Diggings That Yield
Less Than Five Dollars A Day To The Man Were Considered Worthless.
Only Three Of The Claims On Defot Creek, Eighteen Miles From The
Mouth Of Thibert Creek, Were Then Said To Pay.
One of the nuggets
from this creek weighed forty pounds.
While wandering about the banks of these gold-besprinkled streams,
looking at the plants and mines and miners, I was so fortunate as to
meet an interesting French Canadian, an old coureur de bois, who
after a few minutes' conversation invited me to accompany him to his
gold-mine on the head of Defot Creek, near the summit of a smooth,
grassy mountain-ridge which he assured me commanded extensive views
of the region at the heads of Stickeen, Taku, Yukon, and Mackenzie
tributaries. Though heavy-laden with flour and bacon, he strode
lightly along the rough trails as if his load was only a natural
balanced part of his body. Our way at first lay along Thibert Creek,
now on gravel benches, now on bed rock, now close down on the
bouldery edge of the stream. Above the mines the stream is clear and
flows with a rapid current. Its banks are embossed with moss and
grass and sedge well mixed with flowers - daisies, larkspurs,
solidagos, parnassia, potentilla, strawberry, etc. Small strips of
meadow occur here and there, and belts of slender arrowy fir and
spruce with moss-clad roots grow close to the water's edge. The creek
is about forty-five miles long, and the richest of its gold-bearing
beds so far discovered were on the lower four miles of the creek; the
higher four-or-five-dollars-a-day diggings were considered very poor
on account of the high price of provisions and shortness of the
season.
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