bearing territory thus far explored is the American side of the 141st degree of longitude, which is the accepted boundary line. The most sensational discoveries have been on the British side, about 140 miles to the east of the line.

On the American side gold has been found in liberal quantities along number of creeks, Birch Creek, Firty-mile Creek and Sixty-mile Creek being the most promising fields in the order named, and the centre for these diggings has been Circle City, on the bank of the Yukon, about 140 miles west of the boundary. On the British side of the Klondike River and the Eldorado and Bonanza Creeks, tributary to it near its junction with the Yukon, have proved the miners' paradise. There is a group of creeks very near the boundary, chief of which is Miller Creek, which have contributed most generously to the gold supply. These are claimed both by the American and the British officials, and there is grave danger that they may lead to international complications unless the boundary is quickly surveyed.

Miller Creek, up to the time of the discovery of Klondike, was credited with the richest diggings along the Yukon in proportion to their

extent. Over $300,000 was taken out last season. The creek is only six miles long, but fiftyfour claims were staked out on it. A claim consists of 500 feet of creek and reaching up indefinitely on both sides of the gulch. The creek is distant about sixty miles from Forty-mile Post, at the junction of Forty-mile Creek with the Yukon, and it is surrounded at short distances by Poker, Davis, Glacier and Little Gold Creeks, all bearing gold.

The Klondike River enters the Yukon from the east at a bend about 300 miles east of Circle City and fifty miles north of Sixty-mile Creek. From Sixty-mile Creek the course of the Yukon is due north to the Klondike and then it starts again toward the West. The great copper belt crosses the Yukon just at this point, and the Indians have had a fishing camp there for years, the Klondike being a noted stream for salmon. Its waters are very clear and shallow, as befits its source high up in the snow-capped ranges.

"Klondike" means "reindeer." It is about as near the Indian word as the miscellaneous population of prospectors who have been digging there for gold were able to come. At the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey it is said the

word ought really to be spelled "Tlondak," which is Indian for "fishing grounds," and that is the name given to the stream which has now become synonymous with Eldorado in maps which were made in 1887 by Mr. McGrath, the Coast Survey official detailed at that time to explore a country which was then quite unknown. McGrath very nearly starved to death on the very spot whence millions of dollars in yellow metal have been taken during the last twelve months, and he never suspected the presence at that immediate place of the precious metal. But that is another story.

Miners have been taking out gold since 1894 from the placer diggings on the American side of the line. The earliest diggings were at Forty Mile Creek, about sixty miles east of the Klondike, and then came discoveries at Sixty Mile Creek, a little farther south, and at Birch Creek, a good deal farther west. Of these diggings those along Birch Creek have been the most profitable, and the camp of Circle City, which was founded in the fall of 1894, was for a time a place of considerable importance. It was the distributing point for the whole region and was, in a measure, the metropolis of the Yukon Val

ley. Now it has been eclipsed, for a time, at any rate, by the new settlement at Dawson City. Circle City has the great advantage, however, of being on American soil, for whatever the present temporary tendency, it is believed by those who have studied the country most closely that the American side of the 141st parallel of longitude, which constitutes the Alaskan boundary, will eventually prove the richest and most profitable portion of the gold-bearing territory. Over 500 men wintered at Circle City last year. The town, which is situated near the head waters of the Yukon, about 170 miles from Forty Mile Creek, is laid off in streets, with the main street facing the river, and it is so near to Birch Creek that a portage of six miles brings it to the banks of Birch Creek, two hundred miles from the mouth, and thus in a position to bring the gold ores taken out of this great American gold-bearing basin to the navigable waters of the Yukon. The gold diggings on American soil which have been prospected extend from the 141st to the 146th degree of longitude. The Klondike region is just to the west of the 141st degree, Dawson City being situated at the junction of the Klondike and Yukon, about sixty miles to the west.

The experts of the Coast and Geological Surveys who have explored the country to some extent estimate that the gold-yielding territory extends over at least five hundred miles and that the richest portion of it is on American soil. The Cassiar Mountain region, as far east as the 130th degree of longitude on the northern border of British Columbia, has been worked with a good deal of success for the last eleven years, although the yield now seems to be falling off. The gold in this region comes from the same mother lode as that at Klondike, at Sixty Mile Creek, at Forty Mile Creek and at Birch Creek. Scientists believe it is from the same mother lode as the gold from the Sierras, and they even go so far as to assert that the gold mines of the Ural Mountains in Siberia go back to the same origin. In other words, the whole country of two continents, from the Ural Mountains to the Rockies, is impregnated with a mineral which is apparently exhaustless in extent and which will suffice to keep the world supplied with gold for ages to

come.

Nobody seems to know just when gold was first discovered in the Yukon Basin, for no two miners can be found to agree on the subject. It