It is not often that the selection of a route of travel is determined by the odorous or malodorous qualities which appertain thereto. Such a case was, however, 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, laid emphasis upon the stench of decaying horse-flesh as a factor of first consideration in the choice of route. So far as stench and decaying horse-flesh 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 of the full number which in April and May gave grim character to the route to the new Eldorado. 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 the inhuman treatment, or lack of care and assistance, which they received on the part 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. Oftentimes pack saddles, and sometimes even the packs, were allowed to remain with the struggling or sunken animal--such was the mad race which the greed of gold inspired.