As soon as word was spread abroad, the miners began to rush into the new district. After McCormick's fishing-trip several men went prospecting, and, finding that he had not exaggerated the greatness of his discovery, men began to hurry to the Klondike region to take up their claims and secure their share of the great prize. The work of mining this gold is very lengthy and somewhat curious. The Yukon region, in which the Klondike lies, is very cold. Alaska is bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, and the Arctic circle runs right through the Yukon country. You can imagine therefore that it is terribly cold, and that the ground is frozen nearly all the year round. The rich pay-dirt in which the gold is found lies from eighteen to twenty-five feet below the surface. It would not pay the miners to wait for the short warm season when the frost is out of the ground to make their harvest; so they have found a plan to get at the gold all the year round, no matter how hard or frozen the earth may be. They build great fires on the top of the gravel, and fix them so that they shall burn all night. When morning comes about eighteen inches of the ground beneath the fire is found to be thawed out. This surface is shovelled away, and another fire built on the gravel where it is frozen again. They keep right on in this slow and tedious way, until finally the pay-dirt is reached. The yield from these new gold-fields is something wonderful. It is greater than anything ever recorded in the history of gold mining. [Illustration: ALASKA: YUKON VALLEY AND GOLD FIELDS. (The State of Pennsylvania is inserted to show comparative size.)] One miner, who is a thoroughly experienced man, declares that he is absolutely amazed at the amount of gold that has already been produced. He says that the work has only been commenced, and that this present find which is setting people crazy is nothing to the gold that will be discovered as soon as the miners really get to work. He stated that, in addition to the rich pay-dirt we have already spoken of, there were veins of gold in the rocks underneath, which veins appeared to grow richer the farther they were probed. In his opinion the gold deposits of the Yukon region form the mother vein of all the gold in North America. Many people are hurrying to the Klondike district from all parts, and the excitement is intense. San Francisco has caught the gold fever. It reached the city through some miners from Klondike, who arrived by steamer, bringing with them piles of shining gold to prove the truth of their stories. Not one member of this party went up to Alaska with anything more than his outfit and a few hundred dollars. All have brought back stores of riches. The smallest amount of gold owned by any of these men was valued at five thousand dollars, while several had as much as fifty thousand dollars' worth. The luckiest people in this little band were a Mr. and Mrs. Lippey, who left New York in April, 1896.