mewhat curious.

The Yukon region, in which the Klondike lies, is very cold. Alaska is
bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, and the Arctic circle runs
right through the Yukon country. You can imagine therefore that it is
terribly cold, and that the ground is frozen nearly all the year round.

The rich pay-dirt in which the gold is found lies from eighteen to
twenty-five feet below the surface. It would not pay the miners to wait
for the short warm season when the frost is out of the ground to make
their harvest; so they have found a plan to get at the gold all the year
round, no matter how hard or frozen the earth may be.

They build great fires on the top of the gravel, and fix them so that
they shall burn all night. When morning comes about eighteen inches of
the ground beneath the fire is found to be thawed out. This surface is
shovelled away, and another fire built on the gravel where it is frozen
again.

They keep right on in this slow and tedious way, until finally the
pay-dirt is reached.

The yield from these new gold-fields is something wonderful. It is
greater than anything ever recorded in the history of gold mining.

[Illustration: ALASKA: YUKON VALLEY AND GOLD FIELDS.

(The State of Pennsylvania is inserted to show comparative size.)]

One miner, who is a thoroughly experienced man, declares that he is
absolutely amazed at the amount of gold that has already been produced.
He says that the work has only been commenced, and that this present
find which is setting people crazy is nothing to the gold that will be
discovered as soon as the miners really get to work.

He stated that, in addition to the rich pay-dirt we have already spoken
of, there were veins of gold in the rocks underneath, which veins
appeared to grow richer the farther they were probed. In his opinion the
gold deposits of the Yukon region form the mother vein of all the gold
in North America.

Many people are hurrying to the Klondike district from all parts, and
the excitement is intense.

San Francisco has caught the gold fever. It reached the city through
some miners from Klondike, who arrived by steamer, bringing with them
piles of shining gold to prove the truth of their stories.

Not one member of this party went up to Alaska with anything more than
his outfit and a few hundred dollars. All have brought back stores of
riches.

The smallest amount of gold owned by any of these men was valued at five
thousand dollars,