416 



CONQUERING THE ARCTIC ICE 



and black with the ravages of the fire. Most of this damage 

 was due to the carelessness of people who had used camp fires 

 and not put them out before leaving. The first day we drove 

 fifty miles, the next about the same distance, and then stopped 

 within ten miles of Fairbanks, at a large mining place called 



A GENERAL VIEW OF THE ALASKAN RANGE. 



Ester Creek, one of the best of the many camps in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Fairbanks. Ester Creek could almost be called 

 a small town, but most of its business went to Fairbanks, with 

 which it was connected by a railroad, running, if not frequently, 

 at any rate regularly. 



In spite of the serious working men's strike, which had con- 

 tinued during the preceding summer and which was raging 

 still, large "dumps" of dirt were taken out of the different 

 mines. Water, for sluicing out the gold, was led to the camp 

 by means of ditches and pipes from some rivers and large 

 lakes twenty miles or more distant. It was a scene of great 

 activity. The clank of the steam winches and pumps was 

 heard above the less penetrating noise of the trolley cars from 

 which the soil from the mines was dumped in great loads. 

 Steam whistles were blowing when we drove in, the signal for 

 stopping work on that day, and we might have thought ourselves 

 in a large manufacturing town, and not upon a mining property 

 in the middle of Alaska. 



