THE LONG ICE TRAIL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19550, 1 February 1927, Page 8

THE LONG ICE TRAIL.

THRILLS OF THE YUKON, "THE GREAT WHITE SILENCE." CARRYING THE KING'S MAILS. ! [from our own correspondent.] VANCOUVER. Dec. 28. Dawson, where His Majesty's mails are landed for the Yukon overland journey, is 400 miles from Whitehorse, 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. Mr. Frank Harbottle, who is responsible for the northern section, has just been recalling some interesting experiences of his service in "the great white silence." With a cat'erpillar and; trailer, known as "Araminta" 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. His mail sometimes weighs up to ten tons. At the rivers, the mail is transferred to a canoe. Constant rocking of th<3 boat i« 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 tho 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 the samo way. A small tree or rock, fallen across the trail, often builds a glacier 20ft. high, that takes four hours to chop through. The Story of a Murder. "At intervals, we take passengers," says Mr. Harbottle, "and then wo have new thrills. The Federal member for the Yukon came down with us recently, on his way "outside" to Ottawa. His wife took kindly to all the experiences wo met, but was not at all partial to tha rocking canoe. Then we had Judge Macaulay who, though 20 years in the Far North, was having his first experience of being followed by a pack of hungry wolves. " I'm an all-round handy man on the trail," Mr. Harbottle says. "Sometimes I am sworn in as special constable, to take an occasional lunatic or criminal out. We had an interesting 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 as hard as granite. So he kept him in a cellar for a couple of months, waiting for the thaw. A trooper of the Northwest Mounted lolice, the eye tftat never sleeps in our great Northland, was going his round?, and called at the shack to pass. the time of day. Asking a friendly question about ,the absent prospector, whom he knew, he grew suspicous, and found the corpse. " I Love the Trail." "Me? Oh, I love the life. I love the trail. It is the same to-day as when God gave it to us. I know every inch of it. I have to, when every landmark is obliterated in the long winter's night." The Christmas mail was loaded. Mr. Harbottle waved good-bye, saying he must get on. "The people back there will be clocking me this trip, waiting for their letters from the Old Country, and, if I'm late, I'll have to show good cause. Besides ; I guess there's a letter from my old mothei' in Nova Scotia, and I'm in just as great a hurry to get it as any old-timer in God's own country."