can now get almost anything
here by paying for it, on a scale regulated by the local daily
newspapers, which are sold for a shilling and sometimes more. Even in
the cheaper eating-houses, where sausages steam in the window, the most
frugal meal runs away with a five dollar note, while at the Regina Hotel
(by no means a first-class establishment) the price charged for the most
modest bedroom would have secured a sumptuous apartment at the Ritz
palaces in Pall Mall or the Place Vendome! On the day of our arrival I
thought a bar-tender was joking when he charged me three dollars for a
pint of very ordinary "Medoc," but quickly discovered that the man was
in sober earnest. Nevertheless, only big prices are to be expected in a
region almost inaccessible ten years ago. And what a change there is
since those days. In 1896 it took us two months to reach Thron-diuck
from the coast, and on the last occasion I received a reply from London
to a cable within seven hours! This new era of progress and
enlightenment seemed to have scared the insect creation, for, in 1896,
"smudges" were lit here to drive away the clouds of mosquitoes which
mingled with our very food; and now not a gnat was to be seen in Dawson,
although the creeks around were said to be alive with them.

This is essentially a cosmopolitan city, and you may hear almost every
known language, from Patagonian to Chinese, talked in its streets.
"First Avenue," about a mile long and fronting the river, is the finest
thoroughfare, and the high-sounding title is not incongruous, for
several handsome stone buildings now grace this street which in a few
years will doubtless be worthy of Seattle or San Francisco. One side of
the road is lined by busy wharves, with numberless steamers ever on the
move, the other by shops of every description, restaurants, and gorgeous
drinking-saloons. A stranger here cannot fail to be struck with the
incongruity with which wealth and squalor are blended. Here a dainty
restaurant is elbowed by a cheap American _gargote_, there a plate-glass
window blazing with diamonds seems to shrink from a neighbouring
emporium stocked with second-hand wearing apparel. Even the exclusive
Zero Club with its bow window generally crowded with fashionable
loungers, is contaminated by the proximity of a shabby drinking-bar,
which, however, does not impair the excellence of its internal
arrangements, as the writer can testify. For a Lucullian repast, of
which I was i