BOOK FOR GOLD-SEEKERS.            151
show up equally well for a considerable distance. These comprise, with Bear creek, which comes into the Klondike between Bonanza and Hunker, the extent of territory of which anything certain is known. Quartz creek and Indian creek are reached from the heads of Bonanza and Hunker and they have also some prospects. The country rock is slate and mica schist. Many of the nuggets are full of quartz. Iron rock is found with them, and pieces of stratified rock containing iron are found showing plainly -on their sides the matrices of gold nuggets. Some fair gold-bearing quartz has been discovered, but no rich, free gold-bearing rock in place. The mineral belt seems to run northeast and southwest, if one may judge from the creeks, and to be about ten miles wide.
It seems to parallel the main range of mountains about
ioo miles distant from it.
"There are both summer and winter diggings on all the
creeks, as some of the claims are capable of being both drifted and sluiced. Some summer drifting is also done.
Wages, owing to the scarcity of men last winter, were $15 a day at the diggings, but they are likely to fall very soon.
The price of flour at Dawson City last winter was $i a pound, and this spring the trading companies advanced their prices in some cases 50 per cent. Canned meats
were sold at 75 cents a can.
"Meals were charged for at the rate of $1.50 apiece.
Whisky was the same old price-5o cents a drink. Lumber, when it can be had, is $I30 a thousand feet. The price for sawing at the mills is $Ioo a thousand feet, the logs being furnished by the purchaser. Beds or lodgings are not to be had. If you can't find a place in some tent where you may sleep you may try the saloon floors, of which places there are a number. Good river-front lots in the center of the town may be purchased at from
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