A different class, and a worst one if possible, was met with at these late meals. Do you see that short, fat woman over there with the bleared eyes, and the neck of a prize fighter? She is a Dawson saloon keeper, and is now on her way to Nome. But there were a number of people on the steamer not properly belonging to this set, and after supper a few usually gathered in one corner to listen to each other's experiences in the far Northwest. Some were tales of hardship, sickness and death; some of hair-breadth escapes from the jaws of an Arctic winter, or from shipwreck. One told of having, two years before, paid $175 for five sacks of flour in the Klondyke; selling the same, a few days later, for $500. Stories of rich strikes were related; how one man, while drunk, was persuaded by his associates to trade a valuable claim for one apparently worthless; his indescribable feelings the next day and until he had prospected the so-called worthless claim, when it proved ten times richer than the first one. [Illustration: FELLOW TRAVELERS.] A little middle-aged Norwegian woman told her story with great gusto. She had sailed from Seattle two years before with Mayor Woods' expedition, getting as far as a point on the Yukon River two hundred miles below Rampart City. Here the low water prevented their going farther. She, in company with others, made her way to Rampart as best she could, rested and "outfitted" for a trip to Dawson over the ice. Finally, with sleds and provisions, eight dogs and four men, she started. It was a journey of about eight hundred miles. Before leaving Rampart she experimented with fur sleeping bags, and finally made one in which she could sleep comfortably on the ice and snow. Rice and tea were their staple articles of diet, being more quickly prepared in hasty camps at night, and being found most nourishing. After a perilous trip of thirty-five days in the dead of winter, they reached Dawson in good shape, two days ahead of a party of men with whom a wager had been made. With these, and similar stories, we whiled away the long evening hours by the fire. Many short stops were made along the river. A few little settlements were passed during the night. At Holy Cross and Russian Mission we saw flourishing Catholic schools for the natives. The Yukon was now getting wider and wider, the water was shallow and more shallow, then suddenly we felt a heavy jar. The big stern wheel refused to move,--we were stuck fast on a sand-bar! Here we remained all day, dreading a hard freeze which was liable to settle down upon us at any time, fixing our boat and us in the ice indefinitely. But we were now in the Aphoon, or eastern mouth of the Yukon, and near enough to Behring Sea to get the benefit of the tides; so that in the early evening we again heard the thud of the big machines,--the steamer quivered,--the stern wheel again revolved,--we had entered the Behring Sea!