ish America-along Forty-mile Creek, Sixtymile Creek and Birch Creek. They would have continued digging along these creeks for months longer content with the moderate but certain returns of their labors had it not been for the sudden discovery on the Klondike pouring into the Yukon over on the British side, of gold nuggets so large and handily found that, carried away with the news, they pulled up stakes and abandoned in a day the claims upon which they had been toiling for months. Circle City, the largest camp in the Yukon district, was deserted over night, and Dawson City, at the junction of the Klondike and the Yukon, sprang into being in a day. This was a year ago, at the beginning of the short summer season. The gold the returning miners brought to San Francisco and Seattle was the product of one season's pickings. They worked the Klondike and the banks of two creeks flowing into it, which they called appropriately the Eldorado and the Bonanza, until winter shut in on them, and for nine months of the cheerless Arctic season they kept up the search for gold, until the breaking up of the ice in the following June gave them their first chance to escape back home with their

treasure. They had been shut out from the world for nine months as completely as if they had been dead. They did not even know the result of the election for President. They were strangers in their own country.

What is believed to be the richest gold strike the world has ever known was made on Bonanza Creek, a branch of the Klondike River, in August, 1896. A miner named George W. Cormack has received the credit for the discovery. Some say that Cormack only followed the lead pointed out to him by others, but there seems to be no doubt about his having been the first to take advantage of rumors and locate a claim. William Ogilvie, the Canadian land surveyor, suggests that the discovery was due to reports of Indians. Cormack had an Indian wife, and he had for partners his brother-in-law, Tagish Charley, and another Indian. Ogilvie says he set about working his claim late in August. He was short of appliances and could put together only a defective apparatus to wash the gravel with. The gravel itself he had to carry in a box on his back from thirty to one hundred feet. Notwithstanding this, the three men, working very irregularly, washed out $1200 in eight days. "Cormack asserts with rea

son," says Ogilvie, "that had he had proper facilities it could have been done in two days, besides having several hundred dollars more gold, which was lost in the tailings through defective appara

tus."

In his report of November 6, 1896, to the Canadian Government Ogilvie says that on Bonanza Creek two men rocked out $75 in about four hours, and he speaks of two men on the same creek who were said to have taken out $4000 in two days with only two lengths of sluice boxes. In the same report Mr. Ogilvie says:

"A branch of Bonanza, named Eldorado, has prospected magnificently, and another branch, named Tilly Creek, has prospected well; in all there are some four or five branches to Bonanza which have given good prospects. There are about 170 claims staked on the main creek, and the branches are good for about as many more, aggregating say 350 claims, which will require. over 1000 men to work properly.

"A few miles further up Bear Creek enters Thron-Diuck (Klondike), and it has been prospected and located on. About twelve miles above the mouth Gold-bottom Creek joins ThronDiuck, and on it and a branch named Hunker

Creek very rich ground has been found. One man showed me $22.75 he took out in a few hours on Hunker Creek with a gold nan, prospecting his claim on the surface, taking a handful here and there as fancy suggested. On Gold-bottom Creek and branches there will probably be 200 or 300 claims. The Indians have reported another creek much farther up, which they call "Too Much Gold Creek," on which the gold is so plentiful that as the miners say in joke you have to mix gravel with it to sluice it."

"From all this we may, I think, infer that we have here a district which will give 1000 claims of 500 feet in length each. Now, 1000 such claims will require at least 3000 men to work them properly, and, as wages for working in the mines are from $8 to $10 a day, without board, we have every reason to assume that this part of our territory will in a year or two contain 10,000 souls at least. And this is not all, for a large creek, called Indian Creek, joins the Yukon about midway between Thron-Diuck and Stewart Rivers, and all along this creek good pay dirt has been found. All that has stood in the way of working it heretofore has been the scarcity of provisions and the difficulty of getting them up there. Indian Creek