on the sixth day of June, when we were on the high
seas, and the best that the goodly sized legal fraternity represented on
the _Lane_ could do was to discuss the proposed provisions, and "what
would you do in such a case?" There was developing aboard ship a certain
nervousness to get away--people wanted to arrive among the first, and
thought that they were losing valuable time; but Mr. Lane, who had been
at Nome before, remarked that we should arrive there none too late, and
his judgment proved to be sound.

Leaving Seattle June 3, with something of a send-off and some
interesting additions to the passenger list, associations with
civilization were finally severed.

As it is problematical in the spring just when the Bering Sea is free
from ice, the first objective point of all vessels bound for the Arctic
regions is Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, one of the numerous Aleutian Islands
at the mouth, so to speak, of Bering Sea, which extend in a broken chain
across the Pacific Ocean almost to the coast of Asia.

The stretch from Seattle to this Bering Sea harbor of refuge is
twenty-one hundred miles, and the route is not like that of the
delightful inside passage up the Gulf of Alaska, by Sitka and the Muir
Glacier, replete with magnificent scenery, and calm. On the contrary, it
furnishes nothing to gaze upon except the majestic and not always
sufficiently tranquil ocean.

There was, of course, on the _Lane_ a goodly representation of the genus
"know-all," whose fortunes were really assured by reason of an
infallible combination which they held or device which they had
contrived. Such a combination was a certain Alaska "syndicate," from the
East, whose component parts consisted of an ex-"judge," to decide the
vital legal questions which might arise in the acquisition of property;
an attorney, to search titles; a general manager, who declared that he
didn't know gold from brass, but would soon find out the difference; a
couple of engineers, and some others--not to mention clever machinery
with which to extract gold, supplies of all kinds for a year at least,
and the essentials of a ready-made house which could weather the fierce
winter Arctic gales. It was really too good to endure long. Then, there
were individuals who could demonstrate by their blue-prints just how the
gold was to be dredged from the sea, it being to them a moral certainty
that the gold, probably emanating from the Siberian shore, had been
washed by the oce