"It is enough to turn the mind of any person, and particularly when one learns with what comparative ease this gold is mined."
As we write several steamers having already departed from various Pacific ports, are on their way to the Yukon, all freighted to their fullest capacity with gold hunters, provisions and mining outfits. Others are following as rapidly as they can be outfitted, and scarcely a seaworthy craft available for the purpose can be found that has not already been brought into requisition.
This stream of humanity that has suddenly turned northward and is being constantly swollen as it proceeds on its way is made up of all classes of men and from every condition in life. The experienced and rugged miner is accompanied by the "tenderfoot." The soft-handed clerk falls in line with the tanned and strong-muscled out-of-door laborer. Even the professional man has abandoned his comfortable office for the miner's hut. The first steamer to leave numbered among her passengers the venerable poet of the Sierras, Joaquin Miller. Another steamer, sailing from Seattle on July 22, carried north ex-Governor McGraw, who for many years was president of the First National Bank, of Seattle; Governor of Washington for four years ending January last, and later a candidate for United States Senator to succeed W. S. Squire. Among his companions du voyage were General M. E. Carr, formerly Brigadier General of the State militia, and whose law practice is the largest in the State of Washington, and Captain A. J. Balliet, at one time Yale's greatest oarsman and football player, who also leaves a handsome law practice to seek gold on the Yukon.
WHERE THE GOLD IS FOUND.
HOW IT IS REACHED AND MINED.
Dr. William H. Dall, one of the curators of the National Museum, is familiar with the region of country in which the Klondyke gold fields are located, through having been on several geological expeditions to the region in Alaska adjoining the gold district, and says that in his opinion the reports from there probably are not exaggerated.
"When I was there," he says, "I did not find gold, but knew of it being taken out in profitable quantities for fifteen years or more. It was first discovered there in 1866. In 1880, when I was up in that country, the first party of prospectors who have made mining profitable, started out. The gold is found on the various tributaries of the Yukon, and I have been within a comparatively short distance of the Klondyke fields. I made one trip to Circle City, just over the boundary of Canada.