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"You mean railroads and coal-fields and such things?" "I do." Trevor shook his head. "If the people of Alaska waited for a Government railroad, they'd die of old age and be buried where they died, for lack of transportation. The Government owns telegraph-lines here, but it charges us five times the rates of the Western Union.
But here, just at the foot of these mountains, there is one little seam of coal, as if placed for the express use of these people, living so far away from the larger coal-fields. The Botfield lime and coal works cover only a few acres of the surface; but underground there are long passages bored beneath the pleasant pastures and the yellow cornfields.
I refer especially to the trouble in the Pennsylvania coal-fields, three years ago. I regarded him, apart from an all personal dislike, in the light of a criminal and a disgrace to society. I came to this hotel, and I saw my niece here. She told me What I have more briefly told you.
A modern Cassandra who confidently predicts the near exhaustion of our coal-fields, or graphically describes a crushing national disaster that must some day overtake us, may attract some public attention; but when we learn that the misfortune is not to take place in our time, we placidly remark that future generations must take care of themselves, and that we cannot reasonably be expected to bear their burdens.
Heard the news?" "No." "Curtis Gordon has bought the McDermott outfit in Kyak." "That tells me nothing. Who is McDermott?" "He's a shoe-stringer. He had a wildcat plan to build a railroad from Kyak to the coal-fields, but he never got farther than a row of alder stakes and a book of press clippings." "Does that mean that Gordon abandons his Hope route?" "Yep!
They let him go at last only upon his promise to return on his way back from the coal-fields, and they insisted upon accompanying him down to the dock, whither Gordon had preceded them in order to have his motor-boat in readiness. As they neared the landing they overheard the latter in spirited debate with "Happy Tom" Slater.
Certainly, there could have been no time more unhappy than this to display the charms of the community to the critical eyes of the man who as the rapid word spread to all had come to look into the gold-mines on Baxter side of the valley, and the new coal-fields up Patos way; and who, moreover, so said swift rumor, was the real head and front of the railroad heading northward from El Paso!
These iron roads, therefore, began to multiply, and about the beginning of the present century they were largely employed in the coal-fields and mineral districts of the kingdom.
I followed the line of the proposed railroad, looking for chances. All Canada was asleep, or too much interested in its west, and gave me no competition. I was alone west of the surveyed line; east of it steel-corporation men had optioned mountains of iron and another interest had a grip on coal-fields. Six months I spent among the Indians, French, and half-breeds.
Huge fern plants spread their giant fronds in the dank sunless atmospheres, to be buried later in vast beds of decaying vegetation that form the coal-fields of to-day. Animal life began first, like the plants, in the bosom of the ocean. From the slimy depths of the water life crawled hideous to the land.
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