of water is
turned that sweeps away all the dirt and gravel, allowing the heavier
gold to sink to the bottom, where it is caught and held by cross-bars or
"riffles."

Although gold has been discovered at many points along the Yukon and its
branches, the deposit at Forty Mile is the richest yet worked, and has
paid as high as $300 to a man for a single day's labor; $12,000 worth of
gold was cleared by one miner in a three months' season, and a $500
nugget has been found; but most of the miners are content if they can
make "ounce wages," or sixteen dollars per day, while the average for
the camp is not over $8 per day during the short season of that arctic
region.

Sluices can only be worked during three or four months of summer-time;
then come the terrible eight or nine months of winter when the mercury
thinks nothing of dropping to 60 deg. or 70 deg. below zero, and the whole
world seems made of ice. Strange as it may appear, the summer weather of
this region is very hot, 85 deg. in the shade, and 112 deg. in the sun
being frequently reached by the mercury. During the summer months, too,
the entire Yukon Valley is as terribly infested with mosquitoes as is any
mangrove swamp of the tropics. Thus the hardy miner who penetrates it in
his search for gold is made to suffer from one cause or another during
every month of the year.

In spite of the summer heat the ground never thaws to a depth of more
than five or six feet, below which it is solidly frozen beyond any point
yet reached by digging. Under the dense covering of moss, six to
eighteen inches thick, by which the greater part of Alaska is
overspread, it does not thaw more than a few inches. Consequently the
most important item of a Yukon miner's winter work is the stripping of
this moss from his claim in order that next summer's sun may have a
chance to thaw it to working depth.

There were no women nor children at Forty Mile, and there were few
amusements, but there was plenty of hard work in both summer when the
sun hardly sets at all, and in the winter when he barely shows his face
above the southern horizon. Besides the laborious task of
moss-stripping, the miner must saw out by hand all lumber for sluices
and rockers. He must build his own cabin and fashion its rude furniture,
besides doing all of his own house-work and cooking. He also expects to
do a certain amount of hunting and trapping during the winter months, so
that his time, unless he be very lazy,