age at the assayer's from eighteen to nineteen dollars, sixteen
dollars is, in Alaska, the accepted current value. With this, therefore,
as a standard,--a pennyweight being eighty cents and a grain three and a
third cents,--with accurate scales and proper weights, exchange is not a
difficult matter.

Alaska has furnished a fertile field for unscrupulous schemers to enrich
themselves at the expense of credulous investors. Hundreds of claims,
which either did not exist or were not worth the paper upon which they
were presented, have been sold to the gullible public, and corporations
have been formed to make their stockholders quickly millionaires. Such
a proposed donor of wealth was "The Polar Bear Mining Company," whose
prospectus I had read and whose operations near Council were within my
ken. This bonanza concern had a capital stock of one million shares,
offered for sale at four cents a share, and its assets consisted of
forty-seven wildcat claims upon which the prospectus dwelt at length in
golden praise, declaring that "pay streaks" and "old channels" pervaded
the entire bunch. "Alaska has made many millionaires--why not be one?"
was the tenor of this masterpiece of seductive argument. After the
season was well under way, the Polar Bear began to tear open the ground
not far from Council; and soon afterward a party of some six or seven
discouraged, disgusted, and disgruntled men trudged laboriously over
the tundra, and camped near us, until they should learn from
headquarters at Nome which other one of the forty-seven claims should
similarly be drained of its treasure. But no word came, and there they
remained abjectly despondent as the dreary days dragged by. One evening
my partner and I strolled over to where they were gathered in dismal
silence about a small fire, engaged in brushing away the mosquitos, and
looking generally miserable. They appeared to be farmers masquerading as
miners. There had been defection in the camp, due to a controversy as to
who was the "captain," and in consequence the circle was depleted.
Speaking of this lamentable fact, one of them, who resembled a shoemaker
out of employment, said apologetically (but he was proud of it): "Now,
I don't want to seem to be stuck up or conceited, but _I'm_ the boss
here--I'm the _secretary_ of the company." "How much did it cost you?"
we queried. "Well," he said, "I didn't pay anything to be secretary, but
I put twenty-one hundred dollars in the company."