2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



north, is a settlement of the Northwest Territory of Canada, situated 

 at a point thirteen hundred miles as the crow flies northwest of Seattle. 

 It is close to, if not quite on, the Arctic Circle, and it lies the better 

 part of three hundred miles nearer to the pole than does St. Peters- 

 burg in Russia. By its side one of the mighty rivers of the globe 

 hurries its course to the ocean, but not too swiftly to permit of sixteen 

 hundred miles of its lower waters being navigated by craft of the size 

 of nearly the largest of the Mississippi steamers, and five hundred 

 miles above by craft of about half this size. In its own particular 

 world, the longest day of the year drawls itself out to twenty-two 

 hours of sunlight, while the shortest contracts to the same length of 

 sun absence. 



During the warmer days of summer the heat feels almost tropical; 

 the winter cold is, on the other hand, of almost the extreme Siberian 

 rigor. Yet a beautiful vegetation smiles not only over the valleys, 

 but on the hilltops, the birds gambol in the thickets, and the tiny 

 mosquito, either here or near by, pipes out its daily sustenance to the 

 wrath of man. The hungry forest stretches out its gnarled and 

 ragged arms for still another hundred or even three hundred miles 

 farther to the north. 



Up to within a few years the white man was a stranger in the 

 land, and the Indian roamed the woods and pastures as still do the 

 moose and caribou. To-day this has largely changed. The banks 

 of the once silent river now give out the hum of the sawmill, the click 

 of the hammer, and the blast of the time-whistle, commanding either 

 to rest or to work. A busy front of humanity has settled where 

 formerly the grizzly bear lapped the stranded salmon from the shore, 

 and where at a still earlier period although perhaps not easily asso- 

 ciated with the history of man the mammoth, the musk ox, and the 

 bison were masters of the land. The red man is still there in linger- 

 ing numbers, but his spirit is no longer that which dominates, and his 

 courage not that of the untutored savage. 



The modern history of Dawson begins with about the middle of 

 1896, shortly after the " public " discovery of gold in the Klondike 

 tract. Three or four months previous there was hardly a habitation, 

 whether tent or of logs, to deface the landscape, and the voice of 

 animate Nature was hushed only in the sound of many waters. At 

 the close of the past year, as nearly as estimate can make it, there were 

 probably not less than from fourteen thousand to fifteen thousand 

 men, women, and children, settled on the strip of land that borders 

 the Yukon, both as lowland and highland, for about two miles of its 

 course near the confluence of the Klondike. Many of these have lo- 

 cated for a permanence, others only to give way to successors more 

 fortunate than themselves. Some of the richest claims of the Bo- 



