The Chitina leader., 1910-12-31

the softening spring came highway
over not only them but the reaches
of loose ice, churning slush and
speeding water so that the heavy
material for construction inland
could be transported thither.
Using brush and poles packed in
to mattress, placed by men and
missed footing all wet fioundering
down into varying depths of loose
ice, snow and water that froze like
armor on them when they were drag
ged out-that was the way they
| built the track. All winter they
worked preparing the way and get
ting the men equipment, tools, DON
key engines materials and food sup
plies across.
The spring brought added terrors
in the way of labor under difficult
ties and sufferings that increased
Each thaw meant the sinking of a
portion of the work or the under
| mining or sweeping away of anoth-
er, and as the weather grew warm
er the turning of the whole into a
mush from six to 20 feet deep, over
which men must work in snowshoes.
How doggedly they had striven can
be imagined when it is said that one
month after reinforcements had land
ed in April track had been laid across
the first section of those terrible
flats reaching to Alaska, crossing a
distance of % IL miles. To put
down the ties and rails and drive the
spikes the snow must be shoveled
| away as it. fell. Once the path was
| ready the piledrivers could begin
| their work of replacing the brush
and pole mattress with regular trest-
| ling.
Now, just beyond are two channels
of the river itself, averaging Is feet
in depth; torrents of icy water filled
with foes crashing and grinding
down on the sea. One channel is
$500 feet wide, the other 1 100 feet.
Imagine handling piles and timbers
under such conditions, with men in
boats held by long ropes and men
standing on the structural work, new
er taking their eyes from the work
men, ready to pick up or throw
line to any man who succumbed to
the labor and exposure or lost his
foothold. Nevertheless. the twenty
first of June found track laid across
both channels and on to the twenty
ninth mile.
Another time when gang was ad-
vancing horses in individual barges,
as was often done, an odd thing hap
pened. The barges were craft that
would hold one horse only. The ami
NAL would be forced into it, made
fast, and then the gang would take
hold, sometimes to the number of
thirty on a hawser, and haul the
beast not only against ten-mile cur
rents, but through shadows choked
with ice and slush, through dense
mud and over stretches of sand with
very little water over it.
Two big brothers from Seattle,
longshoremen they had been, were
in this gang, and when the horse
they were hauling partly broke loose
the elder of the two made his way
out to the barge to readjust the fast
enings as it touched the tip Of
sandy spot. The horse in his strug-
giles dealt the man kick with his
foreleg that stretched him uncon-
scious in a precariously balanced po-
sition across the bow of the barge.
Now the barge swung out where
at any moment the horse might dis
lodge the man and drop him to his
death. Shouting to the other men to
haul for all they were worth, the
younger brother plunged in, clinging
to the line, with its coating of flesh
cutting ice, and made his way, at
times up to his neck in water or UP
to his hips in quicKsand, to the barge.
1t was superhuman muscular effort,
but when he reached the barge he
still had strength enough to deal