The Tanana Gold Fields, Alaska 



109 



The " First Boat Out " after the Ice. 



Photo by Sidney Paige 



White Horse 



city have disappeared, and men shovel 

 and sweat for their daily bread and the 

 other man gets the gold. 



Everywhere the sluice box and the 

 piles of " tailings " catch your eye, and 

 the incessant chug chug of pumps and 

 dummy engines with the rhythmic 

 dumping of the gravel greets your ears. 



Descending one of the many shafts 

 sunk to bed rock through the frozen 

 gravel, the shift boss will show you 

 where the best pay lies, and while you 

 stoop to examine the spot a chunk of 

 the roof may catch you in the back of 

 the neck. But it seldom sloughs off in 

 more than 40-pound pieces, so there is 

 no danger. 



The mass of miners are wage-earners, 

 and they earn their wage. To work 

 all day at the end of a No. 2 shovel is 

 not all honey and treacle, nor does it 

 lead to high ideals and gentle philoso- 



phy to sweat out your ten hours in a 

 steam-filled drift of frozen gravel forty 

 feet below the creek, and when the 

 whistle blows issue to a hasty wash, a 

 dinner, and a crowded bunk-house. 

 But there is the ever-present possibility 

 of a good strike or a profitable " lay " 

 on a rich claim. The day is 24 hours 

 long and the sun shines most of the 

 time, and when the snow falls and the 

 trail freezes over, the wage-earner is his 

 own master again. With the hard- 

 earned "grub stake" and his team of 

 dogs he hits the trail for the new coun- 

 try, and it is " mush " until the coming 

 spring, when, if he hasn't struck it dur- 

 ing the short days of the Arctic winter, 

 he returns to the end of a No. 2 to try 

 it again next fall. Ask as many as you 

 will if they are ' ' goin' out this winter, ' ' 

 nine times out of ten the answer comes, 

 " Not till I go with a full poke." And 



