We can infer that, in the passage, the word prospector refers to a person who ....... .

The Klondike River Region of Canada's Yukon Territory caught the attention of the world in
1896 when gold was discovered there. As had happened in the California Gold Rush in 1848,
thousands of prospectors rushed to the scene. The greater part of the new gold rush occurred in
1898; since it took many people a long time to get to the far north. Dawson City was founded as
a support base. For all the feverish activity, the gold rush was short-lived. By 1900, most of the
miners had given up and left. The population of Dawson City, which had reached 30,000 in the
peak years, soon fell to less than a few thousand. Another by-product of the gold rush was the
literature penned by such authors as Jack London and Robert Service.