CLAIMS AND THEIR VALUES.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 10012, 16 April 1898, Page 4

CLAIMS AND THEIR VALUES.

The miners have a iargon of their onm in sneaking of the value of claims. The meanest of all are contemptuously referred to as Chinese diggings, a term whioh Will be recognised by all who know anything of Australian mining, where the Chinamen resort to abandoned claims, and are content to go through the old dirt which was thrown out by the miners, lor the Bake of what gold they can scrape together, The Birch (Seek placers, for instance, 200 miles below FortyMile, whioh were all the rage in 1691, ere now referred to as Chinese diggings hi com* parison with those at the Klondike. Thai there is the "grub-stake," a claim whioh ia only sufficient to afford a living for the miner;and, lastly, the "home-stake," from which he can get enough to take home again. This, of course, is an elastic term, which varies according to the notions of the man as to what constitutes a fortune. Mr Ogilvie says of the Klondike that there ia no other region in the world of the same extent that has afforded in the same length of tijne so many "home-etakes." There are over 600 claims on Bonanza and El Dorada creeks and their affluents, and all of them are good. About 100 of those on the Bonanza, will yield upwards of thirty million dollars. Claim 50 below, on El Dorado, will yield a million, and ten others from 100,000 up. These two creeks, he asserts, "will, I *m confident, turn out from sixty to cerealy* five million dollars."—From "Gold-mining at the Klondike," in "Cornhill."