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Alaska Gold Prospecting

GOLD DISCOVERIES AND MINING

We now come to the feature that has made this region famed, and but for which it might have lain dormant till the crush of humanity had pushed the race into the outlying parts of the earth : Gold ! GOLD ! ! Robert Campbell knew sixty years ago that there was gold in the gravel at his trading post on the Pelly and Yukon ; but he was not a miner, and indeed there were few in the world who could then have extracted successfully the gold from the gravel. The " rocker " and " sluice box" were not so familiar as now, and the gold would have been plentiful indeed that would have diverted those grim pioneers from the chase for furs, to which they devoted life and limb. Nearly two generations ago a missionary took up his abode in that far-away region. He died recently at Fort McPherson near the mouth of Mackenzie River. In the middle years of the past century he lived and laboured among the Indians on the Porcupine and the Yukon in that vicinity.

His work called him as far up the Yukon as the river afterwards called the Fortymile, and from it over to the head of the Tanana. In his journeyings he crossed the sources of the since famous Birch Creek, the Circle City field, and on one of its branches he found gold. As he had his head- quarters at Fort Yukon the knowledge was common there, but fur traders do not understand gold mining. The methods are to them a sealed book, and as the trading seasons are strenuous, though short, they had not much time to devote to mining even if they would. Even the early miners on the Yukon, men whose life business it was, and learned in all the lore of the craft, did not think it possible to mine in the winter, until forced to that conclusion by long experience in the country. In the year 1859 a young man of the city of Toronto, Canada, entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company and was sent to the other end of the world, as it was considered then, to the Company's most distant post, Fort Yukon.
In the fall of the year soon after his arrival he wrote a long letter home giving a minute account
of his journey of nearly five thousand miles. On October 2nd, 1864, he wrote again, and told of the fur trade and its dog expeditions in the winter, and boat voyages in the summer after furs. He dwelt with feeling on the fear of meeting some of the Russian parties on the river below the fort
where he often went, and though he was not afraid of an encounter he was anxious about it.

The idea appeared to be that there would be a collision, and the strongest party would take all
the furs. I have copies of both these letters, and though all the contents are interesting the following paragraph is extremely so as foreshadowing the future of the Yukon : "I had some thoughts of digging the gold here, but am not sure about it. I do not think it is in paying quantities at the fort, but if I could only get time to make an expedition up the Yukon, I expect we should find it in abundance, but I am always on the voyage or busy at the fort during the summer, and in the winter nothing can be done in the way of gold-hunting. I think that next fall, after arriving from my trip down the Yukon, I shall be able to go up the river. There is a small river not far from here that the minister, the Rev. McDonald, saw so much gold on a year or two ago that he could have gathered it with a spoon. I have often wished to go, but can never find the time. Should I find gold in paying quantities I may turn gold - digger, but this is merely a last resort when I can do no better" A last resort ! how it sounds now, and it was not sarcasm, nor moralizing on the vanity of riches either. A last resort to a young man on a yearly stipend of not more than two hundred dollars and such board and lodging as the country afforded. To the miners of the Yukon it, well !