LIFE ON A YUKON TRAIL 



461 



ONLY TWO-WHEELED VEHICLE SEEN ON TESLIN TRAIL 



to use the technical name of these vehicles, were fashioned in 

 the wilderness, with only an ax and whipsaw as instruments of 

 construction. Thongs of buckskin bound the parts together, 

 nails being reserved for future use in boat-building. Where the 

 center of gravity of these " go-devils " was low, two men could 

 balance a load of 500 or 600 pounds in the roughest places. 



Men now appeared whose faces were familiar. They were 

 men whom we had passed on the river more than three months 

 before. These belated wayfarers had an exceedingly rough ap- 

 pearance. The venture seemed to have particularly attracted 

 the '* bronze beards " and " barbarossas." A tangle of long hair, 

 worn in portieres over the ears, and an unkempt, bushy beard, 

 commonly of a reddish hue, half concealed, but also strongly re- 

 vealed in all their stern aspects, faces which bore the sad traces 

 of hardships, of deprivations, of bitter disappointments. Nearly 

 all had tales of losses of provisions through the ice, of losses of 

 animals from starvation, of exorbitant transportation rates over 

 distances which they had hoped to traverse without financial 



