Salmon fishers on an Alaskan river drawing in their seines. tion of the scenery escape us. Everywhere are the lovely emerald islets being lashed by the tongues of wanton water. Everywhere the waterways wind and wind in picturesque fashion, perhaps going into an inlet to meet some mountain cascade or a glacier, or perhaps only following the shore line of an island. The trees that we see are mostly hemlock and spruce, though there is considerable yellow or Alaska cedar. Mountain sides are bald from glacial action, but the tops are luxuriously wooded and most of them capped with snow. There is no beach, the shore line being very precipitous and rugged. It is not unlike the coast of Norway, but is more bold and craggy. Juneau, being the capital of Alaska as well as its largest industrial center, is an important town. Like Ketchikan, one's first and most lasting impression of the town is of the big mountain behind it-Mt. Juneau. The town of Juneau lies literally on a shelf at its base. Along the back of the shelf flows Gold Creek. It was along this creek that Joseph Juneau and Richard Harris fought their way in 1880 in search of gold. And they found ita rich quartz ledge at the head of what they called Snow Slide Gulch. Juneau is situated in what is known as the Juneau Gold Belt, which extends from about fifty miles south to fifty miles north of there, running in a northeasterly direction parallel with Lynn Canal. The belt averages from three to four miles in width, and, geologically speaking, is made up of slates, schists, quartzites, porpyries and intrusive dikes of greenstone and diorites. The hanging wall is a high range of mountains paralleling its entire course. They are intrusive in character, and of later origin than the country rock, hence probably responsible for the fractures that allowed the mineral deposits to form. As one walks across the country one can easily read the story of mountain formation in the upturned strata; it lies nearly horizontal and some of it is greatly inverted. Juneau has a number of mines in operation, chief of which is the Treadwell-the largest gold mine in the Hauling a net on to a big barge and dumping the salmon. Note the fish jumping into the air in efforts to reach the water outside the seine. The canneries handle the fish expeditiously in enormous quantities. world. Its capacity is 5,000 tons per day. The Alaska Gastineau, however, expects to double this amount when their plant shall have been completed. The first unit of the latter plant began operation early in 1914. With fifteen thousand tons of rock being scooped out of the earth daily it would seem only a matter of time before all inside of the earth would be on the outside, wouldn't it? The ore of the belt is very low grade, running about $2.50 per ton; hence the necessity of working it on a large scale. Mining in these parts is no poor man's proposition. A shoot into the mines is a thrilling experience to one so fortunate as to be accorded that privilege. Imagine dropping 2,100 feet below the surface of the earth-nearly half a mile worse still, following the drifts away out under Gastineau Channel. The drifts of the Alaska Gastineau mines will connect with those of the Treadwell, so that one might go from Juneau to Treadwell by boat and return on foot underneath the water. The "pay dirt" is loosened by dynamite, compressed-air drills being used to bore the holes for it. Utilizing the force of gravity, the arrangement is such that the ore falls by its own weight through finger chutes into tram cars which are drawn to the shaft in trains of five cars by horses. It is interesting to note that these horses never leave the mine as long as they work there; and they are so well trained that the driver while loading simply yells "car ahead," when each car is filled, and the animal steps up just far enough to bring the next car into place beneath the chute. And as one looks about-above, about and underneath-all is aglitter. In the Mexican Mine of the Treadwell group is a hollowed out cavity called a stope, large enough to hold a house or two. When lighted up it is a magnificent thing-the millions of specks of ore in its roughly hewn walls suggest to the beholder some mammoth fairy palace. After being trammed to the bins at the mine shaft the ore is loaded into ships and hoisted to the surface, where it goes through the rock breakers and Thousands of halibut frozen in cold storage awaiting a market. continues on its journey to the stamp mill. The tram cars by which it journeys dump it into the big central bin of the stamp mill, and it slides by its own weight as it is needed through numerous chutes and into the stamp mortars, where it is crushed to sand. A stamp is nothing more or less than an iron pole about fifteen feet long, standing upright with an iron shoe attached at the lower end. Under it is conveniently placed the mortar into which the shoe stamps after the manner of an old fashioned churn dasher. Each mill at the Treadwell has three hundred stamps arranged in groups of five each; and each stamp drops at the rate of ninety-eight times a minute with a weight of about 1,100 pounds, thus quickly pulverizing the ore in the mortars. This sand is washed out of the mortars as fast as ground and flowed over copper plated that have previously been treated with quicksilver. The quicksilver catches the free gold, and the rest which is held in the iron pyrites passes with the sand to the vanner mill. Upon entering this latter mill we are completely puzzled. Hundreds of table-like objects are jiggling curiously and by observation we discover that they are separating the glittering substance from the sand and saving it. We put our wits to work and study out the process; after all, it is quite simple. A vanner is a slightly inclined surface something like a table with a rubber apron revolving around it. The jiggling motion causes the pyrites to sink to the bottom where they stick to the rubber apron, and are carried upward out of danger, while the sand is washed away and goes down the tail race to Gastineau Channel. Thus saved, the cyanide plant ac |