When, after six weeks spent in curiously studying conditions and things,--not to say people,--in the great mining camp, it was decided that I should accompany my brother down the Yukon to Cape Nome, and so "out" home to San Francisco, I felt a very distinct sense of disappointment. The novelty of everything, the excitement which came each day in some form or other, was as agreeable as the beautiful summer weather with the long, quiet evenings only settling into darkness at midnight. In September came the frosts. Men living in tents moved their little Yukon stoves inside, and brought fresh sawdust and shavings from the mills for their beds. Others packed their few possessions into small boats, hauled down their tents, whistled to their dogs, and rolling up their sleeves, pulled laboriously up the swift little Klondyke to their winter "lays" in the mines. Hundreds were also leaving for the outside. Steamers, both large and small, going to White Horse and Bennett, carried those who had joyfully packed their bags and smilingly said good-bye; for they were going home to the "States." How we strained our eyes from our cabin window or from the higher bank above, to see the people on the decks of the out-going boats. How the name of each tug and even freight-carrier became a familiar household word, and how many were the conjectures as to whether "she" would get through to White Horse Rapids in the low water before a freeze-up! [Illustration: A KLONDYKE CLAIM.] One day our own steamer came. She was a magnificently equipped river boat called the "Hannah," belonging to the Alaska Commercial Company, and had cost one hundred thousand dollars. This was to be her last trip for the season, and with us it was "home now, or here all winter," and we made ready to leave. My kodak had been emptied and filled again, calls on acquaintances made, and good-byes said. My battered and broken trunk, which, at the hands of the English customs officials had suffered much, had now to be repaired and put to a good long test. This box was in a state of total collapse; rollers all gone, covering torn and bent, screws and nails lost, sides split, bottom entirely dropped out, but it must go; so my big brother was wheedled into putting it into some kind of shape again, and it came out stronger than before. No lunches were needed. The cuisine of the Hannah was said to be as perfect as could be in this far away corner of the globe, and we trusted to that.