GREAT WHITE TRAIL

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 17, 21 January 1927, Page 9

GREAT WHITE TRAIL

MAILS IN THE YUKON

A BISHOP'S CONCURRENCE

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

VANCOUVEE, 20th December

The Bishop of the Yukon was struggling over the trail, wi|h his dogs and dunnage, at a temperature of 60 below zero, on his way to visit an outlying mission and confirm some Indian children. At a point some two hundred miles north of Dawson, he met the

mailman.

"How is the trail south of here?" asked the Bishop. The mailman did not recognise the right reverend gentleman, who .vas heavily weighted with furs. Having served in the North-west Mounted Police and on- a riv«r steamboat, ac well as the mail service, he had acquired a vocabulary that embraced the profanity of all,three callings, quite apart from the vernacular of the sour-dough. The crisp air surrounding the little camp fire on the Klondyke mountain top must have turned blue—as blue as the Eimutakas on an autumn afternoon—as tho mailman told of the lamentable condition of the trail.

"And how is the trail'you have just covered to the north, old-timer?" asked the mailman.

The bishop never batted an eyelid as he answered,'' The same.'' Dawson, where His Majesty's mails are landed for the overland journey, is 400 miles from "Whitehouse, Yukon, the terminal of the mail service. Two men perform the work, one taking the first "leg," from Dawson to Crooked Junction, a distance of 150 miles, the other 250 miles to the north, into the Yukon country. ' • J

CLOCKWORK REGULARITY.

Prank Harbottle, icsponsible for the northern section, has just been recalling some interesting experiences of his service in "the great white silence." With a caterpillar and trailer, known as "Araininta" in the mining camps he covers his route usually in five and a half days. Coming and going for nearly thirty years, since the Chilcoot Pass was first negotiated, he runs as close to schedule as any of the great trains that span the continent. 'Tis mail sometimes weighs up to ten tons. At the rivers, the mail is transferred to a canoe. Constant rocking of the boat is necessary; to prevent, the canoe freezing into the ice before it reaches the other side. The canoe has an advantage over a sled as the dogs can easily pull it out, where a sled would be hopelessly embedded. At the other side of the stream,,another caterpillar is waiting. When the rivers are in flood, the mails are sent across in. a raft hung from aerial cables, the mailman crossing in tho same way. A small tree or rock, fallen across the trail, often builds a glacier twenty feet high, that takes four hours to chon through. , l "At intervals, we take passengers " says Harbottle, "and then we have new thrills. The Federal Member for tlie Yukon came down with us recently on his way 'outside' to Ottawa. His wife took kindly to all the experiences' we met, but was not at all partial to the rocking canoe. Then we had Judge Mscaulay who, though twenty years in the Far North, was having his "first expenenco of being followed by r. pack of hungry wolves.

UNPLEASANT SPECIAL DUTIES,

1 m an all-round handy man on the trail, he says. "Sometimes, I am sworn m as special constable, to take an occasional lunatic or criminal out. "We had an group of passengers a month ago—a murderer and his 'evidence,' the-frozen corpse of his victim. He had killed his partner but could not bury him, as the ground was frozen hard as granite. So ho kept him in a cellar for a couplo of months, waiting tor the thaw. ■

A trooper of the North-west Mounted Pohce, the eye that never sleeps in our great Northland,-was o-oing his rounds, and called at the shack to pass the time of day. Asking a friendly question, about the absent prospector, &S th °W) h^ gr6W *™&«™>. and round the corpse." trai]MCTt°- h> ?, lOVe the Hfe- X love tllc tiail. It is the same to-day as when Goa gave, it to us. I know every inch ?, «M-r t Ve to ' when every landmark in the long winter's

W nThei Ghris, tmas mail was loaded. Ho waved good-bye saying he must get on. _ The people back there will be clocking mo this trip, waiting for their iZ,t % have t0 show S°°a cause. ™ nil' * &uess there's a letter from my old mother in Nova Scotia, and I'm in just as great a hurry to get it as any old-timer in God's own country." V