The Land of Nome - Lanier McKee

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been told. My brother and I decided to make the venture, and to be content with a safe return and a fund of experience, to offset the uncertain rewards of business and law practice during the dull summer months. He took up surveying, and I spent all my spare time in studying the elaborate codes of laws which Congress was then enacting for Alaska, as well as substantive mining law and all available information pertaining to that little known or understood country.

      In San Francisco there were many signs of the Nome excitement. "Cape Nome Supplies," in large print, met the eye frequently. One ran across many who were going, and heard of many more who had already started for the Arctic gold-fields. All indications pointed to the advent of a small army of lawyers and doctors on the shores of Nome. But, though there was a stir in the atmosphere, the excitement was nothing compared with that at Seattle, which is the natural outfitting-point for Alaska; for San Francisco has had a long experience in these "excitements," and treats each recurring one with comparative indifference. We took everything with us—tents, stoves, provisions, all sufficient to enable us to live independently for three or four months—not to mention the "law library" and surveying apparatus.

      The C.D. Lane was the ship, named after its owner, the prominent mining man, who had backed up his belief in the genuineness of the new country by investing in it a great deal of money, and who was now taking up in his boat machinery, supplies, miners, and general passengers, some four hundred persons in all. The sailing from San Francisco, and the scenes of farewell at the dock, were both amusing and impressive. Ready exchanges of repartee between the ship and the dock were in order. Passengers held up "pokes," small buckskin bags for gold-dust, and cheerfully shouted to their friends that they would come back with their "sacks" full. But there was about it all at the same time something not altogether gay. It was no certain undertaking. The great majority, of course, would not return successful, and it was not improbable that some might not return at all.

      I presume that the Lane carried in its personnel an average assortment of the eighteen thousand similarly brought to Nome; perhaps, however, a higher average, due to the fact that many of its passengers went legitimately to work in the employ of the Wild Goose Mining and Trading Company, in which Mr. Lane is largely interested. Nevertheless, students of human nature could there have found an ample field for study in the array of adventurers, gamblers, pugilists, alleged actors and actresses—a nondescript male and female population, which might very appropriately be collected under the term "grafters"—an expression commonly used to designate individuals who ingraft themselves at the expense of others. One of the first men we met was V——, who shared accommodations with us. He was a practical miner, who had prospected through nearly all of the Western States and parts of Alaska, and, like the great majority, he was going to make a try at the new gold-fields, with nothing assured, but with the determination to strike out somewhere and "make it." It did not take long to learn that the real American miner, the man who undergoes hardships and endures privations such as but few people can know or understand, is a fine, intelligent, and generous citizen, whom it is a pleasure to know.

      On the 24th of May the ship steamed out of the Golden Gate and up the coast, to stop en route at Seattle for additional machinery, freight, and passengers, though it was difficult to figure just where the latter were to be distributed. All ages are subject to the gold fever. We met aboard ship a gentleman of our own university, a classmate of Senator Stewart, who, catching this fever in 1849, without waiting to graduate, left New Haven with Mr. Stewart in 1850, and joined the pioneers in California. He has since then been a Congressman and held an important federal office. His ship's companions likewise had been through the "early days" in the Western country, and were now going to take a look at the new El Dorado, but, I inferred, rather as investors and investigators, and not, like the majority, dependent upon what the new country might give to them. These people were worth listening to in their continual discussions as to the conditions to be met and the opportunities to be grasped in the Nome country. One of them I remember saying that there would be more broken hearts at Nome than in any other community. And there were on the Lane people who had staked their all upon this venture, and who confidently believed that, soon after landing, they could dig out a small fortune. A number of these, men with their wives, knew practically nothing about mining. I recall a woman of refinement from the South, who, with her two sons, recently graduated from college, was likewise in quest of a ready fortune. She had never cooked in her life, but thought it would be interesting to look after her boys while they were digging gold from the beach to empty into their mother's lap. This sentiment certainly betokened more hopefulness than common sense. A few days after their arrival at Nome, they departed for home, having had all the experience they wanted; and I subsequently learned on my return that the mother had been confined in a hospital for some time, suffering from brain fever, a malady which it is strange she could have contracted.

      The Lane remained six days at Seattle, and was one of the last boats to sail from that port for Nome. Everything in Seattle seemed to be labeled "Cape Nome"; it was in the air. General Randall and the military were there, expecting to sail for the North any day on the transport Seward, the guardians and guaranty of law and order in the new camp until the inauguration of the civil authorities. The lawyers were anxious to know the status of the Alaska bill then under debate in the Senate, especially with reference to its provisions regarding the rights to hold and mine the beach. This matter proved, after all, to be of very little consequence, as the beach had been practically worked out the preceding season and before the arrival of the 1900 stampede, about two million dollars' worth of fine "dust" having been taken from it. But the bill became a law on the sixth day of June, when we were on the high seas, and the best that the goodly sized legal fraternity represented on the Lane could do was to discuss the proposed provisions, and "what would you do in such a case?" There was developing aboard ship a certain nervousness to get away—people wanted to arrive among the first, and thought that they were losing valuable time; but Mr. Lane, who had been at Nome before, remarked that we should arrive there none too late, and his judgment proved to be sound.

      Leaving Seattle June 3, with something of a send-off and some interesting additions to the passenger list, associations with civilization were finally severed.

      As it is problematical in the spring just when the Bering Sea is free from ice, the first objective point of all vessels bound for the Arctic regions is Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, one of the numerous Aleutian Islands at the mouth, so to speak, of Bering Sea, which extend in a broken chain across the Pacific Ocean almost to the coast of Asia.

      The stretch from Seattle to this Bering Sea harbor of refuge is twenty-one hundred miles, and the route is not like that of the delightful inside passage up the Gulf of Alaska, by Sitka and the Muir Glacier, replete with magnificent scenery, and calm. On the contrary, it furnishes nothing to gaze upon except the majestic and not always sufficiently tranquil ocean.

      There was, of course, on the Lane a goodly representation of the genus "know-all," whose fortunes were really assured by reason of an infallible combination which they held or device which they had contrived. Such a combination was a certain Alaska "syndicate," from the East, whose component parts consisted of an ex-"judge," to decide the vital legal questions which might arise in the acquisition of property; an attorney, to search titles; a general manager, who declared that he didn't know gold from brass, but would soon find out the difference; a couple of engineers, and some others—not to mention clever machinery with which to extract gold, supplies of all kinds for a year at least, and the essentials of a ready-made house which could weather the fierce winter Arctic gales. It was really too good to endure long. Then, there were individuals who could demonstrate by their blue-prints just how the gold was to be dredged from the sea, it being to them a moral certainty that the gold, probably emanating from the Siberian shore, had been washed by the ocean upon the beach. One of professed large experience vehemently maintained that his theory of the beach deposits was the correct one; that is to say, the gold came down the Yukon River attached to the bottom of icebergs which were carried out to sea, and then, somehow, through the kindness of the Japanese current, the gold which they brought was deposited upon the long-extending beach at Cape Nome! Of course, as had been clearly demonstrated in the preliminary United States geological report, the beach gold had been carried down from the interior by the streams emptying into Bering Sea, and there distributed in the black and "ruby" sand.

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