THE GOLD SANDS OF CAPE NOME. 



63: 



tember — a full front of tents and frame houses took possession 

 of what continues to remain a dreary and desolate expanse of ocean 

 beach — sufficiently pleasant in the quiet, balmy days of summer 

 and autumn, but wofully exposed to the hurricane blasts of the 

 arctic winter — and gave shelter to from three to four thousand 

 adventurers, where formerly a few Indians and Eskimos from the 

 still farther northwest and King's Island constituted a straggling 

 and accidental population. This, in brief, is the initial history of 

 the Nome or Anvil City mining region, which will almost cer- 

 tanly call to it in the coming spring fifteen to twenty thousand addi- 

 tional inhabitants. 



Far more interesting to the one who has not been properly 

 rewarded in his search for placer claims than the placer deposits 

 themselves are the gold-bearing beach sands, whose productivity 

 will mainly be responsible for the influx of population to the new 

 region. From them, by crude and simple methods, has been taken, 

 in barely more than two months, gold to the value of more than 

 a million dollars, and what the possibilities for the future may be 



A Street in jS'ome. 



no one is wise enough to tell. So clearly exaggerated did the 

 accounts of the free-sand rocking appear, even those coming from 

 reputable miners who were personally known to me, that I could 

 hardly bring myself to take -them at their full value, but, being acci- 

 dentally drifted in the course of a summer's wanderings to St. 



