Latter-day Argonauts, not dismayed by the untold dangers and hardships in store, toiled up the Yukon, or, swarming over the precipitous Chilcoot Pass, braved, too often at cost of life, the boiling rapids to be passed in descending the Upper Yukon to the gold fields. Later the easier and well-wooded White Pass was found, traversed, at length, by a railroad. In October, 1898, the Cape Nome coast, north of the Yukon mouth, uncovered its riches, whereupon treasure-seekers turned thither their attention, even from the Yukon. Little lawlessness pestered the gold settlements. The Dominion promptly despatched to Dawson a body of her famous mounted police. Our Government, more tardily, made its authority felt from St. Michaels, near the Yukon mouth, all the way to the Canadian border. On June 6, 1900, Alaska was constituted a civil and judicial district, with a governor, whose functions were those of a territorial governor. When necessary the miners themselves formed tribunals and meted out a rough-and-ready justice. [Illustration: Men with huge piles of supplies.] Rush of Miners to the Yukon. The City of Caches at the Summit of Chilcoot Pass. The rush of miners to the middle Yukon gold region, which, together with certain ports and waters on the way thither, were claimed by both the United States and Great Britain, made acute the question of the true boundary between Alaskan and British territory. In 1825 Great Britain and Russia, the latter then owning Alaska, agreed by treaty to separate their respective possessions by a line commencing at the southernmost point of Prince of Wales Island and running along Portland Channel to the continental coast at 56 degrees north latitude. North of that degree the boundary was to run along mountain summits parallel to the coast until it intersected the 141st meridian west longitude, which was then to be followed to the frozen ocean. In case any of the summits mentioned should be more than ten marine leagues from the ocean, the line was to parallel the coast, and be never more than ten marine leagues therefrom. When it became important to determine and mark the boundary in a more exact manner, Great Britain advanced two new claims; first, that the "Portland Channel" mentioned in the Russo-British treaty was not the channel now known by that name, but rather Behm Channel, next west, or Clarence Straits; and, secondly, that the ten-league limit should be measured from the outer rim of the archipelago skirting Alaska, and not from the mainland coast. If conceded, these claims would add to the Canadian Dominion about 29,000 square miles, including 100 miles of sea-coast, with harbors like Lynn Channel and Tahko Inlet, several islands, vast mining, fishery, and timber resources, as well as Juneau City, Revilla, and Fort Tongass, theretofore undisputably American.