The Olneyville times. (Olneyville [Providence, R.I.]) 1887-1917, 1900-06-22
TO THE YUKON BY RAIL
A BOLD AND DIFFICULT ENTER
PRISE.

interesting TO Men Impeled by Gold
Hunger-The Terrible Dead Horse
Tral-up the Dangerous White
Pass.
OF all the Industrial auxiliaries
which the closing century has seen set
up on the American continent the rail-
road just finished from Alaskan tide.
water into the valley of the great Yu'
kon Is the boldest and most difficult.
and promises to be the most useful
A year ago the gold-besprnkled Yu-
kon watershed was accessible only
TO the hardy mountainecr and at the
cost of much money, immense labor
and serious peril. OF all those who
vontured up the Pacific through the
Alexandria archipelago and Lynn
Canal as far as Skaguay and Dyea
ut least n quarter turned back intimi-
dated and disheartened, for in front
of them loomed the precipitous coast
range, with the terrible Dead Horse
Trail on the one hand, and on tho
other, only five miles north the Chill
koot Trail from Dyea, even more ter
rible, with its dreaded avalanches
and its cemeteries of numerous dead
at Sheep Camp.
To cross the divide was at the risk
of limb and life, for 1t involved hitch.
ing along a narrow and insecure shelf
through a dark defile over a turbulent
river and climbing rocky walls that
dehed almost any creature not armed
with claws. In Chilkoot Pass, back OF
Dyea, several scores of adventurous
Argonauts had been buried beneath
the tremendous slides of ice and rock
from the summit, and the Indian trail
from Skaguay over White Pass was
populous with buzzards feasting on
the Carcases OF thousand horses
which perished there in single au.
tumn.
The narrow vale through which
flows down TO Lynn Canal the stream
known as the Skaguay is one OF the
most humid portions OF the earth's
surface. II is carpeted with heavy
moss, and the thick.set evergreens
and tangle OF dead trees are satur.
ated with water and yelled with Itch
ems OF gigantic size and motley color.
Ing, and kept wet by tremendous
storms of rain and by an incessant
downfow OF melted snow from the
SUBMITS OF mountains where winter
makes its perpetual home. The eli.
mate of the sea coast and adjacent
islands is eQuable and mild. the win.
ters being scarcely as cold as those
at Washington, ID. c.. but the valley
of the Yukon is cold and forbidding.
constituting strange contrast
To men impelled by gold hunger tho
coast range was only temporary
bugbear. American enterprise did
not long remain idle In the presence
OF this menacing obstruction. Chill.
koot Pass is nearly a thousand feet
higher than White Pass, on account
OF which important fact the great
stream OF eager transit turned i'm the
spring OF 1898 from the former TO the
latter. But even here the Thlinkit
Trail was so terrible that. while thou.
sands of the harder succeeded In
getting over and setting their frall
boats anoat on the Upper Yukon al
Lake Bennett, a hundred every week
turned back. appalled, and disheart.
ened.
One OF the visitors 90 Skaguay in
the fall of 1897 strolled up the Indian
path which had even thus early ac.
cumulated SO many OF the carcases
Of horses falling from the sloping
rocks that II had borrowed from that
circumstance the eTewsome name Of