CANADIAN GOLD

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 58, 10 March 1938, Page 10

CANADIAN GOLD

A NEW RICH FIELD

FORBIDDING WILDERNESS

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

I VANCOUVER, February 16. • Two hundred an'd fifty inches of rain a year, trails too rough for the stoutest pony> from tidewater'up a steep mountain face, rapids, over which prospectors, standing hip-deep, ease their scowload of ore, packed in tins, after they man-handle it down the slope, a mushroom town, with one street, no preacher, teacher, doctor, lawyer, barber, beer parlour, dance hall, or pool-room to divert the prospector, such is Zeballos, Canada's newest rich gold "strike,'' almost inaccessible in a wilderness on the west.coast of Vancouver Island. Its story is the story of the precious metal, located ten years ago, but abandoned in the face of almost impossible natural conditions, until, three years ago, when three young men, who refused to be beaten, stayed on and won through, after a fourth perished in the rapids. Their claim, the Privateer, is now estimated to be worth 4,000,000 dollars. Two of them sold out a year ago for a paltry 40,000 dollars.' / The new field has given the lie to the theory that the ' old-time prospector who birked at no job, however tough, had.died ouj. The first mill was back-packed by Sam Knutsen over a mountain trail that was little more than a series of fresh blaze-marks. Some day, the little mill will have an honoured place in history ■ relic. Canada does not forget. The first mill at Hollinger, Ontario's richest field, rests on a v concrete base, in a stretch of well-kept lawn. The one-stamp "coffeegrinder," that developed British Columbia's fabulously rich Premier mine, has a place'of honour near the present extensive plant.

THE OPJENING UP OF THE FIELD. Zeballos may. have remained a secret, locked in the stormy bosom of Nature had it not been for the foresight of Conrad Wolfe, of Coast Copper fame, who persuaded a number of fishermen to work there, grubstaked by the returns' of their salmon trolling; or of Ray Pitre, of Privateer, whose faith maintained him while comrades left, one by one, and whose wife followed him, the only woman at the mountain camp, as wife of Major Georgr Nicholson, first resident on the beach, is the only other of her sex, proud chatelaine of No. 1 Rotten Row, who is doctor and nurse to a community of 37S souls.

A radio-telephone is being installed, to link the camp with the "outside."' Canadian Airways are about tb operate a weekly service, across the mountains and the Gulf of Georgia, to Vancouver. A wharf is being built. An extra .boat will be placed on the run, to supplement the present 10-day round trip. -A hotel, post office store, and beer parlour will be operating when spring travel brings a rush of miners arid settlers. The returns? When Pitre camu out recently, with a shipment of ore for the smeller, he gave your correspondent a piece, the size of the writer's fist,, almost entirely free gold, worth eight hundred dollars. The ore shipment averaged £1800 per ton—described as the richest end. most extensively impregnated seen in fifty-years''experi-ence by the assayer.