CHAPTER XXII

Ellamar is a small town on Virgin Bay, Prince William Sound, at the entrance to Puerto de Valdes, or Valdez Narrows. It is very prettily situated on a gently rising hill.

It has a population of five or six hundred, and is the home of the Ellamar Mining Company. Here are the headquarters of a group of copper properties known as the Gladdaugh mines.

One of the mines extends under the sea, whose waves wash the buildings. It has been a large and regular shipper for several years. In 1903 forty thousand tons of ore were shipped to the Tacoma smelter, and shipments have steadily increased with every year since.

The mine is practically a solid mass of iron and copper pyrites. It has a width of more than one hundred and twenty-five feet where exposed, and extends along the strike for a known distance of more than three hundred feet.

The vast quantities of gold found in Alaska have, up to the present time, kept the other rich mineral products of the country in the background. Copper is, at last, coming into her own. The year of 1907 brought forth tremendous developments in copper properties. The Guggenheim-Morgan-Rockefeller syndicate has kept experts in every known, or suspected, copper district of the North during the last two years. Cordova, the sea terminus of the new railroad, is in the very heart of one of the richest copper districts. The holdings of this syndicate are already immense and cover every district. The railroad will run to the Yukon, with branches extending into every rich region.

Other heavily financed companies are preparing to rival the Guggenheims, and individual miners will work their claims this year. Experts predict that within a decade Alaska will become one of the greatest copper-producing countries of the world. In the Copper River country alone, north of Valdez, there is more copper, according to expert reports, than Montana or Michigan ever has produced, or ever will produce.

The Ketchikan district is also remarkably rich. At Niblack Anchorage, on Prince of Wales Island, the ore carries five per cent of copper, and the mines are most favorably located on tide-water.

Native copper, associated with gold, has been found on Turnagain Arm, in the country tributary to the Alaska Central Railway.

A half interest in the Bonanza, a copper mine on the western side of La Touche Island, Prince William Sound, was sold last year for more than a million dollars. This mine is not fully developed, but is considered one of the best in Alaska. It has an elevation of two hundred feet. Several tunnels have been driven, and the ore taken out runs high in copper, gold, and silver. One shipment of one thousand two hundred and thirty-five pounds gave net returns of fifty dollars to the ton, after deducting freight to Tacoma, smelting, refining, and an allowance of ninety-five per cent for the silver valuation. A sample taken along one tunnel for sixty feet gave an assay of over nine per cent copper, with one and a quarter ounces of silver.

The Bonanza was purchased in 1900 by Messrs. Beatson and Robertson for seventy-two thousand dollars. There is a good wharf and a tramway line to the mine.

Adjoining the Bonanza on the north is a group of eleven claims owned by Messrs. Esterly, Meenach, and Keyes, which are in course of development. There are many other rich claims on this island, on Knight's, and on others in the sound. Timber is abundant, the water power is excellent, and ore is easily shipped.

There is an Indian village two or three miles from Ellamar. It is the village of Tatitlik, the only one now remaining on the sound, so rapidly are the natives vanishing under the evil influence of civilization. Ten years ago there were nine hundred natives in the various villages on the shores of the sound; while now there are not more than two hundred, at the most generous calculation.

White men prospecting and fishing in the vicinity of the village supply them with liquor. When a sufficient quantity can be purchased, the entire village, men and women, indulges in a prolonged and horrible debauch which frequently lasts for several weeks.

The death rate at Tatitlik is very heavy,--more than a hundred natives having died during 1907.

Passengers have time to visit this village while the steamer loads ore at Ellamar.

The loading of ore, by the way, is a new experience. A steamer on which I was travelling once landed at Ellamar during the night.

We were rudely awakened from our dreams by a sound which Lieutenant Whidbey would have called "most stupendously dreadful." We thought that the whole bottom of the ship must have been knocked off by striking a reef, and we reached the floor simultaneously.

I have no notion how my own eyes looked, but my friend's eyes were as large and expressive as bread-and-butter plates.

"We are going down!" she exclaimed, with tragic brevity.

At that instant the dreadful sound was repeated. We were convinced that the ship was being pounded to pieces under us upon rocks. Without speech we began dressing with that haste that makes fingers become thumbs.

But suddenly a tap came upon our door, and the watchman's voice spoke outside.

"Ladies, we are at Ellamar."

"At Ellamar!"

"Yes. You asked to be called if it wasn't midnight when we landed."

"But what is that _awful_ noise, watchman?"

"Oh, we're loading ore," he answered cheerfully, and walked away.

All that night and part of the next day tons upon tons of ore thundered into the hold. We could not sleep, we could not talk; we could only think; and the things we thought shall never be told, nor shall wild horses drag them from us.

We dressed, in desperation, and went up to "the store"; sat upon high stools, ate stale peppermint candy, and listened to "Uncle Josh" telling his parrot story through the phonograph.

Somehow, between the ship and the store, we got ourselves through the night and the early morning hours. After breakfast we found the green and flowery slopes back of the town charming; and a walk of three miles along the shore to the Indian village made us forget the ore for a few hours. But to this day, when I read that an Alaskan ship has brought down hundreds of tons of ore to the Tacoma smelter, my heart goes out silently to the passengers who were on that ship when the ore was loaded.