From Paris to New York by Land

There is, on portions of Lake Le Barge, a curiously loud and resonant echo. A cry is repeated quite a dozen times, and a rifle shot awakens quite a salvo of artillery. This is especially noticeable near an island about four miles long near the centre of the lake, which for some obscure reason is shown on Schwatka's charts as a peninsula. The American explorer named it the "Richtofen Rocks," but as the nearest point of this unmistakable island to the western shore is but half a mile distant, and as the extreme width of the lake is only five miles, I cannot conceive how the error arose.

Towards evening we reached the Fifty Mile River, noted for the abundance and excellence of its fish. A few miles above the lake the Takheena flows in from the west. This river, which rises in Lake Askell, derives its name from the Indian words, "Taka," a mosquito, and "Heena," a stream, and it is aptly named, for from here on to White Horse City we were assailed by myriads of these pests. Indeed the spot where the town now stands was once a mosquito swamp in which I can recall passing a night of abject misery. It was past midnight before the White Horse was safely moored alongside her wharf, but electric light blazed everywhere, and here, for the first time since leaving Irkutsk, more than seven months before, clanking buffers and the shriek of a locomotive struck pleasantly upon the ear.

White Horse City is a cheerful little town rendered doubly attractive by light-coloured soil and gaily painted buildings. There is a first-rate hotel adjoining the railway station, which contained a gorgeous bar with several billiard and "ping-pong" tables, the latter game being then the rage in every settlement from Dawson to the coast. I mention the bar, as it was the scene of a somewhat amusing incident, which, however, is, as a Klondiker would say, "up against me." About this period a "desperado" of world-wide fame named Harry Tracy was raising a siege of terror in the State of Oregon, having committed over a dozen murders, and successfully baffled the police. We had found Dawson wild with excitement over the affair, and here again Tracy was the topic of the hour. Entering the hotel with some fellow passengers, I took up a Seattle newspaper and carelessly glancing at the portrait of a seedy-looking individual of ferocious exterior, passed it on to a neighbour, remarking (with reference to Tracy), "What a blood-thirsty looking ruffian!" "Why, it's yourself!" exclaimed my friend, pointing to the heading, "A Phenomenal Globe-trotter," which, appearing above the wood-cut, had escaped my notice. I am glad to be able to add that the portrait was not from a photograph!

As an instance of engineering skill, the "White Pass" is probably the most remarkable railway in existence, and the beauty and grandeur of the country through which it passes fully entitles it to rank as the "Scenic railway of the world." In 1896, I was compelled to cross the Chilkoot Pass to enter Alaska (suffering severely from cold and hunger during the process), and to scramble painfully over a peak that would have tried the nerves and patience of an experienced Alpine climber. Regarding this same Chilkoot a Yankee prospector once said to his mate: "Wal, pard, I was prepared for it to be perpendicular, but, by G—d, I never thought it would lean forward!" And indeed my recollections of the old "Gateway of the Klondike" does not fall far short of this description. And in those days the passage of the White Pass, across which the line now runs, was almost as unpleasant a journey as that over the Chilkoot judging from the following account given by Professor Heilprin, who was one of the first to enter the country by this route. The professor writes:

"It is not often that the selection of a route of travel is determined by the odorous, or mal-odorous qualities pertaining thereto. Such a case, however, was presented here. It was not the depth of mud alone which was to deter one from essaying the White Pass route. Sturdy pioneers who had toiled long and hard in opening up one or more new regions had laid emphasis on the stench of decaying horseflesh as a first consideration in the choice of route. And so far as stench and decaying horseflesh were concerned they were in strong evidence. The desert of Sahara with its lines of skeletons, can boast of no such exhibition of carcasses. Long before Bennett was reached I had taken count of more than a thousand unfortunates whose bodies now made part of the trail. Frequently we were obliged to pass directly over these ghastly figures of hide, and sometimes, indeed, broke into them. Men whose veracity need not be questioned assured me that what I saw was in no way the full picture of the 'life' of the trail; the carcasses of that time were less than one-third the full number which in April and May gave grim character to the route to the new 'El Dorado.' Equally spread out this number would mean one dead animal for every sixty feet of distance! The poor beasts succumbed not so much to the hardships of the trail as to lack of care and the inhuman treatment which they received at the hands of their owners. Once out of the line of the mad rush, perhaps unable to extricate themselves from the holding meshes of soft snow and of quagmires, they were allowed to remain where they were, a food-offering to the army of carrion eaters which were hovering about, only too certain of the meal which was being prepared for them."

It will be seen by the foregoing accounts that only a short time ago the journey across this coast range was anything but one of unalloyed enjoyment, and even now, although the White Pass Railway is undoubtedly a twentieth-century marvel, and every luxury is found on board the train, from a morning paper to "candies" and cigars, the trip across the summit is scarcely one which I should recommend to persons afflicted with nerves. The line is a narrow gauge one about 110 miles in length, which was completed in 1899 at a cost of about $3,000,000, and trains leave the termini at Skagway and White Horse simultaneously every day in the year at 9 A.M., reaching their respective destinations at 4 P.M. For a couple of hours after leaving White Horse the track skirts the eastern shores of Lakes Bennett and Lindemann, through wild but picturesque moorland, carpeted with wild flowers,88 and strewn with grey rocks and boulders. A species of pink heather grows freely here, the scent of which and the presence of bubbling fern-fringed brooks, and crisp bracing air, recalled many a pleasant morning after grouse in Bonnie Scotland. A raw-boned Aberdonian on the train remarks on the resemblance of the landscape to that of his own country and is flatly contradicted by an American sitting beside him, who, however, owns that he has never been there! The usual argument follows as to the respective merits, climatic and otherwise, of England and the United States, which entails (also as usual) a good deal of forcible language. Shortly after this, however, the train begins to ascend, and its erratic movements are less conducive to discussion than reverie. For although the rails are smooth and level enough, the engine proceeds in a manner suggestive of a toy train being dragged across a nursery floor by a fractious child. At midday Bennett station is reached, and half an hour is allowed here for lunch in a cheerful little restaurant, where all fall to with appetites sharpened by the keen mountain air, and where the Scot and his late antagonist bury the hatchet in "Two of whisky-straight."

Bennett is buried in pine forests, but here the real ascent commences, and we crawl slowly up an incline which grows steeper and steeper in proportion as trees and vegetation slowly disappear, to give place to barren rocks, moss, and lichens. Towards the summit (over two thousand feet high) the scene is one of wild and lonely grandeur, recalling the weirdest efforts of Gustave Doré. Nothing is now visible but a wilderness of dark volcanic crags with here and there a pinnacle of limestone, towering perilously near the line, and looking as though a puff of wind would dislodge it with disastrous results. The only gleam of colour in the sombre landscape are numerous lakes, or rather pools, of emerald green, perhaps extinct craters, which, shining dimly out of the dark shadows cast by the surrounding cliffs, enhance the gloom and mystery of the scene. Nearing the summit, the road has been blasted out of many yards of solid rock, a work entailing fabulous cost and many months of perilous and patient labour. The Chamounix railway in Switzerland was, at the time of its construction, considered the king of mountain railways, but it becomes a very humble subject indeed when compared with the White Pass line.

At Summit we cross the frontier into American territory, and here my thermometer marks a drop of 25° F. since our departure this morning. Although this rapidly constructed line is admirably laid, portions of the ascent from White Horse are anything but reassuring to those averse to high altitudes, but they are not a circumstance to those on the downward side. On leaving Summit station the train enters a short tunnel, from which it emerges with startling suddenness upon a light, iron bridge which spans, at a giddy height, a desolate gorge. This spidery viaduct slowly and safely crossed, we skirt, for a while, the mountain side, still overhanging a perilous abyss. Every car has a platform, and at this point many passengers instinctively seek the side away from the precipice, which would in case of accident benefit them little, for there is no standing room between the train and a sheer wall of overhanging rock, the crest of which is invisible. Here the outlook is one which can only really be enjoyed by one of steady nerves, for the southward slope of the mountain is seen in its entirety, giving the impression that a hardy mountaineer would find it a hard job to scale its precipitous sides, and that this railway journey in the clouds cannot be reality but is probably the result of a heavy supper. Perhaps the worst portion of the downward journey is at a spot where solid foothold has been found impracticable, and the train passes over an artificial roadway of sleepers, supported by wooden trestles and clamped to the rock by means of iron girders. Here you may stand up in the car and look almost between your toes a sheer thousand feet into space. While we were crossing it, this apparently insecure structure shook so violently under the heavy weight of metal that I must own to a feeling of relief when our wheels were once more gliding over terra firma. The men employed in constructing this and other parts of the track were lowered to the spot by ropes, which were then lashed to a place of safety while they were at work. But although the construction of this line entailed probably as much risk to life and limb as that of the Eiffel Tower, only one death by accident is recorded during the whole period of operations here, while it cost over a hundred lives to erect the famous iron edifice in Paris.

The gradient of this railway is naturally an unusually steep one, and should, one would think, necessitate the utmost caution during the descent, but we rattled down the mountain at a pace which in any country but happy-go-lucky Alaska would certainly have seemed like tempting Providence, especially as only brakes are used to check the speed of the train. However, the fact that two passenger trains are run daily (also a goods train), and that not a single accident has occurred during the four years the line has been in operation, are sufficient proof that the officials of the White Pass Railway know what they are about, and are not lacking in care and competence. I can speak from personal experience as to their civility and also punctuality, for, towards three o'clock, the silvery waters of the Lynn Canal were disclosed through a rift in the mountains, and an hour later we were steaming into the town of Skagway, within half a minute of the scheduled time.

CHAPTER XIX

THE FRANCO-AMERICAN RAILWAY—SKAGWAY—NEW YORK

While on the subject of railways a few remarks anent the projected line from France (viâ Siberia and Bering Straits) to America may not be amiss. As the reader is already aware, the main object of our expedition was to determine whether the construction of such a line is within the range of human possibility. The only means of practically solving this question was (firstly) to cover the entire distance by land between the two cities, by such primitive means of travel as are now available, and (secondly) to minutely observe the natural characteristics of the countries passed through, in order to ascertain whether these offer any insuperable obstacle to the construction of a railway.

I would again remind the reader that the overland journey from Paris to New York had never been made, or even attempted, until it was accomplished by ourselves. This is the more necessary in so far as, before our departure from Paris, the project of an All-World railway was freely discussed in the English and French Press by persons with no practical experience whatsoever of either Siberia or Alaska. Their opinions would, therefore, have been equally valuable with reference to a railway across the moon or planet Mars. From a humorous point of view, some of the letters published were well worth perusal, notably those of a French gentleman, who, in the Paris New York Herald, repeatedly drew my attention to the fact that he "claimed the paternity of the scheme to unite France and America by rail," and this being so, apparently strongly resented my making a preliminary trip over the ground with dogs and reindeer. Having ascertained, however, that M. de Lobel had never visited Arctic Siberia, and had not the remotest intention of doing so, I scarcely felt justified in abandoning the overland journey on his account. This ridiculous but somewhat amusing incident was therefore brought to an end by the following letter:

"To the Editor of the New York Herald, Paris.

"Sir,—May I briefly reply to M. Loicq de Lobel's letter which appeared in your issue of November 23rd. Your correspondent has already violently attacked me in the Paris Journal, his grievance being that he 'claims the paternity' of the projected Trans-Siberian and Alaskan Railway. This fact is probably as uninteresting to your readers and to the world in general as it is to myself, and so far as I am concerned M. de Lobel is also welcome to annex (in his own imagination) the countries through which the proposed line may eventually pass.

"But this is not the point. According to his own showing, M. de Lobel only 'conceived the project' of uniting Paris and New York by rail in the year 1898. As I left New York in 1896 for Paris by land, with the object of ascertaining the practicability of this gigantic enterprise, I think that I may, with due modesty, dispute the shadowy 'paternity' of the scheme, which, after all, is worth nothing from a theoretical point of view.

"The American and British Press of March, April, and May 1897 will fully enlighten your correspondent as to the details of my last attempt, which unhappily met with disaster and defeat on the Siberian shores of Bering Straits. But I trust and believe that a brighter future is in store for the 'Daily Express' Expedition of 1901, which I have the honour to command, and which leaves Paris for New York by land on the 15th of next month.

"If, as M. de Lobel writes, 'the Englishman thought best not to answer' it was simply because the former's childish tirades seemed to me unworthy of a reply. If, however, you will kindly insert this brief explanation, you may rest assured that, so far as I am concerned, this correspondence is closed.

"I am, yours faithfully,"Harry de Windt."Royal Geographical Society,London, November 26, 1901."

With regard to the projected railway, let me now state as briefly and as clearly as I can the conclusion to which I was led by plain facts and personal experience. To begin with, there are two more or less available routes across Siberia to Bering Straits, which the reader may easily trace on a map of Asia. The city of Irkutsk is in both cases the starting-point, and the tracks thence are as follows:

No. 1 Route. To Yakutsk, following the course of the Lena River, and thence in an easterly direction to the town of Okhotsk on the sea of that name. From Okhotsk, northward along the coast to Ola and Gijiga, and from the latter place still northward to the Cossack outpost of Marcova on the Anadyr River. From Marcova the line would proceed northward chiefly over tundra and across or through one precipitous range of mountains, to the Siberian terminus, East Cape, Bering Straits.

The second route is practically the one we travelled, viz., from Irkutsk to the Straits viâ Yukutsk, Verkhoyansk, and Sredni-Kolymsk.

From a commercial point of view, route No. 1 would undoubtedly be the best, for of late years a considerable trade has been carried on between Vladivostok and the Sea of Okhotsk. The latter only twenty years ago was visited solely by a few whalers and sealing schooners, but a line of cargo steamers now leaves Vladivostok once a month throughout the open season (from June to September) and make a round trip, calling at Petropaulovsk (Kamchatka), Okhotsk, Yamsk, and Ayan.89 There is now a brisk and increasing export trade in furs, fish, lumber, and whalebone from these ports, the imports chiefly consisting of American and Japanese goods.

It has already been shown in a previous chapter that the natural resources of the Yakutsk district would probably repay an extension of the Trans-Siberian line to this now inaccessible portion of the Tsar's dominions. Indeed it is more than probable that in a few years the mineral wealth of this province, to say nothing of its agricultural possibilities, will render the construction of a line imperative, at any rate as far as the city of Yakutsk. The prolongation of this as far north as Gijiga is no idle dream, for I have frequently heard it seriously discussed, and even advocated, by the merchant princes of Irkutsk. A railway to Gijiga would open up Kamtchatka, with its valuable minerals, furs, and lumber, and also Nelkan, near Ayan, where gold has lately been discovered in such quantities that a well-known Siberian millionaire has actually commenced a narrow-gauge railway about two hundred miles in length, to connect the new gold-fields with the sea. Even this miniature line is to cost an enormous sum, for it must pass through a region as mountainous and densely wooded as the eight hundred odd miles which separate Yakutsk from the coast. But although this latter section of the Franco-American line, short as it is, would entail a fabulous outlay, there is here, at any rate, some raison-d'être for a railway, viz., the vast and varied resources of the region through which it would pass, whereas to the north of Gijiga on the one hand, and Verkhoyansk on the other, we enter a land of desolation, thousands of miles in extent, chiefly composed of tundra, as yet unprospected, it is true; but probably as unproductive, minerally and agriculturally, as an Irish bog. The reader is already aware that tundra is impassable in summer, for its consistency is then that of a wet bath sponge. The foot sinks in over the knee at every step, and a good walker can scarcely cover a mile within the hour. In winter the hard and frozen surface affords good going for a dog-sled and could, no doubt, be made to support a rolling mass of metal; but even then I doubt whether the thaws and floods of springtime would not find the rails and sleepers at sixes and sevens. This opinion is, of course, purely theoretical, for the experiment of laying a line of such magnitude under such hopeless conditions has yet to be tried.

Chat Moss in England is the nearest approach I can think of to these Siberian swamps, but the railway across the former is only four miles long, and cost, I am told, something like thirty thousand pounds. At this rate the tundra section of the Bering Straits Railway would alone involve an outlay of twenty million sterling; probably far more, for every foot of timber for the roadway would have to be imported into this treeless waste. And how is this expenditure going to be repaid by these barren deserts, in winter of ice, and in summer of mud and mosquitoes. Let another Klondike be discovered near, say, Sredni-Kolymsk, and I have no doubt that surveys for a line to this place would be commenced to-morrow by the Russian Government, but neither gold, not any other mineral has yet been found so far north in anything like paying quantities. Draw a straight line on the map from Verkhoyansk to Gijiga and it will divide the southern (or productive) portion of Siberia from the northern (and useless) wastes about three thousand miles in length, which a Paris-New York railroad would have to cross.90

A so-called prospectus issued by a syndicate, inviting the public to subscribe for a "preliminary survey" for a Franco-American line, came under my notice the other day. Here is an extract:

"Ten years ago the name Siberia called up a picture of wastes of snow and ice. To-day the same Siberia is a land filled with thriving villages, producing grain and various vegetables; that great compeller of civilisation, the railway, has broken down the bars between the world and Siberia. Besides its countless resources of the soil, besides its rivers filled with valuable fish, and its forests inhabited by fur-bearing animals, Siberia is now beginning to show to the world its resources of gold, iron, copper, manganese, quicksilver, platinum, and coal, the yearly output of which is but a feeble index of what it will be when the deposits are developed."

All this is very true regarding certain portions of Siberia. The Amur, Altai, Yenesei, and even Yakutsk provinces. But although the writer goes on to enlarge upon the boundless possibilities which would be opened up by the construction of a railway from Europe to America, he fails to mention that it would have to traverse an Arctic and unproductive Sahara thousands of miles in extent.

Some enthusiastic visionaries mentioned in an earlier portion of this chapter have laid stress on the fact that the passenger traffic over this portion of the line would be enormous, that surging crowds of sea-sick victims would gladly endure even three weeks in a train in preference to a stormy passage across the Atlantic, and so forth. But I fancy a moment's serious thought will show the absurdity of this theory. In the first place a journey by rail from Paris to New York would certainly occupy over a month under the most favourable conditions, for while in summer time all might be comparatively plain sailing, gales, snow-drifts, and blizzards would surely, judging from our own experiences, seriously hamper the winter traffic, especially along the coast. If this leviathan railway is ever constructed it must, in the opinion of the ablest Russian engineers, depend solely upon (1) the transport of merchandise, and (2) the development of the now ice-locked regions it will traverse. The scheme has never been, as many people seem to imagine, simply to convey passengers and their belongings from one terminus to the other, for even Jules Verne would probably hesitate to predict the existence of this line as one of restaurants and sleeping-cars.

But let us assume that the railway has actually reached East Cape at a cost of, say, fifty millions sterling from Irkutsk, which is probably a low estimate. Here we are confronted by another colossal difficulty, the passage of Bering Straits, which (at the narrowest part) are forty miles across. Here my friends the theorists have again been very busy, and all kinds of schemes have been suggested for the negotiation of this stumbling-block, from a bridge to balloons. Both are equally wild and impracticable, although the former has been warmly advocated by a Parisian gentleman, who never having been nearer even Berlin than the Gare du Nord, can scarcely be expected to know much about the climatic conditions of North-Eastern Siberia. As a matter of fact, the mightiest stone and iron structure ever built would not stand the break-up of the ice here in the spring time for one week. A tunnel could no doubt be made, for the depth of the Straits nowhere exceeds twenty-seven fathoms, and the Diomede Islands could be conveniently utilised for purposes of ventilation. But what would such a subway cost? And above all, where is the money coming from to repay its construction?

In Northern Alaska almost the same difficulties would be met with as in Arctic Siberia, for here also spongy tundra covers enormous tracts of country. A company has, however, been formed for the purpose of laying a line between Iliamna on Cook's Inlet and Nome City which will, when completed, be really useful and profitable. Cook's Inlet is navigable throughout the year, and it is proposed to run a line of steamers from Seattle on Puget Sound to this port, where passengers will be able to embark on a comfortable train for Nome instead of facing a long and painful journey by dog-sled. I understand that this work has actually been commenced by the "Trans-Alaskan Railway Company," but not with any idea of connection with a possible Siberian system. This will be merely a local railway, which, judging from the increasing prosperity of Nome, and the fact that the line will pass through the rich Copper River country, should certainly repay its shareholders with interest. The extension of the White Pass Railway as far as Dawson City is only a question of time, but the idea of prolonging it to Bering Straits was not even hinted at when I was in Alaska.