Then Mr. Bromley said abruptly: "This is all very interesting, Mr. Tisdale, but it is the Chugach Railway and not the Copper River Northwestern, that bears on our case. You have been over that route, I believe?" "Yes." Tisdale's voice quickened. "I used the roadbed going to and from the Matanuska Valley. Also I went over the proposed route once with Mr. Foster and the civil engineers." "Was it, in your opinion, a bona fide railroad, Mr. Tisdale? Or simply a lure to entice people to make coal locations in order that they might be bought after the patents were issued?" "It was started in good faith." The steel rang, a warning note, in his voice. "The largest stockholder had spent nearly a hundred thousand dollars in opening his coal claim. He was in need of immediate transportation." "This was after the Chugach Company consolidated with the Prince William syndicate, Mr. Tisdale?" "No, sir. It was previous to that time. The Chugach Railway and Development Company had chosen one of the finest harbors in Alaska for a terminus. It was doubly protected from the long Pacific swell by the outer, precipitous shore of Prince William Sound. But their greatest engineering problem met them there at the start. It was necessary to cross a large glacier back of the bay. There was no possible way to build around it; the only solution was a bore under the ice. The building of such a tunnel meant labor and great expense. And it was not a rich company; it was made up principally of small stockholders, young men, just out of college some of them, who had gone up there with plenty of enthusiasm and courage to invest in the enterprise, but very little money. They did their own assessment work, dug like any coal miners with pick and shovel, cut and carried the timbers to brace their excavations under Mr. Foster's instructions. And when construction commenced on the railroad, they came down to do their stunt at packing over the glacier--grading began from the upper side--and sometimes they cut ties." "And meantime," said the attorney brusquely, "Mr. Foster, who was responsible I believe, was trying to interest other capital to build the tunnel."