been in all parts of the world where gold is mined say they never saw such quantities taken in so short a time. At least $2,500,000 has been taken from the ground on the British side within the past year, and about $1,000,000 from the American side. The diggings around Circle City and in the older places are rich. There was one woman in the throng of miners who came from the Yukon on the steamer Portland. This was Mrs. J. S. Lippy, the wife of Prof. Lippy, who a year or two ago was secretary of the Y. M. C. A. at Seattle and who brought back with him $85,000 in gold. Mrs. Lippy was the first white woman on the creek and the only one in her camp, but she was not the first white woman to cross the divide. Nine or ten others were at Forty-mile Creek. Lippy went to the gold fields with hardly a grub stake. He believes his claim is worth $350,000. It may be worth millions. Joseph Ladue, formerly of Binghamton, N. Y., was a farm hand before he went to Alaska. He struck it rich and is the owner of the town site of Dawson City. He counts himself a millionaire. He went to the Northwestern country first in 1892 and has been there most of the time since. He left Dawson with a population of 3500. He was the first man to run a saw mill in Alaska, and it was a paying investment, although it was almost impossible to get anybody to run it. He paid men as high as $15 a day to work for him. The cheapest lumber he ever sold brought $100 per thousand, and when planed double that amount. Mr. Ladue, since his return, has said that already eight hundred claims are staked within a radius of twenty miles of Dawson. There is jumping of claims. Three months' work each year is required to hold a claim. Failing in this the land reverts to the government. The laws of Canada are stringent in such matters, and severe penalties are imposed for jumping or other interference with the rights of claimants. Another successful argonaut is William Stanley, 68 years old, who up to two years ago kept a little stationery stand in Seattle. He left a wife at home with several children and took one son to the gold fields with him. He brought back $112,000 and left his son in the diggings. He is interested with his son and two New York men in claims which he values at $2,000,000. He went to the Yukon as a last resort, and made his findings in three months. Ethel Bush, of Selma, Cal., and Clarence Berry, of Fresno, were married March 15, 1896. They were penniless, and for a honeymoon they chose a journey to the Alaskan gold fields. They drove their dog team into Forty Mile camp eighty-seven days later. For weeks they toiled on without result. Then came the Klondike find, and they moved on to Dawson City, where they picked out over $100,000, and they sold their claim in San Francisco for $2,000,000. CHAPTER II. THE KLONDIKE AND THE YUKON The richest yields of gold in the Yukon region have come from the territory embraced by the 138th and 145th degrees of longitude and the 62d and 66th degrees of latitude, between the upper ramparts on the East-steep bluffs frowning on a picuresque bend in the river, and Fort Yukon on the west. The greatest extent of gold |