"You won't be achin', none, to hear all o' my roamin's after I quit the Sutro Tunnel," Jim resumed, a couple of days later, when Owens and Clem came to hear the rest of his story, "so I'll cut 'em short. But you'll be wantin' to hear how it was I got into that queer part o' the country where I made my strike.

"It was Father's doin's more'n it was mine. I reckon I'd ha' stuck around the Comstock Lode an' got into reg'lar silver-quartz minin' if I'd gone my own way. But Father didn't have no use for silver. He was a gold prospector, he was, an' he didn't want to do nothin' else.

"After the Comstock got goin' good, with big stamp-mills poundin' an' roarin' night an' day, an' when Virginia City begun to settle into a sure-enough town, Father begun to itch to be away. Folks worried him. Gold, he used to say, had savvy enough to hide itself when a mob come around, an', accordin' to Father's ideas, a placer wasn't no good, anyhow, after two seasons' pickin's.

"He jest wanted to come along an' skim off the cream o' some new find, clean up enough dust to keep him goin' for a while, an' then pick up his stakes an' git! It wasn't jest the money Father was after. He liked huntin' after gold, jest for the sake o' huntin'. I've seen him quit a claim that was makin' a fair profit an' start off prospectin', for the sake o' the change. The wilder the spot, the more chance there was o' findin' gold, he used to say; the fewer the folks, the bigger the clean-up. Looked like he was right, too, placer fields peter out mighty fast when a gang gets there."

"They are bound to," Owens agreed.

"But why? There ain't no rule about gold. One placer'll give up millions in dust, an' another ain't worth pannin'."

"There's no rule that will tell you where to find placer gold," the mine-owner corrected, "but don't run away with the idea that gold deposits are all freaks. As a matter of fact, there is a regular science to help a good prospector in hunting for reef or quartz gold. Whether he will find it in sufficient quantity to make the deposit worth working is quite another matter.

"You mustn't think, Jim, that gold happens to be in one place and happens not to be in another as a result of mere chance. There's no chance in Nature. We think there is, sometimes, merely because the factors are so terribly complicated that we can't follow them all.

"What makes the finding of gold seem so much a matter of luck is not because we don't know how the gold came to be where it is, but because we can't know the whole history of the Earth before Man came, and we can't read everything from the rocks which crop out on the surface. But we have some clues, and if you studied out the big money-making gold-mines of to-day, you would find that chance has played but a small part in their discovery and no part at all in their working.

"A lucky prospector may have been the first to find signs of gold in the region, but most likely, he got but little out of it. It was the scientific search which followed that revealed the location of the great rock deposits below in which the gold was thinly scattered, and it was highly specialized mining engineering which made them possible to work. There are mines where ores containing only two dollars' worth of gold (48 grains, a tenth of an ounce) to the ton are successfully handled, and the greater part of the big gold-mines run along quite comfortably on five dollars' worth."

"You mean on a quarter of an ounce o' gold to the ton!" exclaimed Jim, amazed. "I've often got ten times that much in one pan!"

"Exactly. Yet you're not a millionaire, are you? Most gold-mines run on a narrow margin of profit, a dollar or two to the ton of ore crushed. So, you see, the works must be on a huge scale in order to return a dividend on the investment. What's more, you can't afford to establish a big plant unless there's an enormous amount of ore available.

"It's an old rule of wise investors not to put money into a mine that looks too rich. Why?

"Because rich ore generally peters out fast. The rich mines always catch the suckers easily, and they're the ones who lose. A few cents a ton profit on an immense deposit of low-grade ore means a sure return, because, as a rule, such ore comes from a very old geological formation where the gold is evenly scattered, and labor-saving machinery can be put in with a certainty that those few cents of profit will continue indefinitely.

"Gold, as you know, Jim, is always the same price. This has been agreed upon by all nations. It is the one standard of value. It is worth a fraction over $20 an ounce. Year in, year out, all over the world, gold is worth the same.

"As a result, a gold-mine manager who knows the exact proportion of gold per ton in the ore of his mine, can calculate to a cent how much he can afford to pay for mining the ore, crushing it, and separating the gold by chemical processes. He must figure on the cost of installing his machinery, on his interest for original outlay, on depreciation, on the cost of power for his machinery, on the water power needed for crushing and washing, on transportation for his supplies and on wages. Usually he will have to build his own railroad and his own aqueducts. A little saving in one place—even a few cents per ton—will enable him to make a big profit; a little extra cost, such as an increase in the price of fuel, of chemicals, or of wages, will make him bankrupt.

"That is why, Jim, even the richest-ored mine in the world—if it be uneven in its yield of gold per ton—may be worthless, and why a low-grade mine with an unchanging percentage may be worth millions, so long as there is plenty of it. It all depends on the cost of extracting the metal. There are scores, yes, hundreds of gold-deposits well known to-day, which cannot be worked as long as gold stays $20 an ounce, because it costs almost as much as that to get it out, but which would be big money-makers if the gold were worth $25. Three-quarters of the gold-mines of to-day would shut tight like a clam, if gold were to drop in price even a dollar or two. What a capitalist wants to-day is ore, and he is not interested in free gold. What a prospector looks for, is free gold, and he ignores the rock. I'm telling you all this, now, Jim, because it's what will be the important thing when we get to talking, later, over your find."

"That's all right," the old prospector answered, "but how can a man tell when he's tappin' a big lot o' rock or jest a little, if it ain't the free gold what shows him?"

"He can't tell, as a rule," the mine-owner rejoined. "It takes a geologist to do that. As I was saying, there are some rules to go by. Here, I'll give you a notion of how gold came to be in the rocks, and then you'll see what a geologist can tell and what he can't.

"To start with, you've got to begin 'way at the beginning of things, before the crust of the earth was solid and when all the rocks of the crust were in a melted and half-liquid state. So far as we can make out, the metals seems to have classified themselves at that time, more or less, according to density. The lighter elements came to the surface, the heavier ones stayed at the bottom. It wasn't merely a question of weight, but of gravitation, centrifugal action and a lot of things I won't stop to explain to you now. Gold, as you know, is heavy, that is, it possesses extreme density. It stayed therefore, mainly at the bottom of this semi-molten sea.

"But this sea, which covered the whole of the earth's surface, wasn't altogether liquid, as the oceans are to-day. It was a seething mass of different densities, some of it liquid, some of it slimy, some of it thick like sticky mud, acted upon by fearful whirlwinds of electric forces such as astronomers see in the sun to-day, and by powerful internal currents which created vast churning whirlpools of super-heated matter."It's impossible for us to tell where these electric whirlwinds passed or where these currents were. So, since the original separation of the metals was highly irregular, no geologist can say with certainty where gold or silver, lead or tin, will be found in the greatest quantity.

"Then there's another complication. As you know, most of the metals have chums or affinities with other substances, just as gold has with mercury. These chums of the metals were also in that molten ocean, but not always in the same proportions, nor yet distributed regularly. So metallic compounds were formed at different times and in diverse places. These compounds had varying densities, with the result that in later ages they behaved in a way quite different from the pure metal. You see, Jim, long before the crust of the earth was even formed, gold was scattered far and wide, and already was in different forms.

"Then, little by little, the crust began to form as the earth cooled. It was just a scum, at first, and was constantly broken up from below. As it got thicker, it resisted more and more, until the upheavals of the crust formed the mountains of the earliest or Primary Age. This crust, which was now solid rock, contained gold, but, naturally, nowhere in the same proportions. Some had much metal inclusion; some, little; some, none at all. Besides, between the mountains or in them, were vast volcanic craters, pouring up molten matter which became what are known as the eruptive rocks, and these, too, carried up gold from below. These rocks crystallized and the gold remained in them.

"But even that wasn't complicated enough for Mother Nature. In those same eruptive rocks, both of the early and later periods, gold is mainly found in veins. These veins are of dozens of different sorts, depending on the rock in which they occur and on Nature's ways of putting them there.

"To make it simple to you, I'll only mention two. The most general method was by fumaroles. These are subterranean blow-holes of vapor containing sulphur, tellurium, and chlorine compounds, as well as super-heated steam. These vapors, projected from deep down in the earth with incredible pressure and energy, acted on the new-made rocks, formed compounds with the metals, or, when united with hydrogen in the steam, separated the metals from solutions of their salts, and forced the metals into cracks in the new-made and cooling eruptive rocks. According to the kind of rock and the nature of the chemical agent, a geologist will know for what type of vein to search. The other most general agent of vein-making was hot water—generally heavily saturated with sulphur and other chemicals—which dissolved the gold. This hot water, with gold in solution, seeped into the cracks and crevices made by the rock as it cooled, thus forming other types of veins."

"Hold on a minute, there!" protested Jim. "Water won't dissolve gold."

"It will and does," was the retort, "especially when certain chemicals are in the water. As a matter of fact, even to-day, the geysers at Steamboat Springs, California, and at several places in New Zealand, deposit gold and silicon in their basins. But let me go on.

"After the gold was placed in veins in these primary rocks, there came a period of erosion, and the mountains were worn away. The gold being harder than rock, it remained and made alluvial deposits of a very early age. Some, of these old 'placers' are several miles below the surface, now, others have come again to the surface by all the superposed rock having been washed away, anew. Some of the gold was dissolved, as before, and got into the crevices of the newly deposited rocks made by erosion, known as sedimentary rocks. So, you see, Jim, even millions of years ago, there was gold in the crystallized eruptive rock, gold in veins of igneous rock, gold in alluvial deposits, and, again, gold in veins in the sedimentary rocks.

"Then came another period of elevation, with a second raising up of mountain ranges, and with a renewal of violent volcanic action. The crust was getting more and more unequal, the way in which the metals were distributed became more and more scattered. Mountains of the Secondary Age were often made of Primary sedimentary rocks, or of Primary igneous rocks, so much changed that geologists call them metamorphic rocks. And, Jim, every time that the rock was changed, the gold changed either its place or its compound character, or both. Then came another period of erosion, lasting millions of years, the gold was washed away to form new placers, or made its way into veins in the Secondary sedimentary rocks.

"Then came the great upheaval of the Third or Tertiary Age, in which new mountains rose, new volcanic vents were opened, and, once more, much of the gold was acted upon by chemicals, mainly sulphur and tellurium. In many places silver showed a strong affinity with gold, forming deposits where the ores were commingled. Once more the hundreds of centuries of erosion came, to be followed by the upheaving of the newer mountains of the Fourth or Quaternary Age. So, you see, Jim, as I told you before, gold can be found in almost every rock and of every geological period."

"I don't see that it helps much, then!" declared the old prospector. "You can go lookin' where you durn please."

"There's nothing to stop you," agreed Owens cheerfully, "but that's a hit-and-miss method. And I can show you just how even this little bit of geology comes in to help the miner.

"Get this clearly in your head, Jim! Three-quarters of the present gold production of the world comes from gold that is mixed with pyrites—which is a sulphide of iron, or from tellurides—in which a tellurium-hydrogen compound has been the chemical agent. A prospector, therefore, who uncovers a new field where the gold is in the pyritous or the telluride form has ten times more chance of attracting capital than one who finds lumps of native gold lying around loose.

"It is when a prospector strikes a section where all the gold-bearing rock has been eroded that he is apt to find the 'pockets' so dear to his heart. The amazing riches of the Klondyke lay in the fact that prospectors found, first, the alluvial deposits from the present age in the sands of the running creeks, and, on ledges high above the creeks and running into the rocks on either side, the alluvial deposits, even thicker and richer, of a bygone time."

"You've got it right," declared Jim, emphatically. "I know 'cos I was there!"

"Was it on the Yukon, then, that you made your famous strike?"

The prospector winced. Evidently, he intended to reach that point in his own way.

"I'll tell you about that, after a bit," he answered evasively. "But you ain't said why placer claims peter out."

"Can't you see? A placer claim doesn't show where the big store of gold is, but where it isn't! It shows that the gold has gone. A placer is just a spot where a little heavy gold, that hasn't been acted on by chemicals, happens to have been deposited during the erosion of a mountain which was composed of gold-bearing rock. The rock has been washed into sand and gravel and a great deal of it taken out to sea. There's plenty of gold in the sea, as I told you before.

"But the amount of sand or gravel to be panned along a creek or river is limited. When that's washed over, there's no more to find. A prospector gets down to bed-rock and he's through. Then he's either got to pack up and hunt some new spot where the same erosion has happened, or, if he's clever enough, he's got to find the rock or reef from which the gold was washed out. If he doesn't know his geology, he's apt to waste his time.

"Then the scientific expert and the capitalist come in. It's the man with money who profits most by a poor man's strike. He can afford to sit back and wait. Presently the expert will come back and report where the gold-bearing rock lies. The capitalist arrives with huge machinery for mining and crushing the rock, for turning on enormous water-power, in short, for performing a sort of artificial erosion in a few days which Nature took hundreds of thousands of years to do. He pockets millions, where the prospectors who did the first work only get thousands, or even hundreds, or, sometimes, nothing at all.

"Your father was perfectly right, Jim, in saying that the prizes of prospecting are for the man who gets there first. Placers are bound to peter out quickly. They are Nature's purses, and a purse hasn't any more money in it than you put in. Even the Klondyke, that astounding pocket of riches, lasted only three years and then dwindled down.

"Some of these days, all the available places of the earth will have been worked over by the casual prospector, and then his day will be done. The ever-hoping rover of the pick, shovel, and pan is becoming extinct. Even now, the only spots which hold out any chance of pockets of gold are in the almost inaccessible section of the globe.

"The daring seeker for gold must go to the bleak ranges of the frigid North, where, even in the middle of the summer, the ground is frozen as hard as a rock a few inches below the surface; or else to the jungle-clad slopes of the tropics, where fever and stewing heat menace him with ever-present death; or yet to regions so far removed from civilization that the white man has not yet penetrated there. The shores of the Arctic Ocean, the steaming equatorial forests of the Eastern Andes, or the untrodden valleys of the inner Himalayas offer the most hopes to the prospector. But he may spend all the gold-dust he finds, and more, to go there and return.

"The tundras of Alaska and eastward to Hudson Bay still contain placer gold, to a surety, gold not difficult to find if a man is willing to face an Arctic winter and a mosquito-haunted summer to work there. It's a wonder to me, Jim, that your father didn't join the great rush to the Fraser River, in British Columbia, in 1856. That was a mad and sorrowful stampede, if ever there was one!"

"He was crazy about the Fraser," Jim answered. "All that kep' him from goin' was the smash-up o' the Kern River rush, which lef' him dead-broke an' nigh starvin', like I told you. But he never forgot the Fraser. That's what took us up north, to wind up with.

"It was in '79, when I was twenty years old, that Father comes into the cabin, an' says, point blank,

"'We're a-goin' to the Kootenay.'"'Where's that?' I asks.

"'Somewheres up near the Fraser River. There's gold there, so they're sayin', like there was on the Sacramento in '49. An' thar ain't no one, hardly, thar! Fust one in gits it all.'

"I tried to reason with him. So did Mother, but it weren't no manner o' use. A week later, we was gone."

"I shouldn't have thought he'd have found much on the Kootenay," said Owens reflectively, "it's all vein mining there. That needs heavy crushing machinery."

"Not all," Jim corrected. "There's some glacial gravel there an' we washed out enough to pay our way. But Father wanted something bigger.

"We struck out from West Kootenay an' hit the trail for Six Mile Creek, near Kicking Horse Pass, in Upper East Kootenay. We stayed there a while, but some one, who had a grudge agin the Mormons, pulled his gun on Father. A 'forty-niner' ain't apt to be lazy on the shoot, an' Father's gun spit first. We didn't wait for the funeral, but moved on, an' lively, at that, strikin' for the Fraser."

"Good thing for you the N.W.M.P. (North West Mounted Police), didn't strike your trail!" commented Owens.

"It was a straight-enough deal," protested Jim, "an' the N.W.'s ha' got plenty o' sense. But that wasn't no reason for hangin' around, lookin' for trouble. We thought the Fraser'd be healthier. As it turned out, it wasn't.

"The Fraser boom was dead. The shacks in the ol' minin' camps was rottin' to ruin. The machinery—what little there was of it—was lyin' there, rustin'. The sluices had all fallen to bits, except on Hop Rabbit Creek. A couple o' hundred men was there still, workin' over the tailin's, but they was all Chinamen. Up the creek a ways some o' them was pannin'.

"Second day we was there, a big Chink comes up to me, an' says, very quiet like,

"'You plenty sabbee? Run away quick!'

"It didn't look that way to me, for I don't take to orderin'. I was good an' ready to drop that Chink in his tracks, but I did a little thinkin' first. Two hundred agin two is big odds. I nodded, an' the big Chink turns away.

"I didn't say nothin' about the warnin' to Father, for he was that stubborn he'd ha' waded right in an' tried to clean up the whole camp. He wouldn't ha' had the chance of a rat in a trap. He'd ha' got himself carved up in little slices an' that was about all. So I jest told him that one o' the Chinks had reported there was a new strike on the Cassiar. Father took the bait like a hungry trout an' we was off in an hour."

"But I always thought Chinamen were such a peaceful lot!" exclaimed Clem.

"If a Chink comes into a white camp, he's willin' to sing small an' do what he's told. But in a boom camp that white folks have given up an' quit, if Johnny Chink comes in, he won't let nary a white come back. I know! One o' my pardners was in the massacre o' Happy Man Gulch in '87. That's a yarn worth hearin'! I'll tell it you, some time.

"Out we trailed to the Cassiar, an', funny enough, though I'd only been bluffin' to Father about the strike there, we landed on the pay gravel the very day after French Pete had struck a pocket. He was a good prospector, was French Pete, an' knew more'n most, but he was timid like, an' glad to have us there. He could handle Indians—he was a half-breed himself—but he was that superstitious, he was afraid o' the dark, alone. He was religious, too, an' Father an' him got along together famous. We staked out a claim, right next to his, an', for a few weeks, cleaned up a good fifty dollars a day.

"Then, one fine mornin', a bunch o' redskins come down, friends o' French Pete. They palavered some, an', after a while, French Pete he comes over to us an' says:

"'We got three days to get out!'

"Father he put up an awful howl an' was for plugging the redskins full o' holes, pronto. But French Pete puts it to him that these Injuns was his friends, an' shootin' wouldn't go. There'd been some kind o' deal between this tribe an' the Chilkoots, an' every miner on the Divide knew more'n plenty about the Chilkoots. They'd tortured to death Georgie Holt, the first prospector that ever went over the Chilkoot Pass, an' more'n one miner that got into their country wasn't never heard of no more.

"So Father puts it up to French Pete where he's goin' next. French Pete is a good pardner, an' tells a queer tale, but he tells it straight. He allows there's gold on the islands off the coast an' shows the lay.

"Some years afore, so he says, Joe Juneau, an old-time Hudson Bay trapper, an' Dick Harris, one o' the forty-niners, had found color on Gold Creek, near the coast, an' had made a pile. Juneau went on prospectin', though he was rich, an', havin' a generous streak, grub-staked any man what asked him. That way he got a big share in the placers found on Silver Bow and doubled his pile. Some other prospectors what he'd grub-staked reported havin' found gold on the islands, but nothin' extraordinary. Harris, havin' a business head, stuck around Gold Creek (the present town of Juneau was formerly called Harrisburg) an' got rich a-plenty. Juneau an' Harris had more'n enough to look after, an' never got over to the islands.

"French Pete, he's an old friend of Juneau an' he knows about this island game. He reckons it'd be worth pannin'. There's sure-enough gold up thar to pay for the workin', an' there might be a chance for a big haul, seein' no one is prospectin' thar. He offers to show Father where the placers are supposed to be, if he's willin' to come along. Father likes to stick by his pardner an' agrees.

"From Cassiar we hoofed it back to Juneau—a long an' a hard trail—an', after buyin' a small sailboat an' grub enough for three months, we struck out for Douglas Island. French Pete handled that boat like a cowboy does a buckin' bronc. We was green wi' scare in that wild sea, full o' chunks o' ice clashin' all around, but the old trapper never turns a hair. Presently we landed on a beach which looked like it was a seal rookery, once, an' works our way to where a good-sized creek comes plungin' down to the sea.

"Juneau had it right. The sands along the creek were full o' color, but the dust was small an' it was slow pannin'. It was all we could do to make fourteen dollars a day in dust, workin' fourteen hours a day, maybe; poor pickin's for a spot costin' so much cash an' trouble to get to.

"French Pete, though, had plenty o' savvy. From the lie o' the rock, he reckoned this thin placer gold must ha' been washed out o' the little mountain what sticks up in one corner o' the island. He let his placer claim go for a while and prospected for ore. At last he found what he thought looked like the best spot. The ore was poor in color, but so soft an' rotten that it could be smashed into dust with a hammer, an' the gold—what little there was of it—separated out easy.

"We all staked out half-a-dozen claims, doin' enough work on each to hold title. Since French Pete had brought us to the island, an' shown the rock besides, Father an' I promised to give him a quarter o' whatever we got for our claims, if we ever sold 'em.

"Off went French Pete in the sail-boat, leavin' us marooned on Douglas Island, an' in a pickle of a mess supposin' he shouldn't return! But he come back, sure enough, after about six weeks, havin' found John Treadwell, a minin' man, who undertakes to buy our claims if Juneau, after havin' looked 'em over, says they're all right.

"Juneau an' Treadwell come, a couple o' days after, wi' one o' these up-to-date engineer Johnnies. The ore's low-grade, but there's head enough in the creek to run stamp mills by water-power, which makes cheap crushin'. Treadwell pays French Pete $15,000 for his claims an' Father an' me $10,000 apiece. Then he buys up the rest o' the island for next to nothin'. The Treadwell mine's a big un, now, workin' 540 stamp mills, an', as Mr. Owens says, it's makin' millions out o' low grade ore.

"Father had promised Mother, as soon as he got $10,000 clear, he'd go back home. She holds him to it. After payin' French Pete what we promised, there's $10,000 for Father an' $5,000 for me, besides what was left from the Cassiar an' Douglas Island placer clean-ups. Father an' Mother went back to Utah, leavin' me wi' French Pete an' Treadwell.

"But Father couldn't stand it long. While he was prospectin', all hours, all weathers, he was tough an' strong. Back in town, he begun to pine. In less'n a year he was dead. Mother didn't live long after him. That lef' me on my own hook. Douglas Island was too slow, though Treadwell offered me a good job as long's I cared to stick it out. But I wanted to be off an' away, feelin' sure, some day, I'd make my big strike.

"I was foot-loose, now, wi' five thousand in dust an' the whole world to roam in. Where was I goin' to find the place where the sands was nothin' but gold? Somewheres, I was sure! Some day I'd strike it rich an' never have to work no more. Out in the wild beyond, where no one else was, millions was waitin' for me!"