Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/16

6 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 themselves 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