to be reckoned with was that of sanitary
conditions, or rather the lack of them. The general "toughness" of
things and the inconveniences of getting settled had been in the main
foreseen and discounted, but the rather alarming outbreak of smallpox in
the camp, and the reported filling up of the "pest-house," made matters
somewhat more involved and complicated. There had been a warning in
Seattle that certain vessels were bringing up persons infected with the
disease, and two of the suspected ships were then being held in
quarantine by the vigilant government representative, Lieutenant Jarvis,
but the disease had, nevertheless, secured a foothold in the camp.
Undoubtedly, however, the matter was grossly exaggerated, and there were
probably more deaths from pneumonia than from any other disease. The
smallpox scare, nevertheless, gave the doctors a good opening, for
vaccination was strictly in order. Considering in retrospect the site of
the place, the total absence of any sewerage, and the great motley crowd
there herded together, Nome proved to be a remarkably healthy camp--a
fact due, in the main, to the prompt measures for sanitation taken by
General Randall immediately upon his arrival, and the introduction into
the town, later in the season, of good water conveyed by pipes from the
streams beyond. During the preceding year typhoid had been very
prevalent and deaths numerous. A repetition was thus happily avoided,
though, during the first days the prospects seemed indeed dismal, and
the old-timers (always spoken of as "sour doughs" in Alaska) predicted
that, after the rains should set in, the people were going to die like
flies; and, without the least exaggeration, it certainly looked that
way. I believe, nevertheless, that if the story could be told, it would
be learned that more lives have been lost in that country through
drowning than in any other way. Hundreds of gold-hunters, in small and
unseaworthy boats, as soon as they could do so, left Nome to prospect
the remoter coast and possible creeks, many of whom perished in the
sudden and fierce storms which occur in the Bering Sea, and wives and
mothers wondered why no letters came from Alaska.

We were four or five days collecting our seventeen packages of freight,
and with V---- took turns day and night waiting for the uncertain
lighters to come ashore with their mixed loads of machinery and
miscellaneous supplies. I believe that between us we saw and examined
ev