Do you say this was enduring great hardships? That depends upon the point of view. As to this return trip, for myself, I can truly say that it was not. I enjoyed the strife to overcome all difficulties, and so did the greater number of the company. They felt that it was a duty and enjoyed doing their duty. Many of them, it is true, were weakened by the long trip across the Plains, but with the better food obtainable, and the goal so near at hand, there was a positive pleasure to pass over the miles, one by one, and become assured that final success was only a matter of a very short time.
One day, we encountered a new fallen tree, as one of the men said, a whopper, cocked up on its own upturned roots, four feet from the ground. Go around it, we could not; to cut it out seemed an endless task with our dulled, flimsy saw. Dig down, boys, said the father, and in short order every available shovel was out of the wagons and into willing hands, with others standing by to take their turn. In a short time the way was open fully four feet deep, and oxen and wagons passed through under the obstruction.
CHAPTER XXIII.
TRIP THROUGH THE NATCHESS PASS—[CONTINUED.]
People now traversing what is popularly known as Nisqually Plains, that is, the stretch of open prairie, interspersed with clumps of timber, sparkling lakes, and glade lands, from the heavy timber bordering the Puyallup to a like border of the Nisqually, will hardly realize that once upon a time these bare gravelly prairies supplied a rich grass of exceeding fattening quality and of sufficient quantity to support many thousand head of stock, and not only support but fatten them ready for the butcher's stall. Nearly half a million acres of this land lie between the two rivers, from two to four hundred feet above tide level and beds of the rivers mentioned, undulating and in benches, an ideal part of shade and open land of rivulets and lakes, of natural roads and natural scenery of splendor.
So, when our little train emerged from the forests skirting the Puyallup Valley, and came out on the open at Montgomery's, afterwards Camp Montgomery, of Indian war times, twelve miles southeasterly of Fort Steilacoom, the experience was almost as if one had come into a noonday sun from a dungeon prison, so marked was the contrast. Hundreds of cattle, sheep and horses were quietly grazing, scattered over the landscape, so far as one could see, fat and content. It is not to be wondered that the spirits of the tired party should rise as they saw this scene of content before them, and thought they could become participants with those who had come before them, and that for the moment rest was theirs if that was what they might choose.
Fort Nisqually was about ten miles southwesterly from our camp at Montgomery's, built, as mentioned elsewhere, by the Hudson Bay Company, in 1833.
In 1840-41, this company's holdings at Nisqually and Cowlitz were transferred to the Puget Sound Agricultural Company. This latter company was organized in London at the instance of Dr. William F. Tolmie, who visited that city to conduct the negotiations in person with the directors of the Hudson Bay Company. He returned clothed with the power to conduct the affairs of the new company, but under the direction of the Hudson Bay Company, and with the restriction not to enter into or interfere with the fur trade; he later became the active agent of both companies at Nisqually.
It was principally the stock of this company that we saw from our camp and nearby points. At that time, the Agricultural Company had several farms on these plains, considerable pasture land enclosed, and fourteen thousand head of stock running at large; sheep cattle and horses.