On an island in Bering Sea, where the river and the ocean meet, he established a great distributing station, and on the North Pacific he put big ocean steamships; while in his offices in Seattle and San Francisco it took clerks by the score to keep the order and system of his business.
Men drifted into the land.

Hitherto famine had driven them out, but Jacob Welse was there now, and his grub-stores; so they wintered in the frost and groped in the frozen muck for gold.

He encouraged them, grub-staked them, carried them on the books of the company.

His steamers dragged them up the Koyokuk in the old days of Arctic City.
Wherever pay was struck he built a warehouse and a store.

The town followed.