Alaska and the Klondike (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 Excerpt: ...in the newspapers. But not all the prospecting or all the mining of western Alaska is going on in the vicinity of Nome. Thanks to our exceedingly defective mining laws it is possible for the dog in the manger to play his part in Alaska to the limit, and he is doing it. There is nothing to prevent a single prospector from staking as much ground as he pleases, and where the indications are good he pleases to stake everything in sight. Owing to these same legal defects he may hold his claims indefinitely without doing anything to develop them, if only he is clever about it. And he is holding them, in more than nine cases out of ten, hoping that some one will come and buy them or till some one, thinking they have been abandoned, files on them. If they prove to be valuable he is then prepared to pounce on the one who has spent the money to prove their value and, Washing out Gold with a ' Long Tom " near Nome aided by a lot of others of the manger breed, compel him to pay a large sum for a quit claim or to divide the output, or possibly to vacate altogether. The senatorial committee took stenographic reports here and at all the places visited of the recommendations of miners and business men and lawyers, and will undoubtedly endeavour to so change the mining laws as to compel those who do not develop their claims to abandon them so that others may make them productive. This dog-in-the-manger practice has had one partially compensating result--it has compelled the late comers to go on further into unprospected parts of the peninsula and develop the fact that there is " pay dirt" scattered pretty nearly all over the peninsula. Some of it is of too low grade to admit of profitable mining by the crude methods of the pan and the rocker, but may be made ...