Show I ALASKA MINES Tho arrlvalo of gold from Alaska and the Klondike up to dale are only about half what they were last year From I this It has been Inferred that the Alaskan Alas-kan gold discoveries have already passed the maximum of richness That Inference Is not well founded There Is a scramble about titles around Cape Nome which has prevented the working I of the best mlncf and moreover It has been a trying year In lie north on account of the unusually cold weather It is l possible that about Dawson City the mines are prcttly well exhausted As wo understand those deposits they are placer deposits on bedrock from thirty to fifty feet below tho surface and the method of workIng work-Ing has been to alnk shafts down to the bedrock to drift and hoist the oands In the winter and Ihen wash them out when warm weather comes in the summer They probably lie In th6 old channel either of a river or of a glacier and It Is quite possible that they will be exhausted pretty soon even as the placem of California were But there Is another form of mining growing up there which is liable to endure through this generation at least that Is great reefs of lowgrade gold rock have been found Some mills have already been erected They arc the kind of mines which makes permanent per-manent and legitimate mining because a great lowgrade mine that employs many men tho profits of which depend on working vast quantities of quartz are tho best possible mines for a country coun-try and there Is a belief that those are not practically half explored and only a fraction of them arc opened Alaska promises to be more and more a factor In the worlds gold product for many years to come I |