Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-04-21
Freight for White Horse.

turn 1t was not part of his business.
Dut he did it, and thought nothing of it.
Freight for White Horse.
NO" the empties begin to rattle in from
White Herse-the empty cars on the Spruce
Line. While the horses eat the men load
the freight. using a scrubby cayuse as
switch engine. The motive power of the
spruce Line consists of twenty-sIx horses
the rolling stock includes thirteen four
wheeled, implanted freight cars about the
size and shape of ordinary transfer
wagon The wheels of the cars are wide
and conCaved, to fit over the round spruce
ran. Tine ties are of the same material
spruce-and We're cut when the right of
way was cleared. This the first railway"
in the Yukon country. is better for the mo-
ment than anybody's mine. Each of these
cars. drawn by two ordinary horses. walk
ing tandem, driven by a man who handles
freight at each end of the line earns $40 a
trip, making from two to three trips day
The foreman said operating expenses were
$500 a day. At least half that was dust in
my eye. Call it $500 and this five miles of
spruce road is clearing a thousand dollars
a day carrying freight and people into
country that is supposed to be dead.
GU come on the last car and look after
the luggage said Capt. B. I'll go on to
White Horse. round my fellows up, secure
boat and if the Victorian does not sail
until midnight We'll take a scoot over into
the new copper fields"
About l pm. my car left the station, and
about LOB left the track. The sharp rim
OF the wheel cut into the rail, climbed it
and dropped to the ties. A delicate-iooking
lady from Frisco, with an eight-year-old
boy, who had been i'll all night and 1 made
UP the passenger list.
We unloaded 1 helped the long. lank,
good-natured fireman, engineer and conduc-
tor make wooden frogs for the wheels.
Then We hitched to the rear end Of the car
and tried to drag It back on the rail. 1t
would not go on, and we were obliged to
send back to the Canyon for help.
Finally we were on again-gone again.
When the little boy was walking in the dust
of the trail he cried and complained. When
his mother put him on the car he regretted
IT. for there was great danger of dtslocating
his spinal column. l paid a dollar to ride,
and when 1 was not helping to get the car
on the track I was walking. and when 1
was not walking 1 was regretting my dollar.
A Little Klondike Romance.
There said Mrs. NJ. to her little boy,
there, dear. are the dreadful White Horse
rapids, where papa's ship was wrecked. and
here over this rocky trail he walked with
bare, bleeding feet
Seeming copy" I introduced myself ard
learned that Mr.. NJ had been wrecked in
the rapids some two years ago. His boat,
with his leather coat and note book In the
bottom of 1t, drifted all the way to Dawson.
A San Francisco newspaper correspondent
M. was mourned dead at Frisco for
many moons. Finally he reached Dawson
and contradicted the story of his death, and
now, after two long years, his wife and boy
were going to join him at Dawson, where
he has profitable law business.
Across on the opposite shore, high up on
the bluff we can see another tramway-an
opposition line. 1t is a better road than
this, has sawed rails" the drivers tell us,
but 1t is not being operated. This company
has bought it to cut off competition, there
being no law in Canada against the con
eolidation of competing parallel lines 1t
has cost the Spruce Line sixty cool thou
sand. When the White Horse and Yukon
road Is completed to White Horse both these
TRANS will be worth in the neighborhood OF
sixty thousand cents.
When I reached White Horse 1t was 4
pm. My friends had given me up for lost
and gone to the copper fields without me.
I was not sorry, for old Colorado miner
told me. conf1dentially, that the "skeeters
were thicker out there than fiddlers in the
hereafter" CY WARMAN.