ly grateful, for the
Skagway River roared savagely under our feet, while on either side of
the roadway at other points I could see abysses of mud which, in the
growing darkness, were sufficiently menacing.

Our course was a northerly one. We were ascending the ever narrowing
canyon of the river at a gentle grade, with snowy mountains in vista.
We arrived at White Pass at about ten o'clock at night. A little
town is springing up there, confident of being an important station
on the railroad which was already built to that point.

Thus far the journey had been easy and simple, but immediately after
leaving White Pass we entered upon an exceedingly stony road, filled
with sharp rock which had been blasted from the railway above us.
Upon reaching the end of the wagon road, and entering upon the trail,
we came upon the Way of Death. The waters reeked with carrion. The
breeze was the breath of carrion, and all nature was made indecent
and disgusting by the presence of carcasses. Within the distance of
fifteen miles we passed more than two thousand dead horses. It was a
cruel land, a land filled with the record of men's merciless greed.
Nature herself was cold, majestic, and grand. The trail rough, hard,
and rocky. The horses labored hard under their heavy burdens, though
the floor they trod was always firm.

Just at the summit in the gray mist, where a bulbous granite ridge
cut blackly and lonesomely against the sky, we overtook a flock of
turkeys being driven by a one-armed man with a singularly appropriate
Scotch cap on his head. The birds sat on the bleak gray rocks in the
gathering dusk with the suggestion of being utterly at the end of the
world. Their feathers were blown awry by the merciless wind and they
looked weary, disconsolate, and bewildered. Their faint, sad gobbling
was like the talk of sick people lost in a desert. They were on their
way to Dawson City to their death and they seemed to know it.

We camped at the Halfway House, a big tent surrounded by the most
diabolical landscape of high peaks lost in mist, with near-by slopes
of gray rocks scantily covered with yellow-green grass. All was bare,
wild, desolate, and drear. The wind continued to whirl down over the
divide, carrying torn gray masses of vapor which cast a gloomy half
light across the gruesome little meadow covered with rotting
carcasses and crates of bones which filled the air with odor of
disease and death.

Within the tent, which flopped