The Cordova Daily Times

STRIKES BUT NO STAMPEDE.

Stampedes are mysterious things and come without regard to the value of the discovery. Some of the wildest little stampedes in Alaska have been to creeks where there was about one color to the square foot of bedrock.

There now exists in the Iditarod, lower Yukon, and lower Kuskokwim all the elements for a stampede and yet there is no stampede.

The strike at Tolstoi is extensive and the pay has been lined up on the creeks. It is going to be a good camp. Additional discoveries would make it a regular bonanza.

Down at Marshall City pay has been lined up on a creek running into the lower Yukon and more gold was taken out last season than during the first year at Fairbanks. There was a little stampede over that way from Nome last winter, but it was nothing more than the tame migration of gold miners to a new camp.

Pay has also been lined up on Spruce creek, a tributary to Bear creek, on the lower Kuskokwim.

The latter discoveries show that there is a gold bearing belt extending south from the Seward peninsula toward the Bristol bay country, through a country where the trails of men are few and far apart.

Past events in Alaska show that the rich pay in new districts is found as the result of stampedes. Men rush in and find the creek where pay was discovered located, and then rush to other creeks and put down not one hole, but hundreds. A stampede to the lower Yukon would have unlimited possibilities, but there is no stampede.

Where are the old timers of the "Camps of Chaos?"

Can it be that the boys of '98 who have been in on every camp worth while no longer get the "itching feeling" when they see new pay of a strange run, or has Father Time worked his will and made faint the limbs of those whose spirit is still strong?

An explanation which is more plausible is that recent stampedes to Shushanna and east of the Matanuska divide were unwarranted and worked up, and the old timer is wary. With age comes a certain keenness of perception and a desire to stand back and let the younger generation rush hither and yon, but the younger generation isn't showing much enthusiasm on rushes, hence the placer camps on the lower Yukon are dawdling along somewhat after the pattern of a quartz mining district. But who can tell what a day may bring forth? - Seward Post.