Sunday, December sixteenth: We had breakfast today at sunrise (ten in the morning) and I went for a walk alone upon the ice in a southerly direction, where the natives were fishing. There was a good trail which has been made by a horse-team hauling wood from the other shore, and the air was fine, so that I enjoyed it very much, though my hood was soon frosty around my face. For a while I watched the natives haul tom-cod up through the ice holes, but having no place to sit except upon the ice, as they did, I returned after having been gone two hours, and was soon dressed for dinner in Sunday suit.
After dinner Mr. H. arrived with the teacher to hold an evening service in the kitchen, the latter taking Ricka and Mary with her to call upon some native families, two of whose members were sick. When they returned Ricka was full of laughter at the way they had entered the native igloos, especially Mary, who is a large woman and could barely squeeze in through the small opening called by courtesy a door. Ricka says it was more like crawling through a hole than anything else, and at one time Mary was so tightly jammed in that she wondered seriously how she was ever to get out.
"Ugh!" said Ricka, when Mary related the incident, "that was not the worst of it. I wanted to keep the good dinner I had eaten, but the smell of the igloo almost made me lose it then and there, and as I was inside already, and Mary stuck fast in the door so I could not get out, we were both in a bad plight. When I tried to help her she would not let me, but only laughed at me."
"Next time we will send Mrs. Sullivan," said Alma, laughing.
"And you go along with me," said I, knowing that I could stand as long as Alma the smell of the Eskimo huts and their seal oil. So that was settled, Miss J., I presume, thinking us all very foolish to make so much fuss over a little thing like that in Alaska.
This evening, when the kitchen was filled with natives, their service had begun, and while some of us sat in the sitting-room to leave more chairs for the others, there came a knock at the door, and in walked the Commissioner and the young baritone singer, who was persuaded to sing a few solos after the meeting was through in the kitchen.
Monday, December seventeenth: Mollie is cutting my fur coat for me, but says I must have one or two more skins to make it large enough. She says she is too busy to study before Christmas, but will afterwards. The Commissioner brought more copying for me to do, and told me I could have the money for my work at any time. Some tell me he never pays anything he owes, and that I must look sharp or I will not get anything. The other Commissioner has invited me to go to a New Year's party at Council, fifty miles away, saying he will take me there and back behind his best dogs, but I refused, telling him that I never dance, and that I am a married woman. At that he laughed, said he was also married, with a wife in the States, but that does not debar him from having a good time.
Word comes of a new gold strike not far away, but I think we are not really sure that it is bona fide, and must not put too much dependence on what we hear. The Commissioner comes with his copying, and is full of jokes.
Wednesday, December nineteenth: A man came from the Home yesterday who has persuaded M. to go with him on a short staking expedition. They think they know of a new "find" very near home, and I ran over to the Recorder's to get two attorney papers made out for them to take as they say they will stake for the girls and me. The Commissioner paid me twenty dollars on copying, and said he would settle the remainder when he got back from Nome, as he and the other Commissioner were just setting out with a dog-team for that place. I have had to buy another fox skin for my coat, making twenty-seven dollars paid out on the garment thus far.
Right sorry I was today that Mr. H. carried away the big velvet couch yesterday that I have slept on nights since coming here, and I tried last night the wooden settle brought down from upstairs to the sitting-room. I found it a most uncomfortable thing to sleep on, as my feet hung at least six inches over the end of the lounge, and they were icy when I wakened in the morning. I then decided to go upstairs to one of the canvas bunks in the northeast room, and I find it much better every way. The bunk is long, wide and warm enough with a reindeer skin under me, and all my blankets and comforters over me, while I have the room alone, temporarily, at least.