"I had proceeded with them about a mile, when the man, in crossing a stony beach, fell down and cut his foot very much. This made me stop, upon which the woman pointed to the man's eyes, which, I observed, were covered with a thick, white film. He afterward kept close to his wife, who apprised him of the obstacles in his way. The woman had a little child on her back, covered with a hood, and which I took for a bundle until I heard it cry. At about two miles distant we came upon their open skin-boat, which was turned on its side, the convex part toward the wind, and served for their house. I was now made to perform a singular operation upon the man's eyes. First, I was directed to hold my breath; afterward, to breathe on the diseased eyes; and next, to spit on them. The woman then took both my hands and, pressing them to his stomach, held them there while she related some calamitous history of her family, pointing sometimes to her husband, sometimes to a frightful cripple belonging to the family, and sometimes to her child."
Berries, birch, willow, alders, broom, and spruce were found. Beer was brewed of the spruce.
Cook now sailed past that divinely beautiful shore upon which St. Michael's is situated, and named Stuart Island and Cape Stephens, but did not hear the Yukon calling him. He did find shoal water, very much discolored and muddy, and "inferred that a considerable river runs into the sea." If he had only guessed how considerable! Passing south, he named Clerk's, Gore's, and Pinnacle Islands, and returned to Unalaska.
CHAPTER XLI
A famous engineering feat was the building of the White Pass and Yukon Railway from Skaguay to White Horse. Work was commenced on this road in May, 1898, and finished in January, 1900.
Its completion opened the interior of Alaska and the Klondike to the world, and brought enduring fame to Mr. M. J. Heney, the builder, and Mr. E. C. Hawkins, the engineer.
In 1897 Mr. Heney went North to look for a pass through the Coast Range. Up to that time travel to the Klondike had been about equally divided between the Dyea, Skaguay, and Jack Dalton trails; the route by way of the Stikine and Hootalinqua rivers; and the one to St. Michael's by ocean steamers and thence up the Yukon by small and, at that time, inferior steamers.
Mr. Heney and his engineers at once grasped the possibilities of the "Skaguay Trail." This pass was first explored and surveyed by Captain Moore, of Mr. Ogilvie's survey of June, 1887, who named it White Pass, for Honorable Thomas White, Canadian Minister of the Interior. It could not have been more appropriately named, even though named for a man, as there is never a day in the warmest weather that snow-peaks are not in view to the traveller over this pass; while from September to June the trains wind through sparkling and unbroken whiteness.