At the summit, twenty miles from Skaguay, is a red station named White Pass. A monument marks the boundary between the United States and Yukon Territory. The American flag floats on one side, the Canadian on the other. A cone of rocks on the crest of the hill leading away from the sea marks the direction the boundary takes.
The White Pass Railway has an average grade of three per cent, and it ascends with gradual, splendid sweeps around mountainsides and projecting cliffs.
The old trail is frequently called "Dead Horse Trail." Thousands of horses and mules were employed by the stampeders. The poor beasts were overloaded, overworked, and, in many instances, treated with unspeakable cruelty. It was one of the shames of the century, and no humane person can ever remember it without horror.
At one time in 1897 more than five thousand dead horses were counted on the trail. Some had lost their footing and were dashed to death on the rocks below; others had sunken under their cruel burdens in utter exhaustion; others had been shot; and still others had been brutally abandoned and had slowly starved to death.
"What became of the horses," I asked an old stampeder, "when you reached Lake Bennett? Did you sell them?"
"Lord, no, ma'am," returned he, politely; "there wa'n't nothing left of 'em to sell. You see, they was dead."
"But I mean the ones that did not die."
"There wa'n't any of that kind, ma'am."
"Do you mean," I asked, in dismay, "that they all died?—that none survived that awful experience?"
"That's about it, ma'am. When we got to Lake Bennett there wa'n't any more use for horses. Nobody was goin' the other way—and if they had been, the horses that reached Lake Bennett wa'n't fit to stand alone, let alone pack. The ones that wa'n't shot, died of starvation. Yes, ma'am, it made a man's soul sick."