"There's a tram," they told us, "an old, abandoned tram, and you can't get lost. You've only to follow the tram. Why, a goose couldn't get lost. Norman McCauley built the tram, and outfits were portaged around the canyon and the rapids two seasons; then the railroad come in and the tram went out of business."
We took our bundles of mosquito netting and boarded the train. In summer the travel is all "in," and we were the only passengers. When the White Pass Railway Company was organized, stock was worth ten dollars a share; now it is worth six hundred and fifty dollars, and it is not for sale. Freight rates are five cents a pound, one hundred dollars a ton, or fifty in car-load lots, from Skaguay to White Horse. Passenger rates are supposed to be twenty cents a mile. We paid seventy-five cents to return to the canyon which we passed the previous day. This rate should make the distance four miles, and we barely had time to arrange our mosquito veils, according to the instructions of the conductor, when the train stopped.
We were told that we might not see a mosquito; and again, that we might not be able to see anything else.
We were put off and left standing ankle-deep in sand, on the brink of a precipice, four miles from any human being—in the wilds of Alaska. At that moment the trainmen looked like old and dear friends.
"The path down is right in front of you," the collector called, as the train started. "Don't be afraid of the bears! They will not harm you at this time of the year."
Bears!
We had considered heat, mosquitoes, losing our way, hunger, exhaustion,—everything, it appeared, except bears. We looked at one another.
"I had not thought of bears."
"Nor had I."
We looked down at the bushes growing along the canyon; little heat-worms glimmered in the still atmosphere.