water; Nome a full month. After navigation
closes in October, the first mail does not commonly reach the Seward
Peninsula until January. So that, with all its comforts and luxuries,
Nome is a very isolated place for eight months in the year.

[Illustration: GOLD-MINING AT NOME.]

[Illustration: PULLING THE "PELICAN" OUT WITH A "SPANISH WINDLASS."]

[Sidenote: MINING AT NOME]

We went out with the dog sled to the diggings a few miles behind the
town, and a busy scene we found, enveloped in steam and smoke. Here an
old beach line had been discovered and was yielding rich reward for the
working. A long line of conical "dumps" marked its extension roughly
parallel with the present shore, and the buckets that arose from the
depths, travelled along a cable, and at just the right moment upset
their contents, continually added to these heaps. All the winter
"pay-dirt" is thus excavated and stored; in the summer when the streams
run the gold is sluiced out. But that phrase "when the streams run"
covers a world of difficulty and expense to the miner. In some places in
this Seward Peninsula, ditches thirty and forty miles long have been
constructed to insure the streams running when and where they are
needed.

There was quite a little to do in Nome. A new sled must be bought, and
another dog, and, above all, some arrangement made about a travelling
companion. I was not willing to hire a native who would have to return
here, and I was resolved never again to travel alone. So I put an
advertisement in the newspaper, desiring communication with some man who
was intending a journey to Fairbanks immediately, and was fortunate to
meet a sober, reliable man who undertook to accompany and assist me for
the payment of his travelling expenses.

The week wore rapidly away, and I began to be eager to depart, mindful
of the eight hundred odd miles yet to be covered. Spring seemed already
here and summer treading upon her heels, for the town was all slush and
mud from a decided "soft snap," the thermometer standing well above
freezing for days in succession.

A visitor to this place is struck by the number of articles made from
walrus ivory exposed for sale, chief amongst them being cribbage-boards.
A walk down the streets would argue the whole population given over to
the incessant playing of cribbage. The explanation is found in the
difficulty of changing the direction of Esquimau activity once that
direction is established. These cle