This discussion occurred in the midst of the winter, and while it was going on the Honourable George Black, who was then Commissioner of Yukon Territory, decided to show parliament that the undertaking was practicable. He made an arrangement with C. A. Thomas, the resident manager of the Yukon Gold Company at Dawson, to take a forty-horse-power automobile over the trail. With a chauffeur, the two men left Dawson when the road was covered with snow and the thermometer far below zero. The long winter nights were at hand and the sun shone only an hour or so every day. The darkness was conquered in part by a locomotive headlight on the front of the car.
The trip to White Horse and return was made within fifty-six hours, of which thirty-six hours was actual running. The distance of seven hundred and twenty miles was covered at an average speed of twenty miles an hour for the running time of the round trip. During the journey the thermometer fell to fifty-six degrees below zero, but the air was dead still, and wrapped up as they were in furs, the men did not realize how cold it was until they came to a road house and read the thermometer.
It was necessary to keep the machine going continuously, for during a stop of even a few minutes the engine would freeze and the oil congeal. At one time their gasoline gave out and they had to stop twenty miles away from a road house they had expected to reach. A dog team was found and sent on to the road house, but while they waited the engine froze and the oil became stiff, and they had to build a fire under the car with wood from the forest before they could start off again. When they had completed the journey and returned to Dawson the bill for the road appropriation was just coming up for action. The news of their trip was telegraphed to Ottawa and the bill was passed.
CHAPTER XXXII
FROM WHITE HORSE TO DAWSON
Within the last fifteen days I have travelled by foot, by rail, and by steamer from the headwaters of the Yukon to Dawson, a distance of five hundred miles. The river has one of its sources in the coast range of mountains only fifteen miles from the Pacific Ocean. It starts as a trickling stream of icy cold water and winds its way down the hills to Lake Bennett. On the White Pass Railway I rode twenty-five miles along the east shore of that lake to Caribou, and thence for an hour or so farther to White Horse. That town is at the head of steam navigation on the Yukon, from where one can go for more than two thousand miles to the mouth of the river on Bering Sea, not far from the Arctic Ocean.
The Yukon makes one think of Mark Twain’s description of the Mississippi, which he knew so well as a pilot. He said: “If you will peel an apple in one long paring and throw it over your head, the shape it will have when it falls on the floor will represent the ordinary curves of the river.”
Let me take you with me on my trip down this looping river. In its upper reaches, it winds about like a snake. It narrows and widens, now measuring only a few hundred feet from shore to shore, and now almost as broad as a lake. It is full of sand banks, and there are rocky cañons through which our boat shoots, its sides almost grazing the cliffs.
Our ship down the Yukon from White Horse is the little steamer Selkirk, drawing between four and five feet of water. Nevertheless, it is so skilfully handled that it twists and turns with the current and at times swings about as though on a pivot. Now the pilot throws the boat across the stream and lets the current carry it along, and now he drives it through the rapids, putting on steam to make the paddles go faster.
In addition to the boat itself we have a great barge to care for. Most of the freight that goes down the Yukon is carried on barges pushed along in front of the steamers. The load of to-day consists largely of cattle. The barge is enclosed in a high board fence, within which are eight cow pens, with a double-deck sheep-fold at the back. There are one hundred and fifty beef cattle in the pens and two hundred live sheep in the fold. The animals were brought by rail from Calgary to Vancouver. There they were loaded on a Canadian Pacific steamer and carried through the thousand miles of inland waterways that border the west coast of the continent to Skagway. They were then taken over the mountains on the White Pass Railway, and are now on their way to Dawson, where they will be transferred to another steamer that will push them a thousand or fifteen hundred miles more down the Yukon.
The freight charges are so heavy that the animals selected must be of a high grade. The steers average three fourths of a ton and several of them weigh close to two thousand pounds each. They were raised on grass and are now fed on the bales of alfalfa piled around the edge of the barge.