Theodore Winthrop.
From the Rowse crayon portrait.
IV. TACOMA AND THE INDIAN LEGEND OF HAMITCHOU
By THEODORE WINTHROP
Theodore Winthrop was a descendant of the famous Governor John Winthrop, of Massachusetts. He was born at New Haven, Connecticut, on September 22, 1828, and lost his life early in the Civil War near Great Bethel, Virginia, on June 10, 1861. His death was deeply mourned as of one who had given great promise of success in the field of literature.
His book, The Canoe and the Saddle, has appeared in many editions. It tells of his visit to Puget Sound and across the Cascade Mountains in 1853. In that volume he declares that the Indians called the mountain, Tacoma. So far as is known to the editor, that is the first place that that name for the mountain appeared in print.
In addition to this interesting fact, the book is a charming piece of literature, and will endure as one of the classics on the Pacific Northwest. The portions here reproduced relate to the mountain. They are taken from an early edition of the book published by the John W. Lovell Company of New York. The edition carries no date, but the copyright notice is by Ticknor and Fields, 1862. The parts used are from pages 43-45, and 123-176.
The author's niece, Elizabeth Winthrop Johnson, of Pasadena, California, kindly furnished a photograph of Rowse's portrait of her famous uncle.
The large and beautiful glacier sweeping from the northeast summit past the western slope of Steamboat Prow now bears the name of Winthrop Glacier.
We had rounded a point, and opened Puyallop Bay, a breadth of sheltered calmness, when I, lifting sleepy eyelids for a dreamy stare about, was suddenly aware of a vast white shadow in the water. What cloud, piled massive on the horizon, could cast an image so sharp in outline, so full of vigorous detail of surface? No cloud, as my stare, no longer dreamy, presently discovered,—no cloud, but a cloud compeller. It was a giant mountain dome of snow, swelling and seeming to fill the aërial spheres as its image displaced the blue deeps of tranquil water. The smoky haze of an Oregon August hid all the length of its lesser ridges, and left this mighty summit based upon uplifting dimness. Only its splendid snows were visible, high in the unearthly regions of clear blue noonday sky. The shore line drew a cincture of pines across the broad base, where it faded unreal into the mist. The same dark girth separated the peak from its reflection, over which my canoe was now pressing, and sending wavering swells to shatter the beautiful vision before it.
Kingly and alone stood this majesty, without any visible comrade or consort, though far to the north and the south its brethren and sisters dominated their realms, each in isolated sovereignty, rising above the pine-darkened sierra of the Cascade Mountains,—above the stern chasm where the Columbia, Achilles of rivers, sweeps, short-lived and jubilant, to the sea,—above the lovely vales of the Willamette and Umpqua. Of all the peaks from California to Frazer's River, this one before me was royalest. Mount Regnier Christians have dubbed it, in stupid nomenclature perpetuating the name of somebody or nobody. More melodiously the siwashes call it Tacoma,—a generic term also applied to all snow peaks. Whatever keen crests and crags there may be in its rock anatomy of basalt, snow covers softly with its bends and sweeping curves. Tacoma, under its ermine, is a crushed volcanic dome, or an ancient volcano fallen in, and perhaps as yet not wholly lifeless. The domes of snow are stateliest. There may be more of feminine beauty in the cones, and more of masculine force and hardihood in the rough pyramids, but the great domes are calmer and more divine, and, even if they have failed to attain absolute dignified grace of finish, and are riven and broken down, they still demand our sympathy for giant power, if only partially victor. Each form—the dome, the cone, and the pyramid—has its type among the great snow peaks of the Cascades.
[Chapter VII, beginning at page 123 of the original publication, is entitled "Tacoma.">[