north ten years ago and made their "piles." Now they multiply their "piles" by thousands and even millions. And Iditarod will be the same.

There is never a word of the hundreds who rushed to the icy north and found no gold. Those who came back penniless and in debt, broken in health and those who never came back at all. These are not considered in this mad rush for the new diggings. Men who never had a blister on their white hands talk easily of breaking trails and "mushing" over the mountains. Men who never knew what hunger is, have no fear of starvation. Men who wouldn't know pay dirt if it were shown to them, will sacrifice

everything to reach the district where the gold lies in piles. the gold lies in piles. All this is characteristic of the greed panic.

Some stampeder whispers he is going to start a bank in the Iditarod district. Immediately the bank is in existence and doing an enormous business. Every dreamer can picture himself dumping his pokes of yellow dust into the vaults of the institution. Another rumor starts that a magnificent hotel will be erected at once. The visionary tender foot immediately finds himself comfortably settled in a hostelry that would do credit to one on Broadway.

The Iditarod district is reached by boat from Seattle. At St. Michaels, at the

mouth of the Yukon River, the gold seeker leaves the ocean liner and boards a river boat. He goes up the river to the nearest point to the district and then the "mush" overland begins. Everything in the way of transportation facilities is being pressed into service. Even angora goats are used to haul the sleds over the snow-covered ground. Dog teams are in big demand. But hundreds must travel on foot or take small boats and paddle up the creeks.

There are no accommodations for comfort. Everything is in the rough, rougher in fact, than anywhere else in the world. The country is wild and rugged. Railroads have not penetrated the fastnesses. Even roads are unknown and only trails lead to the creeks from which the gold must be wrested.

Besides the hundreds of gold seekers from the outside world who are hurrying

to the Iditarod, the Alaskans themselves are flocking to the new diggings. It was predicted that summer would see many of the famous camps of Alaska deserted. This has proved true. The celebrated city of Fairbanks is doomed. Every one is leaving for the richer fields. Newspapers are preparing to move their plants from Fairbanks to the Iditarod district.

In fact, one of the greatest stampedes for gold the world has ever seen is ending only with the coming of winter. Every steamship on the Pacific Coast that could be pressed into service carried argonauts to the far north. On June 2 the first boat for St. Michaels left Seattle. Others followed in rapid succession at intervals of one and two days. Some of them were caught in the ice fields off the mouth of the Yukon and compelled to wait several weeks before landings could be made.

D

-WORDSWORTH.

S

OW

HOME cows may give better milk,

but no cow in the world gives so much of it as Josephine, an eight-year-old Holstein-Fresian, the queen of the herd of the Missouri State College of Agriculture. Just now Josephine is undergoing a test to determine how much milk she will give in a year. Having already broken all the other lacteal records it is a pretty safe bet that Josephine will establish a clear title to the heavy-weight milk producing championship and hold it safe for some time.

Colanthe 4th Johanna, owned in Rosendale, Wisconsin, used to be the prize cow, but Josephine has beaten every one of her records. In the first six months of the present test Josephine produced 16,834 pounds of milk against 15,541 pounds for Colanthe. In one day Josephine produced 110.2 pounds of milk against Colanthe's 106; in one month

Josephine produced 2,960 pounds against the Wisconsin cow's 2,783 and she has beaten the Wisconsin cow's averages for two, three, four, five, and six months.

The average farmer is satisfied if his cows give ten quarts of milk a day, but Josephine gives enough to fill fifty-four quart bottles. Giving the average person two-thirds of a pint of milk a day she could supply a hotel with 165 boarders. The butter from her milk would be enough to supply forty boarders three times a day. Naturally with such a high production, the milk given by Josephine is inferior to that given by the average dairy cow, although it meets and exceeds the legal requirements of butter fat. It is estimated that her milk will produce a revenue of $1,200 to $1,500 a year.

And yet with all these honors, Josephine is quite a modest cow. She has hundreds of visitors every week, but fame has not turned head nor switched

her tail. Naturally she has everything that the bovine heart desires, so far as a mere human can understand. When she is not grazing on the broad lawn that surrounds the college of agriculture at Columbia, Missouri, she is kept in a stall-perhaps room would be betterwhich is furnished as befits her rank as queen. Two or three inches of the softest sawdust cover the floor on which she lies while contentedly chewing her cud. An electric fan in one corner keeps cool breezes flowing over her and netting on the windows keep the flies out.

Every ounce of the thirty gallons or so of water that she drinks every day is warmed to a temperature of seventy degrees, and the dry feed that she gets is

the choicest. Josephine rises each morning at 4:30 o'clock for her bath, and at five o'clock she breakfasts on various grains, bran, corn chop, ground oats, linseed meal or cotton seed meal, mixed with beet pulp. She is milked while she eats. At 10:30 o'clock she is given another meal and is milked again, and the process is repeated at 4:30 o'clock in the afternoon and 10 o'clock at night. tween the second and third milkings she is allowed to exercise on the lawn. Never under any circumstances is she allowed to become excited and she is never struck. I. T. Van Note, the college dairyman, her "lady in waiting," he might be called, is the only person who ever touches her.

Be

HE white goats, the Rocky Mountain bighorns, the moose, the elk and deer, the giant grizzlies, and all the other wild things of the North

west have had donated to them another million-acre tract of Uncle Sam's domain. Within its boundaries they may mate, rear their little ones and enjoy life secure from the startling crack of the murderous rifle and the dread thud of the swiftly speeding bullet. And nowhere, And nowhere, perhaps, is there a finer place for these sleek-furred native Americans to work out their several destinies.

This big federal "Zoo" ranges in character from the flat table-land of the Great Plains to inaccessible glaciers and highest mountain peaks, rugged, precipitous, but beloved of the four-footed mountain climbers, while intervening, are meadows

knee-deep in rich pasturage, with innumerable lakes and roaring glacial streams, well stocked by nature with brisk trout.

Yet, on the other hand, there are no fences about this park nor other boundaries which the wild creatures may discern, and the deer or bear or wild sheep which venture beyond the unseen line does so at his own risk and, without warning, then becomes the legitimate quarry of the sportsman. Thus the wild territory in the vicinity of the new Glacial National Park in northwestern Montana is destined to become America's most famous hunting ground. The overflow from the park of the game animals of the Northwest will stock the surrounding country for every hunting season of the future.

But again, the disciples of Muir, and

Burroughs and Joaquin Miller, who may enjoy nature and her varied products, animate and inanimate, without desire to kill and despoil, can satisfy their cravings to the full bent in this wonderful region. A dozen years ago John Muir urged the creation of this matchless mountain territory into a federal park and its dedication for all time to the American people and to its wild denizens; for it is suspected that Muir is almost a greater lover of the animals than of the people. But he believes that man, by association with the animals in their native haunts and through close contact with the stupendous natural wonders of the Western country can be much

improved and become therefore more like the animals. Give at least a month, he said, to this precious reserve, and the time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it. Mr. Muir, however, does not draw the line short of fishing, and he tells in a way to electrify the angler, of leaping, speckled trout inhabiting the thousand lakes and streams of the region. region. Nor has a ban been placed by the government upon fishing in this preserve. You may not carry a rifle into the Glacier Park, but the bamboo rod will not be considered contraband. In all America, probably, there is no place which will afford such sport, such keen