"The sun sinks out of sight now about 10.30 p. m., and comes up again about 3 a. m. About midnight, however, it is almost as light as noonday. There is no night. At Dawson there is a little sawmill and rough houses going up in all directions, but for the most part it is a city of tents. On the shore of the river are hundreds of boats, and others are getting in every day.
"The Klondyke has not been one particle overrated. I have seen gold measured by the bucketful. Just think of a man taking $800 out of one pan of dirt. Mrs. Wilson panned out $154 out of one pan in one of the mines I am to take charge of. This, without doubt, is the richest gold strike the world has ever known.
"Of course all the claims in the Klondyke district are taken up now, and there are hundreds of men who own claims valued from $50,000 to $1,000,000. But with all these men in the country many miles of new ground will be prospected, and from the lay of the country I think other gold fields are certain to be located."
CANADIAN GOVERNMENT'S ATTITUDE.
AN INTERNATIONAL QUESTION AS TO MINER'S RIGHTS.
The fact that the Klondyke placer diggings, as thus far prospected and developed, are well east of the 141st meridian, which forms the boundary line between Alaska and the Dominion of Canada has attracted no little attention among our northern neighbors, and many contradictory reports as to what attitude the Ottawa Government will assume as to the rights of miners who are not British subjects, have come to us. That the Canadian Government has the right to prohibit all but British subjects from working these diggings cannot be questioned. But, as the New York Sun puts it, it would be preposterous to suppose that the Dominion would really attempt to exercise its right of exclusion. Gold fields all over the world are open to miners without regard to nationality. Canadians to-day are free to work in the Yukon diggings on our side of the boundary. The Dominion will do well enough in collecting its revenues and customs duties on the new industry, and on the collateral industries certain to spring up among the population that will flock there. Already it has a customs officer for the district.
American miners have rushed in large numbers from Forty-mile Creek and other points to the new Klondyke, Bonanza Creek, Eldorado Creek, or other regions, and they have staked out their claims. The Dominion would have its hands full in dispossessing these men, and there would be plenty of reason for retaliation on our part. We do, it is true, exclude Chinese immigration, but it would be dangerous for the Dominion to put Mongolians and Americans on the same footing in an exclusion policy.
American miners who have written to the Department of State asking protection for their Klondyke claims have no reason to worry; and, in fact, it maybe surmised that their anxieties, rather than any indications given by the Ottawa Government, are the source of the absurd rumor of exclusion.