El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1898-07-23
OF War Correspondents

Much has been said lately of our war
correspondents and the articles which
have been written by some of them de-
serve very severe criticism. One OF
them, Sylvester Scovel, is reported to
have slapped, General Skaters face q
few days ago.
In talking of war correspondents the
other evening Capt. Courtney of the
British army said to the HERALD'S
man that he once had an experience
with this same Scovel. In relating the
for the Klondike gold fields was made
the home Office sent me to Skagway to
clear q new trail over the mountains
to the gold regions.
"As soon as 1 was ready to start 1
went to San Francisco for the start
and from there 1 went on q vessel
with many others bound for Skagway.
Among the many who sailed were
Sylvester Scovel and his wife.
AT that time eScovel was working
for the New York World and he had
been sent as special correspondents for
that paper to lake reports on the
hardship of the trip from the United
States to the Klondyke regions.
THE voyage was uneventful from
the time we embarked to the time we
landed and as soon as we arrived we at
once started out on the trail to try and
make il more passable. Mr.. and Mrs
Scovel went with the party and after
we had gone quite q ways over the
mountains we came to place where
the rocks had fallen down in the trail
ard saw at once that it was almost
impossible to get the massive boulders
out OF the way, for as soon as you would
get the lower ones out, the upper
ones would slide down and fill up the
space. While we, the engineering
corps l bad along with me and miners,
were trying to solve how to get on with
out making q long detour around the
whole mass, Mr.. Scovel came up to the
party and told them that IL would be
no matter at all to remove the rock
and II they would assure him that
they would let the trail to the gold re-
gion be called the Worlds trail he
would send men enough back to Sksg-
way and get a ton of dynamite. Well,
we didn't care what the trail was call
ed, just so we could get it opened,
and told him so. Immediately
he started the men back after the dy-
Mantle. When it came it had no eff
feet on the trail whatever notwith-
standing that he said he could clear
the trail in half day. The dynamite
came and was used to no avail. Well,
that he had talked too much and too
soon. we started to go around the big
pile of rock and got a nice trail made
clear through.
ever after this the Worlds CORES
pondent has had no use for me because
we didn't all think he was able to blow
the boulders out OF the path.
. "Now Mr.. Scovel has got his foot in
it down in Cuba by having too much to
say in the doings OF the army officers
at the surrender of Santiago. The re-
ports say that he has been placed un-
der arrest. l don't know how true it
is, but il he was as obstreperous in
Cuba as he was on our Klondike trip
then there is no doubt but what he
really is under arrest and l think it
must have been deserved, too.
Mrs. Scovel is one of the Quickest
little women l ever saw When we
were coming back over the trail from
the Klondike, her shoes had all worn
out, but she bound her feet up in an
old gunny sack, and did as hard march
ing as any of the men of the party,
when snow was up to our waists.
Another amusing thing of the
Klondyke trip was that there was an
other New York newspaper CORES
pendent along, representing the
'Times," and the two of them were
fighting and squabbling the whole
time. Scovel would tell the other fell
low his paper was no good and the
Times reporter would tell Scovel he
would rather work for good for moth
ing paper and get his news fair than
to work for an old Jew who stole all
the news he could get his hands on,
and claimed it as special cores
pondent's work. This is the way the
whole trip was spent. Whenever that
fellow Scovel was around he was al
ways finding fault about things that
he knew nothing whatever about"