As one strolls in the woods about the logging camps, most of the
lumbermen are found to be interesting people to meet, kind and obliging
and sincere, full of knowledge concerning the bark and sapwood and
heartwood of the trees they cut, and how to fell them without
unnecessary breakage, on ground where they may be most advantageously
sawed into logs and loaded for removal. The work is hard, and all of
the older men have a tired, somewhat haggard appearance. Their faces
are doubtful in color, neither sickly nor quite healthy-looking, and
seamed with deep wrinkles like the bark of the spruces, but with no
trace of anxiety. Their clothing is full of rosin and never wears out.
A little of everything in the woods is stuck fast to these loggers, and
their trousers grow constantly thicker with age. In all their movements
and gestures they are heavy and deliberate like the trees above them,
and they walk with a swaying, rocking gait altogether free from quick,
jerky fussiness, for chopping and log rolling have quenched all that.
They are also slow of speech, as if partly out of breath, and when one
tries to draw them out on some subject away from logs, all the fresh,
leafy, outreaching branches of the mind seem to have been withered and
killed with fatigue, leaving their lives little more than dry lumber.
Many a tree have these old axemen felled, but, round-shouldered and
stooping, they too are beginning to lean over. Many of their companions
are already beneath the moss, and among those that we see at work some
are now dead at the top (bald), leafless, so to speak, and tottering to
their fall.
A very different man, seen now and then at long intervals but usually
invisible, is the free roamer of the wilderness—hunter, prospector,
explorer, seeking he knows not what. Lithe and sinewy, he walks erect,
making his way with the skill of wild animals, all his senses in
action, watchful and alert, looking keenly at everything in sight, his
imagination well nourished in the wealth of the wilderness, coming into
contact with free nature in a thousand forms, drinking at the fountains
of things, responsive to wild influences, as trees to the winds. Well
he knows the wild animals his neighbors, what fishes are in the
streams, what birds in the forests, and where food may be found. Hungry
at times and weary, he has corresponding enjoyment in eating and
resting, and all the wilderness is home. Some of these rare, happy
rovers die alone among the leaves. Others half settle down and change
in part into farmers; each, making choice of some fertile spot where
the landscape attracts him, builds a small cabin, where, with few wants
to supply from garden or field, he hunts and farms in turn, going
perhaps once a year to the settlements, until night begins to draw
near, and, like forest shadows, thickens into darkness and his day is
done. In these Washington wilds, living alone, all sorts of men may
perchance be found—poets, philosophers, and even full-blown
transcendentalists, though you may go far to find them.
Indians are seldom to be met with away from the Sound, excepting about
the few outlying hop ranches, to which they resort in great numbers
during the picking season. Nor in your walks in the woods will you be
likely to see many of the wild animals, however far you may go, with
the exception of the Douglas squirrel and the mountain goat. The
squirrel is everywhere, and the goat you can hardly fail to find if you
climb any of the high mountains. The deer, once very abundant, may
still be found on the islands and along the shores of the Sound, but
the large gray wolves render their existence next to impossible at any
considerable distance back in the woods of the mainland, as they can
easily run them down unless they are near enough to the coast to make
their escape by plunging into the water and swimming to the islands off
shore. The elk and perhaps also the moose still exist in the most
remote and inaccessible solitudes of the forest, but their numbers have
been greatly reduced of late, and even the most experienced hunters
have difficulty in finding them. Of bears there are two species, the
black and the large brown, the former by far the more common of the
two. On the shaggy bottom-lands where berries are plentiful, and along
the rivers while salmon are going up to spawn, the black bear may be
found, fat and at home. Many are killed every year, both for their
flesh and skins. The large brown species likes higher and opener
ground. He is a dangerous animal, a near relative of the famous
grizzly, and wise hunters are very fond of letting him alone.
The towns of Puget Sound are of a very lively, progressive, and
aspiring kind, fortunately with abundance of substance about them to
warrant their ambition and make them grow. Like young sapling sequoias,
they are sending out their roots far and near for nourishment, counting
confidently on longevity and grandeur of stature. Seattle and Tacoma
are at present far in the lead of all others in the race for supremacy,
and these two are keen, active rivals, to all appearances well matched.
Tacoma occupies near the head of the Sound a site of great natural
beauty. It is the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and calls
itself the “City of Destiny.” Seattle is also charmingly located about
twenty miles down the Sound from Tacoma, on Elliott Bay. It is the
terminus of the Seattle, Lake Shore, and Eastern Railroad, now in
process of construction, and calls itself the “Queen City of the Sound”
and the “Metropolis of Washington.” What the populations of these towns
number I am not able to say with anything like exactness. They are
probably about the same size and they each claim to have about twenty
thousand people; but their figures are so rapidly changing, and so
often mixed up with counts that refer to the future that exact
measurements of either of these places are about as hard to obtain as
measurements of the clouds of a growing storm. Their edges run back for
miles into the woods among the trees and stumps and brush which hide a
good many of the houses and the stakes which mark the lots; so that,
without being as yet very large towns, they seem to fade away into the
distance.
But, though young and loose-jointed, they are fast taking on the forms
and manners of old cities, putting on airs, as some would say, like
boys in haste to be men. They are already towns “with all modern
improvements, first-class in every particular,” as is said of hotels.
They have electric motors and lights, paved broadways and boulevards,
substantial business blocks, schools, churches, factories, and
foundries. The lusty, titanic clang of boiler making may be heard
there, and plenty of the languid music of pianos mingling with the
babel noises of commerce carried on in a hundred tongues. The main
streets are crowded with bright, wide-awake lawyers, ministers,
merchants, agents for everything under the sun; ox drivers and loggers
in stiff, gummy overalls; back-slanting dudes, well-tailored and shiny;
and fashions and bonnets of every feather and color bloom gayly in the
noisy throng and advertise London and Paris. Vigorous life and strife
are to be seen everywhere. The spirit of progress is in the air. Still
it is hard to realize how much good work is being done here of a kind
that makes for civilization—the enthusiastic, exulting energy displayed
in the building of new towns, railroads, and mills, in the opening of
mines of coal and iron and the development of natural resources in
general. To many, especially in the Atlantic States, Washington is
hardly known at all. It is regarded as being yet a far wild west—a dim,
nebulous expanse of woods—by those who do not know that railroads and
steamers have brought the country out of the wilderness and abolished
the old distances. It is now near to all the world and is in possession
of a share of the best of all that civilization has to offer, while on
some of the lines of advancement it is at the front.
Notwithstanding the sharp rivalry between different sections and towns,
the leading men mostly pull together for the general good and
glory,—building, buying, borrowing, to push the country to its place;
keeping arithmetic busy in counting population present and to come,
ships, towns, factories, tons of coal and iron, feet of lumber, miles
of railroad,—Americans, Scandinavians, Irish, Scotch, and Germans being
joined together in the white heat of work like religious crowds in time
of revival who have forgotten sectarianism. It is a fine thing to see
people in hot earnest about anything; therefore, however extravagant
and high the brag ascending from Puget Sound, in most cases it is
likely to appear pardonable and more.
Seattle was named after an old Indian chief who lived in this part of
the Sound. He was very proud of the honor and lived long enough to lead
his grandchildren about the streets. The greater part of the lower
business portion of the town, including a long stretch of wharves and
warehouses built on piles, was destroyed by fire a few months ago [28],
with immense loss. The people, however, are in no wise discouraged, and
ere long the loss will be gain, inasmuch as a better class of
buildings, chiefly of brick, are being erected in place of the
inflammable wooden ones, which, with comparatively few exceptions, were
built of pitchy spruce.
With their own scenery so glorious ever on show, one would at first
thought suppose that these happy Puget Sound people would never go
sightseeing from home like less favored mortals. But they do all the
same. Some go boating on the Sound or on the lakes and rivers, or with
their families make excursions at small cost on the steamers. Others
will take the train to the Franklin and Newcastle or Carbon River coal
mines for the sake of the thirty- or forty-mile rides through the
woods, and a look into the black depths of the underworld. Others again
take the steamers for Victoria, Fraser River, or Vancouver, the new
ambitious town at the terminus of the Canadian Railroad, thus getting
views of the outer world in a near foreign country. One of the regular
summer resorts of this region where people go for fishing, hunting, and
the healing of diseases, is the Green River Hot Springs, in the Cascade
Mountains, sixty-one miles east of Tacoma, on the line of the Northern
Pacific Railroad. Green River is a small rocky stream with picturesque
banks, and derives its name from the beautiful pale-green hue of its
waters.
Among the most interesting of all the summer rest and pleasure places
is the famous “Hop Ranch” on the upper Snoqualmie River, thirty or
forty miles eastward from Seattle. Here the dense forest opens,
allowing fine free views of the adjacent mountains from a long stretch
of ground which is half meadow, half prairie, level and fertile, and
beautifully diversified with outstanding groves of spruces and alders
and rich flowery fringes of spiraea and wild roses, the river
meandering deep and tranquil through the midst of it. On the portions
most easily cleared some three hundred acres of hop vines have been
planted and are now in full bearing, yielding, it is said, at the rate
of about a ton of hops to the acre. They are a beautiful crop, these
vines of the north, pillars of verdure in regular rows, seven feet
apart and eight or ten feet in height; the long, vigorous shoots
sweeping round in fine, wild freedom, and the light, leafy cones
hanging in loose, handsome clusters.
Perhaps enough of hops might be raised in Washington for the wants of
all the world, but it would be impossible to find pickers to handle the
crop. Most of the picking is done by Indians, and to this fine, clean,
profitable work they come in great numbers in their canoes, old and
young, of many different tribes, bringing wives and children and
household goods, in some cases from a distance of five or six hundred
miles, even from far Alaska. Then they too grow rich and spend their
money on red cloth and trinkets. About a thousand Indians are required
as pickers at the Snoqualmie ranch alone, and a lively and merry
picture they make in the field, arrayed in bright, showy calicoes,
lowering the rustling vine pillars with incessant song-singing and fun.
Still more striking are their queer camps on the edges of the fields or
over on the river bank, with the firelight shining on their wild jolly
faces. But woe to the ranch should fire-water get there!
But the chief attractions here are not found in the hops, but in
trout-fishing and bear-hunting, and in the two fine falls on the river.
Formerly the trip from Seattle was a hard one, over corduroy roads; now
it is reached in a few hours by rail along the shores of Lake
Washington and Lake Squak, through a fine sample section of the forest
and past the brow of the main Snoqualmie Fall. From the hotel at the
ranch village the road to the fall leads down the right bank of the
river through the magnificent maple woods I have mentioned elsewhere,
and fine views of the fall may be had on that side, both from above and
below. It is situated on the main river, where it plunges over a sheer
precipice, about two hundred and forty feet high, in leaving the level
meadows of the ancient lake basin. In a general way it resembles the
well-known Nevada Fall in Yosemite, having the same twisted appearance
at the top and the free plunge in numberless comet-shaped masses into a
deep pool seventy-five or eighty yards in diameter. The pool is of
considerable depth, as is shown by the radiating well-beaten foam and
mist, which is of a beautiful rose color at times, of exquisite
fineness of tone, and by the heavy waves that lash the rocks in front
of it.
Though to a Californian the height of this fall would not seem great,
the volume of water is heavy, and all the surroundings are delightful.
The maple forest, of itself worth a long journey, the beauty of the
river-reaches above and below, and the views down the valley afar over
the mighty forests, with all its lovely trimmings of ferns and flowers,
make this one of the most interesting falls I have ever seen. The upper
fall is about seventy-five feet high, with bouncing rapids at head and
foot, set in a romantic dell thatched with dripping mosses and ferns
and embowered in dense evergreens and blooming bushes, the distance to
it from the upper end of the meadows being about eight miles. The road
leads through majestic woods with ferns ten feet high beneath some of
the thickets, and across a gravelly plain deforested by fire many years
ago. Orange lilies are plentiful, and handsome shining mats of the
kinnikinic, sprinkled with bright scarlet berries.
From a place called “Hunt’s,” at the end of the wagon road, a trail
leads through lush, dripping woods (never dry) to Thuja and Mertens,
Menzies, and Douglas spruces. The ground is covered with the best
moss-work of the moist lands of the north, made up mostly of the
various species of hypnum, with some liverworts, marchantia,
jungermannia, etc., in broad sheets and bosses, where never a dust
particle floated, and where all the flowers, fresh with mist and spray,
are wetter than water lilies. The pool at the foot of the fall is a
place surpassingly lovely to look at, with the enthusiastic rush and
song of the falls, the majestic trees overhead leaning over the brink
like listeners eager to catch every word of the white refreshing
waters, the delicate maidenhairs and aspleniums with fronds outspread
gathering the rainbow sprays, and the myriads of hooded mosses, every
cup fresh and shining.