Monday, August 17, 2009

Why I didn't take a picture of our train as it was loading, I don't know. I guess I wasn't inspired by the scene. But these four shots are from the train. The first two show you how narrow the trail was going from the coast to the gold rush area. This was a two way trail. It is only a couple of feet wide. The story goes that if you fell out of line you could be hours waiting for someone to give you a chance to get back in. At the top of this trial was a place where dead pack animals where piled up in the hundreds. The Canadians said the prospectors had to have enough gear and food to help them survive and the weight of that gear was over 2000 lbs. The clime up through these mountains was just too hard on pack animals who where not treated or fed well. The real shame is of the thousands of prospectors who attempted this Rush only a few found any gold and only a few of those found enough to have made it worth their while. Greed for quick riches and the disregard for one's own ignorance about what would be a dangerous and devastating try helps me to understand why nations prefer war to diplomacy so often in human history.




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The first photo could be a photo of a crack in some broken asphalt almost...that's amazing that it's a real trail.
Some people's ignorance is right!