The following day we could see Mt. Rainier, with its reflection in the placid waters of the bay. Theodore Winthrop, the observant traveler who came into these same waters a few months later and wrote of it as Mt. Tacoma, described it as "a giant mountain dome of snow, seeming to fill the aerial spaces as the image displaced the blue deeps of tranquil water." A wondrous sight it was and is, whatever the name.
Next day we entered the mouth of the Puyallup River. We had not proceeded far up this stream before we were interrupted by a solid drift of monster trees and logs, extending from bank to bank up the river for a quarter of a mile or more. The Indians told us that there were two other like obstructions a few miles farther up the river, and that the current was very strong.
We secured the services of an Indian and his canoe to help us up the river, and left our boat at the Indians' camp near the mouth. It took a tugging of two days to go six miles. We had to unload our outfit three times to pack it over cut-off trails, and drag our canoe around the drifts. It was a story of constant toil with consequent discouragement, not ending until we camped on the bank of the river within the present limits of the thriving little city of Puyallup.
The Puyallup valley at that time was a solitude. No white settlers were found, though it was known that two men had staked claims and had made some slight improvements. An Indian trail led up the river from Commencement Bay, and another led westward to the Nisqually plains. Over these pack animals could pass, but wagon roads there were none; and whether a feasible route for one could be found, only time and labor could determine.
We retraced our steps, and in the evening landed again at the mouth of the river after a severe day's toil. We were in no cheerful mood. Oliver did not sing as usual while preparing for camp. Neither did I have much to say; but I fell to work, mechanically preparing the much-needed meal. We ate in silence and then went to sleep.
We had crossed the two great states of Illinois and Iowa, over hundreds of miles of unoccupied prairie land as rich as anything that ever "lay out of doors," on our way from Indiana to Oregon in search of land on which to make a home. Here, at what we might call the end of our rope, we had found the land, but with conditions that seemed almost too adverse to overcome.
It was a discouraging outlook, even if there had been roads. Such timber! It seemed an appalling undertaking to clear this land, the greater part of it being covered with a heavy growth of balm and alder trees and a thick tangle of underbrush besides. When we fell asleep that night, it was without visions of new-found wealth. And yet later I did tackle a quarter-section of that heaviest timber land, and never let up until the last tree, log, stump, and root had disappeared, though of course, not all cleared off by my own hands.
If we could have known what was coming four months later, we would have remained, in spite of our discouragement, and searched the valley diligently for the choicest locations. For in October following there came the first immigrants over the Natchess Pass Trail into Washington. They located in a body over nearly the whole valley, and before the year was ended had made a rough wagon road out to the prairies and to Steilacoom, the county seat.
We lingered at the mouth of the river in doubt as to what best to do. My thoughts went back to wife and baby in the lonely cabin on the Columbia River, and again to that bargain we had made before marriage, that we were going to be farmers. How could we be farmers if we did not have land? Under the donation act we could hold three hundred and twenty acres, but we must live on it for four years; it behooved us to look out and secure our location before the act expired, which would occur the following year.
With misgivings and doubts, on the fourth day Oliver and I loaded our outfit into our skiff and floated out on the receding tide, whither, we did not know.