Estimated at three millions, the reservoir and
conduit cost nearer four. Nor did he stop with this. Electric
power plants were installed, and his workings were lighted as
well as run by electricity. Other sourdoughs, who had struck it
rich in excess of all their dreams, shook their heads gloomily,
warned him that he would go broke, and declined to invest in so
extravagant a venture.
But Daylight smiled, and sold out the remainder of his town-site
holdings. He sold at the right time, at the height of the placer
boom. When he prophesied to his old cronies, in the Moosehorn
Saloon, that within five years town lots in Dawson could not be
given away, while the cabins would be chopped up for firewood, he
was laughed at roundly, and assured that the mother-lode would be
found ere that time. But he went ahead, when his need for lumber
was finished, selling out his sawmills as well. Likewise, he began
to get rid of his scattered holdings on the various creeks, and
without thanks to any one he finished his conduit, built his
dredges, imported his machinery, and made the gold of Ophir
immediately accessible. And he, who five years before had crossed
over the divide from Indian River and threaded the silent
wilderness, his dogs packing Indian fashion, himself living Indian
fashion on straight moose meat, now heard the hoarse whistles
calling his hundreds of laborers to work, and watched them toil
under the white glare of the arc-lamps.
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