The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-11-15
A SURVEY THAT TOOK NERVE
Crossing Arctic Mountains = With Plunges Also Into the Sea-Amer-
 jeans and Canadians Fix
 Boundary.

Far to the north. in latitude 60 de-
 grees 20 minutes, towering high above ] other mountain giants, stands Mt.
 Saint Elias. From a ridge of Saint
 Elias, and running north straighter than the crow III, mes, ,t, IS tne la1ss t me. ne,
 dividing inland line, between the pos
 sessions of Great Britain and Alaska.
 joint American and Canadian eommis-
 sion, for five years we have strug-
 gled with this, the straigfDtest of the
 worlds surveyed Hnes,' writes one of
 the American surveyors in the Nation
 al Geogra phfcal Magazine. This year
 it was given to some, from the high
 Moses from Pisgah, to gaze upon our
 goal and to see the deep blue of the
 arctic, dotted with the dazzling white of wind-driven ieef1oes.
 From it's starting point, near Mt.
 Saint Elias, the boundary shoots for
 60 miles over the great ranges and
 he broad valley of the White river.
 where the prospector patiently drives
 his tunnels lodes of copper and
 CT river and North western railroad,
 now built up the Chitana river to
 Kennecott, may be pushed over the wares marketable.
 1 'sWhat is it to the pioneer if tlde i railroad should charge as much as STD i per ton for is not the present rate 35 l cents to $1 8 pound from Whftehorse 1 to Canyon City, on the White river?
 he @1nn1if Sousn of o Mf l' Nafazhat. the eter 5 nal snows cast their last defiance at | the boundary. From here even to
 the Arctic ocean there exists a season 1 of the year free from ice and cold. 'The many channels and qudcksands
 of the White river being passed, the
 S fnngs e5aysd 5o the @ ia rallns sheee and to the low al1e dotted muskeg
 marshes inhabited by the wide antler- disc, where sheep, moose, caribou and i bear may be had at almost any time; I where grayling are not caught on hook J and line. but are kicked out of the
 sAcroas Iadue river, where the ! stream flows 12 miles to go three in i ty Mile river. the scene of the latest I gold rush; through A1aska's pioneer 5, diggings of the Forty Mile; into the
 Yukon valley and UP SE,,t the a9fu {na Senn n1grn Ei duk, the home of the Fannin sheep; I across the Nation river and across I dix: over the bottomIess marshes of I the Big Black river, nightly made hid- l eous by the long-drawn howl of the
 praea partP oyer ysrp the Porcnpine, skirtIng E 5y i Rampant house, one of CanRda,s most
 northerly trading posts; through the
 Ammerman mountain. the Davidson
 range the British mountains; then
 down to the terminal mountain to be placed on the bleak shore of the Arc l tic ocean-so runs the Hist meridian 1 of west longitude: in all, roughly speaking, a distance of about 500 s"The actual visible results of the work consist of a vista 20 feet wide cut through all timber, monuments set four miles apart, and a detailed map of a strip of country exbend1ng for two miles on each side of the boundary: | A 4 V-fxya1r | the maia1 points Of travel the mon11- tments are five foot alun1irurn bronze I sectional shafts, each weighing about
 300 pounds and set in a ton of con crete.
 | HAt less important points are the l three-foot aluminium bronze cones set in about 1900 pounds of concrete. All 1 monuments are geodencaHy defeTInin- ed and will be the bases for future | ..Tyhe maps when published will be | among the finest of their kind in the
 world; besides showing the differences lof elevation and drainage they Will af-s
 bols. between the various groVvths of i timber and show their density. The
 character of the country will also be | .aThis survey has had more obsta- I cIes to overcome than almost any oth- CT of recent times In the first place I the meridian is crossed in only two jplaces by possiblze routes Of water ] transportation, at the Yukon river and
 
 1 of the Yukon supplies, forage camp | outfit, instrum ents, everything must
 be carried, chiefly on the backs of
 deep in nnire, over which a six-horse team can barely pull it's 4,O00 pounds,
 runs out a. short distance from such places as Dawson or White Horse.
 ssBut the main reliance is the pack
 train, winding it's way over hill. t1n- dra and swamp Two miles an hour
 is the average speed, and six hours a. day is long enough for a horse to carry his heavy burden. On a fore
 ed march of nearly 800 miles miles my 1 ;,aa arndn la. day for IT days, but the trail was
 frozen and hard nd frequent ccnes or Igrain were on the line of travel. | Another time, late in the autumn, iconing from 30 miles north of the Arc Itic circle, to the Yukon river, we were i23 days on the trail, a distance of not with which we started only A reach led the river.
 abandoned everything possible in the way of camp equipment; six days out and every man in the detachment of Bounds. Four days out, in a blind ling snowstorm, one of the topogra- phers set out to get train of iz
 horses which had preceded the main
 train. He started at 10 o'clock one
 morning, reaching the Yukon camp in
 time for breakfast the next morn ] ing. He had forded two raging tor rents in the night and crossed high summit deep in snow. The relief train i met US two days out, bringing the precious grain.
 1 .sIn summer one can fight mosqui- I toes and keep fairly comfoFtabFe, but in the long retreat after the dark | nights have come, when snow covers the trail when ise is just thick enoukh to break through with the weight of man, when the wolves how'd around the camp, when in the morn ing huge fires must be built to ttaw out tents and pack rigging, while packers freeze their fingers tying packs on dejected and sl1ivering po- nies-then the true spirit of the man is manifested and the 'ca1eechako,' as the tenderfoot is called, shows whether