e, and because their pleasant faces and agreeable manners always
made friends for them, I felt sure that they would be able to give me
work if they chose and I so desired. Then, too, there were the several
Dawson families of my acquaintance here, and I would find them; possibly
some of them might give me work if I asked them.

However, the first move to be made was to find our freight and baggage,
and a spot upon which to pitch our tents, and the sooner that was done
the better, as the test and cleanest camping places were fast being
appropriated by the newcomers hourly landing. It was not easy to find a
clean, dry spot for a tent, as I had found the day before that the
black, soggy soil was hardly free from frost a foot down, and this made
it everywhere marshy, as the water could not keep down nor run off where
it was level. Some one on the steamer who had been in Nome before had
advised us to pitch our tents on the "Sandspit" at the mouth of Snake
River, as that was the cleanest, driest and most healthful spot near
fresh water that we could find; and my mind was made up that it was to
the Sandspit I would go. Many had been the warnings from friends before
leaving home about drinking impure water, getting typhoid fever and
other deadly diseases, and without having any particular fear as to
these things I still earnestly desired a clean and healthful camping
place.

This, then, was the way I planned during most of the first night after
landing at Nome. If I slept it was towards morning, when I had become
accustomed to the regular and stentorian snores of the old judge; or
when, for a few moments, after turning in his sleep, his snorts and
wheezes had not yet reached their loudest pitch; and when my wishes had
shaped themselves so distinctly into plans for work that I felt relieved
and full of confidence, and so slept a little.

[Illustration: LIFE AT NOME.]

Next day I looked for my father. At the landing, on the streets, in the
stores, at all times I was on the lookout, though it was a difficult
matter to find any one in a crowd such as that in Nome. I saw several
acquaintances from Dawson the year before, and people from different
steamers that I knew, but not my father. At nine o'clock next morning
three of us started out to find the Sandspit, with, if possible, a good
camping spot to which we could take our freight as soon as it was
landed, and part of our number was detailed to stay at the landing while
we inve