"SUPPER." Supper is ready; and when repeated in more imperative tones, I at last awake to inhale the fragrant flavors of that most delicious beverage, camp coffee, from the Mocha and Java mixed grain that had "just come to a boil," and to realize there was something else in the air when the bill of fare was scanned.

Menu.
Calf's liver, fried crisp, with bacon.
Coffee, with cream, and a lump of butter added.
Lettuce, with vinegar and sugar.
Young onions.
Boiled young carrots.
Radishes.
Beets, covered with vinegar.
Cornmeal mush, cooked forty minutes, in reserve and for a breakfast fry.

These "delicacies of the season," coupled with the—what shall I call it?—delicious appetite incident to a strenuous day's travel and a late supper hour, without a dinner padding in the stomach, aroused me to a sense of the necessities of the inner man, and to that keen relish incident to prolonged exertion and to open-air life, and justice was meted out to the second meal of the day following a 5:00 o'clock breakfast.

I awoke also to the fact that I was on the spot near where I camped fifty-four years ago in this same Platte Valley, then apparently almost a desert. Now what do I see? As we drew into camp, two mowing machines cutting the alfalfa; two or more teams raking the cured hay to the rick, and a huge fork or rake at intervals climbing the steep incline of fenders to above the top of the rick, and depositing its equivalent to a wagon-load at a time. To my right, as we drove through the gate, the large garden looked temptingly near, as did some rows of small fruit. Hay ricks dotted the field, and outhouses, barns and dwellings at the home. We are in the midst of plenty and the guests, we may almost say, of friends, instead of feeling we must deposit the trusted rifle in convenient place while we eat. Yes, we will exclaim again, "What wondrous changes time has wrought!"

But my mind will go back to the little ivy-covered cabin now so carefully preserved in Pioneer Park in the little pretentious city of Puyallup, that was once our homestead, and so long our home, and where the residence still stands nearby. The timber is all gone and in its place brick blocks and pleasant, modest homes are found, where the roots and stumps once occupied the ground now smiling fruit gardens adorn the landscape and fill the purses of 1,400 fruit growers, and supply the wants of 6,000 people. Instead of the slow trudging ox team, driven to the market town sixteen miles distant, with a day in camp on the way, I see fifty-four railroad trains a day thundering through the town. I see electric lines with crowded cars carrying passengers to tide water and to the rising city of Tacoma, but seven miles distant. I see a quarter of a million people within a radius of thirty miles, where solitude reigned supreme fifty-four years ago, save the song of the Indian, the thump of his canoe paddle, or the din of his gambling revels. When I go down to the Sound I see miles of shipping docks where before the waters rippled over a pebbly beach filled with shell-fish. I look farther, and see hundreds of steamers plying thither and yon on the great inland sea, where fifty-four years ago the Indian's canoe only noiselessly skimmed the water. I see hundreds of sail vessels that whiten every sea of the globe, being either towed here and there or at dock, receiving or discharging cargo, where before scarce a dozen had in a year ventured the voyage. At the docks in Seattle I see the 28,000-ton steamers receiving their monster cargoes for the Orient, and am reminded that these monsters can enter any of the numerous harbors of Puget Sound and are supplemented by a great array of other steam tonnage contending for that vast across-sea trade, and again exclaim with greater wonderment than ever, "What wondrous changes time has wrought!" If I look through the channels of Puget Sound, I yet see the forty islands or more; its sixteen hundred miles of shore line; its schools of fish, and at intervals the seal; its myriads of sea gulls; the hawking crow; the clam beds; the ebb and flow of the tide—still there. But many happy homes dot the shore line where the dense forests stood; the wild fruits have given way to the cultivated; trainloads of fruit go out to distant markets; and what we once looked upon as barren land now gives plenteous crops; and we again exclaim, "What wondrous changes time has wrought," or shall we not say, "What wondrous changes the hand of man has wrought!"

But I am admonished I have wandered and must needs go back to our narrative of "Out on the Trail."

FOOTNOTE:

[24] A monument 25 feet high has since been erected, that cost $1,500.00.