12 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



gaged. A limited number of cattle and horses have also found their 

 way over the summit of the Chilkoot Pass some crossing immediate- 

 ly after us but the trail is too steep on the ocean side to fit it for ani- 

 mal service, although I strongly suspect that were the location in 

 Mexico instead of in Alaska, there would be a goodly number of 

 caballeros and arrieros to smile at the proposition of presented diffi- 

 culties. Indian women seem to consider it no hardship to pack a 

 fifty-pound sack of flour and more over the summit, and there are 

 many men who do not hesitate to take double this load, and make 

 several journeys during the same day. It is the load that kills, and 

 it was, doubtless, this influence, united to a cruel method, which so 

 strongly impressed the pioneers with the notion of extreme hardship. 

 r .f he most level and perfect road, to one carrying for miles a pack of 

 from sixty to eighty pounds, soon begins to loom up a steep incline. 



Both the northern and southern slopes of the Chilkoot Pass are 

 largely surfaced with shattered rocks, over which, with occasional de- 

 flections across more pleasant snow banks, a fairly well-defined trail 

 mounts on either side to the summit. In its grim landscape effects, 

 more particularly on the inner face, where a number of rock-bound 

 tarns Crater Lake, Long Lake, Deep Lake afford a certain relief 

 to the degree of desolation which the scene carries, it reminded me 

 much of the famous Grimsel Pass, and here as well as there the 

 modeling of the surface through glacial action was strongly in evi- 

 dence. The vastly towering Alpine peaks were, however, wanting, 

 and the glaciers that still appeared showed that they had long since 

 passed their better days. The actual summit is trenched by a narrow 

 rocky gap, roughly worn through walls of granite, and by it have 

 passed the thousands who have pressed to the interior. There is no 

 timber growth at or near this summit, nor is there soil sufficient to 

 give support to an arboreal vegetation. Nearest to the top line a 

 prostrate form of scrubby hemlock (Tsuga Pattoniana) alone makes 

 pretense to being a tree, but below it of itself grows to majestic pro- 

 portions, and about " Sheep Camp," with Menzie's spruce, a birch, 

 and cottonwood (Populus balsamifera), forms part of the beautiful 

 woodland, which with ever-increasing freshness descends to the lower 

 levels. 



Lest I be accused of too freely seeing the beauties of the northern 

 landscape, I venture in my defense the following graphic description 

 of the Dyea Valley from the pen of another traveler and geologist, 

 Prof. Israel Russell: " In the valley of the Taiya the timber line is 

 sharply drawn along the bordering cliffs at an elevation of about 

 twenty-five hundred feet. Above that height the mountain sides are 

 stern and rugged; below is a dense forest of gigantic hemlocks, fes- 

 tooned with long streamers of moss, which grows even more luxuri- 



