Where eggs sell for a dollar apiece, where the temperature goes down to 72 degrees below zero and as high as 110 degrees above, where the sun shines for seventy-two hours at a time. This is Alaska--at the time of the famous gold rush in the years 1903 and thereafter. It is the Alaska known to Robert R. Wright, 913 Locust St., scene of many hardships as well as pleasant occurrences.

Soon after Wright was graduated from grade school in Mexico, Mo., he left with his father, Robert H. Wright, his mother, and his baby sister for the land of the midnight sun. The family left Mexico May 10, 1803, and arrived in Dawson Alaska, June 15 of the same year.

At Dawson a small boat was purchased and the Wrights, with Silas Spiers, and old-time miner from Montgomery City, and Mr. Wright's uncle, C. B. Wilkerson, also of Mexico, moved down the Yukon river five hundred miles to Rampart, which was their headquarters for the two years they were in the "land of gold."

Their claim, the site to which they later moved was thirty-five miles from Rampart, the nearest town. Before they set out on an actual prospecting, they spent the Forth of July in Rampart. It was quite different, Mr. Wright says, from the celebration in the states. There was no shooting of firecrackers or guns. The day was featured by a birchbark canoe race across the Yukon by native Indians. The river there is a mile wide and the Indians had to row across, touch a certain point and row back. Mr. Wright believes the rowing done that day would have done credit to any college team. The town was also treated to a horse race, an unusual thing in Alaska, since horses are rare.

Wright left Rampart the next day and continued down the Yukon to the site where his father had staked a claim. All claims had to be reported to an official recorder and if the claim was not worked for at least $100 a year, it could be taken away.

Unlike many prospectors who merely set up any sort of structure to live in, the Wrights built a large, comfortable log cabin fit for living quarters.

Not long after their arrival at the claim site, young Wright, running from under a falling post they were attempting to set up to connect a pulley to, fell on the ice and dislocated both jaw bones and broke his left leg. Onlookers said that if he had not stumbled when he did, he would have been killed by the falling pole.

A doctor was sent for but because he did not know the exact location of the place, it took him twenty hours to get there. The first thing he did was to reset Wright's Jaws -- by just pulling them until they finally snapped back into place! Mr. Wright was in bed for seventy-two days before he could even move. and he says it took him five years to actually recover.

For those who think mining is an easy job that gold is merely dug from the ground in chunks, Mr. Wright has a message of disillusionment. It is a slow, monotonous process which in itself has no romance or glamour.

Because the ground is eternally frozen there, the usual method is to clear away a space of the debris and growth and build a huge fire on the spot. This fire is permitted to burn all day. On the following day, the two or three inches of earth which has thawed is dug out, a new fire built, and so on until the desired depth, ordinarily ten or twelve fee, is reached. From there, rather blindly, the same process is continued in any direction until fertile territory is found. Samples of the earth are taken from time to determine if it is gold bearing soil.

When gold-bearing earth is found tons of it are hauled up and piled above ground it is then necessary to thaw out this pile and wash the earth through home-made troughs to strain out the fine gold dust.

Quite different from many of the prospectors, Mr. Wright's father owned a boiler which he used to thaw out the ground instead of the conventional fire. His progress was, of course, much quicker.

As further proof of his father's inventive ability, during Wright's convalescence, the glass gauge off the boiler, bent and flattened for its new use, was employed as a means of supplying him food.

With other new ways in Alaska, they had to adapt a new menu. For meat, snowshoe rabbits, ducks, geese, moose and bear were eaten. Wild currants, red raspberries, and blueberries were abundant in seasons; the currants often grew to the size of a plumb. Moose meat often sold for as high as $1 a pound, eggs for $1 apiece, and nothing was thought of paying $2.50 for an ordinary meal. The eggs were packed in lard and stored in barrels so that they would not spoil. All provisions were cached on platforms built six feet above the ground to prevent the dogs from getting to them.

Practically no money was in circulation in Alaska during the rush. All commodities were paid for with the gold dust, carried by the prospectors in small skin pouches.

Numerous stories are told of how terrifically cold it gets in Alaska at times. Mr. Wright tells one that is authentic. One morning passing from his sleeping quarters to their storage shed, he looked, as was his custom, at the thermometer which hung just outside the door, and found that it had broken and cracked. It was a mercury thermometer and mercury freezes at 40 degrees below zero! He’d read later that the government thermometer, five miles away, registered 72 degrees below.

There were many newspapers printed in Alaska during this period. --The Rampart Miner, the Alaska Forum, The Yukon Valley News, and others, The Yukon News, printed by Sam J. Callahan, was especially interesting because he used dogs to furnish power for his press, operated in much the same fashion sorghum is made in this part of the country. The rates were twenty-five cents a month' it was issued weekly. One of its main features was a calendar of the month, which was the only accurate way people had for telling the time. Ordinarily they just made a mark on the wall so they would be sure to know when Sunday arrived.

If mail was received once a month the people considered themselves lucky. It cost Mr. Wright twenty cents a pound to send mail from Rampart to his claim, thirty-five miles away.

The Aurora Borealis, perhaps the most awe-inspiring natural spectacle on earth, was witnessed by Mr. Wright. The entire sky directly over head was crammed full of beautiful, countless streams of color, blended and intermingled in the most perfect design; the phenomenon is accompanied by a peculiar cracking noise which adds to the drama. Mr. Wright says that if every atheist could see this sight, he would be converted instantly.

Mr. Wright has also watched the "Midnight Sun" make a complete circuit of the globe's horizon. He has watched it barely go down and then start its return journey around the heavens. Often it stays up for twenty-two hours at a time, and for a few days in late June for as long as 72 hours.

Millions of dollars in gold have been taken from Alaska, but according to Mr. Wright, it is only a drop in the bucket to what still remains. When he was there there were no railroads and few passable roads, to say nothing of numberless other improvements made since. He say that for every $1 taken out of Alaska $5 was sunk into it.

People read, Mr. Wright states, of the huge fortunes made there, but few know of the many, many prospectors who are unlucky and toil year in and year out, only to find all their efforts to no avail.