Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

178 HISTORY OF THE BANKand dredging operations have entirely readjusted the basis ofplacer-mining in the district. At the beginning the camp wasessentially a "poor man's camp;" that is, the opportunitieswere open to everyone alike, and there was much groundavailable for prospecting and locating claims. With the passingof groups of claims, worked out by the old methods, intothe hands of dredging companies, and the more general operationof large grants or concessions by dredge or hydraulicmachinery, the day of the small individual miner was over.There are, of course, still some miners of that type at work,and their labours will, no doubt, from time to time be wellrewarded, but the general character of the district has changed,and mining, as a rule, is now carried on by large interestsoperating on an extensive scale.As early as 1897 the North American Transportation andTrading Company had opened up a quartz ledge across theriver opposite Dawson. Various other quartz claims weresubsequently located in the vicinity, and some stamp millsof small capacity were operated on some of these for a time,but it is generally understood that they met with veryindifferent success. On the other hand, higher up the river, inthe Whitehorse and White River districts, quartz miningproved more successful. Our first canoe party observedoutcroppings of coal at Five Finger, as they passed down theriver, and coal has been mined on the Yukon river since about1898, although so far on a very small scale, the production ofthe district amounting in 1910 and 1911 to about 12,000metric tons each year.The miner himself in the early days usually lived like apig, although conditions naturally varied in individual cases,at least in degree. The reader can picture for himself the stuffycabin wherein four or five men slept, ate and smoked, wherepans of dirt were "washed up" in one corner and wet clotheswere dried in another. The only means of ventilation wasto open the cabin door, and inwinter time the piercing coldcaused this to be little used. The miner's food was badly