One beautiful day in the spring of 1900 I sailed again for Alaska--this time for Nome from San Francisco. An English family consisting of the mother, one son and a daughter were to accompany me, and we had spent weeks in making our preparations. We were taking supplies of clothing, food, tents and bedding sufficient to last until some of our numerous plans of work after our arrival brought in returns. My hope was to meet my father there, for he had written that he thought he should go to the new gold fields, where he could do beach mining. I was not above doing any honest work, and felt confident that I could make my way if I could gain an entrance into that country. The English people were all workers, and I had known them for ten years or more. Our steamer was the good ship "St. Paul," belonging to the Alaska Commercial Company, and was advertised to sail on May twenty-fifth. When I laughingly called the attention of one of the owners of the ship to the fact that that date fell upon Friday, and many persons objected to sailing upon that day, he postponed the starting of the "St. Paul" to May twenty-sixth, and we left the dock on Saturday afternoon amid the cheers and hand-waving of thousands of people who had come to see the big boat off for Nome. The steamer was well fitted out, spick and span in fresh carpets and paint, and crowded to the utmost capacity for comfort. Every stateroom was full; each seat at the tables occupied. Not a foot of space above or below decks was left unused, but provision was made for all, and the ship was well manned. I was now much gratified to learn that there were many on board whom I had met before; that the steward, stewardess and several of the waiters had been on duty on the steamer "Bertha" during my trip out from Alaska the fall before, while I was upon speaking terms with a dozen or more of the passengers with whom I had traveled from the same place. Of passengers we had, all told, four hundred and eighty-seven. Of these thirty-five were women. There was only one child on board, and that was the little black-eyed girl with her Eskimo mother and white father from Golovin Bay whom I had seen at St. Michael some months before, and who was now going back to her northern home. She wore a sailor suit of navy blue serge, trimmed with white braid, and was as coy and cunning as ever, not speaking often to strangers, but laughing and running away to her mother when addressed. From the day we sailed from San Francisco until we reached Nome I missed no meals in the dining salon, a pace which my English friends and others could not follow, for they were uncomfortably ill in the region of their digestive apparatus for several days. I slept for hours each day and thoroughly enjoyed the trip.