70 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



where the mining experts feel justified in predicting a steady and 

 inexhaustible yield of paying ore it is paying handsomely at 

 present. 



This subject of what is, or what is not, a good mining region or 

 investment is one to which no rational man can well afford to com- 

 mit himself. Those who have had extended experience in these 

 matters know that it is a topic which baffles the best investigator, 

 and returns no safe answer to the most intelligent cross-examina- 

 tion. The true advice which can be honestly given is that which 

 prompts every man interested to look and resolve wholly for him- 

 self, for he, in fact, knows just as much as anybody else. At the 

 most, the finding of a rich or desirable lead of gold or silver in a 

 new country is an accident or sheer opportunity of chance. Whether 

 it will hold out, or end in a " pocket," is also only to be determined 

 by working it for all it is worth. Once in a while a man makes a rich 

 find, and is rewarded ; but an overwhelming majority of prospect- 

 ors are ever wandering in fruitless, restless, tireless search for those 

 golden ingots which are still hidden in the recesses of mountain 

 ledges, or buried in the alluvium of river bottoms. The miners in 



O " 



Alaska embrace various nationalities Australians and Canadians, 

 Cornishmen and Californians, Oregonians and British Columbians 

 predominate but the number aggregated is not large.* 



If gold or silver-quartz mines of free-milling ore (no matter how 

 low the grade) can be located anywhere on the shores of these 

 mountainous fiords of the Alexander archipelago, their wealth will 

 be great, because the transportation to them and from them is prac- 

 tically without cost. The expense of working such valuable quartz 

 mines up a hundred or more miles from the sea, will result in aban- 

 donment, where reaching them involves frequent transfers of sup- 

 plies, and the working season is cut by the rigor of winter to less 

 than half or one-third of every year. The same mines, down within 

 the dockage of an ocean-steamer in the Sitkan district would be 

 a steady source of wealth and industry all the year round. 



The coal which is found here is not satisfactory for steamers' 

 use too heavily charged with sulphur. Copper ore is well-known, 

 but not worked in competition with the Lake Superior and Arizona 

 cheap outputs. At the present writing there are no active indus- 



* Eight hundred, or a thousand, perhaps. They come and go suddenly, 

 alternating in travel as the rumors relative to their occupation circulate. 



