Alaska -- Description and travel; Frontier and pioneer life -- Alaska
At last, on the morning of October twentieth, with the sun just rising
over the snowy hills surrounding the water, the cliffs on both sides of
the entrance standing out clear and sharp in the cold morning light, and
with one ship already there, we dropped anchor, being in Golovin Bay.
The settlement, a score of houses, a hotel, a flagstaff or two, and the
Mission.
I now waked the girls, who turned out of their bunks, dressed as they
had been since coming on board the "Elk," and we made ready to go
ashore. We were out in deep water, still some distance from the beach,
and must again get out into a small boat, probably for the last time
this year. Not all could get into the boat; we must take turns, but we
were bundled into it some way, and soon we were upon the sands, a dozen
feet from dry land. Again we were transferred by one man power, as at
Nome, to the sands, which were here frozen quite hard, and upon which I
had the sensation, at first, of walking with a gunboat attached to each
foot.
Some one conducted us to the Mission House, only a few hundred yards
from our landing place, while the boat went back to the "Elk" for the
others. Miss E., who had come up on the "St. Paul" with us, and now the
housekeeper here, came running out to welcome all cordially. By her we
were shown into the cozy little parlor, so tidy, bright and warm that we
immediately felt ourselves again in civilization. Soon Mr. H., the head
missionary, whom I had already met in Nome, came in with Miss J., the
teacher of the Mission children. She also had spent some days with us at
Nome. These all made us very welcome, and our party of seven was soon
sitting together before a good, smoking hot breakfast, to which we did
real justice.
When entering the house I had, upon first removing my wraps and
"fascinator," given my friends another surprise equal to the one of the
muckluks on the steamer. The day before leaving Nome I had
(surreptitiously again) made a visit to the hairdresser, and when I left
her room I appeared another woman. My head now, instead of being covered
with long, thin hair, done up hastily in a twist at the back, had short
hair and curled all over, a great improvement, they all voted, when the
first surprise was over.
My hair, all summer, had been like that of most women when first in
Alaska, falling out so rapidly that I feared total baldness if something
was not done to prevent. This was the only sure remedy for the trouble,
as I knew from former experience, and as I again proved, for it entirely
stopped coming out. Ricka soon followed my example, and we, with Miss
J., who had been relieved of her hair by fever the year before, made
almost a colony of short-haired women, much to the amusement of some of
our party.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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