e doctor at White Mountain, but there was too much water on
the ice, and they returned.

February sixth: The man who made the two reindeer sleds for his Kotzebue
trip has gone at last with two loads and three reindeer. He wanted his
drill parkie hood bordered with fur, as I had done some belonging to
others, and I furnished the fox tails, and sewed them on for him.

"Shall I stake a claim for you?" asked the man with a smile the day
before he left the Mission.

"O, I would like it so much!" said I, really delighted. "I did not wish
to ask you, because I thought you had promised so many."

"So I have," he replied, "but I guess I can stake for one more, and if I
find anything good I will remember you."

"Shall I have a paper made out?" I inquired, feeling it would be safer
and better from a business point of view to do so.

"You may if you like. I will take it," said he; and I thanked him very
cordially, and hastened to the Commissioner to have the paper drawn up.
It did not take long, and the man has taken it, and gone. Being an old
mail carrier and stampeder of experience in this country, he ought to
know how to travel, and, being a Norwegian, he is well used to the snow
and the cold. He says he always travels alone, though I told him he
might sometime get lost in a storm and freeze to death, at which he only
laughed, and said he was not at all afraid. Two years afterwards he was
frozen to death on the trail near Teller City, northwest of Nome. He was
an expert on snowshoes or ski, both of which he learned to use when a
boy in Norway.

February tenth: The two young men, B. and L., have returned from the
Koyuk trip, having been able to travel only three days of the eleven
since they left here on account of blizzards, but they will not give it
up in this way.

Mollie and Jennie are better, the doctor having been here two days. For
the little invalid there is nothing of such interest as Apuk's baby, and
as the child is well wrapped and brought in often to see her, she is
highly delighted. She holds the baby in her arms, and hushes it to sleep
as any old woman might, lifting a warning finger if one enters the room
with noise, for fear of waking it. Little Charlie cries with whooping
cough a great deal and is taken to Ageetuk's house when he gets
troublesome, as he worries both Mollie and Jennie. Under no
consideration is Charlie to come near enough to Jennie to give her the
whooping-cough, for she coughs badly alre