orking at desk.]
James Wilson,
Secretary of Agriculture.

[Illustration: Working at desk.]
Postmaster-General Gary.
From a copyrighted photo by Clinedinst.

The valley of the Yukon, in Alaska and the adjacent British territory,
had long been known to contain gold, but none suspected there a bonanza
like the South African Rand. In the six months' night of 1896-1897 an
old squaw-man made an unprecedented strike upon the Klondike
(Thron-Duick or Tondak) River, 2,000 miles up the Yukon. By spring all
his neighbors had staked rich claims. Next July $2,000,000 worth of gold
came south by one shipment, precipitating a rush to the inhospitable
mining regions hardly second to the California migration of 1849.

Latter-day Argonauts, not dismayed by the untold dangers and hardships
in store, toiled up the Yukon, or, swarming over the precipitous
Chilcoot Pass, braved, too often at cost of life, the boiling rapids to
be passed in descending the Upper Yukon to the gold fields. Later the
easier and well-wooded White Pass was found, traversed, at length, by a
railroad. In October, 1898, the Cape Nome coast, north of the Yukon
mouth, uncovered its riches, whereupon treasure-seekers turned thither
their attention, even from the Yukon.

Little lawlessness pestered the gold settlements. The Dominion promptly
despatched to Dawson a body of her famous mounted police. Our
Government, more tardily, made its authority felt from St. Michaels,
near the Yukon mouth, all the way to the Canadian border. On June 6,
1900, Alaska was constituted a civil and judicial district, with a
governor, whose functions were those of a territorial governor. When
necessary the miners themselves formed tribunals and meted out a
rough-and-ready justice.

[Illustration: Men with huge piles of supplies.]
Rush of Miners to the Yukon.
The City of Caches at the Summit of Chilcoot Pass.

The rush of miners to the middle Yukon gold region, which, together with
certain ports and waters on the way thither, were claimed by both the
United States and Great Britain, made acute the question of the true
boundary between Alaskan and British territory.

In 1825 Great Britain and Russia, the latter then owning Alaska, agreed
by treaty to separate their respective possessions by a line commencing
at the southernmost point of Prince of Wales Island and running along
Portland Channel to the continental coast at 56 degrees north latitude.
North of that degree the boun