Cruisings in the Cascades
by G. O. Shields · English · Gutenberg #36654 · 447,442 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Cruisings in the Cascades
Author: G. O. Shields
Release date: July 7, 2011 [eBook #36654]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
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[Illustration: G. O. Shields]
CRUISINGS IN THE CASCADES.
A NARRATIVE OF
Travel, Exploration, Amateur Photography, Hunting, and Fishing,
WITH SPECIAL CHAPTERS ON
HUNTING THE GRIZZLY BEAR, THE BUFFALO, ELK, ANTELOPE, ROCKY MOUNTAIN
GOAT, AND DEER; ALSO ON TROUTING IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS; ON A MONTANA
ROUND-UP; LIFE AMONG THE COWBOYS, ETC.
BY G. O. SHIELDS,
("COQUINA")
AUTHOR OF
"RUSTLINGS IN THE ROCKIES,"
"HUNTING IN THE GREAT WEST,"
"THE BATTLE OF THE BIG HOLE," ETC.
CHICAGO AND NEW YORK:
RAND, MCNALLY & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS.
1889.
COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY RAND, MCNALLY & CO.
The articles herein on Elk, Bear, and Antelope Hunting are reprinted by
the courtesy of Messrs. Harper & Brothers, in whose Magazine they were
first published; and those on Buffalo Hunting and Trouting are
reproduced from "Outing" Magazine, in which they first appeared.
"Come live with me and be my love.
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods or steepy mountains, yield."
--_Marlowe._
"Earth has built the great watch-towers of the mountains, and they
lift their heads far up into the sky, and gaze ever upward and
around to see if the Judge of the World comes not."
--_Longfellow._
PREFACE.
And now, how can I suitably apologize for having inflicted another book
on the reading public? I would not attempt it but that it is the custom
among authors. And, come to think of it, I guess I won't attempt it
anyway. I will merely say, by way of excuse, that my former literary
efforts, especially my "Rustlings in the Rockies," have brought me in
sundry dollars, in good and lawful money, which I have found very useful
things to have about the house. If this volume shall meet with an
equally kind reception at the hands of book buyers, I shall feel that,
after all, I am not to blame for having written it.
THE AUTHOR.
CHICAGO, MARCH, 1889.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
The Benefits, Mental and Physical, of Mountain Climbing--A
Never-failing Means of Obtaining Sound Sleep and a Good
Appetite--The Work to be in Proportion to the Strength of the
Climber--People Who Would Like to See, but are Too Lazy to
Climb--How the Photograph Camera May Enhance the Pleasures and
Benefits of Mountain Climbing--Valuable Souvenirs of Each
Ascent--How "These Things are Done in Europe"--An Effective Cure
for Egotism.
CHAPTER II.
The Cascade Mountains Compared with the Rockies--Characteristics
and Landmarks of the Former--The Proper Season for Cruising in
the Cascades--Grand Scenery of the Columbia--Viewing Mount
Tacoma from the City of Tacoma--Men Who Have Ascended this
Mysterious Peak--Indian Legends Concerning the Mountain--Evil
Spirits, Who Dwell in Yawning Caverns--The View from the
Mountain--Crater Lake and the Glaciers--Nine Water-falls in
Sight from One Point.
CHAPTER III.
The City of Seattle--A Booming Western Town--Lumbering and Salmon
Canning--Extensive Hop Ranches--Rich Coal and Iron Mines--Timber
Resources of Puget Sound--Giant Firs and Cedars--A Hollow Tree
for a House--Big Timber Shipped to England--A Million Feet of
Lumber from an Acre of Land--Novel Method of Logging--No Snow in
Theirs--A World's Supply of Timber for a Thousand Years.
CHAPTER IV.
Length, Breadth, and Depth of Puget Sound--Natural Resources of
the Surrounding Country--Flora and Fauna of the Region--Great
Variety of Game Birds and Animals--Large Variety of Game and
Food Fishes--A Paradise for Sportsman or Naturalist--A Sail
Through the Sound--Grand Mountains in Every Direction--The Home
of the Elk, Bear, Deer, and Salmon--Sea Gulls as Fellow
Passengers--Photographed on the Wing--Wild Cattle on Whidby
Island--Deception Pass; its Fierce Current and Wierd
Surroundings--Victoria, B. C.--A Quaint Old, English-looking
Town.
CHAPTER V.
Through English Bay--Water Fowls that Seem Never to Have Been
Hunted--Rifle Practice that was Soon Interrupted--Peculiarities
of Burrard Inlet--Vancouver and Port Moody--A Stage Ride to
Westminster--A Stranger in a Strange Land--Hunting for a
Guide--"Douglass Bill" Found and Employed--An Indian Funeral
Delays the Expedition.
CHAPTER VI.
The Voyage up the Frazier--Delicious Peaches Growing in Sight of
Glaciers--The Detective Camera Again to the Front--Good Views
from the Moving Steamer--A Night in an Indian Hut--The Sleeping
Bag a Refuge from Vermin--The Indian as a Stamping Ground for
Insects--He Heeds Not Their Ravages.
CHAPTER VII.
A Breakfast with the Bachelor--Up Harrison River in a Canoe--Dead
Salmon Everywhere--Their Stench Nauseating--The Water Poisoned
with Carrion--A Good Goose Spoiled with an Express
Bullet--Lively Salmon on the Falls--Strange Instinct of this
Noble Fish--Life Sacrificed in the Effort to Reach its Spawning
Grounds--Ranchmen Fishing with Pitchforks, and Indians with
Sharp Sticks--Salmon Fed to Hogs, and Used as Fertilizers; the
Prey of Bears, Cougars, Wild Cats, Lynxes, Minks, Martins,
Hawks, and Eagles.
CHAPTER VIII.
The River Above the Rapids--A Lake Within Basaltic Walls--Many
Beautiful Waterfalls--Mount Douglas and its Glaciers--A Trading
Post of the Hudson Bay Fur Company--The Hot Springs; an Ancient
Indian Sanitarium--Anxiously Waiting for "Douglass Bill"--Novel
Method of Photographing Big Trees.
CHAPTER IX.
An Early Morning Climb--A Thousand Feet Above the Lake--Fresh
Deer Signs in Sight of the Hotel--Three Indians Bring in Three
Deer--"Douglass Bill" Proves as Big a Liar as Other
Indians--Heading off a Flock of Canvas Backs--A Goodly Bag of
these Toothsome Birds--A Siwash Hut--A Revolting Picture of
Dirt, Filth, Nakedness, and Decayed Fish--Another Guide
Employed--Ready on Short Notice--Off for the Mountain.
CHAPTER X.
Characteristics of the Flathead Indians--Canoeists and Packers by
Birth and Education--A Skillful Canoe Builder--Freighting
Canoes--Fishing Canoes--Traveling Canoes--Two Cords of Wood for
a Cargo, and Four Tons of Merchandise for Another--Dress of the
Coast Indians.
CHAPTER XI.
Climbing the Mountain in a Rainstorm-Pean's Dirty Blankets--His
Careful Treatment of His Old Musket--A Novel Charge for Big
Game--The Chatter of the Pine Squirrel--A Shot Through the
Brush--Venison for Supper--A Lame Conversation: English on the
One Side, Chinook on the Other--The Winchester Express Staggers
the Natives--Peculiarities of the Columbia Black Tail Deer.
CHAPTER XII.
The Chinook Jargon; an Odd Conglomeration of Words; the Court
Language of the Northwest; a Specimen Conversation--A Camp on
the Mountain Side--How the Indian Tried to Sleep Warm--The
Importance of a Good Bed when Camping--Pean is taken Ill--His
Fall Down a Mountain--Unable to go Further, We Turn Back--Bitter
Disappointment
CHAPTER XIII.
The Return to the Village--Two New Guides Employed--Off for the
Mountains Once More--The Tramp up Ski-ik-kul Creek Through
Jungles, Gulches, and Canyons--And Still it Rains--Ravages of
Forest Fires--A Bed of Mountain Feathers--Description of a
Sleeping Bag; an Indispensable Luxury in Camp Life; an Indian
Opinion of It
CHAPTER XIV.
Meditations by a Camp Fire--Suspicions as to the Honesty of My
Guides; at Their Mercy in Case of Stealthy Attack--A Frightful
Fall--Broken Bones and Intense Suffering--A Painful and Tedious
Journey Home--A Painful Surgical Operation--A Happy Denouement
CHAPTER XV.
The Beauties of Ski-ik-kul Creek; a Raging Mountain Torrent;
Rapids and Waterfalls Everywhere; Picturesque Tributaries--Above
the Tree Tops--The Pleasure of Quenching Thirst--A Novel
Spear--A Fifteen-Pound Salmon for Supper--The Indians' Midnight
Lunch--A Grand Camp Fire--At Peace with All Men
CHAPTER XVI.
Seymour Advises a Late Start for Goat Hunting; but His Council is
Disregarded--We Start at Sunrise--A Queer Craft--Navigating
Ski-ik-kul Lake--A "Straight-up" Shot at a Goat--Both Horns
Broken Off in the Fall--More Rain and Less Fun--A Doe and
Kid--Successful Trout Fishing--Peculiarities of the Skowlitz
Tongue; Grunts, Groans and Whistles--John has
Traveled--Seymour's Pretended Ignorance of English
CHAPTER XVII.
En Route to the Village Again--A Water-Soaked Country--"Oh, What
a Fall was There, My Countrymen!"--Walking on Slippery
Logs--More Rain--Wet Indians--"Semo He Spile de Grouse"--A
Frugal Breakfast--High Living at Home--A Bear He did a Fishing
Go; but He was Caught Instead of the Fish, and His Skin is
Bartered to the Unwashed Siwashes.
CHAPTER XVIII.
John and His Family "At Home"--An Interesting Picture of Domestic
Economy--Rifle Practice on Gulls and Grebes--Puzzled
Natives--"Phwat Kind of Burds is Them?"--A day on the
Columbia--The Pallisades from a Steamer--Photographing Bad Lands
from a Moving Train.
CHAPTER XIX.
Deer Hunting at Spokane Falls--Ruin Wrought by an Overloaded
Shotgun: A Tattered Vest and a Wrecked Watch--Billy's Bear
Story--The Poorest Hunter Makes the Biggest Score--A Claw in
Evidence--A Disgusted Party.
CHAPTER XX.
A Fusilade on the Mule Deer--Two Does as the Result--A Good Shot
Spoiled--View from the Top of Blue Grouse Mountain--A Grand
Panorama; Lakes, Mountains, Prairies and Forests--Johnston's
Story--Rounding Up Wild Hogs--A Trick on the Dutchman--A Bucking
Mule and a Balky Cayuse--Falls of the Spokane River.
CHAPTER XXI.
Hunting the Grizzly Bear--Habitat and Characteristics--A Camp
Kettle as a Weapon of Defense--To the Rescue with a
Winchester--Best Localities for Hunting the Grizzly--Baiting and
Still-Hunting--A Surprise Party in the Trail--Two Bulls-eyes and
a Miss--Fresh Meat and Revelry in Camp.
CHAPTER XXII.
Elk Hunting in the Rocky Mountains--Characteristics of the
Elk--His Mode of Travel--A Stampede in a Thicket--The Whistle of
the Elk, the Hunter's Sweetest Music--Measurements of a Pair of
Antlers--Saved by Following an Elk Trail--The Work of
Exterminators--The Elk Doomed.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Antelope Hunting in Montana--A Red Letter Day on Flat
Willow--Initiating a Pilgrim--Sample Shots--Flagging and
Fanning--Catching Wounded Antelopes on Horseback--Four
Mule-Loads of Meat.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Buffalo Hunting on the Texas Plains--A "Bull Train" Loaded with
Skins--A Sensation in Fort Worth--En Route to the Range--Red
River Frank's Mission--A Stand on the Herd--Deluged with Buffalo
Blood--A Wild Run by Indians--Tossed into the Air and Trampled
into the Earth.
CHAPTER XXV.
Hunting the Rocky Mountain Goat--Technical Description of the
Animal--Its Limited Range--Dangers Incurred in Hunting It--An
Army Officer's Experience--A Perilous Shot--A Long and Dangerous
Pursuit--Successful at Last--Carrying the Trophies to
Camp--Wading up Lost Horse Creek--Numerous Baths in Icy
Water--An Indian's Fatal Fall--Horses Stampeded by a Bear--Seven
Days on Foot and Alone--Home at Last.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Trouting in the Mountains--Gameness of the Mountain Trout--A Red
Letter Day on the Bitter Root--Frontier Tackle and Orthodox
Bait--How a Private Soldier Gets to the Front as an Angler--A
Coot Interrupts the Sport, and a Rock Interrupts the
Coot--Colonel Gibson takes a Nine-Pounder--A Native Fly
Fisherman--Grand Sport on Big Spring Creek--How Captain Hathaway
does the Honors--Where Grand Sport may be Found.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Deer Hunting in Northern Wisconsin--On the Range at Daylight--The
Woods Full of Game--Missing a Standing "Broadside" at Thirty
Yards--Several Easy Shots in Rapid Succession; the only Fruits
Shame and Chagrin--Nervousness and Excitement Finally Give Way
to Coolness and Deliberation--A Big Buck at Long Range--A Steady
Aim and a Ruptured Throat--A Blind Run Through Brush and Fallen
Trees--Down at Last--A Noble Specimen--His Head as a Trophy
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Among the Pines--A Picture of Autumnal Loveliness--Cordial
Welcome to a Logging Camp--A Successful Shot--The Music of the
Dinner Horn--A Throat Cut and a Leg Broken--A Stump for a
Watch-Tower--The Raven Homeward Bound--A Suspicious Buck--A
Mysterious Presence--Dead Beside His Mate--Three Shots and Three
Deer
CHAPTER XXIX.
A Typical Woodsman--Model Home in the Great Pine Forest--A
Lifetime in the Wilderness--A Deer in a Natural
Trap--Disappointment and Despondency--"What, You Killed a
Buck!"--Sunrise in the Woods--An Unexpected Shot--A Free Circus
and a Small Audience--A Buck as a Bucker--More Venison
CHAPTER XXX.
Cowboy Life--The Boys that Become Good Range Riders--Peculiar
Tastes and Talents Required for the Ranch--Wages Paid to
Cowboys--Abuse and Misrepresentation to which They are
Subjected--The "Fresh Kid," and the Long-Haired "Greaser"--The
Stranger Always Welcome at the Ranch--A Dude Insulted--A Plaid
Ulster, a Green Umbrella, and a Cranky Disposition--Making a
Train Crew Dance--An Uncomplimentary Concert--No Sneak Thieves
on the Plains--Leather Breeches, Big Spurs, and a Six-Shooter in
a Sleeping Car--Fear Gives Way to Admiration--The Slang of the
Range--The "Bucker," and the "Buster"--The Good
Cow-Horse--Roping for Prizes--Snaking a Bear with a Lariat--A
Good School for Boys--Communion with Nature Makes Honest
CHAPTER XXXI.
A Montana Roundup--Ranges and Ranches on Powder River; Once the
Home of the Buffalo, the Elk, the Antelope; now the Home of the
Texas Steer and the Cowboy--The Great Plains in Spring Attire--A
Gathering of Rustlers--"Chuck Outfits" to the Front--Early
Risers--Taming an "Alecky" Steer--A Red-Hot Device--Branding and
Slitting--The Run on the Mess Wagon--"Cutting Out" and "Throwing
Over"--A Cruel Process.
CRUISINGS IN THE CASCADES.
CHAPTER I.
"Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery."
--RUSKIN.
For anyone who has the courage, the hardihood, and the physical strength
to endure the exercise, there is no form of recreation or amusement
known to mankind that can yield such grand results as mountain climbing.
I mean from a mental as well as from a physical standpoint; and, in
fact, it is the mind that receives the greater benefit. The exertion of
the muscular forces in climbing a high mountain is necessarily severe;
in fact, it is more than most persons unused to it can readily endure;
and were it not for the inspiration which the mind derives from the
experience when the ascent is made it would be better that the subject
should essay some milder form of exercise. But if one's strength be
sufficient to endure the labor of ascending a grand mountain peak, that
extends to or above timber line, to the regions of perpetual snow and
ice, or even to a height that gives a general view of the surrounding
country, the compensation must be ample if one have an eye for the
beauties of nature, or any appreciation of the grandeur of the Creator's
greatest works.
[Illustration: MOUNT HOOD.]
Vain, self-loving man is wont to consider himself the noblest work of
God, but let him go to the top of one of these lofty mountains,
surrounded by other towering peaks, and if he be a sane man he will soon
be convinced that his place in the scale of creation is far from the
top. Let him stand, for instance, on the summit of Mount Hood, Mount
Tacoma, or Mount Baker, thousands of feet above all surrounding peaks,
hills, and valleys, where he may gaze into space hundreds of miles in
every direction, with naught to obstruct his view, face to face with his
Creator, and if he have aught of the love of nature in his soul, or of
appreciation of the sublime in his mental composition, he will be moved
to exclaim with the Apostle, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him,
or the son of man that Thou visitest him?" He will feel his littleness,
his insignificance, his utter lack of importance, more forcibly perhaps
than ever before. It seems almost incredible that there should be men in
the world who could care so little for the grandest, the sublimest
sights their native land affords, as to be unwilling to perform the
labor necessary to see them to the best possible advantage; and yet it
is so, for I have frequently heard them say:
"I should like very much to see these grand sights you describe, but I
never could afford to climb those high mountains for that pleasure; it
is too hard work for me."
And, after all, the benefits to be derived from mountain climbing are
not wholly of an intellectual character; the physical system may be
benefited by it as well. It is a kind of exercise that in turn brings
into use almost every muscle in the body, those of the legs being of
course taxed most severely, but those of the back do their full share of
the work, while the arms are called into action almost constantly, as
the climber grasps bushes or rocks by which to aid himself in the
ascent. The lungs expand and contract like bellows as they inhale and
exhale the rarified atmosphere, and the heart beats like a trip-hammer
as it pumps the invigorated blood through the system. The liver is
shaken loose from the ribs to which it has perchance grown fast, and the
stomach is aroused to such a state of activity as it has probably not
experienced for years. Let any man, especially one of sedentary habits,
climb a mountain 5,000 feet high, on a bright, pleasant day, when
"Night's candles are burnt out and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops."
[Illustration: MOUNT TACOMA.]
There let him breathe the rare, pure atmosphere, fresh from the portals
of heaven, and my word for it he will have a better appetite, will eat
heartier, sleep sounder, and awake next morning feeling more refreshed
than since the days of his boyhood.
Although the labor be severe it can and should be modulated to the
strength and capabilities of the person undertaking the task. No one
should climb faster than is compatible with his strength, and halts
should be made every five or ten minutes, if need be, to allow the
system ample rest. In this manner a vast amount of work may be
accomplished in a day, even by one who has had no previous experience
in climbing.
[Illustration: ON THE COLUMBIA.]
The benefits and pleasures of mountain climbing are much better
understood and appreciated in Europe than in this country. Nearly every
city of England, France, Spain, Germany, and other European countries
has an Alpine, Pyrenese, or Himalayan club. The members of these clubs
spend their summer outings in scaling the great peaks of the mountains
after which the societies are named, or other ranges, and the winter
evenings in recounting to each other their experiences; and many a man,
by his association with the clubs and by indulgence in this invigorating
pastime develops from a delicate youth into a muscular, sturdy, athletic
man in a few years.
The possible value of mountain climbing as a recreation and as a means
of gaining knowledge, has been greatly enhanced, of late years, by the
introduction of the dry-plate system in photography, and since the
small, light, compact cameras have been constructed, which may be easily
and conveniently carried wherever a man can pack his blankets and a
day's supply of food. With one of these instruments fine views can be
taken of all interesting objects and bits of scenery on the mountain,
and of the surrounding country. The views are interesting and
instructive to friends and to the public in general, and as souvenirs
are invaluable to the author. And from the negatives thus secured
lantern slides may be made, and from these, by the aid of the calcium
light, pictures projected on a screen that can only be excelled in their
beauty and attractiveness by nature herself.
[Illustration: GLACIERS ON MOUNT TACOMA.]
CHAPTER II.
Each succeeding autumn, for years past, has found me in some range of
mountains, camping, hunting, fishing, climbing, and taking views. The
benefits I have derived from these expeditions, in the way of health,
strength, and vigor, are incalculable, and the pleasures inexpressible.
My last outing was in the Cascade Range, in Oregon and Washington
Territory, where I spent a month in these delightful occupations, and it
is with a view of encouraging and promoting a love for these modes of
recreation that this record is written.
"I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture."
[Illustration: A VIEW IN THE CASCADES.]
The Cascade Range of mountains extends from Southern Oregon through
Washington Territory, away to the northward in British Columbia. In
width, from east to west, it varies from fifty to one hundred miles. It
is the most densely-timbered range on the continent, and yet is one of
the highest and most rugged. It may not possess so many ragged,
shapeless crags and dark canyons as the Rocky Range, and yet everyone who
has ever traversed both accords to the Cascades the distinction of
being the equal, in picturesqueness and grandeur, of the Rockies, or, in
fact, of any other range in the country. As continental landmarks,
Mounts Pitt, Union, Thielson, Jefferson, Hood, Adams, St. Helens,
Tacoma, Baker, Stuart, Chiam, Douglass, and others are unsurpassed.
Their hoary crests tower to such majestic heights as to be visible, in
some instances, hundreds of miles, and their many glaciers feed mighty
rivers upon whose bosoms the commerce of nations is borne. Mount
Jefferson is 9,020 feet high; Mount Adams, 9,570; Mount St. Helens,
9,750; Mount Baker, 10,800, Mount Hood, 11,025, and Mount Tacoma,
14,444. There are many other peaks that rise to altitudes of 7,000 to
9,000 feet, and from these figures one may readily form something of an
idea of the general height and beauty of the Cascade Range. The
foot-hills are generally high, rolling, and picturesque, and so heavily
timbered that in many places one cannot see a hundred yards in any
direction. Higher up the range, however, this heavy timber is replaced
by smaller trees, that stand farther apart, and the growth of underbrush
is not so dense; consequently, the labor of travel is lightened and the
range of vision is extended. The geological formation in the Cascades is
varied. Igneous rock abounds; extensive basaltic cliffs and large bodies
of granite, limestone, sandstone, etc., are frequently met with, and
nearly all the table-lands, in and about the foot-hills, are composed of
gravel drift, covered with vegetable mold. The Cascades may be explored
with comfort later in the fall than the Rockies or other more eastern
ranges, the winter setting in on the former much later than on the
latter, although the winter rains usually come in November. September
and October are the most pleasant months for an outing in the Cascades.
[Illustration: ONEONTA GORGE, COLUMBIA RIVER, OREGON.]
* * * It was late in October when my wife and I started from Chicago for
a tour of a month among the bristling peaks of the Cascades and the
picturesque islands of Puget Sound. A pleasant ride of fifteen hours on
the Wisconsin Central Railroad to St. Paul, and another of three days
and nights on the grand old Northern Pacific, brought us face to face
with the glittering crests and beetling cliffs that were the objects of
our pilgrimage. As the tourist goes west, the first view of the range is
obtained at the Dalles of the Columbia river, from whence old Mount
Hood, thirty-five miles distant, rears its majestic head high into the
ethereal vault of heaven, and neighboring peaks, of lesser magnitude,
unfold themselves to the enraptured vision. As the train whirls down the
broad Columbia river, every curve, around which we swing with dazzling
speed, reveals to our bewildered gaze new forms of beauty and new
objects of wonder. So many descriptions of the scenery along this mystic
stream have been written, that every reading man, woman, and child in
the land must be familiar with it, and I will not repeat or attempt to
improve upon any of them. To say the most extravagant representations
are not exaggerated, is to speak truly, and no one can know how
beautiful some of these towers and cliffs are until he has seen them.
The train arrived at Portland, that old and far-famed metropolis of the
North Pacific coast, at half past ten o'clock in the morning, and after
twenty-four hours pleasantly spent in viewing its many points of
interest and the snow-covered mountains thereabouts, we again boarded
the Northern Pacific train and sped toward Tacoma, where we arrived at
six o'clock in the evening. Here we passed another day in looking over a
booming Western city, whose future prosperity and greatness have been
assured by its having been chosen as the tide-water terminus of the
Northern Pacific Railway. Tacoma is situated on Commencement Bay, an arm
of Puget Sound, and has a harbor navigable for the largest ocean
steamships. The vast forests of pine, fir, and cedar, with which it is
surrounded, give Tacoma great commercial importance as a lumbering town,
and the rich agricultural valleys thereabout assure home production of
breadstuffs, vegetables, meats, etc., sufficient to feed its army of
workingmen. Rich coal fields, in the immediate neighborhood, furnish
fuel for domestic and manufacturing purposes at merely nominal prices.
All the waters hereabouts abound in salmon, several varieties of trout
and other food-fishes, while in the woods and mountains adjacent, elk,
deer, and bears are numerous; so the place will always be a popular
resort for the sportsman and the tourist. The chief attraction of the
city, however, for the traveler, will always be the fine view it affords
of Mount Tacoma. This grand old pinnacle of the Cascade Range,
forty-five miles distant, lifts its snow-mantled form far above its
neighbors, which are themselves great mountains, while its
glacier-crowned summit rises, towers, and struggles aloft 'til----
"Round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head;"
and its crown is almost lost in the limitless regions of the deep blue
sky.
From the verandas of the Tacoma House one may view Mount Tacoma until
wearied with gazing. The Northern Pacific Railway runs within fifteen
miles of the base of it, and from the nearest point a trail has been
made, at a cost of some thousands of dollars, by which tourists may
ascend the mountain on horseback, to an altitude of about 10,000 feet,
with comparative comfort; but he who goes above that height must work
his passage. There are several men who claim the distinction of being
the only white man that has ever been to the top of this mountain.
Others declare that it has been ascended only twice; but we have
authentic information of at least three successful and complete ascents
having been made. Indian legends people the mountain with evil spirits,
which are said to dwell in boiling caldrons and yawning caverns--
"Calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men's names."
Tradition says their wild shrieks and groans may be heard therein at all
times; and no Indians are known ever to have gone any great distance up
Mount Rainier, as they call it. White men have tried to employ the
native red men as guides and packers for the ascent, but no amount of
money can tempt them to invade the mysterious canyons and cliffs with
which the marvelous pile is surrounded. They say that all attempts to do
so, by either white or red men, must result in certain destruction.
Undoubtedly the first ascent was made about thirty years ago, by General
(then Lieutenant) Kautz, and Lieutenant Slaughter, of the United States
Army, who were then stationed at Steilacoom, Washington Territory. They
took pack animals, and with an escort of several men ascended as far as
the animals could go. There they left them and continued the climb on
foot. They were gone nine days, from the time of leaving their mules
until they returned to the animals, and claimed, no doubt justly, to
have gone to the top of Liberty Cap, the highest of the three distinct
summits that form the triplex corona; the others being known as the
Summit and the Dome. The next ascent, so far as known, was made in 1876
by Mr. Hazard Stevens, who gave an account of his experiences in the
_Atlantic Monthly_ for November, of that year. In 1882, Messrs. Van
Trump and Smith, of San Francisco, made a successful ascent, and in the
same year an Austrian tourist who attempted to ascend the mountain, got
within three hundred feet of the top, when his progress was arrested by
an avalanche, and he came very near losing his life. Mr. L. L. Holden,
of Boston, went to within about six hundred feet of the summit in 1883,
and Mr. J. R. Hitchcock claims to have reached it in 1885.
From the point gained by the trail above mentioned, the tourist may look
down upon the glaciers of the North Fork of the Puyallup River, 3,000
feet below, while on the other hand, the glaciers of the canyon of the
Carbon may be seen 4,000 feet beneath him. Away to the north, glimmering
and glinting under the effulgent rays of the noonday sun, stretches that
labyrinth of waters known as Puget Sound--
"Whose breezy waves toss up their silvery spray;"
while the many islands therein, draped in their evergreen foliage, look
like emeralds set in a sheet of silver. Many prominent landmarks in
British Columbia are seen, while to the north and south stretches the
Cascade Range, to the west the Olympic, and to the southwest the Coast
Range. All these are spread out before the eye of the tourist in a grand
panorama unsurpassed for loveliness. Crater Lake forms one of the
mysteries of Mount Tacoma. About its ragged, ice-bound and rock-ribbed
shores are many dark caverns, from which the Indians conceived their
superstitious fears of this mysterious pile. An explorer says of one of
these chambers:
"Its roof is a dome of brilliant green, with long icicles pendant
therefrom; while its floor is composed of the rocks and debris that
formed the side of the crater, worn smooth by the action of water and
heated by a natural register, from which issue clouds of steam."
The grand canyon of the Puyallup is two and a half miles wide, and from
its head may be seen the great glacier, 300 feet in thickness, which
supplies the great volume of water that flows through the Puyallup
river. From here no less than nine different waterfalls, varying in
height from 500 to 1,500 feet, are visible; and visitors are sometimes
thrilled with the magnificent spectacle of an avalanche of thousands of
tons of overhanging ice falling with an overwhelming crash into the
canyon, roaring and reverberating in a way that almost makes the great
mountain tremble. Fed by the lake, torrents pour over the edge of the
cliff, and the foaming waters, forming a perpetual veil of seemingly
silver lace, fall with a fearful leap into the arms of the surging
waves below. Mount Tacoma will be the future resort of the continent,
and many of its wondrous beauties yet remain to be explored.
[Illustration: VIEW ON GREEN RIVER NEAR MOUNT TACOMA.]
CHAPTER III.
The Oregon Railway & Navigation Company's steamers leave Tacoma, for
Seattle, at four o'clock in the morning, and at six-thirty in the
evening, so we were unable to see this portion of the sound until our
return trip. Seattle is another of those rushing, pushing, thriving,
Western towns, whose energy and dash always surprise Eastern people. The
population of the city is 15,000 souls; it has gas-works, water-works,
and a street railway, and does more business, and handles more money
each year than many an Eastern city of 50,000 or more.
The annual lumber shipments alone aggregate over a million dollars, from
ten saw-mills that cost over four millions, and the value of the
salmon-canning product is nearly a million more. The soil of the valleys
adjacent to Seattle is peculiarly adapted to hop-raising, and that
industry is extensively carried on by a large number of farmers. Some of
the largest and finest hop-ranches in the world are located in the
vicinity, and their product is shipped to various American and European
ports, over 100,000 tons having been shipped in 1888, bringing the
growers the handsome sum of $560,327.
During the fifteen years since the beginning of this important
cultivation, the hop crop is said never to have failed, nor has it been
attacked by disease, nor deteriorated by reason of the roots being kept
on the same land without replanting. It is believed that the Dwamish,
the White River, and the Puyallup Valleys could easily produce as many
hops as are now raised in the United States, if labor could be obtained
to pick them. Indians have been mainly relied upon to do the picking,
and they have flocked to the Sound from nearly all parts of the
Territory, even from beyond the mountains. Many have come in canoes from
regions near the outlet of the Sound, from British Columbia, and even
from far off Alaska, to engage temporarily in this occupation; then to
purchase goods and return to their wigwams. They excel the whites in
their skill as pickers, and, as a rule, conduct themselves peaceably.
Elliot Bay, on which Seattle is built, affords a fine harbor and good
anchorage, while Lakes Union and Washington, large bodies of fresh
water--the former eleven and the latter eighteen feet above tide
level--lie just outside the city limits, opposite. There are rich coal
mines at hand, which produce nearly a million dollars worth each year.
Large fertile tracts of agricultural lands, in the near vicinity,
produce grain, vegetables, and fruits of many varieties, and in great
luxuriance. Iron ore of an excellent quality abounds in the hills and
mountains back of the city, and with all these natural resources and
advantages at her command, Seattle is sure to become a great metropolis
in the near future. The climate of the Puget Sound country is temperate;
snow seldom falls before Christmas, never to a greater depth than a few
inches in the valleys and lowlands, and seldom lies more than a few days
at a time. My friend, Mr. W. A. Perry, of Seattle, in a letter dated
December 6, says:
"The weather, since your departure, has been very beautiful. The morning
of your arrival was the coldest day we have had this autumn. Flowers are
now blooming in the gardens, and yesterday a friend who lives at Lake
Washington sent me a box of delicious strawberries, picked from the
vines in his garden in the open air on December 4, while you, poor
fellow, were shivering, wrapped up in numberless coats and furs, in the
arctic regions of Chicago. Why don't you emigrate? There's lots of room
for you on the Sumas, where the flowers are ever blooming, where the
summer never dies, where the good Lord sends the _tyee_ (great) salmon
to your very door; and where, if you want to shoot, you have your choice
from the tiny jacksnipe to the cultus bear or the lordly elk."
There are thousands of acres of natural cranberry marshes on the shores
of the sound, where this fruit grows wild, of good quality, and in great
abundance. It has not been cultivated there yet, but fortunes will be
made in that industry in the near future.
But the crowning glory of Puget Sound, and its greatest source of
wealth, are the vast forests of timber. It is scarcely advisable to
tell the truth concerning the size to which some of the giant firs and
cedars grow in this country, lest I be accused of exaggeration; but, for
proof of what I say, it will only be necessary to inquire of any
resident of the Sound country. There are hundreds of fir and cedar trees
in these woods twenty to twenty-five feet in diameter, above the spur
roots, and over three hundred feet high. A cube was cut from a fir tree,
near Vancouver, and shipped to the Colonial Exhibition in London in
1886, that measured nine feet and eight inches in thickness each way.
The bark of this tree was fourteen inches thick. Another tree was cut,
trimmed to a length of three hundred and two feet, and sent to the same
destination, but this one, I am told, was only six feet through at the
butt.
[Illustration: PUGET SOUND SAW-LOGS.]
From one tree cut near Seattle six saw-logs were taken, five of which
were thirty feet long, each, and the other was twenty-four feet in
length. This tree was only five feet in diameter at the base, and the
first limb grew at a height of two feet above where the last log was cut
off, or over one hundred and seventy feet from the ground. A red cedar
was cut in the same neighborhood that measured eighteen feet in diameter
six feet above the ground; and there is a well-authenticated case of a
man, named Hepburn, having lived in one of these cedars for over a year,
while clearing up a farm. The tree was hollow at the ground, the cavity
measuring twenty-two feet in the clear and running up to a knot hole
about forty feet above. The homesteader laid a floor in the hollow,
seven or eight feet above the ground, and placed a ladder against the
wall by which to go up and down. On the floor he built a stone
fireplace, and from it to the knot hole above a stick and clay chimney.
He lived upstairs and kept his horse and cow downstairs. It may be well
to explain that he was a bachelor, and thus save the reader any anxiety
as to how his wife and children liked the situation.
The "Sumas Sapling" stands near Sumas Lake, northeast of Seattle. It is
a hollow cedar, twenty-three feet in the clear, on the ground, and is
estimated to be fifteen feet in diameter twenty feet above the ground. I
have, in several instances, counted more than a hundred of these mammoth
trees on an acre of land, and am informed that one tract has been out
off that yielded over 1,000,000 feet of lumber per acre. In this case
the trees stood so close together that many of the stumps had to be dug
out, after the trees had been felled, before the logs could be gotten
out. The system of logging in vogue here differs widely from that
practiced in Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, and elsewhere. No snow or ice
are required here, and, in fact, if snow falls to any considerable depth
while crews are in the woods a halt is called until it goes off.
Corduroy roads are built into the timber as fast as required, on which
the teams travel, so that it is not necessary that the ground should be
even frozen. Skids, twelve to eighteen inches thick, are laid across,
these roads, about nine feet apart, and sunk into the ground so as to
project about six inches above the surface; the bark is peeled off the
top, they are kept greased, and the logs are "snaked" over them with
four to seven yoke of cattle, as may be required. The wealthier
operators use steam locomotives and cars, building tracks into the
timber as fast and as far as needed. This great timber belt is
co-extensive with Puget Sound, the Straits of Georgia, and the Cascade
Mountains. I believe that at the present rate at which lumber is being
consumed, there is fir, pine, and cedar enough in Washington Territory
and British Columbia to last the world a thousand years.
CHAPTER IV.
Puget Sound is a great inland sea, extending nearly 200 miles from the
ocean, having a surface of about 2,000 square miles, and a shore line of
1,594 miles, indented with numerous bays, harbors, and inlets, each with
its peculiar name; and it contains numerous islands inhabited by
farmers, lumbermen, herdsmen, and those engaged in quarrying lime and
building stone. Nothing can surpass the beauty of these waters and their
safety. Not a shoal exists within the Sound, the Straits of Juan de
Fuca, Admiralty Bay, Hood's Canal, or the Straits of Georgia, that would
in any way interrupt their navigation by a seventy-four-gun ship. There
is no country in the world that possesses waters equal to these. The
shores of all the inlets and bays are remarkably bold, so much so that a
ship's side would touch the shore before her keel would touch the
ground. The country by which these waters are surrounded has a
remarkably salubrious climate.
The region affords every advantage for the accommodation of a vast
commercial and military marine, with conveniences for docks, and there
are a great many sites for towns and cities, which at all times would be
well supplied with water, and the surrounding country, which is well
adapted to agriculture, would supply all the wants of a large
population. No part of the world affords finer islands, sounds, or a
greater number of harbors than are found within these waters. They are
capable of receiving the largest class of vessels, and are without a
single hidden danger. From the rise and fall of the tide (18 feet),
every facility is afforded for the erection of works for a great
maritime nation. The rivers also furnish hundreds of sites for
water-power for manufacturing purposes. On this Sound are already
situated many thriving towns and cities, besides those already
mentioned, bidding for the commerce of the world.
The flora of the Sound region is varied and interesting. A saturated
atmosphere, constantly in contact with the Coast Range system of
upheaval, together with the warm temperature, induces a growth of
vegetation almost tropical in its luxuriance. On the better soils, the
shot-clay hills and uplands, and on the alluvial plains and river
bottoms, grow the great trees, already mentioned, and many other species
of almost equal beauty, though of no commercial value.
"The characteristic shrubs are the cornels and the spiraeas, many
species. These, with the low thickets of salal (_Gaultheria shallon_),
Oregon grape (berries), and fern (chiefly pteris, which is the most
abundant), and the tangle of the trailing blackberry (_Rubus pedatus_)
make the forests almost impenetrable save where the ax or the wild beast
or the wilder fire have left their trails.
"The dense shade of the forest gives little opportunity for the growth
of the more lowly herbs. Where the fire has opened these shades to the
light the almost universal fireweed (_epilobium_) and the lovely brown
fire-moss (_funaria_) abound. In swamps and lowlands the combustion of
decay, almost as quick and effective as fire itself, opens large spaces
to the light; and here abound chiefly the skunk cabbage of the Pacific
coast (_lysichiton_) and many forms of the lovliest mosses, grown beyond
belief save by those who have looked upon their tropical congeners.
_Hypnums_ and _Mniums_ make the great mass which meet the eye; and among
the many less obvious forms a careful search will reveal many species
characteristic of this coast alone. The lower forms of the cryptogams,
the lichens and the fungi, abound in greatest profusion as might be
expected. The chief interest in these, in the present state of our
knowledge of them, springs from their disposition to invade the more
valuable forms of vegetation which follow advancing civilization."
[Illustration: VIEWS ON PUGET SOUND.]
I measured one fungus, which I found growing upon the decaying trunk of
a mammoth fir, that was thirteen inches thick and thirty-four inches
wide. I have frequently seen mosses growing on rotten logs, in the deep
shades of these lonely forests, that were twelve to sixteen inches deep,
and others hanging from branches overhead three feet or more in length.
There are places in these dense forests where the trees stand so close
and their branches are so intertwined that the sun's rays never reach
the ground, and have not, perhaps for centuries; and it is but natural
that these shade and moisture loving plants should grow to great size in
such places.
The fauna of this Territory includes the elk, black-tailed deer,
_Cervus columbianus_; the mule-deer, _Cervus macrotus_; the Virginia
deer, _Cervus virginianus_; the caribou, the Rocky Mountain goat, Rocky
Mountain sheep, the grizzly and black bear. Among the smaller mammals
there are the raccoon, the cougar, wild cat, gray wolf, black wolf,
prairie wolf or coyote, gray and red fox, fisher, mink, martin, beaver,
otter, sea otter, red squirrel, ermine, muskrat, sea lion, fur and hair
seals, wolverine, skunk, badger, porcupine, marmot, swamp hare,
jack-rabbit, etc. Of birds and wild fowls there is a long list, among
which may be mentioned several varieties of geese and brant, including
the rare and toothsome black brant, which in season hovers in black
clouds about the sand spits; the canvas back, redhead, blue bill, teal,
widgeon, shoveler, and various other ducks; ruffed, pinnated, and blue
grouse; various snipes and plovers; eagles, hawks, owls, woodpeckers,
jays, magpies, nuthatches, warblers, sparrows, etc. There are many
varieties of game and food fishes in the Sound and its tributaries, in
addition to the salmon and trout already mentioned. In short, this whole
country is a paradise for the sportsman and the naturalist, whatever the
specialty of either.
We left Seattle, _en route_ for Victoria, at seven o'clock on a bright,
crisp November morning. The air was still, the bay was like a sheet of
glass, and only long, low swells were running outside. We had a charming
view of the Cascade Mountains to the east and the Olympics to the west,
all day. The higher peaks were covered with snow, and the sunlight
glinted and shimmered across them in playful, cheery mood. Deep shadows
fell athwart dark canyons, in whose gloomy depths we felt sure herds of
elk and deer were nipping the tender herbage, and along whose raging
rivers sundry bears were doubtless breakfasting on salmon straight. Old
Mount Baker's majestic head, rising 10,800 feet above us and only fifty
miles away, was the most prominent object in the gorgeous landscape, and
one on which we never tired of gazing. We had only to cast our eyes from
the grand scene ashore to that at our feet, and _vice versa_, to--
"See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another."
A large colony of gulls followed the steamer, with ceaseless beat of
downy wings, from daylight till dark, and after the first hour they
seemed to regard us as old friends. They hovered about the deck like
winged spirits around a lost child. Strange bird thus to poise with
tireless wing over this watery waste day after day! Near the route of
the vessel one of the poor creatures lay dead, drifting sadly and alone
on the cold waves. Mysterious creature, with--
"Lack lustre eye, and idle wing,
And smirched breast that skims no more,
Hast thou not even a grave
Upon the dreary shore,
Forlorn, forsaken thing?"
Our feathered fellow-passengers greeted us with plaintive cries whenever
we stepped out of the cabin, dropping into the water in pursuit of every
stray bit of food that was thrown overboard from the cook-room. My wife
begged several plates of stale bread from the steward, and, breaking it
into small pieces, threw handfuls at a time into the water.
[Illustration: OUR FEATHERED FELLOW-PASSENGERS.]
Twenty or thirty of the birds would drop in a bunch where the bread
fell, and a lively scramble would ensue for the coveted food. The lucky
ones would quickly corral it, however, when the whole flight, rising
again, would follow and soon overtake the vessel. Then they would
cluster around their patron, cooing, and coaxing for more of the welcome
bounty. I took out my detective camera and made a number of exposures on
the gulls, which resulted very satisfactorily. Many of the prints show
them sadly out of focus, but this was unavoidable, as I focused at
twenty feet, and of course all that were nearer or farther away, at the
instant of exposure, are not sharp. Many, however, that were on wing at
the time of making the exposure, and at the proper distance from the
lens, are clearly and sharply cut.
These pictures form a most interesting study for artists, anatomists,
naturalists, and others, the wings being shown in every position assumed
by the birds in flight. The shutter worked at so high a pressure that
only one or two birds in the entire series show any movement at all, and
they are but very slightly blurred. When we consider that the steamer,
as well as the gulls, was in motion--running ten miles an
hour--trembling and vibrating from stem to stern, and that, in many
cases, the birds were going in an opposite direction from that of the
vessel, the results obtained are certainly marvelous. It may interest
some of my readers to know that I used an Anthony detective camera,
making a four-by-five-inch picture, to which is fitted a roll holder,
and in all the work done on this trip, I used negative paper. I also
obtained, _en route_, several good views of various islands, and points
of interest on the mainland, while the boat was in motion.
There are many beautiful scenes in and about the Sound; many charming
islands, clothed in evergreen foliage, from whose interiors issue clear,
sparkling brooks of fresh water; while the mainland shores rise
abruptly, in places, to several hundreds of feet, bearing their burdens
of giant trees. There are perpendicular cut banks on many of the islands
and the mainland shores, thirty, forty, or fifty feet high, almost
perpendicular, made so by the hungry waves having eaten away their
foundations, and the earth having fallen into the brine, leaving exposed
bare walls of sand and gravel. On Whidby Island, one of the largest in
the Sound, there was, up to a few years ago, a herd of wild cattle, to
which no one made claim of ownership, and which were, consequently,
considered legitimate game for anyone who cared to hunt them. They were
wary and cunning in the extreme. The elk or deer, native and to the
manor born, could not be more so. But, alas, these cattle were not to be
the prey of true, conscientious sportsmen; for the greed of the market
hunter and the skin hunter exceeded the natural cunning of the noble
animals, and they have been nearly exterminated; only ten or twelve
remain, and they will soon have to yield up their lives to the
insatiable greed of those infamous butchers.
[Illustration: DECEPTION PASS, PUGET SOUND.]
One of the most curious and interesting points in the sound is Deception
Pass. This is a narrow channel or passage between two islands, only
fifty yards wide, and about two hundred yards long. On either side rise
abrupt and towering columns of basaltic rock, and during both ebb and
flow the tide runs through it, between Padilla and Dugalla Bays, with
all the wild fury and bewildering speed of the maelstrom. This pass
takes its name from the fact of there being three coves near--on the
west coast of Whidby Island--that look so much like Deception that they
are often mistaken for it at night or during foggy weather, even by
experienced navigators. All the skill and care of the best pilots are
required to make the pass in safety, and the bravest of them heave a
sigh of relief when once its beetling cliffs and seething abysses are
far astern. Gulls hover about this weird place, and eagles soar above it
at all hours, as if admiring its pristine beauties, yet in superstitious
awe of the dark depths. Mount Erie, two miles away, rising to a height
of 1,300 feet, casting its deep shadows across the pass and surrounding
waters, completes a picture of rare beauty and grandeur.
We reached Victoria, that quaint, old, aristocratic, ultra-English town,
just as the sun was sinking beneath the waves, that rolled restlessly on
the surface of Juan de Fuca Strait. We were surprised to see so
substantial and well-built a town as this, and one possessing so much of
the air of age and independence, so far north and west. One might
readily imagine, from the exterior appearance of the city and its
surroundings, that he were in the province of Quebec instead of that of
British Columbia. My wife felt that she must not remain longer away from
home at present, and we were to part here; therefore, in the early
morning she embarked for home, while I transferred my effects and self
to the steamer Princess Louise, bound for Burrard Inlet.
CHAPTER V.
At daylight in the morning we entered English Bay, having crossed the
strait during the night. The sun climbed up over the snow-mantled
mountains into a cloudless sky, and his rays were reflected from the
limpid, tranquil surface of the bay:
"Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,"
as if from the face of a mirror. A few miles to the east, the
triple-mouthed Frazer empties its great volume of fresh, cold,
glacier-tinted fluid into the briny inland sea, and its delta, level as
a floor, stretches back many miles on either side of the river to the
foot-hills of the Cascades. Thousands of ducks sat idly and lazily in
the water, sunning themselves, pruning their feathers, and eyeing us
curiously but fearlessly, as we passed, sometimes within twenty-five or
thirty yards of them. A few geese crossed hither and thither, in low,
long, dark lines, uttering their familiar honk, honk; but they were more
wary than their lesser cousins, and kept well out of range. I asked the
purser if there was any rule against shooting on board, and he said no;
to go down on the after main deck, and shoot until I was tired. I took
my Winchester express from the case, went below and opened on the ducks.
They at once found it necessary to get out of the country, and their
motion, and that of the vessel combined, caused me to score several
close misses, but I finally found the bull's-eye, so to speak, and
killed three in rapid succession. Then the mate came down and said:
"We don't allow no one to be firin' off guns on board."
"I have the purser's permission," I said.
"Well," he replied, "the captain's better authority than the purser on
this here boat," whereupon he returned to the cabin deck, and so did I.
I was not seriously disappointed, however, for I cared little for the
duck shooting; I was in quest of larger game, and only wanted to
practice a little, to renew acquaintance and familiarity with my weapon.
Early in the day we entered Burrard Inlet, a narrow, crooked, and
peculiarly shaped arm of the salt water, that winds and threads its way
many miles back into the mountains, so narrow in places, that a boy may
cast a stone across it, and yet so deep as to be navigable for the
largest ocean steamship. The inlet is so narrow and crooked that a
stranger, sailing into it for the first time, would pronounce it a great
river coming down from the mountains. Through this picturesque body of
water our good boat cleft the shadows of the overhanging mountains until
nearly noon, when we landed at Vancouver, the terminus of the Canadian
Pacific Railway. In consequence of this important selection, the place
is a busy mart of trade. The clang of saw and hammer, the rattle of
wheels, the general din of a building boom, are such as to tire one's
nerves in a few hours. Later in the day we reached Port Moody. This town
was originally designated as the tide-water terminus of the road, and
had its brief era of prosperity and speculation in consequence; but now
that the plan has been changed it has been reduced to a mere way
station, and has relapsed into the dullest kind of dullness.
From here I staged across the divide to New Westminster, on the Frazer
river, the home of Mr. J. C. Hughs, who had invited me there to hunt
Rocky Mountain goats with him. I was grieved beyond measure, however, to
learn on my arrival that he was dangerously ill, and went at once to his
house, but he was unable to see me. He sank rapidly from the date of his
first illness, died two days after my arrival, and I therefore found
myself in a strange land, with no friend or acquaintance to whom I could
go for information or advice.
My first object, therefore, was to find a guide to take me into the
mountains, and although I found several pretended sportsmen, I could
hear of no one who had ever killed a goat, except poor Hughs, and a Mr.
Fannin, who had formerly lived there, but had lately moved away, so of
course no one knew where I could get a guide. Several business men, of
whom I asked information, inquired at once where I was from, and on
learning that I was an American, simply said "I don't know," and were,
or at least pretended to be, too busy to talk with me. They seemed to
have no use for people from this side of the boundary line, and this
same ill-feeling toward my Nation (with a big N) was shown me in other
places, and on various occasions, while in the province. I found,
however, one gracious exception, in New Westminster, in the person of
Mr. C. G. Major, a merchant, who, the moment I made known to him my
wish, replied:
"Well, sir, the best guide and the best hunter in British Columbia left
here not three minutes ago. He is an Indian who lives on Douglass Lake,
and I think I can get him for you. If I can, you are fixed for a good
and successful hunt."
This news, and the frank, manly, cordial greeting that came with it,
were surprising to me, after the treatment I had been receiving. Mr.
Major invited me into his private office, gave me a chair by the fire,
and sent out a messenger to look for "Douglass Bill," the Indian of whom
he had spoken. This important personage soon came in. Mr. Major told him
what I wanted, and it took but a few minutes to make a bargain. He was a
solid, well-built Indian, had an intelligent face, spoke fair English,
and had the reputation of being, as Mr. Major had said, an excellent
hunter. Mr. Major further said he considered Bill one of the most
honest, truthful Indians he had ever known, and that I could trust him
as implicitly as I could any white man in the country.
This arrangement was made on Saturday night, but Bill said he could not
start on the hunt until Wednesday morning, as his mother-in-law had just
died, and he must go and help to bury her on Tuesday. The funeral was to
take place on the Chilukweyuk river, a tributary of the Frazer, about
fifty miles above New Westminster, and it was arranged that I should go
up on the steamer, and meet him at the mouth of Harrison river, another
tributary stream, on Wednesday morning. We were then to go up the
Harrison to the hunting grounds. I was delighted at the prospect of a
successful hunt, with so good a guide, and cheerfully consented to wait
the necessary three days for the red man to perform the last sad rites
of his tribe over the remains of the departed _kloochman_, but I was
doomed to disappointment.
[Illustration: A VIEW ON THE FRAZER.]
CHAPTER VI.
For many years I had read, heard, and dreamed of the Frazer, that
mysterious stream which flows out from among the icy fastnesses of the
Cascades, in the far-off confines of British Columbia. For many years
had I longed to see with my own eyes some of the grand scenery of the
region it drains, and now, at last, that mighty stream flowed at my
feet. How eagerly I drank in the beauty of the scene! How my heart
thrilled at the thought that I stood face to face with this land of my
dreams and was about to explore a portion, at least, of the country in
which this great river rises. The beautiful lines penned by Maria
Brooks, on the occasion of her first visit to the St. Lawrence, came
vividly to my mind:
"The first time I beheld thee, beauteous stream,
How pure, how smooth, how broad thy bosom heaved;
What feelings rushed upon my heart! a gleam
As of another life my kindling soul received."
I left New Westminster at seven o'clock Monday morning on the steamer
Adelaide, for the mouth of Harrison river, sixty miles up the Frazer.
There were over twenty Indians on board, going up to the mouth of the
Chilukweyuk, to attend the funeral of Douglass Bill's deceased relative.
As soon as I learned their destination I inquired if he were among
them, but they said he was not. He had come aboard before we left, but
for some reason had decided to go on another boat that left half an hour
ahead of the Adelaide. The voyage proved intensely interesting. The
Frazer is from a quarter to half a mile wide, and is navigable for large
steamers for a hundred miles above its mouth. There are portions of the
valley that are fertile, thickly settled, and well cultivated. The
valleys of some of its tributaries are also good farming districts, and
grain, fruits, and vegetables of various kinds grow in abundance. At the
mouth of the Chilukweyuk I saw fine peaches that had grown in the
valley, within ten miles of perpetual snow. The river became very
crooked as we neared the mountains, and finally we entered the gorge, or
canyon, where the rocky-faced mountains rise, sheer from the water's
edge, to heights of many hundreds of feet, and just back of them tower
great peaks, clad in eternal snows. The little camera was again brought
into requisition and, as we rounded some of these picturesque bends and
traversed some of the beautiful reaches, I secured many good views,
though the day was cloudy and lowery. The boat being in motion, I was,
of course, compelled to make the shortest possible exposures, and was,
therefore, unable to get fine details in the shadows; yet many of the
prints turned out fairly well.
We saw several seals in the river on the way up, and the captain
informed me that at certain seasons they were quite plentiful in the
Frazer and all the larger streams in the neighborhood. They go up the
Frazer to the head of navigation and he could not say how much farther.
He said that on one occasion a female seal and her young were seen
sporting in the water ahead of the steamer, and that when the vessel
came within about fifty yards they dove. Nothing more was seen of the
puppy, and the captain thought it must have been caught in the wheel and
killed, for the mother followed the vessel several miles, whining,
looking longingly, pitifully, and beseechingly at the passengers and
crew. She would swim around and around the steamer, coming close up,
showing no fear for her own safety, whatever, but seeming to beg them to
give back her baby. She appeared to have lost sight of it entirely,
whatever its fate, and to think it had been captured and taken on board.
Her moaning and begging, her intense grief, were pitiable in the
extreme, and brought tears to the eyes of stout, brawny men. Finally she
seemed completely exhausted with anguish and her exertions and gradually
sank out of sight. My informant said he hoped never to witness another
such sight.
We arrived at the mouth of Harrison river at six o'clock in the evening.
There is a little Indian village there called by the same name as the
river, and Mr. J. Barker keeps a trading post on the reservation, he
being the only white man living there. He made me welcome to the best
accommodations his bachelor quarters afforded, but said the only
sleeping-room he had was full, as two friends from down the river were
stopping with him for the night, and that I would have to lodge with one
of the Indian families. He said there was one _kloochman_ (the Chinook
word for squaw) who was a remarkably neat, cleanly housekeeper, who had
a spare room, and who usually kept any strangers that wished to stop
over night in the village. While we were talking the squaw in question
came in and Mr. Barker said to her:
"Mary, yah-kwa Boston man tik-eh moo-sum me-si-ka house po-lak-le."
(Here is an American who would like to sleep in your house to-night.) To
which she replied:
"Yak-ka hy-ak" (he can come), and the bargain was closed.
I remained at the store and talked with Mr. Barker and his friends until
ten o'clock, when he took a lantern and piloted me over to the Indian
rancherie, where I was to lodge. I took my sleeping-bag with me and
thanked my stars that I did, for notwithstanding the assurances given me
by good Mr. Barker that the Indian woman was as good a housekeeper as
the average white woman, I was afraid of vermin. I have never known an
Indian to be without the hemipterous little insect, _Pediculus_
(_humanus_) _capitis_. Possibly there may be some Indians who do not
wear them; I simply say I have never had the pleasure of knowing one,
and I have known a great many, too. I seriously doubt if one has ever
yet lived many days at a time devoid of the companionship of these
pestiferous little creatures. In fact, an Indian and a louse are natural
allies--boon companions--and are as inseparable as the boarding-house
bed and the bedbug. The red man is so inured to the ravages of his
parasitic companion, so accustomed to have him rustling around on his
person and foraging for grub, that he pays little or no attention to the
insect, and seems hardly to feel its bite.
You will rarely see an Indian scratch his head or, in fact, any portion
of his person, as a white man does when he gets a bite. Lo gives forth
no outward sign that he is thickly settled, and it is only when he sits
or lies down in the hot sun that the inhabitants of his hair and
clothing come to the front; then you may see them crawling about like
roaches in a hotel kitchen. Or, when he has lain down on a board, or
your tent canvas, or any light-colored substance and got up and gone
away, leaving some of his neighbors behind, then you know he is--like
others of his race--the home of a large colony of insects.
When Mary and her husband, George, saw my roll of bedding, which they
supposed to be simply blankets, they protested to Mr. Barker that I
would not need them, that there was "hy-iu mit-lite pa-se-se" (plenty of
covering on the bed). I told them, however, that I could sleep better in
my own blankets and preferred to use them. I took the bundle into my
room, spread the sleeping-bag on the bed and crawled into it. The outer
covering of the bag being of thick, hard canvas, I hoped it would prove
an effectual barrier against the assaults of the vermin, and that they
might not find the portal by which I entered, and so it proved.
George and Mary live in a very well-built, comfortable, one-story frame
cottage, divided into two rooms; the kitchen, dining-room, parlor and
family sleeping-room all in one, and the spare room being the other.
The house has four windows and one door, a shingle roof and a board
floor. They have a cooking-stove, several chairs, a table, cupboard,
etc. The bedstead on which I slept was homemade, but neat and
substantial. It was furnished with a white cotton tick, filled with
straw, feather pillows, several clean-looking blankets, and a pair of
moderately clean cotton sheets. I have slept in much worse-looking beds
in hotels kept by white people.
[Illustration: GEORGE AND MARY.]
This Indian village, Harrison river, or Skowlitz, as the Indians call
both the river and the village, is composed of about twenty families,
living in houses of about the same class and of the same general design
as the one described, although some are slightly larger and better,
while others are not quite so good. All have been built by white
carpenters, or the greater part of the work was done by them, and the
lumber and other materials were manufactured by white men. None of the
dwellings have ever been painted inside or out, but there is a neat
mission church in the village that has been honored with a coat of white
paint. There are a few log shacks standing near, that look very much as
if they had been built by native industry. The frame houses, I am
informed, were erected by the Government and the church by the Catholic
Missionary Society.
CHAPTER VII.
I was not compelled to eat with George and Mary, for Mr. Barker had
kindly invited me to breakfast with him, and when I reached his store,
at the breakfast hour in the morning, I found a neat inviting-looking
table in the room back of the store, loaded with broiled ham, baked
potatoes, good bread and butter, a pot of steaming coffee, etc.; all of
which we enjoyed intensely. Mr. Barker informed me there was a cluster
of hot springs ten miles up the river, at the foot of Harrison Lake, the
source of Harrison river, near which a large hotel had lately been
built. Upon inquiry as to a means of getting up there, I learned that he
had employed a couple of Indians to take some freight up that morning in
a canoe, and that I could probably secure a passage with them. As
Harrison Lake, or rather the mountains surrounding it, were the
hunting-grounds which Douglass Bill had selected, and as we would have
to pass these hot springs en route, I decided to go there and wait for
him. I therefore arranged with Barker to send him up to the springs,
when he should call for me at the store, and took passage in the freight
canoe.
The Harrison river is a large stream that cuts its way through high,
rugged mountains, and the water has a pronounced milky tinge imparted
by the glaciers from which its feeders come, away back in the Cascades.
It is a famous salmon stream, and thousands of these noble fishes, of
mammoth size, that had lately gone up the river and into the small
creeks to spawn, having died from disease, or having been killed in the
terrible rapids they had to encounter, were lying dead on every sand
bar, lodged against every stick of driftwood, or were slowly floating in
the current. Their carcasses lined the shore all along the lower portion
of the river, and the hogs, of which the Indians have large numbers,
were feasting on the putrid masses as voraciously as if they had been
ears of new, sweet corn. The stench emitted by these festering bodies
was nauseating in the extreme; and the water, ordinarily so pure and
palatable, was now totally unfit for use. I counted over one hundred of
these dead fishes on a single sand bar of less than half an acre in
extent. Cruising amid such surroundings was anything but pleasant, and I
was glad the current was slow here so that, though going up stream, we
were able to make good progress, and soon got away from this nauseating
sight.
About a mile above the village we rounded a bend in the river, where it
spread out to nearly a quarter of a mile in width, and on a sand bar in
the middle of the stream, sat a flock of geese. I picked up my rifle and
took a shot at them, but the ball cut a ditch in the water nearly fifty
yards this side, and went singing over their heads into the woods
beyond. They did not seem lo enjoy such music, and taking wing started
for some safer feeding-ground, carrying on a lively conversation in
goose Latin, probably about any fool who would try to kill geese at that
distance. I turned loose on them again, and in about a second after
pulling the trigger one of them seemed to explode, as if hit by a
dynamite bomb. For a few seconds the air was full of fragments of goose,
which rained down into the water like a shower of autumn leaves. My red
companions enjoyed the result of this shot hugely, and a canoe load of
Indians from up river, who were passing at the time, set up a regular
war whoop. We pulled over and got what was left of the goose, and found
that my express bullet had carried away all his stern rigging, his
rudder, one of his paddles, and a considerable portion of his hull. The
water was covered with fragments of sail, provisions of various kinds,
and sundry bits of cargo and hull. Charlie picked up so much of the
wreck as hung together, and said in his broken, laconic English:
[Illustration: DEAD SALMON ON HARRISON RIVER.]
"Dat no good goose gun. Shoot him too much away."
There were plenty of ducks, coots, grebes, and gulls on the river, and I
had fine sport with them whenever I cared to shoot.
A mile above where I killed the goose we entered a long reach of shoal
rapids, where all the brawn and skill of the Indians were required to
stem the powerful current and the immense volume of water. The rapids
are over a mile long, and it took us nearly two hours to reach their
head. As soon as we were well into them we came among large numbers of
live, healthy salmon. Many of them were running down the stream, some
up, while others seemed not to be going anywhere in particular, but
just loafing around, enjoying themselves. They were wild, but, owing to
the water being so rough and rapid, we frequently got within two or
three feet of them before they saw us, and the Indians killed two large
ones with their canoe poles. Occasionally we would corner a whole school
of them in some little pocket, where the water was so shallow that their
dorsal fins would stick out, and where there was no exit but by passing
close to the canoe. When alarmed they would cavort around like a herd of
wild mustangs in a corral, until they would churn the water into a foam;
then, emboldened by their peril, they would flash out past us with the
velocity of an arrow. They were doing a great deal of jumping;
frequently a large fish, two or three feet long, would start across the
stream, and make four or five long, high leaps out of the water, in
rapid succession, only remaining in the water long enough after each
jump to gain momentum for the next. I asked Charlie why they were doing
this, if they were sick, or if something was biting them.
[Illustration: WRECKED BY AN EXPRESS BULLET.]
"No," he said. "Play. All same drunk--raise hell!"
These salmon run up the rivers and creeks to deposit their spawn, and
seem possessed of an insane desire to get as far up into the small
brooks as they possibly can. They frequently pursue their mad course up
over boiling, foaming, roaring rapids, and abrupt, perpendicular falls,
where it would seem impossible for any living creature to go--regardless
of their own safety or comfort. They are often found in dense schools in
little creeks away up near their sources, where there is not water
enough to cover their bodies, and where they become an easy prey to man,
or to wild beasts. In such cases, Indians kill them with spears and
sharp sticks, or even catch and throw them out with their hands.
Or if their journeyings take them among farms or ranches, as is often
the case, the people throw them out on the banks with pitch-forks, and
after supplying their household necessities, they cart the noble fish
away and feed them to their hogs, or even use them to fertilize their
fields. I have seen salmon wedged into some of the small streams until
you could almost walk on them. The banks of many creeks, far up in the
foot-hills, are almost wholly composed of the bones of salmon. In
traveling through dense woods I have often heard, at some distance
ahead, a loud splashing and general commotion in water, as if of a dozen
small boys in bathing. This would, perhaps, be the first intimation I
had that I was near water, and, on approaching the source of the noise,
I have found it to have been made by a school of these lordly salmon,
wedged into one of the little streams, thrashing the creek into suds in
their efforts to get to its head.
After depositing their spawn the poor creatures, already half dead from
bruises and exhaustion incurred in their perilous voyage up stream,
begin to drift down. But how different, now, from the bright, silvery
creatures that once darted like rays of living light through the sea.
Unable to control their movements in the descent, even as well as in the
ascent, they drift at the cruel mercy of the stream. They are driven
against rough bowlders, submerged logs and snags, or through raging
rapids by the fury of the torrent, until hundreds, yes thousands, of
them are killed outright, and thousands more die from sheer exhaustion.
I have seen salmon with their noses broken and torn off; others with a
lower jaw torn away; some with sides, backs, or bellies bruised and
bleeding; others with their tails whipped and split into shreds, and
still others with their entrails torn out by snags. In this sad plight
they are beset at every turn in the river by their natural enemies.
Bears, cougars, minks, wild cats, fishers, eagles, hawks, and worst and
most destructive of all, men, await them everywhere, and it would be
strange, indeed, if one in each thousand that left the salt water should
live to return. The few that do so, are, of course, so weak that they
fall an easy prey to the seals, sharks, and other enemies, that wait
with open mouths to engulf them. So, all the leaping, rushing multitude
that entered the river a few months ago, have, ere this, gone to their
doom, but their seed is planted in the icy brook, far away in the
mountains, and their young will soon come forth to take the place of the
parents that have passed away. The instinct of reproduction must,
indeed, be an absorbing passion in poor dumb creatures, when they will
thus sacrifice life in the effort to deposit their ova where the
offspring may best be brought into being.
[Illustration: INDIAN SPEARING SALMON.]
CHAPTER VIII.
Above the rapids we had a lovely reach of river, from a quarter to half
a mile wide, with no perceptible current. Impelled by our united
efforts, our light cedar canoe shot over the water as lightly and almost
as swiftly as the gulls above us sped through the air. I took one of the
poles and used it while the Indians plied their paddles, and for a
distance of nearly two miles the depth of water did not vary two inches
from four and a half feet. The bottom was composed of a hard, white
sand, into which the pole, with my weight on it, sunk less than an inch;
in fact, the current is so slight, the width of the river so great, and
the general character of the water such, that it might all be termed a
lake above the falls; though the foot of the lake, as designated on the
map, has a still greater widening five miles above the head of the
falls.
Abrupt basaltic walls, 500 to 1,000 feet high and nearly perpendicular,
rise from the water's edge on either side. On the more sloping faces of
these, vegetation has obtained root-room, little bunches of soil have
formed, and various evergreens, alders, water hazels, etc., grow
vigorously. Half a foot of snow had lately fallen on the tops of these
mountains, and a warm, southwest wind and the bright sun were now
sending it down into the river in numerous plunging streams of crystal
fluid. For thousands of years these miniature torrents have, at frequent
intervals, tumbled down here, and in all that time have worn but slight
notches in the rocky walls.
[Illustration: A TRIBUTARY OF THE HARRISON.]
Shrubs have grown up along and over these small waterways, and as the
little rivulets come coursing down, dodging hither and thither under
overhanging clumps of green foliage, leaping from crag to crag and
curving from right to left and from left to right, around and among
frowning projections of invulnerable rock, glinting and sparkling in the
sunlight, they remind one of silvery satin ribbons, tossed by a summer
breeze, among the brown tresses of some winsome maiden. I took several
views of these little waterfalls, but their transcendent beauty can not
be intelligently expressed on a little four-by-five silver print.
Several larger streams also put into the Harrison, that come from remote
fastnesses, and seem to carve their way through great mountains of
granite. Their shores are lined with dense growths of conifers, and
afford choice retreats for deer, bears, and other wild animals.
At three o'clock in the afternoon we rounded a high point of rocks that
jutted out into the river, and another beautiful picture--another
surprise, in this land of surprises--lay before us. Harrison Lake,
nestling among snowy peaks and dotted with basaltic islands, reflected
in its peaceful depths the surrounding mountains as clearly as though
its placid surface had been covered with quicksilver. This lake is about
forty miles long, is fed by the Lillooet river and numerous smaller
streams. Silver creek, which comes in on the west side, twenty miles
north of the hot springs, is a beautiful mountain stream of considerable
size. A quarter of a mile above its mouth, it makes a perpendicular fall
of over sixty feet. It is one of the most beautiful falls in the
country. Near the head of the lake, and in full view from the springs,
old Mount Douglass, clad in perpetual snow and glacial ice, towers into
the blue sky until its brilliancy almost dazzles one's eyes. Though
forty miles away, one who did not know would estimate the distance at
not more than five, so clearly are all the details of the grand picture
shown. It is said that from the glaciers on this peak come the streams
whose waters give their peculiar milky cast to Harrison Lake and
Harrison river. Near the base of Mount Douglass is an Indian village of
the same name, and the Hudson Bay Fur Company formerly had a trading
post in the neighborhood, which they called Fort Douglass. This Indian
village is the home of my prospective guide, and from it he has adopted
his unpoetic cognomen.
Half a mile to the right of where we entered the lake, the famous hot
springs, already mentioned, boil out from under the foot of a mountain,
and discharge their steaming fluid into the lake. The curative power of
these waters has been known to the natives for ages past, and the sick
have come from all directions, and from villages many miles away, to
bathe in the waters and be healed. All about the place are remains of
Indian encampments, medicine lodges, etc. The tribes in this vicinity
are greatly exercised over the fact of the white man having lately
asserted ownership of their great sanitarium, and having assumed its
control. Mr. J. R. Brown has erected over the springs a large
bath-house, and near that a commodious hotel. He has cut a road through
a pass in the mountains to Agassiz station, on the Canadian Pacific
Railway, five miles distant, so that the springs may now be easily
reached by invalids wishing to test their curative properties. Soon
after my arrival at the springs, I climbed the mountain to the east of
the hotel, and passed the time pleasantly, until sunset, viewing the
beautiful scenery in the neighborhood.
On the following morning I took a boat and rowed up the east shore of
the lake, in hope of getting a shot at a deer, but though I saw plenty
of fresh signs all along the shore no game was visible. I spent the
afternoon looking anxiously for my promised guide, but he came not. I
again amused myself, however, taking views of the scenery, but found on
developing the negatives that I had not been eminently successful with
either Mount Douglass or Mount Chiam. Snowy mountains are about the most
difficult objects in all nature to photograph, especially if you attempt
to include anything beside the snowy peaks in the picture; for they are
so intensely white, and the sky or even clouds that form the background
are so light and afford so slight contrast, that it is next to
impossible to get good sharp pictures of them. The landscape about the
mountains is sure to offer some dark objects, perhaps deep shadows, and
even the mountain itself nearly always has bare rocks and dark, gloomy
canyons, and to get these and the dazzling whiteness of the snow and ice
on the same plate is decidedly difficult. Of course we see many fine
photographs of snow-covered mountains, but if taken with a clear sky or
with light clouds for background, there is generally more or less
retouching necessary, and more or less doctoring in printing, with
tissue paper, glass screens, etc., in order to obtain the results we see
in the prints. I made some fair views of both these peaks, but not such
as an enthusiastic amateur might wish. Of the lower mountains, where at
that time there was no snow, of the lake, the islands, etc., I got very
satisfactory pictures. I went up the road, toward the railway station, a
mile or more, where it passes through one of those grand forests for
which this country is so famous, where--
"Those green-robed senators of mighty woods
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir."
There I made views of some of the giant cedars, the dense moss-hung
jungles, the great fir trees, etc. In these dark, densely-shaded woods I
had to take off the flying shutter and make time exposures. I gave three
to five seconds to each plate. In the prints the trees and other objects
nearest to the lens are of course over-exposed, but the details in the
shadows and objects in the extreme distance are clearly and beautifully
brought out. For these time exposures I placed the camera on some
convenient log, stump, or stone, in lieu of a tripod. In two instances I
seated the rear end of the instrument on the ground, with the lens
bearing up through the tops of the trees. The whitened trunk and broken,
straggling arms of one great old dead fir--one that has flourished in
this rich soil and drawn sustenance from the moist, ozone-laden
atmosphere of these mountains for hundreds of years, but has lived out
his time and is now going the way of all things earthly--forms the
subject of one of the best and most interesting pictures of the whole
series. The tops of several other trees--birch, maple, etc., that stood
near the fir--are also shown in the picture. It can best be seen and
appreciated by holding it above your head, looking up at it, and
imagining yourself there in the forest, looking up through the tops of
the giant trees into the blue ethereal dome of heaven.
CHAPTER IX.
In the morning I got up early to look for Douglass Bill, thinking and
hoping he might have landed during the night, but no one had seen him
and there was no strange canoe in the harbor. After breakfast, in order
to kill time, I climbed the mountain east of the hotel to a height of
about a thousand feet. It is heavily timbered, and I found plenty of
fresh deer-signs within plain sound of the hammers wielded by the
carpenters at work on the hotel, but failed to get a shot. I returned at
eleven o'clock, but Bill had not yet shown up. Three other Indians were
there, however, with three deer in their canoe, which they had killed on
the opposite side of the lake the day before. I now concluded that Mr.
Major's confidence in Bill was misplaced; that he was not going to keep
his contract, and was, in short, as treacherous, as unreliable, and as
consummate a liar as other Indians; so I entered into negotiations with
these three Indians to get one or two of them to go with me. But they
had planned a trip to New Westminster, to sell their venison, and I
could not induce any one of them to go, though I offered big wages, and
a premium on each head of game I might kill, besides. They said that if
I wished they would take me to their village--which is five miles down
the river--and that there were several good goat hunters there whom I
could get. I accepted their offer of transportation, stepped into the
canoe, and we pulled out. As we entered the shoal water in the river I
asked for a pole, and impelled by it and the three paddles we sped down
the stream at a rapid rate.
There was a cold, disagreeable rain falling and a chilly north wind
blowing. This storm had brought clouds of ducks into the river, among
them several flocks of canvas backs. The Indians, who were using
smooth-bore muskets, killed several of these toothsome fowls. One flock
rose ahead of us and started directly down the river, but by some kind
of native intuition the Indians seemed to know that they would come back
up the opposite shore. They dropped their guns, caught up the paddles
and plied them with such force that every stroke fairly lifted the light
cedar canoe out of the water, and we shot across the river with the
speed of a deer. Sure enough, after flying a hundred yards down stream
the ducks turned and, hugging the shore, undertook to pass up the river
on the other side, but we cut them off, so that they had to pass over
our heads. At this juncture the two muskets carried by the two young men
cracked and three canvas backs dropped, limp and lifeless, into the
water within a few feet of us.
We arrived at the hut occupied by this family at noon. It stands on the
bank of the river, half a mile above the village of Chehalis, and as we
pulled up, two old and two young squaws and nine small Indians, some of
them mere papooses in arms (but not in long clothes--in fact, not in
any clothes worth mentioning), came swarming out to meet us. Their abode
was a shanty about twelve feet square, made by setting four corner posts
into the ground, nailing cross-ribs on, and over these clapboards riven
from the native cedars, and the roof was of the same material. The adult
members of this social alliance had been engaged in catching and drying
salmon during the recent run; the heads, entrails and backbones of which
had been dumped into the river at their very door. There being no
current near the shore they had sunk in barely enough water to cover
them, and lay there rotting and poluting the water used by the family
for drinking and cooking. Cart-loads of this offal were also lying about
the dooryard, and had been trampled into and mixed up with the mud until
the whole outfit stunk like a tanyard.
Within was a picture of filth and squalor that beggars description. The
floor of the hut was of mother earth. A couple of logs with two
clapboards laid across them formed the only seats. On one side was a
pile of brush, hay, and dirty, filthy blankets, indiscriminately mixed,
on which the entire three families slept, presumably in the same
fashion. Near the centre of the hut a small fire struggled for
existence, and that portion of the smoke that was not absorbed by the
people, the drying fish and other objects in the room, escaped through a
hole in the centre of the roof. The children, barefooted and half-naked,
came in out of the rain, mud, and fish carrion, in which they had been
tramping about, and sat or lay on the ground about the fire, looking as
happy as a litter of pigs in a mud hole. On poles, attached by cedar
withes to the rafters, were hung several hundred salmon, absorbing
smoke, carbonic acid gas from the lungs of the human beings beneath, and
steam from the cooking that was going on. It is understood that after
this process has been prolonged for some weeks these once noble fishes
will be fit for the winter food of the Siwash.
Some of the houses in Chehalis are neat frame cottages; in fact, it is a
better-built town, on the whole, than the village of Harrison River
already described; but these better houses all stand back about a
quarter of a mile from the river, and the inhabitants have left them and
gone into the "fish-houses," the clapboard structures, on the immediate
river bank. Some of these shanties are much larger than the one
mentioned above, and in some cases four, five, or even six families hole
up in one of these filthy dens during the fish-curing season.
As a matter of fact, there are salmon of one variety or another in these
larger rivers nearly all the year, but sometimes the weather is too
cold, too wet, or otherwise too disagreable in winter for the noble red
man to fish with comfort, and hence all these preparations for a rainy
day. After the fishes are cured they are hung up in big out-houses set
on posts, or in some cases built high up in the branches of trees, in
order to be entirely out of the reach of rats, minks, or other vermin,
and the members of the commune draw from the stock at will. The coast
Indians live almost wholly on fish, and seem perfectly happy without
flesh, vegetables, or bread, if such be not at hand, though they can eat
plenty of all these when set before them. If one of them kills a deer he
seldom or never eats more of it than the liver, heart, lungs, etc. He
sells the carcass, if within a three days' voyage of a white man who
will buy venison.
[Illustration: SALMON BOXES IN TREES.]
One of the young men already mentioned went with me down to one of the
big fish-houses and called out Pean, a man about fifty years of age, who
he said was a good goat hunter and a good guide. They held a hurried
conversation in their native tongue, at the close of which the young
man said Pean would go with me for two dollars a day. I asked Pean if he
could talk English, and he said "yes," but this proved, in after
experience, to be about the only English word he could speak. He rushed
into the hut, and in about three or four minutes returned with his gun,
powder-horn, bullet-pouch, pipe, and a small roll of blankets, and was
ready for a journey into the mountains of, he knew not how many days.
His canoe was on the river bank near us, and as we were stepping into it
I asked him a few questions which he tried to answer in English, but
made a poor stagger at it, and slid off into Chinook.
Just then another old Indian came up with a canoe-load of wood. I asked
him if he could speak English--"wah-wah King George"; and he said "Yes."
I then told him I had hired this other man to go hunting with me and
asked him if he knew him.
"Oh, yes," he said; "me chief here. All dese house my house. All dese
people my people. No other chief here." I said I was delighted to know
him, shook hands with him, gave him a cigar, and inquired his name.
"Captain George," he said; "me chief here."
"Is he a good hunter?" pointing to Pean.
"Yes, Pean good hunter; good man. He kill plenty sheep, deer, bear."
With this additional certificate of efficiency and good character I felt
more confidence in Pean, and stepping into the canoe was once more _en
route_ to the mountains.
Still, I felt some misgivings, for my past experience with the fish
eaters had taught me not to place implicit faith in their statements or
pretensions, and the sequel will show how well grounded these fears
were.
CHAPTER X.
The Flathead nation, to which nearly all the Puget Sound Indians belong,
may almost be termed amphibians; for though they can, and do in some
cases, live inland exclusively, they are never happy when away from the
water. They are canoeists by birth and education. A coast Indian is as
helpless and miserable without a canoe as a plains Indian without a
horse, and the Siwash (Chinook for coast Indian) is as expert in the use
of the canoe as the Sioux, Crow, or Arapahoe in the use and control of
his cayuse. Almost the sole means of travel, of intercommunication among
these people, and between themselves and the whites, is the canoe.
There are very few horses owned in any of the coast tribes, and these
are rarely ridden. When a Siwash attempts to ride a horse he climbs onto
it kicking and grunting with the effort, much as an Alabama negro mounts
his mule, and sits him about as gracefully. But let the Siwash step into
his canoe, and he fears no rapid, whirlpool, nor stormy billow. He faces
the most perilous water and sends his frail cedar shell into it with a
skill and a consciousness of mastery that would put to the blush any of
the prize winners in our Eastern canoe-club regattas. The canoes are
models of nautical architecture. They are cut and carved from the cedar
trees which bounteous Nature, in wise provision for the wants of Her
children, has caused to grow so plentifully and to such prodigious size
in the Sound country. They are of various sizes and lengths, owing to
the uses for which they are intended. If for spearing salmon or for
light traveling, they are cut from a tree twenty to twenty-four inches
in diameter, and are not more than twelve to fifteen feet long. If for
attending nets and bringing in the catch, they are generally longer, and
if for freighting and long-distance traveling, they are of immense size
and capable of carrying great burdens. A tree of the size wanted is
selected, perfectly sound and free from knots, and a log of the desired
length cut off. The log is hollowed, carved out to the desired shape,
then trimmed and tapered outside until it is a mere shell, scarcely more
than an inch thick anywhere.
[Illustration: AN OCCIDENTAL GONDOLA.]
It is then filled with water, a fire is built near in which rocks are
heated and thrown into the canoe until the water boils. This is
continued until the wood is thoroughly cooked and softened, when the
water is turned out, the canoe is spread at the centre, braced out to
nearly twice its natural width or diameter, and left to dry. This gives
it "sheer" and enables it to ride a heavy sea like a lifeboat.
Handsomely carved figureheads are attached to some of the large canoes,
and the entire craft is painted, striped, and decorated in gay colors.
I measured one of these cedar canoes that was thirty-four feet long and
five and a half feet beam, and was told by its owner that he had carried
in it four tons of freight on one trip, and two cords of green wood on
another. It would carry fifty men comfortably and safely. There are not
many of the Indians that can make the larger and better grade of canoes,
and the trade is one that but few master.
There is one famous old canoe builder near Vancouver, to whom Indians go
from distances of a hundred miles or more when they want an extra fine,
large, light canoe. For some specimens of his handiwork he gets as high
as $80 to $100. The Indians throughout Washington Territory and British
Columbia do considerable freighting for whites, on streams not navigable
for steamers, and they take freight up over some of the rapids where no
white man could run an empty canoe.
Some of these Flatheads are industrious and are employed by the whites
in salmon canneries, lumbering and logging operations, farming, etc.
Steamboat men employ them almost exclusively for deck hands, and they
make the best ones to be had in the country; better than either whites
or Chinamen. They are excellent packers by education. In this
densely-timbered country horses can not, as a rule, be used for packing,
and the Indians, in going across country where there is no watercourse,
pack all their plunder on their backs. Whites traveling in the woods
also depend on Indians to pack their luggage; consequently it is not
strange that the latter become experts at the business, and it is this
schooling that makes them valuable as deck hands. They are not large
men, but are tough, sinewy, and muscular. An average Siwash will pick up
a barrel of flour or pork, a case of dry goods, or other heavy freight
weighing three hundred pounds or more, roll it onto his back, and walk
up a gang-plank or a steep river-bank as easily as a white man would
with a barrel of crackers.
No work is too dirty or too hard for them. They are obedient to orders
and submissive to discipline, but their weak point, like that of all
Indians, is their inordinate love of whisky. Quite frequently, after
working a few weeks or months, they quit and go on a drunken debauch
that ends only when their money is gone. Their dress is much the same,
in general, as that of the whites in this region, with the exception
that the Indians wear moccasins when hunting. This footgear is little in
favor here with white hunters, owing to there being so much rainfall,
and so much wading to do. Rubber boots are indispensable for hunting in
most seasons, and a rubber coat should also be included in every
hunter's outfit. I found the Hannaford ventilated rubber boot the most
comfortable and perfect footgear I have ever worn. You can scarcely walk
a mile in any direction in this country at any time of year, on
mountains or lowlands, without encountering water. Moccasins soon become
soaked, and are then the most uncomfortable things imaginable. I asked
one of my guides why he did not wear rubber boots instead of moccasins,
and he replied:
"O, I dunno. De moxicans cheaper, mebbe. I mek him myself. Can't mek de
boots."
This is about the only use the Indians make of buckskin. It is not
popular with them as a material for clothing, on account of the vast
amount of rainy weather.
It has been said they make cloth from the wool of the goat, but, so far
as I could learn, they make very little, if any of it, of late years. I
saw some blankets that Indians had woven from this wool, but they were
very coarse. They have no machinery for spinning; the yarn is merely
twisted by hand, and is so coarse and loose that it would not hold
together a week if made into a garment and worn in the woods. Of course,
a fair article of yarn, and even cloth, may be, and has been, made
entirely by hand, but these people have neither the skill, the taste,
nor the industry to enable them to do such work. A coarse hair grows
with the wool on the goat, and the squaws do not even take the trouble
to separate it, but work both up together, making a very uncouth-looking
fabric, even if thick, warm, and serviceable.
As a class, these Indians appear to be strictly honest, toward each
other at least. They leave their canoes, guns, game, or in fact, any
kind of property, anywhere they choose, without the slightest effort at
concealment, and always feel perfectly sure of finding it on their
return. About the only case of pilfering I ever heard of, while among
them (and I took special pains to investigate) was when John asked me
for some fish-hooks, and said in explanation:
"I had plenty hooks, but I reckon Seemo he steal all my hooks."
"Why, does Seymour steal?" I inquired. He looked all around to see if
Seymour was within hearing, and not seeing him, replied:
"You bet. He steal my hooks, too."
[Illustration: A SIWASH AND HIS MORNING'S CATCH.]
[Illustration: AN INDIAN SALMON FISHERY.]
CHAPTER XI.
I had left my bedding at the Hot Springs Hotel, and returning to get it
staid there all night. Early next morning (Friday, November 12) we
crossed Harrison Lake, in a drenching rain, to the foot of a high
mountain, about two miles from the springs, on which Pean, Captain
George, and other Indians said there were plenty of goats. We beached
our canoe, and made up packs for the climb up the mountain. The outfit
consisted of our guns, my sleeping-bag, Pean's gun and blankets, a few
sea biscuits, a piece of bacon, and some salt.
My sleeping-bag was wrapped up in a piece of canvas, and when I handed
it to Pean, he commenced to unroll it to put his blankets in with it,
but I objected. Visions of the insects with which I knew his bedding was
inhabited rose up before me. I thought of the rotary drill, key-hole
saw, and suction pump with which they are said to be armed, and I did
not want any of them in my bag. So I unrolled the canvas only a part of
its length, laid his blankets in and rolled it up again, hoping the
remaining folds might prevent the vermin from finding their way in, and
my reckoning proved correct. One of his blankets had been white in its
day, but had long since lost its grip on that color, and was now about
as pronounced a brunette as its owner. The other blanket was gray, but
even through this sombre shade, as well as through the rank odor it
emitted, gave evidence that it had not been washed for many years. Pean
brought with him a cotton bedspread that had also once been white, but
left this with the canoe. In my pack I carried the grub, and an extra
coat for use on the mountain, where we expected to encounter colder
weather.
We started up the mountain at ten o'clock in the forenoon. For the first
two miles we skirted its base to the eastward, through dense timber,
crossing several deep, dark jungles and swamps. Then we began the ascent
proper, and as soon as we got up a few hundred feet on the mountain
side, we found numerous fresh deer-signs. We halted to rest, when Pean
took from its case his gun, which up to this time he had kept covered,
and which I naturally supposed to be a good, modern weapon. It proved,
however, an old smooth bore, muzzle-loading, percussion-lock musket, of
.65 calibre, with a barrel about fifty inches long. He drew out the
wiping stick, on the end of which was a wormer, pulled a wad of paper
from the gun and poured a charge of shot out into his hand. This he put
carefully into his shot-bag. Then he took from another pouch a No. 1
buckshot, and dropped it into the muzzle of his musket. It rolled down
onto the powder, when he again inserted the bunch of paper, rammed it
home with the rod, put on a cap, and was loaded for bear, deer, or
whatever else he might encounter. He then replaced the musket in its
sealskin cover as carefully as if it had been a $300 breech-loader.
Nearly all these Indians use just such old muskets, bought from the
Hudson Bay Company, and yet they keep them in covers made of the skin of
the seal, which they kill in the rivers hereabout, or of deer or other
animals. They take excellent care of their guns in this respect, but I
have never seen one of them clean or oil his weapon, and several of them
told me they seldom do so.
My Winchester express, with fancy stock, Lyman sight, etc., was a
curiosity to them. None of them had ever seen anything like it, and one
of them asked me what kind of a rifle it was. When told it was a
Winchester, he said:
"I didn't know Winchester so big like dat. Didn't know he had stock like
dat." He had only seen the little .44 Winchester, with a plain stock,
and innocently supposed it was the only kind made.
Pean and I had a hard day's work toiling up the mountain through fallen
timber, over and around great ledges of jutting rock, across deep,
rugged canyons and gulches, and through dense jungles of underbrush.
About two o'clock in the afternoon we halted, lay down for a rest, and
had been there but a few minutes when I heard the sharp, familiar
chatter of the little pine squirrel. I looked around quickly, expecting
to see one within a few feet of me, but instead saw Pean lying close to
the ground, beckoning to me and pointing excitedly up the game trail in
which we had been walking. Looking through the thick, intervening brush,
I saw two deer, a buck and a doe, looking toward us. They had not seen
nor scented us, but had merely heard the chatter of the little squirrel,
as they supposed, and, though apparently as completely deceived by it as
I had been, they had stopped to listen, as they do at almost every sound
they hear in the woods. But there was no squirrel there. Pean had taken
this method of calling my attention, and had imitated the cry of the
familiar little cone-eater so perfectly that even the deer had been
deceived by it.
I cautiously and slowly drew my rifle to my shoulder, and taking aim at
the breast of the buck, fired. Both deer bounded away into thicker
brush, and were out of sight in an instant. Pean sprang after them, and
in a few minutes I heard the dull, muffled report of his musket. He
shouted to me, and going to him I found the buck dead and the Indian
engaged in butchering it. My bullet had gone a little farther to the
left than I intended, breaking its shoulder, and had passed out through
the ribs on the same side. The deer had fallen after going but a few
yards, but was not quite dead when Pean came up and shot it through the
head. We took out the entrails, cut a choice roast of the meat for our
supper and breakfast, and hurried on our way.
We camped at four o'clock on a small bench of the mountain, and you may
rest assured, gentle reader, that our conversation in front of the camp
fire that night was novel. Pean, you will remember, could not speak half
a dozen words of English. He spoke entirely in Chinook, and I knew but a
few words of that jargon. I had a Chinook dictionary with me, however,
and by its aid was able to pick out the few words necessary in what
little talking I had to do, and to translate enough of Pean's answers to
my questions to get along fairly well. The great trouble with him seemed
to be that he was wound up to talk, and whenever I made a remark or
asked a question in his adopted language he turned loose, and talked
until I shut him off with "Halo kumtucks" (I don't understand). No
matter how often I repeated this he seemed soon to forget it, and would
open on me again whenever he got a cue. He was a fluent talker, and if I
had only been well up in the jargon, I could have got lots of pointers
from him.
The deer of this region is the true black-tail (_Cervus columbianus_),
not the mule-deer (_Cervus macrotis_), that is so often miscalled the
black-tail. The black-tail is smaller than the mule-deer, and its ears,
though not so large as those of the latter, are larger than those of the
Virginia deer (_Cervus virginianus_). Its tail is white underneath, dark
outside, shading to black at the lower end, and while longer than that
of the mule-deer, is not so long as that of the Virginia deer.
CHAPTER XII.
Chinook is a queer jargon. It is said to have been manufactured many
years ago by an employe of the Hudson Bay Fur Company, who taught the
principal chiefs of various Indian tribes to speak it in order to
facilitate traffic with them. From that time it has grown and spread
until almost every Indian of the North Pacific Coast, and many inland
tribes of Washington, British Columbia, and Oregon speak it. White men
of all nations who live in this country speak it, and even the
almond-eyed Chinaman learns it soon after locating here. In short, it is
the court language of the Northwest, as the sign language is of the
plains. It is made up from various Indian tongues, with a few English,
or rather pigeon-English, French, and Spanish words intermixed. There
are only about 1,500 words in the language and it is very easy to learn.
Of course, it is woefully lacking in strength and beauty. You will often
want to say something that can not be said in Chinook, because there are
no words in that jargon with which to say it. But it is made to answer
the purposes of trade, travel, and barter, in common forms. For
instance:
"Kah-tah si-ah ko-pa Frazer chuck?" would be, "How far is it to the
Frazer river?"
"Yutes kut klat-a-wa la-pe-a," "Only a short walk." If you wish to say
good-morning or good-evening to an Indian you say:
"Kla-how-ya, six."
"Chah-co yah-wa" is "Come here."
"Mi-ka tik-eh mam-ook?" "Do you want to work?"
"Ik-ta mi-ka mam-ook?" "At what?"
"Mam-ook stick." "Cut some wood."
"Na-wit-ka." "Certainly."
"Kon-si dat-la spose mi-ka mam-ook kon-a-way o-koke stick?" "What do you
want for cutting that lot of wood?"
"Ikt dol la." "One dollar."
The numerals are ikt (one), mox (two), klone (three), lock-it (four),
kwin-num (five), tagh-kum (six), sin-na mox (seven), sto te-kin (eight),
twaist (nine), tah-tlum (ten), tah-tlum pee-ikt (eleven), tah-tlum
pee-mox (twelve), mox-tah tlum (twenty), klone tah-tlum (thirty), ikt
tali-kamo-nux (one hundred), tah-tlum to-ka mo-mik (one thousand), etc.
It is often difficult to get accurate information from these Indians as
to distances or time, as they have little idea of English miles or of
the measurements of time, and very few of them own or know how to read a
watch or clock. Under Pean's tutelage I learned rapidly, and was soon
able to carry on quite an interesting conversation by the aid of the
little dictionary.
By the light of a rousing camp-fire I cut a large quantity of cedar
boughs and made for myself a bed a foot deep. On this I spread my
sleeping-bag, crawled into it and slept the sleep of the weary hunter.
Pean cut only a handful of boughs, spread them near the fire, threw his
coat over them, and lay down. Then he folded his two blankets and spread
them over him, mostly on the side away from the fire, leaving that part
of his body next to the fire exposed so as to catch its heat direct.
During the night, whenever he turned over, he would shift his blankets
so as to keep them where most needed. At frequent intervals he would get
up and replenish the fire from the large supply of dry wood we had
provided. The night was bitter cold, at this high altitude, and snow
fell at frequent intervals. A raw wind blew, and the old man must have
suffered from the cold to which he exposed himself.
There are few of these savages that understand and appreciate fully the
value of a good bed when camping. In fact, many white hunters and
mountaineers go on long camping trips with insufficient bedding, simply
because they are too lazy to carry enough to keep them comfortable. I
would rather get into a good warm, soft bed at night without my supper,
than eat a feast and then sleep on the hard ground, without covering
enough to keep me warm. After a hard day's work a good bed is absolutely
necessary to prepare one for the labor and fatigue of the following day.
"In bed we laugh, in bed we cry,
And born in bed, in bed we die;
The near approach, a bed may show,
Of human bliss to human woe."
Any ablebodied man may endure a few nights of cold, comfortless sleep,
but it will tell on him sooner or later; while if he sleep comfortably
and eat heartily, he may endure an incredible amount of labor and
hardship of other kinds. You may tramp all day with your feet wet, and
all your clothing wet, if need be, but be sure you crawl into a good,
warm, dry bed at night.
Old Pean complained of feeling unwell during the evening, and in the
morning when we got up said he was sick. I prepared a good breakfast,
but he could not, or at least would not, eat. Then he told me that he
had once fallen down a mountain; that his breast-bone had been crushed
in by striking on a sharp rock, and that it always hurt him since when
doing any hard work. He said the climb up the mountain with the pack was
too hard for him and he was played out, that he could go no farther.
Here was another bitter disappointment, as we were yet two miles from
the top of the mountain, and in going that distance a perpendicular
ascent of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet must be made. I deliberated,
therefore, as to whether I should go up the mountain alone and let Pean
go back, but decided it would be useless. I could not carry more load
than my sleeping-bag, gun, etc., and therefore could bring no game down
with me if I killed it, not even a head or skin. Beside, if he went back
he would take his canoe, and I would be left with no means of crossing
the lake. So the only thing to be done was to pack up and retrace our
steps. On our way down we stopped and took the head and skin off of the
deer killed the day before, and I carried them to the canoe. Arriving at
the lake, we pulled again for Chehalis in a cold, disagreeable rain. I
stopped at the hot springs on my way down, and took my leave of my
host, Mr. Brown, who had been so kind to me, and who regretted my ill
luck almost as much as I did.
CHAPTER XIII.
On our return to Chehalis--that town of unsavory odors and
salmon-drying, salmon-smoking Siwashes--I at once employed two other
Indians, named John and Seymour, and, on the following day we started up
Ski-ik-kul Creek, to a lake of the same name, in which it heads ten
miles back in the mountains. The Indians claimed that goats, or sheep,
as they call them, were plentiful on the cliffs surrounding this lake,
and that we could kill plenty of them from a raft while floating up and
down along the shores. Seymour claimed to have killed twenty-three in
March last, just after the winter snows had gone off, and a party of
seven Siwashes from Chehalis had killed ten about two weeks previous to
the date of my visit.
Such glowing accounts as these built up my hopes again to such a height
as to banish from my mind all recollection of the bitter disappointment
in which the former expedition had ended, and, although the rain
continued to fall heavily at short intervals, so that the underbrush
reeked with dampness and drenching showers fell from every bush we
touched, I trudged cheerily along regardless of all discomforts.
The first two miles up the creek, we had a good, open trail, but at the
end of this we climbed a steep, rocky bluff, about 500 feet high, and
made the greater portion of the remaining distance at an average of
about this height above the stream. There was a blind Indian trail all
the way to the lake, but it led over the roughest, most tortuous,
outlandish country that ever any fool of a goat hunter attempted to
traverse. There are marshes and morasses away up among these mountains,
where alders and water beeches, manzanitas, and other shrubs grow so
thick that their branches intertwine to nearly their full length. Many
of these have fallen down in various directions, and their trunks are as
inextricably mixed as their branches, forming altogether a labyrinthine
mass, through which it was with the utmost difficulty we could walk at
all.
There were numberless little creeks coming down from the mountain into
the main stream, and each had in time cut its deep, narrow gulch, or
canyon, lined on both sides with rough, shapeless masses of rock, and all
these we were obliged to cross. In many cases, they were so close
together that only a sharp hog-back lay between them, and we merely
climbed out of one gulch 300 or 400 feet deep, to go at once down into
another still deeper, and so on. Fire had run through a large tract of
this country, killing out all the large timber, and many trees have
since rotted away and fallen, while the blackened and barkless trunks of
others, with here and there a craggy limb, still stand as mute monuments
to the glory of the forest before the dread element laid it waste.
We camped that night at the base of one of these great dead firs around
which lay a cord or more of old dry bark that had fallen from it, and
which, with a few dry logs we gathered, furnished fuel for a rousing,
all-night fire. Within a few feet of our camp, a clear, ice-cold little
rivulet threaded its serpentine way down among rocks and ferns, and made
sweet music to lull us to sleep. After supper, I made for myself the
usual bed of mountain feathers (cedar boughs), on which to spread my
sleeping-bag.
This old companion of so many rough jaunts, over plains and mountains,
has become as necessary a part of my outfit for such voyages as my
rifle. Whether it journey by day, on the hurricane deck of a mule, in
the hatchway of a canoe, on my shoulder blades or those of a Siwash, it
always rounds up at night to house me against the bleak wind, the
driving snow, or pouring rain. I have learned to prize it so highly that
I can appreciate the sentiments of the fallen monarch, Napoleon, on the
lonely island of St. Helena, when he wrote:
"The bed has become a place of luxury to me. I would not exchange it for
all the thrones in the world."
These Indians, like Pean, and, in fact, all others who have seen the
bag, are greatly interested in it. They had never seen anything like it,
and watched with undisguised interest the unfolding and preparing of the
article, and when I had crawled into it, and stowed myself snugly away,
they looked at each other, grunted and uttered a few of their peculiar
guttural sounds, which I imagined would be, if translated:
"Well, I'll be doggoned if that ain't about the sleekest trick I ever
saw. Eh?"
"You bet it's nice to sleep in, but heavy to carry."
[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF SLEEPING-BAG.]
By the way, some of my readers may never have seen one of these valuable
camp appendages, and a description of it may interest them. The outer
bag is made of heavy, brown, waterproof canvas, six feet long, three
feet wide in the centre, tapered to two feet at the head and sixteen
inches at the foot. Above the head of the bag proper, flaps project a
foot farther, with which the occupant's head may be completely covered,
if desired. These are provided with buttons and button-holes, so that
they may be buttoned clear across, for stormy or very cold weather. The
bag is left open, from the head down one edge, two feet, and a flap is
provided to lap over this opening. Buttons are sewed on the bag, and
there are button-holes in the flaps so it may also be buttoned up
tightly. Inside of this canvas bag is another of the same size and
shape, less the head flaps. This is made of lamb skin with the wool on,
and is lined with ordinary sheeting, to keep the wool from coming in
direct contact with the person or clothing. One or more pairs of
blankets may be folded and inserted in this, as may be necessary, for
any temperature in which it is to be used.
If the weather be warm, so that not all this covering is needed over the
sleeper, he may shift it to suit the weather and his taste, crawling in
on top of as much of it as he may wish, and the less he has over him the
more he will have under him, and the softer will be his bed. Beside
being waterproof, the canvas is windproof, and one can button himself up
in this house, leaving only an air-hole at the end of his nose, and
sleep as soundly, and almost as comfortably in a snowdrift on the
prairie as in a tent or house. In short, he may be absolutely at home,
and comfortable, wherever night finds him, and no matter what horrid
nightmares he may have, he can not roll out of bed or kick off the
covers.
Nor will he catch a draft of cold air along the north edge of his spine
every time he turns over, as he is liable to do when sleeping in
blankets. Nor will his feet crawl out from under the cover and catch
chilblains, as they are liable to do in the old-fashioned way. In fact,
this sleeping-bag is one of the greatest luxuries I ever took into camp,
and if any brother sportsman who may read this wants one, and can not
find an architect in his neighborhood capable of building one, let him
communicate with me and I will tell him where mine was made.
CHAPTER XIV.
Long after the Indians went to sleep I lay there, looking into the fire
and thinking. Many and varied were the fancies that chased each other
through my restless brain--some pleasant, some unpleasant. I pondered on
the novelty, even the danger, of my situation. I was away up there in
that wild, trackless, mountain wilderness, alone, so far as any
congenial companionship was concerned. Yes, I was worse than alone, for
the moment I might close my eyes and sleep I would be at the mercy of
these two reckless red men. True, they are not of a courageous, warlike
race, but what might they not do for the sake of plunder? They could
crush my skull at a blow and conceal my body beyond all possibility of
discovery; or they could leave it and, saying I had killed myself by a
fall, reveal its resting place to anyone who might care to go in search
of me. I had some property with me, especially my rifle, sleeping-bag,
and a small sum of money, that I knew they coveted, and I reflected that
they might already have concocted some foul scheme for disposing of me
and getting possession of my effects.
In their native tongue of strange, weird gutturals, hisses, and
aspirations, they had conversed all the evening of--I knew not what.
John had rather an honest, frank face, that I thought bespoke a good
heart, but Seymour had a dark, repulsive countenance that plainly
indicated a treacherous nature. From the first I had made up my mind
that he was a thief, if nothing worse. He pretended not to be able to
speak or understand English, although I knew he could. John spoke our
tongue fairly, and through him all communication with either or both was
held. Should they contemplate any violence I would welcome them both to
an encounter, if only I could have notice of it a second in advance.
Their two old smooth-bore muskets would cut no figure against the deadly
stream of fire that my Winchester express could pour forth. But I
dreaded the treachery, the stealth, the silent midnight assault that is
a characteristic of their race. Yet, on further consideration, I
dismissed all such forebodings as purely chimerical. These were
civilized Indians, living within the sound of the whistle of a railroad
engine, and would hardly be willing to place themselves within the toils
of the law, by the commission of such a crime, even if they had the
courage or the desire to do it, and I hoped they had neither.
Then my fancies turned to the contemplation of pleasanter themes. I
thought of the dear little black-eyed woman, whom I had parted with on
board the steamer nearly a week ago. She is homeward-bound and must now
be speeding over the Dakota or Minnesota prairies, well on toward St.
Paul. Will she reach home in safety? God grant it--and that in due time
I may be permitted to join her there. Then other familiar images passed
and repassed my mental ken. The kind acts of dear friends, the
hospitalities shown me by strangers and passing acquaintances in distant
lands and in years long agone came trooping through my memory, and a
feeling of gratitude for those kindnesses supplanted for the time that
of solitude. Gradually and sweetly I sank into a profound slumber and
all was stillness and oblivion.
Several hours, perhaps, have passed, and I am thirsty. I get up and
start to the little brook for water; to reach it a log, lying across a
deep fissure in the rocks, must be scaled. With no thought of danger I
essay the task by the dying fire's uncertain light and that of the
twinkling stars. I have not counted on the heavy covering of frost that
has been deposited on the log since dark, and stepping out upon the
barkless part of the trunk, my moccasins slip, and with a shriek and a
wild but unsuccessful grasp at an overhanging limb I fall twenty feet
and land on the mass of broken and jagged granite beneath! The Indians,
alarmed by my cries, spring to my relief, carry me to the fire, give me
stimulants, bind up my broken arm, and do all in their power to
alleviate my sufferings.
They are not the crafty villains and assassins that my fancy had
painted. They are kind, sympathetic friends. I realize that my right
collar-bone and three ribs on the same side are broken, and when I
remember where I am, the deplorableness and utter helplessness of my
condition appal me.
[Illustration: EN ROUTE TO THE INDIAN VILLAGE.]
The long hours until daylight drag slowly by, and at last, as the sun
tips the distant mountain tops with golden light, we start on our
perilous and painful journey to the Indian village and to the steamboat
landing. The two red men have rigged a litter from poles and blankets,
on which they carry me safely to their homes, and thence in a canoe to
the landing below. How the long, tedious journey thence, by steamer and
rail, to my own home is accomplished; how the weary days and nights of
suffering and delirium which I endure _en route_ were passed, are
subjects too painful to dwell upon. I am finally assisted from the
sleeper at my destination. My wife, whom the wire has informed of my
misfortune and my coming, is there. She greets me with that fervent
love, that intensity of pity and emotion that only a wife can feel. Her
lips move, but her tongue is paralyzed. For the time she can not speak;
the wells of her grief have gone dry; she can not weep; she can only
act. I am taken to my home, and the suspense, the anxiety, having been
lived out, the climax having been reached and passed I swoon away. Again
the surgeon appears to be racking me with pain in an effort to set the
broken ribs, and seems to be making an incision in my side for that
purpose, when I awake.
The stars shone brightly above me, the frost on the leaves sparkled
brightly in the fire-light. It took me several minutes to realize that I
had been dreaming. I searched for the cause of the acute pain in my
side, and found it to be the sharp point of a rock that my cedar boughs
had not sufficiently covered and which was trying to get in between two
of my ribs. I got up, removed it and slept better through the remainder
of the night.
CHAPTER XV.
Ski-ik-kul, or Chehalis Creek, as the whites call it, is surely one of
the most beautiful streams in the whole Cascade Range. Its size may be
stated, approximately, as two feet in depth by fifty feet in width, at
or near the mouth, but its course is so crooked, so tortuous, and its
bed so broken and uneven that the explorer will seldom find a reach of
it sufficiently quiet and undisturbed to afford a measurement of this
character. At one point it is choked into a narrow gorge ten feet wide
and twice as deep, with a fall of ten feet in a distance of thirty.
Through this notch the stream surges and swirls with the wild fury, the
fearful power, and the awe-inspiring grandeur of a tornado. At another
place it runs more placidly for a few yards, as if to gather strength
and courage for a wild leap over a sheer wall of frowning rock into a
foaming pool thirty, forty, or fifty feet below. At still another place
it seems to carve its way, by the sheer power of madness, through piles
and walls of broken and disordered quartz, granite, or basalt, even as
Cortes and his handful of Spanish cavaliers hewed their way through the
massed legions of Aztecs at Tlascala.
Farther up, or down, it is split into various channels by great masses
of upheaved rock, and these miniature streams, after winding hither and
thither through deep, dark, narrow fissures for perhaps one or two
hundred yards, reunite to form this headlong mountain torrent. Viewing
these scenes, one is forcibly reminded of the poet's words:
"How the giant element,
From rock to rock, leaps with delirious bound."
Series of cascades, a quarter to half a mile long, are met with at
frequent intervals, which rival in their beauty and magnificence those
of the Columbia or the Upper Yellowstone. Whirlpools occur at the foot
of some of these, in which the clear, bright green water boils,
sparkles, and effervesces like vast reservoirs of champagne. The
moanings and roarings emitted by this matchless stream in its mad career
may be heard in places half a mile. At many points its banks rise almost
perpendicularly to heights of 300, 400, or 500 feet. You may stand so
nearly over the water that you can easily toss a large rock into it, and
yet you are far above the tops of the massive firs and cedars that grow
at the water's edge. Looking down from these heights you may see in the
crystal fluid whole schools of the lordly salmon plowing their way up
against the almost resistless fury of the current, leaping through the
foam, striking with stunning force against hidden rocks, falling back
half dead, and, drifting into some clear pool below, recovering strength
to renew the hopeless assault.
The time will come when an easy roadway, and possibly an iron one, will
be built up this grand canyon, and thousands of tourists will annually
stand within its walls to gaze upon these magic pictures, absorbed in
their grandeur and romantic beauty. Nor does the main stream afford the
only objects of beauty and interest here. It is a diamond set in a
cluster of diamonds, for many of the little brooks, already mentioned as
coming down the mountain on either side, are only less attractive
because smaller. Many of them tumble from the tops of rocky walls, and
dance down among the branches of evergreen trees, sparkling like ribbons
of silver in the rays of the noonday sun.
Theodore Roosevelt, in his excellent work, "Hunting Trips of a
Ranchman;" says: "Thirst is largely a matter of habit." So it may be,
but I am sadly addicted to the habit, and I found it one from which, on
this trip, I was able to extract a great deal of comfort, for we crossed
one or more of these little brooks every hour, and I rarely passed one
without taking a copious draught of its icy fluid. The days, were
moderately warm, and the hard labor we performed, walking and climbing,
made these frequent opportunities to quench thirst one of the most
pleasant features of the journey. I was frequently reminded of Cole's
beautiful tribute to the mountain brook:
"Sleeping in crystal wells,
Leaping in shady dells,
Or issuing clear from the womb of the mountain,
Sky-mated, related, earth's holiest daughter;
Not the hot kiss of wine,
Is half so divine as the sip of thy lip, inspiring cold water."
We arrived at our destination, the foot of Ski-ik-kul Lake (and the
source of the creek up which we had been traveling), at four o'clock in
the afternoon of the second day out. We made camp on the bank of the
creek, and John and I engaged in gathering a supply of wood. After we
had been thus occupied for ten or fifteen minutes, I noticed that
Seymour was nowhere in sight, and asked John where he was.
"He try spear salmon."
"What will he spear him with?" I said. "Sharp stick?"
"No. He bring spear in him pocket," said John.
We were standing on the bank of the creek again, and as he spoke there
was a crashing in the brush overhead, and an immense salmon, nearly
three feet long, landed on the ground between us. Seymour had indeed
brought a spear with him in his pocket. It was made of a fence-nail and
two pieces of goat horn, with a strong cord about four feet long
attached. There was a sort of socket in the upper end of it, and the
points of the two pieces of horn were formed into barbs. As soon as
Seymour had dropped his pack he had picked up a long, dry, cedar pole,
one end of which he had sharpened and inserted between the barbs,
fastening the string so that when he should strike a fish the spear
point would pull off. With this simple weapon in hand he had walked out
on the vast body of driftwood with which the creek is bridged for half a
mile below the lake, and peering down between the logs, had found and
killed the fish. We made a fire in the hollow of a great cedar that
stood at the water's edge. The tree was green, but the fire soon ate a
large hole into the central cavity, and, by frequent feeding with dry
wood, we had a fire that roared and crackled like a great furnace, all
night. It
"Kindled the gummy bark of fir or pine,
And sent a comfortable heat from far,
Which might supply the sun."
[Illustration: SUPPER FOR THREE-SAUMON ROTI.]
Seymour cut off the salmon's head, split the body down the back, and
took out the spine. Then he spread the fish out and put skewers through
it to hold it flat. He next cut a stick about four feet long, split it
half its length, tied a cedar withe around to keep it from splitting
further, and inserting the fish in the aperture, tied another withe
around the upper end. He now stuck the other end of the stick into the
ground in front of the fire, and our supper was under way.
I have often been reduced to the necessity of eating grub cooked by
Indians, both squaws and men, and can place my hand on my heart and say
truthfully I never hankered after Indian cookery. In fact, I have always
eaten it with a mental reservation, and a quiet, perhaps unuttered
protest, but I counted the minutes while that fish cooked. I knew
Seymour was no more cleanly in his habits than his kin--in fact, he
would not have washed his hands before commencing, nor the fish after
removing its entrails, had I not watched him and made him do so; but
even if he had not I should not have refused to eat, for when a man has
been climbing mountains all day he can not afford to be too scrupulous
in regard to his food. When the fish was thoroughly roasted on one side
the other was turned to the fire, and finally, when done to a turn, it
was laid smoking hot on a platter of cedar boughs which I had prepared,
and the savory odors it emitted would have tempted the palate of an
epicure. I took out my hunting knife, and making a suggestive gesture
toward the smoking fish, asked John if I should cut off a piece; for not
withstanding my consuming hunger, my native modesty still remained with
me, and I thus hinted for an invitation to help myself.
"Yes," he said. "Cut off how much you can eat."
You can rest assured I cut off a ration that would have frightened a
tramp. Good digestion waited on appetite, and health on both. I ate with
the hunger born of the day's fatigue and the mountain atmosphere, and
the Indians followed suit, or rather led, and in half an hour only the
head and spine of that fifteen-pound salmon remained, and they were not
yet in an edible condition. Near bedtime, however, they were both
spitted before the fire, and in the silent watches of the night, as I
awoke and looked out of my downy bed, I saw those two simple-minded
children of the forest, sitting there picking the last remaining morsels
of flesh from those two pieces of what, in any civilized camp or
household, would have been considered offal. But when a Siwash quits
eating fish it is generally because there is no more fish to eat. After
such a supper, charmed by such weird, novel surroundings, lulled by the
music of the rushing waters, and warmed by a glowing camp-fire, I slept
that night with naught else to wish for, at peace with all mankind. Even
"mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me, should have stood that night
against my fire."
CHAPTER XVI.
Before going to bed, Seymour cautioned me through his interpreter, the
faithful John, against getting out too early in the morning. He said the
goats did not commence to move around until nine or ten o'clock, and if
we started out to hunt before that time we were liable to pass them
asleep in their beds.
But I read the hypocrite's meaning between his words; he is a lazy
loafer and loves to lie and snooze in the morning. It was his own
comfort, more than our success in hunting, that he was concerned about.
Goats, as well as all other species of large game, are on foot at
daylight, whether they have been out all night or not, and from that
time until an hour after sunrise, and again just before dark in the
evening, are the most favorable times to hunt. The game is intent on
feeding at these times and is not so wary as at other times. I told
Seymour we would get up at four o'clock, get breakfast, and be ready to
move at daylight. And so we did.
The night had been clear and cold; ice had formed around the margin of
the lake, and a hoar frost a quarter of an inch deep covered the ground,
the logs, and rocks that were not sheltered by trees. Ski-ik-kul or
Willey's Lake, as it is termed by the whites, is a beautiful little
mountain tarn about a quarter of a mile wide and four miles long. It is
of glassy transparency, of great depth, and abounds in mountain trout,
salmon, and salmon trout. It is walled in by abrupt, rocky-faced
mountains that rise many hundreds of feet from the water's edge, and on
which a scanty growth of laurel, currant bushes, and moss furnish food
for the goats. Stunted cedars, balsams, spruces, and pines also grow
from small fissures in the rocks that afford sufficient earth to cover
their roots.
The craft on which we were to navigate this lake was an interesting
specimen of Indian nautical architecture. It was a raft Seymour had made
on a former visit. The stringers were two large, dry, cedar logs, one
about sixteen feet long, the other about twenty; these were held
together by four poles, or cross-ties, pinned to the logs, and a floor
composed of cedar clapboards was laid over all. Pins of hard, dry birch,
driven into the logs and tied together at the tops, formed rowlocks, and
the craft was provided with four large paddles, or oars, hewed out with
an ax. In fact, that was the only tool used in building the raft. The
pins had been sharpened to a flat point and driven firmly into sockets
made by striking the ax deeply into the log, and instead of ropes, cedar
withes were used for lashing. These had been roasted in the fire until
tough and flexible, and when thus treated they formed a good substitute
for the white sailor's marline or the cow-boy's picket rope.
We boarded this lubberly old hulk and pulled out up the north shore of
the lake just as the morning sun gave the first golden tints to the
mountain tops. Our progress was slow despite our united strength applied
to the oars, but it gave us more time to scan the mountain sides for
game. I did not find it so plentiful as I had been promised, for I had
been told by the Indians that we should see a dozen goats in the first
hour, but we had been out more than that length of time before we saw
any. Finally, however, after we had gone a mile or more up the lake
shore, I saw a large buck goat browsing among the crags about four
hundred feet above us. He had not seen us, and dropping the oar I caught
up my rifle. The men backed water, and as the raft came to a standstill,
I sent a bullet into him. He sprang forward, lost his footing, came
bounding and crashing to the foot of the mountain, and stopped, stone
dead, in the brush at the water's edge not more than twenty feet from
the raft. We pushed ashore and took him on board, when I found, to my
disappointment, that both horns had been broken off in the fall, so that
his head was worthless for mounting.
We cruised clear around the lake that day and could not find another
goat. In the afternoon it clouded up and set in to rain heavily again in
the canyon, while snow fell on the mountains a few hundred feet above us.
The next morning I went up a narrow canyon to the north, and ascending a
high peak hunted until nearly noon, when I found two more goats, a
female and her kid (nearly full grown), both of which I killed, and
taking the skins and one ham of the kid, I returned to camp. It
continued to rain at frequent intervals, which robbed camp life and
hunting of much of their charm, so I decided to start for home the
following morning. In the afternoon I rigged a hook and line, cut an
alder pole, and caught five fine trout, the largest seventeen and a half
inches long. Seymour speared three more salmon and roasted one of them,
so that we had another feast of fish that night. We also roasted a leg
of goat for use on our way home, and spent the evening cleaning and
drying the three skins as best we could by the camp-fire, to lighten
their weight as much as possible.
Meanwhile, I questioned John at considerable length regarding the nature
of his language, but could get little information, as he seemed unable
to convey his ideas on the subject in our tongue. The language of the
Skowlitz tribe, to which he and Seymour belong, is a strange medley of
gutturals, aspirates, coughs, sneezes, throat scrapings, and a few
words. I said:
"Your language don't seem to have as many words as ours."
"No; English too much. Make awful tired learn him."
"Where did you learn it?"
"O, I work in pack train for Hudson Bay one year, and work on boat one
year."
"Where did the boat run?"
"She run nort from Victoria," he said.
"Where to, Alaska?"
"O, I dunno."
"How far north?"
"O, I dunno. Take seven day. We go to de mout of de river."
"What river? What was the name of the town?"
"O, I dunno know what you call 'em."
And thus I learned, by continued questioning, that he did not know or
remember the English names of the places he had visited, but that they
were probably in Alaska. He always appealed to Seymour to reply to any
of my questions that he could not himself answer, and a question or
remark that in our tongue had taken a dozen words to express he would
repeat in a cough, a throat-clearing sound, and a grunt or two.
Seymour's answer would be returned in a half sneeze, a lisp, a
suppressed whistle, a slight groan, and an upturning of the eye. Then
John would look thoughtful while framing the answer into his pigin
English, and it would come back, for instance, something like this:
"Seymo say he tink we ketch plenty sheep up dat big mountain, on de
top." Or, "He say he tink maybe we get plenty grouse down de creek.
To-morrow we don't need carry meat," etc. John seemed to regard Seymour
as a perfect walking cyclopedia of knowledge, and, in fact, he was well
informed on woodcraft, the habits of birds and animals, Indian lore, and
other matters pertaining to the country in which he lived, but outside
of these limits he knew much less than John.
I was disgusted with his pretended inability to speak or understand
English, for on one of my former visits to the village I had heard him
speak it, and he did it much better than John could. Beside, Pean had
told me that Seymour had attended school at the mission on the Frazer
river, and could even read and write, but now that he had an interpreter
he considered it smart, just as a great many Indians do, to affect an
utter ignorance of our language. I asked him why he did not talk; told
him I knew he could talk, and reminded him that I had heard him speak
good English; that I knew he had been to school, etc. He simply shook
his head and grunted. Then I told him he was a boiled-down fool to act
thus, and that if he really wanted to appear smarter even than his
fellows, the best way to do it was to make use of the education he had
whenever he could make himself more useful and agreeable by so doing. I
saw by the way he changed countenance that he understood every word I
said, though he still remained obstinate. On several occasions, however,
I suddenly fired some short, sharp question at him when he was not
expecting it, and before stopping to think he would answer in good
English.
CHAPTER XVII.
After making a hearty breakfast on Rocky Mountain kid, salmon, and sea
biscuits, we began our return journey down the creek in a drizzling
rain. Our burdens were increased by the weight of the three goat skins,
and the walking was rendered still more precarious than before by the
logs, grass, soil, pine needles, and everything else having become so
thoroughly watersoaked. If we had had hard climbing up the steep pitches
on our outbound cruise, we had it still harder now. We could not stick
in our toe nails as well now as before, and even if we stuck in our
heels going down a hill, they would not stay stuck any better than a
second-hand postage-stamp. I remembered one hill, or canyon wall, that in
the ascent made us a great deal of hard work, and much perturbation of
spirit, because it was steep, rocky, and had very few bushes on it that
we could use as derricks by which to raise ourselves. I dreaded the
descent of this hill, now that the rocks were wet, but we made it
safely. Not so, however, the next one we attempted; it was not so rocky
as the other, and had a goodly bed of blue clay, with a shallow covering
of vegetable mold for a surface, with a little grass and a few weeds.
It was very steep, I think about what an architect would call a
three-quarter pitch, but we essayed it boldly and fearlessly. Seymour
was in the lead, his faithful partisan, John, followed, and I
constituted the tail end of the procession. We had just got well over
the brow, when the end of a dry hemlock stick caught in the mansard roof
of my left foot; the other end was fast in the ground, and, though I
tried to free myself, both ends stuck; the stick played a lone hand, but
it raised me clear out in spite of my struggles. I uttered a mournful
groan as I saw myself going, but was as helpless as a tenderfoot on a
bucking cayuse. My foot was lifted till my heel punched the small of my
back, and my other foot slid out from under me; I spread out like a step
ladder, and clawed the air for succor, but there was not a bush or
branch within reach. I think I went ten feet before I touched the earth
again, and then I landed head first among John's legs. He sat down on
the back of my neck like a trip-hammer, and we both assaulted Seymour in
the rear with such violence as to knock him clear out. For a few seconds
we were the worst mixed up community that ever lived, I reckon. Arms,
legs, guns, hats, packs, and human forms were mingled in one writhing,
squirming, surging mass, and groans, shouts, and imprecations, in
English, Chinook, and Scowlitz, rent the air. Every hand was grabbing
for something to stop its owner, but there were no friendly stoppers
within reach; if one caught a weed, or a stunted juniper, it faded away
from his herculean grasp like dry grass before a prairie fire. I seemed
to have the highest initial velocity of any member of the expedition,
and, though in the rear at the start, I was a full length ahead at the
finish. We finally all brought up in a confused mass at the foot of the
hill, and it took some time for each man to extricate himself from the
pile, and reclaim his property from the wreck. Strange as it may seem,
however, but little damage was done. There was a skinned nose, a bruised
knee or two, a sprained wrist, and everybody was painted with mud. All
were, however, able to travel, and after that, when going down steep
hills, the Siwashes kept looking back to see if I were coming.
[Illustration: TRYING TO GET UP.]
We performed several dangerous feats that day and the next, walking
along smooth, barkless logs, that lay across some of the deep gorges; in
places we were thirty feet or more above the ground, or rather rocks,
where a slip would have resulted in instant death. My hair frequently
stood on end, what little I have left, but John and Seymour always went
safely across and I could not afford to be outdone in courage by these
miserable, fish-eating Siwashes, so I followed wherever they led. We
read that the wicked stand on slippery places, but I can see these
wicked people, and go them about ten better, for I have stood, and even
walked, on many of these wet logs, and they are about the all-firedest
slipperyest things extant, and yet I have not fallen off. I fell only
that once, when I got my foot in the trap, and that would have downed a
wooden man. Just before going into camp that night, John shot a grouse,
but we were all too tired and hungry to cook it then, and made our meal
on cold kid, fish, and biscuits. After supper, however, John dressed
the bird and laid it aside for breakfast, saying we would each have a
piece of it then. The rain ceased falling at dark, and the stars came
out, which greatly revived our drooping spirits. We gathered large
quantities of dry wood and bark, so we were able to keep a good fire all
night. I drew from a half-rotten log, a flat, slab-like piece of pine,
which at first I failed to recognize. John saw it and said:
[Illustration: TRYING TO GET DOWN.]
"Good. Dat's beech."
"Beech," I said. "Why, there's no beech in this country."
"No, beech wood, make good fire, good kindle, good what you call him?
Good torch."
"Oh," I said, "pitch pine, eh?"
"Yas, beech pine." And this was as near as he could get to pitch.
About two o'clock in the morning, it commenced to rain heavily again,
and the poor Indians were soon in a pitable condition, with their
blankets and clothing wet through. They sat up the remainder of the
night, feeding the fire to keep it alive and themselves warm, for they
had neither canvas or rubber coats, or any other kind of waterproof
clothing. They put up some of the longer pieces of the bark we had
gathered for fuel, and made a passable shelter, but it was so small, and
leaked so badly, that it was far from comfortable. I pitied the poor
fellows, but had nothing I could give or even share with them for
shelter. I got up at five o'clock, and we commenced preparations for
breakfast. I told John he had better cook the grouse, but he shook his
head, and said sadly:
"Seymo, he spile de grouse."
"How did he do that?" I inquired.
"He say put him on stick by fire to cook in de night. Then he go to
sleep and stick burn off. Grouse fall in de fire and burn."
"That's too thin," I said. "Seymour cooked that grouse and ate it while
you and I were asleep."
Seymour glared at me, but had not the courage to resent or deny the
charge. An Indian does not let sleep interfere with his appetite; he
eats whatever there is first, and then sleeps. I divided the last of the
bacon and biscuits equally between us, and with a remnant of cold
broiled salmon, we eked out a scant breakfast on which to begin a day's
work. John was clawing some white greasy substance from a tin can with
his fingers, and spreading it on his biscuits with the same tools. He
passed the can to me, and said:
"Have butta?"
"No, thanks," I answered; "I seldom eat butter in camp."
"I like him all time," he replied; "I never git widout butta for brade
at home." This by way of informing me that he knew what good living was,
and practiced it at home. It rained heavily all day, and our tramp
through the jungle was most dreary and disagreeable.
"The day was dark, and cold, and dreary;
It rained, and the wind was never weary."
[Illustration: _EN FAMILLE_]
About three o'clock in the afternoon, we sat down to rest on the bank of
the creek. We had been there but a few minutes, when a good sized black
bear came shambling along up the bank of the creek, looking for salmon.
The Indians saw him when a hundred yards or more away, and flattened
themselves out on the ground to await his nearer approach. I raised my
rifle to my shoulder, but they both motioned me to wait, that he was yet
too far away. I disregarded their injunction, however, and promptly
landed an express bullet in the bear's breast. He reared, uttered a
smothered groan, turned, made one jump, and fell dead. Now arose the
question of saving his skin; it was late, and we were yet three miles
from the Indian village; to skin the bear then meant to camp there for
the night, and as the rain still came down in a steady, heavy sheet, I
at once decided that I would not stay out there another night for the
best bear skin in the country. Seymour and John held a short
consultation, and then John said they would come back and get the skin
next day, and take it in lieu of the money I owed them for their
services. We struck a bargain in about a minute, and hurried on,
arriving at the village just as it grew dark. My rubber coat and high
rubber boots had kept me comparatively dry, but the poor Indians were
wet to the skin.
CHAPTER XVIII.
On arriving at Chehalis John kindly invited me to stop over night with
him, but I declined with thanks. I went into his house, however, to wait
while he got ready to take me down to Barker's. It was the same type of
home that nearly all these Indians have--a large clapboard building
about eight feet high, with smoked salmon hung everywhere and a fire in
the centre of the room, which, by the way, was more of a smoke than
fire, curing the winter provender. A pile of wood lay in one corner of
the room, some empty barrels in another, fish-nets were hung in still
another, and the family lived, principally, in the fourth. John lives
with his father-in-law, mother-in-law, two brothers-in-law, one
sister-in-law, his wife and three papooses. Blankets, pots, tinware and
grub of various kinds were piled up promiscuously in this living corner,
and the little undressed kids hovered and shivered around the dull fire,
suffering from the cold. We were soon in the canoe again, _en route_ to
the steamboat landing, where we arrived soon after dark. I regretted to
part with John, for I had found him a good, faithful servant and staunch
friend. I was glad to get rid of Seymour, however, for I had learned
that he was a contemptible sneak, and told him so in as many words.
_En route_ home I had about two hours to wait at Port Moody for the
boat. There were great numbers of grebes and ducks in the bay, and I
asked the dock foreman if there was any rule against shooting there. He
said he guessed not; he had never seen anyone shooting there, but he
guessed there wouldn't be any objection. I got out my rifle and two
boxes of cartridges and opened on the birds. The ducks left at once, but
the grebes sought safety in diving, and as soon as the fusillade began a
number of gulls came hovering around, apparently to learn the cause of
the racket. I had fine sport between the two, and a large audience to
enjoy it with me. In ten minutes from the time I commenced shooting all
the clerks in the dock office, all the freight hustlers in the
warehouse, all the railroad section men, the ticket-agent and
baggage-master, numbering at least twenty men in the aggregate, were
clustered around me, and their comments on my rifle and shooting were
extremely amusing. Not a man in the party had ever before seen a
Winchester express, and the racket it made, the way in which the balls
plowed up the water, and the way the birds, when hit, vanished into thin
air and a few feathers, were mysteries far beyond their power to solve.
At the first lull in the firing half a dozen of them rushed up and
wanted to examine the rifle, the fancy finish and combination sights of
which were as profoundly strange to them as to the benighted Indians.
They soon handed it back to me, however, with the request to resume
hostilities against the birds; they preferred to see the old thing work
rather than to handle it. The gulls were soaring in close, and six
shots, rapidly delivered, dropped three of them into the water,
mutilated beyond recognition. This was the climax; the idea of killing
birds on the wing, with a rifle, was something these men had never
before heard of, and two or three examined my cartridges to see if they
were not loaded with shot, instead of bullets. When they found this
suspicion was groundless they were beside themselves with wonder and
admiration of the strange arm. As a matter of fact, it required no
particular skill to kill the gulls on the wing, for they were the large
gray variety, and frequently came within twenty or thirty feet of me, so
that anyone who could kill them with a shotgun could do so with a rifle.
Finally the steamer came in and I went aboard. The train arrived soon
after and several of its passengers boarded the boat. The gulls were now
hovering about the steamer, picking up whatever particles of food were
thrown overboard from the cook-room. One old Irishman, who had come in
on the train from the interior wilds, walked out on the quarter deck and
looking at them intently for a few minutes, turned to me and inquired:
"Phwat kind of burds is thim--geese?"
"Yes," I said, "thim's geese, I reckon."
"Well, be gorry, if I had a gun here I'd shoot some o'thim"; and he went
and told his companions "there was a flock of the tamest wild geese out
thare ye iver sawed."
[Illustration: A SNAP SHOT WITH A DETECTIVE CAMERA.]
The return journey to Portland was without incident. There I boarded the
steamer and spent another delightful day on the broad bosom of the
Columbia river, winding up among the grand basaltic cliffs and
towering mountain peaks of the Cascade Range. Again the little camera
came into requisition, and though the day was cloudy and blusterous,
though snow fell at frequent intervals, and though the steamer trembled
like a reed shaken by the wind, I made a dozen or more exposures on the
most interesting and beautiful subjects as we passed them, and to my
surprise many came out good pictures. Most of them lack detail in the
deeper shadows, but the results altogether show that had the day been
clear and bright all would have been perfect. In short, it is possible
with this dry-plate process to make good pictures from a moving
steamboat, or even from a railway train going at a high rate of speed. I
made three pictures from a Northern Pacific train, coming through the
Bad Lands, when running twenty-five miles an hour, and though slightly
blurred in the near foreground, the buttes and bluffs, a hundred yards
and further away, are as sharp as if I had been standing on the ground
and the camera on a tripod; and a snap shot at a prairie-dog town--just
as the train slowed on a heavy grade--shows several of the little
rodents in various poses, some of them apparently trying to look pretty
while having their "pictures took."
CHAPTER XIX.
I stopped off at Spokane Falls, on my way home, for a few days' deer
hunting, and though that region be not exactly in the Cascades, it is so
near that a few points in relation to the sport there may be admissible
in connection with the foregoing narrative. I had advised my good
friend, Dr. C. S. Penfield, of my coming, and he had kindly planned for
me a hunting trip. On the morning after my arrival his brother-in-law,
Mr. T. E. Jefferson, took me up behind a pair of good roadsters and
drove to Johnston's ranch, eighteen miles from the falls, and near the
foot of Mount Carleton, where we hoped to find plenty of deer. We hunted
there two days, and though we found signs reasonably plentiful and saw
three or four deer we were unable to kill any. Mr. Jefferson burned some
powder after a buck and a doe the first morning after our arrival, but
it was his first experience in deer hunting, so it is not at all strange
that the game should have escaped. Mr. Jefferson was compelled to return
home at that time on account of a business engagement, but Mr. Johnston,
with characteristic Western hospitality and kindness, said I must not
leave without a shot, and so hooked up his team and drove me twenty-five
miles farther into the mountains, to a place where he said we would
surely find plenty of game. On the way in we picked up old Billy
Cowgill, a famous deer hunter in this region, and took him along as
guide. We stopped at Brooks' stage ranch, on the Colville road to rest
the team, and the proprietor gave us an amusing account of some
experiments he had been making in shooting buckshot from a
muzzle-loading shotgun. He had made some little bags of buckskin, just
large enough to hold twelve No. 2 buckshot, and after filling them had
sewed up the ends. He shot a few of them at a tree sixty yards away, but
they failed to spread and all went into one hole. Then he tried leaving
the front end of the bag open, and still they acted as a solid ball; so
he had to abandon the scheme, and loaded the charge loose, as of old. He
concluded, however, not to fire this last load at the target, and hung
the gun up in its usual place. A few days later he heard the dog barking
in the woods a short distance from the house, and supposed it had treed
a porcupine. Mr. Brooks' brother, who was visiting at the time, took the
gun and went out to kill the game, whatever it might be. On reaching the
place, he found a ruffed grouse sitting in a tree, at which he fired.
The ranchman said he heard the report, and his brother soon came back,
carrying a badly-mutilated bird; he threw it into the kitchen, and put
the gun away; then he sat down, looked thoughtful, and kept silent for a
long time. Finally he blurted out:
[Illustration: THE STAGE RANCH.]
"Say, Tom; that gun got away from me."
"How was that?" queried the ranchman.
"I don't know; but I shot pretty near straight up at the grouse, and
somehow the gun slipped off my shoulder and done this." And opening his
coat he showed his vest, one side of which was split from top to bottom;
he then took out a handful of his watch and held it up--one case was
torn off, the crystal smashed, the dial caved in, and the running gear
all mixed up. The ranchman said he guessed he had put one of the
buckskin bags of shot into that barrel, and forgetting that fact, had
added the loose charge. He said he reckoned twenty-four No. 2 buckshot
made too heavy a load for an eight-pound gun.
We reached "Peavine Jimmy's" mining cabin, which was to be our camp, at
three o'clock in the afternoon, and busied ourselves till dark in the
usual duties of cooking, eating, and gathering wood. Old Billy proved a
very interesting character; he is a simple, quiet, honest, unpretentious
old man, and unlike most backwoodsmen, a veritable coward. He has the
rare good sense, however, to admit it frankly, and thus disarms
criticism. In fact, his frequent admission of this weakness is amusing.
He says that for fear of getting lost he does not like to go off a trail
when hunting, unless there is snow on the ground, so that he can track
himself back into camp. He rides an old buckskin pony that is as modest
and gentle as its master. Billy says he often gets lost when he does
venture away from the trail, but in such cases he just gives old Buck
the rein, hits him a slap, and tells him to go to camp and he soon gets
there. He told us a bear story that night, worthy of repetition.
Something was said that reminded him of it, and he mentioned it, but
added, modestly, that he didn't know as we cared for any bear stories.
But we said we were very fond of them, and urged the recital.
"Well, then," he said, "if you will wait a minute, I'll take a drink of
water first and then I'll tell it to you," and he laughed a kind of
boyish titter, and began:
"Well, me and three other fellers was up north in the Colville country,
huntin', and all the other fellows was crazy to kill a bear. I didn't
want to kill no bear, and didn't expect to. I'm as 'feard as death of a
bear, and hain't no use for 'em. All I wanted to kill was a deer. The
other fellers, they wanted to kill some deer, too, but they wanted bear
the worst. So one mornin' we all started out, and the other fellers they
took the best huntin' ground, and said I'd better go down along the
creek and see if I couldn't kill some grouse, for they didn't believe I
could kill any thing bigger'n that; and I said, all right, and started
off down the creek. Purty soon I come to an old mill that wasn't runnin'
then. And when I got purty near to the mill I set down on a log, for I
didn't think it was worth while to go any furder, for I didn't think I
would find any game down the creek, and I didn't care much whether I did
or not. Well, I heard a kind of a racket in the mill, and durned if
there wasn't a big black bear right in the mill. And I watched him a
little bit, and he started out towards me. And I said to myself, says I,
'Now Billy, here's your chance to kill a bear.'
"I hadn't never killed no bear before, nor never seed one before, and
durned if I wasn't skeered nearly to death. But I thought there wasn't
no use of runnin', for I knowed he could run faster'n I could, so I took
out my knife and commenced cuttin' down the brush in front of me, for I
wanted to make a shure shot if I did shoot, if I could. And the bear,
he come out of the mill and rared up, and put his paws on a log and
looked at me, and I said to myself, says I, 'Now Billy, this is your
time to shoot'; but I wasn't ready to shoot yit. They was one more bush
I wanted to cut out of the way before I shot, so I cut if off and laid
down my knife, and then I took up my gun and tried to take aim at his
breast, but doggoned if I didn't shake so I couldn't see the sights at
all. And I thought one time I wouldn't shoot, and then I knowed the
other fellers would laugh at me if I told 'em I seed a bear and didn't
shoot at him, and besides I was afraid some of 'em was up on the
hillside lookin' at me then. So I just said to myself, says I, 'Now
Billy, you're goin' to get eat up if you don't kill him, but you might
as well be eat up as to be laughed at.' So I jist took the best aim I
could for shakin', an' shet both eyes an' pulled.
"Well, I think the bear must a begin to git down jist as I pulled, for I
tore his lower jaw off and shot a big hole through one side of his neck.
He howled and roared and rolled around there awhile and then he got
still. I got round where I could see him, after he quit kickin', but I
was afeared to go up to him, so I shot two more bullets through his head
to make sure of him. And then I set down and waited a long while to see
if he moved any more; for I was afeard he mightn't be dead yit, and
might be playin' possum, jist to get ahold of me. But he didn't move no
more, so I went up to him with my gun cocked and pointed at his head, so
if he did move I could give him another one right quick. An' then I
punched him a little with my gun, but he didn't stir. An' when I found
he was real dead I took my knife and cut off one of his claws, an' then
I went back to camp, the biggest feelin' old cuss you ever seed.
"Well, arter while the other fellers they all come in, lookin' mighty
blue, for they hadn't any of 'em killed a thing, an' when I told 'em I'd
killed a bear, they wouldn't believe it till I showed 'em the claw. An'
then they wouldn't believe it, neither, for they thought I'd bought the
claw of some Injin. And they wouldn't believe it at all till they went
out with me and seed the bear and helped skin 'im, and cut 'im up, and
pack 'im into camp. An' they was the dog-gondest, disappointedest lot of
fellers you ever seed, for we hunted five days longer, an' nary one of
'em got to kill a bear nor even see one. They thought I was the poorest
hunter and the biggest coward in the lot, but I was the only one that
killed a bear that clip."
CHAPTER XX.
We were out at daylight the next morning and hunted all day with fair
success. Johnston and Billy jumped a bunch of five mule-deer, a buck,
two does, and two fawns. Johnston fired fourteen shots at them before
they got out of the country, and killed the two does. In speaking of it
afterward Billy said he was just taking a good aim at the old buck's eye
when Johnston's gun cracked the first time, and of course the buck ran,
so he did not get a shot.
"But why didn't you shoot at him running?" I inquired.
"Because I can't hit a jumpin' deer," he replied, frankly, "and I hate
like thunder to miss."
I spent the day about a mile from camp on top of Blue Grouse Mountain, a
prominent landmark of the country. A heavy fog hung about the mountain
and over the surrounding country until about three o'clock in the
afternoon, when it lifted and disclosed a view of surpassing loveliness.
Away to the west and southwest there was a level tract of swampy,
heavily timbered country about thirty miles long and ten miles wide. I
looked down on the tops of the trees composing this vast forest, and
they appeared at this distance not unlike a vast field of half-grown
green grain. Beyond this tract to the west a chain of hills wound in
serpentine curves from north to south, their parks and bits of prairie
gleaming in the sun like well-made farms. To the north lay Loon Lake
nestling among the pine-clad hills, its placid bosom sparkling in the
setting sun like a sheet of silver. Farther to the north and northeast
were two other lakes of equal size and beauty, while far distant in the
east were several large bodies of prairie separated by strips of pine
and fir. I longed for my camera, but on account of the unfavorable
outlook of the morning, I had not brought the instrument.
[Illustration: ONE OF JOHNSTON'S PRIZES.]
The following morning promised no better, for the fog hung like a pall
over the whole country; but I took the little detective with me, hoping
the mist would lift as before; in this, however, I was disappointed. I
staid on the mountain from early morning till half-past three, and there
being then no prospect of a change went down. Just as I reached the base
I saw a rift in the clouds, and supposing the long-wished change in the
weather was about to take place, I turned and began the weary climb, but
again the fog settled down, and I was at last compelled to return to
camp without the coveted views. I made several exposures during the day
on crooked, deformed, wind-twisted trees on the top of the mountain,
which, strange to say, came out good. The fog was so dense at the time
that one could not see fifty yards. I used a small stop and gave each
plate from five to twenty seconds, and found, when developed, that none
of them were over exposed, while those given the shorter time were under
exposed. That day's hunting resulted in three more deer, and as we then
had all the meat our team could take out up the steep hills near camp,
we decided to start for home the next morning. While seated around our
blazing log fire in the old cabin that night, Mr. Johnston entertained
us with some interesting reminiscences of his extensive experience in
the West. He has been a "broncho buster," a stock ranchman, and a
cow-boy by turns, and a recital of his varied experiences in these
several lines would fill a big book. Among others, he told us that he
once lived in a portion of California where the ranchmen raised a great
many hogs, but allowed them to range at will in the hills and mountains
from the time they were littered until old enough and large enough for
market; that in this time they became as wild as deer and as savage as
peccaries, so that the only way they could ever be reclaimed and
marketed was to catch them with large, powerful dogs, trained to the
work. Their feet were then securely tied with strong thongs, and they
were muzzled and packed into market or to the ranches, as their owners
desired, on horses or mules.
[Illustration: ARE YOU LOOKING FOR US?]
Johnston had a pair of these dogs, and used to assist his neighbors in
rounding up their wild hogs. In one case, he and several other men went
with an old German ranchman away up into the mountains to bring out a
drove of these pine-skinners, many of whom had scarcely seen a human
being since they were pigs, and at sight of the party the hogs stampeded
of course, and ran like so many deer. The dogs were turned loose, took
up a trail, and soon had a vicious critter by the ears, when the packers
came up, muzzled and tied it securely. The dogs were then turned loose
again, and another hog was rounded up in the same way. These two were
hung onto a pack-animal with their backs down, their feet lashed
together over the pack-saddle, and their long, sharp snouts pointing
toward the horse's head. They were duly cinched, and the horse turned
loose to join the train. This operation was repeated until the whole
herd was corralled and swung into place on the horses, and the
squealing, groaning, and snorting of the terrified brutes was almost
deafening. One pair of hogs were loaded on a little mule which had
never been accustomed to this work, and, as the men were all engaged in
handling the other animals, the old ranchman said he would lead this
mule down the mountain himself. Johnston and his partner cinched the
hogs on in good shape, while the Dutchman hung to the mule.
[Illustration: A BUCKING MULE.]
As they were giving the ropes the final pull, Johnston gave his chum a
wink, and they both slipped out their knives, cut the muzzles off the
porkers when the old man was looking the other way, and told him to go
ahead. He started down the trail towing the little mule, which did not
relish its load in the least, by the halter. The hogs were struggling to
free themselves, and, as the thongs began to cut into their legs, they
got mad and began to bite the mule.
Then there was trouble; stiff-legged bucking set in, and mule and hogs
were churned up and down, and changed ends so rapidly that for a few
minutes it was hard to tell which of the three animals was on the
outside, the inside, the topside, or the bottom-side. The poor little
mule was frantic with rage and fright, and what a mule can not and will
not do under such circumstances, to get rid of a load can not be done by
any four-footed beast. He pawed the air, kicked, and brayed, jumped
backward, forward, and sidewise, and twisted himself into every
imaginable shape. The old Dutchman was as badly stampeded as the mule;
he shouted, yanked, and swore in Dutch, English, and Spanish; he yelled
to the men above to come and help him, but they were so convulsed and
doubled up with laughter that they could not have helped him if they
would.
Finally, the mule got away from the old man and went tearing down into
the canyon; he overtook and passed the balance of the pack-train,
stampeded them almost beyond control of the packers, and knocked the
poor hogs against trees and brush until they were almost dead. He ran
nearly six miles, and being unable to get rid of his pack, fell
exhausted and lay there until the men came up and took charge of him.
The old man accused Johnston of cutting the muzzles off the hogs, but he
and his partner both denied it, said they certainly must have slipped
off, and they finally convinced him that that was the way the trouble
came about.
[Illustration: THE BUCKER AND THE BUSTER.]
This, with sundry other recitals of an equally interesting nature,
caused the evening to pass pleasantly, and at a late hour we turned into
our bunks. We were up and moving long before daylight the next morning,
and as soon as we could see the trail hooked up the team and attempted
to go, but, alas for our hopes of an early start, one of the horses
refused to pull at the very outset--in short, he balked and no mule ever
balked worse. Johnston plied the buckskin until the horse refused to
stand it any longer and began to rear and to throw himself on the
tongue, back in the harness, etc. Johnston got off the wagon, went to
the animal's head and tried to lead it, but the brute would not be led
any more than it would be driven, and commenced rearing and striking at
its master as if trying to kill him. This aroused the ire of the
ranchman and he picked up a piece of a board, about four inches wide and
three feet long, and fanned the vicious critter right vigorously. I took
a hand in the game, at Johnston's request, and warmed the cayuse's
latter half to the best of my ability with a green hemlock gad. He
bucked and backed, reared and ranted, pawed, pitched, plunged and
pranced, charged, cavorted and kicked, until it seemed that he would
surely make shreds of the harness and kindling wood of the wagon; but
the whole outfit staid with him, including Johnston and myself.
We wore out his powers of endurance if not his hide, and he finally got
down to business, took the load up the hill and home to the ranch,
without manifesting any further inclination to strike. We reached the
ranch about nine o'clock at night, and the next day Johnston drove me
into Spokane Falls, where, in due time, I caught the train for home.
[Illustration: VIEW IN THE SPOKANE VALLEY.]
Spokane Falls is a growing, pushing town, and the falls of the Spokane
river, from which the town takes its name, afford one of the most
beautiful and interesting sights on the line of the Northern Pacific
road. There are over a dozen distinct falls within a half a mile, one of
which is over sixty feet in perpendicular height. Several of these falls
are split into various channels by small islands or pillars of basaltic
rock. At one place, where two of these channels unite in a common plunge
into a small pool, the water is thrown up in a beautiful, shell-like
cone of white foam, to a height of nearly six feet. It is estimated by
competent engineers that the river at this point furnishes a water-power
equal in the aggregate to that of the Mississippi at St. Anthony's
Falls. Every passenger over this route should certainly stop off and
spend a few hours viewing the falls of the Spokane river.
CHAPTER XXI.
HUNTING THE GRIZZLY BEAR.
The bear, like man, inhabits almost every latitude and every land, and
has even been translated to the starry heavens, where the constellations
of the Great Dipper and the Little Dipper are known to us as well as to
the ancients as _Ursi Major_ and _Minor_. But North America furnishes
the largest and most aggressive species in the grizzly (_Ursus
horribilis_), the black (_Ursus americanus_), and the polar (_Ursus
maritimus_) bears, and here the hunter finds his most daring sport. Of
all the known plantigrades (flat-footed beasts) the grizzly is the most
savage and the most dreaded, and he is the largest of all, saving the
presence of his cousin the polar bear, for which, nevertheless, he is
more than a match in strength and courage. Some specimens measure seven
feet from tip of nose to root of tail. The distinctive marks of the
species are its great size; the shortness of the tail as compared with
the ears; the huge flat paws, the sole of the hind foot sometimes
measuring seven and a half by five inches in a large male; the length of
the hind legs as compared with the fore legs, which gives the beast his
awkward, shambling gait; the long claws of the fore foot, sometimes
seven inches in length, while those of the hind foot measure only three
or four; the erect, bristling mane of stiff hair, often six inches long;
the coarse hair of the body, sometimes three inches long, dark at the
base, but with light tips. He has a dark stripe along the back, and one
along each side, the hair on his body being, as a rule, a
brownish-yellow, the region around the ears dusky, the legs nearly
black, and the muzzle pale. Color, however, is not a distinctive mark,
for female grizzlies have been killed in company with two cubs, one of
which was brown, the other gray, or one dark, the other light; and the
supposed species of "cinnamon" and "brown" bears are merely color
variations of _Ursus horribilis_ himself.
This ubiquitous gentleman has a wide range for his habitat. He has been
found on the Missouri river from Fort Pierre northward, and thence west
to his favorite haunts in the Rockies; on the Pacific slope clear down
to the coast; as far south as Mexico, and as far north as the Great
Slave Lake in British America. He not only ranges everywhere, but eats
everything. His majesty is a good liver. He is not properly a beast of
prey, for he has neither the cat-like instincts, nor the noiseless tread
of the _felidae_, nor is he fleet and long-winded like the wolf, although
good at a short run, as an unlucky hunter may find. But he hangs about
the flanks of a herd of buffalo, with probably an eye to a wounded or
disabled animal, and he frequently raids a ranch and carries off a
sheep, hog, or calf that is penned beyond the possibility of escape.
Elk is his favorite meat, and the knowing hunter who has the good luck
to kill an elk makes sure that its carcass will draw Mr. Grizzly if he
is within a range of five miles. He will eat not only flesh, fish, and
fowl, but roots, herbs, fruit, vegetables, honey, and insects as well.
Plums, buffalo-berries, and choke-cherries make a large part of his diet
in their seasons.
[Illustration: DEATH AND THE CAUSE OF IT.]
The grizzly bear possesses greater vitality and tenacity of life than
any other animal on the continent, and the hunter who would hunt him
must be well armed and keep a steady nerve. Each shot must be cooly put
where it will do the most good. Several are frequently necessary to
stop one of these savage beasts. A single bullet lodged in the brain is
fatal. If shot through the heart he may run a quarter of a mile or kill
a man before he succumbs. In the days of the old muzzle-loading rifle it
was hazardous indeed to hunt the grizzly, and many a man has paid the
penalty of his folly with his life. With our improved breech-loading and
repeating rifles there is less risk.
The grizzly is said to bury carcasses of large animals for future use as
food, but this I doubt. I have frequently returned to carcasses of elk
or deer that I had killed and found that during my absence bears had
partially destroyed them, and in their excitement, occasioned by the
smell or taste of fresh meat, had pawed up the earth a good deal
thereabout, throwing dirt and leaves in various directions, and some of
this debris may have fallen on the bodies of the dead game; but I have
never seen where any systematic attempt had been made at burying a
carcass. Still, Bruin may have played the sexton in some cases. He
hibernates during winter, but does not take to his long sleep until the
winter has thoroughly set in and the snow is quite deep. He may
frequently be tracked and found in snow a foot deep, where he is roaming
in search of food. He becomes very fat before going into winter
quarters, and this vast accumulation of oil furnishes nutriment and heat
sufficient to sustain life during his long confinement.
The newspapers often kill grizzlies weighing 1,500, 1,800, or even 2,000
pounds, and in any party of frontiersmen "talking grizzly" you will find
plenty of men who can give date and place where they killed or helped
to kill at least 1,800 pounds of Bruin.
"Did you weigh it?"
"No, we didn't weigh 'im; but every man as seed 'im said he would weigh
that, and they was all good jedges, too."
And this is the way most of the stories of big bear, big elk, big deer,
etc., begin and end. Bears are usually, though not always, killed at
considerable distances from towns, or even ranches, where it is not easy
to find a scales large enough to weigh so much meat.
The largest grizzly I have ever killed would not weigh more than 700 or
800 pounds, and I do not believe one has ever lived that would weigh
1,000 pounds. The flesh of the adult grizzly is tough, stringy, and
decidedly unpalatable, but that of a young fat one is tender and juicy,
and is always a welcome dish on the hunter's table.
The female usually gives birth to two cubs, and sometimes three, at a
time. At birth they weigh only about 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 pounds each. The
grizzly breeds readily in confinement, and several litters have been
produced in the Zoological Gardens at Cincinnati. The female is
unusually vicious while rearing her young, and the hunter must be doubly
cautious about attacking at that time. An Indian rarely attacks a
grizzly single-handed at any time, and it is only when several of these
native hunters are together that they will attempt to kill one. They
value the claws very highly, however, and take great pride in wearing
strings of them around their necks.
The grizzly usually frequents the timbered or brush-covered portions of
mountainous regions, or the timbered valleys of streams that head in the
mountains. He occasionally follows down the course of these streams, and
even travels many miles from one stream to another, or from one range of
mountains to another, across open prairie. I once found one on a broad
open plateau in the Big Horn Mountains, about half a mile from the
nearest cover of any kind. He was turning over rocks in search of worms.
At the report of my rifle he started for the nearest canyon, but never
reached it. An explosive bullet through his lungs rendered him unequal
to the journey.
Few persons believe that a grizzly will attack a man before he is
himself attacked. I was one of these doubting Thomases until a few years
ago, when I was thoroughly convinced by ocular demonstration that some
grizzlies, at least, will attempt to make a meal off a man even though
he may not have harmed them previously. We were hunting in the Shoshone
Mountains in Northern Wyoming. I had killed a large elk in the morning,
and on going back to the carcass in the afternoon to skin it we saw that
Bruin had been there ahead us, but had fled on our approach. Without the
least apprehension of his return, we leaned our rifles against a tree
about fifty feet away, and commenced work. There were three of us, but
only two rifles, Mr. Huffman, the photographer, having left his in camp.
He had finished taking views of the carcass, and we were all busily
engaged skinning, when, hearing a crashing in the brush and a series of
savage roars and growls, we looked up the hill, and were horrified to
see three grizzly bears, an old female and two cubs about two-thirds
grown, charging upon us with all the savage fury of a pack of starving
wolves upon a sheepfold.
To make a long story short, we killed the old female and one cub; the
other escaped into the jungle before we could get a shot at him. The
resolute front we put on alone saved our lives.
In another instance, when hunting deer in Idaho, I came suddenly upon a
female grizzly and two cubs, when the mother bear charged me savagely
and would have killed me had I not fortunately controlled my nerves long
enough to put a couple of bullets through her and stop her before she
got to me.
I have heard of several other instances of grizzlies making unprovoked
attacks on men, which were so well substantiated that I could not
question the truth of the reports.
The grizzly is partially nocturnal in his habits, and apparently divides
his labor of obtaining food and his traveling about equally between day
and night. It is not definitely known to what age he lives in his wild
state, but he is supposed to attain to twenty-five or thirty years.
Several have lived in domestication to nearly that age, and one died in
Union Park, Chicago, a few years ago, that was known to be eighteen
years old.
Notwithstanding the great courage and ferocity of this formidable beast,
he will utter the most pitiable groans and howls when seriously or
mortally wounded.
Two brothers were prospecting in a range of mountains near the
headwaters of the Stinking Water river. The younger of the two, though
an ablebodied man, and capable of doing a good day's work with a pick or
shovel, was weak-minded, and the elder brother never allowed him to go
any distance away from camp or their work alone. He, however, sent him
one evening to the spring, a few rods off, to bring a kettleful of
water. The spring was in a deep gorge, and the trail to it wound through
some fissures in the rock. As the young man passed under a shelving
rock, an immense old female grizzly, that had taken up temporary
quarters there, reached out and struck a powerful blow at his head, but
fortunately could not reach far enough to do him any serious harm. The
blow knocked his hat off, and her claws caught his scalp, and laid it
open clear across the top of his head in several ugly gashes. The force
of the blow sent him spinning around, and not knowing enough to be
frightened, he attacked her savagely with the only weapon he had at
hand--the camp kettle.
The elder brother heard the racket, and hastily catching up his rifle
and hurrying to the scene of the disturbance, found his brother
vigorously belaboring the bear over the head with the camp kettle, and
the bear striking savage blows at him, any one of which, if she could
have reached him, would have torn his head from his shoulders. Three
bullets from the rifle, fired in rapid succession, loosened her hold
upon the rocks, and she tumbled lifelessly into the trail. The poor
idiotic boy could not even then realize the danger through which he had
passed, and could only appease his anger by continuing to maul the bear
over the head with the camp kettle for several minutes after she was
dead.
Some years ago I went into the mountains with a party of friends to hunt
elk. Our guide told us we should find plenty of grouse along the trail,
from the day we left the settlements; that on the third day out we
should find elk, and that it would therefore be useless to burden our
pack-horses with meat. We accordingly took none save a small piece of
bacon.
Contrary to his predictions, however, we found no grouse or other small
game _en route_, and soon ate up our bacon. Furthermore, we were five
days in reaching the elk country, instead of three as he said. All this
time we were climbing mountains and had appetites that are known only to
mountain climbers. We had plenty of bread and potatoes, but these were
not sufficient. We hankered for flesh, and though we filled ourselves
with vegetable food, yet were we hungry.
Finally we reached our destination at midday. While we were unloading
the horses, a "fool hen" came and lit in a tree near us. A rifle ball
beheaded her, and almost before she was done kicking she was in the
frying pan.
A negro once had a bottle of whisky, and was making vigorous efforts to
get outside of it, when a chum came up and asked for a pull at it. "O,
g'long, nigger," said the happy owner of the corn juice. "What's one
bottle of whisky 'mong one man?" And what was one little grouse among
five half-starved men? The smell and taste only made us long for more.
After dinner we all went out and hunted until dark. Soon after leaving
camp some of us heard lively firing up the canyon, where our guide had
gone, and felt certain that he had secured meat, for we had heard
glowing accounts, from him and his friends, of his prowess as a hunter.
The rest of us were not so despondent, therefore, when we returned at
dusk empty handed, as we should otherwise have been, until we reached
camp and found the guide there wearing a long face and bloodless hands.
He told a doleful story of having had five fair shots at a large bull
elk, who stood broadside on, only seventy-five yards away, but who
finally became alarmed at the fusilade and fled, leaving no blood on his
trail. The guide of course anathematized his gun in the choicest terms
known to frontiersmen, and our mouths watered as we thought of what
might have been.
Our potatoes, having been compelled to stand for meat also, had vanished
rapidly, and we ate the last of them for supper that night. Few words
were spoken and no jokes cracked over that meal. We ate bread straight
for breakfast, and turning out early hunted diligently all day. We were
nearly famished when we returned at night and no one had seen any living
thing larger than a pine squirrel. It is written that "man shall not
live by bread alone," and we found that we could not much longer. And
soon we should not have even that, for our flour was getting low. But we
broke the steaming flat-cake again at supper, and turned in to dream of
juicy steaks, succulent joints, and delicious rib roasts.
We were up before daylight to find that six or eight inches of light
snow had fallen silently during the night, which lay piled up on the
branches of the trees, draping the dense forests in ghostly white. Our
drooping spirits revived, for we hoped that the tell-tale mantle would
enable us to find the game we so much needed in our business. We broke
our bread more cheerfully that morning than for two days previously, but
at the council of war held over the frugal meal, decided that unless we
scored that day we must make tracks for the nearest ranch the next
morning, and try to make our scanty remnant of flour keep us alive until
we could get there.
Breakfast over we scattered ourselves by the four points of the compass
and set out. It fell to my lot to go up the canyon. Silently I strode
through the forest, scanning the snow in search of foot-prints, but for
an hour I could see none. Then, as I cautiously ascended a ridge, I
heard a crash in the brush beyond and reached the summit just in time to
see the latter end of a large bull elk disappear in the thicket.
He had not heard or seen me, but had winded me, and tarried not for
better acquaintance. I followed his trail some three miles up the canyon,
carefully penetrating the thickets and peering among the larger trees,
but never a glimpse could I get and never a sound could I hear of him.
He seemed unusually wild. I could see by his trail that he had not
stopped, but had kept straight away on that long, swinging trot that is
such a telling gait of the species, and which they will sometimes keep
up for hours together. Finally I came to where he had left the canyon
and ascended the mountain. I followed up this for a time, but seeing
that he had not yet paused, and finding that my famished condition
rendered me unequal to the climb, was compelled to abandon the pursuit
and with a heavy heart return again to the canyon. I kept on up it, but
could find no other game or sign of any. Like the red hunter, in the
time of famine, who
"Vainly walked through the forest,
Sought for bird, or beast, and found none;
Saw no track of deer or rabbit,
In the snow beheld no foot-prints,
In the ghostly gleaming forest
Fell and could not rise from weakness,"
so I trudged on until, wearied and worn out, I lay down beside a giant
fir tree, whose spreading branches had kept the snow from the ground,
and fell asleep. When I awoke my joints were stiff and sore, and I was
chilled to the bone. It was late in the afternoon, and a quiet,
drizzling rain had set in.
I found the trail that led through the canyon, and started back to camp,
trudging along as rapidly as possible, for hunger was gnawing at my
vitals and my strength was fast failing.
"Over snow-fields waste and pathless,
Under snow-encumbered branches,
Empty-handed, heavy-hearted,"
I toiled wearily on. The snow had become saturated with the rain, and
great chunks of it were falling from the trees with dull, monotonous
sounds. "Slush, slush," "Splash, splash," came the gloomy sounds from
all parts of the woods. I was nearing camp, and had abandoned all hope
of seeing game. My only object was to reach shelter, to rest, and feast
on the unsatisfying bread. I heard a succession of the splashings that
came from my left with such regular cadence as to cause me to look up,
when, great St. Hubert! there came a huge grizzly bear shambling and
splashing along through the wet snow. It was his footsteps that I had
been hearing for a minute or two past, and which I had, at first,
thought to be the falling snow.
He had not yet seen me, and what a marvelous change came over me! I
forgot that I was tired; that I was weak; that I was hungry. The
instincts of the hunter reanimated me, and I thought only of killing the
grand game before me. I threw down my rifle, raising the hammer as the
weapon came into position, and the click of the lock reached his ear. It
was the first intimation he had of possible danger, and he stopped and
threw up his head to look and listen. My thoughts came and went like
flashes of lightning. I remembered then the famishing condition of
myself and friends. Here was meat, and I must save it. There must be no
nervousness--no wild shooting now. This shot _must_ tell. And there was
not a tremor in all my system. Every nerve was as of steel for the
instant. The little gold bead on the muzzle of the rifle instantly found
the vital spot behind the bear's shoulder, gleamed through the rear
sight like a spark of fire, and before he had time to realize what the
strange apparition was that had so suddenly confronted him, the voice of
the Winchester was echoing through the canyon and an express bullet had
crashed through his vitals.
The shock was so sudden and the effect on him so deadly that he
apparently thought nothing of fight, but only of seeking a place to die
in peace.
He wheeled and shot into a neighboring thicket with the speed of an
arrow. I fired at him again as he disappeared. He crashed through the
jungle out into the open woods, turned to the right and went across a
ridge as if Satan himself were after him. As the big gray mass shot
through a clear space between two trees I gave him another speeder, and
then he disappeared beyond a ridge.
The snow had melted rapidly and the ground was bare in places, so that I
had some trouble in trailing the bear, but wherever he crossed a patch
of snow his trail was bespattered with blood. I followed over the ridge
and through scattering jack pines, about two hundred yards, and found
him lying dead near the trail. My first and third bullets had gone in
behind his shoulder only an inch apart. The first had passed clear
through him, and the other had lodged agai
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