THE FIRST CABIN.
What a charm the words our first cabin have to the pioneer. To many,
it was the first home ever owned by them, while to many others, like
myself, the first we ever had. We had been married nearly two years,
yet this was really our first abiding place. All others had been merely
way stations on the march westward from Indianapolis to this cabin.
Built of small, straight logs, on a side hill, with the door in the end
fronting the river, and with but little grading, for the rocky nature
of the location would not admit of it. Three steps were required to
reach the floor. The ribs projected in front a few feet to provide
an open front porch, with a ground floor, not for ornament, but for
storage for the dry wood and kindling so necessary for the comfort and
convenience of the mistress of the house. The walls were but scant five
feet, with not a very steep roof, and a large stone fire place and
chimney—the latter but seven feet high—completed our first home.
The great river, nearly a mile and three-quarters wide, seemed to tire
from its ceaseless flow at least once a day as if taking a nooning
spell, while the tides from the ocean, sixty miles away, contended for
mastery, and sometimes succeeded in turning the current up stream.
Immediately in front of our landing lay a small island of a few acres
in extent, covered with heavy timber and driftwood. This has long since
disappeared and ships now pass over the spot with safety.
Scarcely had we become settled in our new home before there came a
mighty flood that covered the waters of the river with wrecks of
property impossible to enumerate. Our attention was immediately turned
to securing logs that came floating down the river in great numbers.
In a very short time we had a raft that was worth quite a sum of
money could we but get it to the market. Encouraged by this find, we
immediately turned our attention to some fine timber standing close
to the bank nearby, and began hand logging to supplement what we had
already secured afloat. I have often wondered what we would have done
had it not been for this find, for in the course of seven weeks three
of us marketed eight hundred dollars' worth of logs that enabled us to
obtain flour, even if we did pay fifty dollars a barrel, and potatoes
at two dollars a bushel, and sometimes more.
And yet, because of that hand logging work, Jane came very near
becoming a widow one morning before breakfast, but did not know of it
until long afterwards. It occurred in this way. We did not then know
how to scaffold up above the tough, swelled butts of the large trees,
and this made it very difficult to chop them down. So we burned them
by boring two holes at an angle to meet inside the inner bark, and by
getting the fire started, the heart of the tree would burn, leaving
an outer shell of bark. One morning, as usual, I was up early, and
after starting the fire in the stove and putting on the tea kettle, I
hastened to the burning timber to start afresh the fires, if perchance,
some had ceased to burn. Nearing a clump of three giants, two hundred
and fifty feet tall, one began toppling over toward me. In my confusion
I ran across the path where it fell, and while this had scarce reached
the ground, a second started to fall almost parallel to the first,
scarcely thirty feet apart at the top, leaving me between the two with
limbs flying in a good many directions. If I had not become entangled
in some brush, I would have gotten under the last falling tree. It was
a marvelous escape, and would almost lead one to think that there is
such a thing as a charmed life.
The rafting of our precious accumulations down the Columbia River to
Oak Point; the relentless current that carried us by where we had
contracted our logs at six dollars a thousand; the following the raft
to the larger waters, and finally, to Astoria, where we sold them for
eight dollars, instead of six per thousand, thus profiting by our
misfortunes; the involuntary plunge off the raft into the river with
my boots on; the three days and nights of ceaseless toil and watching
would make a thrilling story if we had but the time to tell it. Our
final success was complete, which takes off the keen edge of the
excitement of the hour, and when finished, we unanimously voted we
would have none of it more.
At Oak Point we found George Abernethy, former Governor of Oregon, who
had quite recently returned with his family from the "States," and
had settled down in the lumber business. He had a mill running of a
capacity of about 25,000 feet of lumber a day. It was a water power
mill, and the place presented quite a smart business air for the room
they had. But Oak Point did not grow to be much of a lumber or business
center, and the water mill eventually gave way to steam, located
elsewhere, better suited for the business.
The flour sack was nearly empty when we left home expecting to be
absent but one night, and now we had been gone a week. There were no
neighbors nearer than four miles and no roads—scarcely a trail—the only
communication was by the river. What about the wife and baby alone in
the cabin with the deep timber close by in the rear, and heavy jungle
of brush in the front? Nothing about it. We found them all right
upon our return, but like the log drivers with their experience, the
little wife said she wanted no more of cabin life alone. And yet, like
adventures and like experiences followed.
The February sun of 1853 shone almost like midsummer. The clearing grew
almost as if by magic. We could not resist the temptation to begin
planting, and before March was gone, the rows of peas, lettuce, and
onions growing on the river bank could be seen from the cabin door,
thirty rods away.
One day I noticed some three-cornered bits of potatoes that had been
cut out, not bigger than the end of my finger. These all ran to a
point as though cut out from a pattern. The base, or outer skin, all
contained an eye of the potato. The wife said these would grow and
would help us out about seed when planting time came, and we could have
the body of the potatoes to eat. That would have seemed a plausible
scheme had we been able to plant at once, but by this time we had been
forcibly reminded that there was another impending flood for June,
incident to the melting of the snow on the mountains, a thousand miles
away as the channel ran. But the experiment would not cost much, so the
potato eyes were carefully saved and spread out on shelves where they
became so dry that they would rattle like dry onion sets when handled.
Every steamer outward bound carried potatoes for the San Francisco
market, until it became a question whether enough would be left for
seed, so that three and even four cents per pound was asked and paid
for sorry looking culls. We must have seed, and so, after experimenting
with the dried eyes, planted in moist earth in a box kept warm in the
cabin, we became convinced that the little lady of the household was
right, so ate potatoes freely even at these famine prices. Sure enough,
the flood came, the planting delayed until July, and yet a crop was
raised that undug brought in nearly four hundred dollars, for we did
not stay to harvest them, or in fact, cultivate them, leaving that to
another who became interested in the venture.
In April, the word began to pass around that we were to have a new
Territory to embrace the country north of the Columbia River, with its
capital on Puget Sound, and here on the Columbia we would be way off
to one side and out of touch with the people who would shortly become
a great, separate commonwealth. Besides, had we not come all the way
across the plains to get to the Sea Board, and here we were simply on
the bank of a river—a great river to be sure, with its ship channel,
but then, that bar at the mouth, what about it? Then the June freshet,
what about that?
So, leaving the little wife and baby in the cabin home, one bright
morning in May, my brother Oliver and myself made each of us a pack
of forty pounds and took the trail, bound for Puget Sound, camping
where night overtook us, and sleeping in the open air without shelter
or cover other than that afforded by some friendly tree with drooping
limbs. Our trail first led us down near the right bank of the Columbia
to the Cowlitz, thence up the latter river thirty miles or more, and
then across the country nearly sixty miles to Olympia, and to the salt
sea water of the Pacific sent inland a hundred and fifty miles by the
resistless tides, twice a day for every day of the year.
Our expectations had been raised by the glowing accounts about Puget
Sound, and so, when we could see in the foreground but bare, dismal
mud flats, and beyond but a few miles, of water with a channel scarce
twice as wide as the channel of the great river we had left, bounded
on either side by high table, heavily timbered land, a feeling of deep
disappointment fell upon us, with the wish that we were back at our
cabin on the river.
Should we turn around and go back? No, that was what we had not yet
done since leaving our Indiana home eighteen months before; but what
was the use of stopping here? We wanted a place to make a farm, and we
could not do it on such forbidding land as this. Had not the little
wife and I made a solemn bargain or compact, before we were married
that we were going to be farmers? Here, I could see a dense forest
stretched out before me quite interesting to the lumberman, and for
aught I know, channels for the ships, but I wanted to be neither a
lumberman nor sailor, and so my first camp on Puget Sound was not
cheerful and my first night not passed in contentment.
Olympia at the time contained about 100 inhabitants. It could boast
having three stores, a hotel, a livery stable, and saloon, with one
weekly newspaper, then publishing its thirtieth number. A glance at
the advertising columns of this paper, the "Columbian," (named for
what was expected would be the name of the new Territory) disclosed
but few local advertisers, the two pages devoted to advertising being
filled by announcements of business other than in Olympia. "Everybody
knows everybody here," said a business man to me, "so what's the use
of advertising." And it was thus with those who had been in the place
for a few weeks, and so it continued all over the pioneer settlements
for years. To meet a man on the road or on the street without speaking
was considered rude. It became the universal practice to greet even
strangers as well as acquaintances, and to this day I doubt if there
are many of the old settlers yet devoid of the impulse to pass the
time of day with hearty greetings to whomsoever they may meet, be they
acquaintances or strangers.
Edmund Sylvester in partnership with Levi L. Smith, located the claims
where the town of Olympia is built, in 1848. Mr. Smith soon after died,
leaving Sylvester as sole proprietor of the town, where I saw him, as
it will appear, five years later. It is said that Colonel I. N. Ebey
suggested the name Olympia, which was not given to the place until
after Mr. Sylvester's flight to the gold mines of California and return
in 1850.
But we could not stay here at Olympia. We had pushed on past some
good locations on the Chehalis, and further south, without locating,
and now, should we retrace our steps? Brother Oliver said no. My
better judgment said no, though sorely pressed with that feeling of
homesickness, or blues, or whatever we may call it. The resolve was
quickly made that we would see more of this Puget Sound, that we were
told presented nearly as many miles of shore line as we had traveled
westward from the Missouri River to Portland, near sixteen hundred
miles, and which we afterwards found to be true.
But how were we to go and see these, to us unexplored waters? I said I
would not go in one of those things, the Indian canoe, that we would
upset it before we were out half an hour. Brother Oliver pointed to the
fact the Indians navigated the whole Sound in these canoes, and were
safe, but I was inexorable and would not trust my carcass in a craft
that would tip so easily as a Siwash canoe. When I came to know the
Indians better, I ceased to use such a term, and afterwards when I saw
the performances of these apparently frail craft, my admiration was
greater in degree than my contempt had been.
Of the cruise that followed on Puget Sound, and in what manner of
craft we made it, and of various incidents of the trip that occupied a
month, I must defer telling now, and leave this part of the story for
succeeding chapters.