As may be seen, the buried treasures of these gravel beds
were to be won in these pioneer years only by dint of
exhausting labor and frightful hardship. They would never
have been found at all had not the bars and shores of the
streams yielded gold at the surface level. Yet the
extraordinary richness of these gravels, from which as much
as $50,000 might be obtained as the result of a winter's
work, excited men's imaginations to the utmost, and the
stream of gold-seekers continued year after year until
Dawson grew to be a well-built and populous city and the
yearly output of the Klondike mines amounted to more than
$16,000,000.
The difficulty in reaching the mines grew less year by year.
As early as 1898 a railway was begun across the White Pass.
It now extends from Skagway more than a hundred miles
inland, the lakes and streams being traversed by steamers,
so that the purgatory of the early prospectors has been
converted into the "broad and easy way" of the later
sinners. The old method of burning into the frozen soil has
also been improved on, steam being now used instead of fire
and the pay-dirt reached much more rapidly and cheaply by
its aid.
The Klondike region, though largely prospected and worked by
Americans, is not in Alaska, Dawson lying sixty miles east
of the border.
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