Document 1: Mary Hitchcock, Bering Sea, June 1898; from Melanie Mayer, Klondike Women: True Tales of the 1897-98 Gold Rush (Athens, Ohio, 1989), p. 56.
Far in the distance a small cake of ice appeared, then another, and still another, until we were soon in what could only be termed an ice-field, with the stillness of death around and not even the voice of a bird calling....It is difficult to describe the solemn stillness which pervades this vast region, dotted with ice-floes speeding noiselessly to destruction....Language becomes too poverty stricken to express the awe and admiration which fill the soul at such a time.
-Mary Hitchcock, steaming into the Bering Sea, June, 1898
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