“My prices are small, compared with what I got when I first started business,” he said. “I used to charge a dollar for a mustard plaster, a dollar for a two-grain quinine pill, and fifty cents an ounce for castor oil. I sold my Seidlitz powders at a dollar apiece, and flaxseed for thirty-two dollars a pound. The latter was used largely to make a tea for coughs and colds. I remember a cheechako, or tenderfoot, who came in during those days. He asked me for ten cents’ worth of insect powder. I looked him over and said: ‘Ten cents! Why man, I wouldn’t wrap the stuff up for ten cents.’ The cheechako turned about and replied: ‘You needn’t wrap it up, stranger; just pour it down the back of my neck.’” Speaking of the old-time prices, I hear stories everywhere as to the enormous cost of things in the days of the gold rush. All tinned vegetables were sold at five dollars a can, and a can of meats cost a third of an ounce of gold dust or nuggets. At one time, the usual price of all sorts of supplies and provisions was one dollar a pound. One man tells me he bought an eight-hundred-pound outfit in Dawson for eight hundred dollars. It consisted of provisions and supplies of all kinds, shovels and nails costing the same as corn meal and rice. At that time flour sold for fifty dollars a sack, firewood for forty dollars a cord, and hay for from five hundred to eight hundred dollars a ton. [Illustration: Many who live in Dawson in winter spend their summers in little cabins in the country or on the islands in the river. Some of them grow flowers and vegetables for the Dawson market in gardens along the river.] [Illustration: Though not many degrees south of the Arctic Circle, the official residence of the Commissioner of Yukon Territory has in summer green lawns, shade trees, and beds of flowers that thrive in the long hours of sunlight.] [Illustration: Dawson is so far north on the globe that some days in midsummer have only one hour of darkness. This photograph of Mr. Carpenter and a miner’s pet bear was taken after ten o’clock at night.] I heard last night of Jack McQuestion, who had a log cabin store at Forty Mile, a camp on the Yukon. One day a miner came in and asked for a needle. He was handed one and told that the price was seventy-five cents. The man took the needle between his thumb and finger, looked hard at it, and then said to McQuestion: “Say, pard, ain’t you mistaken? Can’t you make it a bit cheaper? That’s an awful price for a needle.” “No,” said the storekeeper, “I’d like to if I could, but great snakes, man, just think of the freight!” Another story is told of a miner who wanted to buy some sulphur. The price asked was five dollars a pound. “Why man,” said he, “I only paid five cents a pound for it in Seattle last month.” “Yes, and you can get it for nothing in hell,” was the reply.