In Search of a Siberian KlondikeVanderlip, Washington Baker
History
In Search of a Siberian Klondike
Vanderlip, Washington Baker
Gold mines and mining -- Russia (Federation) -- Siberia; Siberia (Russia) -- Description and travel
When I awoke in the morning and opened my hood, I found two inches of
snow over me. That day we floundered through the remaining mile of
deep snow to the river. I was pushing one of the sledges, when we came
to the steep bank that leads down to the river. The sled began to
glide down the declivity, settling deeper and deeper. Chrisoffsky
called to me to get on quickly, as there was open water beneath, but
he was too late. I was already in the icy water up to my knees. We had
unfortunately struck a snow-bridge over open water. The sled was fast
in the snow, and the dogs were struggling madly. By vigorous pulling
and pushing we managed to get the sledge out on to the ice. The other
drivers, who were behind, saw our predicament and went up-stream,
prodding with their polkas until they found solid ice beneath.
Chrisoffsky immediately began taking the lashings off the pack on the
sled to get me dry fur socks and boots. Almost before I could undo the
lashings, those I wore were frozen stiff. The last one was cut away
with a knife. I applied a vigorous rubbing with snow to my feet and
they were soon glowing with warmth. Then pulling on the warm, soft fur
socks and fresh boots, I found that I had suffered no harm; but
Chrisoffsky warned me that whenever I had wet feet I must change
immediately or serious consequences would result. At the time, the
thermometer stood between ten and fifteen degrees below zero.
On examining the wind-swept bars of the creek there seemed to be good
promise of gold, so making camp near timber I prepared for a three or
four days' stay. The ground was frozen to bed-rock, and it was
necessary to thaw it out all the way down. The following day I
unloaded the sledges and sent them into the woods under the direction
of Chrisoffsky to haul in fuel for the fires. I selected a likely spot
and proceeded to thaw out a shaft. As this was very slow work, I
determined to try it in several places at the same time. After the
fires had burned three hours the picks and shovels would be called
into play, and we could take out about twelve or fifteen inches of
gravel. The surface gravel showed some small "colors" in the pan, and
I determined to set watches and keep the fires going night and day. A
windlass was rigged over one of the shafts, and we went down
twenty-five feet, till we came to boulders which showed that we were
near bed-rock. Six inches more brought us to the end. I eagerly panned
out some of the gravel and found several tiny nuggets, but was forced
to admit that there was not enough gold to pay for working. The other
shafts showed the same results; so we were compelled to move on after
four days of exhausting and fruitless work. We repeated this
operation at several other points on the river, and carefully examined
the outcroppings all along the stream. Coming to the head of the
river, we crossed over the summit of the ridge. The aneroid showed
that we were seven thousand six hundred feet above the sea level. When
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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