Document 15: "The Skagway Trail"
"The Skagway Trail," in Seattle Argus, September 25, 1897.
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There are upwards of a thousand horses on the trail....The poor dumb brutes have a hard time of it. There are probably three hundred dead horses on the trail; there are surely two hundred. Their carcasses are left lying in the trail, just where the unfortunate animals had broken their legs or become hopelessly mired....A great many owners of horses have thought that their animals could subsist on grass and have taken no food beyond the summit. The result has been that the horses have literally starved to death, as it is impossible for them to subsist on grass alone and do the hard work required.