Excerpt from Starving on a Bed of Gold: Or the World's Longest Fast The doctor was a frequent caller, and after some conversa tion on commonplace subjects, informed me he had the gold fever, was going to Alaska, and wanted me to go along. I told him I could not go, that I did not think I could stand the hardships of that kind of life. Finally, after some days of consideration, I agreed to take the trip. We engaged passage on the Thrasher, one of the many vessels belonging to the Pacific Steam Whaling Company. It was advertised to sail on the 21st of April. I then invited the doctor to spend a week or so with me at Rose Hill, my father's ranch near Watsonville, Santa Cruz County, California. After a pleasant visit we returned to San Francisco, and began active preparations for the long, dangerous journey. I had never been outside of California in my life, had never even been in a half inch of snow, and was now preparing to start to one of the bleakest, coldest and most barren countries in the world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.