Gold is less important than coal, but its discovery produces more excitement. The report of gold in any quarter stimulates the emigrant or the adventurer hoping to obtain riches swiftly. Nor is this distant region without such experience. Only a few years ago, the British colony of Victoria was aroused by a rumor of gold in the mountains of the Stikine River, not far in the interior from Sitka. At once there was a race that way, and the solitudes of this river were penetrated by hunters in quest of the glittering ore. Discomfiture ensued. Gold had been found, but not in any sufficient quantities reasonably accessible. Nature for the present had set up obstacles. But failure in one place will be no discouragement in another, especially as there is reason to believe that the mountains here contain a continuation of those auriferous deposits which have become so famous further south. The Sierra Nevada chain of California reaches here. Traces of gold have been observed at other points. One report places a deposit not far from Sitka. The same writer who reports iron also reports that during the last year he saw a piece of gold as large as a marble, which was shown by an Indian. But the Russian engineer, Doroschin, furnishes testimony more precise. He reports gold in at least three different localities, each of considerable extent. The first is the mountain range on the north of Cook’s Inlet and extending into the peninsula of Alaska, consisting principally of clay slate with permeating veins of diorite, the latter being known as a gold-bearing rock. He observed this in the summer of 1851. About the same time, certain Indians from the Bay of Yakutat, not far from Mount St. Elias, brought him specimens of diorite found in their neighborhood, making, therefore, a second deposit. In the summer of 1855, the same engineer found gold on the southern side of Cook’s Inlet, in the mountains of the Kenay peninsula. Satisfying himself, first, that the bank occupied by the redoubt of St. Nicholas, at the mouth of the Kaknu River, was gold-bearing, he was induced to follow the development of diorite in the upper valley of the river, and, as he ascended, found a gold-bearing alluvion, gradually increasing, with scales of gold becoming coarser and coarser, instead of scarcely visible, as at first.