turn the reports were alluring enough to impel a hundred or more men to start at once for the new find.

The Klondike had been known for several years to drain a gold country, and the first five miles of it had been indifferently prospected, but the gold hunters were generally run out by bears.

If the miners had made any encouraging finds at the outset it would have been different, but all other things being equal, in their estimation, they concluded to try streams where the bears were not so aggressive. And it happened that there was a reason for the bears being so bad in that particular place. It is possibly the best stream for salmon of all the tributaries of the great river.

The mountains along that section of the Yukon, and in fact, from Circle City up stream fur several hundred miles, are extremely wild and rugged. The great copper belt, which crosses the Yukon at the Klondike, is a succession of massive quartz ledges, with that metal predominating. The veins are known to carry gold, but in what proportion is yet to be determined.

Here also is the pioneer quartz mine of the Yukon. Captain Healy, the manager of the

transportation company, located a claim on the side of a precipice opposite the mouth of the Klondike over two years ago. Vein mining had never been thought of as a present undertaking. Labor was worth $15 a day and supplies of all kinds were proportionately high, but he put up his location.

Last year he did some development work on it and had samples assayed, showing it to be rich in gold. But the latest reports from the Klondike put such extravagant prices on labor that quartz will not be considered for some time yet. Still it is in the veins that will be found the real wealth of this wonderful country.

CHAPTER III.

SEEKING THE POT OF GOLD.

The first requirement for one seeking the gold fields is a hardy constitution; the second is capital. For the Yukon is not, as some other gold countries have been, a poor man's paradise. Gold is there in Aladdin-like profusion, but it is not to be had for the asking. It comes only as

the fruit of wearisome and perilous travel, of desperate combat with the rigors of an Arctic climate, of deadly waiting for Arctic winters to unloose their icy hands. For the privilege of a few months of toil the prospecting miner must endure many months of unremunerative delay, during which he must pay extortionately for the mere privilege of living. For the season of placer mining lasts only during June, July and August.

Before beginning even to hunt for gold the aspiring miner must prepare himself for the long and tedious trip to the fields, and this is a task that will tax the endurance and nerve of the most hardy. It means, according to one who has made the trip, "packing provisions over pathless mountains, towing a heavy boat against a five to an eight-mile current, over battered boulders, digging in the bottomless frost, sleeping where night overtakes, fighting gnats and mosquitoes by the millions, shooting seething canyons and rapids and enduring for seven long months a relentless cold which never rises above zero and frequently falls to 80 below."

Any man who is physically able to endure all this, who will go to the gold fields for a few