On the 1st of June Miss Appolina Briggs sailed for England, accompanied by her maid and by her young cousin, Joanna Reid. And Millicent and Peggy stood on the wharf and waved them a sad farewell. THE END. SNOW-SHOES AND SLEDGES. BY KIRK MUNROE. CHAPTER XXI. A YUKON MINING CAMP. The supper provided by the hospitable miners was a good one, and heartily did our travellers enjoy it; but while they are appeasing the extraordinary appetites that they acquired somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness, let us take a look at this most northern of American mining camps. To begin with, although it is at the junction of Forty Mile Creek and the Yukon River, it is not in Alaska, but about twenty miles east of the boundary in Northwest Territory, which is one of the sub-divisions of Canada. The most recent name of this camp is "Mitchell," but all old Yukon miners know it as Camp Forty Mile. At the time of Phil Ryder's visit it contained nearly two hundred log cabins, two stores, including the one that he established in the name of his friend, Gerald Hamer, two saloons, both of which were closed for the season, and a small cigar factory. Although the winter population was only about three hundred, in summer-time it is much larger, as many of the miners come out in the fall and return before the 15th of June, at which date, according to Yukon mining law, every man owning a claim must be on the ground or it may be "jumped." Forty Mile is what is known as a placer camp, which means that its gold is found in minute particles or "dust" in soft earth, from which it can be washed in sluices or rockers. Into one of these a stream of water is turned that sweeps away all the dirt and gravel, allowing the heavier gold to sink to the bottom, where it is caught and held by cross-bars or "riffles." Although gold has been discovered at many points along the Yukon and its branches, the deposit at Forty Mile is the richest yet worked, and has paid as high as $300 to a man for a single day's labor; $12,000 worth of gold was cleared by one miner in a three months' season, and a $500 nugget has been found; but most of the miners are content if they can make "ounce wages," or sixteen dollars per day, while the average for the camp is not over $8 per day during the short season of that arctic region. Sluices can only be worked during three or four months of summer-time; then come the terrible eight or nine months of winter when the mercury thinks nothing of dropping to 60° or 70° below zero, and the whole world seems made of ice. Strange as it may appear, the summer weather of this region is very hot, 85° in the shade, and 112° in the sun being frequently reached by the mercury. During the summer months, too, the entire Yukon Valley is as terribly infested with mosquitoes as is any mangrove swamp of the tropics. Thus the hardy miner who penetrates it in his search for gold is made to suffer from one cause or another during every month of the year.