During the nine days' sail from San Francisco to Unalaska, a distance of two thousand three hundred and sixty-eight miles, I studied well the passengers. We had preachers on board, as well as doctors, lawyers, merchants and miners, and there were women going to Nome to start eating houses, hotels and mercantile shops. There were several Swedish missionaries; one, a zealous young woman from San Francisco, going to the Swedish Mission at Golovin Bay. This young person was pretty and pleasant, and I was glad to make her acquaintance as well as that of three other women speaking the same tongue and occupying the next stateroom to mine. The last named were going to start a restaurant in Nome. As they were sociable, jolly, and good sailors for the most part, I enjoyed their society. They had all lived in San Francisco for years, and though not related to each other, were firm friends of long standing and were uniting their little fortunes in the hope of making greater ones. The young missionary was a friend to the other three, and I found no better or more congenial companions on board the ship than these four honest, hard-working women, so full of hope, courage and good sense as well as Christianity. Little did I then think that these people, placed by a seeming chance in an adjoining stateroom, were to be my fellow-workers and true friends, not only for the coming months in that Arctic land to which we were going, but, as the sequel will show, perhaps for years to come. Not many days had passed when we found that we had on board what few steamers can boast of, and that was an orchestra of professional musicians among the waiters. These were men going, with all the others, to seek their fortunes in the new gold fields, working their passage as waiters on the ship to Nome, where they intended to leave it. Three evenings in the week these musicians, with the help of several singers on board, gave concerts in the dining salon, which, though impromptu, were very enjoyable. A sweet and trained singer was the English girl of our company, and she sang many times, accompanied by the stringed instruments of the musicians, much to the delight of the assembled passengers. When she sang, one evening, in her clear sympathetic voice the selection, "Oh, Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight," there was not a dry eye in the room, and the mind of many a man went back to his old home and praying mother in some far distant state, making him resolve to write oftener to her that she might be comforted with a knowledge of his whereabouts and welfare. These evenings were sometimes varied by recitations from an elocutionist on board; and a practised clog dancer excited the risibles of the company to the extent that they usually shouted with laughter at his exhibition of flying heels.