FAR AND NEAR 



PORT CLARENCE 



We traveled two hours in Asia. I am tempted to 

 write a book on the country, but forbear. At eight 

 o'clock we steamed away along the coast toward 

 Indian Point, in an unending twilight. We arrived 

 there at midnight, l)ut the surf was running so high 

 that no landing was attempted. Then we stood off 

 across Bering Strait for Port Clarence in Alaska, 

 where we hoped to take water, passing in sight of 

 King Island and the Diomedes, and about noon 

 again dropped anchor behind a long, sickle-shaped 

 sandspit, which curves out from the southern head- 

 land, ten or twelve miles away. In the great basin 

 behind tliis sand-bar a dozen vessels of the whaling 

 fleet were anchored and making ready to enter the 

 Arctic Ocean, where some of them expected to spend 

 the winter. The presence of the fleet had drav/n to- 

 gether upon the sand-bar over two hundred Eskimos 

 for trade and barter with the whalers. Their shapely 

 skin boats, filled wdth people, — men, women, chil- 

 dren, often to the number of twenty, to say nothing 

 of the dogs, — soon swarmed about our ship. They 

 had all manner of furs, garments, baskets, ornaments, 

 and curios for sale or for barter. An animated and 

 picturesque scene they presented, and dozens of 

 cameras were leveled at them. In dress they pre- 

 sented a much more trim and shapely appearance 

 than did the people we had just left in Siberia, though 



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