at the surface level. Yet the
extraordinary richness of these gravels, from which as much
as $50,000 might be obtained as the result of a winter's
work, excited men's imaginations to the utmost, and the
stream of gold-seekers continued year after year until
Dawson grew to be a well-built and populous city and the
yearly output of the Klondike mines amounted to more than
$16,000,000.

The difficulty in reaching the mines grew less year by year.
As early as 1898 a railway was begun across the White Pass.
It now extends from Skagway more than a hundred miles
inland, the lakes and streams being traversed by steamers,
so that the purgatory of the early prospectors has been
converted into the "broad and easy way" of the later
sinners. The old method of burning into the frozen soil has
also been improved on, steam being now used instead of fire
and the pay-dirt reached much more rapidly and cheaply by
its aid.

The Klondike region, though largely prospected and worked by
Americans, is not in Alaska, Dawson lying sixty miles east
of the border. The streams of Alaska itself, so far as they
have yet been worked, are far less promising, and yet Alaska
has a golden treasure house of its own that may yet prove as
prolific as the Klondike itself.

This is at Nome, on the shores of Bering Sea, about
twenty-five degrees of longitude nearly due west from
Dawson, and a hundred and fifty miles north of the mouth of
the Yukon. Here the sands of the sea itself and of its
bordering shores have proven splendid gold bearers and have
attracted a large population to that inhospitable region, in
latitude sixty-five degrees north; here has grown up a city
containing 25,000 inhabitants, and here may be seen the most
northerly railroad in the world.

In 1898 a soldier, in digging a well on the beach at Nome,
saw in the sands thrown up that alluring yellow glint which
has led so many men to fortune and so many to death. The
story of his find came to the ears of an old prospector from
Idaho, who, too ill to go inland, was stranded in the
military station of Nome. Spade and pan were at once put to
work and in twenty days the fortunate invalid found himself
worth $3000 in gold.

At Nome the gold was first found in the beach sands and even
in the sands of the sea adjoining the beach, old Neptune
being forced to yield part of the treasures he had taken to
himself. Later, the bench of higher land stretching back
from the beach and the sides o