Sit beside me on the top of King Solomon’s Dome and listen to some of the romances of the Klondike, true stories surpassing the fiction of the “Arabian Nights.” King Solomon’s Dome is the very centre of the Klondike gold region. It is a mountain higher than the average peaks of the Alleghanies, rising three thousand feet above Dawson, and I have climbed to its top in an automobile. There at the west is Bonanza Creek, where, twenty-five years ago, gold was first found, and running into it is Eldorado Creek, where Swift-Water Bill Gates and Charlie Anderson, the Lucky Swede, as well as scores of others, made their fortunes. The man who first discovered gold in the Klondike was George Carmack, a New Englander who had come to Alaska from North Adams, Massachusetts. He married an Indian and he had three Indians with him when he was prospecting on the ground just below us. As the story goes, one of the Indians who had gone to the creek for some water saw the gold shining there in the sand. Taking up some dirt on the edge of the creek, the men washed it, and within a half hour had recovered twenty dollars’ worth of gold. Carmack then laid out claims for himself and his three companions, each of which brought a fortune that all too soon slipped through its owner’s fingers. The news of the discovery spread like wildfire over the North. It was telegraphed to all parts of the world and by the next year men were rushing to the Klondike from every direction. They staked both sides of the Bonanza. They set up claims along Eldorado, Dominion, and Hunker creeks, and dug out gold all along the valley of the Klondike River. [Illustration: Although the earth contains only a few cents’ worth of gold to the ton, the use of giant dredges to scoop up the gravel from the beds of the Klondike and Yukon rivers enables the mining companies to operate at a profit.] [Illustration: With all the force of a shell from a big gun, a giant stream of water is played against the hillside, washing the earth into sluice boxes, where a layer of mercury catches even the most infinitesimal particles of gold.]