This area of approximately fifteen hundred square miles, which but little exceeds that of Rhode Island or of the county of Cornwall in England, may be broadly characterized as being gently mountainous, with elevations of five hundred to fifteen hundred feet, and in the highest parts of about twenty-two hundred feet. Its lowest depression is the valley of the Yukon, which, in itself occupying a position about fourteen hundred feet above the sea, gives to these points absolute elevations of three and nearly four thousand feet. Dome Mountain, or, as it is frequently designated, simply "The Dome," and less often "Solomon's Dome," "King Dome," and "Mount Ophir," appears to be the culminating point of the entire region; and its prominent position at the water parting of Bonanza, Hunker, Sulphur, and Dominion Creeks makes it a noble figure in the landscape, and the most interesting single feature to the prospector and miner. No absolute determinations for altitude have as yet been made for it, but when crossing the summit it seemed to me that it could not be much under four thousand feet, and I believe that Mr. Ogilvie gives to it about thirty-five hundred feet. The landscape which this mountain dominates is surpassingly beautiful, and I know of no finer view from similarly low mountains than that which this one commands. The sharply incised wooded valleys of the different streams that head up to it tear the mountain into projecting buttresses, and in the ridge that leads off from it southwestward contracts it to the extent of forming for half a mile or more a narrow backbone or saddle. In this respect it reminded me much of Mount Katahdin, in Maine. On a clear day the distant main mass of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains is sharply outlined against the northeastern sky, a most impressive setting to the verdant slopes that trend off toward it, only to disappear in the belt of plain that separates the two mountain systems. I was unfortunate in not getting the full benefit of this view, as at the time of my first crossing the atmosphere was very cloudy, and on the second it was so surcharged with smoke from forest fires in the valleys of Gold Bottom, Quartz, and Sulphur Creeks that hardly more than the foreground was visible. [Illustration: A BIT OF NORWAY IN ALASKA.--CASCADE NEAR SKAGUAY.]