CHAPTER XXI.
A DAY IN DAWSON CITY.
At the time of which I write, Dawson City was little better than a rude mining camp, containing, as has been previously mentioned, a half dozen board buildings and fifty tents, strung along what was known as the principal "street." Back in the timber land a rude saw-mill had been set up, and this was beginning to get out lumber at the moderate price of one hundred and twenty-five dollars per thousand feet!
A year before Dawson City had been unknown, but the rich finds of gold on Bonanza and Gold Bottom creeks had caused the miners to leave Circle City and Forty Mile Post and boom the new El Dorado, as it was termed, and the settlement grew as if by magic. From the wild rush to stake claims many rows resulted, but the cooler heads speedily took matters in hand, and each man was allowed a claim from five to fifteen hundred feet long and extending the width of the creek or gulch in which it was located.
These claims were not located upon the Klondike River, which joins the Yukon at Dawson City, as has been often supposed, but upon the little watercourses
164
