Part 40 (2/2)

”One of the mill officials said, 'We are at present doing a large business with South American and Australian ports, and expect with proper attention to secure the South African trade, which, if successful, will be a big thing. We have the finest lumber in the world, and there is no reason why we should not be doing five times the business that is being done on the Sound. Why, there is some first quality and some selected Norway lumber out there on the wharf, and it does not even compare with our second quality lumber.'

”The company has at present (1896) 350 men employed and between $15,000.00 and $20,000.00 in wages is paid out every month.

”The following vessels are now loading or are loaded and ready to sail:

”Bark Columbia, for San Francisco, 700,000 feet; s.h.i.+p Aristomene, for Valparaiso, 1,450,000 feet; s.h.i.+p Earl Burgess, for Amsterdam, 1,250,000 feet; bark Mercury, for San Francisco, 1,000,000 feet; s.h.i.+p Corolla, for Valparaiso, 1,000,000 feet; barkentine Katie Flickinger, for Fiji Islands, 550,000 feet; bark Matilda, for Honolulu, 650,000 feet; bark E. Ramilla, for Valparaiso, 700,000 feet; s.h.i.+p Beechbank, for Valparaiso, 2,000,000 feet.

”To load next week:

”Barkentine George C. Perkins, for Sidney, N. S. W., 550,000 feet; bark Guinevere, for Valparaiso, 850,000 feet.

”Those to arrive within the next two weeks:

”Bark Antoinette, for Valparaiso, 900,000 feet; barkentine J. L.

Stanford, for Melbourne, 1,200,000 feet; s.h.i.+p Saga, for Valparaiso, 1,200,000 feet; bark George F. Manson, for Shanghai, China, 950,000 feet; s.h.i.+p Harvester, for South Africa, 1,000,000 feet.”

s.h.i.+ngle making was a prominent early industry. The process was slow, done entirely by hand, in vivid contrast with the great facility and productiveness of the modern s.h.i.+ngle mills of this region; in consequence of the slowness of manufacture they formerly brought a much higher price. It was an ideal occupation at that time. After the mammoth cedars were felled, sawn and rived asunder, the s.h.i.+ngle-maker sat in the midst of the opening in the great forest, towering walls of green on all sides, with the blue sky overhead and fragrant wood spread all around, from which he shaped the thin, flat pieces by shaving them with a drawing knife.

Cutting and hewing spars to load s.h.i.+ps for foreign markets began before 1856.

As recorded in a San Francisco paper:

”In 1855, the bark Anadyr sailed from Utsalady on Puget Sound, with a cargo of spars for the French navy yard at Brest. In 1857 the same s.h.i.+p took a load from the same place to an English navy yard.

”To China, Spain, Mauritius and many other places, went the tough, enduring, flexible fir tree of Puget Sound. The severe test applied have proven the Douglas fir to be without an equal in the making of masts and spars.

”In later days the Fram, of Arctic fame, was built of Puget Sound fir.”

The discovery and opening of the coal mines near Seattle marks an epoch in the commerce of the Northwest.

As early as 1859 coal was found and mined on a small scale east of Seattle.

The first company, formed in 1866-7, was composed of old and well-known citizens: D. Bagley, G. F. Whitworth and Selucius Garfield, who was called the ”silver-tongued orator.” Others joined in the enterprise of developing the mines, which were found to be extensive and valuable.

Legislation favored them and transportation facilities grew.

The names of McGilvra, Yesler, Denny and Robinson were prominent in the work. Tramways, chutes, inclines, tugboats, barges, coalcars and locomotives brought out the coal to deep water on the Sound, across Lakes Was.h.i.+ngton and Union, and three pieces of railroad. A long trestle at the foot of Pike Street, Seattle, at which the s.h.i.+p ”Belle Isle,”

among others, often loaded, fell in, demolished by the work of the teredo.

The writer remembers two startling trips up the incline, nine hundred feet long, on the east side of Lake Was.h.i.+ngton, in an empty coal car, the second time duly warned by the operatives that the day before a car load of furniture had been ”let go” over the incline and smashed to kindlingwood long before it reached the bottom. The trips were made amidst an oppressive silence and were never repeated.

The combined coal fields of Was.h.i.+ngton cover an area of one thousand six hundred fifty square miles. Since the earliest developments great strides have been made and a large number of coal mines are operated, such as the Black Diamond, Gilman, Franklin, Wilkeson, the U. S.

government standard, Carbonado, Roslyn, etc., with a host of underground workers and huge steam colliers to carry an immense output.

The carrying of the first telegraph line through the dense forest was another step forward. Often the forest trees were pressed into service and insulators became the strange ornaments of the monarchs of the trackless wilderness.

Pioneer surveyors, of whom A. A. Denny was one, journalists, lawyers and other professional men, with the craftsmen, carpenters who helped to repair the Decatur and build the fort, masons who helped to build the old University of Was.h.i.+ngton, and other industrious workers brought to mind might each and every one furnish a volume of unique and interesting reminiscence.

The women pioneers certainly demand a work devoted to them alone.

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