258 GRAVEL AND PLACER MINING IN ALASKA. [bull. 263. 
four to seventy-two hours. On every one of these tracts under the 
correct interpretation of the law, a shaft or drill hole at least 15 feet 
in depth would have been necessary in order to find one color of gold. 
Yet the same men have immediately recorded their staked ground as 
locations, swearing that they discovered gold. Lindley states (sec. 
437): "The Land Department has uniformly held that discovery is 
essential in the case of placers, going so far at one time as to hold that 
such discovery was essential in each 20-acre tract within a location of 
160 acres located by an association of persons." He further says: 
"Discovery is just as essential in case of placers as it is in lode 
locations." 
The regulations of the General Land Office include the following: 
No lode claim shall be located until after the discovery of a vein or lode (or in a 
placer of gold) within the limits of the claim, the object of which provision is evi- 
dently to prevent the appropriation of presumed mineral ground for speculative pur- 
poses to the exclusion of bona fide prospectors before sufficient work has been done 
to determine whether a vein or lode (of gold) really exists. a 
The nonobservance of the above requirement, and, in fact, the impos- 
sibility under the present law of its enforcement is the cause of the 
very evil in Alaska which the law aims to avert. I regard the pro- 
miscuous location and illegal holding of land on which gold has not 
been discovered as one of the most serious detriments to Alaskan 
development. 
SUBSEQUENT ANNUAL LABOR. 
Regarding subsequent labor Lindley (sec. 024) makes the following 
statement: 
While a timely resumption of work may prevent a relocation, the law contemplates 
that the labor or improvements, actual and valuable, to the amount of $100 in each 
year, computed from the 1st day of January next succeeding the date of location, 
should be performed in good faith. There is probably no single provision of the law 
which is evaded to a greater extent than this one. While, of course, there are many 
exceptions the average locator exhausts his ingenuity in attempting to avoid this plain 
and wholesome requirement. The courts are disposed to deal with these drones in the 
hive with much more leniency than they deserve. The statute is too frequently applied 
on sentimental lines. Forfeitures, say these tribunals, are odious, and in many cases 
the reluctance with which they enforce the law encourages rather than deters the 
systematic evasion of it. 
The statute is extremely liberal as to the time in which the specified amount of 
work shall be performed. A location made on January 1, 1897, may, in the absence 
of State laws or local rules requiring development work to be performed as an act of 
location, b be held without a stroke of labor until December 31, 1898, and in no case 
a Mining laws and regulations, General Land Office, 1903, p. 27, §8. 
'»It should be borne in mind that the principal Western States where mining is conducted have, by 
State legislation, so enlarged upon the rather bare fabric of the Federal mining law that, within the 
boundaries of these States many of the abuses which are permissible under a liberal interpretation 
of the Federal law, have been done away with. On the other hand, the excellent restrictions in 
force in the placer-mining States have no force in Alaska, and in consequence decisions rendered 
by the courts must be much more liberal, and are productive of the evils for the obviation of which 
the State statutes were long ago enacted.— C W. P. 
