Trails of the Gold Hunters in Northern Seas and on Mountain Passes. Five Passes to the Yukon Gold Fields. John Muir\u27s Letter on the Condition of the Trails. The Best Route Next Spring Will Be by the Way of Dyea. Skagway Pronounced the Worst, in Spite of Attempted Road-Building. Bread for Prospectors. As Well Take Drugs to Heaven as Medicines to Alaska, Says the Experienced Traveler.

M ..ext men, gging. . .0 death di -ied on the one ashore? . Neilson, almost .mteered. Over the with the line about tipped on the jagged xkers tossed him. Lost Jhe wreck could hear his ivened, and they thought: c became taut, and a shout -.em that brave Neilson was .1 line a big four-inch hawser cried the Captain above the Neilson pulled, and soon all n the beach. The men rescued , little progress. Of the three other southern passes at the head of Lynn canal, the middle one, called the Dyea or Chilcoot, though rough and difficult, especially near the summit, is nevertheless under present conditions the best for miners, and the east- most, called the Skaguay or White pass, is the worst. The Chilkat, at the head of the west branch of the canal, is the best for cattle and horses. Several droves of beef cattle have been driven in this way to the mines or to some point on the river near the mines, growing fat on the grassy plains and hills by the way. The summit of the pass is about 4,500 feet above the sea. As early. as the year 1891 Glave and Dalton led packed horses over it and thus escaped the extortionate charges aud tantalizing delays of the Indian packers. This pass has been traveled from time immemorial by the Coast Indians in their trade with the tribes of the interior. A road with easy grades may be made through it from deep water to the heart of the mining country all the way by land, and kept open both winter and summer for pack animals and horse, dog and reindeer teams. The Chilcoot is the shortest of all the passes, the distance from tide water to the navigable waters of the Yukon being but little more than twenty- two miles in a straight line. Nearly all of the prospectors and miners who have entered the Yukon basin during the last seventeen years have gone in by this old Indian pass. The summit is only about 3,500 feet above sea level. The eastmost of the three, the now famous White pass, was named by the well-known surveyor Ogilvie for the Hon. Thomas White, Canadian Minister of the Interior. Though the lowest, it is as yet the worst of all the traveled passes, simply because no fairly passable trail has been made through it. Nevertheless, strange to say, most of the Yukon crowd are trying to go in this way. Here at the end of August I saw- perhaps from three to four thousand gold seekers with about two thousand horses, mules and oxen stalled and baffled at the foot of the half-made or less than half-made trail leading over muddy, rocky hills to the summit. These adventurers, with more energy than knowledge, were struggling like salmon in a bowldery pool at the foot of a fall. The Skaguay fiat is a water-washed bed of moraine material densely forested with spruce, birch, alder and cottonwood extending back about five miles from the beach and from side to side of the grand gap in the mountains forming the pass. Through this level forest a wagon road has been cut to the foot of the mountains, along which last month I saw the multitude streaming. Notwithstanding the long-continued rain, it was only moderately muddy on account of the sandiness of the ground, but rough and hillocky with roots and stumps, which kept the pack animals dodging from side to side and upset many a curious wheelbarrow and truck. Dwarf cornel with whorled leaves and beautiful red berries and fresh fern fronds fringed the wheel ruts, while the tall trees, airy and graceful, stood guard on either side. A few rods from the track the woods were purely wild, while the mountains ahead, and on either hand, laden with ice and snow, look down out of the cool sky and the Skaguay river goes roaring to the sea. No doubt a road with easy grades will be built across the summit of this naturally J good pass from the head of the flat along the j course of the river, but expensive blasting , and, filling will be required where the river brushes against precipices. These difflcul- i ties drove the hurried trailmakers on to the j slopes of the mountains, and rocky taluses lying against the cliffs. When dry and j bare these rough, angular taluses are hard t enough to cross for either men or animals j laden with awkward, shifting packs; but t when they are tangled with bushes and the j spaces between the bowlders are filled with. , soft muck the difficulty is immensely in- \ creased. Across such rooty, brushy mire c and\u27huvvlder slopes the White pass trail lie.- When first blazed through the new trail did* not seem so bad. The fallen leaves of centuries of growth from birch, alder, spruce, cottonwood and pine collected in the hollow spaces between the bowlders and changed into slushy humus by the copious rains, was covered by a sod of mosses and huckleberry bushes, which hid the black mire and seemed kindly to level the way. Sections were cut out of obstructing fallen trunks and rolled aside, the brush and overleaning branches cleared off and the new gold-way, the best in Alaska was hastily declared open; and then the first grand spluttering, jostling, floundering onrush began. Everybody tried to be the first, and most everybody got stuck ere the first rough mile was passed. Of course, the tender, mossy sod over the humus accumulations was broken by the feet of the first animals that passed over them. The mosses and huckleberry bushes were trodden down and the inky humus welled up, fluent and puddly and scarce firm-enough to support a fly. Greatly to their surprise, these hardy, bespattered pioneers found the craggy Alaska hillslopes about as much bog as rock—a slobbery bog between every three or four bowlders. If the bottoms of the miserable puddles were only level they might be easily wallowed through; but they are far from level. Most of them have slanting or hopper-shaped sides on which the f et of animals glint and slide, and oftentimes they get caught in hidden holes between the rocks, and in their efforts to free themselves some of them broke their legs, and others, though uninjured, had to be dragged out with ropes. Many of these small interbowlder bogs are barely big enough to take in one animal at a time; others accommodate a dozen or more with their masters, making a wild, discouraging mess on which the beautiful trees and flowers look calmly down. After the worst spots were corduroyed and the trail again was declared open a few parties with animals lightly loaded and led by experienced mountaineers who were on the front of the crowd got through, but the trail was quickly blockaded again by the swarming inexperienced throng, many of whom had never before seen a trail. Sections of the corduroy among the bowlders not well pinned down broke loose, and bits of bog judged passable made wrecks here and there, and\u27a few unfortunate animals were killed. Then another miners\u27 meeting was held, more volunteers called and more tolls levied. New patches of corduroy were made and old bits mended, and thus the wild struggle was going on when I left Skaguay. We are all in bondage to bread. If only stomachs could be abolished how free to wander we would be! Alaska is far from being a desert. Good hunters, skilled in woodcraft, may with guns and fish-hooks go all over the Yukon basin for years without any drawback of provisions, living on the country free as a bird. Besides berries and wild vegetables in their season, ptarmigan —Nature\u27s chickens—abound on the open plains and hillsides, fish in most of the streams, deer, mountain sheep, caribou and moose on the mountains and tundras. But gold-hunting and game-hunting go not on well together. Little or no dependence is to be placed on game by the miner. Nevertheless, most inexperienced travelers carry too much. From nearly every 1,500- pound pack that I saw this summer at least 500 pounds could have been got rid of as worse than useless. As well put the devil in your pack as a case of yeast powders. It is in every way a hard case. It leads straight to dyspepsia. It will rub the skin off your shoulders and eat the skin of your stomach—dissolve or inflame it, as if it were lye, slowly but surely. Not in a day or week will its deadly work be made manifest, for it works insidiously, like\u27dFry- rot in trees. ,-, Good bread on which your climbing\u27 and digging depends, may be made direct from the fiour-sack, with a little salt and water stirred in. After the dough is worked to the required firmness squeeze it into thin cakes about the size of ship biscuits, throw them on hot coals raked from the heart of your camp fire, turn them before they begin to burn, and when firm enough set them on edge to be toasted until thoroughly baked through. : Or if the weather is bad. TO TO THE YUKON 0 FIELDS. John Muir\u27s Letter on the Condition of the Trails. The Best Route Next Spring Will Bi by the Way of Dyea. Skaguay Pronounced the Worsts in Spite of Attempted Road-Building. BREAD FOR PROSPECTORS As Well Take Drugs to Heaven as Medicines to Alaska, Says the Experienced Traveler. or you are camped in a boggy place, cut a stick about the size of a whip-handle, of birch, pine, spruce, Cottonwood or willow, according to the flavor desired, and sharpen it, squeeze out a handful of dough, coil it in a thin spiral around the stick and set it upright in the ground at baking distance from the fire, giving it a quarter turn from time to time until the bread spiral is thoroughly baked and browned all around. Wholesome bread may be quickly made in this way in any kind of weather, with the flavor of sunny wheat fields in it, and that of the stick on which it is baked; while the losses from the smearing of pans, and the soggy heart of thick loaves and dampers that must be thrown away, are avoided. If you must have your bread old-fashioned and light- bloated into a fluffy mass full of airholes- then instead of a heavy case of powders take a quarter-ounce cake of baker\u27s compressed yeast to start with, and after each baking put a handful of the fermented dough into the flour-sack and with this store you may go on raising cerealian billows as long as you like. Even medicine chests may be found in Yukon packs. The idea of carrying medicine to Alaska, where all the wilderness is medicine! As well take drugs to heaven. With a little tea and sugar, take plenty of flour, beans, rice, dried fruit and warm clothing; and forget and leave behind as much of everything else as you can. Be thoughtful about your fet. Try to bathe them three or four times a day, and clothe them with the utmost care. Loose-fitting, thick and perfectly dry footwear Is required. Few know what 50 degrees below zero means to the toes. Of course you will learn, but your frost lessons may be costly, making yon a cripple for life. Frost-bite among the natives of Siberia and Alaska is rare, he- cause all who did not know how to clothes are dead.https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/1238/thumbnail.jp