We pass the “Five Fingers” between one and two o’clock in the morning, when the sun is just rising. This is the land of the midnight sun, and there are places not far from here where on one or two days of the year the sun does not sink below the horizon. Even here, at midnight it is hard to tell sunrise from sunset. There is a long twilight, and the glories of the rising and the setting sun seem almost commingled. At times it has been light until one o’clock in the morning, and I have been able to make notes at midnight at my cabin windows. There is a vast difference between this region and the rainy districts near the Pacific coast. We have left the wet lands, and we are now in the dry belt of the great Yukon Valley. The air here is as clear as that of Colorado. The sky is deep blue, the clouds hug the horizon, and we seem to be on the very roof of the world, with the “deep deathlike valleys below.” We are in the country of Robert Service, the poet of the Yukon, and some of his verses come to our minds: I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim; I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow In crimson and gold, and grow dim, Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming, And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop; And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming, With the peace o’ the world piled on top. CHAPTER XXXIII THE CAPITAL OF THE YUKON I write of Dawson, the capital of Yukon Territory, the metropolis of the Klondike, and for years the richest mining camp of the world. In the height of its glory it had more than thirty thousand inhabitants, and in the region about there have been more than sixty thousand people. To-day the population of the town is less than one thousand. With the gradual exhaustion of the gold the population is decreasing, and it may be only a question of years when the precious metal will all have been taken from the ground and the chief reason for a city here will have disappeared. One of the great hopes of the people is in the discovery of rich quartz mines or the mother lode from which all the loose gold came. The hills have been prospected in every direction, but so far no such find has been made. Dawson lies just where it was located when gold was discovered. The houses still stand on the banks of the Klondike and Yukon rivers where the two streams meet. The town is laid out like a checkerboard, with its streets crossing one another at right angles. They climb the sides of the hills and extend far up the Klondike to the beginning of the mountains of gravel built up by the dredgers. The public roads are smooth, and the traffic includes automobiles and heavy draft wagons. There are more than fifty automobiles in use, and two hundred and fifty-five miles of good country highways have been made by the government in the valleys near by.