The hatchet. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1883-19??, 1900-06-10
TO THE YUKON BY RAIL
A BOLD AND DIFFICULT ENTER.
PRISE.

Interesting to Men ImpeIled by Gold
Hunger-The Terrible Dead Horse
TralI-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.
year ago the gold-besprinkled Yu-
kon watershed was accessible only
to the hardy mountaineer and at the
cost of much money immense labor
and serious peril. OF all those who
ventured up the Pacific through the
Alexandria archipelago and Lynn
Canal as far as Skaguay and Dyea
at least quarter turned back intimi-
dated and disheartened, for in front
of them doomed the precipitous coast
range, with the terrible Dead Horse
Trail on the one hand, and on the
other, only five miles north the Chill
koot Trail from Dyea, even more ter
rible, with it's dreaded avalanches
and it's cemeteries of numerous dead
at Sheep Camp.
To cross the divide was at the risk
of limb and life for it involved hitch
ing along a narrow and insecure shelf
through q dark defle 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 a thousand horses
which persisted 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. 1t is carpeted with heavy
hlOSof anu bllC NhANhoOb
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
downflow of melted snow from the
SUBMITS of mountains where winter
makes its perpetual home. The eli
% h. 1
islands is equable and mild, the win.
ters being scarcely as cold as those
at Washington, d. c.; but the valley
of the Yukon is cold and forbidding,
constituting a strange contrast.
To men impelled by gold hunger the
coast range was only a 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 in 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 frail
boats ahoat on the Upper Yukon at
Lake Bennett, hundred every week
turned back, appalled, and disheart-
ened
One of the visitors to Skaguay in
the fall of 1897 strolled up the Indian
path which had even thus early &C.
cumulated so many of the carcases
of horses falling from the sloping
rocks that 1t had borrowed from that
circumstance the grewsome name of
Dead Horse Trail" He was a man
of mature years, shrewd, strong,
alert, fearless, and not unacquanted
with personal exposure in Indian wars
and hazardous enterprises-Mr. George
A. Bracket, one of the early pioneers
of Minnesota. He climbed the trail
to the summit of the White Pass, and
concluded that though almost mac
cessible to horses and dogs, it was
practicable to build a wagon road
through the dark defiles and up the
frowning activities. From his tour
of inspection he returned to Skaguay,
where a company was formed for the
purpose of building and cutting a
road through the lowest pass of the
coast range to Lake Bennett, the pro-
jectors to reimburse themselves by
charging a small toll to travellers
w. A. Croffut, in Frank Leslie's Month.
ly for April.