er spare moments. About this period many other
valuable discoveries took place and amongst them may be mentioned
MacDonald's claim on "El Dorado" which yielded L19,000 in twenty-eight
days, Leggatt's claims on the same creek which in eight months produced
L8400 from a space only twenty-four square feet, and Ladue, a Klondike
pioneer, who for seven consecutive days took L360 from one claim and
followed his good fortune with such pluck and persistency that he is now
a millionaire. Of other authentic cases I may mention that of a San
Francisco man and his wife who were able to secure only one claim which
to their joy and surprise yielded L27,000, and that of a stoker on board
a Yukon river boat who in 1896 was earning L10 a month and who, the
following summer, was worth his L30,000!

[Footnote 78: In view of the eventual development of this region it is
interesting to note Mr. Ogilvie's report of his explorations in 1887
which runs thus:

"The Thron-diuck river enters the Yukon from the east, it is a small
stream about forty yards wide at the mouth and shallow; the water is
clear and transparent and of a beautiful blue colour, the Indians catch
great numbers of salmon here. A miner had prospected up this river for
an estimated distance of forty miles in the season of 1887. I did not
see him."]

But the foregoing are only individual cases which have come under my
personal notice. There were, of course, innumerable others, for it was a
common thing in those days for a man to return to California after a
year's absence with from L5000 to L10,000 in his pocket. Take, for
instance, the case of the lucky bar-tender of Forty Mile City who joined
the general exodus from that place which followed Cormack's first
discovery. This man came out of the country with $132,000 in gold dust
which he had taken out of his stake, and after purchasing an adjoining
claim for another $100,000 (all taken from his original claim), it is
said (though I cannot vouch for this statement) that the fortunate
cock-tail mixer eventually sold his property to a New York Syndicate for
L400,000. Of course at this time fairy tales were pretty freely
circulated; how, for instance, one man with very long whiskers had been
working hard in his drift all through the winter and, as was the custom,
neither washed nor shaved. In the spring when the whiskers were shaved
off his partner is said to have secured them, washed them out in a pan,
and collected $27 as the r