FAR AND NEAR 



We had reached the land of eagles as well as of 

 ravens. On a low rocky point seven eagles sat in 

 a row on the rocks near the water's edge and re- 

 garded us with the indifference of Indian chiefs. 



We stopped a day at Juneau, from which point 

 we visited the famous Treadwell mines on Douglas 

 Island. Nearly two thousand tons of quartz rock 

 are crushed daily at these mills, and the roar made 

 by the eight hundred or more stamps, all under one 

 roof, in pulverizing this rock, dwarfs all other rackets 

 I ever heard. Niagara is a soft hum beside it. Never 

 before have I been where the air was torn to tatters 

 and the ear so stunned and overwhelmed as in this 

 jaill. If the heavens ever should fall and one were 

 under a roof strong enough to stand the shock, I 

 think the uproar might be something like what we 

 experienced that day. It was not a grand reverber- 

 ating sound like the sounds of nature, it was simply 

 the most ear-paralyzing noise ever heard within four 

 walls. Heard, I say, though in truth we did not hear 

 it. To hear a thing, there must be some silence ; this 

 hubbub was so great and all-pervasive that the audi- 

 tory nerve was simply bruised into insensibility. The 

 remarkable thing about this mine is the enormous 

 extent of the gold-bearing quartz and its low grade 

 — three or four dollars a ton of rock. And yet the 

 process of extracting the gold has been so cheap- 

 ened by improved methods and machinery that the 

 investment yields a good profit. 



34 



