One day in August, with a large pack, and followed by an unattractive but devoted-looking dog, there came into Council F----, whom we had known on the _Lane_. He was only twenty-two years old, but financial stress had compelled him to leave his university prematurely; and he had been among the first to cross the Chilkoot Pass and undergo the rigors of the Klondike. Late in the season of 1899 he had come from the Klondike to Nome, and had acquired, as he believed, some valuable interests there, which he had been obliged to intrust to a partner, as he was carried out from Nome in the fall more dead than alive with typhoid. Returning the next year, he learned that his partner had robbed him, and that all that remained was this dog. So, with his pack and his dog, and the aid of a compass, he had walked over the mountains and tundra from Nome to Council,--sleeping, of course, in the open air and upon the ground,--in quest of employment on one of the Wild Goose properties, "No. 15 on Ophir." And he was rather a delicate-looking fellow. He dined with us, and we extended to him the hospitality of our kitchen floor for the night, for which he was very grateful. Notwithstanding his continued ill fortune, F---- seemed to be in first-rate spirits. He recited a verse which he had composed, after "Break, break, break," etc., which began thus:
"Break, broke, bust, on the ruby sands of Nome, Break, broke, bust--three thousand miles from home!"
The way he got it off caused general laughter. He endured for two weeks work which very few strong men can keep up, working on the ten-hour night shift shoveling frozen ground up and into a sluice-box; and then, pretty well used up, but with enough money to take him home, he departed for Nome, this time by way of the river, saying that he hoped to return next spring. Certainly pluck was not lacking in his make-up.
There is no game in this country to speak of. Occasionally, however, one would scare up a covey of ptarmigan or white grouse, and of course there were fish in the stream. The government recently imported into northern Alaska some reindeer with Laplanders to care for them, and there are scattered reindeer-stations. But none of these animals were seen.