July 9, 1898.J 
clearer and sweeter than other topics, and lasts longer. 
Dreamed about or in the reality it is of never ending in- 
terest, and there is no rod on the Canachagala trail 
where one might not study a life, or a death, or think 
philosophy by the yard. 
In the earliest days now remembered it was no un- 
common thing to hear the wolves on their howling race 
for prey. The fearsome print of the panther's paw was 
often found in the damp places at spring sides, a pad 
sometimes just crumbling into the hoof-print of a deer 
—that was thrilling. The trail to the lake has been 
changed much of late. A year or so ago the State Canal 
Commissioners decided to increase the size of the State 
reservoirs. The dams of Canachagala Lake were to be 
raised 5ft. and a gang of men was needed. To house 
the men a camp had to be built, and that meant lumber 
and a wagon road. The old trail, already slashed and 
mangled, was cut out almost entirely by the Govern- 
ment road to the lake. It is now as rough and muddy 
a road as one can think of, almost. It is by no means as 
inviting to the pack carriers as the old trail, yet it is still 
the Canachagala trail. Deer and other game were 
driven away by the human operations thereabouts, but 
now that the road is closed to human trafficking their 
tracks may again be seen by the flocking blue jays in 
the leaf-strewn woods road should the birds care to 
look. They may even see the animals themselves. Be- 
yond the lake, although there was much lumbering ear- 
ned on there, a few years back, the old camps have been 
destroyed, and the little "camp wood" clearings about 
their sites are growing rapidly into second growth, as 
excellent deer browse and cover. No woodsman ever 
yet passed by day over the river side of the trail with- 
out seeing the signs and traces of game that thrill. 
A strange and motley array of people has passed over 
the trail, ranging all the way from students of nature to 
purely business men, from children to the sick and aged, 
and every kind of garb, almost, has been worn over it 
too— the man who because his clothes had been lost 
somehow had to come out in a deerskin clout, and the 
other one who wore patent leather shoes and a silk hat, 
having started on the spur of the moment, are still told 
about. The fanciest of hunting rigs, from gold mounted 
rifles to moose skin hunting boots, as well as the loud- 
colored mackinaw flannels, with a deer tallowed repeat- 
er, and everything between, have astonished the red 
squirrels into the hastiest of scamperings and most stut- 
tering of protests. 
There is no hour of the day or night that has not 
found men creeping through "The Windfall," or picking 
their way feet first along the packed beaten way. Men 
these were who had received word of sick ones at 
home, or had news of tragic import to carry in. Some- 
times it was to catch trains. Always, however, it was 
a trip of interest, occupying the tramper's closest atten- 
tion by day or night. 
There were voices along the trail, too, always. Some- 
times the commanding of a deadly weapon, of a gun or 
rifle, mellowing away through the hawk's scream, the 
hound's bay and man's shout to the veery's dreamland 
cry at night, and the lisping sob of the leaves and 
tongues of roots and charred fagots, the heel marks of 
tongues of roots and charred fagots, the hell marks of 
boots and traceries of insects, the chips and signs left 
to lie in silence, unseen often, but each with a volume to 
tell of adventure in one way or another, were a listener 
ready. Near the end of the trail is a tree through which 
a bullet once passed. It was this bullet that killed young 
Pell a few years back. A man — maybe several men, 
trappers and the like — was once looking for this trail 
on the mountain near by, but he never found it. A 
wanderer in the spring came upon a few traps, well 
rusted, near by was a little axe, and then he found a 
rifle. A little further, beside a log, were the marten 
and fox knawed bones of a man. In the winter snow 
the man had been lost and then died. His bones were 
carried down the trail to his home. 
Who can tell of the venison and fish that were carried 
over this trail? One party, I remember, of sixteen, each 
man of whom brought out a pack load of say 6olbs. — half 
a ton of jerked venison, besides the venison that never 
came, not even as dog bone and tissue, but lay under 
the trees, food for beetles and bears. Men who trod 
that trail alone killed — who will ventm-c to put high 
enough the number of deer? But it was worth the 
health it gave to the men who found not alone health, 
but life there, whatever the slaughter of game. 
And trophies; Charlie Thomas', George Squires', Fred 
Jones', Dye's and my own — all these deer horns. The 
mouldy moose horn Fred Jones picked up, and which 
now hangs at Will Light's. That strange doe skin Wijl 
Miller killed at the Natural Dam one fall — a doe in the 
fall coat, but red as the reddest summer buck. The lop- 
sided head — spike on one side and five point on the other 
— the great angular thing killed by a New York broker; 
loads of skins and furs, rocks that were the hope of 
gold and silver seekers — and best of all, woods lore to 
last a century, came to remind people. 
Curiously enough, besides all sorts of weapons, foods, 
drinks, garments and camp ware in general that have 
gone over the trail, some few books have found their 
way to camps at the end of it. Only last year I found 
half a dozen novels in one new camp, and scraps of 
poetry were to be read on the peeled logs, written with 
pencil, as if somebody had carried a few book lines 
in his head. Sometimes a little original rhyming was 
done, and it seemed as if the bluejays had learned them 
"by heart." There never is a lack of names or initials 
carved into the bark of trees, and I have seen deer hair 
hanging on the, splinters of such carving — that deer had 
been rubbing it in. 
The trails that cross the man trail — they too deserve 
attention, greater attention maybe than seventeen men 
trails should receive. But this is the story of what men 
followed, and only a line can be given to the others. 
Overhead the migrating birds, "setting their course by 
the mountains" — not blazed saplings — passed on their way- 
north or south; squirrels in the tree branches, and on 
the ground the deer, rabbits, and the mice running, or 
walking, always in the same footsteps, the easiest courses 
to given points, left more or less plainly marked and 
followable paths, and they cross the man trail all along 
its course, sometimes even follow it aways, but it was 
woe when the wild tribes disputed the right of way 
with the tamed! 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Perhaps now that none is to be allowed to follow the 
old trail any more it will grow up and become forgot- 
ten, something for mythologists to sit on. But until 
certain many of the now living die, nightly there will 
pass over it beings for whom the trespass laws have no 
terrors, and though the watcher at North Lake wear the 
cap of invisibility and the shoes of silence, he will never 
catch them, for what gamekeeper will venture to try 
guarding dreamland? 
At any event it is the hope of every honest lover of the 
woods that never again will an ill-gotten bit of meat 
come over that trail, that neither the bay of hound nor 
man's voice seeking any injustice will ever disturb the 
serenity of those forests. Enough bloody tragedies have 
been enacted there to let it now be said that they arc now 
baptized as peace. The wrongs of the past are not all 
irremediable. That some will be there is no doubt, and 
gracefully, too, before it is too late. A right and just 
relation between man and man and man and beast then- 
is bound to be sooner or later, but especially when they 
meet in the shade of the balsam, spruce and birch, sung 
to by all the woods birds, by all voices there, their own 
joining in the chorus. Raymond S. Spears. 
New York City. 
Yukon Notes.-VIIL 
History of the White Pass Route, 
It had taken our party nearly two months of inces- 
sant labor, working on the average five horses daily, to 
pack across supplies for two men to Lake Bennett, for- 
ty-five miles from Skagway, and also advance the sup- 
plies of the other three members of the party to the 
cache, where Herrington and Baskerville built a shack 
and wintered, fifteen miles from salt water and about 
five from Summit Lake. At the start our outfit in the 
aggregate weighed upward of 8,ooolbs. Of this less than 
2.oooIbs. reached Lake Bennett last October, including 
about i,50olbs. of food. And yet this showing, barren 
as it is, was far above the average. Hundreds of men win- 
tered on the trail who had landed weeks before our 
arrival, and of those who started at the same time we 
did not one in a score succeeded in getting over the 
pass before the lakes closed. 
Almost the only men who got through to Dawson, 
starting on equal terms with our party, were those who 
crossed Chilcoot Pass. In general terms, the 4,400 per- 
ON THE TRAIL. 
From sketch by J, B. Burnham. 
sons who by actual count passed Fort Selkirk en route 
for the gold fields in 1897 either landed in Skagway late 
in July or early in August, before the season ot heaviest 
rains, or else went in over the Indian route. 
The White Pass trail was one of the great swindles 
of the century. It was systematically boomed through 
the newspapers in the interests of a land and railroad 
company who had no immediate advantage to gain, and 
who caused the public incalculable suffering and loss be- 
cause they were afraid their interests would be side- 
tracked if they allowed the first great rush of miners to 
pass by and go in over another route. This company 
had in its employ promoters who went so far as to give 
to the newspapers statements that a wagon road across 
the pass was nearing completion, and would be open for 
travel by September. The horse trail, it was declared 
was excellent and passible by loaded pack trains in a 
day. Its length was stated to be less than thirty miles 
and grades were said to be easy and footing good The 
height of land was said to be 1,000ft. lower than the 
terrible Chi coot summit, and many alluring rumors re- 
garding a shorter water route to Dawson via Tootshai 
-Lake were circulated. 
The truth of the matter is that at the time the boom- 
ers were most industriously at work advertising the Ska<*- 
JEX r T% J efe WaS u n ? trail across the P a « at all, and 
that all efforts were being concentrated in the endeavor 
to discover that which did not exist— a feasible route to 
Tagish via Tootshai Lake. 
A short wagon road had been built at Skagway which 
was really little more than a main street for the pros- 
pective town, and from the terminus of that to the sum- 
mit a trail had been opened, which was merely a make- 
shift for getting in supplies to the exploring party Onlv 
the trees and bush had been cleared away, and the foot- 
ing was over untouched rocks and quagmires 
Skagway had a better harbor than Dyea at the en- 
trance to Chilcoot Pass, and the difficulties of the lat- 
ter were already well known. Naturally the reported 
advantages of White Pass were alluring. And so it hap- 
pened that nine out of ten men at the last moment de- 
cided to go in by way of the new route. The miners 
figured that $20 expended for a horse in Seattle $^>o 
for freight, and $20 for feed would put them through 
with an outfit in two or three weeks. Many brought 
knockdown boats, thinking it would be an easy task 
to pack them over the trail, which they believed to 
exist as reported. Later these boats went to build houses 
along the trail, or were burned for firewood. 
£3 
When the vanguard of the Argonauts crossed the sum- 
mit of White Pass, the trail, which they bad followed 
that far with difficulty, gave out altogether, and they 
had to be their own explorers and road builders. Pas- 
sengers from the Queen and Mexico fell to with a will, 
and finding that the Tootshai route ended among wild 
canons in a towering mountain range, they resolved to 
make the best of a hard matter and effect a juncture with 
the almost forgotten Chilcoot trail. They could not 
take the time to pick the best and shortest route but 
struck westward at a venture through wooded plateau 
country, between snow-clad ranges. The men marking 
out the hue and those chopping and clearing the way 
were never a hundred yards apart, and the pack horses 
followed directly m their wake. Eventually they reached 
Lake Linderman and paralleled the old route for three 
or four miles to Bennett. 
With the passage of subsequent parties the trail, which 
had never been good, grew steadily worse. The crust 
of sloughs which had supported the first horses that 
passed over broke through, and no bottom could be 
found. The fall rains washed the surface soil from the 
rocky parts of the trail and made them slippery and 
dangerous, while corduroy that had been put in in 
places was floated off, and fords became impossible for 
several days at a time. The 1st of September found 3.000 
horses working on the trail, and to its natural diffi- 
culties was added the vexatious delay incident to the 
movement of the long columns advancing in single file 
To reach the 2.600ft. height of land the trail crossed 
five mountains, and climbed an estimated aggregate of 
12,000ft. It swung round almost in a semicircle, and 
if we imagine a great letter D with the straight vertical 
line representing the Chilcoot trail and the curved line 
the Skagway trail, we have a fair idea of the relative posi- 
tions and lengths of the two main gatewavs to the up- 
per Yukon. 
Freighting on the Chain of Lakes. 
Just bevond the summit of Chilcoot Pass are three 
glacial lakes, Crater, Long and Deep lakes, and the chain 
is duplicated jn White Pass by Summit, Middle and 
Shallow lakes. The White Pass chain affords twelve 
miles of navigation, with a total of something less than 
^• 0 , !l ul ^ S , of Ponging. the carry between Summit and 
Middle lakes being much the longest. The last four 
days m August the Skagway trail was closed to permit 
a hopeless effort at improvement. Small groups of 
men with loaded rifles stood guard at intervals and 
effectually checked all attempts at packing, in some 
cases not even permitting men to get feed tor starving 
horses. Foot passengers were held up and made to work- 
by these press gangs, and so much bad blood was en- 
gendered by this arbitrary action that it is surprising 
there was no blood shed. 
McKercher, Baskerville and Sheriff, of our party vol- 
unteered for work on the road, and I put in the best 
part of two days assisting in the work of leveling some 
of the worst boulders on the hog back mountain with 
dynamite. During this period I managed to get time to 
go over to the chain of lakes and saw at once that they 
would give us a big lift on our journey, with the aid 
wu" Ur T toldlng boats ' In com P an y with Hepburn, the 
White Horse Rapids pilot, who was thinking of putting 
scows on the chain for freighting, I looked out a practi- 
cal horse route from the main trail, which did not then 
approach nearer than a mile to Summit Lake, ai.u hav- 
ing satisfied myself that horses could be gotten across I 
returned to camp. At the first opportunity we packed 
over four boats, and during the three following weeks 
most of my time was spent freighting from the head of 
Summ.tt Lake to the foot of Shallow Lake with a 
tandem team of two boats on each side the long port- 
age. My plan was to carry a large amount of goods 
across these lakes for persons who agreed in exchange to 
pack a small amount for us from our canm to Sum- 
mit Lake. In this way we often had other men working 
for us, and the size of our pack train was for all in- 
tents and purposes increased. 
I shall never forget those weeks of storm and rain 
among the barren mountains of the c< ast range In 
occasional intervals of clear weather the eye was often 
puzzled to differentiate between the snowy Tootshai 
range and low lying cloud masses that rivaled each other 
tor snowy whiteness. 
In stormy weather eternity sat brooding with death- 
less serenity upon the hoary faces of snow-capped, 
glacier clothed pinnacles seen towering high overhead 
through rifts in the driving mist. 
Summit Lake in particular was rarely free from fog. 
It is a peculiarly shaped lake, six miles long and never 
more than half a mile broad. In places the channel is 
obstructed by pinnacly islands of broken reck, and else- 
where the lake bed is driven into long narrow' ami!,' 
rounding north and south, parallel with the general direc- 
tion of the main body. These arms are often blind chan- 
nels, and in foggy weather it requires a clear head and 
a good knowledge of the lake to keep from being lost 
among them. Near the lower end of the lake on the east 
side is a bay from which branch off four ot these chan- ' 
nels like the fingers of a hand, with an aggregate shore 
line of a number of miles. The opposite side of the lake 
here is exposed to the prevailing south wind, which has a 
straight sweep of nearly five miles, resulting in a very 
ugly sea. 
It was necessary to keep off this dangerous lee shore 
but this involved the crossing of the bay alluded to, and 
at times when the fog was so dense that the stern of 'your 
boat was almost lost in the gloom it was no easy mat- 
ter to lay one's course so as to hit the partictdar point 
with the semi-submerged "nigger head" rock at the end 
that marked the main channel of the lake. 
One of the fiord-like passages diverging from this bay 
could be traversed with an unloaded boat, but the pas- 
sage of heavy craft was checked by submerged rocks 
half a mile from either end. 
Returning light one afternoon, I took advantage of 
this channel to avoid the wind and waves of the lake and 
just above the submerged barrier came upon two men 
who were crouching very disconsolately over a puny 
fire of roots, with their boat drawn up alongside on the 
rocks. They hailed me and wanted to know where they 
were. They had spent the best part of a day in follow- 
ing blind channels, and were afraid to round with their 
