4i8 CONQUERING THE ARCTIC ICE 



It was a wonderful sight to see the stores and then to think 

 that most of their contents had been brought over the trail from 

 Valdez. All the dry goods had been hauled in over the ice, a 

 very expensive mode of transport, seeing that the distance to 

 the coast is about four hundred miles, that everything has to be 

 carried on horse sledges at a price of 30 cents a pound, and that 

 a man is wanted for every sledge. Eggs, vegetables, etc., are 

 brought in the same manner, and large herds of oxen " mush " 

 the long way from the coast to Fairbanks to be slaughtered 

 there. 



All this costs money, but money, which is easily come by in a 

 mining town, is just as easily spent. This is never more 

 apparent than at night, when people go to the rink, where they 

 pay 75 cents for admittance, and where the man who plays 

 "Home, sweet home" and other tunes on a large piano gets 

 $15 a single night. The same extravagance prevails in the 

 fashionable club-rooms, where the more well-to-do part of the 

 population go to talk over the news, drink and smoke, and where 

 champagne suppers are given, the cost of which sounds fabulous 

 to European ears ; in the theatre, where a lady team play basket 

 ball, while their sisters among the spectators appear in gorgeous 

 toilettes, or in the same place a couple of nights later, when a 

 wrestling match takes place before a crowded hall, where seats 

 are sold for as much as $5. The splendour of private dinners 

 makes it hard to think that they are given in Alaska, at a place 

 where only six years ago the forest was untouched and the very 

 ground on which the town now stands was untrodden by any 

 white man's foot. 



Fairbanks is a fine town, and it is wonderful that a town of its 

 size can be built on such uncertain prospects as those of a 

 mining centre. No one knows when the production of gold may 

 end, and then the whole thing will not be worth ten dollars. 



Fairbanks, according to a story I heard, was found in rather 

 a strange way, in fact could appropriately be called the result 

 of a lie. A Japanese had sent a number of men post haste into 

 the country by telling a wonderful tale of rich gold mines 

 which he had found. He wanted men to work in them, but 

 when the men came they found that the smart "Jap" had a 

 road-house, where meals cost a lot of money, and that he had 

 not put a single spade into the promised mines. Matters 



