GOLD-SPEKING IN ALASKA

Otago Witness, Issue 2541, 26 November 1902, Page 23

GOLD-SPEKING IN ALASKA

" When the snow and ice of Northern Alaska give up their dead it will be seen at what an awful caerifice of human life the treasures of that frozen land are being obtained." It is with such a remark as this (says the Glasgow Weekly Mail) that Mr C. D. Bristol, of the firm of Bristol and Lindhard, Alaaka, prefaces his remarks about the country where, he hab been located since the sprmg of 1898. Over a third of thoae who leave the camps and towns of the coast in splendid physical condition are never heard of again, and 4-0 per cent, of those who get back to the point* of their departure die while seeking recovery from hardships they have endured. The horrors of the interior of Summer Peninsula, in which is located Nome City, are almost unbelievable. Of every two men who leave to prospect it is safe to say that only one will return alive, and it is safe to say that even the dead body of the other may never be found, unless he has died on the coast.

Yet that is unquestionably the richest go'.dbesring country in the world ; new c!i^tricts producing the precious metal arc being discovered every year, and when a new El Dorado has been found, even though the thermometer may stand at 72deg below, and certain death stares everybody in the face who attempts the trip to it, men and v/omen will swarm there by the hundreds as scon as they have information of it. Each one is animated by the hope that he or she trill b» tha lucky one to set through all

right, and hardly any suffering is great enough to deter them from pushing- on; they combat every hardship in the belief that they will ultimately triumph, and though the trail may be lined with the dead bodies of those who have gone before, and each corpse gives them warning of the fate that may overtake them, still they face the biting blast of the Arctic winter, struggle on with, their half-frozen bodies growing weaker every day, and even when, the glaze of death shuts out the trail, shuts out everything but tho mirage of wealth from their eight, they will not confess themselves beaten, and fight a little further along on 'the journey for gold, until the flickering lamp of life goes out. ■ IS A. KORTHEEN* HI&ING CAMP! The> prospectors who make thoh valuable discoveries always seek to keep them quiet, but this is an impossible thing in ono of tho Northern Alaska mining campß. No matter how secretly lie endeavours to get in, the fact that a new arrival is in toxen "from the interior is known all over the camp before he has been thero two hours, and from that time on there is never a moment, sleeping or waking, that he 'is not watched. Men take regular turns at dogging hi 3 footsteps, and if the miner deposits any gold ac a bank or purchases goods with dust, a thrill sweeps through the whole town. Bar-tenders grow absenimrnaed at their duties, gamblers become nervous, a collection is quickly taken up among the more anxious, and the volunteer " shadows " of the miner are replaced by men who are paid for never allowing him to escape their eyes. Everybody has grown excited; though the most ludicrous endeavours are made to suppress it when the man who had caused it all is around. Outfits are priced and bought by those lucky enough to have the money, and scores, even hundreds, of dog sleds are kept on 't'fio outskirts of the camp ready to move at a moment's notice. There is no fever so bad as this gold fever in mining towns. Sometimes this watching and state of readiness to move on the part of half of the inhabitants are kept up for weeks before the miner leaves town, but no matter howhe tries to get away he will find the eager followers on his track before he has prooeeded a-quarter of a mile. He may endeavour to lose them in every possible way;j he may make long detours, but it is a game of follow-my-leader that he cannot break. The long string of dog sleds and weary, half-starved plodders on foot stick to him, like the proverbial leech, and if he ever succeeds in getting back to the country of his olaim he will find at least half of the followers "in at the death," the others having marked the trail with their cold clay. SEVEN HtJNDBED MEX FROZEN TO DEATH. Several of these stampedes occur every year. One of the most horrible ever known was toward the Kuskerquin district last year, and it was a deliberately-planned scheme to attract men to that district, where no gold had been found, in order to benefit a trading post. A man whom we only knew as Murphy was the fellow who worked it for the trading people. He came int<> Nome in the usual secretive manner of fortunate prospectors, with a large quantity of fine gold in his possession. While apparently drunk in a ealoon he divulged tha fact that the district in which he had found the gold was the richest in Alaska, and the quality of the gold he brought in lent the colour of truth to this assertion. Nome was soon raging with a gold fever of intense fierceness, and on the morning Murphy started out of the town- there were 1500 men and two women following him — one of the women, the keeper of a. restaurant at Nome, a Mrs Raymond. The thermometer was 50deg below zero that day, and a blizzard coming up several days later sent both of the women and a few of th© men back ; but the others kept on after Murphy. He made a straight line for the Kuskerquin, but so terrible was the journey that of the 1500 who left. Nome nearly 700 perished. Why, in one cabin only, on the trail, the bodies of 36 men were found last cummer.