In the United States Senate, on the 26th of February, 1901, an attempt was made to exonerate Messrs. McKenzie and Noyes. Senator Hansbrough of North Dakota characterized the former as "in every respect an honorable and responsible man," and read a letter which he had received from Judge Noyes, in which the latter elaborately declaims how honest and upright he is and always has been. Senator Pettigrew of South Dakota championed McKenzie as a man of "character," and eulogized Noyes as "the peer of any man who sits upon the bench in any State or Territory in the Union." But Senator Stewart gave the whole affair a very thorough airing, and caused to be printed in the "Congressional Record" the complete history of the receivership proceedings above set forth, together with the opinion and judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals.
One of the last official acts of Attorney-General Griggs was the preparation and transmission of charges against Judge Noyes, which reached their destination in June, 1901; and as only a reply with explanations was required, Noyes had a lease of official life during the mining season of 1901. His answer to the charges preferred against him was in the nature of a general denial, and a justification of his conduct in every respect.
Despite, however, its various handicaps, the Nome country, it is estimated, yielded in the year 1900 between five and six million dollars in gold--almost as much as was paid to Russia for Alaska in 1867.
Thus far no well-defined quartz ledges have been discovered, but it is not impossible that such may yet be found. Once on a steady basis, it will from year to year, like the Klondike, increase its output until, finally deprived of its only attraction and drained of its sole asset, it shall again assume the dreary, uninhabited state in which it was discovered.
Lieutenant Jarvis estimates that, in addition to the two thousand who wintered there, eighteen thousand people were at Nome in the summer of 1900. Probably six thousand remained in the country throughout the following winter, well provided for, as the government at the close of the mining season transported the remaining needy and destitute.
Before communication with the outside world closed with the freezing of the sea, about the 1st of November, C---- got out a letter which informed me of his safe arrival at Council and his settling down in the new quarters. It seems that not enough was found of the _Mush-on_ at Chenik to make a toothpick. At a meeting of the "city fathers" at Council the nomination for president of the Town-site Organization had been extended to C----, which he said he had at first declined with becoming modesty; but, finally, under pressure, and as a "public duty," he had graciously yielded and been duly elected. This news of my partner's accession to so high a dignity rather led me to indulge an expectation that, upon my return, I might be received with civic honors.