G. A. Hacking and James Taffondale arrived at 3:30 this afternoon from Bullion creek, having left there last Saturday, three days later than the men who arrived here yesterday evening.
Hacking and Taffondale have been working on 18 below, owned by Dr. Sugden, digging a drain. Hacking came to town in response to a telegram informing him of
the serious illness of his mother in Ontario.
In talking with a Star representative just after reaching town Hacking said:
"New life pervaded Bullion creek during the last two or three days I was there.
"Hicks & Martin, on 43 below, owned by Capt. Siewerd, are taking out as high as 55 cents to the pan and nothing less than 10 cent pans.
"Puckett & Dickson, on 13 below, on last Saturday struck bedrock and got 40 cents to the pan.
"A man whose name I forget came down from the 40's above and said he was getting 60 cents to the pan. He had a well-filled poke of dust. I saw the gold and know he
was telling the truth.
"Before finding the big pay on 18 Puckett & Dickson had put down two holes from which they got from 4 to 10 cent pans. They sunk another, getting 40 cents."
Hacking says that until the first of July high water will greatly retard operations, but after that date he thinks Bullion will be a hummer. Smith, of discovery, is bringing his pack horses to town but will return immediately.
Hacking will await further news as to his mother's condition before he knows whether he will go to Ontario or back to Bullion.
Hacking is not surprised that alot of knockers have had considerable to say since returning from the creeks. He says they did nothing cut there except loaf around and eat up what grub they had.
The letter from Charles Barnes, published in this issue of the Star,
does not agree with the stories told by a few who are returning from the creeks.
With experienced, thinking people the stories told by these quitters carry not the slightest weight. They are not prospectors or miners, but are tenderfeet looking for easy money which is never found until after considerable hard work has been performed.
Not a man who has come in from the creeks within the past few days with the story that there is nothing to be found, has put a hole to bedrock or seen a hole that
had been sunk to bedrock. They failed to find colors in the first few pans of surface dirt, with the result that their feet became numb and they quit. In nine cases out of ten these men would not recognize colors if they lay before them in the pan.
It is a good thing for the camp that the tenderfeet are getting out of it. The misfortune is that these fellows ever went in. But it is the history of all mining camps that the staking element is composed of very few miners who know how to use picks and shovels and are not too lazy to exercise that knowledge.
By the time a few more croakers have become disgusted and left the camp, reports from the mining element will begin to come in and with there reports will come the
yellow metal, the fruit of hard and industrious labor.
Not one experienced miner has ever been heard to utter a word derogatory of the diggings on his return to town.
Not one man in every five who went to the Klondike ever got a dollar's worth of gold, yet that camp has given up nearly one hundred million dollars.
