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

“Here the doctor’s face perceptibly lengthened and a very dry laugh, a sort of hysterical cross between a chuckle and a suppressed oath, escaped him, but before he had time to speak the old man went on:

“‘So much for the triumph of religion, but science, sir, will be under much weightier obligations to us when you and I succeed in making an honest living from the progeny of an old blind horse and a little, miserable runty steer calf.’

“This was too much for the doctor and springing to his feet he fairly shouted, ‘There, there, old man, not another word! come right along and I will stand treat for the whole town and we will never mention Alki Point again.’

“‘No, thank you,’ said the hermit, dryly, ‘I never indulge, and since you have been the means of my conversion you ought to be the last man in the world to lead me into temptation, besides our income from the blind horse and runty steer calf will hardly justify such extravagance.’

“Hat and cane in hand he got as far as the door, when Maynard called to him saying, ‘Look here, old man, I hope you’re not offended, and if you will say nothing about this little matter, I’ll doctor you the rest of your life for nothing.’

“After scratching his head a moment the hermit looked up and naively answered, ‘No, I’m not mad, only astonished, and as for your free medicine, if it is all as bitter as the free dose you have just given me, I don’t want any more of it,’ and he bowed himself out and was soon lost to the doctor’s longing gaze. With eyes still fixed on the door he exclaimed, ‘Blast my head if I thought the old crackling had so much dry humor in him. Come, Charley, let’s have something to brave our nerves.’”

Among the unfortunate victims of the drink habit in an early day was poor old Tom Jones. Nature had endowed him with a splendid physique, but he wrecked himself, traveling downward, until he barely lived from hand to mouth. He made a house on the old Conkling place, up the bay toward the Duwampsh River, his tarrying place. Having been absent from his customary haunts for a considerable time, it was reported that he was dead. In the village of Seattle, some marauder had been robbing henroosts and Tom Jones was accused of being the guilty party. Grandfather John Denny told one of his characteristic stories about being awakened by a great commotion in his henhouse, the lusty cocks crowing “Tom Jo-o-o-ones is dead! Tom Jo-o-o-ones is dead!” rejoicing greatly that they were henceforth safe.

D. T. Denny gathered up seven men and went to investigate the truth of the report of his demise. They found him rolled up in his blankets, in his bunk, not dead but helplessly sick. When they told him what they had come for – to hold an inquest over his dead body, the tears rolled down his withered face. They had him moved nearer town and cared for, but he finally went the way of all the earth.

Another of the army of the wretched was having an attack of the “devil’s trimmings,” as Grandfather John Denny called them, in front of a saloon one day and a group stood around waiting for him to “come to”; upon his showing signs of returning consciousness, all but one filed into the saloon to get a nerve bracer. D. T. Denny, who relates the incident, turned away, he being the only temperance man in the group.

CHAPTER III.

TRAILS OF COMMERCE

Samuel L. Simpson wrote this sympathetic poem concerning the old Hudson Bay Company’s steamer Beaver, the first steam vessel on the North Pacific Coast. She came out from London in 1836 and is well remembered by Puget Sound pioneers. In 1889 she went on the rocks in Burrard Inlet, British Columbia.

THE BEAVER’S REQUIEM

“Forlorn in the lonesome North she lies,
That never again will course the sea,
All heedless of calm or stormy skies,
Or the rocks to windward or a-lee;
For her day is done
And her last port won
Let the wild, sad waves her minstrel be.

“She will roam no more on the ocean trails,
Where her floating scarf of black was seen
Like a challenge proud to the shrieking gales
By the mighty shores of evergreen;
For she lies at rest
With a pulseless breast
In the rough sea’s clasp and all serene.

“How the world has changed since she kissed the tide
Of the storied Thames in the Georgian reign,
And was pledged with wine as the bonny bride
Of the West’s isle-gemmed barbaric main —
With a dauntless form
That could breast the storm
As she wove the magic commercial chain.

“For Science has gemmed her brow with stars
From many and many a mystic field,
And the nations have stood in crimsoned wars
And thrones have fallen and empires reeled
Since she sailed that day
From the Thames away
Under God’s blue sky and St. George’s shield.

“And the world to which, as a pioneer,
She first came trailing her plume of smoke,
Is beyond the dreams of the clearest seer
That ever in lofty symbols spoke —
In the arts of peace,
In all life’s increase,
And all the gold-browed stress invoke.

“A part of this was a work of hers,
In a daring life of fifty years;
But the sea-gulls now are her worshipers,
Wheeling with cries more sad than tears,
Where she lies alone
And the surges moan —
And slowly the north sky glooms and clears.

“And may we not think when the pale mists glide,
Like the sheeted dead by that rocky shore,
That we hear in the rising, rolling tide
The call of the captain’s ring once more?
And it well might be,
So forlorn is she,
Where the weird winds sigh and wan birds soar.”

The development of the most easily reached natural resources was necessarily first.

The timber and fisheries were a boundless source of wealth in evidence.

As early as 1847, a sawmill run with power afforded by the falls of the Des Chutes at Tumwater, furnished lumber to settlers as a means of profit.

The first cargo was taken by the brig Orbit in 1850, to San Francisco, she being the first American merchant vessel in the carrying trade of Puget Sound. The brig George Emory followed suit; each carried a return cargo of goods for trade with the settlers and Indians.

At first the forest-fallers had no oxen to drag the timbers, after they were hewn, to the water’s edge, but rolled and hauled them by hand as far as practicable. It was in this manner that the brig Leonesa was loaded with piles at Alki in the winter of 1851-2, by the Dennys, Terry, Low, Boren and Bell.

Lee Terry brought a yoke of oxen to complete the work of loading, from Puyallup, on the beach, as there was no road through the heavy forest.

Several ships were loaded at Port Townsend, where the possession of three yoke of oxen gave them a decided advantage.

One ship, the G. W. Kendall, was sent from San Francisco to Puget Sound for ice. It is needless to say the captain did not get a cargo of that luxury; he reported that water did not freeze in Puget Sound and consoled the owner of the ship by returning with a valuable cargo of piles.

The cutting of logs to build houses and the grubbing of stumps to clear the land for gardens alternated with the cutting of piles. In the clearing of land, the Indians proved a great assistance; far from being lazy many of them were hard workers and would dig and delve day after day to remove the immense stumps of cedar and fir left after cutting the great trees. The settlers burned many by piling heaps of logs and brush on them, others by boring holes far into the wood and setting fire, while some were rent by charges of powder when it could be afforded.