As recently as midnight of August 19th, 1912, an undignified and profane pilgrimage to the shrine of the goddess of fortune occurred in Temiskaming. At the stroke of twelve a ziz-zagging procession of flickering lights born by all manner of men, stretching from Cobalt three miles to the famous, now naked Gillies Timber Limit, broke into motion at the double quick. Ahead of them were twelve square miles--4,000 acres--or twenty acres of undiagnosed area of rock each for the lucky two hundred eager, excited prospectors and adventurers who might stake, find ore and register for $10 at Haileybury first, and thus perchance, stumble on a king’s ransom. Ordinarily, the journey on steam coach costs Ten Cents. This night one bold spirit chartered a special train for $50.00 hoping to outstrip the throng afoot and horseback, in autos and on bicycles, armed as they were with a Five Dollar mining license and panting for place. For an hour or two the nervous strain was intense and the schemes and ruses resorted to for advantage were numerous and crafty. Sweating relay horses clattered at top speed all night between the new diggings and the district seat, positions held in person or proxy in the line-up waiting for dawn reminded one of the nocturnal vigil and struggle for tickets to behold the late Sir Henry Irving, while rumor and conjecture were rife. One energetic but luckless individual, with boundary stakes in earth, had them uprooted and tossed aside by a speculator’s hireling the moment he headed to the registry office; another collapsed from exhaustion and laid prone in the bush as the strong trod over his body and aspirations and still a third poor devil lost a pronounced advantage by falling, horse and rider, into a quagmire at the roadside, and all because there lies side by side beneath the earth’s surface silver sidewalks and blighted hopes. [Illustration: JACOB LEWIS ENGLEHART, Chairman, Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway Commission]