This lease gives to Russia what she has so long wanted—that is, a port on the Asiatic coast which is not frozen up in winter. She now has her "sphere of influence" located in a way most satisfactory to herself.
If China leases many more ports to the great powers she may secure the materials for a "concert of powers" which will prove as useful to her as it has been to the Sultan of Turkey.
It is reported that there are 10,000 men on the trail between Skaguay and Dyea in Alaska.
The rush is now at its height, for now that the warmer weather is coming, the perils of the Klondike will be fewer for some months.
Some very thrilling tales have reached us from the Pacific coast, although the newspapers are very reticent about publishing reports of accidents. It would seem that some agency is suppressing accounts of ill-starred ventures. Certainly, the papers hold out the golden possibilities of the trip, while the dangers and privations are kept well in the background.
Thousands of men are setting out for the gold country to-day. Every small town and village of the United States has its quota of Argonauts, and they are pouring west to take ship for the Klondike. In Greek mythology there is a story about a man named Jason, who set out to find the Golden Fleece. The ship he sailed in was named the Argo. In 1849, when the people of the United States had the gold fever so badly, and the rush to California was very much like that to the Klondike to-day, the men who started from the East to go to the Pacific coast by ship were called Argonauts. Afterward it became a common term, and all people setting out for the gold-mines were designated by this title.
The reindeer which were bought in Scandinavia by the United States for use in Alaska, and shipped to New York, are to be sold. They were to have been used for relief expeditions, but it has been found out that supplies are more abundant in the Klondike than was first reported.
There are five hundred and thirty-seven of these reindeer, and it is to be doubted whether they will sell for as much money as they have cost. To buy them in Lapland, Norway, and Sweden involved an expenditure of $50,000, and to bring them to this country was a very expensive undertaking.