north to Laramie City, Wyoming. From these two points draw straight
lines one thousand miles to the west and inclose the parallelogram. You
have inclosed what is known as the great gold belt of the United States.
Nearly all the gold has been discovered within these comparatively
narrow limits. Cripple Creek produced $8,000,000 in four years. A man
who walked into that place three years ago to save his stage fare is now
taking out $100,000 a year from his mines. Dawson City, way up in the
frozen British possessions, promises to do as well as any gold discovery
in the United States. Two men, the Thorpe brothers, cleaned up with
their pans $13,000 in eight weeks. This was but a very small part of the
immense amount of gold found in an insignificant creek, but there are at
least five hundred creeks on the branches of the Yukon River, many of
them no doubt as rich as the one that gave Dawson City its fame.