of the bay.

Small steamers still came straggling in from Dawson crowded with
passengers going to the new gold fields, and our tired cooks and
stewards in the kitchens were rushed both day and night. Here the price
of a meal, to all but those having through tickets to San Francisco, was
one dollar, and fifteen hundred meals a day were frequently served.

In this hotel we waited two weeks, patiently at times, restlessly at
other times. What would we do if the Bertha failed to appear? Possibly
she was lost, and now drifting, a worthless derelict, at the mercy of
the winds! Not another boat would or could carry us, tickets on each one
having long ago been sold. If we should be frozen in all winter, with
no way of letting our friends at home know of our whereabouts for six
months, how terrible would be their anxiety, how hard for us in this
exposed spot near the Arctic Sea! Many times a day and in the night did
this emergency present itself to us, and we shuddered. Each day we
climbed the hill a quarter of a mile away to look, Robinson Crusoe like,
over the ocean to see if we could discover the "Bertha."

In the meantime, with note book and pencil in hand I often sat in the
parlor; and, while occupied to a certain extent, I gathered sundry bits
of information regarding the gold fields in this wonderful new Golconda.
Two million dollars, it was said, had already been extracted from the
beach at Nome, and no estimate could be made on what was still there.
The pay streak ran to the water's edge, and even farther, but just how
far, no one knew.

Back of this beach spread the tundra, an expanse of marsh, ice and
water, which extends some four miles inland. The size of the claims
allowed by law is one thousand three hundred and twenty feet in length,
and six hundred and sixty feet in width; or about twenty acres of land.
The insignificant sum of $2.50 is required to be paid the recorder.

In the York District the area allowed for claims is smaller, being five
hundred feet in width, and the length depending on the geographical
formation or creek upon which the claim is situated.

North of Nome there are ninety to one hundred miles of gold-bearing
beach to be worked, and again to the south a vast stretch of like
character extending to Norton Bay. The tundra, which is nothing but the
old beach, follows the present shore, and is fully as rich as the
surf-washed sands. More productive and larger than all is the inland
region tr