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Show f fill EATING N ATU'RCv in f:lMM . rasr9i?K of Adventure w '..-v Alaska Which Proves That V All F Y1k : : Indomitable Men Can Over- V JUJUJU: 0,, , .tv.:r come Difficulties That Seem at .;v; ;. V r - Times To Be Too Vast for p.;--ly-'-:'.--C-v:. Sy ;l.ii-tfX 'y-.- -;..t-i;v-:V;::";.;- yy- ;--;.v-- :.r.:rZL.. : -i-aC canyon Bridge Across the 'f:.;V":Vv!v-? X ": ' 'v '' .'r: ri - Copper River, Miles Glacier in J-.-':.--' the. Background. wtulth to tide water. Tbc men who are bullillns It :ire the advetituri.,r.s of tbi narrative. I'.oginnlinr with the first few miles after tin ica'l sweeps from Cord-iva amnnd Lake Myall tin- fiv-t Ihrci" Imiulred and fifty men who invadel the ivnion eiiciuntrred the first llRht. M- -T. Ileiiey, duhbed the 'Trincc of Alaska." a lirollnr of rraneis J. Ilonej-. the noted prosecutor of San Frnnclco, hd THE author of this article is known even oniony progressive, daring, dauntless American railroad men as an "advanced-railroader." "advanced-railroader." I! e fore ho took the presidency of the Copper Hivcr and Northwestern Railroad he won his 3purs with the Eurlington, after a record rec-ord with other roads in lesser offices, as a driv-inf?, driv-inf?, puhins, indomitable man. Physically he is a piant, and, quite like many other such men who really do things, he has an abounding pood nature and a sense of humor ': ic : .ff. lyi i J :''S'v-r:' This Is the Only Method of Reaching the In tcrior in Winter Valdez-Fairbanks Trail. that nothing can cloud, Many of the talcs in this series arc particularly particu-larly th adventures cf fhe naiTator, and perhaps per-haps one or two im-piediate associates. In this one are told tho things that have befallen five thousand Americans, of whom the teller cf the tale, though the loader, was only one, who took liis share of the labor and danger as any good general in a great campaign should do. EY S. W. ECCLES. (Copyrlffbl, 1610, by tbc Now York lloral.l Co All rlcliln rrrrl I ""O the nverage man In the United States Alaska i Is merely a near-polar region of i e ami snow, j where there Is plenty of gold to tic found if the 3 bunlr can keep from freezing to death. The truth is that it Is largely a f.iir und wonderful land, in parts of which nature has looked up treasures of untold value and set the mightiest of mountains, the most powerful of streams, the cruellest of winds and the moit crnfly, stubborn and treacherous of all Lor aids o-s guards, whose vlgilnnoe i eternal. They comprise au appalling defensive and at limes aggressive force, nod, quite us much as Napoleon's troops who marched on Moscow, Kdward Ill 's out- numbered knights and bowmen who triumphed at Creoy aud the mnrvelloiut Foreign Iogiou whieh Africa engulfn in part eaeh year, our men on the Copper Cop-per River constitute an army, and the building of the Copper lilver Railroad is one of the fiercest and most spectacular battles ever fought. The enemy is Xa- ture Nature who when conquered, as she will be, will prove a good friend and ally. It is only building two hundred mile1 of railroad. It is only the fultliling of a contract. There will be no heroes, medals, processions, pensions and Thrilling pages in history. The men who, from the chief to tho lowest camp helper. Imperil their, lives every day are working merely for pay, but I can't help feeling that, though the great mass of people never will hear of It and only a few will realize, It Is something more than commonplace. It constitutes one of the truly glorious things In the history of the American people. Picture of the Scene, l'.cforc passing to the narrative of the crisis of this batlle of. the Copper River In the North, permit me ' ' y, yyyy :zy. :4 y 1: p. v: x f&fc&r;v:. - x .. . ::i3x-rj; .t'Te?V;t' r' V-v .'. -..,.r:'.' - i -,. , r-- "v o. , i.'p-f.'l a wave ten feet high to a wall of water twenty feet blgli- One can never toll when these things are coming, nnd when one of those walls of wator hurls itself across the twelve hundred foot channel, bearing hundreds hun-dreds of thousands of tons of ice on Its front, the shock Is something terrific. The industrial soldiers of the Copper River Valley bail to get boats through with material, build suilkiently htroug piers in this icy water and do all their work between the onslaughts of these waves. At tho llrst cry of '.lie watchers, who would go almost blind from scanning the glisteniug, changeable ice face, the men would drop tht-lr work and run for their lives. As the wave subsided they would return to their work if it had not been swept n way. The water is so cold that it would freeze If it were not for the Ufteen mile current. Construction to I he camp opposite the glacier was not extremely ditH-lUlt. ditH-lUlt. Just above, mi the sanio bank, however, was the great Miles glacier, and this made It necessary to cross to the other shore between the two glaciers. It was quite the usual thing for boats to arrive with but oue-thlid of the cargo with which they started. The men were saving the lives of one another all the time. When a man Ml into the river the deadly chill of It seemed to iirike him almost powerless and quick ac turn was nece-sary unless he was an able swimmer. For a time after the upper camp was established it was impossible to gel building material to the meu there, as ul of the avnilable force was required to ec through enough food to keep the men In the camp alive. things. More dramatic were some of the exceptional Not heeding the signs of a storm a man had started to "mush on," he uud one dog drawing the sled, taking tak-ing fresh provisions from one camp to another late In the day, and as the storm descended and the dark came down he lost his way. At last be found himself him-self on water side ice, and before he could retreat the section supporting him gave way and he weut whit ling down stream. Soon he saw a gleaming light ahead somewhat 'to the right. He yelled and the mala moot barked. Just as he was swept against the timbers In the dark and the One crashed beneath him to let him through to death, a giant Wisconsin Swede rushed out, clung with one hand as he swung down and heaving mightily lifted man, then dog and at la,st the loaded sled to safely. Bravery of One Man. Another time when a gang was advancing horse. In imllx iilu.il barges, as was oPtcu done, an odd thing happened. The barges were craft Miat would hold one horse only. The animal would be forced into It, made fast, and then the gang would take hold, sometimes to the number of thirty on a hansel, and h iul the beat not only against ten ml'e cum-uts, but through shallows choked with Ice ami slush, through dense mud and over stretches of sand with very little wat'-r over it. Two big brothers from Seattle, long!' ' oienieu they had been, were In this gang, inl when the Imrsr thei were hauling partly broke loose the elder of the two made his way out to the barge to readjust .'; ' . , Showing Heavy Rock Work in Allen Canyon, X ! Copper River. Aj; Mil ' i Ivi 'A y -) Alaska's Present Winter Transportation Dos Team Leaving Valdci. missed footing all went llounderlng down into vary-big vary-big depths of looe Ice, miow anil water I hat froze like armor on thetu when tln.'y were dragged out. If they were so fortunate as lo be dragged out lhat was the way they built thit track. All winter they worked preparing the way and getting men, equipment, equip-ment, tools, donkey engines, materials and food supplies sup-plies acro.vs. In Icy Perils. The spring brought added terrors in the way of labor under dinkultics and suli'erings that In-.ieased. Each thaw meant the sinking of a portion of the work or the undermining or sweeping away of another, and a-, the weuther grew warmer the turning of the whole Into .i mush from six to twenty feet deep, over which men must work in snowshoes. How doggedly they bad striven can be imagined when it Is said that ono mouth aficr reinforcements had landed In April track had beeu laid across the llrst section of those terrible Hats reaching to AlagansU, erossPig a distance of twenty-two and one-half miles To put down tho ties and rails and drive the spikes the snow must be shovelled away as it fell. nice tho path was ready the plledrheis could begin their work of replacing the brush and pole mattress with regular trestliug. Now. just beyond are two channels of the river itself, it-self, averaging eighteen feet in depth; torrents of icy water Idled with floes crashing and grinding down to the sea. ne channel is y, :!'. f"-', t wid,?' tll'- ot,.'tT l.lixi feet. Imagine handling I'll" "ml timbers under such conditions, with men in boats held by long ropes and men standing on the structural work, never taking tak-ing their eyes from the workmen, ready to pick up or throw a line to any man who succumbed to the labor aud eiH'snre or lost his foothold! Nevertheless, the twenty-fust of June found track laid across both channels chan-nels and on to the twenty-uluth mile. Thesu hilars, these dangers were tho everyday The most Incredible .set of rescues occurred one day when u boat with seventeen men was milking a brae eil'ort to land a cargo of supplies thut were Imperatively needed. They were caught by one of these glvaniie lee-hung waves, the boat crushed to bits and all the supplies loM, yet it was contrived to get every mau out, and none of them bad inorf serlou.s injuries than broken legs and arms. Ju.-t as au Illustration of the force of attack thii bridge must stand all the time every day in the open sea.sou of the year, this is one thing that happened hap-pened to us. At last a very determined uud Ingenious In-genious foreman had coutrlvetl to get nine huge pile chained deeply Into the bed of the river und felt that he had made a substantial beginning lu that .spot. The next wave hurled the ice ugaiust those nine huge sticks of wood bound together as one alii broke them off like pipe Kleins. Farges towed b launches, a double cable workis.1 by donkey engine both failed as a means of getting material uiroi that river, till at last an overhead cable was rigged and every pound of the heavy muterlal, IncluuluS engines, cars and rails, was got across t'7 October 30. Iu conclusion there should be cited that part of tbe battle which M. J. Ilc-ney led in person lu the Allen Canyon. The contract required completion to Mile 54 by October 3i. llws The stream down this canyon is really liquid Ice moving ut u rate of twenty miles au hour. Up this must go the material and supplies. Does man need to have the struggle described to picture it? In September there were twenty-four days of storms and blizzards, one destroying tbe construction con-struction cump at .Mile 2. Some men did desert, but Ileney leaped into the work himself and out of Pur grit and loyalty the men stuyed with him, working lti that awful weather from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, staggering to their bunks for a 'ew hours' sleep and back again, half the time in the dark, drlvlng( thosij last lire miles on to completion, and they did lt-j No army In the Held, riot even Washington's inea j nt Valley Forge, ever was called upou for greatif fortitude or courage. the fastenings as It touched on the tip of a saudv spot. The horse In his struggles dealt the man a kh k with his fore leg that stretched him tim ou -clous in a precariously balanced position n ,,ss the Low of the barge. Now the barge swung out where at any moineut the horse might dislodge the man and drop hlni t0 nis death. Shouting to the other men to haul fur all they were worth the younger brother plunged In, clinging to the line, with its coating of flesh cutting ice. and made his way, at times up to his nock in water or up to" his hips In quicksand, to the barge. It wjs a snper-humau snper-humau muscular effort, but when he rear bed the barge he still had strength enough lo deal the horse a blow lhat took all the light and struggle out of it, and then raising his brother to safety ho stuck to the barge until It was drawn through to safety. There was a very great deal of this work to do iu making connections between tho various Islands up the delta, and frequently the current was such that it required lifteen men lo haul up n boat carrying a few hundred pounds of freight, and ut times they were breast high iu the raging ley flood, slipping Into quicksands quick-sands or falling over logy along the bank. Nowhere in the world bus anything ever been heard of like the construction of the section of Hue across the front of Chllds Glacier. The .bridge thrown across the river here, called the Miles Canyon Fridge, Is wlut Is called ' glac h rpruo'f," and there is no such another one In tho world, so far as that is concerned. Like an Avalanche. As the great ever moving river of Bolld ice, three miles wide und towering three hundred feet sheer from the water, flows slowly down great bergs of ice burst from the face day in and day out ami fall into the river with an alarming noise and a great upheaval of water. The "ripple" u berg will raise ranges from 10 uci.iu .some- or me umaller heroisms of the loug eampaigu. for surely the euhu who under tire digs u rllle pit with his bayouet or bears a wounded comrade com-rade through a louden boll Lj no greater hero than the man who swing a pick where tbe next Infant be may be swept to death in a rush of lee and earth und water or in the bitter, bitter cold strives to thrust forward a mattress of brush for a foo-.ing where one misstep means that be will he whirled Hway in nn ley torrent ut the speed of an express train beyond till possible hope of rescue. Northward from the port of Cordova, ou tbe centre cen-tre of tbe southeastern coast, at a distance such a.s n good automobile cau cover lu a tamed Fusteru State between breakfast and dinner, Ilex the Kotslua-Chitina Kotslua-Chitina copper district, one of the world's richest, if not the richest of all. deposits. Just beyond Is the region of gold, and iurt of the way from the coat are holds of coal the wealth of which even at the lowest estimate makes a mind strain for comprehension. compre-hension. The America u spirit would not permit lhat this weaith should remain undeveloped for lack of U-ansportuUou, und w heu (he go eminent ovad.sl th " Aask of preparing to get It out a private corporatlou cut to build u railroad Lbul would hjiui tiuit . . i i, .scjoiided by U. C. llawuins as chief engineer. Tbe Copper K'aor is spread luto a delta covered with slit as Is the delta of tbe Mississippi. This it was necessary to cross in the hard season before the summer floods should turn it into a shallow lake with u muddy bottom of grout depth. It was on November 10. I'wiT, lhat the heroes of my fctory began and already the terrible winter was on. The snow was eight feet deep and then were only six hours of daylight. The flats were twenty miles wide aud bare to the bins', with mauy glacial and tidal streams, in addition lo the three mighty chanucls of the Copier River itself. They set to work In storms lu which tho wind, blowing from sixty to ninety miles au hour, hurled the particles of line Ice and snow through tho nlr like line shot. Utilizing the winter hardened stretches, they must construct' before the softculug spring came a highway high-way over not only them but I he reaches of loose ice, churning slush nnd speeding water, to that the heavy material for construction Inland could bo transported l!utber. Using brush and poles packed into n mattress, uluocd br tneu and horses where tuauy times 1 they |