vertaxed
transportation companies. There was about 12,000 gallons of whisky
imported into the territory from Canada the past year. Smoking tobacco
was selling at $1.50 a pound and good plug cut and fancy tobacco was
selling at $2.00 a pound.

The demand for medicine is very light, but the local traders carry a
small stock of patent and proprietary medicines.

CHAPTER V.

MINERS' LUCK.

The reports already received of the finds of gold seem beyond belief but
the greater part of them are actual facts, and the following came under
my personal observation:--

Alexander McDonald, on Claim No. 30, Eldorado, on the Klondyke, started
drifting on his claim with four men. The men agreed to work the claim on
shares, the agreement being that they should work on shares by each
receiving half of what they could get out. The five together took out
$95,000.00 in twenty-eight days. The ground dug up was found to measure
but 40 square feet. This was an exceptional find. The men are of course
working the claim and had 460 square feet on the claim still to work out
when I left for the East.

People in the East or elsewhere can hardly realize what a small space a
mining claim is in this vast and comparatively unexplored territory.

William Leggatt on Claim No. 13, Eldorado, together with William Gates
and a miner named Shoots, purchased their claim from a miner named
Stewart, and his partner, for the sum of $45,000.00. They did not have
money to make the payment in cash but made a first payment of $2,000.00
with the agreement to pay the balance of the purchase price, $43,000.00,
prior to July 1st, 1897. They sunk a shaft and commenced taking out
$1,000.00 per day.

They worked the pay dirt until about May 15, 1897, when they found that
they had taken out $62,000.00, and the space of the claim worked was
only _twenty-four square feet_.

A young man who went to the Klondyke recently writes that he is taking
out $1,800.00 a day from his claim.

It is stated on good authority that one claim yielded $90,000 in 45
feet up and down the stream. Clarence Berry bought out his two partners,
paying one $35,000 and the other $60,000, and has taken up $140,000 from
the winter dump alone. Peter Wiborg has purchased more ground. He
purchased his partner's interest in a claim, paying $42,000. A man by
the name of Wall has all he thinks he wants, and is coming out. He sold
his interests for $50,000. Nearly all the gold is found in the cree