purington.] LEGAL CONDITIONS IN L904. 259 
is the period less than a full year. It would seem that a more rigid enforcement of 
the rule would not only command more respect for the law, bul would in ;i greal 
degree tend to promote the general object and intent of the mining statutes — the 
development of the mining resources of the country. 
The above quotations are made because the opinions so closely bear 
on the deplorable conditions in Alaska. The climatic conditions arc 
so formidable on the 81st of December of each year (the date of expi- 
ration of the time in which a miner may do his annual assessment 
work) that $100 might be expended by him in work on the claim in 
merely shoveling snow. Naturally, all traces of the work so done 
would be obliterated in a short time; yet it would be actual and valua- 
ble work, for otherwise he could not reach the ground beneath. This 
feature is so well understood in Alaska that a man who makes affidavit 
to work done holds his claim from year to year unquestioned, and it is 
undoubtedly true that the bulk of the territory held as placer ground 
is not only T unworked but unvisited by the claimants alter first loca- 
tion. Should, however, an individual relocate or "jump" a given 
claim so held, the first holder goes into court and swears that he has 
done his annual representation work, thus maintaining his title. 
Should the relocator maintain that he has searched the ground and 
found no traces of any previous work, he still has a weak case, and the 
verdict is usually against him. It is needless to say that this relocator 
has, in the great majority of cases, the better right to the ground. 
I have endeavored to make clear a few of the reasons why the pro- 
duction of gold is actually retarded in Alaska, rather than assisted, by 
the present administration of the mining law. 
BOUNDARIES. 
Of over a thousand prospectors in California, Oregon, Nevada, Colo- 
rado, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska whom I have known, talked with, and 
been in the field with, I have never seen ten who included a compass in 
their equipment, to say nothing of surveying instruments more nearly 
approaching precision. These men, generally known among them- 
selves as "practical miners," are of the class by which mineral loca- 
tions are generally made. Is it fair to assume that such men are com- 
petent to make a location which shall conform to the mining regulat ion \ 
His location notice should give the course and distance as nearly as practicable 
from the discovery shaft on the claim to some permanent well-known points or 
objects, such, for instance, as stone monuments, blazed trees, the confluence of 
streams, point of intersection of well-known gulches, ravines, or roads, prominenl 
buttes, hills, etc., which may be in the immediate vicinity, and which will serve to 
perpetuate and fix the locus of the claim and render it susceptible of identification 
from the description thereof given in the record of locations in the district, and 
should be duly recorded. « 
oU. S. Mining Laws and Regulations— General Land Office, 1903, p. 27, sec. 9. 
