Page:The Pacific Monthly volumes 1-3.djvu/772

 greatly reduced cost of operation will enable owners to work many claims at a profit which must otherwise have remained unworked. Many steam plants are already at work, and almost all the available spare boilers on the Pacific coast (with some that are not suitable) have started for Dawson, but many will not reach their destination until navi- gation opens in 1900.

The primitive method of thawing by fire has had its day; that of steam has now come, and by it individual owners will continue to operate for years with satisfactory results. Then the ground, reverting to the Crown, will be turned over to concessionaries, who by hydraulic process will extract at least as much of the precious metal as has previously been secured by individual effort.

Under the mining laws and regulations of Yukon territory, individuals cannot acquire title to placer mines, but receive annual grants which are renewed as long as the requirements are complied with as to licenses, royalty, and work performed. Creek claims are limited to five hundred feet in length, and although individuals and corporations may acquire by purchase as many as they pay for, questions of water rights and dumping ground make it almost impossible to operate on the large scale demanded for successful hydraulic work until the time comes when, private rights having expired, concessions of miles in length may be handled as single propositions. Then will all the valleys and hillsides be scoured clean to bedrock, 2nd the gold secured which has escaped tlie individual because of inefficient facilities, cost of handling waste, accidents and the obstructive forces of nature generally and particularly. None can, therefore, predict the length of life of the Dawson mining district (as it is now officially designated), but it is safe to prophecy, in view of the wonderfully rich deposits and for the reasons already outlined, that it will continue for a great many years to furnish a very considerable portion of the world's supply of gold.

The Klondike episode has so stimulated the search for gold in Alaska that discoveries already made promise to rival the Klondike in extent and total returns, if not in richness. Of the many gold-t earing fields the first that can pose successfully as a rival to the Klondike is Cape Nome, which, although generally regarded down to as late a date as August of this year as having occasioned an unwarranted excitement, has already produced gold running into the millions.

The gold is secured with far less effort than on the Klondike, the ground not being frozen to unknown depths, nor is bedrock so far below the eager search of the prospector. Though their great value has been established, but little work has yet been done on the gold-bearing creeks of the new district, the time since discovery having been too brief; but on many miles of ocean beach hundreds of miners with rockers each limited to a strip sixty feet in width, close down to the heavy surf, have saved from $10 to $100 of the precious dust during each working day of the later summer of 1899. As on other gold beaches, the dust found in the sand is very fine, but this beach is unique in having a cement bedrock bearing a thin stratum which carries coarse gold.

Except in regard to the mining laws and. regulations, conditions have thus far been more trying than on the Klondike, owing to the worse climate, the Jack of all timber except driftwood, and the lack of the creature comforts that will come later. But lumber, fuel and supplies are easily accessible from the lower coast, and next season will witness great activity at Cape Nome. As far as is kn«wn all the rick creek claims are appropriated, and the beach diggings will not last forever, from which it would appear that men should not go there unless to trade or work for wages. But the limits of the district do not seem to be yet defined, and the hope of new discoveries there or elswhere in Alaska promise to occasion a rush to the district next spring of many thousands who are prejudiced against prospecting on Canadian soil by mining experiences in