ries in the Canadian Northwest Territories.

Prior to August 24, 1896, this section of the country had never been
heard of. It was on this day that a man named Henderson discovered the
first gold.

On the first day of the following month the writer commenced erecting
the first house in this region and called the place Dawson City, now the
central point of the mining camps.

Dawson City is now the most important point in the new mining regions.
Its population in June, 1897; exceeded 4,000; by June next it cannot be
less than 25,000. It has a saw-mill, stores, churches, of the
Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist and Roman Catholic denominations. It is
the headquarters of the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police, _and perfect
law and order is maintained_.

It is at Dawson City that the prospector files his claims with the
Government Gold Commissioner, in the recording offices.

Dawson City faces on one of the banks of the Yukon River, and now
occupies about a mile of the bank. It is at the junction of the Klondyke
River with the Yukon River. It is here where the most valuable mining
claims are being operated on a scale of profit that the world has
hitherto never known. The entire country surrounding is teeming with
mineral wealth.

Copper, silver and coal can be found in large quantities, but little or
no attention is now being paid to these valuable minerals, as every one
is engaged in gold-hunting and working the extraordinary placer mining
claims already located.

The entire section is given up to placer mining. Very few claims had
been filed for quartz mining. The fields of gold will not be exhausted
in the near future. No man can tell what the end will be. From January
to April, 1897, about $4,000,000 were taken out of the few placer claims
then being worked. This was done in a territory not exceeding forty
square miles. All these claims are located on Klondyke River and the
little tributaries emptying into it, and the districts are known as Big
Bonanza, Gold Bottom and Honker.

I have asked old and experienced miners at Dawson City who mined
through California in Bonanza days, and some who mined in Australia,
what they thought of the Klondyke region, and their reply has
invariably been, "The world never saw so vast and rich a find of gold as
we are working now."

Dawson City is destined to be the greatest mining camp in the history of
mining operations.

CHAPTER II.

KLONDYKE FACTS.

There is a great