t that I would rise and dress as quietly as
possible, as the "ladies" next door had just gone to bed for the first
time in three days, and rather needed a rest!

A stroll through the streets of Nome at midday was also amusing,
although the sun blazed down with a force which recalled summer-days in
Hong-kong or Calcutta. It was then hard to picture these warm and sunlit
streets swept by howling blizzards and buried in drifts which frequently
rise to the roofs of the houses, until their inmates have to be
literally dug out after a night of wind and snow. But when we were at
Nome, Cairo in August would have seemed cool by comparison, and I began
to doubt whether ice here could ever exist, for nothing around was
suggestive of a Northern clime. The open-air life, muslin-clad women,
gaily striped awnings, and Neapolitan fruit-sellers seemed to bear one
imperceptibly to some sunlit town of Italy or Spain, thousands of miles
away from this gloomy world (in winter) of cold and darkness. Only
occasionally a skin-clad Eskimo from up coast would slouch shyly through
the busy throng, rudely recalling the fact that we were still within the
region of raw seal-meat and walrus-hide huts.

Most of the prospectors I met here had no use for the place as a
gold-mining centre, but I should add that these grumblers were usually
inexperienced men, who had come in with no knowledge whatever of quartz
or placer-mining. On the other hand, fortunes have been made with
remarkable ease and rapidity, as in the case of one of the first
pioneers, Mr. Lindeberg, a young Swede (already mentioned), who arrived
here as a reindeer-herder and now owns the largest share of Anvil Creek.
From this about $3,000,000 have been taken in two years, and the lucky
proprietor has recently laid a line of railway to his claims, about
seven miles out of Nome. Anvil Creek has turned out the largest nugget
ever found in Alaska.

Generally speaking, however, Nome is no place for a poor man, although
when we were there five dollars a day (and all found) could be easily
earned on the Creeks. I invariably found men connected with large
companies enthusiastic, and grub-stakers down on their luck. Lack of
water in this district has proved a stumbling block which will shortly
be dispelled by machinery. Anvil Creek will probably yield double the
output hitherto extracted when this commodity has been turned on, and
this is now being done at an enormous cost by its enterprising
pr