Nick Carter Stories No. 120, December 26, 1914: An uncanny revenge; or, Nick Carter and the mind murderer.Carter, Nicholas (House name)
General
Nick Carter Stories No. 120, December 26, 1914: An uncanny revenge; or, Nick Carter and the mind murderer.
Carter, Nicholas (House name)
Detective and mystery stories, American -- Periodicals; Popular literature -- Periodicals
The gold-mining industry, both placer and quartz, in most instances has
been for long so closely associated with the wilderness that the average
man instantly conjures up pictures of ice-bound mountain passes, or
glaring, sun-scorched stretches of desert, when he thinks of it. To such
places his imagination turns where men daily and hourly must face
hardship and danger in order to win the precious metal.
Yet in the city of Edmonton, Canada, since the outbreak of war, some
thirty “grizzlies” have been at work on the banks of the Saskatchewan
River. Here, within half a block of the city’s main street, and always
with the sound of its traffic in their ears, nearly a hundred men daily
shovel and sluice for gold.
The bars of the Saskatchewan River in the early days and as late as 1900
were worked. Many prospectors at that time made from three to ten
dollars a day. Of late years, however, mining of this kind has been
abandoned, though a large dredge, working the bars of the river, has
proven a paying proposition.
The river runs directly through the city. With the outbreak of war and
the possibility of large numbers of men being out of employment, the
city council suddenly turned their attention to gold mining, which
offered returns right in the heart of the city. Within its gates are
to-day a large number of old mining men. Men who, after going through
the Klondike rush, settled here. Most of them are to-day wealthy and
retired. But some half dozen of them offered their services as tutors.
A number of grizzlies, so commonly used in the working of river bars and
other placer-mining propositions, were constructed and for a while they
gave instructions as how to work them. About a hundred men soon went to
work. Though the highest daily clean-up so far has been seven dollars,
the majority of the workers are making from one to two dollars a day.
The workmen are from all classes of society. Old-time sourdoughs work
next to new-come English immigrants. Two college students, working their
way through a nearby university, put in their off hours shoveling and
panning. An out-of-work literary man and an out-of-work actor here are
working a claim together.
The mining game has always been marked for its tragic side. The stories
of men made suddenly rich overnight by some fortunate strike has been
told in a hundred stories; but seldom is the other side mentioned, the
story of quick-flung-away wealth that went almost as rapidly as it came.
Working slowly, toilfully, with the mark of old age upon him, in this
diggings within the heart of the city is at least one man who is a
living representative of this sad side of the game. His name is Tim
Foley. Ten years ago he sold his third interest in a quartz mine in
northern Ontario for $40,000. To-day he toils strenuously on the river
bank, his great hope, as he himself expressed it, to clean up three or
four dollars a day.
Stage Lines Still in the West.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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