6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing of passengers at Dyea impossible on that day threw me back upon 

 my first resource, and about two hours before midday of the 30th 

 I was mounted on a horse following out the Skaguay trail. By 

 seven o'clock in the evening of the following day I had reached Lake 

 Lindeman, and about a half hour later Lake Bennett, the starting- 

 point of the lines of Upper Yukon steamers which had just recently 

 been established. We had made the forty miles of the dreaded White 

 Pass trail without serious hindrance or delay, up over the summit 

 of 2,860 feet elevation, and down over a course which was depicted 

 in colors of hardship that would have done more truthful service in 

 describing a pass in the Himalayas. There was no mud, not a trace 

 of snow or ice except on the mountain declivities, and had it not been 

 for a horse that was both stiff and lame, and required my attention as 

 pedestrian to an extent that had not been bargained for, the journey 

 would have been an exceptionally delightful one. 



It is true that an unfortunate fall at one time almost deprived 

 me of my animal, but the service of tackle soon put him to rights 

 and to his feet, and but few blood marks were left on the rocks to tell 

 of the struggle. The most disagreeable incident of the journey was a 

 dense and shifting fog, which so blocked out the landscape of early 

 evening as to necessitate " feeling " the brokenness of a glaciated 

 country in order to ascertain wherein lay the trail. But beyond this 

 there was a perpetual delight in the landscape in the narrow rocky 

 defile, the bursting torrent, the open meadows, with their carpet of 

 green and variegated with fireweed, gentian, rose, and forget-me-not, 

 which more than compensated for the little vexations that allied them- 

 selves with the journey. 



It is not often that the selection of a route of travel is determined 

 by the odorous or malodorous qualities which appertain thereto. 

 Such a case was, however, presented here. It was not the depth of 

 mud alone which was to deter one from essaying the White Pass 

 route; sturdy pioneers who had toiled long and hard in opening up 

 one or more new regions, laid emphasis upon the stench of decaying 

 horse-flesh as a factor of first consideration in the choice of route. So 

 far as stench and decaying horse-flesh were concerned, they were in 

 strong evidence. The Desert of Sahara, with its lines of skeletons, can 

 boast of no such exhibition of carcasses. Long before Bennett was 

 reached I had taken count of more than a thousand unfortunates 

 whose bodies now made part of the trail; frequently we were obliged 

 to pass directly over these ghastly figures of hide, and sometimes, 

 indeed, broke into them. Men whose veracity need not be questioned 

 assured me that what I saw was in no way the full picture of the 

 " life " of the trail ; the carcasses of that time were less than one third 

 of the full number which in April and May gave grim character to 



