Page:To Alaska for Gold.djvu/202

182 dam up the gulch where the pocket had been found, so that all the water might flow through Mosquito Hollow, as the doctor had facetiously dubbed the new diggings,—a name that stuck to it. This work was done by Randy and Dr. Barwaithe, while Earl joined the captain and his uncle in burning down the brush and getting rid of the tundra.

Before turning the water from Prosper Gulch into Mosquito Hollow, Foster Portney advised sinking several holes along the latter gulch, that any gold washed along by the flow would be caught. The captain put these down, and then came the long labor of cleaning the sand and dirt from the bedrock below. As it would have taken all summer to clean out the entire bottom of the gulch, only the deeper part was attacked and here a runway for the water was made, a foot to two feet wide.

The water had just been turned along Mosquito Hollow and washing begun when a party of prospectors from Forty Mile Post came along and espied the claims. They at once wished to know the particulars of the find made, and, assured that there was gold there, one of the men lost no time in putting up his stakes below them, while two others went above. Inside of a week after this the Hollow boasted of eight claims, and a little settlement sprung up at the Fork, as the miners named the spot where the Portney crowd had located.