Skookum Jim tried his luck, and from surface prospects got from ten cents to a dollar to the pan. Carmack and his brothers-in-law staked and "hit the high places" for Forty Mile, where they filed on the claims before Captain Constantine, and renamed the creek Bonanza. And Henderson was forgotten. No word of it reached him. Carmack broke his promise.

Weeks afterward, when Bonanza and Eldorado were staked from end to end and there was no more room, a party of late-comers pushed over the divide and down to Gold Bottom, where they found Henderson still at work. When they told him they were from Bonanza, he was nonplussed. He had never heard of such a place. But when they described it, he recognized it as Rabbit Creek. Then they told him of its marvelous richness, and, as Tappan Adney relates, when Henderson realized what he had lost through Carmack's treachery, "he threw down his shovel and went and sat on the bank, so sick at heart that it was some time before he could speak."

Then there were the rest of the oldtimers, the men of Forty Mile and Circle City. At the time of the discovery, nearly all of them were over to the West at work in the old diggings or prospecting for new ones. As they said of themselves, they were the kind of men who are always caught out with forks when it rains soup. In the stampede that followed the news of Carmack's strike very few old miners took part. They were not there to take part. But the men who did go on the stampede were mainly the worthless ones, the newcomers, and the camp hangers-on. And while Bob Henderson plugged away to the East, and the heroes plugged away to the West, the greenhorns and rounders went up and staked Bonanza.

But the Northland was not yet done with its joke. When fall came on and the heroes returned to Forty Mile and to Circle City, they listened calmly to the

Again the Northland turned the tables. The Alaskan gold-hunter is proverbial, not so much for his unveracity, as for his inability to tell the precise truth. country of exaggerations, he likewise is prone to hyperbolic description of things actual. But when it came to Klondike, he could not stretch the truth as fast as the truth itself stretched. Carmack first got a dollar pan. He lied when he said it was two dollars and a half. And when those who doubted him did get two-anda-half pans, they said they were getting an ounce, and lo! ere the lie had fairly started on its way, they were getting, not one ounce, but five ounces. This they claimed was six ounces; but when they filled a pan of dirt to prove the lie, they washed out twelve ounces. And so it went. They continued valiantly to lie, but the truth continued to outrun them.

But the Northland's hyperborean laugh was not yet ended. When Bonanza was staked from mouth to source, those who had failed "to get in," disgruntled and sore, went up the "pups" and feeders. Eldorado was one of these feeders, and many men, after locating on it, turned their backs upon their claims and never gave them a second thought. One man sold a half-interest in five hundred feet of it for a sack of flour. Other owners wandered around trying to bunco men into buying them out for a song. And then Eldorado "showed up." It was far, far richer than Bonanza, with an average value of a thousand dollars a foot to every foot of it.

A Swede named Charley Anderson

had been at work on Miller Creek the year of the strike, and arrived in Dawson with a few hundred dollars. Two miners, who had staked No. 29 Eldorado, decided that he was the proper man upon whom to "unload." He was too canny to approach sober, so at considerable expense they got him drunk. Even then it was hard work, but they kept him befuddled for several days, and finally inveigled him into buying No. 29 for $750. When Anderson sobered up, he wept at his folly, and pleaded to have his money back. But the men who had duped him were hard-hearted. They laughed at him, and kicked at themselves for not having tapped him for a couple of hundred more. Nothing remained for Anderson but to work the worthless ground. This he did, and out of it he took over three quarters of a million of dollars.

It was not till Frank Dinsmore, who already had big holdings on Birch Creek, took a hand, that the old-timers developed faith in the new diggings. Dinsmore received a letter from a man on the spot, calling it "the biggest thing in the world," and harnessed his dogs and went up to investigate. And when he sent a letter

back, saying that he had "never seen anything like it," Circle City for the first time believed, and at once was precipitated one of the wildest stampedes the country had ever seen or ever will see. Every dog was taken, many went without dogs, and even the women and children and weaklings hit the three hundred miles of ice through the long arctic night for the biggest thing in the world. It is related that twenty people, mostly cripples and unable to travel, were left in Circle City when the smoke of the last sled disappeared up the Yukon.

Since that time gold has been discovered in all manner of places, under the grass-roots of the hillside benches, in the bottom of Monte Cristo Island, and in the sands of the sea at Nome. And now the gold-hunter who knows his business shuns the "favorable looking" spots, confident in his hard-won knowledge that he will find the mest gold in the least likely place. This is sometimes adduced to support the theory that the gold-hunters, rather than the explorers, are the men who will ultimately win to the Pole. Who knows? It is in their blood, and they are capable of it.

Jack London.

ANY one looking up at the Hong Far Restaurant would have known that something unusual was going on. The big gauze lanterns were new, and fresh lilies blossomed in vases of pale green porcelain, luminous as jade stones. Everywhere the gilding had been brightened and renewed. Hong Far was always spotless, but this day it fairly shone, for was not Ong Chee, son of Ong Wing, of age, and was not the entire aristocracy of the Quarter bidden to the great feast to be given in honor of his majority? All day the attendants at the fashionVOL. XCII.— NO. 549.

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able eating-place had been hurrying up and down the polished stairway with burdens on their heads; all day savory incense had been floating from the kitchen, and white-bloused cooks had been succeeding one another in relays over the perspiring range, for the most expensive and elaborate of feasts was not a whit too good to grace this important occasion. Every difficult and expensive dish of the Chinese cuisine was upon the menu, for Ong Wing was rich, and it was rumored that the banquet would not cost less than five dollars a plate.

Besides the rice brandy, a great deal of French champagne had been carried in. Ong Wing's guests were to be, above all things, merry.

In the beautiful restaurant, with its elaborately carved gilt walls, through the interstices of which came the dull glow of ebony, five great tables were set, at each round and polished board, twenty places. The table tops were of onyx, with carved ebony hanging like black lace from their edges, and the shining stools were dark as rosewood with a mirror-like polish.

At dark the candles were lighted in their great gauze houses. A child of six might have stood in any one of these giant lanterns. The soft glow gave the effect of a dozen full moons shining on the scene of jollity. In the corner near the balcony the orchestra was gathering, and, without any preliminary tuning or scraping, was setting up the long wail of tortured strings and the resonant reply of drum and sturdy brass. The conglomerate sound was terrible to Caucasian ears, but soothing, evidently, to Oriental ones, since numbers of the uninvited lingered below the windows to drink in rapturously this robust ensemble harmony.

By this time hacks had begun to rumble up the narrow street, - white men drove them, and each carried two or three or four Chinese gentlemen in long blue or purple or plum-colored brocaded garments, which flapped about their silken-bound ankles as they briskly climbed the steps, frankly stared at by the unbidden on the pavement. Ong Wing and his handsome young son are welcoming the arriving guests at the head of the stairs, quite in Caucasian fashion. Presently the round tables are full of guests with aristocratic, or keen, or shrewd, or fat, comfortable faces, but all beautifully clothed and with beautiful, well-kept hands, which manipulate the ivory chopsticks with the extreme of deftness and delicacy.

Above the rasping music rises the

The bird's nest

clatter of tongues. soup comes on, twelve dollars a pound in China, and the epicures wag their heads approvingly, even while their words of praise die away before the excellence of a quail and bean salad, the perfection of its kind. With the sprouts of young bamboo come renewed volleys of champagne. Perhaps this explains why the voices grow a bit louder, the laughter more hearty, and the toasts to the heir and the speech-making quite Western in their volubility.

Unnoted by the banqueters, the shrill voices of women had mingled themselves with the sharp screams of the orchestra; professional singing and dancing girls had come in from the most aristocratic resorts of the Quarter, and were adding the music of their high, falsetto voices, and the grace of their slender wrists and ankles, to the merriment of this memorable evening.

Ong Chee alone was not unmindful. He had noted the slave girls when they entered, had observed their smiling eyes and their daintily tinted cheeks. He saw the eyebrows so carefully narrowed by art; the glossy hair ornamented with gold and pearl and jade; the exquisite sahms of pink and green and lavender and yellow, delicate sleeve showing within sleeve, in a rainbow of pastel tints. He saw the long tapering fingers with the highly polished, inchlong nails, telling their tale of freedom from manual labor, and he saw, without realizing, that these are the most beautiful hands in the world, with their soft, creamy tints and their weight of translucent jade, set off by yellowest gold. Particularly he noted one pair of hands on which the jade and the chased rings and bracelets were of the finest, for some of these had been his gifts. As the eyes of the other men followed Yun Ho's graceful, rustling figure, Ong Chee knew a little spasm of jealousy; decidedly, one breathes in Occidental ideas through mere living on Occidental soil.

At last the banquet was over.

Ong

Chee's health had been drunk so many times that his head was quite turned by it, and he felt like a college senior on Commencement Day. He did not know whether he should ever get down to earth again or not. The champagne, drunk from big water goblets, was all gone, and Ong Wing had heard at least a hundred times that his banquet had been an immense success. The carriages had taken the guests home through the narrow streets, not, however, until the silly young heart of Ong Chee had been lacerated by many open compliments to Yun Ho and careless inquiries as to where she lived, each one like a blow in the face to him.

Yun Ho was not only the prettiest slave, but new to the Quarter, and Ong Chee was in love with her. His father was rich enough to buy her, and would probably have humored his son so far, though Ong Chee knew that he would never consent to a marriage between them. Ong Chee would be expected to marry a little-foot woman in his own station in life, and though Ong Wing might listen to the suggestion of the beautiful Yun Ho as a second wife, it would be years before Ong Chee would be able to afford such an extravagance. In the meantime what might not happen to Yun Ho? Decidedly this being in love was a tiresome business and likely to complicate things. No one had ever heard before of a Chinese gentleman permitting love for a slave girl to interfere with his career, and Ong Chee was quite angry with himself. What would his father say? I was perhaps as well not to think about that.

Meanwhile little Yun Ho had gone home with her duenna to Gum Cook Alley. She stood before her mirror, slowly divesting herself of one exquisitely tinted blouse after another, until she looked more like a tea rose than ever, with her beautiful bare yellow arms, and her hands with their burden of good-luck jade and purest gold. Would the jade bring her luck, she wondered.

She

smiled in the glass, removed the precious things from her hair, and folded herself away on the high, narrow bed like the berth in a ship's cabin, with long rows of polished boxes full of toilet secrets above her, and silken curtains hanging between her and the room.

The next morning, before the hairdresser had finished with Yun Ho, Ong Chee was in Gum Cook Alley, craving an audience. He had something on his mind, something that must be submitted at once to Yun Ho. The youth of twenty-one knew well the story of the sixteen-year-old belle of Gum Cook Alley, how the girl, sent by her parents to buy something in the market place of the tiny village on the river-bank, had been met by the aged Ah Ma, now her duenna and jailer. The old woman, always on the lookout for youth and good looks, had been struck by the child's beautiful, slanting eyes, her small mouth, red without any rouge, the pale, luminous, faintly yellow skin, and the abundant black hair; it seemed a shame that so much marketable loveliness, worth precisely so much a pound, should be wasted on this Chinese river-bank, likely to be swallowed any spring by the horrible, resistless Yellow Terror. Ah Ma worked herself into quite a frenzy in her unselfish desire to save this fragile bit of femininity from the spring freshets. So she smiled at the girl, addressed her in her own dialect, and, observing that she was more poorly dressed than others of her class, asked her if she would not like to go to California, which was full of rich Chinamen, to sell handkerchiefs on the street until some rich man took a fancy to her and married her. It was a fascinating picture that Ah Ma drew, and Yun Ho did not dare to go home for fear that her elderly admirer might change her mind. So the aged Ah Ma and the lovely runaway were housed in the steerage of the next steamer that sailed with her head to the East, and Yun Ho never saw the river villages of China again.

Nor, in truth, did she ever see the handkerchiefs which she was to sell, and but very little of the streets of San Francisco where her rich countrymen abounded, for Ah Ma sold her at once to Ah Fong, the slave dealer, for $1650, which was a good price for a slave who had cost nothing but her passage money.

Yet unlike Ah Fong's other slaves, Yun Ho was not happy. She hated the house, she loathed her fine clothes, and she envied the hardest-working, smallpox-pitted, ugliest coolie-woman who passed, envied her her freedom and the burden on her back, and the privilege of doing drudgery. It was the sad look in the young eyes and the discontent of the red mouth which had first attracted Ong Chee as he passed down the Alley, for Ong Chee had been sent to the American day school because his father wished his English to be faultless. Ong Wing would have been horrified had he known that his son had drunk in English ideas with the words that represented them. Happily, he did not know.

The reason for Ong Chee's visit to Yun Ho so early in the day after the enervating birthday feast was that he had thought it all out overnight, and had news of real importance to communicate. If only he could win her consent to his plans! Ah Ma smiled to see him, for she had not been unconscious of his glances the night before, and she had said to Ah Fong, "You will have an offer for Yun Ho from the Ong family, mark my words. See that you get a good price for her, she is worth at least $2500." And Ah Fong had sworn at the old woman for her officiousness. As though one would take advice from a woman!

Ong Chee came close to Yun Ho and took her hand. The Golden Lily, as she was sometimes called, smiled into his eyes, for he was good to see, and they sat down on the carved stools, while Ong Chee talked long and earnestly. During the rest of that day Yun Ho seemed

less unhappy than usual, but if she was joyful in anticipation of another visit from Ong Chee her hope was not gratified, for he was not seen again in the Alley that day or the next. On the following day, however, he came again, and Yun Ho brightened wonderfully, and her drooping mouth lost some of its pathetic curve. His stay was brief, since he had an engagement, and early that evening he might have been seen taking a roundabout course to a brick building on the hill which overlooks the Quarter, where his impatient ring was answered by a brisk young woman who ushered him into the sitting-room and sat down with him in serious converse. Presently, Ong Chee passed her a paper, and soon after they shook hands and parted, Ong Chee hurrying along the street and avoiding the street lamps.

Things were as usual in Gum Cook Alley the following day. Yun Ho dressed carefully, ate her meals, sent in from a near-by restaurant, with perfect Oriental stoicism, and showed a sad and impassive face to passers-by. What a loss to the Chinese stage that woman with such powers of repression should be excluded from the boards!

Toward five o'clock there was a commotion in the Alley. A carriage had stopped two blocks away, and from it had stepped two American ladies and a stout policeman. Up the Alley they came, turning hurriedly in at Ah Fong's place, for in those days, before white lookouts were employed, front doors stood open. But scarcely had the party turned in than there was a cry from the Chinese lookout within the hall, followed by a banging of doors, a shooting of bolts, a rattling of chains, and a falling into place of barricades. The picket had disappeared from the open wicket, and a yellow silk curtain had fallen where he had been sitting. The policeman was now joined by two others, and their brawny shoulders and a crowbar or two against the first ironbound door forced it at last, only to