ng
of a ship-yard and shriek of steam syrens were awakening the once silent
and desolate waters of Norton Sound. St. Michael feeds and clothes the
Alaskan miner, despatches goods and stores into the remotest corner of
this barren land, and has thus rapidly grown from a dreary little
settlement into a centre of mercantile activity. Seven years ago I
journeyed down the Yukon towards Siberia and a problematical Paris in a
small crowded steamer, built of roughly hewn logs, and propelled by a
fussy little engine of mediaeval construction. We then slept on planks,
dined in our shirt-sleeves, and scrambled for meals which a respectable
dog would have turned from in disgust. On the present occasion we
embarked on board a floating palace, a huge stern-wheeler, as large and
luxuriously appointed as the most modern Mississippi flyer. The
_Hannah's_ airy deck-halls were of dainty white, picked out with gold,
some of the well-furnished state-rooms had baths attached, and a perfect
_cuisine_ partly atoned for the wearisome monotony of a long river
voyage.

A delay here of twenty-four hours enabled me to re-visit the places I
had known only too well while wearily awaiting the _Bear_ here for five
weeks in 1896. But everything was changed beyond recognition. Only two
landmarks remained of the old St. Michael: the agency of the "Alaska
Commercial Company," and the wooden church built by the Russians during
their occupation of the country.[70] A native hut near the beach, where
I was wont to smoke my evening pipe with an old Eskimo fisherman, was
now a circulating library; the ramshackle rest-house, once crowded with
"Toughs," a fashionable hotel with a verandah and five o'clock
tea-tables for the use of the select. And here I may note that tea is,
or was, all that the traveller can get here, for St. Michael is now a
military reservation, where even the sale of beer or claret is strictly
prohibited. My old friend Mikouline would have fared badly throughout
this part of the journey, for from here on to Dawson City alcoholic
refreshment of any kind was absolutely unprocurable, and although the
heat was tropical, iced water, not always of the purest description, was
the only cold beverage obtainable at St. Michael or on the river. I was
afterwards informed that the initiated always carry their own cellar,
and having a rooted antipathy to tea at dinner (especially when served
in conjunction with tinned soup), regretted that I had not ascerta