What are they? They are too hard to be lead, and are not tarnished like silver should be.

With one outstretched hand grasping the bottle and the other waving at air, I moved forward feeling for the tent. No tent. No tree.

Australians have told me that emus, being very curious, will pick up and swallow anything shiny or unusual. They say aborigines will kick and pick apart any emu poop they see to check them out for nuggets.

The catch being was that it was about 60 miles from Anchorage near Hope, and a good four or five-mile hike uphill to the claims.

Sure enough, after hiking a couple miles uphill and hacking through some brush, we found the place just as he had described it.

At first we decided to see what the flat by our camp would produce where the old-timers had worked it with their Pelton wheel and dragline buckets.

We all love to see that first glimmer of gold when it peeks out from under the black sand in our pan, or feel the weight of a nugget in our scoop when we dig a good target. But sometimes things don’t go quite so smoothly.