'Travels in Alaska 



branches, head together in the same general range of 

 mountains or on moor-like tablelands on the divide 

 between the Mackenzie and Yukon and Stickeen. All 

 these Mackenzie streams had proved rich in gold. 

 The wing-dams, flumes, and sluice-boxes on the lower 

 five or ten miles of their courses showed wonderful in- 

 dustry, and the quantity of glacial and perhaps pre- 

 glacial gravel displayed was enormous. Some of the 

 beds were not unlike those of the so-called Dead 

 Rivers of California. Several ancient drift-filled 

 channels on Thibert Creek, blue at bed rock, were ex- 

 posed and had been worked. A considerable portion 

 of the gold, though mostly coarse, had no doubt 

 come from considerable distances, as boulders in- 

 cluded in some of the deposits show. The deepest 

 beds, though known to be rich, had not yet been 

 worked to any great depth on account of expense. 

 Diggings that yield less than five dollars a day to the 

 man were considered worthless. Only three of the 

 claims on Defot Creek, eighteen miles from the mouth 

 of Thibert Creek, were then said to pay. One of the 

 nuggets from this creek weighed forty pounds. 



While wandering about the banks of these gold- 

 besprinkled streams, looking at the plants and mines 

 and miners, I was so fortunate as to meet an inter- 

 esting French Canadian, an old coureur de bois, who 

 after a few minutes' conversation invited me to ac- 

 company him to his gold-mine on the head of Defot 

 Creek, near the summit of a smooth, grassy moun- 

 tain-ridge which he assured me commanded extensive 

 views of the region at the heads of Stickeen, Taku, 



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