The story takes place in the middle of the Gold Rush, and features two French-Canadian cousins, who inherit a mining claim on the shores of the Klondike.

On the way out to a hunt, Summy Skim, Bill Steel, and the trusted Indian, Neluto, discover a man, torn apart, and lying under a tree.

Before he dies, the man tells Ben Raddle and Summy Skim of a volcano of pure gold named the "Golden Mount".

In 1886, after the death of Pierre-Jules Hetzel, Verne was partially freed from the constraints that had previously been imposed on the content of his novels (both scientific and geographical).

"It was not uncommon to see some poor emigrant, killed by cold and fatigue, abandoned under the trees..." The cities of the Great North are described with all the precision that Verne is known for.

In this novel, as in Five Weeks in a Balloon, Captain Grant's Children, and The Mysterious Island, the reader discovers Verne's fascination for extreme natural phenomena.

The dark character of the novel and its unequivocal condemnation of the thirst for gold make it a work that stands out very clearly from most of the others in Verne's Amazing Journeys series.

Finally, a more serious twist is made in Jules Verne' message: the heroes do not return from this journey completely empty-handed, and this means, perhaps, that the reviled metal (gold) is not quite as awful as it seems.