Part 3 (1/2)

Fortunately this penetrated their besotted minds and they put about in time to save the lives of all on board, although they landed some distance below the usual place.

A little farther and they would have been past all human help.

One of the boatmen cheerfully acknowledged the next day that if it ”hadn't been fur that purty girl they had a' gone over them falls, shure.”

The other boat had a similar experience; it began to leak profusely before they had gone very far and would soon have sunk, had not the crew, who doubtless were sober, made all haste to land.

My grandmother has often related to me how she clasped her little child to her heart and resigned herself to a fate which seemed inevitable; also of a Mrs. McCarthy, a pa.s.senger likewise, becoming greatly excited and alternately swearing and praying until the danger was past. An inconvenient but amusing feature was the soaked condition of the ”plunder” and the way the sh.o.r.e and shrubbery thereon were decorated with ”hiyu ictas,” as the Chinook has it, hung out to dry. Finding it impossible to proceed, this detachment returned and took the mountain road.

A tramway built by F. A. Chenoweth, around the great falls, afforded transportation for the baggage of the narrowly saved first described.

There being no accommodations for pa.s.sengers, the party walked the tramroad; at the terminus they unloaded and stayed all night. No ”commodious and elegant” steamer awaited them, but an old brig, bound for Portland, received them and their effects.

Such variety of adventure had but recently crowded upon them that it was almost fearfully they re-embarked. A. A. Denny observed to Captain Low, ”Look here, Low, they say women are scarce in Oregon and we had better be careful of ours.” Presumably they were, as both survive at the present day.

From a proud ranger of the das.h.i.+ng main, the old brig had come down to be a carrier of salt salmon packed in barrels, and plunder of immigrants; as for the luckless pa.s.sengers, they accommodated themselves as best they could.

The small children were tied to the mast to keep them from falling overboard, as there were no bulwarks.

Beds were made below on the barrels before mentioned and the travel-worn lay down, but not to rest; the mosquitos were a bloodthirsty throng and the beds were likened unto a corduroy road.

One of the women grumbled a little and an investigation proved that it was, as her husband said, ”Nothing but the tea-kettle” wedged in between the barrels.

Another lost a moccasin overboard and having worn out all her shoes on the way, went with one stockinged foot until they turned up the Willamette River, then went ash.o.r.e to a farmhouse where she was so fortunate as to find the owner of a new pair of shoes which she bought, and was thus able to enter the ”city” of Portland in appropriate footgear.

After such vicissitudes, dangers and anxiety, the little company were glad to tarry in the embryo metropolis for a brief season; then, having heard of fairer sh.o.r.es, the restless pioneers moved on.

CHAPTER III

THE SETTLEMENT AT ALKI.

Midway between Port Townsend and Olympia, in full view looking west from the city of Seattle, is a long tongue of land, washed by the sparkling waves of Puget Sound, called Alki Point. It helps to make Elliott Bay a beautiful land-locked harbor and is regarded with interest as being the site of the first settlement by white people in King County in what was then the Territory of Oregon. _Alki_ is an Indian word p.r.o.nounced with the accent on the first syllable, which is _al_ as in alt.i.tude; _ki_ is spoken as _ky_ in silky. Alki means ”by and by.”

It doth truly fret the soul of the old settler to see it printed and hear it p.r.o.nounced Al-ki.

The first movement toward its occupancy was on this wise: A small detachment of the advancing column of settlers, D. T. Denny and J. N.

Low, left Portland on the Willamette, on the 10th of September, 1851, with two horses carrying provisions and camp outfit.

These men walked to the Columbia River to round up a band of cattle belonging to Low. The cattle were ferried over the river at Vancouver and from thence driven over the old Hudson Bay Company's trail to the mouth of Cowlitz River, a tributary of the Columbia, up the Cowlitz to Warba.s.s Landing and on to Ford's prairie, a wide and rich one, where the band were left to graze on the luxuriant pasturage.

On a steep, rocky trail along the Cowlitz River, Denny was following along not far behind a big, yellow ox that was scrambling up, trying vainly to get a firm foothold, when Low, foreseeing calamity, called to him to ”Look out!” Denny swerved a little from the path and at that moment the animal lost its footing and came tumbling past them, rolling over several times until it landed on a lower level, breaking off one of its horns. Here was a narrow escape although not from a wild beast. They could not then stop to secure the animal although it was restored to the flock some time after.

From Ford's prairie, although footsore and weary, they kept on their way until Olympia was reached. It was a long tramp of perhaps two hundred fifty miles, the exact distance could not be ascertained as the trail was very winding.

As described by one of our earliest historians, Olympia then consisted of about a dozen one-story frame cabins, covered with split cedar siding, well ventilated and healthy, and perhaps twice as many Indian huts near the custom house, as Olympia was then the port of entry for Puget Sound.

The last mentioned structure afforded s.p.a.ce on the ground floor for a store, with a small room part.i.tioned off for a postoffice.

Our two pioneers found here Lee Terry, who had been engaged in loading a sailing vessel with piles. He fell in with the two persistent pedestrians and thus formed a triumvirate of conquerors of a new world.