644 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



were rim up very materially in the period of the next two weeks. 

 Good meals were only a dollar, and fractions of meals could be 

 had for twenty-five and fifty cents. Magnificent oranges were 

 only a quarter apiece, and watermelons four and five dollars. All 

 these prices were, at the least, doubled before the first week in 

 i^ovember, when the locality was finally cut off from contact with 

 the rest of the civilized world. The principal commercial houses 

 doing trade in Alaska — as the Alaska Commercial Company, the 

 iSTorth American Trading and Transportation Company, the Alaska 

 Exploration Company, all of which, besides others, have their 

 agencies in Dawson and at various stations on the Yukon River — 

 have well-constructed, iron-sheathed warehouses, and carry large 

 lines of goods. The energy which in so short a period has planted 

 these interests here, and in so substantial a manner, is certainly 

 astonishing. Who a year ago could have expected that the needs 

 of a resident population situated close under the Arctic Circle, and 

 along the inhospitable shores of Bering Sea, would have demanded 

 depots of sale of the size of those that one finds in cities of impor- 

 tance in the civilized South? 



Nome prints to-day three newspapers, the first issue of the first 

 journal, the Nome News, appearing about the 10th of October. 

 Its selling price was twenty-five cents. Up to the time of my leav- 

 ing, there were no serious disturbances of any kind, but indications 

 of trouble, resulting from the disputed rights of possession, whether 

 in the form of squatter sovereignty or of purchase, were ominously 

 in the air, and it was feared that should serious trouble of any kind 

 arise, neither the military nor civil authorities would be in a position 

 to properly cope with it. It was freely admitted that the commu- 

 nity was not under the law that so strongly forces order in Dawson 

 and the Klondike region. Much more to be feared than disturb- 

 ance, for at least the first season, is the possibility of conflagration; 

 closely packed as are the tents and shacks, with no available water 

 supply for combating flames, a headway of fire can not but be a 

 serious menace to the entire location, and one which is in no way 

 lessened through the general indraught of hurricane winds. The 

 experiences of Dawson should have furnished a lesson, but they 

 have seemingly not done so, nor has apparently the average in- 

 habitant profited in any effort to ward off the malignant influences 

 arising from hard living, unnecessary exposure to the inclemencies 

 of the weather, and a non-hygienic diet. Hence, typhoid or typho- 

 malarial disease, even if not in a very pronounced form, has already 

 sown its seeds of destruction, and warns of the dangers which here, 

 as in Dawson, man brings to himself in his customary contempt 

 for the working of Nature's laws. 



