The Alaskan Mines 257 



difficulty has been to concentrate it economically. 

 I saw thin seams of gold quartz cutting through the 

 great stratas of slate all along the Silver Bow Canon. 

 But gold is worth what it costs in labor, like every 

 other commodity. Where the quartz or the ore will 

 not pay good wages to the man who would work 

 it, he lets it alone. 



The Treadwell lode is four hundred and fifty feet 

 thick and set on edge. Its extent is not known, 

 but there is enough in sight to keep ten hundred 

 stamps busy day and night for one hundred years. 

 The situation allows ore extraction with the mini- 

 mum of labor. First a tunnel was driven into the 

 lode some four hundred feet. Then a shaft was 

 driven down to meet it, not perpendicular to the 

 tunnel, but so as to allow a cork-screw slide of some 

 fifty feet to reach it; this to break the force of the 

 ore falling to the cars. The ore is blasted off the 

 sides of the shaft, falls to the slide, which empties 

 it into the cars. The cars are on a slight incline, so 

 that the only labor is to regulate the brakes. They 

 dump themselves into a hopper, which feeds the ore 

 to the crusher. From the crusher it falls into the 

 hopper four hundred feet long, which feeds it to 

 the stamps. From the stamps it falls into the 

 separators, which wash out all unmineralized dust. 

 This leaves the "concentrates" which contain gold, 

 silver, and base metals. These are put in one-hun- 

 dred-pound sacks and sent, mostly as ballast, to 

 the reduction works in the States. 



