Yet it is doubtful if the engineer scarcely expected the results that were experienced. The adequacy of his rolling-stock over the first 40 miles was tested to breaking point. The pack-trail over the pass was abandoned as quickly as a candle is extinguished by a gust of wind when the first train was announced. The miners braved the elements, pitiless cold and dazzling snow, no longer. From the railway to-day one can still see decaying evidences of a bygone bustle and activity attending the trek of the first prospectors and pioneers to the Klondike in the falling shacks and huts scattered along the trail, which before the advent of the iron horse were centres of life and revelry, but which to-day are wrapped in forlorn desolation. Scarcely a person enters or even passes their doors now. So soon as the winter broke, the engineer brought his forces to the front once more. The line skirts Lake Bennett. White Horse, on the head waters of the Yukon, some 72 miles ahead, was the objective, and the engineer was determined to reach that inland terminus that season by hook or by crook. As the line skirts Lake Bennett, and this sheet of water is navigable, he decided to use it temporarily until White Horse was reached, the railway consequently being resumed from the head of the lake. This was a justifiable course, inasmuch as the building of the line along the waterside would have occupied considerable time owing to physical characteristics, while it was imperative that White Horse should be reached without delay. The coming of spring saw the graders regirding themselves for another wrestle with the rock and gravel. Before they had gone very far the edge of a lake was gained. Its banks were precipitous and did not lend themselves to a feasible track. An ingenious solution of the problem was essayed. The engineer decided to lower the level of this sheet of water by some 14 feet and to build his grade on a shelf which surveys showed there would be exposed. To this end he cut a small outlet. But as the vent was driven through soft soil and totally inadequate to resist the pent-up force of the escaping water, the latter widened the breach into such a deep and wide channel that the lake was lowered by no less than 70 feet! This result opened up a new difficulty, escape from which was only practicable by the erection of two large bridges spanning the rift left by the receding waters. As a result, the line does not run round the lake as planned originally, but cuts directly across its bed.