We determined to have the skiff broad enough to not upset easily, and long enough to carry us and our light cargo of food and bedding. Like the trip across the plains we must provide our own transportation. We were told that the Sound was a solitude so far as transportation facilities, with here and there a vessel loading piles and square timber for the San Francisco market. Not a steamer was then plying on the Sound; not even a sailing craft that essayed to carry passengers. We did not really know whether we would go twenty miles or a hundred; whether we would find small waters or large; straight channels or intricate by-ways; in a word we knew but very little of what lay before us. If we had known a little more, we would not have encountered the risks we did. One thing we knew, we could endure sturdy labor without fatigue, and improvised camp without discomfort, for we were used to just such experiences. Poor innocent souls, we thought we could follow the shore line and thus avoid danger, and perhaps float with the tide and thus minimize the labor, and yet keep our bearings.
George A. Barnes sold us the nails and oakum for building the boat and charged us 25 cents per pound for the former, but could not sell us any pitch as that was to be had for the taking. However, articles of merchandise were not high, though country produce sold for extreme prices.
Recently I have seen a "retail prices current of Puget Sound, Washington Territory, corrected weekly by Parker, Colter & Co.," in which, among many others, the following prices are quoted in the columns of the only paper in the Territory then published in Olympia, the "Columbian," as follows:
Pork, per lb., 20c; flour, per 100 lbs., $10.00; potatoes, per bushel, $3.00; butter, per lb., $1.00; onions, per bushel, $4.00; eggs, per dozen, $1.00; beets, per bushel, $3.50; sugar, per lb., 12½c; coffee, per lb., 18c; tea, per lb., 75c and $1.00; molasses, per gallon, 50c and 75c; salmon, per lb., 10c; whisky, per gallon, $1.00; sawed lumber, fir, per M, $20.00; cedar, per M, $30.00; shingles, per M, $4.25 to $5.00; piles, per foot, 5c to 8c; square timber, per foot, 12c to 15c.
Thus it will be seen that what the farmer had to sell was high while much he must buy was comparatively cheap, even his whisky, then but a dollar a gallon, while his potatoes sold for $3.00 a bushel.
This Parker, of Parker, Colter & Co., is the same John G. Parker, Jr., of steamboat fame who yet lives in Olympia, now an old man, but never contented without his hand on the wheel in the pilot house, where I saw him but a few years ago on his new steamer the Caswell, successor to his first, the Traveler, of fifty years before.
Two or three other stores besides Barnes' and Parker's were then doing business in Olympia, the Kandall Company, with Joseph Cushman as agent; A. J. Moses, and I think the Bettman Brothers.
Rev. Benjamin F. Close, Methodist, held religious service in a small building near Barnes' store, but there was no church edifice for several years. Near by, the saloon element had found a foothold, but I made no note of them in my mind other than to remember they were there and running every day of the week including Sunday.
The townsite proprietor, Edmund Sylvester, kept the hotel of the town, the "Washington," at the corner of 2nd and Main Street, a locality now held to be too far down on the water front, but then the center of trade and traffic.
G. N. McConaha and J. W. Wiley dispensed the law and H. A. Goldsborough & Simmons (M. T. Simmons) looked out for the real estate and conveyances. Add to these a bakery, a livery stable, and a blacksmith shop and we have the town of Olympia in our mind again of possibly 100 people who then believed a great future lay in store for their embryo city "at the head of Puget Sound."