Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound

Rare birds peculiar to the western coast, the rufous-backed hummingbird, like a living coal of fire, and the bush-titmouse which builds a curious hanging nest, also visited this natural park.

The road we children traveled from this place led through heavy forest and the year of the drouth (1868) a great fire raged; we lost but little time on this account; it had not ceased before we ran past the tall firs and cedars flaming far above our heads.

Returning from church one day, when about half way home, a huge fir tree fell just behind us, and a half mile farther on we turned down a branch road at the very moment that a tree fell across the main road usually traveled.

The game was not then all destroyed; water fowl were numerous on the lakes and bays and the boys of the family often went shooting.

Rather late in the afternoon of a November day, the two smaller boys, taking a shot gun with them, repaired to Lake Union, borrowed a little fishing canoe of old Tsetseguis, the Indian who lived at the landing, and went to look at some muskrat traps they had set.

It was growing quite dark when they thought of returning. For some reason they decided to change places in the canoe, a very “ticklish” thing to do. When one attempted to pass the other, over went the little cockle-shell and both were struggling in the water. The elder managed to thrust one arm through the strap of the hunting bag worn by the younger and grasped him by the hair, said hair being a luxuriant mass of long, golden brown curls. Able to swim a little he kept them afloat although he could not keep the younger one’s head above water. His cries for help reached the ears of a young man, Charles Nollop, who was preparing to cook a beefsteak for his supper – he threw the frying pan one way while the steak went the other, and rushed, coatless and hatless, to the rescue with another man, Joe Raber, in a boat.

An older brother of the two lads, John B. Denny, was just emerging from the north door of the big barn with two pails of milk; hearing, as he thought, the words “I’m drowning,” rather faintly from the lake, he dropped the pails unceremoniously and ran down to the shore swiftly, found only an old shovel-nosed canoe and no paddle, seized a picket and paddled across the little bay to where the water appeared agitated; there he found the boys struggling in the water, or rather one of them, the other was already unconscious. Arriving at the same time in their boat Charley Nollop and Joe Raber helped to pull them out of the water. The long golden curls of the younger were entangled in the crossed cords of the shot pouch and powder flask worn by the older one, who was about to sink for the last time, as he was exhausted and had let go of the younger, who was submerged.

Their mother reached the shore as the unconscious one was stretched upon the ground and raised his arms and felt for the heart which was beating feebly.

The swimmer walked up the hill to the house; the younger, still unconscious, was carried, face downward, into a room where a large fire was burning in an open fireplace, and laid down before it on a rug. Restoratives were quickly applied and upon partial recovery he was warmly tucked in bed. A few feverish days followed, yet both escaped without serious injury.

Mrs. Tsetseguis was much grieved and repeated over and over, “I told the Oleman not to lend that little canoe to the boys, and he said, ‘O it’s all right, they know how to manage a canoe.’”

Tsetseguis was also much distressed and showed genuine sympathy, following the rescued into the house to see if they were really safe.

The games we played in early days were often the time-honored ones taught us by our parents, and again were inventions of our own. During the Rebellion we drilled as soldiers or played “black man;” by the latter we wrought excitement to the highest pitch, whether we chased the black man, or returning the favor, he chased us.

The teeter-board was available when the neighbor’s children came; the wonder is that no bones were broken by our method.

The longest, strongest, Douglas fir board that could be found, was placed across a large log, a huge stone rested in the middle and the children, boys and girls, little and big, crowded on the board almost filling it; then we carefully “waggled” it up and down, watching the stone in breathless and ecstatic silence until weary of it.

Our bravado consisted in climbing up the steepest banks on the bay, or walking long logs across ravines or on steep inclines.

The surroundings were so peculiar that old games took on new charms when played on Puget Sound. Hide-and-seek in a dense jungle of young Douglas firs was most delightful; the great fir and cedar trees, logs and stumps, afforded ample cover for any number of players, from the sharp eyes of the one who had been counted “out” with one of the old rhymes.

The shadow of danger always lurked about the undetermined boundary of our play-grounds, wild animals and wild men might be not far beyond.

We feared the drunken white man more than the sober Indian, with much greater reason. Even the drunken Indian never molested us, but usually ran “amuck” among the inhabitants of the beach.

Neither superstitious nor timid we seldom experienced a panic.

The nearest Indian graveyard was on a hill at the foot of Spring Street, Seattle. It sloped directly down to the beach; the bodies were placed in shallow graves to the very brow and down over the face of the sandy bluff. All this hill was dug down when the town advanced.

The childrens’ graves were especially pathetic, with their rude shelters, to keep off the rain of the long winter months, and upright poles bearing bits of bright colored cloth, tin pails and baskets.

Over these poor graves no costly monuments stood, only the winds sang wild songs there, the sea-gulls flitted over, the fair, wild flowers bloomed and the dark-eyed Indian mothers tarried sometimes, human as others in their sorrow.

But the light-hearted Indian girls wandered past, hand in hand, singing as they went, pausing to turn bright friendly eyes upon me as they answered the white child’s question, “Ka mika klatawa?” (Where are you going?)

“O, kopa yawa” (O, over yonder), nodding toward the winding road that stretched along the green bank before them. Without a care or sorrow, living a healthy, free, untrammeled life, they looked the impersonation of native contentment.

The social instinct of the pioneers found expression in various ways.

A merry party of pioneer young people, invited to spend the evening at a neighbor’s, were promised the luxury of a candy-pull. The first batch was put on to boil and the assembled youngsters engaged in old fashioned games to while away the time. Unfortunately for their hopes the molasses burned and they were obliged to throw it away. There was a reserve in the jug, however, and the precious remainder was set over the fire and the games went on again. Determined to succeed, the hostess stirred, while an equally anxious and careful guest held the light, a small fish-oil lamp. The lamp had a leak and was set on a tin plate; in her eagerness to light the bubbling saccharine substance and to watch the stirring-down, she leaned over a little too far and over went the lamp directly into the molasses.

What consternation fell upon them! The very thought of the fish-oil was nauseating, and that was all the molasses. There was no candy-pulling, there being no grocery just around the corner where a fresh supply might be obtained, indeed molasses and syrup were very scarce articles, brought from a great distance.

The guests departed, doubtless realizing that the “best laid plans … gang aft agley.”

The climate of Puget Sound is one so mild that snow seldom falls and ice rarely forms as thick as windowglass, consequently travel, traffic and amusement are scarcely modified during the winter, or more correctly, the rainy season. Unless it rained more energetically than usual, the children went on with their games as in summer.

The long northern twilight of the summertime and equally long evenings in winter had each their special charm.

The pictures of winter scenes in eastern magazines and books looked strange and unfamiliar to us, but as one saucy girl said to a tenderfoot from a blizzard-swept state, “We see more and deeper snow everyday than you ever saw in your life.”

“How is that?” said he.

“On Mount Rainier,” she answered, laughing.

Even so, this magnificent mountain, together with many lesser peaks, wears perpetual robes of snow in sight of green and blooming shores.

When it came to decorating for Christmas, well, we had a decided advantage as the evergreens stood thick about us, millions of them. Busy fingers made lavish use of rich garlands of cedar to festoon whole buildings; handsome Douglas firs, reaching from floor to ceiling, loaded with gay presents and blazing with tapers, made the little “clam-diggers’” eyes glisten and their mouths water. In the garden the flowers bloomed often in December and January, as many as twenty-six varieties at once.

One New Year’s day I walked down the garden path and plucked a fine, red rosebud to decorate the New Year’s cake.

The pussy-willows began the floral procession of wildlings in January and the trilliums and currants were not far behind unless a “cold snap” came on in February and the flowers dozed on, for they never seem to sleep very profoundly here. By the middle of February there was, occasionally, a general display of bloom, but more frequently it began about the first of March, the seasons varying considerably.

The following poem tells of favorite flowers gathered in the olden time “i’ the spring o’ the year!”

In the summertime we had work as well as play, out of doors. The garden surrounding our cottage in 1863, overflowed with fruits, vegetables and flowers. Nimble young fingers were made useful in helping to tend them. Weeding beds of spring onions and lettuce, sticking peas and beans, or hoeing potatoes, were considered excellent exercise for young muscles; no need of physical “culchuah” in the school had dawned upon us, as periods of work and rest, study and play, followed each other in healthful succession.

Having a surplus of good things, the children often went about the village with fresh vegetables and flowers, more often the latter, generous bouquets of fragrant and spicy roses and carnations, sweet peas and nasturtiums, to sell. Two little daughters in pretty, light print dresses and white hats were flower girls who were treated like little queens.

There was no disdain of work to earn a living in those days; every respectable person did something useful.

For recreation, we went with father in the wagon over the “bumpy” road when he went to haul wood, or perhaps a long way on the county road to the meadow, begging to get off to gather flowers whenever we saw them peeping from their green bowers.

Driving along through the great forest which stood an almost solid green wall on either hand, we called “O father, stop! stop; here is the lady-slipper place.”

“Well, be quick, I can’t wait long.”

Dropping down to the ground, we ran as fast as our feet could carry us to gather the lovely, fragrant orchid, Calypso Borealis, from its mossy bed.

When the ferns were fully grown, eight or ten feet high, the little girls broke down as many as they could drag, and ran along the road, great ladies, with long green trains!

We found the way to the opening in the woods, where in the midst thereof, grandfather sat making cedar shingles with a drawing knife. Huge trees lay on the ground, piles of bolts had been cut and the heap of shingles, clear and straight of the very best quality, grew apace.

Very tall and grand the firs and cedars stood all around, like stately pillars with a dome of blue sky above; the birds sang in the underbrush and the brown butterflies floated by.

Among all the beautiful things, there was one to rivet the eye and attention; a dark green fir tree, perhaps thirty feet high, around whose trunk and branches a wild honeysuckle vine had twined itself from the ground to the topmost twig.

It had the appearance of a giant candelabrum, with the orange-scarlet blossoms that tipped the boughs like jets of flame.