It seemed advisable to look about a little, before making the move; so leaving the little wife and baby in the cabin home one bright morning in May, Oliver and I each made a pack of forty pounds and took the trail, bound for Puget Sound. We camped where night overtook us, sleeping in the open air without shelter or cover other than that afforded by some friendly tree with drooping limbs.
Our trail first led us down near the right bank of the Columbia to the Cowlitz, thence up the latter river thirty miles or more, and then across the country nearly sixty miles to Olympia.
At this time there might have been, about Puget Sound, two thousand white people all told, while now there are nearer a million. But these people were so scattered we did not realize there were even that number, for the Puget Sound country is a big place—more than two hundred miles long and seventy-five miles wide—between two mountain ranges, with the Cascades on the east and the Olympics on the west. The waters of the Sound, including all the channels and bays and inlets and shores of forty islands, make more than sixteen hundred miles of shore line—nearly as many miles as the Oregon Trail is long; that is, almost as many miles as we had the previous year traversed from the Missouri River to the Sound.
Our expectations had been raised high by the glowing accounts of Puget Sound. But a feeling of deep disappointment fell upon us when we could see in the foreground only bare, dismal mud flats, and beyond these a channel scarcely twice as wide as that of the great river we had left, bounded on either side by high, heavily timbered land. We wished ourselves back at our cabin on the Columbia.
Should we turn around and go back? No; we had never done that since leaving our Indiana home. But what was the use of stopping here? We wanted a place to make a farm, and we could not do it on such forbidding land as this. The dense forest stretching out before us was interesting enough to the lumberman, and for aught I knew there were channels for the ships; but I wanted to be neither lumberman nor sailor. My first camp on Puget Sound was not cheerful.
Olympia at the time contained about one hundred inhabitants. It had three stores, a hotel, a livery stable, a saloon, and one weekly newspaper. A glance at the advertising columns of this paper, The Columbian (the name which was expected to be that of the new territory), disclosed but a few local advertisers. "Everybody knows everybody here," a resident remarked to me, "so what's the use of advertising?"
We could not stay at Olympia. We had pushed on past some good locations on the Chehalis, and farther south, without locating. Should we now retrace our steps? Oliver said no, and my better judgment also said no, though I was sorely pressed with a feeling of homesickness.
The decision was quickly made to see more of this Puget Sound. But how were we to see these—to us—unexplored waters? I declared that I would not go in one of those Indian canoes, that we should upset it before we were out half an hour. I had to admit that the Indians navigated the whole Sound in these canoes and were safe, but I would not trust myself in a craft that would tip as easily as a Siwash canoe. When I came to know the Indians better and saw their performances in these frail craft, my admiration for the canoes was even greater than my distrust had been.
Neither Oliver nor I had much experience in boating, and we had none in boat building. However, when we had discarded the idea of taking a canoe, we set to work with a hearty good will to build us a skiff. We made it out of light lumber, then easily obtained at Tumwater. We determined to have the skiff broad enough not to upset easily, and long enough to carry us and our light cargo of food and bedding.
