CHAPTER XLII.
THE START.
Camp No. 1 was in my front dooryard at Puyallup, Washington, a town established on my own homestead nearly forty years ago, on the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad, nine miles southeast of Tacoma, and thirty miles south of Seattle, Washington. In platting the town I dedicated a park and called it Pioneer Park, and in it are the remains of our ivy-covered cabin, where the wife of fifty-eight years and I, with our growing family, spent so many happy hours. In this same town I named the principal thoroughfare Pioneer Avenue, and a short street abutting the park Pioneer Way, hence the reader may note it is not a new idea to perpetuate the memory of the pioneers.
The Ivy-Covered Cabin, the First House in Puyallup; the Early Home of Ezra Meeker.
No piece of machinery ever runs at the start as well as after trial; therefore Camp No. 1 was maintained several days to mend up the weak points, and so after a few days of trial everything was pronounced in order, and Camp No. 2 was pitched in the street in front of the Methodist church of the town, and a lecture was delivered in the church for the benefit of the expedition.
I drove to Seattle, passing through the towns of Sumner, Auburn and Kent, lecturing in each place, with indifferent success, as the people seemed to pay more attention to the ox team than they did to me, and cared more to be in the open, asking trivial questions, than to be listening to the story of the Oregon Trail. However, when I came to count the results I found ninety-two dollars in my pocket, but also found out that I could not lecture and make any headway in the work of getting monuments erected; that I must remain in the open, where I could meet all the people and not merely a small minority, and so the lecture scheme was soon after abandoned.
Then I thought to arouse an interest and secure some aid in Seattle, where I had hosts of friends and acquaintances, but nothing came out of the effort—my closest friends trying to dissuade me from going—and, I may say, actually tried to convince others that it would not be an act of friendship to lend any aid to the enterprise. What, for lack of a better name, I might call a benign humor underlay all this solicitude. I knew, or thought I knew, my powers of physical endurance to warrant undertaking the ordeal; that I could successfully make the trip, but my closest friends were the most obdurate, and so after spending two weeks in Seattle I shipped my outfit by steamer to Tacoma. Conditions there were much the same as at Seattle. A pleasant incident, however, broke the monotony. Henry Hewitt, of Tacoma, drove up alongside my team, then standing on Pacific Avenue, and said, "Meeker, if you get broke out there on the Plains, just telegraph me for money to come back on." I said no, "I would rather hear you say to telegraph for money to go on with." "All right," came the response, "have it that way then," and drove off, perhaps not afterwards giving the conversation a second thought until he received my telegram, telling him I had lost an ox and that I wanted him to send me two hundred dollars. As related elsewhere, the response came quick, for the next day I received the money. "A friend in need is a friend indeed."