Until a few years ago the popular conception of Alaska was a vast country sealed against the efforts of civilisation by impenetrable barriers of snow and ice, presenting such a dismal outlook as to daunt the most intrepid spirits. But to-day quite a different impression prevails. Alaska is considered a coming country, although it rests on either side of the invisible line denoting the Arctic circle. It is a vast mineral storehouse, the lofty mountains containing rich deposits of all the valuable minerals of commerce, while the dales nestling among the peaks have been found to be of wonderful fertility and capable of producing a wealth of agricultural produce. One might regard the possibility of raising wheat and hay in that northern clime as a mere phantasy, but I have seen cereals and hay cut in those valleys which compare very favourably in quality with the similar products grown in the great agricultural belts of the United States and Canada.

The fact is that the interior, far from being locked the whole year round in a temperature hovering around, or many degrees below, zero, has extremes of heat and cold. In the winter the snow envelops the ground to a depth of several feet, and the mercury descends to 40 or 50 degrees below zero, but in the summer the thermometer registers temperatures of 80 and 90 degrees. While the winter grips the country for nearly two-thirds of the year, the summer barely lasts 100 days. But what a summer it is! The sun shines from a cloudless sky the whole time, and for some twenty hours throughout the day. Consequently it is possible to sow and to harvest the crops within 80 days.

Along the coast extremely cold weather scarcely ever is experienced. The conditions, in fact, are very similar to those prevailing in Scandinavia. The coast-line of the latter country is bathed by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream: the coast-line of Alaska is swept by the warm breezes of the Japanese chinook wind blowing off the Pacific.

Yet popular fallacy resulted in the country being regarded as a closed book, and the possibility of a railway ever securing sufficient traffic to justify its existence was ridiculed to scorn twenty years ago. But the past two decades have witnessed strange developments. The railway engineer has penetrated the country, and to-day there is a scene of great activity to connect the remarkable discoveries of metals among the mountains with convenient points of shipment along the coast.

It was the discovery of gold, and the subsequent rush to the “Klondike,” that brought about the unlocking of Alaska, and which was responsible for bringing a country of 591,000 square miles within the purview of the railway-builder. A rude collection of timber shacks and tents sprung up like mushrooms on a little indent on the seashore, and to-day is a healthy, prosperous town and port—Skaguay. From this point the daring spirits infected with the “yellow fever” pushed inland over the gaunt, snow-clad mountains to the “fields,” enduring privations untold and experiences that make the blood run cold in order to gain the new Eldorado. The trail was blazed with the bleached bones of animals and pioneers eager to be first on the spot. Of roads there were none—there was not even a rough path. Those early seekers had to tread one with their own feet.

No sooner had the first reports concerning the discoveries of gold at Dawson trickled through, to be substantiated by subsequent investigations, than the possibility of building a railway from the coast to the gold-fields, in order to lift the men over the most difficult and hazardous part of the journey, was discussed. Indeed, among one of the earliest bands which trailed across the Chilkoot Pass in a thick black line were one or two surveyors spying out the general characteristics of the country. Less than two years after the excitement first flared up the plans for a line 112 miles in length, extending practically through unknown country, had been prepared. One end of the line rested on the seashore at Skaguay, while the other reposed at White Horse, near Lake Lebarge, where communication was effected with the wonderful inland waterway of the country, the river Yukon. It was not a long railway in comparison with other great systems of the world, but it was a highly ambitious enterprise, for it was destined to lift man and freight over the most terrible part of the country, the coast range which had been the grave of scores of fortune-hunters.

The prime mover in this undertaking was an accomplished engineer who is quite at home in such inhospitable territory. He was sanguine of its financial success, but when he approached American financiers for support he was laughed to scorn. But this man was not to be cast down so easily. Foiled in his efforts to enlist the practical sympathy of his own countrymen, he came to London and sought British assistance, for in the matter of railway pioneering the British financier is probably the greatest plunger. He required roughly £1,000,000, or $5,000,000, and what was more, he secured it. The firmness and boldness with which the capitalists of London supported what was regarded as a hare-brained scheme astonished the American financial world. The ultimate success of the enterprise, however, was even more surprising to them, and they more than regretted their refusal to support the undertaking when it was originally laid before them. One eminent authority belaboured his compatriots soundly for their lack of foresight and initiative, and aptly remarked, “As long as the British know how to grasp the trade of the world, when and where it is most profitable, they have no immediate cause to worry about German and American competition.”

Armed with the requisite cash resources, the projector lost no time. He hurried back to Alaska and commenced his attack upon the towering mountain chain. His arrival in “shack-town” with an efficient staff and materials signalised the transition of Skaguay from a tumbledown, disreputable collection of shanties into an important, well-built port.

The engineer realised only too well that he had a desperate task confronting him. The maps and reports of the territory he intended to traverse were found to be absolutely unreliable. He discarded the whole lot and advised his own survey expeditions to prepare their own cartographical guides. Five surveys were run, and five alternate routes for the line between the coast and White Horse were completed before selection was made definitely.

Then the rock and earth commenced to fly. There was a call for 5000 men. Skaguay was the starting-point, the first spadeful of earth being turned near the water’s edge. A narrow gauge—three feet—was adopted as being more economical to build, while from the traffic point of view it was considered to be more than adequate. As the small gangs of men armed with pick-axes and shovels advanced up the main street of the town in embryo, defining the grade, the enthusiasm knew no bounds. It was an occasion for a frantic outburst of revelry. The conquest of the dreaded White Pass had commenced: the most northerly railway on the American continent was under way; and the time was not far distant when the miners would be able to pass from coast to gold-fields with no more danger or discomfort than attends one who travels from London to Scotland or from New York to Chicago.

For the first five miles the going was easy, as the line was plotted through practically level country with only a slight ascent in order to strike the mountains at a convenient point. Two months after the first sod was turned down by the waterside this section was completed and opened for traffic, an event which was not permitted to pass by without another outbreak of jubilation.

The feature that most astonished the inhabitants, however, was the vigour with which the presiding genius pushed his enterprise forward. The gold rush was at its height, and hundreds of new arrivals poured into Skaguay from every arriving boat. One and all were bound for the diggings, and they proceeded as far as possible over the railway, to continue a wearisome toil afoot from the railhead. To these men the completion of the line meant more than one can realise from a distance. That plod over the mountain crest through a pass which is so steep that it appeared to lean back was heroic.

As the engineer penetrated the mountains his task became more exacting, perilous, and the pace of the advance eased up appreciably. There was no dearth of labour, for new arrivals, not having the wherewithal to gain the gold region, or others who, having ventured there to meet only with misfortune and ill-luck, were only too glad to seize the opportunity to earn a good day’s pay on the building of the White Pass & Yukon railway, as it is called.

The engineer decided to keep his grades as easy as possible, but during the course of 15 miles through the mountains he found very quickly that this was no easy matter. He had to gain the summit of the pass, an altitude of 2,888 feet, in this distance, and it was found quite hopeless without a climb of 1 in 15. Much of the country lying in his path never had been trodden by man. Below the snow-line it was covered thickly with virgin forest, tangled undergrowth and dead-fall piled up to a tremendous height, through which the men had to axe their way at a snail’s pace. Above the line where timber ceased to thrive cliffs rose up sheer, with their faces so polished by the Arctic gales and weather as to be as slippery as ice and affording no foothold whatever. In order that the workmen might gain a purchase for the wielding of their tools, huge logs were slung down from convenient heights, held in position by massive chains attached to iron dogs driven into the rock, and on this flimsy foothold the men were compelled to prosecute their tasks as best they could.

One of the most complex difficulties was in regard to the bringing up of provisions and stores for the men, and the requisite material for the railway. The base of supplies was over 1000 miles away, every ounce of necessities having to be brought up by water from Seattle or Vancouver. The little army was cut off entirely from the outside world, news of which could be gleaned only when a boat called at Skaguay. The absence of telegraphic communication was a deficiency which was felt the most sorely. The post, intermittent and uncertain, as there was no regular service, was the sole vehicle of communication. Consequently extreme care had to be observed to preserve a continuous stream of the material required. The omission of this or that entailed a delay of anything from ten days upwards.

At one point a lofty granite tooth 70 feet wide and 20 feet thick sheered up in front of the engineer to a height of 120 feet. He neither attempted to go round nor through the obstacle. He brought up a squad of expert drillers, and soon they were engaged in honeycombing the base of the cliff with deep holes. Charges of explosives were rammed home, and when detonated the whole crag, a crumbling mass of rock, rattled down into the ravine. The pedestal of this cliff was then smoothed off, and thereon the sleepers and metals were laid.

By dint of prodigious effort, continued without intermission both day and night the whole week through, without even a respite for Sundays, the engineer succeeded in carrying the railway forward for a distance of 40 miles and over the summit of the pass in a single season. Such an achievement in the face of the abnormal difficulties encountered, in such a short space of time, was indeed memorable.

Satisfied with this result, the engineer called a halt. His men were in dire need of rest, and as there was no object in exposing them unduly to the rigours of the terrible winter now that the back of the task had been broken, constructional work was suspended for a few months. But it was not a period of complete inactivity. He had planned his work for the following summer, and during the winter months he pressed the snow-covered country into service for the erection of his constructional camps, the disposition of building material, provisions and stores at convenient points over a long distance ahead.

One cannot help admiring the perspicacity of the man identified with this peculiar enterprise. When he sought financial assistance to further his scheme he argued that directly the railway had negotiated the summit, remunerative traffic would develop. So it proved. Confident in these anticipations, the guiding hand had ordered considerable rolling-stock to be hurried to Skaguay while his graders were forcing their way to the summit, and when the pass was overcome a service was inaugurated.

Yet it is doubtful if the engineer scarcely expected the results that were experienced. The adequacy of his rolling-stock over the first 40 miles was tested to breaking point. The pack-trail over the pass was abandoned as quickly as a candle is extinguished by a gust of wind when the first train was announced. The miners braved the elements, pitiless cold and dazzling snow, no longer. From the railway to-day one can still see decaying evidences of a bygone bustle and activity attending the trek of the first prospectors and pioneers to the Klondike in the falling shacks and huts scattered along the trail, which before the advent of the iron horse were centres of life and revelry, but which to-day are wrapped in forlorn desolation. Scarcely a person enters or even passes their doors now.

So soon as the winter broke, the engineer brought his forces to the front once more. The line skirts Lake Bennett. White Horse, on the head waters of the Yukon, some 72 miles ahead, was the objective, and the engineer was determined to reach that inland terminus that season by hook or by crook. As the line skirts Lake Bennett, and this sheet of water is navigable, he decided to use it temporarily until White Horse was reached, the railway consequently being resumed from the head of the lake. This was a justifiable course, inasmuch as the building of the line along the waterside would have occupied considerable time owing to physical characteristics, while it was imperative that White Horse should be reached without delay.

The coming of spring saw the graders regirding themselves for another wrestle with the rock and gravel. Before they had gone very far the edge of a lake was gained. Its banks were precipitous and did not lend themselves to a feasible track. An ingenious solution of the problem was essayed. The engineer decided to lower the level of this sheet of water by some 14 feet and to build his grade on a shelf which surveys showed there would be exposed. To this end he cut a small outlet. But as the vent was driven through soft soil and totally inadequate to resist the pent-up force of the escaping water, the latter widened the breach into such a deep and wide channel that the lake was lowered by no less than 70 feet! This result opened up a new difficulty, escape from which was only practicable by the erection of two large bridges spanning the rift left by the receding waters. As a result, the line does not run round the lake as planned originally, but cuts directly across its bed.

When at last the metals were laid into White Horse and the Yukon River was gained, the engineer retraced his footsteps to push ahead with the last link around Lake Bennett, so that through rail connection between the coast and the Yukon River might be possible that year. This was a heavy piece of work owing to the indentation of the lake-shore and the number of crags that dropped into the water. But by blasting away the faces of the promontories to fashion a narrow gallery upon which to lay the track, and by dumping the rock shivered by the explosives into the bays to form embankments, an easy alignment was secured.

Although the railway overcomes mountains running up to a height of 7000 feet, only one tunnel was found to be necessary. Curves are numerous and sharp, so that the line describes a sinuous route among the peaks. Although on the ascent of the mountains from a point 5 miles out of Skaguay grades of 1 in 25 were found unavoidable to gain the summit, the descent on the opposite side is much easier, for the difference in level of the White Pass summit and White Horse summit, 91 miles beyond, is only 808 feet. However, the line between these two levels is built for the most part on forced grades.

Bearing in mind the character of the country traversed, where lofty peaks and steep precipices alternate with deep gorges and wide clefts, it is obvious that such a railway as this could not be completed without recourse to heavy bridging. In all there are 11,450 lineal feet of such structures. There are seven steel bridges, one of which, just before the summit is gained, is 400 feet in length, with the centre 215 feet above the bottom of the gorge.

Taken on the whole, labour was not so difficult a problem in Alaska then as it is to-day, despite the remote situation of the constructional work, for reasons already explained. The enterprise found employment for about 35,000 men, and it speaks volumes for the care exercised in regard to their comfort and welfare, that only 35 men met their deaths through accident and disease, notwithstanding the high pressure with which work was maintained. The men for the most part were far more intelligent than those generally identified with such work.

To illustrate the extreme fascination that gold exercises over these prospector-navvies, one incident is worth relating. The men were driving the grade with great zest, quite contented with their lot, because the majority had tasted the bitterness of ill-luck at the Klondike. One day news trickled into the camp of the discovery of a new goldstrike not far distant in British Columbia. It galvanised the labourers like electricity, awoke all slumbering ambitions and re-erected all the castles in the air which Dawson had dispelled so ruthlessly. A solid phalanx of 1,500 men threw down their tools and clamoured round the pay-office of the engineers for their wages due to them forthwith. Not having received any premonitory warning of this development, the engineer inquired what was the matter, thinking that possibly a “strike” was being nursed. As the wages were paid the men stampeded off to see if Fortune could be wooed any more easily at Atlin than she could be won at Klondike.

As the railway was pushed through hurriedly while the Klondike gold fever was at its height, some of the work was of a temporary character, but once the communication was established the whole line was overhauled. Timber trestles and bridges were replaced by heavier substantial metallic structures, and the earthworks were strengthened. To-day the road compares with any to be found on the continent. The service is daily, except Sundays, and the line is patrolled regularly for boulders or avalanches which may have crashed down the mountain-sides, to come to rest on the track, and which form fearsome obstructions to a train. In winter it is kept open by means of the rotary snow-ploughs. This is no easy task, for the blizzards among mountains of the north are ferocious in their severity. Drifting snow often fills the cuttings to a depth of 35 feet or so. Two locomotives harnessed to one of these snow-clearers generally contrive to force a clean open passage through the fleecy mass, however. It may be pointed out that this railway possesses the largest type of narrow-gauge engines in the world, the engine and tender in working order turning the scale at 106 tons. Travel from our point of view appears somewhat expensive, since it averages 1s. or 25 cents per mile.

The total cost of constructing and building the railway amounted to £850,000, or $4,250,000. The most expensive section was that from Skaguay to the White Pass summit, this first twenty miles involving an expenditure of £400,000, or $2,000,000. In the first season after completion, however, its gross receipts were £800,000, or $4,000,000, 25 per cent. of which was absorbed by working expense.

One outcome of the remarkable success attending the pioneer Alaskan railway was the embarkation upon another undertaking in the same country, this time under United States auspices. This, however, was a far more ambitious scheme. It involved the building of a standard-gauge road from Seward, in Resurrection Bay, some miles north of Skaguay, to the town of Fairbanks, 463 miles inland, the idea being not only to bring the latter point into touch with the coast, but also to tap rich coal deposits and vast forests of lumber. Unfortunately this project has not been attended with that success which marked the White Pass & Yukon line. After 54 miles were completed its finances became so entangled as to require the offices of a receiver to straighten matters out.

However, it must be explained that several unforeseen circumstances contributed to this chequered career over which the engineers had no control. Such calamities as floods, arising from the melting snows swelling the glacial rivers, landslides and avalanches wrought widespread damage time after time. Moreover, constructional work was not quite so straightforward as on the road more to the south, for progress was arrested repeatedly by the necessity of carrying out heavier work than the surveys contemplated.

Seward is situate on a flat, and the line was driven through a convenient river valley from this point into the mountains. The absence of any roads or even trails rendered investigation of the country fringing the proposed route precarious and trying because large stretches of swamp occupied the valleys, while the mountains were torn and broken, rising up steeply on either side.

The line was to conform in every particular to a first-class trunk system, with a maximum grade of only 1 in 50, with few and easy curves. That was the idea on paper, but it proved a terrible task to attempt to reduce theory to practice. Directly the base of operations at Seward was left, the engineers found the country in its primeval condition, the ground being covered with a tall, dense, dank grass between five and six feet in height, and tangled thick forests. Clearing alone was a tedious job, and the prevalence of bog rendered movement slow and exasperating.

As a rule it is mountains which offer a deterring barrier to the engineer, but in this instance it was the valleys which presented the most searching difficulties. The practical route for the line lay through the Placer River Valley, and the negotiation of this depression in order to preserve the grade and alignment was beset with innumerable perplexities. After leaving the coast the railway has to climb gradually until it gains and crosses the summit of the watershed at an altitude of 1,050 feet and 45 miles out of Seward. Then comes a sharp drop for 3 miles, followed by a more rapid descent for 200 feet or so. In times gone by a huge glacier filled this valley. At the head the ravine narrows sharply and leads into a canyon, where the rocky wall rises up on either hand almost perpendicularly to a height of some 700 feet. This rift is about three-quarters of a mile in length, and opens into another valley at the foot of a large glacier which leads to a bay on the coast known as Turnagain Arm. So sharp is the descent that in the course of 22 miles some 900 feet has to be overcome.

The drop from the summit at the 48th mile-post out of Seward for a distance of 6 miles puzzled the engineers sorely. Six surveys had to be run through this short canyon, and even then a grade of less than double the 1 in 50 was found impracticable. The configuration of the rift did not permit official requirements to be carried out with economy. Even the grade twice that demanded was found unattainable without six tunnels and seven large curves.

The survey was a perilous undertaking owing to the extreme steepness of the cliff-sides and the vegetation clinging to the rocky face. The rodmen working with the survey parties had to be slung in mid-air from ropes to enable the requisite calculations to be made.

The difficulties of the survey were surpassed by those of construction. The very first tunnel brought this home with startling vividity. It is 700 feet in length, and is almost entirely on a curve of about 400 feet radius burrowing through a projecting hump of the main chain. In order to gain the tunnel a broad sweep of the same radius as that of the tunnel curve had to be made, and the two works together form two-thirds of a circle. But one portal of the tunnel opens out on the brink of a precipice, the mountain-side falling away abruptly at that point. So in order to carry the line forward a huge artificial work had to be carried out. This is a timber trestle which constitutes one of the most outstanding features of the line. From end to end it measures 1,240 feet in length, while it varies in height from 40 to 90 feet, some of the outside members being no less that 120 feet in length. Over 1,000,000 feet of timber was used in its construction.

As a matter of fact, the extent of timber trestling upon this railway cannot fail to impress the visitor. In the valleys the line is laid almost entirely upon a wooden grade, owing to the absence of stable solid ground upon which to raise embankments, while the rivers are spanned by steel bridges ranging in span from 80 to 100 feet in the clear. As the rivers rise and fall considerably according to the season, the abutments had to be set well back from the low channel, and, moreover, had to be protected heavily by piling to withstand the severe scouring that takes place when the waterways are in flood and they rush along with the speed of a cataract.

More than 50 per cent. of the work through the canyon is tunnelling, which aggregates 2,800 feet out of 4,800 feet. There was no other way of overcoming the abrupt cliff-sides, and but for the rifts and clefts in their flanks its extent would have been greater. This was the work which occupied so much time and consumed so much money, for the rock was found to be intensely hard. Steam drilling was attempted at first, but the temperature within the borings rose so high as to become intolerable. Therefore this plant had to be discarded in favour of compressed air drills. With their aid a hole 21 feet in height, by 14 and 16 feet in width, to carry a single track, was hewn and blasted out.

The installation of the power plant to operate the drills was a pretty problem. It could not be set up on the same side of the canyon as the borings were being made, so had to be rigged up at a convenient point on the opposite wall near the upper end of the gorge, the power being transmitted through piping. In order to carry the latter across the gulch a temporary suspension bridge 130 feet long was erected, and as it was also employed for the purpose of conveying materials and men from one cliff to the other, was made heavier than otherwise.

In addition to perforating the shoulders of the mountains, deep clefts in the mountain faces had to be spanned or masses of obstructing rock had to be blown out of the way. In one instance there was a couloir which required a 90-foot span bridge to cross from one side to the other, while in another case 300 feet of solid rock, aggregating over 50,000 tons of rock, had to be torn down to enable the grade to proceed from one tunnel to the other. About thirteen months were required to carry the line through this stretch of 4,800 feet.

The struggles with the rock were equalled by the wrestles with Nature in the valleys. These are to all intents and purposes beds of rivers whose boundaries are the bases of the mountains on either side. As a result, the whole of the depression is practically a swamp, with the river cutting a tortuous path apparently through the centre. The word “apparently” is used because what is the main channel of the river to-day will be semi-dry land probably next year, because in the flood season, when the rivers are fed by melting snows, to speed along with fiendish velocity, they are just as likely as not to cut out an entirely new path through the soft soil. If the railway embankment bars its passage the whole obstruction is swept away. Hundreds of feet of completed line have been demolished in this manner. If the rushing river is unable to break through the embankment it swirls around the obstruction, rapidly undermining the foundations, with the result that a bad cave-in ensues, which is in every way as bad as a clean wash-out, except that perhaps the railway metals and sleepers can be retrieved.

Even the mountain-sides, solid though they appear, are not free from Nature’s playful antics. When the spring sun comes round and melts heavy masses of snow on the higher levels there is trouble looming below. The snow slips on the crest. Gathering impetus with every succeeding foot in its descent, the avalanche picks up boulders, trees and other debris, to hurl them with terrific force against the handiwork of man, wiping it completely out of existence. One slide caught the unfortunate railway in this manner, tore up 1,200 feet of permanent way, and threw it, a twisted mass of iron and splintered timber, a third of a mile away.

Considering the overwhelming odds against which the engineer was pitted, it is not surprising that work was brought to a standstill. The situation was summed up very graphically by one of the engineers whom I met. “If Nature would only leave us alone once we have built the line, we should not care what kind of fight she put up against us to delay our advance. But all the money which could be devoted to new construction is devoured in rebuilding track which is either washed away or buried.”