aller one is another small village,
with about the same number of American Eskimo. Fairway rock, a little
way east of Ratmanoff island, is not inhabited. The comparatively short
distance between the two continents and the intermediate islands has
suggested the utilisation of the latter as supports for a leviathan
railway bridge, a theory which (as Euclid would remark) is obviously
"absurd." For no bridge could withstand the force of the spring ice in
Bering Straits for one week. On the other hand, the boring of a tunnel
from shore to shore is not entirely without the range of possibility,
but of this, and of other matters dealing with the construction of a
Franco-American railway, I shall deal fully in the concluding chapter of
this work.

CHAPTER XV

AN ARCTIC CITY

"You will find a magic city
On the shore of Bering Strait,
Which shall be for you a station
To unload your Arctic freight.
Where the gold of Humboldt's vision
Has for countless ages lain,
Waiting for the hand of labour
And the Saxon's tireless brain."

S. DUNHAM.

Billy, the ex-whaleman, accompanied us here on board the _Thetis_,
intending to make his way to Nome City. The commander of the cutter had
let him go free, thinking, no doubt, that the poor fellow had been
sufficiently punished for his misdeeds by a winter passed amongst the
savages of Northern Siberia. One day during our stay here a native set
out in a skin boat for Nome, and notwithstanding my warnings and a
falling barometer Billy resolved to accompany him. But shortly after
leaving us the pair encountered a furious gale, which swept them back to
the Cape in an exhausted condition, nearly frozen to death after a
terrible night in the ice.

By the end of a week the latter had almost disappeared. A vessel could
now anchor with ease off the settlement, but it seemed as though we
should have to wait until the autumn for that happy consummation. I had
therefore decided, after consultation with the missionary, on risking
the journey in a _baidara_, when, on the evening of the tenth day, our
longing eyes were gladdened by the sight of a small steamer approaching
the Cape. She proved to be the _Sadie_, of the "Alaska Commercial
Company," returning from her first trip of the year to Candle Creek,[68]
a gold-mining settlement on the Arctic Ocean, which had been
unapproachable on account of heavy ice. Fortunately for