CHAPTER I.

Land of the Argonauts.

A Country Frozen by the Lapse of Time-Discovery of Gold Not New-News is Flashed Over the World and Creates a Furore-Old Diggings are Soon Abandoned-Effect of the Find on the People of the United States and on the Money Centres of the World-Region which may Properly be called the Land of Gold once Thought so Worthless the Russians Offered to Give it Away for Nothing-Testimony as to the Richness of the Deposits-The Popular Demand for Information as to the Country, its Inhabitants, Scenery, Resources and the Like-Camp Life and Experi

ences.

A

LASKA is the land of the Nineteenth Century Argonauts;

and the Golden Fleece hidden away among its snowcapped and glacier-clad mountains is not the pretty creation of mythological fame, but yellow nuggets which may be transformed into the coin of the realm. The vast territory into which these hardy soldiers of fortune penetrate is no less replete with wonders than the fabled land into which Jason is said to have led his band of adventurers.

There is this difference, however, between the frozen land of of the North and the fabled land of mythology. There is nothing conjectural about Alaska or its golden treasure. Jason led his band into an unknown country without the certain knowledge that the treasure he was seeking was there. The men and women who brave the perils of the wilderness to seek their fortunes in Alaska, go with a certainty that the treasure is there. It is a mere matter of finding it when once they have reached the fields.

What is more the Land of Gold, as we may properly term Alaska, has proved and will prove to tourist and prospector as rich in delights and marvels as the land which has come

down to us in legend. It seems to be a spot chosen by nature as a field of adventure. The person, therefore, who goes from the South to the Yukon Valley will be sure to find, even though disappointed in the quest for which primarily he went, enough of the beautiful and marvelous to pay him for his trip.

Frozen by Lapse of Time.

And first a word about this land of bleakness and grandeur. Captain Butler, an English officer who crossed the great country some little time ago, writes in the most enthusiastic terms of its scenery, and one cannot do better than quote his picturesque words. Says he

"Nature has here graven her image in such colossal characters that man seems to move slowly amid an ocean frozen rigid by the lapse of time-frozen into those things we call mountains, rivers and forests.

"Rivers whose single length roll twice 2,000 miles of shore line! Prairies over which a traveler can steer for weeks without resting his gaze on aught save the dim verge of the ever-shifting horizon! Mountains rent by rivers, ice-topped, glacier seared, impassable! Forests whose sombre pines darken a region half as large as Europe!

"In summer a land of sound; a land echoed with the voices of birds; the ripple of running water; the mournful music of the waving pine branch! In winter a land of silence; its great rivers glimmering in the moonlight, wrapped in their shrouds of ice; its still forests rising weird and spectral against the auroral lighted horizon; its nights so still that the moving streamers across the northern skies seem to carry to the ear a sense of sound."

The land thus strikingly described has been deemed since early in 1887 the Eldorado where nature has apparently strewn

her golden gifts most lavishly. It is to this land that thousands have wended their way in the hopes of wresting from their hidden beds enough of these treasures to lift them to opulence.

Not a New Discovery.

The knowledge of these gold fields in the North is not new. From early in the days of the Russian occupation it has been known that there were vast deposits of the precious metal in Alaska, practically under the Arctic Circle.

Year by year the gold fields have attracted adventurous fortune seekers, who have gone thither in ever-increasing numbers. Following the discovery of the rich deposits in the Klondike region, however, there has been an influx of people into these frozen wilds, such as has never been known before.

The first chance discovery was for a long time virtually held in secret, not intentionally, but because the lack of transit facilities made it difficult to get the news to civilized communities. When at length, however, the story of the find was brought south, and with the story was brought specimens of nuggets and gold dust which had been found, the news was put upon the wires and flashed through the length and breadth of the land, and the excitement caused gave every promise of a repetition of the memorable scenes which made Cariboo and Cassiar famous a generation ago.

In New York, in Chicago, in London, in Paris, throughout the world, the attention alike of rich and poor, was directed to the marvelously rich, but almost wholly unknown wilds of Alaska. People talked of the days of '49 and devised a new slogan, "The days of '97." The rich immediately began to organize new companies and map out new enterprises, such as made fortunes for thousands in days of other gold excitements; and multitudes of the poor, dissatisfied with their opportunities