But this final success had meant an involuntary plunge off the raft into the river with my boots on, for me, and three days and nights of ceaseless toil and watching for all of us. We voted unanimously that we would have no more such work.
The flour sack was nearly empty when I left home. We were expecting to be absent but one night, and we had been gone a week. There were no neighbors nearer our cabin than four miles, and no roads—scarcely a trail. The only communication was by the river. What about the wife and baby alone in the cabin, with the deep timber at the rear and a heavy jungle of brush in front? Happily we found them all right upon our return.
A lesson in the art of clam baking.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HUNTING FOR ANOTHER HOME SITE
Our enjoyment of this first home did not last long. Hardly were we fairly settled, when news came that unsettled us again.
In April of 1853, the word had begun to pass around that we were to have a new Territory to embrace the country north of the Columbia River. Its capital was to be on Puget Sound. Here on the Columbia we should be away off to one side, out of touch with the people who would shortly become a great separate commonwealth.