THE TREADWELL MINES 



2 9 



We have reached the land of eagles as well as of ravens. 

 On a low rocky point seven eagles sit in a row on the 

 rocks near the water's edge and regard us indifferently, 

 like Indian chiefs. 



We stopped a day at Juneau from which point we visited 



the famous Treadwell 

 2000 tons of quartz 

 rock are crushed 

 daily at these mills 

 and the roar made by 

 the eight hundred or 

 more stamps, all un- 

 der one roof, in pul- 

 verizing this rock 

 dwarfs all other rack- 

 ets I ever heard. Ni- 

 agara is a soft hum 

 beside it. Never be- 

 fore have I been 

 where the air was 

 torn to tatters and 

 the ear so stunned 

 If the heavens ever 



mines on Douglas Island. 



Nearly 



OLD CHURCH AT JUNEAU. 



and overwhelmed as in this mill. 



should fall and one were under a 

 roof strong enough to stand the shock, I think the up- 

 roar might be something like what we experienced that 

 day. It was not a grand reverberating 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-perva- 

 sive that the auditory nerve was simply bruised into in- 

 sensibility. The remarkable thing about this mine is 

 the enormous extent of the gold-bearing quartz and its 

 low grade — three or four dollars per ton of rock. And 

 yet the process of extracting the gold has been so cheap- 



