14 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ness the towering mountain spires, snowy pinnacles, and turquoise 

 cliffs of ice towering heavenward. These views through the cloud 

 rifts seemed glimpses of another world. Below was a sea of surging 

 branches that filled all the valley bottom and dashed high on the 

 bordering cliffs. Much space could be occupied with descriptions of 

 the magnificent scenery about Lynn Canal, and of the wonderful at- 

 mospheric effects to be seen there, but the poetry of travel is foreign 

 to these pages, and must be left for more facile pens." 



In its present condition the Chilkoot trail has the advantage over 

 the Skaguay in its shorter length, the distance from Dyea to the 

 head of Lake Lindeman, the virtual head of river navigation, being 

 about twenty-four miles; from Skaguay to Bennett, along the usual 

 White Pass trail, the distance is fully ten or twelve miles longer, 

 although a cut-off by way of the summit lakes reduces the traverse 

 considerably. At intervals along both routes fairly good accommo- 

 dation can now be had. One condition of the Chilkoot Pass, and 

 that a not altogether light one, places it during certain months at a 

 disadvantage as compared with the White Pass. I refer to the dan- 

 gers from avalanches. These are of the true Alpine type, having 

 their source in the heavy beds of snow which cling with bare support 

 to the steeply pitching mountain walls, in places along some of the nar- 

 rowest parts of the pass. The appalling catastrophe of April, 1898, 

 which caused the loss of sixty-three lives, and followed closely upon 

 an earlier event of like nature, had its seat in the steep, rocky ledges 

 of the east wall between Sheep Camp and the Scales. It is claimed 

 that the Indians along the trail clearly foresaw the impending event, 

 and announced it in unmistakable language, but their warnings were 

 allowed to go unheeded. They themselves did not make the traverse 

 on that day. The minor disaster of the following December (9th), 

 when but six lives were sacrificed, took place on the steep declivity 

 which faces Crater Lake, not far from the service house of the Chil- 

 koot Pass Aerial Tramway Company. Here the mountain face is 

 very precipitous and gives but insecure lodgment to the snow. The 

 Indians carefully watch all natural signals and urge a rapid journey. 

 However useful these trails may have been in the past, how well or 

 how indifferently they may have met the wants of the pioneers of 

 1897 and 1898, they are destined before long to be thrown into that 

 same obscurity which they held when the Indians and a few adventur- 

 ous trappers and traders alone made use of them as avenues of com- 

 munication between the inner and outer worlds. The advance of the 

 iron horse is now an assured fact, and the Pacific and Arctic Railway, 

 whose construction is engineered by some of the most experienced 

 mechanical talent of Great Britain and America, will minister before 

 many months not alone to the professional interlopers in the new land, 



