ery parcel which came from the hold of the _Lane_. C---- was ill
aboard ship, and we looked after his freight as well. Some days it was
too rough to discharge any, or a tug could not be secured or had broken
down. It was good luck finally to get it all, for many were left high
and dry with nothing, their vessels having returned for a second trip
with cargo not wholly discharged. During these nights--or what should
have been nights--we were fortunate to have extended to us the
hospitality of the floor of the storehouse of the Wild Goose Mining and
Trading Company, and I can very distinctly recall the stretched-out,
blanketed figures lying about, the coughing of a sick Eskimo family in
the attic above, and the yelling of the fellow across the way exhorting
people in the ever-restless street to enter the dance-hall and see the
"most beautiful women in the world."

Until our tents and provisions could be collected, it was necessary to
live, so to speak, "on the town," but restaurant competition was already
so keen that one could get a really excellent and clean meal for a
dollar and a half or a dollar. I drank no water at all, unless it had
been boiled, and then took it with tea. It is possible thus to accustom
one's self; but I distinctly remember being on one occasion so thirsty
as to give fifty cents for a glass of ginger-ale, and poor at that.
Despite our special vigilance in watching our freight as it accumulated
on the shore, in an unguarded moment, when our backs were turned, one of
the numerous thugs stole V----'s valise, containing many essentials and
keepsakes of the miner which could not be replaced. The calm, manly
manner in which he bore his great loss, for which my brother and I felt
partly responsible, was an excellent example for us when, on the morrow,
we similarly had stolen from us the sack which contained our invaluable
sleeping-robes, made from army blankets, things which we missed all
summer, and the lack of which made us mentally sore. Of course, among
such an assortment of persons, there were a number of murders, suicides,
and indulgences in "gun-play," and it was not precisely the proper thing
in the small hours to stroll carelessly about the place.

Early in the spring of 1900 a "strike" had been made at Topkok, a small
stretch of beach some thirty miles east of Nome, near the mouth of a dry
creek called Daniel's. Four men with primitive contrivances had taken
out at least forty thousand dollars' w