ined
this fact before we left Nome.

[Footnote 70: The Russo-Greek religion is still maintained throughout
Alaska, and nearly a hundred of its churches and chapels still exist
throughout the country and in the Aleutian Islands.]

But although this liquor law was enforced with severity ashore its
infringement afloat was openly winked at by the authorities. Soldiers
were stationed night and day with loaded rifles on the beach to prevent
the importation of spirits, and yet within half a mile of them, anchored
in the roadstead, were four or five hulks, floating public-houses, where
a man might get as drunk as he pleased with impunity, and often for
the last time, especially when a return to the shore had to be made
through a nasty sea in a skin _kayak_. It was even whispered that
"Hootch" (a fiery poison akin to "Tanglefoot") was manufactured at the
barracks, and retailed by the soldiers to the natives, the very class
for whose protection against temptation the prohibitive law was framed.

[Illustration: ESKIMO GIRLS.]

"All my men are intoxicated," the Commandant at St. Michael was said to
have exclaimed. "So I suppose I had better get drunk myself."

But there was little love lost here between the civil and military
element, and these were probably libels, for I have seldom seen a better
drilled or disciplined set of men, although the hideous uniform of the
American linesman is less suggestive of a soldier than of a railway
guard.[71]

[Footnote 71: Permanent military posts of the United States have been
established as follows, throughout Alaska: Fort Egbert at Circle City,
Fort Gibbon on the Tanana River, Fort Valdez on Prince William Sound,
Fort Davis at Nome, and Fort St. Michael on the island of that name.]

The heat at St. Michael was even more oppressive than at Nome, and it
was impossible to stir out of doors at midday with any comfort. We were
therefore not sorry to embark on board the _Hannah_, of the "Alaska
Commercial Company," which contained one hundred state-rooms, of which
barely a dozen were occupied, for at this season of the year travellers
are mostly outward bound. The White Pass railway has practically killed
the Yukon passenger trade, for people now travel to Dawson by rail, and
to Nome by sea direct. They used to go by ocean steamer to St. Michael,
and thence ascend the river to Dawson, for in those days the perilous
Chilkoot Pass was the only direct way from the South into the Klondike
regio