Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/315

Rh, with elevations of five hundred to fifteen hundred feet, and in the highest parts of about twenty-two hundred feet. Its lowest depression is the valley of the Yukon, which, in itself occupying a position about fourteen hundred feet above the sea, gives to these points absolute elevations of three and nearly four thousand feet. Dome Mountain, or, as it is frequently designated, simply "The Dome," and less often "Solomon's Dome," "King Dome," and "Mount Ophir," appears to be the culminating point of the entire region; and its prominent position at the water parting of Bonanza, Hunker, Sulphur, and Dominion Creeks makes it a noble figure in the landscape, and the most interesting single feature to the prospector and miner. No absolute determinations for altitude have as yet been made for it, but when crossing the summit it seemed to me that it could not be much under four thousand feet, and I believe that Mr. Ogilvie gives to it about thirty-five hundred feet. The landscape which this mountain dominates is surpassingly beautiful, and I know of no finer view from similarly low mountains than that which this one commands. The sharply incised wooded valleys of the different streams that head up to it tear the mountain into projecting buttresses, and in the ridge that leads off from it southwestward contracts it to the extent of forming for half a mile or more a narrow backbone or saddle. In this respect it reminded me much of Mount Katahdin, in Maine. On a clear day the distant main mass of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains is sharply outlined against the northeastern sky, a most impressive setting to the verdant slopes that trend off toward it, only to disappear in the belt of plain that separates the two mountain systems. I was unfortunate in not getting the full benefit of this view, as at the time of my first crossing the atmosphere was very cloudy, and on the second it was so surcharged with smoke from forest fires in the valleys of Gold Bottom, Quartz, and Sulphur Creeks that hardly more than the foreground was visible.

A succession of five or six knobs runs out from the ridge to which reference has been made and which trends off in the direction of the head waters of Eldorado, and these, together with the main Dome, are sometimes spoken of as the "Seven Domes," but they have no particular significance in the orographic detail and can not even be said to be clearly defined to the eye. Dome Mountain is held in a respect bordering almost on veneration by the Klondikers, inasmuch as it is generally thought to be the mainspring of the gold supply which is contained in the streams that fall off from it, and this means nearly all the good and the promising streams of the entire region. And, in truth, there is for the moment no way of absolutely disposing of the miner's suppositions, nor can the