Sliort Winter Days and Summer Nights. 187 



break to see the fracture. Coal-oil and California brandy were 

 also experimented with and solidified in a very short time. 



The principal sources of worry and suffering at an arctic 

 station are to be found in the short, dark days of Avinter and the 

 long, bright days of summer. Our first winter was made rather 

 worse than usual because of the small amount of oil we had to 

 carry us through. For twenty hours each day during the months 

 of December and January no reading or writing could be done 

 in quarters without the aid of artificial light, and as we only had 

 enough oil on hand to allow us to keep a lamp going for four 

 hours per day, we had many a dark hour to endure, and those 

 two months appeared almost endless. The long day of the 

 summer seems to affect some people even more than the long 

 night of winter; they appear to become nervous, and on the 

 whaling fleet it is not unusual for men to become insane, and 

 some are driven to suicide. At camp Davidson we were not in- 

 side the arctic circle, but nevertheless no stars were visible to the 

 naked eye from about April 25 to August 15, and in June at 

 midnight diamond print could be read by natural light out of 

 doors. Some members of the party suffered severly from insom- 

 nia during the summer, and it did not seem to help them in any 

 way when the heaviest cloths were used to curtain their cots. 



Although 1,400 miles in the interior and certain of a mail only 

 once a year, we could not complain of loneliness while the 

 Indians were near us, and very few indeed were the da3^s that 

 some of those social people omitted calling and breakfasting, 

 dining or supping with us. Taken as a whole, the Indians 

 in our vicinity were clean, honest, gentle and virtuous. Never 

 have they occasioned the white men who came among them any 

 trouble, and hitherto the mutual relations of the two races have 

 been of the most cordial and pleasant character. 



The miners early recognized the necessity of seeing that none 

 of their number should do the Indians injustice, and rigid laws 

 have been adopted to enforce due consideration of Indian rights. 

 Whatever work an Indian does for a miner or whatever he sells 

 one is paid for, generally at a high price. Indians working in 

 mining claims receive three to four dollars per day, which is 

 relatively higher than the eight dollars paid to white men. 



What the outcome of the Alaskan placer mines will be is be- 

 yond any one's power to estimate now. The miners have i3ros- 

 pected on nearly every stream in the country ; 6>ven the Arctic 



26— Nat. Geog. Mag., vol, IV, 1892. 



