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Page 2
A sample dozen will be mailed to any address for 20 cents (or ten two-cent
stamps) if you write
WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON
3 and 5 West 18th Street, New York City
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE GREAT ROUND
WORLD
AND WHAT IS GOING ON IN IT.]
VOL. 1 AUGUST 19, 1897. NO. 41
The stories from the Klondike fields seem to grow more wonderful day by
day.
The first accounts have not only been verified, but surpassed by the
later news. Four million dollars' worth of gold is said to be waiting
shipment at St. Michael's, Alaska, and miners at the Klondike say that
fifty millions more will be taken out next season.
Men who went out poor a year ago are now returning with fortunes. Two
miners found $10,000 worth of gold in twenty days.
One man who has just come back bringing $180,000 worth with him gave a
reception at his hotel in San Francisco, and invited all who cared for
the sight to come and see the nuggets he had brought.
It is said to have been the largest exhibit of gold since the famous
times of '49. He had scores of nuggets as large as a man's thumb, but
the feature of the collection was one about the shape and size of a
full-grown potato. This nugget was said to be worth $250. Those who have
seen the Alaska gold say it is very bright, and brassy in color, but not
as fine in quality as the California gold.
The stories of these enormous fortunes have set the Californian and
Northwestern towns in a fever of excitement. A tremendous rush is being
made for the Klondike. Men are leaving good employment and hurrying off
to the gold-fields. Professional men (lawyers and doctors), business
men, merchants, clerks, and laborers are all joining in the mad rush for
the land of gold.
The excitement is as great as it was in '49, but the terrible
experiences of that year have now become ancient history, and the
gold-seekers have to learn the sad lesson anew. It looks as if this land
of gold would, like California in '49, become a land of death.
When the gold fever reached the Eastern States in the spring of '49,
there was just the same mad rush for California that is now being made
for the Klondike.
The emigrants had in those days to cross the prairies in wagons. None of
them understood the rigors of the journey they had to undertake, and
many fell by the wayside and died before the promised land was reached.
After a while the track across this great American desert was marked by
the skeletons of oxen and horses, and boxes and barrels which people had
thrown out of their wagons to lighten the load of their poor weary
beasts, to enable them to reach water and shade. Here and there a rough
mound would mark where some poor soul had been unable to bear the
sufferings and had given up his life.
Thousands died in the awful trip across the continent, and thousands
more, who thought to make an easier journey by sea, died of fevers
contracted in crossing the unhealthy Isthmus of Panama, the strip of
land that divides North and South America, separating the Atlantic from
the Pacific Ocean.
The historian Bancroft says that while between four and five hundred
millions of gold were obtained in the seven years following the find in
'49, the gold cost, in human life and labor, three times what it was
actually worth.
A few of the Forty-niners gained the riches they sought, but the greater
part of the gold-seekers barely made a living by the most exhausting
toil.
[Illustration: FORTY-NINERS CROSSING THE PLAINS.]
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