to be the best appointed and
to be playing to the largest audiences; but it was then too early for
the miners to come in with their gold dust, and the gamblers, therefore,
were not doing a harvest business. We met college-bred men. A man I had
known at college was doing business in a tent pending the building of a
bank with safe-deposit vaults, of which he was the general manager.
Another, with whom I had attended law school, and whom I had never seen
or thought of since, had come to Nome in the first rush from Seattle,
and now, situated in Easy Street, was one of the leaders of the Nome
bar. The negro Pullman-car porter, whom we had last seen at San Antonio,
Texas, on our way out from the East, reintroduced himself to me on the
street, to my infinite surprise, and wanted to know if I could give him
work of some kind, which I was not then in position to do. We may have
been responsible for his infection with the gold fever.

The place was really under martial law. The town government, useless and
corrupt, was practically nil; and as it was believed that the federal
judge, with his staff of assistants, would not arrive until August, it
was the plain duty of the military to preserve order and, so far as
possible, leave legal matters _in statu quo_ until the advent of the
civil authorities as provided by the laws which had been recently
enacted for Alaska.

For various reasons which seemed good and sufficient, we decided to quit
Nome and go to Council City. We knew that Mr. Lane's company had large
interests in that region--that he believed in it; and we knew people on
the _Lane_ who had gone thither direct on reaching Nome. It was said,
too, to be a healthful country, with plenty of good water and even a
belt of timber. One did not hear it much discussed at Nome--people did
not seem to know much about it,--but what was said was favorable. As to
the means of reaching it, information was scanty, and that somewhat
discouraging, but certainly the thing to do was to go by boat east about
seventy-five miles to the mouth of Golovin Bay, from which point we
should have to travel up shallow rivers some fifty or sixty miles to
Council City. C----, who had been a pretty sick man, but who had
declined to follow certain "sound advice" and return home (having
joined us from the _Lane_), and G----, another fellow-passenger, thought
the move a good one, and agreed to come with us. We four, therefore,
making selections from our respectiv