KLONDIKE CHAPTER I. NEW LANDS OF GOLD. On Wednesday, July 14th, 1897, the little steamer Excelsior arrived in the harbor of San Francisco with forty miners on board, each one of whom had brought with him from the icebound interior of Alaska a fortune in gold. From that day may be said to date the Klondike gold craze which already rivals in extent the three other great gold crazes of the century, California in 1849, Australia in 1851 and South Africa in 1890. Already the amount known to have been brought back by the returning miners exceeds $4,000,000, and nearly $3,000,000 more is said to be on the way. It is estimated by some experts that before the full returns come in it will be found the total output of the Alaskan mines has been $8,000,000. California yielded $60,000,000 five years after Marshall's discovery, and all from place diggings, as are the diggings in the Klondike region; but the facilities for mining in California, with its salubrious climate, its comparative nearness to civilization, its all-year-round conveniences, were infinitely superior to the facilities in the Yukon Basin, where winter lasts for. three-quarters of the year, where the thermometer drops to 75 degrees below zero in the winter and climbs to 120 degrees above zero in the summer, and where the nearness of the Arctic circle practically divides the year into one long day and one long night, each extending over a period of six months. When millions of gold can be taken out in a single year under all these disadvantages of climate by laborers working with the most primitive implements of mining life it is difficult to conceive of the opulence of a soil whose grudging tribute to the energy of the modern argonaut is so fabulous in extent. These forty men who came down on the Excelsior from the port of St. Michael, near the mouth of the Yukon, had among them over half a million dollars in gold dust, ranging in size from a hazel nut to fine bird shot and kernels of sand. All of them were penniless, or nearly so, when they left the United States, some of them having taken their departure within a year, others having been prospecting on the fields. along the branches of the Upper Yukon for several years. They brought back fortunes ranging from $5000 to $90,000 and the most extraordinary tales. of their experience in the mining countries. Their descriptions of the vast amounts of gold still remaining in the regions from which they had come were so tempered with cautions and warnings against a mad rush for the new fields that tales which otherwise might have been deemed improbable gained credence through their very conservatism. But whatever might be thought. of the tales, there was no disputing the tangible fact of the yellow metal which was laid down in the Selby smelting works, San Francisco, and when a second ship, the Portland, from St. Michael, arrived at Seattle, three days later, with more miners aboard and $700,000 in bullion, it was as if a spark had set afire the enthusiasm for hunting gold which had been lying dormant since the days of the Argonauts of 1849. There |