Mr. Heney, coming out to finance the road, faced serious difficulties and discouragements in America. Owing to the enormous cost of this short piece of road, as planned, as well as the daring nature of its conception, the boldest financiers of this country, upon investigation, declined to entertain the proposition.
Mr. Heney was a young man who, up to that time, although possessed of great ability, had made no marked success—his opportunity not having as yet presented itself.
Recovering from his first disappointment, he undauntedly voyaged to England, where some of the most conservative capitalists, moved and convinced by his enthusiasm and his clear descriptions of the northern country and its future, freely financed the railroad whose successful building was to become one of the most brilliant achievements of the century.
They were entirely unacquainted with Mr. Heney, and after this proof of confidence in him and his project, the word "fail" dropped out of the English language, so far as the intrepid young builder was concerned.
"After that," he said, "I could not fail."
He returned and work was at once begun. A man big of body, mind, and heart, he was specially fitted for the perilous and daring work. Calm, low-voiced, compelling in repressed power and unswerving courage and will, he was a harder worker than any of his men.
Associated with him was a man equally large and equally gifted. Mr. Hawkins is one of the most famous engineers of this country, if not of any country.
The difficult miles that these two men tramped; the long, long hours of each day that they worked; the hardships that they endured, unflinching; the appalling obstacles that they overcame—are a part of Alaskan history.
The first twenty miles of this road from Skaguay cost two millions of dollars; the average cost to the summit was a hundred thousand dollars a mile, and now and then a single mile cost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The road is built on mountainsides so precipitous that men were suspended from the heights above by ropes, to prevent disaster while cutting grades. At one point a cliff a hundred and twenty feet high, eighty feet deep, and twenty feet in width was blasted entirely away for the road-bed.