As an illustration of adaptability to circumstances and the willingness
to take chances in order to achieve results of any kind, of the men who
open up a new country to civilization, a recent incident is instructive:
A little schooner reached Seattle recently from Nome, on Bering
Sea. She had made the voyage down during the most tempestuous
season of the year in the North Pacific, and had survived storms
which tried well-found steamships of the better class. Yet there
was not a man on board, from the captain down, who had ever
made a voyage at sea, save as passengers, on a boat running to
Alaska. There were no navigating instruments on board save a
compass and an obsolete Russian chart of the North Pacific.
These men wanted to come out for the winter, and there was no
other way within their means to accomplish the trip. They got
hold of the schooner and they started with her. They were not
seamen or navigators, simply handy men who were accustomed to
doing things for themselves. This was out of the routine, but
they did it.
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* * * * *
The men who made the voyage down from Nome in a little schooner
without any previous knowledge of seamanship probably saw
nothing remarkable in the feat. They were used to doing things
that had to be done with the material that came to hand, whether
they knew anything about how it should be done or not.--Seattle
_Post-Intelligencer_.
(28)