the greatest gains is in the adaptability of the new process to sum- mer work. It is then that men labor more advantageously through twenty- four hours of arctic daylight, returns are immediate, and ten per centum or more is saved by depositing pay dirt directly in the sluice boxes, as against rehand- ling the winter's dumps the following spring. On many claims there will also be a great gain by use of steam power for hoisting, sawing and pumping. Another distinct gain to the mining in- terests of the Klondike through the use of steam is found in the fact that the