A Woman who went to Alaska

by May Kellogg Sullivan

The weather was now awful. The storm had increased until it seemed each moment that the tent would be torn from its fastenings, and we be left without any protection whatever. The ropes and stakes had frequently to be looked after and made stronger. The snow had turned to rain, which beat heavily upon the stout canvas resisting well the water without leaking.

By one o'clock the wind showed signs of abating, and we were so much in need of sleep, that, all dressed as we were, we rolled ourselves in our blankets and dozed on the rugs close to the oil stoves. For an hour I lay uneasily dreaming, or listening to the royal cannonading of the heavy surf upon the beach. From my diary I quote the following extract:

"Monday, four in the morning, June eighteenth, 1900.—It is four in the morning and we are sitting around the oil stoves in the middle of the tent. We have just had hot cocoa and crackers. The surf still booms, but it does not rain, and the wind has died down. We are better off than many people. Tomorrow we will put up the other tent and get more settled. We are thankful not to be on the sea beach, where so many are camped. A. wishes herself home again. People around our tent all night were talking, moving, afraid of the storm, but the big ships are still here and they would put out to sea if it were necessary for their safety. They say we have smallpox in town from the steamer 'Ohio,' and yesterday Mrs. H., who came up on the 'St. Paul,' was reported to be dying from pneumonia. The nurse, Mrs. Judge R.'s friend, is caring for her. Judge R. and wife are still in Mrs. M.'s shack near the barracks. It has been daylight all night. I hope to hear from father soon, and get my freight. My friends here have all theirs. The two men are smoking and talking while I write, and the Eskimo dogs not far away are howling in their usual interesting nightly manner. I will now try to get a little more sleep."

We had heard much of beach mining at Nome, but saw little of it. Stories were told of men who, in the summer of 1899, had taken hundreds of dollars in gold dust from the beach sands by the crudest methods, and thousands of men were now flocking into the camp for the purpose of doing beach mining. They were sadly disappointed. Not, however, because there was no gold in the beach sands, but because it was so infinitesimally tiny that they had no means of securing it. No hand rocker, copper plate, nor amalgam had been used with success, neither did any of the myriads of prospective miners bring anything with them which promised better results. Great heaps of machinery called by hopeful promoters "gold dredgers" were being daily dumped upon the beach from the ships, signboards were covered with pictures of things similar, while the papers continually bloomed with advertisements of machines, which, if speedily secured by the miners, would, according to the imaginative advertiser, soon cause all to literally roll in riches.

One flaming dodger ran in large letters thus: "Calling millions from the vasty deep. A fortune in one hundred days. Our dredger will work three thousand yards of sand in heavy surf at Cape Nome. It will take out twenty-four thousand dollars in a day. You can make more money with us than by taking flyers in wild-cat oil schemes, etc." The poster was illustrated by a huge machine gotten up on the centipede plan; at least, it resembled that hated insect from having attached to its frame two sets of wheels of different sizes along the sides like the legs of a centipede, but with a steam boiler for a head, and a big pipe for a throat from which the salt water was disgorged to wash out this immense amount of sand and give the gold to the miner. It did not save the gold.

Thousands of dollars of good, hard-earned money were dumped upon the beach in the shape of heavy machines of different kinds, which were worse than useless, and only brought bitter disappointment to their owners. Men had stripped the beach the summer before of all coarse gold which had, perhaps, been ages in washing up from the ocean's bed, or down the creeks from the hills, and only the fine, or "flour gold," as it was called, remained.

By the newcomers men were cursed for spreading abroad tales of beach mining of the year before, but this was unjust, for conditions were not the same. The waters bringing the gold to the beach could not, in one season, replenish and leave the sands as rich as they had been after long years, perhaps ages of action, and blame could not rightly be attached to any one. Almost without exception, the men who did the cursing were the men who had never been hard workers, and did not intend to be, and so, after becoming satisfied that the nuggets were not there to be simply picked up and pocketed, they turned, looked backward, and went home. It was well for the new camp that they did.

There was also much trouble over real estate. Land was very high in price. Some Swedes, who, the year before, had paid seven hundred dollars for a town lot three hundred by fifty feet in size, now sold one-half of it for ten thousand dollars. It is small wonder, then, where "possession is nine points of the law" that men who rightfully claimed ground were ready to fight to keep it, and those who were wrongfully in possession many times stood guard with firearms.

In pitching our tents upon the sandy beach, especially after gaining permission of the old captain who told us we would be in the street if ever a street should be opened through on the Sandspit, but that was not likely, and he had given us his full and free consent to our camping temporarily there next his lots, we expected to have no trouble. Here we miscalculated. Though the captain was kind and reasonable, he had a partner who was just the reverse, and this person gave us infinite trouble.

Scarcely had our first load of baggage been put upon the ground when he began to tramp fussily about at all times of day and night. After our stakes were driven he would come quietly in the night and pull them up, so we would find our canvas flapping in the morning breeze when we waked. Or, after we had retired for the night, he would come with some other, stand within hearing distance, and threaten us if we did not move away.