Forlorn Caudal is hardly yet a frisky quadruped. Yet he is of better cheer, perhaps up to the family-nag degree of vivacity. As to the others, they have waxed fat, and kick. Klale, the Humorous, kicks playfully, elongating in preparatory gymnastics. Gubbins, the average horse, kicks calmly at his saddler, merely as a protest. Antipodes, the spiteful Blunderer, kicks in a revolutionary manner, rolls under his pack-saddle, and will not budge without maltreatment. Ill-educated Antipodes views mankind only as excoriators of his back, and general flagellants. Klickitats kept him raw in flesh and temper; under me his physical condition improves; his character is not yet affected.
Before sunrise we quitted the house of Sowee.
General August Valentine Kautz.
United States Army.
V. FIRST ATTEMPTED ASCENT, 1857
By LIEUTENANT A. V. KAUTZ, U.S.A.
August Valentine Kautz was born at Ispringen, Baden, Germany, on January 5, 1828. In that same year his parents came to America. On attaining manhood the son entered the army and served as a private soldier in the Mexican War. At its conclusion he was appointed to the Military Academy at West Point. Graduating in 1852, he was assigned to the Fourth Infantry and soon found himself in the Pacific Northwest. After going through the Indian wars here he achieved a brilliant record in the Civil War. Continuing in the army, he reached the rank of brigadier-general and was for a time in command of the Department of the Columbia. He died at Seattle on September 4, 1895.
It was while, as a lieutenant, he was stationed at Fort Steilacoom that he attempted to ascend Mount Rainier. His account of the trip was published in the Overland Monthly, May, 1875. It is here republished by permission of the editor. While the ascent was claimed to be complete the climber says there was still higher land above him, and it is now difficult to fix the exact altitude attained.
Professor I. C. Russell declares that Professor George Davidson made a statement before the California Academy of Sciences, on March 6, 1871, to the effect that when Lieutenant Kautz "attempted the ascent of Mount Rainier in 1857" he found his way barred by a great glacier. From this, says Professor Russell, it "seems that he first reported the existence of living glaciers in the United States." (See: Israel C. Russell: Glaciers of North America; Boston, Ginn & Company, 1897, p. 62). The portrait of General Kautz was furnished by his daughter, Mrs. Navana Kautz Simpson, of Cincinnati, Ohio.
In the summer of 1857 I was stationed at Fort Steilacoom, Washington Territory. This post was located near the village of Steilacoom, on the waters of Puget Sound. The post and the village took their names from a little stream near by, which is the outlet of a number of small lakes and ponds emptying into the sound. Quite a family of Indians made their permanent home in the vicinity of this creek in former years, and were known as "Steilacoom Tillicum." According to the Indian pronunciation of the name it should have been spelled "Steelacoom," dwelling long on the first syllable.