The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, August 12, 1897, Page 1

—— " VOLUME LXXXIL_NV. DAY MORNIN AUGUST 12, 1897. PRTCE FIVE CENTS. A MONSTER CHUNK OF SOLID GOLD The Trinity Find Eclipses the Great Nugget of Ballarat. THE NALUE MORE THAN $42,000. IS CONSIDERABLY A Further Strike of $40,000 in the Blue Jay and One of $18,000 in Morrison Gulch — Arrival REDDING, Cal., Aug. 11.—The) gold excitement was revived with vigor here to-night by pt of news from Coffee the ecffect that $10,000 and nu 5 f gold dust en out yesterday after-| m the pocket out of which the raves brothers took their $42,000 last Saturda They left | in charge of their claim a man named Carter, who at one time | was a partner in the claim, and | Garter proceeded to work the| claim as soon as the Graves boys | left, and late yesterday afternoon | he encountered another pocket and in less than five hours took | out about an even §40,000. | There is plenty of gold in sight | and all indications point to the| taking out of a million from that | REDDING, Cal., Aug. 11.—News has just reached this city (1(1:1‘2‘ P. M.) by privatesource of another | exceedingly rich discovery of gold | Morrison Gulch, about two miles from thescene of the Graves | brothers’ discovery. It said | $18,000 was taken out this after- noon and that two miners, whose names are not known at aking out gold on an average of $40 to the pan. This strike is on the same vein of the | Graves Blu on is here present, ¢ claim and is sup- 1 posed to be an extension of the| same. | { told at the | of the re- J. B. G West Hotel d ey that he was no e ed to rmation Carter, | but he | uthor- | bsence of the two brothers, ar dded that he | thought it very probable that the report | was true. Graves knew of no mine Gulch which was being v two miles of his claim. He had heard, however, or this City ofar hy and Burgess on Hickory Creek, a t sixteen miles above his claim and | on the opposite side of the creek. At that | time the two men were reported to be | taking out from $50 to §100 to the pan. | EMLLA S BIGGEST IN THE WORLD. The Gligantic Slab In the Blue Jay Outclasses the Famous Aus- trallan Discovery. The brothers R. B.snd J. B. Graves, who made the great discovery of a nugget or solid piece of gold worth over $42000 | in the Blue Jay mine, Trinity County, ar- | rived here yesterday. They brought about $20,000 worth of the gold along with them | and the remainder was cached near the mine. It will follow shortly, The gold | brought here was immediately taken to | the United States Mint for coinage. The miners are naw at the Golden West Hotel. They are two young married men, natives of Red Bluff. They went to Coffee Creek, 1 Morrison d within Brothers. Trinity County, with a band of eighty cattle in 1890. The hard winter which fol- | of the Graves lowed gradually killed their livestock and | they gave up the idea of being cattle | barons and in 1895 went to miding ina | nomadic way. e an The great siab o is even bigger t 1d which they the famous tralian nugget Welcome, found at Bal- | found Aus- larat, weirhing 2166 ounces and valued at $41882. The Australian nugget has for years been exhibited as the biggest ever discovered. The Biue Jay gold slab im- measurably surpasses also two other great nuggets, the next in sizs and also for | many years paraded as modern wonders. | These are the Uralnugget, found in the | Ural Mountains, Siberia, veighing 1200 qunce-, and the Vicount of Canterbury | nucget, found at Berlin, Australia, May 31, 1870, weighing 1120 cunces and valued | at $22.000. Casts of al! these nuggets are | to be seen at the State Mining Bareau. Trinity’s newly found nugget, which 1s | destined to arouse at interest in Cali- | fornia gold mining, is, or rather was, for it is now broken in pieces, of the shape of a beaver’s tail. It was 3 feet long, 16 to 18 inches wide at the wider part, 5 inches thick at the big end and 1 at the smaller. “I am sorry I broke this when I got the drill under it,” saia J. B. Graves, *‘for 1 wanted to get it down here in the solid piece in which we found it. However, when it did break we got mad and broke | the rest, too. The bigeest piece we have | now 1s worth about $10,000. The gold hhs | been minting §17 60 and $17 67 an ounce. | *“We were two greenhorns when we commenced. We had never mined, and /didn’t know anything about it. How- ever, whenever we got out of money in any way it seemed we could always find some 1n the Blue Jay. “Our recent aiscovery was by an open cut twenty-five feet lon:. There s soit { porphyry, on tne hanging wall and green on the foot. The gold iaid right on the footwall, on the right-hand side. We had | to stope a little and get to the upper end of it, “We got out at once 163 pounds avoirdu- pois, or about 200 troy of gold, and there is more in the face of the mine yet. I es- timate that there was from $42,000 to $43,000 at least in this compact mass. “Besides all this there is another ledge | twenty-five feet away from this that Iam | sure isjust asrich. We have ninety-six acres in our claim. These Kiondike mines are not as rich from all I can learn as the claims up there. Jack and Joe | Strude, who own the Oro Grande, near us, | have taken out about $500,000 in the last | three or four years, working in a desultory Continued on Fifth Page. THEY SANG 3 THE HIP WENT DOWN Endeavorers’ Hymns the Requiem of the Lost Mexico. COOL BEHAVIOR OF THE PASSENGERS. No Excitement Attendad the Departure From the Sink- ing Vessel. LONG ROW IN THE SMALL BOATS TO METLAKAHTLA. Cared For by Misslonarles and In- dians Until Picked Up by the City of Topeka. SEATTLE, Wasr, Aug. 11 — The steamer City of Topeka, which arrived at 7 o' clock this morning, brought details of the sinking of the steamer Mexico and ex- citement hasrun high hers throughovt tbe day. All of the passengers and crew unite in telling practically the same story as regards the lossof tue big steamer which was operated by the ‘Pacific Coast | Steamship Company. The Mexico was valued at §175,000. She left Seattle on July 25 for Dyea and Skaga- way with nearly 400 mine's and pros- pectors on board and heavily laden with freight. She reached Dyeaon the 29th, and after unloading steamed on her home- ward vovage from Alaska. The passen- gers numbered seventy-three, and were principally Christian Endeavorers and ex- cursionists from Easiern points and Alas- There were sixiy-six in the crew. On | Wednesday, August 4, the steamer left | Sitka, and that night encountered heavy | fogs, but in the esrly morning the fog cleared and when the accident occurred the sieamer was runming at the rate of ten miles an hour with an apparently open sea. Pitot Cornell, who was formerly on the Topeka and has been running in Alaskan waters for five years, was on the lookout. It was ata pointin Dixons Eatrance at 4:30 o’clock Thursday morning when the Mexico suddenly and without warning struck a hidden rock that wrenched off her keel. Two hours later the vessel was entirely engulifed in 500 feet of sea water. ‘When the shock came the engines were reversed, but inrushing water and the settling of the boat at once satisfied the officers of the imyjenaing danger of the craft. The passengers came pouring out of their siaterooms to inquire the cause of the trouble. Some of them had been rudely thrown from their berths by the shock, while others had been hit by flying vater bottles and otherarticles which had been thrown down. =Assoon as the passengers learned the | cause of the trouble they began to make preparations for taking to the boats. | There was no panic or disorder. Every- | thing was done in a quiet and orderly manner, and within an bour and a half | ail the passengers, with what baggage they happened to bave in their state- | rooms, were 1n the lifeboats. The women, | when going down the iadder over the side | of the steamer to get into the small boats | | sang Christian Endeavor songs. | | W. H. Lewis, one of the passengers, says that in less than half an ‘hour after the shock the hold of the steamer was filied with water and the baggage was | " Continued on Third Page. \ e Sty < ATT()RN” \ | AT L JOHN B. ANl Ay [From a photograph | THREE OF THE GREATEST NUGGETS IN THE WORLD. The Ural nugget, on the left, hasa weight of 1200 ounces; the celebrated Welcome of Ballarat, shown on the right, 2166 ounces, and a value of $41,882, while the Coffee Creek gold siab weiched 2400 ounces and has a value of $42,000, AND R. B. GRAVES of the Blue Jay Mine and Some of Their Sacks of Gold. taken at Redding.] ) + BLOCKADE AT DYEA DAILY AUGMENTED At Least a Thousand Men Unable to Cross Chil- coot Pass. ARE ALREADY FIGHTING AMONG THEMSELVES. Twenty-One Cents a Pound Charged by Indians for Carrying Outfits—The Real Situation as Described for “The. Call's” Readers. JUNEAU, ALASKA, Aug. 6.—A wild, excited mcb rushed from the steamship George W. Elder, from Portland, last night. Not head in the crowd was cool. With inflamed imaginations many has- tened to buy grain sacks and other receptacles to bring the Klondike gold back in. Bill Willoughby, the discoverer of the noted ‘‘Silent City”’ mirage, said, “Them fellers is crazy.” They do act like it. All comers are throwing themselves into the barren, snowy interior seemingly without thought of the hardships before them. Juneau is a last-chance town on the way to the diggin’s. At a variety theater last night a gold-seeker was induced to part with $25 in exchange for the note of one of the Jadies in waiting. He next gave a young lawyer $10 to find the woman. He was looking for both until the boat sailed. Others of the throngs going to the Klondike to scoop up gold by the sackful have never been away from home before. The blockade at Dyea and Skagaway is daily growing worse. At the two p;)ints there are now not less than 1000 men unable to go over the sumuiit. The crowd is estimated as high as 1500 by conservative business men of Juneau, who went there for the sole purpose of making an inspection of the situation. The outlook is more certain that hundreds will never see the Yukon side of the mountains this year, and many others will winter on the route to Dawson City. Some, discouraged at the prospective failure of getting their supplies packed on, and being unable to do the heavy work themselves, are starting in ‘‘light”” with insufficient outfits. This means a great risk of life, and, at best, privation of the severest kind. The scene is one of indescribable disorder and confusion. There have been a number of fights over the question of precedence in em- ploying packers. = That there have been no serious disturbances is con- sidered remarkable, taking into account the excited minds and the gen- eral scramble to get beyond the divide and start floating down the Yukon between its hills of gold. More people are arriving than are able to get away. Miners on the ground ten days ago arestill here. A day’s work by pack trains makes no perceptible difference in the size of the piles of mer- chandise. “Experienced prospectors who have been into the Yukon be- fore are returning to their homes and will wait untii next spring. Prices per pound for packing are rising so steadily that it will pres- ently be better to be an Indian than to have a claim on Bonanza Creek, The price now is 21 cents a pound to Lake Bennett 'by the Chilcoot Pass. The Canadian Government has anticipated the advisability of making a show of force in the collection of customs duties. A Gov- ernment cutter passed up last night with a large number of horses and police on board. Charles W. Young, a wealthy business man of Jureau and a pio- neer, returned from Dyea to-day. He said: “I cannot see how it is possible to get all that stuff over the summit this fall. Enough packers or trains cannot be found in the country to handle the freight at the rate the rush is keeping up.”’ Next spring Mr. Young will construct an iron tramway operated from the summit of Chilcoot Pass by a steam windlass and wire cables a to lift supplies from Sheep Camp to the summit, a distance of one and = The Port in Which the Shipwrecked Passengers CITY OF NEW METLAKAHTLA and Crew of the Mexico Sought Refuge.