THE FRANCO-AMERICAN RAILWAY SKAGWAY NEW YORK

While on the subject of railways a few remarks anent the projected line from France (via 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:

N 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 via Yukutsk, Verkhoyansk, and Sredni-Kolymsk.

From a commercial point of view, route N 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. 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’etre 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.

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.

All things considered I cannot see what object would be gained by the construction (at present) of a Franco-American railway. That the latter will one day connect Paris and New York I have little doubt, for where gold exists the rail must surely follow, and there can be no reasonable doubt regarding the boundless wealth and ultimate prosperity of those great countries of the future; Siberia and Alaska. But it is probably safe to predict that the work will not be accomplished in the lifetime of the present generation, or even commenced during the existence of the next. When, at the conclusion of the journey, I arrived at New York, I was asked by reporters whether I considered it possible to connect the latter city by rail with Paris. Most certainly it would be possible with unlimited capital, for this stupendous engineering feat would assuredly entail an expenditure (on the Siberian side alone and not including a Bering Straits tunnel), of fifty to sixty millions sterling. It seems to me that the question is not so much, “Can the line be laid?” as “Would it pay?” In the distant future this question may perhaps be answered in the affirmative, but at present nothing whatever is known of the mineral resources of Arctic Siberia, a practical survey of which must take at least fifteen to twenty years. If reports are then favourable, Russia may begin to consider the advisability of a line to America, but, notwithstanding the fact that an attempt has been made in certain quarters to obtain money from the public for this now extremely shadowy scheme, I can only say that all the prominent Russian officials whom I have met simply ridicule the project.

Skagway is pleasantly situated on the shores of the Lynn Canal, in an amphitheatre formed by precipitous cliffs, the granite peaks of which almost overhang the little town. A curious effect is produced here by rudely coloured advertisements of some one’s chewing gum, or somebody’s else cigars with which the rocky sides of the nearest hills are defaced. But there is nothing new in this, for, as far back as 1887, the name of a well-known American pill and ointment vendor met my astonished gaze on the Great Wall of China. The North Pole will soon be the only virgin field left open to the up-to-date advertiser. Skagway is now a quiet, orderly township, and a favourite resort of tourists, but shortly after it was founded, in 1898, a band of swindlers and cut-throats arrived on the scene, and practically held the place at their mercy for several weeks. The leader of this gang was one “Soapy Smith,” a noted “confidence man,” whose deeds of violence are still spoken of here with bated breath. This impudent scoundrel (said to have been a gentleman by birth) was clever enough to become mayor of the town, and was thus enabled to commit robberies with impunity. Many a poor miner leaving the country with a hardly earned pile has been completely fleeced, and sometimes murdered, by the iniquitous and ubiquitous “Soapy,” who is said to have slain, directly or indirectly, over twenty men. Finally, however, a mass meeting was held, where Smith was shot dead, not before he had also taken the life of his slayer.

Southern Alaska is the Switzerland of America, and every summer its shores are invaded by hordes of tourists. There was, therefore, little room to spare in the steamer in which we travelled down the Lynn Canal, one of the grandest fjords on the coast, which meanders through an archipelago of beautiful islands, and past a coast-line of snowy peaks and glaciers of clear, blue crystal washed by the waves of the sea. Its glaciers are one of the wonders of Alaska, for nowhere in the world can they be witnessed in such perfection. According to a talented American authoress, “In Switzerland a glacier is a vast bed of dirty, air-holed ice, that has fastened itself like a cold, porous plaster to the side of an alp. Distance alone lends enchantment to the view. In Alaska a glacier is a wonderful torrent that seems to have been suddenly frozen when about to plunge into the sea,” and the comparison, although far-fetched, is not wholly devoid of truth.

Nearing Juneau we passed the Davidson glacier sufficiently near to distinguish the strange and beautiful effects produced upon its white and glittering surface by cloud and sunshine. This is the second largest ice-field in Alaska, the finest being its immediate neighbour, the Muir glacier, which drains an area of 800 square miles. The actual ice surface covers about 350 square miles, the mass of it, thirty-five miles long and ten to fifteen miles wide, while surrounding it on three sides are mountains averaging 4000 to 6000 ft. in height. Vessels dare not approach the ice wall, about 250 ft. high, nearer than a quarter of a mile, as masses of ice continually fall from its surface, and submarine bergs, becoming detached from its sunken fore-foot rise to the surface with tremendous force. The colour of the ice on the Muir glacier is as curious as it is beautiful, varying from the lightest blue to dark sapphire, and from a dark olive to the tenderest shades of green. Although the feat has been often attempted no one has yet succeeded in crossing the Muir from shore to shore.

The captain of the Topeka informed me that glaciers and canneries are the chief attractions of this coast. I assumed that it could not be the climate, for rain drizzled persistently from a grey and woolly sky nearly all the way from Skagway to Port Townsend, and this was regarded as “seasonable summer weather.” With bright sunshine this journey through a calm inland sea, gliding smoothly through fjords of incomparable beauty, surrounded by every luxury, would be idyllic. As it is, cold, rain and mist generally render this so-called pleasure trip one of monotony and discomfort, where passengers are often compelled to seek shelter throughout the day in smoke-room or saloon. Swathed in oil-skins, however, I braved the downpour, and visited one of the numerous canneries to which the Topeka tied up for a few minutes, and here I was surprised to find that Chinese labour is almost exclusively employed. And the ease and celerity with which a fish was received, so to speak, fresh from the sea, cleaned, steamed, and securely soldered in a smartly labelled tin, all by machinery, within the space of a few minutes, was marvellous to behold. Before the days of Klondike, the fisheries of this coast were the chief source of wealth in Alaska, where sea-board, lakes, and rivers teem with fish, the wholesale netting of which seem in no way to diminish the number. The yearly output of these coast canneries is something stupendous, and they are, undoubtedly, a far better investment than many a claim of fabulous (prospective) wealth in the gold-fields of the interior. For the establishment of a cannery is not costly, labour and taxes are low, and fish of every description, from salmon and trout to cod and halibut, can be caught without difficulty in their millions. Codfish which abound in Chatham Creek are the most profitable, also herrings, of which six hundred barrels were once caught in a single haul, off Killisnoo. But the number of canneries on this coast is increasing at a rapid rate, and five or six years hence large fortunes will be a thing of the past. The now priceless sea-otter was once abundant along the south-eastern coast of Alaska, the value of skins taken up to 1890 being thirty-six million dollars, but the wholesale slaughter of this valuable animal by the Russians, and later on by the Americans, has driven it away, and almost the only grounds where it is now found are among the Aleutian Islands and near the mouth of the Copper River. A good sea-otter skin now costs something like L200 in the European market.

Juneau and Port Wrangell were the only towns of any size touched at during the two days’ trip from Skagway to Port Townsend. The former was once the fitting-out place for miners bound for the Yukon, but Skagway has now ruined its commercial prosperity, and it is now a sleepy, miserable settlement which appeared doubly unattractive viewed through a curtain of mist. The rain poured down here in such sheets that Douglas Island, only a couple of miles away, was invisible. Here is the famous Treadwell mine, where the largest quartz mill in the world crushes six hundred tons in the twenty-four hours. This mine has already yielded more gold than was paid for the whole of Alaska.

Fort Wrangell is more picturesque than Juneau, although perhaps this was partly due to the cessation (for exactly half an hour) of the rain, which enabled our hitherto cooped-up tourists to enjoy a stroll, and a breath of fresh air ashore. Wrangell was once, like Juneau, a thriving town, when the Cassiar mines in British Columbia were a centre of attraction. Between four and five thousand miners passed through every spring and autumn, travelling to and from the diggings, and the usual hotels, saloons, and stores sprang up on all sides. Then came a period of stagnation, till the last gold rush to Klondike, when it seemed as though Wrangell would rise from its ashes. But the proposed route into the country by way of the Stikine River was finally abandoned for the White Pass, and dealt the final coup de grace to the little town, which is now merely a decaying collection of wooden shanties and ruined log huts, tenanted chiefly by Indians, of whom we met more here than at any other point throughout the Alaskan journey. The natives of this part of the coast are called Thlinkits, a race numbering about 7000, and once numerous and powerful. But the Siwashes of Wrangell were a miserable-looking lot, the men apparently physically inferior to the women, some of whom would not have been ill-favoured, had it not been for the disgusting habit of daubing their faces with a mixture of soot and grease, which is supposed to keep off mosquitoes, and which gives them the grotesque appearance of Christy Minstrels. Tattooing no longer prevails amongst the Thlinkits, but the men still paint their faces and discard ragged tweeds and bowlers for the picturesque native dress on the occasion of a dance, or the feast known as a “Potlatch.” The Thlinkits are not hardy, nor, as a rule, long-lived, and diseases due to drink and dissipation are rapidly thinning them out. Shamanism exists here, but not to such an extent as amongst the Siberian races, and the totem poles, which are met with at every turn in Wrangell, are not objects of worship, but are used apparently for a heraldic purpose. Some of the ancient war canoes of this tribe are still in existence, but they are only brought out on the occasion of a feast, when a chief and his crew appear in the gaudy panoply of war-paint and feathers.

On July 28, Seattle was reached, and here we met with a reception worthy of far doughtier deeds than we had accomplished. In 1896, Seattle was a country town of some 30,000 inhabitants, and I could scarcely recognise this fine modern city of over 100,000 souls which may shortly rival San Francisco as a commercial and social centre. This wonderful change is partly due to discoveries in the Klondike, but chiefly perhaps to the increasing trade of Puget Sound with the East. Fine Japanese liners now run direct every fortnight from Seattle to Japan, and on one of these a passage was obtained for my faithful friend and comrade, Stepan Rastorguyeff, whose invaluable services I can never repay, and to whom I bade farewell with sincere regret. I am glad to add that the plucky Cossack eventually reached his home in safety (via Yokohama and Vladivostok) arriving in Yakutsk by way of Irkutsk and the Lena River early in the new year of 1902. Vicomte de Clinchamp also left me here, to return direct to France via New York and Le Havre.

There is little more to tell. Travelling leisurely in glorious weather through the garden-girt towns and smiling villages of the “Rouge-River” Valley, perhaps the most picturesque and fertile in the world, a day was passed at Shasta Springs, the summer resort of fashionable Californians, where the sun-baked traveller may rest awhile in a little oasis of coolness and gaiety, cascades and flowers, set in a desert of dark pines. A week with old friends in cosmopolitan, ever delightful San Francisco, a rapid and luxurious journey across the American continent, land on August 25, 1902, New York was reached, and the long land journey of 18,494 miles from Paris, which had taken us two-thirds of a year to accomplish, was at an end.