The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mount Rainier, by Various, Edited by Edmond S. (Edmond Stephen) Meany

Mount Rainier

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

First Picture of Mount Rainer.
Drawn by W. Alexander from a sketch by J. Sykes, 1792. Engraved by J. Landseer for Vancouver's Journal.

Mount Rainier
A Record of Exploration

Edited by
Edmond S. Meany
Professor of History in the University of Washington. President of The Mountaineers.
Author of "Vancouver's Discovery of Puget Sound," "History of the State of Washington," etc.

New York
The Macmillan Company
1916
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1916,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1916.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

To
GENERAL HAZARD STEVENS
early lover of the mountain, this book is affectionately dedicated

PREFACE

Mount Rainier National Park is visited annually by increasing thousands of tourists. Many of them seek information about the discoveries and explorations of the mountain and its environs. Much of the information sought, especially that about the origin of place names, has never been published. The annals of discovery and exploration, which have been published, have often appeared in books, pamphlets, or periodicals not easily accessible. It is the purpose of this work to gather the essential portions of the desired information within a compact, usable form.

During the summer of 1915, the mountain was for the first time encircled by a large company of travelers. Small parties, carrying their luggage and provisions on their backs, had made the trip a number of times. The Mountaineers Club, in 1915, conducted a party of one hundred, with fully equipped pack train and commissary, around the mountain. They camped each evening at or near the snow-line. At the daily campfires extracts were read from the original sources of the mountain's history. The interest there manifested in such records gave additional impulse to the preparation of this book.

It is natural that the chronological order should be chosen in arranging the materials, beginning with the discovery and naming of the mountain by Captain George Vancouver of the British Navy. The records are then continued to the present time. There still remains to be done much scientific work on the glaciers, snowfields, rocks, and plants within the Park. It is hoped that this book may stimulate such field work as well as the publication of the results.

The reader will notice that several writers in referring to the mountain use some form of the name Tacoma. The editor has not hesitated to publish such names as were used in the original articles here reproduced. In all other cases he has used the name Mount Rainier, approved by the United States Geographic Board.

In the separate chapters it will be noticed that the height of the mountain has been placed at varying figures. The United States Geological Survey has spoken on this subject with apparent official finality, giving the altitude as 14,408 feet above sea level. How this height was determined is told in the official announcement reproduced in Chapter XVIII of the text, with comment thereon by F. E. Matthes, one of the engineers of the United States Geological Survey.

The place names within the Park have been derived from such varied sources that it is well-nigh impossible to ascertain the origin and meaning of all of them. For the first time they are here (Chapter XIX) gathered into a complete alphabetical arrangement with as full information as is now available. The writer would welcome further facts about any of the names.

In the introductory paragraphs before each chapter, the editor has sought to express his acknowledgment for assistance rendered by others in the compilation of the work. For fear some may have been omitted he wishes here to express gratitude for all such help and to mention especially Professor J. Franklin Jameson, Director of the Department of Historical Research of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, for his assistance in securing photostat reproductions of a number of rare items found in the Library of Congress.

The editor also acknowledges the assistance rendered by Victor J. Farrar, research assistant in the University of Washington.

EDMOND S. MEANY.

University of Washington,
Seattle, August, 1916.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MOUNT RAINIER
A RECORD OF EXPLORATIONS

Captain George Vancouver.
Royal Navy.

I. THE MOUNTAIN DISCOVERED AND NAMED, 1792
By CAPTAIN GEORGE VANCOUVER, R.N.

Captain George Vancouver, the great English navigator and explorer, lived but forty years, from 1758 to 1798. He entered the British navy on the Resolution under Captain James Cook in 1771 and was with that even more famous explorer during his second and third voyages, from 1772 to 1780. He was placed in command of the Discovery and Chatham in 1791 and sent to the northwest coast of America. On this voyage he discovered and named Puget Sound and many other geographic features on the western coast of America.

The portions of his Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, giving the record of his discovery, naming, and exploration in the vicinity of Mount Rainier, are taken from Volume II of the second edition, published in London in 1801, pages 79, 118, and 134-138.

[Tuesday, May 8, 1792.] The weather was serene and pleasant, and the country continued to exhibit, between us and the eastern snowy range, the same luxuriant appearance. At its northern extremity, mount Baker bore by compass N. 22 E.; the round snowy mountain, now forming its southern extremity, and which, after my friend Rear Admiral Rainier, I distinguished by the name of Mount Rainier, bore N. [S.] 42 E.

[Saturday, May 19, 1792.] About noon, we passed an inlet on the larboard or eastern shore, which seemed to stretch far to the northward; but, as it was out of the line of our intended pursuit of keeping the continental shore on board, I continued our course up the main inlet, which now extended as far as, from the deck, the eye could reach, though, from the mast-head, intervening land appeared, beyond which another high round mountain covered with snow was discovered, apparently situated several leagues to the south of mount Rainier, and bearing by compass S. 22 E. This I considered as a further extension of the eastern snowy range; but the intermediate mountains, connecting it with mount Rainier, were not sufficiently high to be seen at that distance.

[Saturday, May 26, 1792.] Towards noon we landed on a point on the eastern shore, whose latitude I observed to be 47° 21′, round which we flattered ourselves we should find the inlet take an extensive eastwardly course. This conjecture was supported by the appearance of a very abrupt division in the snowy range of mountains immediately to the south of mount Rainier, which was very conspicuous from the ship, and the main arm of the inlet appearing to stretch in that direction from the point we were then upon. We here dined, and although our repast was soon concluded, the delay was irksome, as we were excessively anxious to ascertain the truth, of which we were not long held in suspense. For having passed round the point, we found the inlet to terminate here in an extensive circular compact bay, whose waters washed the base of mount Rainier, though its elevated summit was yet at a very considerable distance from the shore, with which it was connected by several ridges of hills rising towards it with gradual ascent and much regularity. The forest trees, and the several shades of verdure that covered the hills, gradually decreased in point of beauty, until they became invisible; when the perpetual clothing of snow commenced, which seemed to form a horizontal line from north to south along this range of rugged mountains, from whose summit mount Rainier rose conspicuously, and seemed as much elevated above them as they were above the level of the sea; the whole producing a most grand, picturesque effect. The lower mountains, as they descended to the right and left, became gradually relieved of their frigid garment; and as they approached the fertile woodland region that binds the shores of this inlet in every direction, produced a pleasing variety. We now proceeded to the N. W. in which direction the inlet from hence extended, and afforded us some reason to believe that it communicated with that under the survey of our other party. This opinion was further corroborated by a few Indians, who had in a very civil manner accompanied us some time, and who gave us to understand that in the north western direction this inlet was very wide and extensive; this they expressed before we quitted our dinner station, by opening their arms, and making other signs that we should be led a long way by pursuing that route; whereas, by bending their arm, or spreading out their hand, and pointing to the space contained in the curve of the arm, or between the fore-finger and thumb, that we should find our progress soon stopped in the direction which led towards mount Rainier. The little respect which most Indians bear to truth, and their readiness to assert what they think is most agreeable for the moment, or to answer their own particular wishes and inclinations, induced me to place little dependance on this information, although they could have no motive for deceiving us.

About a dozen of these friendly people had attended at our dinner, one part of which was a venison pasty. Two of them, expressing a desire to pass the line of separation drawn between us, were permitted to do so. They sat down by us, and ate of the bread, and fish that we gave them without the least hesitation; but on being offered some of the venison, though they saw us eat it with great relish, they could not be induced to taste it. They received it from us with great disgust, and presented it round to the rest of the party, by whom it underwent a very strict examination. Their conduct on this occasion left no doubt in our minds that they believed it to be human flesh, an impression which it was highly expedient should be done away. To satisfy them that it was the flesh of the deer, we pointed to the skins of the animal they had about them. In reply to this they pointed to each other, and made signs that could not be misunderstood, that it was the flesh of human beings, and threw it down in the dirt, with gestures of great aversion and displeasure. At length we happily convinced them of their mistake by shewing them a haunch we had in the boat, by which means they were undeceived, and some of them ate of the remainder of the pye with a good appetite.

This behavior, whilst in some measure tending to substantiate their knowledge or suspicions that such barbarities have existence, led us to conclude, that the character given of the natives of North-West America does not attach to every tribe. These people have been represented not only as accustomed inhumanly to devour the flesh of their conquered enemies; but also to keep certain servants, or rather slaves, of their own nation, for the sole purpose of making the principal part of the banquet, to satisfy the unnatural savage gluttony of the chiefs of this country, on their visits to each other. Were such barbarities practiced once a month, as is stated, it would be natural to suppose these people, so inured, would not have shewn the least aversion to eating flesh of any description; on the contrary, it is not possible to conceive a greater degree of abhorrence than was manifested by these good people, until their minds were made perfectly easy that it was not human flesh we offered them to eat. This instance must necessarily exonerate at least this particular tribe from so barbarous a practice; and, as their affinity to the inhabitants of Nootka, and of the sea-coast, to the south of that place, in their manners and customs, admits of little difference, it is but charitable to hope those also, on a more minute inquiry, may be found not altogether deserving such a character. They are not, however, free from the general failing attendant on a savage life. One of them having taken a knife and fork to imitate our manner of eating, found means to secrete them under his garment; but, on his being detected, gave up his plunder with the utmost good humour and unconcern.

They accompanied us from three or four miserable huts, near the place where we had dined, for about four miles; during which time they exchanged the only things they had to dispose of, their bows, arrows, and spears, in the most fair and honest manner, for hawk's bells, buttons, beads, and such useless commodities.

Doctor William Fraser Tolmie.

II. FIRST APPROACH TO THE MOUNTAIN, 1833
By DOCTOR WILLIAM FRASER TOLMIE

Doctor William Fraser Tolmie was a medical officer in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. He was born at Inverness, Scotland, on February 3, 1812, and died at Victoria, British Columbia, on December 8, 1888. He was educated at Glasgow, and when twenty years of age he joined the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1833, he was located at Nisqually House, Puget Sound. It was then that he made his trip to the mountain. He later served at other posts in the Pacific Northwest, and was raised to the rank of Chief Factor in 1856. He was then placed on the board of management of the great company. In 1860 he retired from the service.

In 1850 he was married to Jane, eldest daughter of Chief Factor John Work. Their descendants still live at Victoria, British Columbia. They, especially the son John W. Tolmie, have compared this reproduction from Doctor Tolmie's diary with the original manuscript to insure accuracy. So far as is now known, this is the first record of a white man's close approach to Mount Rainier.

It is pleasant to note that the new map of Mount Rainier National Park, published by the United States Geological Survey, shows the peak he climbed and the creek flowing near it bearing the name of Tolmie.

August 27, 1833. Obtained Mr. Herron's consent to making a botanizing excursion to Mt. Rainier, for which he has allowed 10 days. Have engaged two horses from a chief living in that quarter, who came here tonight, and Lachalet is to be my guide. Told the Indians I am going to Mt. Rainier to gather herbs of which to make medicine, part of which is to be sent to Britain and part retained in case intermittent fever should visit us when I will prescribe for the Indians.

Aug. 28. A tremendous thunder storm occurred last night, succeeded by torrents of rain. The thunder was very loud, and the lightening flashing completely enlightened my apartment. Have been chatting with Mr. Herron about colonizing Whidby's island, a project of which he is at present quite full—more anon. No horses have appeared. Understand that the mountain is four days' journey distant—the first of which can only be performed on horseback. If they do not appear tomorrow I shall start with Lachalet on foot.

Aug. 29. Prairie 8 miles N. of home. Sunset. Busy making arrangements for journey, and while thus occupied the guide arrived with 3 horses. Started about 3, mounted on a strong iron grey, my companions disposing of themselves on the other two horses, except one, who walked. We were 6 in number. I have engaged Lachalet for a blanket, and his nephew, Lashima, for ammunition to accompany me and Nuckalkut a Poyalip (whom I took for a native of Mt. Rainier) with 2 horses to be guide on the mountain after leaving the horse track, and Quilniash, his relative, a very active, strong fellow, has volunteered to accompany me. The Indians are all in great hopes of killing elk and chevriel, and Lachalet has already been selling and promising the grease he is to get. It is in a great measure the expectation of finding game that urges them to undertake the journey. Cantered slowly along the prairie and are now at the residence of Nuckalkut's father, under the shade of a lofty pine, in a grassy amphitheatre, beautifully interspersed and surrounded with oaks, and through the gaps in the circle we see the broad plain extending southwards to Nusqually. In a hollow immediately behind is a small lake whose surface is almost one sheet of waterlilies about to flower. Have supped on sallal; and at dusk shall turn in.

Aug. 30. Sandy beach of Poyallipa River. Slept ill last night, and as I dozed in the morning was aroused by a stroke across the thigh from a large decayed branch which fell from the pine overshadowing us. A drizzling rain fell during most of the night. Got up about dawn, and finding thigh stiff and painful thought a stop put to the journey, but after moving about it felt easier. Started about sunrise, I mounted on a spirited brown mare, the rest on passable animals, except Nuckalkut, who bestrode a foal. Made a northeasterly course through prairie. Breakfasted at a small marsh on bread, sallal, dried cockels and a small piece of chevriel saved from the last night's repast of my companions (for I cannot call them attendants). The points of wood now became broader, and the intervening plain degenerated into prairions. Stopped about 1 p.m. at the abode of 3 Tekatat families, who met us rank and file at the door to shake hands. Their sheds were made of bark resting on a horizontal pole, supported at each end by tripods, and showed an abundance of elk's flesh dried within. Two kettles were filled with this, and, after smoking, my Indians made a savage repast on the meat and bouillion, Lachalet saying it was the Indian custom to eat a great deal at once and afterwards abstain for a time; he, however, has twice eaten since. Traded some dried meat for 4 balls and 3 rings, and mounting, rode off in the midst of a heavy shower. Ascended and descended at different times several steep banks and passed through dense and tangled thickets, occasionally coming on a prairion. The soil throughout was of the same nature as that of Nusqually. After descending a very steep bank came to the Poyallip. Lashima carried the baggage across on his head. Rode to the opposite side through a rich alluvial plain, 3 or 4 miles in length and ¾ to 1 in breadth. It is covered with fern about 8 feet high in some parts. Passed through woods and crossed river several times. About 7 p.m. dismounted and the horses and accoutrements were left in a wood at the river's brink. Started now on foot for a house Nuckalkut knew, and after traversing woods and twice crossing the torrents "on the unsteadfast footing" of a log, arrived at the house, which was a deserted one, and encamped on the dry part of river's bed, along which our course lies tomorrow. The Poyallip flows rapidly and is about 10 or 12 yards broad. Its banks are high and covered with lofty cedars and pines. The water is of a dirty white colour, being impregnated by white clay. Lachalet has tonight been trying to persuade me from going to the snow on the mountain.

Aug. 31. Slept well, and in the morning two salmon were caught, on which we are to breakfast before starting. After breakfast Quillihaish stuck the gills and sound of the fish on a spit which stood before the fire, so that the next comer might know that salmon could be obtained there. Have traveled nearly the whole day through a wood of cedar and pine, surface very uneven, and after ascending the bed of river a couple of miles are now encamped about ten yards from its margin in the wood. Find myself very inferior to my companions in the power of enduring fatigue. Their pace is a smart trot which soon obliges me to rest. The waters of the Poyallip are still of the same colour. Can see a short distance up two lofty hills covered with wood. Evening cloudy and rainy. Showery all day.

Sunday, Sept. 1. Bank of Poyallip river. It has rained all night and is now, 6 a.m., pouring down. Are a good deal sheltered by the trees. My companions are all snoozing. Shall presently arouse them and hold a council of war. The prospect is very discouraging. Our provisions will be expended today and Lachalet said he thought the river would be too high to be fordable in either direction. Had dried meat boiled in a cedar bark kettle for breakfast. I got rigged out in green blanket without trousers, in Indian style, and trudged on through the wood. Afterwood exchanged blanket with Lachalet for Ouvrie's capot, which has been on almost every Indian at Nusqually. However, I found it more convenient than the blanket. Our course lay up the river, which we crossed frequently. The bed is clayey in most parts. Saw the sawbill duck once or twice riding down on a log and fired twice, unsuccessfully. Have been flanked on both sides with high, pineclad hills for some time. A short distance above encampment snow can be seen. It having rained almost incessantly, have encamped under shelving bank which has been undermined by the river. Immense stones, only held in situ by dried roots, form the roof, and the floor is very rugged. Have supped on berries, which, when heated with stones in kettle, taste like lozenges. Propose tomorrow to ascend one of the snowy peaks above.

Sept. 2. Summit of a snowy peak immediately under Rainier. Passed a very uncomfortable night in our troglodytic mansion. Ascended the river for 3 miles to where it was shut in by amphitheatre of mountains and could be seen bounding over a lofty precipice above. Ascended that which showed most snow. Our track lay at first through a dense wood of pine, but we afterwards emerged into an exuberantly verdant gully, closed on each side by lofty precipices. Followed fully to near the summit and found excellent berries in abundance. It contained very few Alpine plants. Afterwards came to a grassy mound, where the sight of several decayed trees induced us to encamp. After tea I set out with Lachalet and Nuckalkut for the summit, which was ankle deep with snow for ¼ mile downwards. The summit terminated in abrupt precipice directed northwards and bearing N. E. from Mt. Rainier, the adjoining peak. The mists were at times very dense, but a puff of S. W. wind occasionally dispelled them. On the S. side of Poyallip is a range of snow-dappled mountains, and they, as well as that on the N. side, terminate in Mt. Rainier, a short distance to E. Collected a vasculum of plants at the snow, and having examined and packed them shall turn in. Thermometer at base, 54 deg., at summit of ascent, 47 deg.

Sept. 3. Woody islet on Poyallip. It rained heavily during night, but about dawn the wind shifting to the N. E. dispersed the clouds and frost set in. Lay shivering all night and roused my swarthy companions twice to rekindle the fire. At sunrise, accompanied by Quilliliash, went to the summit and found the tempr. of the air 33 deg. The snow was spangled and sparkled brightly in the bright sunshine. It was crisp and only yielded a couple of inches to the pressure of foot in walking. Mt. Rainier appeared surpassingly splendid and magnificent; it bore, from the peak on which I stood, S. S. E., and was separated from it only by a narrow glen, whose sides, however, were formed by inaccessible precipices. Got all my bearings more correctly to-day, the atmosphere being clear and every object distinctly perceived. The river flows at first in a northerly direction from the mountain. The snow on the summit of the mountain adjoining Rainier on western side of Poyallip is continuous with that of latter, and thus the S. Western aspect of Rainier seemed the most accessible. By ascending the first mountain through a gully in its northern side, you reach the eternal snow of Rainier, and for a long distance afterwards the ascent is very gradual, but then it becomes abrupt from the sugarloaf form assumed by the mountain. Its eastern side is steep on its northern aspect; a few glaciers were seen on the conical portion; below that the mountain is composed of bare rock, apparently volcanic, which about 50 yards in breadth reaches from the snow to the valley beneath and is bounded on each side by bold bluff crags scantily covered with stunted pines. Its surface is generally smooth, but here and there raised into small points or knobs or arrowed with short and narrow longitudinal lines in which snow lay. From the snow on western border the Poyallipa arose, and in its course down this rock slope was fenced into the eastward by a regular elevation of the rock in the form of a wall or dyke, which at the distance I viewed it at, seemed about four feet high and four hundred yards in length. Two large pyramids of rock arose from the gentle acclivity at S. W. extremity of mountain, and around each the drifting snow had accumulated in large quantity, forming a basin apparently of great depth. Here I also perceived, peeping from their snowy covering, two lines of dyke similar to that already mentioned.

Sept. 4. Am tonight encamped on a small eminence near the commencement of prairie. Had a tedious walk through the wood bordering Poyallip, but accomplished it in much shorter time than formerly. Evening fine.

Sept. 5. Nusqually. Reached Tekatat camp in the forenoon and regaled on boiled elk and shallon. Pushed on ahead with Lachalet and Quilliliash, and arrived here in the evening, where all is well.

Commander Charles Wilkes.
United States Navy.

III. FIRST RECORDED TRIP THROUGH NACHES PASS, 1841
By LIEUTENANT ROBERT E. JOHNSON, U.S.N.

The proper and official title of the United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842, by common speech has been contracted to the Wilkes Expedition. The commander of the expedition was Charles Wilkes, who entered the United States Navy as a midshipman on January 1, 1818. On July 25, 1866, he was promoted to rear-admiral on the retired list. He was born at New York City on April 3, 1798, and died at Washington City on February 8, 1877.

He was honored in Europe and America for his scientific attainments, especially in connection with the expedition that now bears his name. That voyage with a squadron of American naval vessels was for the purpose of increasing the world's knowledge of geography and kindred sciences. They reached Puget Sound in 1841 and, while making headquarters at Nisqually House of the Hudson's Bay Company, Commander Wilkes sent Lieutenant Robert E. Johnson in command of a party to cross the Cascade Range. Search in the Navy Department revealed only scant information that Lieutenant Johnson was from North Carolina. The Historical Commission of that State and others there have failed to find information about his subsequent career.

Since he speaks of obtaining a guide, it is likely that he was not the first white man to cross the Cascades, but he was the first to leave us a known record. The portions of that record which bear upon Mount Rainier and its environs is here reproduced.

Commander Wilkes, before giving the record of his subordinate, makes reference to the peak as follows: "The height of Mount Rainier was obtained by measuring a base line on the prairies, in which operation I was assisted by Lieutenant Case, and the triangulation gave its height, twelve thousand three hundred and thirty feet." (Narrative, Volume IV., page 413.)

The final reports of the expedition were to appear in twenty-four large volumes and eleven atlases. Several of the volumes were never published, and of those completed only one hundred sets were printed. The rare monographs were full of information. The first part or "Narrative" in five volumes was issued in several editions. The portions here reproduced are taken from the edition by Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia, 1845, Volume IV., pages 418-429 and 468-470.

I have before stated that Lieutenant Johnson's party was ready for departure on the 19th May [1841]; that it consisted of Lieutenant Johnson, Messrs. Pickering, Waldron, and Brackenridge, a sergeant of marines, and a servant. I must do justice to the exertions of this officer in getting ready for his journey, which he accomplished in less time than I anticipated, as the delays incident to setting out on a novel expedition, and one believed by most persons to be scarcely practicable in the summer season, are great and tantalizing. In making preparations for such a journey, the Indians were to be bargained with, and, as I have before had occasion to remark, are enough to tire the patience of Job himself. First, the Indian himself is to be sought out; then the horse is to be tried; next the price is to be discussed, then the mode of payment, and finally the potlatch: each and all are matters of grave consideration and delay, during which the Indians make a business of watching every circumstance of which they can take advantage. No one can be sure of closing his bargain, until the terms are duly arranged, the potlatch given, and the horse delivered. After obtaining horses, Lieutenant Johnson had the saddles, alforcas, saddle-cloths, saddle-trees or pack-saddles, etc., with a variety of lashings, to prepare. For many of these we were indebted to the kindness of Captain M'Niel and Mr. Anderson. [1] Others were made on board the ship, after a pattern lent us. One of the most important persons to obtain was a good guide, and hearing of one who resided at the Cowlitz river, by the name of Pierre Charles, [2] he was at once sent for; but I did not think it worth while to detain the party until his arrival, as he could easily overtake it. Lieutenant Johnson, therefore, was directed to hurry his departure, and to set out, which he did on the 19th May, at noon, and proceeded to the prairie about two miles distant, where the party encamped.

There is little danger on these expeditions of having too few articles: the great difficulty is to avoid having too many. It turned out as I had anticipated. The first night passed in their tent fully satisfied them of this, and taught them to dispense with all other bedding save blankets.

Mr. Anderson rode to the encampment before night, bringing the news of the arrival of Pierre Charles at the fort; whereupon Lieutenant Johnson returned to make an agreement with him and his companion. This was done, although, as is to be supposed, their demands were exorbitant, in consequence of the belief that their services were indispensable.

Pierre Charles's companion was a young man, named Peter Bercier, (a connexion of Plomondon) [3] who spoke English, and all the languages of the country.

On the morning of the 20th, they obtained an accession to their horses, and set out on their route towards the mountains. Although the possibility of crossing them was doubted, yet I felt satisfied if exertion and perseverance could effect the object, the officer who had charge of the party would succeed. This day, they made but five miles; after which they encamped, at the recommendation of Pierre Charles, in order that the horses might not be over-fatigued, and be able to get good pasture and water. Here a number of natives visited the camp. Pine trees were in large numbers, many of them upwards of one hundred and thirty feet in height. On the banks of a small stream, near their camp, were found the yellow Ranunculus, a species of Trillium, in thickets, with large leaves and small flowers, Lupines, and some specimens of a cruciferous plant.

On the 21st they made an early start, and in the forenoon crossed the Puyallup, a stream about seventy feet wide; along which is a fine meadow of some extent, with clumps of alder and willow: the soil was of a black turfy nature. After leaving the meadow-land, they began to ascend along a path that was scarcely visible from being overgrown with Gaultheria, Hazel, Spiræa, Vaccinium, and Cornus.

During the day, they crossed the Stehna. [4] In the evening, after making sixteen miles, they encamped at the junction of the Puyallup with the Upthascap. [5] Near by was a hut, built of the planks of the Arbor Vitæ (Thuja), which was remarkably well made; and the boards used in its structure, although split, had all the appearance of being sawn: many of them were three feet wide, and about fifteen feet long. The hut was perfectly water-tight. Its only inhabitants were two miserable old Indians and two boys, who were waiting here for the arrival of those employed in the salmon-fishery. The rivers were beginning to swell to an unusual size, owing to the melting of the snows in the mountains; and in order to cross the streams, it became necessary to cut down large trees, over which the packs were carried, while the horses swam over. These were not the only difficulties they had to encounter: the path was to be cut for miles through thickets of brushwood and fallen timber; steep precipices were to be ascended, with slippery sides and entangled with roots of every variety of shape and size, in which the horses' legs would become entangled, and before reaching the top be precipitated, loads and all, to the bottom. The horses would at times become jammed with their packs between trees, and were not to be disengaged without great toil, trouble, and damage to their burdens. In some cases, after succeeding in getting nearly to the top of a hill thirty or forty feet high, they would become exhausted and fall over backwards, making two or three somersets, until they reached the bottom, when their loads were again to be arranged.

On the 22d, their route lay along the banks of the Upthascap, [6] which is a much wider stream than the Puyallup. A short distance up, they came to a fish-weir, constructed as the one heretofore described, on the Chickeeles, [7] though much smaller.

This part of the country abounds with arbor-vitæ trees, some of which were found to be thirty feet in circumference at the height of four feet from the ground, and upwards of one hundred feet high. Notwithstanding the many difficulties encountered, they this day made about twelve miles.

On the morning of the 23d, just as they were about to leave their camp, their men brought in a deer, which was soon skinned and packed away on the horses. This was the first large game they had obtained, having previously got only a few grouse.

They had now reached the Smalocho, [8] which runs to the westward, and is sixty-five feet wide: its depth was found to be four and a half feet, which, as it was also rapid, was too great for the horses to ford and carry their loads. The Indians now became serviceable to them. Lieutenant Johnson had engaged several that were met on their way, and they now amounted to thirteen, who appeared for a time lively and contented. This, however, was but a forerunner of discontent, and a refusal to go any farther; but with coaxing and threatening they were induced to proceed.

The road or way, after passing the river, was over a succession of deep valleys and hills, so steep that it was difficult for a horse to get up and over them with a load, and the fall of a horse became a common occurrence. They were all, however, recovered without injury, although one of them fell upwards of one hundred feet; yet in consequence of his fall having been repeatedly broken by the shrubs and trees, he reached the bottom without injury to himself, but with the loss of his load, consisting of their camp utensils, &c., which were swept off by the rapid current of the river.

The route lay, for several days, through forests of spruce, and some of the trees that had fallen measured two hundred and sixty-five feet in length. One of these, at the height of ten feet from the roots, measured thirty-five feet in circumference, and at the end which had been broken off in its fall, it was found to be eighteen inches in diameter, which would make the tree little short of three hundred feet when it was growing. The stems of all these trees were clear of branches to the height of one hundred and fifty feet from the ground, and perfectly straight. In many cases it was impossible to see over the fallen trees, even when on horseback, and on these, seedlings were growing luxuriantly, forcing their roots through the bark and over the body of the trunk till they reached the ground. Many spruces were seen which had grown in this way; and these, though of considerable size, still retained the form of an arch, showing where the old tree had lain, and under which they occasionally rode. As may be supposed, they could not advance very rapidly over such ground, and Lieutenant Johnson remarks, that although he was frequently desirous of shortening the road, by taking what seemed a more direct course, he invariably found himself obliged to return to the Indian trail.

Daylight of the 24th brought with it its troubles: it was found that the horses had strayed,—a disaster that the Indians took quite coolly, hoping it would be the cause of their return. After a diligent search, the horses were found in places where they had sought better food, although it was scanty enough even there.

During the day, the route led along the Smalocho, [9] which runs nearly east and west; and they only left its banks when they were obliged to do so by various impassable barriers. This part of the country is composed of conical hills, which are all thickly clothed with pine trees of gigantic dimensions. They made nine miles this day, without accident; but when they encamped, they had no food for the horses except fern. The animals, in consequence, seemed much overcome, as did also the Indians, who had travelled the whole day with heavy loads. Lieutenant Johnson, by way of diverting the fatigue of the latter, got up a shooting-match for a knife, the excitement of which had the desired effect.

The trees hereabout were chiefly the cotton-wood, maple, spruce, pine, and elder, and some undergrowth of raspberry, the young shoots of which the natives eat with great relish.

On the 25th, they set out at an early hour, and found the travelling less rough, so that they reached the foot of La Tête [10] before noon, having accomplished eleven miles. Lieutenant Johnson with the sergeant ascended La Tête, obtained the bearings, from its summit, of all the objects around, and made its height by barometer, two thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight feet: its latitude was fixed at 47° 08′ 54″ N. This mountain was entirely destitute of wood; but, having been burnt over, was found strewn with huge charred trunks, and the whole ground covered with ashes. The inclination of its sides was about fifty degrees.

The country around seemed one continued series of hills, and like La Tête had suffered from the fire. According to the natives, although the wood on the mountains was destroyed many years since, yet it was still observed to be on fire, in some places, about two years ago. Most of the tops of the distant peaks had snow on them. To the east was seen the appearance of two valleys, through which the two branches of the Smalocho [11] flow.

On descending from La Tête, the river was to be crossed: this was found too deep to be forded, and it consequently became necessary to form a bridge to transport the baggage, by cutting down trees. The current was found to run 6·2 miles per hour. They had been in hopes of reaching the Little Prairie before night, but in consequence of this delay, were forced to encamp before arriving there.

The Indians complained much of the want of food: many of the horses also were exhausted for the same cause, and exhibited their scanty nourishment in their emaciated appearance.

On the 26th, they reached the Little Prairie at an early hour, where, after consultation, it was determined to wait a day to recruit the horses, as this was the only place they could obtain food. It was also desirable to ascertain the practicability of passing the mountain with the horses, and at the same time to carry forward some of the loads, that the horses might have as little as possible to transport. Mr. Waldron and Pierre Charles were therefore sent forward with the Indians, having loads of fifty pounds each, to ascend the mountain, while Lieutenant Johnson remained with the camp to get observations. Dr. Pickering and Mr. Brackenridge accompanied the party of Mr. Waldron to the snow-line. The prairie on which they had encamped was about two and a half acres in extent, and another of the same size was found half a mile farther east.

The 27th was employed by Lieutenant Johnson in determining the positions of this prairie, which proved to be in latitude 47° 05′ 51″ N., and longitude 120° 13′ W. [12] The variation was 19° 39′ easterly. At sunset, messengers arrived from Mr. Waldron, who had reached the summit at noon, and was to proceed down to the snow-line to encamp. The snow was found to be about ten feet deep, and the party crossing sank about ankle-deep, for which reason opinions varied as to the possibility of getting the horses over; but it was determined to make the trial. Lieutenant Johnson, therefore, set out, leaving a supply of food with an old Indian and a horse, both of whom were worn out, and unable to proceed.

By eleven o'clock, they were met by Pierre Charles and the Indians, who gave some slight hopes of accomplishing the task of getting all over. Lieutenant Johnson determined to take only the strongest horses to the edge of the snow. At half-past 5 p.m., they reached the best practicable encampment, being a mile beyond the place where Mr. Waldron had encamped two days before. The snow having melted so rapidly, Lieutenant Johnson, taking all things into consideration, determined, notwithstanding the forebodings of failure held out by the party that had gone before, to make the attempt. It now became necessary to push on with as much haste as possible, on account of the state of their provisions; for what with the loss sustained in fording the river, and in consumption, they were obliged to adopt an allowance.

On the 29th, they departed, at early dawn, in order to take advantage of the firmness of the snow, occasioned by the last night's frost. They ascended rapidly, and passed over the worst of the way, the horses sinking no deeper than their fetlocks. They first passed over a narrow ridge, and then a succession of small cones, until they reached the summit.

Mount Rainier, from the top, bore south-southwest, apparently not more than ten miles distant. A profile of the mountain indicates that it has a terminal crater, as well as some on its flanks. The barometer stood at 24·950 in.: five thousand and ninety-two feet. There was another, to the north-northeast, covered with snow, and one to the west appeared about two hundred feet higher than the place where the observations were taken. This latter had suffered from fire in the same way as La Tête, and showed only a few patches of snow. To the eastward, a range of inferior height, running north and south, was in view, without snow.

On the western ascent of this mountain, the pines were scrubby; but at the summit, which was a plain, about a mile in length by half a mile wide, they were straight and towering, about eighty feet in height, without any limbs or foliage, except at the top. The distance travelled over the top was about five miles. On descending the east side, the snow was much deeper and softer, but the horses managed to get along well, and without accident.

Lieutenant Johnson, in following the party, missed the trail, and lost his way for three or four hours. On discovering the camp of those who had gone before, on the opposite side of a stream, he attempted to cross it on a log, in doing which his foot slipped, and he was precipitated into the water. Although his first thought was to save the chronometer from accident, it was too late, for the watch had stopped; it was not, however, so far injured as not to be set a-going, and it continued to go during the remainder of the journey: the only use I have been able to make of his subsequent observations, was to obtain the relative meridian distances between the points visited, without the absolute longitude. It is needless to say, that I placed little or no dependence on them, in constructing the map.

Although the horses had, with one or two exceptions, reached the eastern side of the mountain, yet they, together with the Indians, were very much exhausted. The time had now come when the Indians, according to agreement, were to be paid off, and they had done much more than they agreed to do, having crossed the mountain twice.

Finding the necessity of retaining all the blankets that had been brought with them, in order to buy horses, Lieutenant Johnson proposed to the Indians to receive an order on Nisqually, in lieu of the immediate delivery of the blankets. This they readily assented to, and also willingly gave up those that had already been paid them, on receiving a similar order,—thus showing a spirit of accommodation highly praiseworthy. Only two of them returned to Nisqually, to whom were entrusted the botanical specimens, and the care of the horses left upon the road.

The banks of the small streams on the eastern side of the mountain were bordered with the greatest variety of trees and shrubs, consisting of poplars, buckthorn fifty feet high, dogwood thirty to forty feet high, several species of willow, alder, two species of maple, and occasionally a yew. The undergrowth was composed of Hazel, Vaccinium, Gaultheria, and a prickly species of Aralia. The herbaceous shrubs were Goodyera, Neottia, Viola, Claytonia, Corallorrhiza. The latter, however, were not in flower.

The party on foot, after leaving the Little Prairie about half a mile, crossed the northern branch of the Smalocho, [13] which was found much swollen and very rapid. Two trees were cut down to form a bridge. After this, the walking through the forest became smooth and firm, and they passed on at a rapid pace. The Indians, although loaded with ninety pounds of baggage, kept up with the rest. At nightfall they encamped at the margin of the snow.

On lighting their fires, they accidentally set fire to the moss-covered trees, and in a few moments all around them was a blazing mass of flame, which compelled them to change their quarters farther to windward. They had made eighteen miles. But few plants were found, the season being too early for collecting at so high an elevation. The ground was covered with spruce-twigs, which had apparently been broken off by the weight of the snow. The summit was passed through an open space about twenty acres in extent. This glade was surrounded with a dense forest of spruce trees. There was no danger in walking except near the young trees, which had been bent down by the snow, but on passing these they often broke through, and experienced much difficulty in extricating themselves, particularly the poor Indians, with their heavy burdens. The breadth of snow passed over was about eight miles. At three o'clock they reached the Spipen [14] River, where they encamped: this camp was found to be two thousand five hundred and forty-one feet above the level of the sea. The vegetation appeared to our botanical gentlemen farther advanced on the east side than on the west, at the same height; the Pulmonarias and several small annuals were more forward. There were only a few pine trees, and those small, seen on the west side of the ridge; and on the east side, there was a species of larch, the hackmatack of the country. While they remained at this camp, they found a Pyrola, and some new ferns.

The country about the Spipen[14] is mountainous and woody, with a narrow strip of meadow-land along its banks. Mr. Waldron had, on arriving at the camp, sent Lachemere, one of the Indians, down the river to an Indian chief, in order to procure horses. Those that remained after providing for the baggage, were consequently assigned each to two or three individuals to ride and tye on their route.

On the 30th, they proceeded down the Spipen, making a journey of eighteen miles, and passed another branch of the river, the junction of which augmented its size very considerably. Its banks, too, became perpendicular and rocky, with a current flowing between them at the rate of six or seven miles an hour. After the junction, the stream was about one hundred feet broad, and its course was east-southeast.

The vegetation on the east side of the mountains was decidedly more advanced than that to the west, and several very interesting species of plants were met with by the botanists, on the banks of the streams: among them were Pæonia brownii, Cypripedium oregonium, Pentstemon, Ipomopsis elegans, and several Compositæ, and a very handsome flowering shrub, Purshia tridentata.

On the 31st, they continued their route over a rough country, in some places almost impassable for a horse from its steepness, and in others so marshy as to require much caution to prevent being mired.

During the morning, they met two Indians, who informed them that the chief of the Yakima tribe was a short distance in advance, waiting to meet them, and that he had several horses. At noon they reached a small prairie on the banks of the river, where old Tidias, the chief, was seen seated in state to receive Lieutenant Johnson; but this ceremony was unavoidably broken in upon by the necessity of getting the meridian observations. The chief, however, advanced towards him with every mark of friendship, giving the party a hearty welcome. In person he was tall, straight, and thin, a little bald, with long black hair hanging down his back, carefully tied with a worsted rag. He was grave, but dignified and graceful. When they had been seated, and after smoking a couple of pipes in silence, he intimated that he was ready for a talk, which then followed, relative to the rivers and face of the country; but little information was obtained that could be depended upon.

This tribe subsist chiefly upon salmon and the cammass-root: game is very scarce, and the beaver have all disappeared. The cammass-root is pounded and made into a sort of cake, which is not unpleasant, having a sweetish taste, but it is very dry, although some of the party took a fancy to it.

Tidias had with him an old man almost blind, who claimed much respect, and two young men, whose dress of buckskin, profusely ornamented with beads, was much admired by the party. During the talk, the old chief expressed himself delighted to see the white men, and spoke of his own importance, his immense territory, etc., in a style of boasting, to which the Indians are very much addicted. He said that he was desirous of affording all the accommodation he could to the party. But although he had eight or ten fine horses with him, he would not agree to part with them, as they were all his favourites. He was presented with a variety of articles, in return for which he gave the party a few dried salmon.

Towards evening, old Tidias took leave of them, saying that it was not proper for an Indian to encamp in the same place with a white man, and with a promise that he would have horses by ten o'clock the next day; but he had a game to play by procrastinating, in which he thoroughly succeeded.

In the morning they reached the Indian camp below, but no horses had arrived. It was far, they said, to Tidias's house; a man could not go thither and return in the same day; no horses or salmon could be brought; no one could be permitted to go. Lieutenant Johnson was then told that the road he had to follow was a "hungry" road. At last the Indian was induced by high offers to exchange good horses for a great number of bad ones, and finally consented to part with two more. On quitting him they became thoroughly aware that all the difficulties were owing, not to any indisposition to sell, but were created for the purpose of inducing high prices to be given.

The party now branched off at right angles to their former route, Lieutenant Johnson heartily sick and tired of his friend Tidias and his people. Two more of the Indians here left them. The country they entered, after passing a ridge about six hundred feet high, was quite of a different aspect, forming long sloping hills, covered with a scanty growth of pines. Many dry beds of rivulets were passed, and the soil of the hills produced nothing but a long thin grass. There are, however, some small valleys where the growth of grass is luxuriant, the pines are larger, and the scenery assumed a park-like appearance.

From the summit of one of the hills, a sketch of Mount Rainier, and of the intervening range, was obtained.

On the top of the ridge they fell in with a number of Spipen Indians, who were engaged in digging the cammass and other roots. The latter were those of an umbelliferous plant, oblong, tuberous, and in taste resembling a parsnip. The process used to prepare them for bread, is to bake them in a well-heated oven of stones; when they are taken out they are dried, and then pounded between two stones till the mass becomes as fine as corn meal, when it is kneaded into cakes and dried in the sun. These roots are the principal vegetable food of the Indians throughout Middle Oregon. The women are frequently seen, to the number of twenty or thirty, with baskets suspended from the neck, and a pointed stick in their hand, digging these roots, and so intently engaged in the search for them, as to pay no attention whatever to a passer-by. When these roots are properly dried, they are stored away for the winter's consumption. This day they made only fifteen miles, in a northern direction.

On the 2d of June, they reached the Yakima, after having crossed a small stream. The Yakima was too deep for the horses to ford with their packs, and they now for the first time used their balsas of India-rubber cloth, which were found to answer the purpose of floating the loads across the stream.

This river is one hundred and fifty feet wide, and pursues an east-southeast course, with a velocity of more than four miles an hour. At this place were found twenty migrating Indians, who have their permanent residence on the banks lower down.

The chief, Kamaiyah, was the son-in-law of old Tidias, and one of the most handsome and perfectly-formed Indians they had met with. He was found to be gruff and surly in his manners, which was thought to be owing to his wish to appear dignified. These Indians were living in temporary huts, consisting of mats spread on poles. Among them was seen quite a pretty girl, dressed in a shirt and trousers, with moccasins of skin very much ornamented with fringe and beads. They had a number of fine horses, but could not be induced to part with any of them.

Lieutenant Johnson had now succeeded in purchasing venison and salmon, and the party again had full allowance.

On the 3d, they continued their route to the northward, over gradually rising ground, and Lieutenant Johnson having succeeded in purchasing three more horses, only three of the party were now without them, so that the riding and tye system was not quite so often resorted to as before. On this plain was seen a number of curlews, some grouse, and a large species of hare. They encamped again near the snow, and found their altitude greater than any yet reached, the barometer standing at 24·750 in.: five thousand two hundred and three feet. They had again reached the spruces and lost the pine, which was only found on the hill-sides and plains.

At 4 a.m. on the morning of the 4th of June, the thermometer stood at 28°. They on that day continued their route up the mountain and across its summit, which was here and there covered with patches of snow. I regret to record another accident to the instruments. The sergeant, to whom the barometer was intrusted by Lieutenant Johnson, in putting up the instrument this morning, carelessly broke it; and thus ended the barometrical experiments in the most interesting portion of the route.

It is difficult to account for the scarcity of snow on a much higher elevation than they had before reached, and under circumstances which would appear to have warranted a contrary expectation. Dr. Pickering was induced to believe that this change in the climate is owing to the open nature of the surrounding country; its being devoid of dense forests, with but a few scattered trees and no under-brush; and the vicinity to elevated plains, and the ridge being of a less broken character.

The early part of the day was cold, with showers of sleet. On the crest of the mountain they passed over swampy ground, with but a few patches of spruces: after passing which, they began to descend very regularly towards the Columbia, which they reached early in the afternoon, about three miles below the Pischous River. [15] The Columbia at this place is a rapid stream, but the scenery differs entirely from that of other rivers: its banks are altogether devoid of any fertile alluvial flats; destitute even of scattered trees; there is no freshness in the little vegetation on its borders; the sterile sands in fact reach to its very brink, and it is scarcely to be believed until its banks are reached that a mighty river is rolling its waters past these arid wastes.

[The record of the journey to Fort Colville is omitted, to be resumed when the party returning draws near the environs of Mount Rainier. The portion omitted extends from page 430 to 468 in the original publication.]

The party now pursued the route up the river, and in two hours reached the Yakima, up whose valley they passed, encamping after making twenty-five miles. The country was rolling, and might be termed sandy and barren.

Mount St. Helen's, [16] with its snow-capped top, was seen at a great distance to the west.

On the 5th, they continued their route, and at midday were overtaken by an Indian, with a note informing them of the arrival of Mr. Drayton at Wallawalla with the brigade. This was quick travelling for news in Oregon; for so slow is it usually carried, that our party were the first to bring the news of the arrival and operations of the squadron in Oregon. This intelligence had not previously reached Wallawalla, although it is considered to be on the direct post-route to the interior, notwithstanding we had been in the country nearly two months. The news of the murder of Mr. Black, in New Caledonia, was nearly a year in reaching some points on the coast.

This was one of the warmest days they had experienced, and the thermometer under the shade of a canopy stood at 108°. At a short distance from the place where they stopped was a small hut, composed of a few branches and reeds, which was thought to be barely sufficient to contain a sheep; yet under it were four generations of human beings, all females, seated in a posture, which, to whites, would have been impracticable. They had just procured their subsistence for the day, and their meal consisted of the berries of the dogwood. The scene was not calculated to impress one very favourably with savage life. The oldest of these had the cartilage of the nose pierced, but the others had not; leading to the conclusion that the practice had been discontinued for some years in the nation, who still, however, retain the name.

The country exhibited little appearance of vegetation; the herbage was quite dried up, and from appearances was likely to continue so throughout the season. The prevailing vegetation consisted of bushes of wormwood, stinted in growth, and unyielding.

After making thirty-three miles, they encamped among loose sand, one hundred feet above the water of the river. Many rattlesnakes were found in this vicinity.

Owing to the quantities of mosquitoes, combined with the fear of snakes, the party obtained little or no rest, and were all glad to mount their horses and proceed on their way.

In the early part of the day, they arrived at the junction of the Spipen with the Yakima: previous to this they crossed another branch, coming in from the southwest; the waters of the latter were very turbid, of a dark-brown colour, and it was conjectured that it had its source at or near Mount Rainier. Along its banks was seen a range of basaltic columns. The Yakima was crossed during the day in canoes, the river not being yet fordable.

The country, which had for some days exhibited the appearance of the Tillandsia districts of Peru, had now begun to acquire a tinge of green, and some scattered pine trees had become visible. Some small oaks were passed, which appeared of a local character. This night they again had a number of rattlesnakes in their camp.

On the 8th, the valley had narrowed, and the banks becoming more perpendicular, they had a great many difficulties to encounter. They stopped at the camp of old Tidias, whom, it will be recollected, they had encountered after crossing the mountains, and from whom they obtained some horses. They soon afterwards arrived at the path where they had turned off to the north. The river had fallen very much during their absence, and there was a marked difference in the season, the vegetation being much more backward than in the parts they had recently visited. The berries were just beginning to ripen, while in the plains, not twenty miles distant, they were already over. Old Tidias determined to accompany them to Nisqually, taking with him his son, and lending them several horses. The Spipen, up which they passed, was now hemmed in by mountain ridges, occasionally leaving small portions of level ground. They encamped at the place they had occupied on the 30th of May.

The vegetation, since they had passed this place, had so much advanced that they had difficulty in recognising it again. The wet prairies were overgrown with rank grass, from one to two feet in height. After a short rest at the foot of the mountain, they began its ascent, and reached the crest of the ridge in about three hours. On every side they found a low growth of shrubs, which they had not suspected when it was covered with snow, and causing the summit to differ essentially from the broad ridge they had crossed between the Yakima and Pischous rivers. They encamped for the night on the edge of a wet prairie, which afforded pasturage for their horses.

The next day they passed through several similar prairies, and descended the western slope of the mountain, where they found more patches of snow than on the east side. This was just the reverse of what they had found on their previous passage; the season, too, was evidently much less advanced. This circumstance was supposed to be owing to the denser forest on the west, as well as the absence of elevated plains.

They encamped the same night at the little prairie before spoken of, at the foot of the western slope. Before reaching it, they met a party of men and women carrying a sick chief over the mountain, who was evidently dying. It was affecting to see him stretching forth his hand to them as they passed, as if desiring to be friends with all before he died. He died the same night.

The two next days it rained almost constantly, but they found the road much less difficult to travel than before, and the streams were fordable, which enabled them to make more rapid progress.

On the 13th, they passed the Smalocho, and on the 15th reached Nisqually, all well; having performed a journey of about one thousand miles without any material accident, except those that have been related as having occurred to the instruments. They traversed a route which white men had never before taken, thus enabling us to become acquainted with a portion of the country about which all had before been conjecture. They had also made a large addition to our collection of plants.

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.">[

Up and down go the fortunes of men, now benignant, now malignant. Ante meridiem of our lives, we are rising characters. Our full noon comes, and we are borne with plaudits on the shoulders of a grateful populace. Post meridiem, we are ostracized, if not more rudely mobbed. At twilight, we are perhaps recalled, and set on the throne of Nestor.

Such slow changes in esteem are for men of some import and of settled character. Loolowcan suffered under a more rapidly fluctuating public opinion. At the camp of the road-makers, he had passed through a period of neglect,—almost of ignominy. My hosts had prejudices against redskins; they treated the son of Owhhigh with no consideration; and he became depressed and slinking in manner under the influence of their ostracism. No sooner had we disappeared from the range of Boston eyes than Loolowcan resumed his leadership and his control. I was very secondary now, and followed him humbly enough up the heights we had reached. Here were all the old difficulties increased, because they were no longer met on a level. We were to climb the main ridge,—the mountain of La Tête,—abandoning the valley, assaulting the summits. And here, as Owhhigh had prophesied in his harangue at Nisqually, the horse's mane must be firmly grasped by the climber. Poor, panting, weary nags! may it be true, the promise of Loolowcan, that not far away is abundant fodder! But where can aught, save firs with ostrich digestion, grow on these rough, forest-clad shoulders?

So I clambered on till near noon.

I had been following thus for many hours the blind path, harsh, darksome, and utterly lonely, urging on with no outlook, encountering no landmark,—at last, as I stormed a ragged crest, gaining a height that overtopped the firs, and, halting there for panting moments, glanced to see if I had achieved mastery as well as position,—as I looked somewhat wearily and drearily across the solemn surges of forest, suddenly above their sombre green appeared Tacoma. Large and neighbor it stood, so near that every jewel of its snow-fields seemed to send me a separate ray; yet not so near but that I could with one look take in its whole image, from clear-cut edge to edge.

All around it the dark evergreens rose like a ruff; above them the mountain splendors swelled statelier for the contrast. Sunlight of noon was so refulgent upon the crown, and lay so thick and dazzling in nooks and chasms, that the eye sought repose of gentler lights, and found it in shadowed nooks and clefts, where, sunlight entering not, delicate mist, an emanation from the blue sky, had fallen, and lay sheltered and tremulous, a mild substitute for the stronger glory. The blue haze so wavered and trembled into sunlight, and sunbeams shot glimmering over snowy brinks so like a constant avalanche, that I might doubt whether this movement and waver and glimmer, this blending of mist with noontide flame, were not a drifting smoke and cloud of yellow sulphurous vapor floating over some slowly chilling crater far down in the red crevices.

But if the giant fires had ever burned under that cold summit, they had long since gone out. The dome that swelled up passionately had crusted over and then fallen in upon itself, not vigorous enough with internal life to bear up in smooth proportion. Where it broke into ruin was no doubt a desolate waste, stern, craggy, and riven, but such drear results of Titanic convulsion the gentle snows hid from view.

No foot of man had ever trampled those pure snows. It was a virginal mountain, distant from the possibility of human approach and human inquisitiveness as a marble goddess is from human love.

Yet there was nothing unsympathetic in its isolation, or despotic in its distant majesty. But this serene loftiness was no home for any deity of those that men create. Only the thought of eternal peace arose from this heaven-upbearing monument like incense, and, overflowing, filled the world with deep and holy calm.

Wherever the mountain turned its cheek toward the sun, many fair and smiling dimples appeared, and along soft curves of snow, lines of shadow drew tracery fair as the blue veins on a child's temple. Without the infinite sweetness and charm of this kindly changefulness of form and color, there might have been oppressive awe in the presence of this transcendent glory against the solemn blue of noon. Grace played over the surface of majesty, as a drift of rose-leaves wavers in the air before a summer shower, or as a wreath of rosy mist flits before the grandeur of a storm. Loveliness was sprinkled like a boon of blossoms upon sublimity.

Our lives forever demand and need visual images that can be symbols to us of the grandeur or the sweetness of repose. There are some faces that arise dreamy in our memories, and look us into calmness in our frantic moods. Fair and happy is a life that need not call upon its vague memorial dreams for such attuning influence, but can turn to a present reality, and ask tranquillity at the shrine of a household goddess. The noble works of nature, and mountains most of all,

"have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence."

And, studying the light and the majesty of Tacoma, there passed from it and entered into my being, to dwell there evermore by the side of many such, a thought and an image of solemn beauty, which I could thenceforth evoke whenever in the world I must have peace or die. For such emotion years of pilgrimage were worthily spent. If mortal can gain the thoughts of immortality, is not his earthly destiny achieved? For, when we have so studied the visible poem, and so fixed it deep in the very substance of our minds, there is forever with us not merely a perpetual possession of delight, but a watchful monitor that will not let our thoughts be long unfit for the pure companionship of beauty. For whenever a man is false to the light that is in him, and accepts meaner joys, or chooses the easy indulgence that meaner passions give, then every fair landscape in all his horizon dims, and all its grandeurs fade and dwindle away, the glory vanishes, and he looks, like one lost, upon his world, late so lovely and sinless.

While I was studying Tacoma, and learning its fine lesson, it in turn might contemplate its own image far away on the waters of Whulge, where streams from its own snows, gushing seaward to buffet in the boundless deep, might rejoice in a last look at their parent ere they swept out of Puyallop Bay. Other large privilege of view it had. It could see what I could not,—Tacoma the Less, Mt. Adams, meritorious but clumsy; it could reflect sunbeams gracefully across a breadth of forest to St. Helen's, the vestal virgin, who still kept her flame kindled, and proved her watchfulness ever and anon. Continuing its panoramic studies, Tacoma could trace the chasm of the Columbia by silver circles here and there,—could see every peak, chimney, or unopened vent, from Kulshan to Shasta Butte. The Blue Mountains eastward were within its scope, and westward the faint-blue levels of the Pacific. Another region, worthy of any mountain's beholding, Tacoma sees, somewhat vague and dim in distance: it sees the sweet Arcadian valley of the Willamette, charming with meadow, park, and grove. In no older world where men have, in all their happiest moods, recreated themselves for generations in taming earth to orderly beauty, have they achieved a fairer garden than Nature's simple labor of love has made there, giving to rough pioneers the blessings and the possible education of refined and finished landscape, in the presence of landscape strong, savage, and majestic.

All this Tacoma beholds, as I can but briefly hint; and as one who is a seer himself becomes a tower of light and illumination to the world, so Tacoma, so every brother seer of his among the lofty snow-peaks, stands to educate, by his inevitable presence, every dweller thereabouts. Our race has never yet come into contact with great mountains as companions of daily life, nor felt that daily development of the finer and more comprehensive senses which these signal facts of nature compel. That is an influence of the future. The Oregon people, in a climate where being is bliss,—where every breath is a draught of vivid life,—these Oregon people, carrying to a new and grander New England of the West a fuller growth of the American Idea, under whose teaching the man of lowest ambitions must still have some little indestructible respect for himself, and the brute of most tyrannical aspirations some little respect for others; carrying the civilization of history where it will not suffer by the example of Europe,—with such material, that Western society, when it crystallizes, will elaborate new systems of thought and life. It is unphilosophical to suppose that a strong race, developing under the best, largest, and calmest conditions of nature, will not achieve a destiny.

Up to Tacoma, or into some such solitude of nature, imaginative men must go, as Moses went up to Sinai, that the divine afflatus may stir within them. The siwashes appreciate, according to their capacity, the inspiration of lonely grandeur, and go upon the mountains, starving and alone, that they may become seers, enchanters, magicians, diviners,—what in conventional lingo is called "big medicine." For though the Indians here have not peopled these thrones of their world with the creatures of an anthropomorphic mythology, they yet deem them the abode of Tamanoüs. Tamanoüs is a vague and half-personified type of the unknown, of the mysterious forces of nature; and there is also an indefinite multitude of undefined emanations, each one a tamanoüs with a small t, which are busy and impish in complicating existence, or equally active and spritely in unravelling it. Each Indian of this region patronizes his own personal tamanoüs, as men of the more eastern tribes keep a private manitto, and as Socrates kept a daimôn. To supply this want, Tamanoüs with a big T undergoes an avatar, and incarnates himself into a salmon, a beaver, a clam, or into some inanimate object, such as a canoe, a paddle, a fir-tree, a flint, or into some elemental essence, as fire, water, sun, mist; and tamanoüs thus individualized becomes the "guide, philosopher, and friend" of every siwash, conscious that otherwise he might stray and be lost in the unknown realms of Tamanoüs.

Hamitchou, a frowzy ancient of the Squallyamish, told to Dr. Tolmie and me, at Nisqually, a legend of Tamanoüs and Tacoma, which, being interpreted, runs as follows:—

Hamitchou's Legend

"Avarice, O Boston tyee," quoth Hamitchou, studying me with dusky eyes, "is a mighty passion. Now, be it known unto thee that we Indians anciently used not metals nor the money of you blanketeers. Our circulating medium was shells,—wampum you would name it. Of all wampum, the most precious is Hiaqua. Hiaqua comes from the far north. It is a small, perforated shell, not unlike a very opaque quill toothpick, tapering from the middle, and cut square at both ends. We string it in many strands, and hang it around the neck of one we love,—namely, each man his own neck. We also buy with it what our hearts desire. He who has most hiaqua is best and wisest and happiest of all the northern Haida and of all the people of Whulge. The mountain horsemen value it; and braves of the terrible Blackfeet have been known, in the good old days, to come over and offer a horse or a wife for a bunch of fifty hiaqua.

"Now, once upon a time there dwelt where this fort of Nisqually now stands a wise old man of the Squallyamish. He was a great fisherman and a great hunter; and the wiser he grew, much the wiser he thought himself. When he had grown very wise, he used to stay apart from every other siwash. Companionable salmon-boilings round a common pot had no charms for him. 'Feasting was wasteful,' he said, 'and revellers would come to want.' And when they verified his prophecy, and were full of hunger and empty of salmon, he came out of his hermitage, and had salmon to sell.

"Hiaqua was the pay he always demanded; and as he was a very wise old man, and knew all the tide-ways of Whulge, and all the enticing ripples and placid spots of repose in every river where fish might dash or delay, he was sure to have salmon when others wanted, and thus bagged largely of its precious equivalent, hiaqua.

"Not only a mighty fisher was the sage, but a mighty hunter, and elk, the greatest animal of the woods, was the game he loved. Well had he studied every trail where elk leave the print of their hoofs, and where, tossing their heads, they bend the tender twigs. Well had he searched through the broad forest, and found the long-haired prairies where elk feed luxuriously; and there, from behind palisade fir-trees, he had launched the fatal arrow. Sometimes, also, he lay beside a pool of sweetest water, revealed to him by gemmy reflections of sunshine gleaming through the woods, until at noon the elk came down, to find death awaiting him as he stooped and drank. Or beside the same fountain the old man watched at night, drowsily starting at every crackling branch, until, when the moon was high, and her illumination declared the pearly water, elk dashed forth incautious into the glade, and met their midnight destiny.

"Elk-meat, too, he sold to his tribe. This brought him pelf, but, alas for his greed, the pelf came slowly. Waters and woods were rich in game. All the Squallyamish were hunters and fishers, though none so skilled as he. They were rarely in absolute want, and, when they came to him for supplies, they were far too poor in hiaqua.

"So the old man thought deeply, and communed with his wisdom, and, while he waited for fish or beast, he took advice within himself from his demon,—he talked with Tamanoüs. And always the question was, 'How may I put hiaqua in my purse?'

"Tamanoüs never revealed to him that far to the north, beyond the waters of Whulge, are tribes with their under lip pierced with a fishbone, among whom hiaqua is plenty as salmonberries are in the woods what time in mid-summer salmon fin it along the reaches of Whulge.

"But the more Tamanoüs did not reveal to him these mysteries of nature, the more he kept dreamily prying into his own mind, endeavoring to devise some scheme by which he might discover a treasure-trove of the beloved shell. His life seemed wasted in the patient, frugal industry, which only brought slow, meagre gains. He wanted the splendid elation of vast wealth and the excitement of sudden wealth. His own peculiar tamanoüs was the elk. Elk was also his totem, the cognizance of his freemasonry with those of his own family, and their family friends in other tribes. Elk, therefore, were every way identified with his life; and he hunted them farther and farther up through the forests on the flanks of Tacoma, hoping that some day his tamanoüs would speak in the dying groan of one of them, and gasp out the secret of the mines of hiaqua, his heart's desire.

"Tacoma was so white and glittering, that it seemed to stare at him very terribly and mockingly, and to know his shameful avarice, and how it led him to take from starving women their cherished lip and nose jewels of hiaqua, and to give them in return only tough scraps of dried elk-meat and salmon. When men are shabby, mean, and grasping, they feel reproached for their grovelling lives by the unearthliness of nature's beautiful objects, and they hate flowers, and sunsets, mountains, and the quiet stars of heaven.

"Nevertheless," continued Hamitchou, "this wise old fool of my legend went on stalking elk along the sides of Tacoma, ever dreaming of wealth. And at last, as he was hunting near the snows one day, one very clear and beautiful day of late summer, when sunlight was magically disclosing far distances, and making all nature supernaturally visible and proximate, Tamanoüs began to work in the soul of the miser.

"'Are you brave,' whispered Tamanoüs in the strange, ringing, dull, silent thunder-tones of a demon voice. 'Dare you go to the caves where my treasures are hid?'

"'I dare,' said the miser.

"He did not know that his lips had syllabled a reply. He did not even hear his own words. But all the place had become suddenly vocal with echoes. The great rock against which he leaned crashed forth, 'I dare.' Then all along through the forest, dashing from tree to tree and lost at last among the murmuring of breeze-shaken leaves, went careering his answer, taken up and repeated scornfully, 'I dare.' And after a silence, while the daring one trembled and would gladly have ventured to shout, for the companionship of his own voice, there came across from the vast snow wall of Tacoma a tone like the muffled, threatening plunge of an avalanche into a chasm, 'I dare.'

"'You dare,' said Tamanoüs, enveloping him with a dread sense of an unseen, supernatural presence; 'you pray for wealth of hiaqua. Listen!'

"This injunction was hardly needed; the miser was listening with dull eyes kindled and starting. He was listening with every rusty hair separating from its unkempt mattedness, and outstanding upright, a caricature of an aureole.

"'Listen,' said Tamanoüs, in the noonday hush. And then Tamanoüs vouchsafed at last the great secret of the hiaqua mines, while in terror near to death the miser heard, and every word of guidance toward the hidden treasure of the mountains seared itself into his soul ineffaceably.

"Silence came again more terrible now than the voice of Tamanoüs,—silence under the shadow of the great cliff,—silence deepening down the forest vistas,—silence filling the void up to the snows of Tacoma. All life and motion seemed paralyzed. At last Skai-ki, the Blue-Jay, the wise bird, foe to magic, sang cheerily overhead. Her song seemed to refresh again the honest laws of nature. The buzz of life stirred everywhere again, and the inspired miser rose and hastened home to prepare for his work.

"When Tamanoüs has put a great thought in a man's brain, has whispered him a great discovery within his power, or hinted at a great crime, that spiteful demon does not likewise suggest the means of accomplishment.

"The miser, therefore, must call upon his own skill to devise proper tools, and upon his own judgment to fix upon the most fitting time for carrying out his quest. Sending his squaw out to the kamas prairie, under pretence that now was the season for her to gather their winter store of that sickish-sweet esculent root, and that she might not have her squaw's curiosity aroused by seeing him at strange work, he began his preparations. He took a pair of enormous elk-horns, and fashioned from each horn a two-pronged pick or spade, by removing all the antlers except the two topmost. He packed a good supply of kippered salmon, and filled his pouch with kinni kinnick for smoking in his black stone pipe. With his bow and arrows and his two elk-horn picks wrapped in buckskin hung at his back, he started just before sunset, as if for a long hunt. His old, faithful, maltreated, blanketless, vermilionless squaw, returning with baskets full of kamas, saw him disappearing moodily down the trail.

"All that night, all the day following, he moved on noiselessly by paths he knew. He hastened on, unnoticing outward objects, as one with a controlling purpose hastens. Elk and deer, bounding through the trees, passed him, but he tarried not. At night he camped just below the snows of Tacoma. He was weary, weary, and chill night-airs blowing down from the summit almost froze him. He dared not take his fire-sticks, and, placing one perpendicular upon a little hollow on the flat side of the other, twirl the upright stick rapidly between his palms until the charred spot kindled and lighted his 'tipsoo,' his dry, tindery wool of inner bark. A fire, gleaming high upon the mountain-side, might be a beacon to draw thither any night-wandering savage to watch in ambush, and learn the path toward the mines of hiaqua. So he drowsed chilly and fireless, awakened often by dread sounds of crashing and rumbling among the chasms of Tacoma. He desponded bitterly, almost ready to abandon his quest, almost doubting whether he had in truth received a revelation, whether his interview with Tamanoüs had not been a dream, and finally whether all the hiaqua in the world was worth this toil and anxiety. Fortunate is the sage who at such a point turns back and buys his experience without worse befalling him.

"Past midnight he suddenly was startled from his drowse, and sat bolt upright in terror. A light. Was there another searcher in the forest, and a bolder than he? That flame just glimmering over the tree-tops, was it a camp-fire of friend or foe? Had Tamanoüs been revealing to another the great secret? No, smiled the miser, his eyes fairly open, and discovering that the new light was the moon. He had been waiting for her illumination of paths heretofore untrodden by mortal. She did not show her full, round jolly face, but turned it askance as if she hardly liked to be implicated in this night's transaction.

"However, it was light he wanted, not sympathy, and he started up at once to climb over the dim snows. The surface was packed by the night's frost, and his moccasins gave him firm hold; yet he travelled but slowly, and could not always save himself from a glissade backwards, and a bruise upon some projecting knob or crag. Sometimes, upright fronts of ice diverted him for long circuits, or a broken wall of cold cliff arose, which he must surmount painfully. Once or twice he stuck fast in a crevice, and hardly drew himself out by placing his bundle of picks across the crack. As he plodded and floundered thus deviously and toilsomely upward, at last the wasted moon gan pale overhead, and under foot the snow grew rosy with coming dawn. The dim world about the mountain's base displayed something of its vast detail. He could see, more positively than by moonlight, the far-reaching arteries of mist marking the organism of Whulge beneath; and what had been but a black chaos now revealed itself into the Alpine forest whence he had come.

"But he troubled himself little with staring about; up he looked, for the summit was at hand. To win that summit was wellnigh the attainment of his hopes, if Tamanoüs were true; and that, with the flush of morning ardor upon him, he could not doubt. There, in a spot Tamanoüs had revealed to him, was hiaqua,—hiaqua that should make him the richest and greatest of all the Squallyamish.

"The chill before sunrise was upon him as he reached the last curve of the dome. Sunrise and he struck the summit together. Together sunrise and he looked over the glacis. They saw within a great hollow all covered with the whitest of snow, save at the centre, where a black lake lay deep in a well of purple rock.

"At the eastern end of this lake was a small, irregular plain of snow, marked by three stones like monuments. Towards these the miser sprang rapidly, with full sunshine streaming after him over the snows.

"The first monument he examined with keen looks. It was tall as a giant man, and its top was fashioned into the grotesque likeness of a salmon's head. He turned from this to inspect the second. It was of similar height, but bore at its apex an object in shape like the regular flame of a torch. As he approached, he presently discovered that this was an image of the kamas-bulb in stone. These two semblances of prime necessities of Indian life delayed him but an instant, and he hastened on to the third monument, which stood apart on a perfect level. The third stone was capped by something he almost feared to behold, lest it should prove other than his hopes. Every word of Tamanoüs had thus far proved veritable; but might there not be a bitter deceit at the last? The miser trembled.

"Yes, Tamanoüs was trustworthy. The third monument was as the old man anticipated. It was a stone elk's head, such as it appears in earliest summer, when the antlers are sprouting lustily under their rough jacket of velvet.

"You remember, Boston tyee," continued Hamitchou, "that Elk was the old man's tamanoüs, the incarnation for him of the universal Tamanoüs. He therefore was right joyous at this good omen of protection; and his heart grew big and swollen with hope, as the black salmon-berry swells in a swamp in June. He threw down his 'ikta'; every impediment he laid down upon the snow; and, unwrapping his two picks of elk-horn, he took the stoutest, and began to dig in the frozen snow at the foot of the elk-head monument.

"No sooner had he struck the first blow than he heard behind him a sudden puff, such as a seal makes when it comes to the surface to breathe. Turning round much startled, he saw a huge otter just clambering up over the edge of the lake. The otter paused, and struck on the snow with his tail, whereupon another otter and another appeared, until, following their leader in slow and solemn file, were twelve other otters, marching toward the miser. The twelve approached, and drew up in a circle around him. Each was twice as large as any otter ever seen. Their chief was four times as large as the most gigantic otter ever seen in the regions of Whulge, and certainly was as great as a seal. When the twelve were arranged, their leader skipped to the top of the elk-head stone, and sat there between the horns. Then the whole thirteen gave a mighty puff in chorus.

"The hunter of hiaqua was for a moment abashed at his uninvited ring of spectators. But he had seen otter before, and bagged them. These he could not waste time to shoot, even if a phalanx so numerous were not formidable. Besides, they might be tamanoüs. He took to his pick and began digging stoutly.

"He soon made way in the snow, and came to solid rock beneath. At every thirteenth stroke of his pick, the fugleman otter tapped with his tail on the monument. Then the choir of lesser otters tapped together with theirs on the snow. This caudal action produced a dull, muffled sound, as if there were a vast hollow below.

"Digging with all his force, by and by the seeker for treasure began to tire, and laid down his elk-horn spade to wipe the sweat from his brow. Straightway the fugleman otter turned, and, swinging his tail, gave the weary man a mighty thump on the shoulder; and the whole band, imitating, turned, and, backing inward, smote him with centripetal tails, until he resumed his labors, much bruised.

"The rock lay first in plates, then in scales. These it was easy to remove. Presently, however, as the miser pried carelessly at a larger mass, he broke his elkhorn tool. Fugleman otter leaped down, and seizing the supplemental pick between his teeth, mouthed it over to the digger. Then the amphibious monster took in the same manner the broken pick, and bore it round the circle of his suite, who inspected it gravely with puffs.

"These strange, magical proceedings disconcerted and somewhat baffled the miser; but he plucked up heart, for the prize was priceless, and worked on more cautiously with his second pick. At last its blows and the regular thumps of the otter's tails called forth a sound hollower and hollower. His circle of spectators narrowed so that he could feel their panting breath as they bent curiously over the little pit he had dug.

"The crisis was evidently at hand.

"He lifted each scale of rock more delicately. Finally he raised a scale so thin that it cracked into flakes as he turned it over. Beneath was a large square cavity.

"It was filled to the brim with hiaqua.

"He was a millionnaire.

"The otters recognized him as the favorite of Tamanoüs, and retired to a respectful distance.

"For some moments he gazed on his treasure, taking thought of his future proud grandeur among the dwellers by Whulge. He plunged his arm deep as he could go; there was still nothing but the precious shells. He smiled to himself in triumph; he had wrung the secret from Tamanoüs. Then, as he withdrew his arm, the rattle of the hiaqua recalled him to the present. He saw that noon was long past, and he must proceed to reduce his property to possession.

"The hiaqua was strung upon long, stout sinews of elk, in bunches of fifty shells on each side. Four of these he wound about his waist; three he hung across each shoulder; five he took in each hand;—twenty strings of pure white hiaqua, every shell large, smooth, unbroken, beautiful. He could carry no more; hardly even with this could he stagger along. He put down his burden for a moment, while he covered up the seemingly untouched wealth of the deposit carefully with the scale stones, and brushed snow over the whole.

"The miser never dreamed of gratitude, never thought to hang a string from the buried treasure about the salmon and kamas tamanoüs stones, and two strings around the elk's head; no, all must be his own, all he could carry now, and the rest for the future.

"He turned, and began his climb toward the crater's edge. At once the otters, with a mighty puff in concert, took up their line of procession, and, plunging into the black lake, began to beat the water with their tails.

"The miser could hear the sound of splashing water as he struggled upward through the snow, now melted and yielding. It was a long hour of harsh toil and much backsliding before he reached the rim, and turned to take one more view of this valley of good fortune.

"As he looked, a thick mist began to rise from the lake centre, where the otters were splashing. Under the mist grew a cylinder of black cloud, utterly hiding the water.

"Terrible are storms in the mountains; but in this looming mass was a terror more dread than any hurricane of ruin ever bore within its wild vortexes. Tamanoüs was in that black cylinder, and as it strode forward, chasing in the very path of the miser, he shuddered, for his wealth and his life were in danger.

"However, it might be but a common storm. Sunlight was bright as ever overhead in heaven, and all the lovely world below lay dreamily fair, in that afternoon of summer, at the feet of the rich man, who now was hastening to be its king. He stepped from the crater edge and began his descent.

"Instantly the storm overtook him. He was thrown down by its first assault, flung over a rough bank of iciness, and lay at the foot torn and bleeding, but clinging still to his precious burden. Each hand still held its five strings of hiaqua. In each hand he bore a nation's ransom. He staggered to his feet against the blast. Utter night was around him,—night as if daylight had forever perished, had never come into being from chaos. The roaring of the storm had also deafened and bewildered him with its wild uproar.

"Present in every crash and thunder of the gale was a growing undertone, which the miser well knew to be the voice of Tamanoüs. A deadly shuddering shook him. Heretofore that potent Unseen had been his friend and guide; there had been awe, but no terror, in his words. Now the voice of Tamanoüs was inarticulate, but the miser could divine in that sound an unspeakable threat of wrath and vengeance. Floating upon this undertone were sharper tamanoüs voices, shouting and screaming always sneeringly, 'Ha, ha, hiaqua!—ha, ha, ha!'

"Whenever the miser essayed to move and continue his descent, a whirlwind caught him, and with much ado tossed him hither and thither, leaving him at last flung and imprisoned in a pinching crevice, or buried to the eyes in a snowdrift, or bedded upside down on a shaggy boulder, or gnawed by lacerating lava jaws. Sharp torture the old man was encountering, but he held fast to his hiaqua.

"The blackness grew ever deeper and more crowded with perdition; the din more impish, demoniac, and devilish; the laughter more appalling; and the miser more and more exhausted with vain buffeting. He determined to propitiate exasperated Tamanoüs with a sacrifice. He threw into the black cylinder storm his left-handful, five strings of precious hiaqua."

"Somewhat long-winded is thy legend, Hamitchou, Great Medicine-Man of the Squallyamish," quoth I. "Why didn't the old fool drop his wampum,—shell out, as one might say,—and make tracks?"

"Well, well!" continued Hamitchou; "when the miser had thrown away his first handful of hiaqua, there was a momentary lull in elemental war, and he heard the otters puffing around him invisible. Then the storm renewed, blacker, louder, harsher, crueller than before, and over the dread undertone of the voice of Tamanoüs, tamanoüs voices again screamed, 'Ha, ha, ha, hiaqua!' and it seemed as if tamanoüs hands, or the paws of the demon otters, clutched at the miser's right-handful and tore at his shoulder and waist belts.

"So, while darkness and tempest still buffeted the hapless old man, and thrust him away from his path, and while the roaring was wickeder than the roars of tens and tens of tens of bears when ahungered they pounce upon a plain of kamas, gradually wounded and terrified he flung away string after string of hiaqua, gaining never any notice of such sacrifice, except an instant's lull of the cyclone and a puff from the invisible otters.

"The last string he clung to long, and before he threw it to be caught and whirled after its fellows, he tore off a single bunch of fifty shells. But upon this, too, the storm laid its clutches. In the final desperate struggle the old man was wounded so sternly that when he had given up his last relic of the mighty treasure, when he had thrown into the formless chaos, instinct with Tamanoüs, his last propitiatory offering, he sank and became insensible.

"It seemed a long slumber to him, but at last he awoke. The jagged moon was just paling overhead, and he heard Skai-ki, the Blue-Jay, foe to magic, singing welcome to sunrise. It was the very spot whence he started at morning.

"He was hungry, and felt for his bag of kamas and pouch of smokeleaves. There, indeed, by his side were the elk-sinew strings of the bag, and the black stone pipe-bowl,—but no bag, no kamas, no kinni kinnik. The whole spot was thick with kamas plants, strangely out of place on the mountain-side, and overhead grew a large arbutus-tree, with glistening leaves, ripe for smoking. The old man found his hardwood fire-sticks safe under the herbage, and soon twirled a light, and, nurturing it in dry grass, kindled a cheery fire. He plucked up kamas, set it to roast, and laid a store of the arbutus-leaves to dry on a flat stone.

"After he had made a hearty breakfast of the chestnut-like kamas-bulbs, and, smoking the thoughtful pipe, was reflecting on the events of yesterday, he became aware of an odd change in his condition. He was not bruised and wounded from head to foot, as he expected, but very stiff only, and as he stirred, his joints creaked like the creak of a lazy paddle upon the rim of a canoe. Skai-ki, the Blue-Jay, was singularly familiar with him, hopping from her perch in the arbutus, and alighting on his head. As he put his hand to dislodge her, he touched his scratching-stick of bone, and attempted to pass it, as usual, through his hair. The hair was matted and interlaced into a network reaching fully two ells down his back. 'Tamanoüs,' thought the old man.

"Chiefly he was conscious of a mental change. He was calm and content. Hiaqua and wealth seemed to have lost their charms for him. Tacoma, shining like gold and silver and precious stones of gayest lustre, seemed a benign comrade and friend. All the outer world was cheerful and satisfying. He thought he had never awakened to a fresher morning. He was a young man again, except for that unusual stiffness and unmelodious creaking joints. He felt no apprehension of any presence of a deputy tamanoüs, sent by Tamanoüs to do malignities upon him in the lonely wood. Great Nature had a kindly aspect, and made its divinity perceived only by the sweet notes of birds and the hum of forest life, and by a joy that clothed his being. And now he found in his heart a sympathy for man, and a longing to meet his old acquaintances down by the shores of Whulge.

"He rose, and started on the downward way, smiling, and sometimes laughing heartily at the strange croaking, moaning, cracking, and rasping of his joints. But soon motion set the lubricating valves at work, and the sockets grew slippery again. He marched rapidly, hastening out of loneliness into society. The world of wood, glade, and stream seemed to him strangely altered. Old colossal trees, firs behind which he had hidden when on the hunt, cedars under whose drooping shade he had lurked, were down, and lay athwart his path, transformed into immense mossy mounds, like barrows of giants, over which he must clamber warily, lest he sink and be half stifled in the dust of rotten wood. Had Tamanoüs been widely at work in that eventful night?—or had the spiritual change the old man felt affected his views of the outer world?

"Travelling downward, he advanced rapidly, and just before sunset came to the prairies where his lodge should be. Everything had seemed to him so totally altered, that he tarried a moment in the edge of the woods to take an observation before approaching his home. There was a lodge, indeed, in the old spot, but a newer and far handsomer one than he had left on the fourth evening before.

"A very decrepit old squaw, ablaze with vermilion and decked with countless strings of hiaqua and costly beads, was seated on the ground near the door, tending a kettle of salmon, whose blue and fragrant steam mingled pleasantly with the golden haze of sunset. She resembled his own squaw in countenance, as an ancient smoked salmon is like a newly-dried salmon. If she was indeed his spouse, she was many years older than when he saw her last, and much better dressed than the respectable lady had ever been during his miserly days.

"He drew near quietly. The bedizened dame was crooning a chant, very dolorous,—like this:

'My old man has gone, gone, gone,—
My old man to Tacoma, has gone.
To hunt the elk, he went long ago.
When will he come down, down, down,
Down to the salmon-pot and me?'

'He has come from Tacoma down, down, down,—
Down to the salmon-pot and thee,'

shouted the reformed miser, rushing forward to supper and his faithful wife."

"And how did Penelope explain the mystery?" I asked.

"If you mean the old lady," replied Hamitchou, "she was my grandmother, and I'd thank you not to call names. She told my grandfather that he had been gone many years;—she could not tell how many, having dropped her tally-stick in the fire by accident that very day. She also told him how, in despite of the entreaties of many a chief who knew her economic virtues, and prayed her to become mistress of his household, she had remained constant to the Absent, and forever kept the hopeful salmon-pot boiling for his return. She had distracted her mind from the bitterness of sorrow by trading in kamas and magic herbs, and had thus acquired a genteel competence. The excellent dame then exhibited with great complacency her gains, most of which she had put in the portable and secure form of personal ornament, making herself a resplendent magazine of valuable frippery.

"Little cared the repentant sage for such things. But he was rejoiced to be again at home and at peace, and near his own early gains of hiaqua and treasure, buried in a place of security. These, however, he no longer over-esteemed and hoarded. He imparted whatever he possessed, material treasures or stores of wisdom and experience, freely to all the land. Every dweller by Whulge came to him for advice how to chase the elk, how to troll or spear the salmon, and how to propitiate Tamanoüs. He became the Great Medicine Man of the siwashes, a benefactor to his tribe and his race.

"Within a year after he came down from his long nap on the side of Tacoma, a child, my father, was born to him. The sage lived many years, beloved and revered, and on his deathbed, long before the Boston tilicum or any blanketeers were seen in the regions of Whulge, he told this history to my father, as a lesson and a warning. My father, dying, told it to me. But I, alas! have no son; I grow old, and lest this wisdom perish from the earth, and Tamanoüs be again obliged to interpose against avarice, I tell the tale to thee, O Boston tyee. Mayest thou and thy nation not disdain this lesson of an earlier age, but profit by it and be wise."

So far Hamitchou recounted his legend without the palisades of Fort Nisqually, and motioning, in expressive pantomime, at the close, that he was dry with big talk, and would gladly wet his whistle.

[Chapter VIII, beginning at page 155 of the original publication, is entitled: "Sowee House—Loolowcan.">[

I had not long, that noon of August, from the top of La Tête, to study Tacoma, scene of Hamitchou's wild legend. Humanity forbade dalliance. While I fed my soul with sublimity, Klale and his comrades were wretched with starvation. But the summit of the pass is near. A few struggles more, Klale the plucky, and thy empty sides shall echo less drum-like. Up stoutly, my steeds; up a steep but little less than perpendicular, paw over these last trunks of the barricades in our trail, and ye have won!

So it was. The angle of our ascent suddenly broke down from ninety to fifteen, then to nothing. We had reached the plateau. Here were the first prairies. Nibble in these, my nags, for a few refreshing moments, and then on to superlative dinners in lovelier spots just beyond.

Let no one, exaggerating the joys of campaigning, with Horace's "Militia potior est," deem that there is no compensating pang among them. Is it a pleasant thing, O traveller only in dreams, envier of the voyager in reality, to urge tired, reluctant, and unfed mustangs up a mountain pass, even for their own good? In such a case a man, the humanest and gentlest, must adopt the manners of a brute. He must ply the whip, and that cruelly; otherwise, no go. At first, as he smites, he winces, for he has struck his own sensibilities; by and by he hardens himself, and thrashes without a tremor. When the cortege arrives at an edible prairie, gastronomic satisfaction will put Lethean freshness in the battered hide of every horse.

We presently turned just aside from the trail into an episode of beautiful prairie, one of a succession along the plateau at the crest of the range. At this height of about five thousand feet, the snows remain until June. In this fair, oval, forest-circled prairie of my nooning, the grass was long and succulent, as if it grew in the bed of a drained lake. The horses, undressed, were allowed to plunge and wallow in the deep herbage. Only horse heads soon could be seen, moving about like their brother hippopotami, swimming in sedges.

To me it was luxury enough not to be a whip for a time. Over and above this, I had the charm of a quiet nooning on a bank of emerald turf, by a spring, at the edge of a clump of evergreens. I took my luncheon of cold salt pork and doughy biscuit by a well of brightest water. I called in no proxy of tin cup to aid me in saluting this sparkling creature, but stooped and kissed the spring. When I had rendered my first homage thus to the goddess of the fountain, Ægle herself, perhaps, fairest of Naiads, I drank thirstily of the medium in which she dwelt. A bubbling dash of water leaped up and splashed my visage as I withdrew. Why so, sweet fountain, which I may name Hippocrene, since hoofs of Klale have caused me thy discovery? Is this a rebuff? If there ever was lover who little merited such treatment it is I. "Not so, appreciative stranger," came up in other bubbling gushes the responsive voice of Nature through sweet vibrations of the melodious fount. "Never a Nymph of mine will thrust thee back. This sudden leap of water was a movement of sympathy, and a gentle emotion of hospitality. The Naiad there was offering thee her treasure liberally, and saying that, drink as thou wilt, I, her mother Nature, have commanded my winds and sun to distil thee fresh supplies, and my craggy crevices are filtering it in the store-houses, that it may be offered to every welcome guest, pure and cool as airs of dawn. Stoop down," continued the voice, "thirsty wayfarer, and kiss again my daughter of the fountain, nor be abashed if she meets thee half-way. She knows that a true lover will never scorn his love's delicate advances."

In response to such invitation, and the more for my thirsty slices of pork, I lapped the aerated tipple in its goblet, whose stem reaches deep into the bubble laboratories. I lapped,—an excellent test of pluck in the days of Gideon son of Barak;—and why? For many reasons, but among them for this;—he who lying prone can with stout muscular gullet swallow water, will be also able to swallow back into position his heart, when in moments of tremor it leaps into his throat.

When I had lapped plenteously, I lay and let the breeze-shaken shadows smooth me into smiling mood, while my sympathies overflowed to enjoy with my horses their dinner. They fed like school-boys home for Thanksgiving, in haste lest the present banquet, too good to be true, prove Barmecide. A feast of colossal grasses placed itself at the lips of the breakfastless stud. They champed as their nature was;—Klale like a hungry gentleman,—Gubbins like a hungry clodhopper,—Antipodes like a lubberly oaf. They were laying in, according to the Hudson's Bay Company's rule, supply at this meal for five days; without such power, neither man nor horse is fit to tramp the Northwest.

I lay on the beautiful verdant bank, plucking now dextrously and now sinistrously of strawberries, that summer, climbing late to these snowy heights, had just ripened. Medical men command us to swallow twice a day one bitter pill confectioned of all disgust. Nature doses us, by no means against our will, with many sweet boluses of delight, berries compacted of acidulated, sugary spiciness. Nature, tenderest of leeches,—no bolus of hers is pleasanter medicament than her ruddy strawberries. She shaped them like Minié-balls, that they might traverse unerringly to the cell of most dulcet digestion. Over their glistening surfaces she peppered little golden dots to act as obstacles lest they should glide too fleetly over the surfaces of taste, and also to gently rasp them into keener sensitiveness. Mongers of pestled poisons may punch their pills in malodorous mortars, roll them in floury palms, pack them in pink boxes, and send them forth to distress a world of patients:—but Nature, who if she even feels one's pulse does it by a gentle pressure of atmosphere,—Nature, knowing that her children in their travels always need lively tonics, tells wind, sun, and dew, servitors of hers, clean and fine of touch, to manipulate gay strawberries, and dispose them attractively on fair green terraces, shaded at parching noon. Of these lovely fabrics of pithy pulpiness, no limit to the dose, if the invalid does as Nature intended, and plucks for himself, with fingers rosy and fragrant. I plucked of them, as far as I could reach on either side of me, and then lay drowsily reposing on my couch at the summit of the Cascade Pass, under the shade of a fir, which, outstanding from the forest, had changed its columnar structure into a pyramidal, and had branches all along its stalwart trunk, instead of a mere tuft at the top.

In this shade I should have known the tree which gave it, without looking up,—not because the sharp little spicular leaves of the fir, miniatures of that sword Rome used to open the world, its oyster, would drop and plunge themselves into my eyes, or would insert their blades down my back and scarify,—but because there is an influence and sentiment in umbrages, and under every tree its own atmosphere. Elms refine and have a graceful elegiac effect upon those they shelter. Oaks drop robustness. Mimosas will presently make a sensitive-plant of him who hangs his hammock beneath their shade. Cocoa-palms will infect him with such tropical indolence, that he will not stir until frowzy monkeys climb the tree and pelt him away to the next one. The shade of pine-trees, as any one can prove by a journey in Maine, makes those who undergo it wiry, keen, trenchant, inexhaustible, and tough.

When I had felt the influence of my fir shelter, on the edge of the wayside prairie, long enough, I became of course keen as a blade. I sprang up and called to Loolowcan, in a resinous voice, "Mamook chaco cuitan; make come horse."

Loolowcan, in more genial mood than I had known him, drove the trio out from the long grass. They came forth not with backward hankerings, but far happier quadrupeds than when they climbed the pass at noon. It was a pleasure now to compress with the knees Klale, transformed from an empty barrel with protuberant hoops, into a full elastic cylinder, smooth as the boiler of a locomotive.

"Loolowcan, my lad, my experienced guide, cur nesika moosum; where sleep we?" said I.

"Copa Sowee house,—kicuali. Sowee, olyman tyee,—memloose. Sia-a-ah mitlite;—At Sowee's camp—below. Sowee, oldman chief,—dead. It is far, far away," replied the son of Owhhigh.

Far is near, distance is annihilated this brilliant day of summer, for us recreated with Hippocrene, strawberries, shade of fir and tall snow-fed grass. Down the mountain range seems nothing after our long laborious up; "the half is more than the whole." "Lead on, Loolowcan, intelligent brave, toward the residence of the late Sowee."

More fair prairies linked themselves along the trail. From these alpine pastures the future will draw butter and cheese, pasturing migratory cattle there, when summer dries the scanty grass upon the macadamized prairies of Whulge. It is well to remind ourselves sometimes that the world is not wholly squatted over. The plateau soon began to ebb toward the downward slope. Descent was like ascent, a way shaggy and abrupt. Again the Boston hooihut intruded. My friends the woodsmen had constructed an elaborate inclined plane of very knobby corduroy. Klale sniffed at this novel road, and turned up his nose at it. He was competent to protect that feature against all the perils of stumble and fall on the trails he had been educated to travel, but dreaded grinding it on the rough bark of this unaccustomed highway. Slow-footed oxen, leaning inward and sustaining each other, like two roysterers unsteady after wassail, might clumsily toil up such a road as this, hauling up stout, white-cotton-roofed wagons, filled with the babies and Lares of emigrants; but quick-footed ponies, descending and carrying light loads of a wild Indian and an untamed blanketeer, chose rather to whisk along the aboriginal paths.

As we came to the irregular terraces after the first pitch, and scampered on gayly, I by and by heard a welcome whiz, and a dusky grouse (Tetrao obscurus) lifted himself out of the trail into the lower branches of a giant fir. I had lugged my double-barrel thus far, a futile burden, unless when it served a minatory purpose among the drunken Klalams. Now it became an animated machine, and uttered a sharp exclamation of relief after long patient silence. Down came tetrao,—down he came with satisfactory thud, signifying pounds of something not pork for supper. We bagged him joyously and dashed on.

"Kopet," whispered Loolowcan turning, with a hushing gesture, "hiu kullakullie nika nanitch;—halt, plenty birds I see." He was so eager that from under his low brows and unkempt hair his dusky eyes glared like the eyes of wild beast, studying his prey from a shadowy lair.

Dismounting, I stole forward with assassin intent, and birds, grouse, five noble ones I saw, engaged in fattening their bodies for human solace and support. I sent a shot among them. There was a flutter among the choir,—one fluttered not. At the sound of my right barrel one bird fell without rising; another rose and fell at a hint from the sinister tube. The surviving trio were distracted by mortal terror. They flew no farther than a dwarf tree hard by. I drew my revolver, thinking that there might not be time to load, and fired in a hurry at the lowermost.

"Hyas tamanoüs!" whispered Loolowcan, when no bird fell or flew,—"big magic," it seemed to the superstitious youth. Often when sportsmen miss, they claim that their gun is bewitched, and avail themselves of the sure silver bullet.

A second ball, passing with keener aim through the barrel, attained its mark. Grouse third shook off his mortal remains, and sped to heaven. The two others, contrary to rule, for I had shot the lower, fled, cowardly carrying their heavy bodies to die of cold, starvation, or old age. "The good die first,"—ay, Wordsworth! among birds this is verity; for the good are the fat, who, because of their avoirdupois, lag in flight, or alight upon lower branches and are easiest shot.

Loolowcan bagged my three trophies and added them to the first. Henceforth the thought of a grouse supper became a fixed idea with me. I dwelt upon it with even a morbid appetite. I rehearsed, in prophetic mood, the scene of plucking, the scene of roasting, that happy festal scene of eating. So immersed did I become in gastronomic revery, that I did not mind my lookout, as I dashed after Loolowcan, fearless and agile cavalier. A thrust awoke me to a sense of passing objects, a very fierce, lance-like thrust, full at my life. A wrecking snag of harsh dead wood, that projected up in the trail, struck me, and tore me half off my horse, leaving me jerked, scratched, disjointed, and shuddering. Pachydermatous leggins of buckskin, at cost of their own unity, had saved me from impalement. Some such warning is always preparing for the careless.

I soon had an opportunity to propitiate Nemesis by a humane action. A monstrous trunk lay across the trail. Loolowcan, reckless steeplechaser, put his horse at it, full speed. Gubbins, instead of going over neatly, or scrambling over cat-like, reared rampant and shied back, volte face. I rode forward to see what fresh interference of Tamanoüs was here,—nothing tamanoüs but an unexpected sorry object of a horse. A wretched castaway, probably abandoned by the exploring party, or astray from them, essaying to leap the tree, had fallen back beneath the trunk and branches, and lay there entangled and perfectly helpless. We struggled to release him. In vain. At last a thought struck me. We seized the poor beast by his tail, fortunately a tenacious member, and, heaving vigorously, towed him out of prison.

He tottered forlornly to his feet, looking about him like one risen from the dead. "How now, Caudal?" said I, baptizing him by the name of the part that saved his life; "canst thou follow toward fodder?" He debated the question with himself awhile. Solitary confinement of indefinite length, in a cramped posture, had given the poor skeleton time to consider that safety from starvation is worth one effort more. He found that there was still a modicum of life and its energy within his baggy hide. My horses seemed to impart to him some of their electricity, and he staggered on droopingly. Lucky Caudal, if life is worth having, that on that day, of all days, I should have arrived to rescue him. Strange deliverances for body and soul come to the dying. Fate sends unlooked-for succor, when horses or men despair.

Luckily for Caudal, the weak-kneed and utterly dejected, Sowee's prairie was near,—near was the prairie of Sowee, mighty hunter of deer and elk, terror of bears. There at weird night Sowee's ghost was often seen to stalk. Dyspeptics from feather-beds behold ghosts, and are terrified, but nightwalkers are but bugbears to men who have ridden from dawn to dusk of a long summer's day over an Indian trail in the mountains. I felt no fear that any incubus in the shape of a brassy-hued Indian chief would sit upon my breast that night, and murder wholesome sleep.

Nightfall was tumbling down from the zenith before we reached camp. The sweet glimmers of twilight were ousted from the forest, sternly as mercy is thrust from a darkening heart. Night is really only beautiful so far as it is not night,—that is, for its stars, which are sources of resolute daylight in other spheres, and for its moon, which is daylight's memory, realized, softened, and refined.

Night, however, had not drawn the pall of brief death over the world so thick but that I could see enough to respect the taste of the late Sowee. When he voted himself this farm, and became seized of it in the days of unwritten agrarian laws, and before patents were in vogue, he proved his intelligent right to suffrage and seizure. Here in admirable quality were the three first requisites of a home in the wilderness, water, wood, and grass. A musical rustle, as we galloped through, proved the long grass. All around was the unshorn forest. There were columnar firs making the Sowee house a hypæthral temple on a grand scale.

There had been here a lodge. A few saplings of its framework still stood, but Sowee had moved elsewhere not long ago. Wake siah memloose,—not long dead was the builder, and viator might camp here unquestioned.

Caudal had followed us in an inane, irresponsible way. Patiently now he stood, apparently waiting for farther commands from his preservers. We unpacked and unsaddled the other animals. They knew their business, namely, to bolt instantly for their pasture. Then a busy uproar of nipping and crunching was heard. Poor Caudal would not take the hint. We were obliged to drive that bony estray with blows out to the supper-field, where he stood aghast at the appetites of his new comrades. Repose and good example, however, soon had their effect, and eight equine jaws instead of six made play in the herbage.

"Alki mika mamook pire, pe nesika klatawah copa klap tsuk; now light thou a fire, and we will go find water," said Loolowcan. I struck fire,—fire smote tinder,—tinder sent the flame on, until a pyre from the world's free wood-pile was kindled. This boon of fire,—what wonder that men devised a Prometheus greatest of demigods as its discoverer? Mortals, shrinking from the responsibility of a high destiny and dreading to know how divine the Divine would have them, always imagine an avatar of some one not lower than a half-god when a gift of great price comes to the world. And fire is a very priceless and beautiful boon,—not, as most know it, in imprisonment, barred with iron, or in sooty chimneys, or in mad revolt of conflagration,—but as it grows in a flashing pyramid out in camp in the free woods, with eager air hurrying in on every side to feed its glory. In the gloom I strike metal of steel against metallic flint. From this union a child is born. I receive the young spark tenderly in warm "tipsoo," in a soft woolly nest of bark or grass tinder. Swaddled in this he thrives. He smiles; he chuckles; he laughs; he dances about, does my agile nursling. He will soon wear out his first infantile garb, so I cover him up in shelter. I feed him with digestible viands, according to his years. I give him presently stouter fare, and offer exhilarating morsels of fatness. All these the hearty youth assimilates, and grows healthily. And now I educate him to manliness, training him on great joints, shoulders, and marrowy portions. He becomes erelong a power and a friend able to requite me generously for my care. He aids me in preparing my feast, and we feast together. Afterward we talk,—Flame and I,—we think together strong and passionate thoughts of purpose and achievement. These emotions of manhood die away, and we share pensive memories of happiness missed, or disdained, or feebly grasped and torn away; regrets cover these like embers, and slowly over dead fieriness comes a robe of ashy gray.

Fire in the forest is light, heat, and cheer. When ours was nurtured to the self-sustaining point, we searched to find where the sage Sowee kept his potables. Carefully covered up in sedges was a slender supply of water, worth concealing from vulgar dabblers. Its diamond drops were hidden away so thoroughly that we must mine for them by torchlight. I held a flaring torch, while Loolowcan lay in wait for the trickle, and captured it in a tin pot. How wild he looked, that youth so frowzy by daylight, as, stooping under the tall sedges, he clutched those priceless sparkles.

Upon the carte du jour at Restaurant Sowee was written Grouse. "How shall we have them?" said I, cook and convive, to Loolowcan, marmiton and convive. "One of these cocks of the mountain shall be fried, since gridiron is not," said I to myself, after meditation. "Two shall be spitted, and roasted; and, as Azrael may not want us before breakfast to-morrow, the fourth shall go on the carte de dejeuner."

"O Pork! what a creature thou art!" continued I, in monologue, cutting neat slices of that viand with my bowie-knife, and laying them fraternally, three in a bed, in the frying-pan. "Blessed be Moses! who forbade thee to the Jews, whereby we, of freer dispensations, heirs of all the ages, inherit also pigs more numerous and bacon cheaper. O Pork! what could campaigners do without thy fatness, thy leanness, thy saltness, thy portableness?"

Here Loolowcan presented me the three birds plucked featherless as Plato's man. The two roasters we planted carefully on spits before a sultry spot of the fire. From a horizontal stick, supported on forked stakes, we suspended by a twig over each roaster an automatic baster, an inverted cone of pork, ordained to yield its spicy juices to the wooing flame, and drip bedewing on each bosom beneath. The roasters ripened deliberately, while keen and quick fire told upon the fryer, the first course of our feast. Meanwhile I brewed a pot of tea, blessing Confucius for that restorative weed, as I had blessed Moses for his abstinence from porkers.

Need I say that the grouse was admirable, that everything was delicious, and the Confucian weed first chop? Even a scouse of mouldy biscuit met the approval of Loolowcan. Feasts cooked under the greenwood tree, and eaten by their cooks after a triumphant day of progress, are sweeter than the conventional banquets of languid Christendom. After we had paid our duty to the brisk fryer and the rotund roaster grouse, nothing remained but bones to propitiate Sowee, should he find short commons in Elysium, and wander back to his lodge, seeking what he might devour.

All along the journey I had been quietly probing the nature of Loolowcan, my most intimate associate thus far among the unalloyed copper-skins. Chinook jargon was indeed but a blunt probe, yet perhaps delicate enough to follow up such rough bits of conglomerate as served him for ideas. An inductive philosopher, tracing the laws of developing human thought in corpore viti of a frowzy savage, finds his work simple,—the nuggets are on the surface. Those tough pebbles known to some metaphysicians as innate ideas, can be studied in Loolowcan in their process of formation out of instincts.

Number one is the prize number in Loolowcan's lottery of life. He thinks of that number; he dreams of it alone. When he lies down to sleep, he plots what he will do in the morning with his prize and his possession; when he wakes, he at once proceeds to execute his plots. Loolowcan knows that there are powers out of himself; rights out of himself he does not comprehend, or even conceive. I have thus far been very indulgent to him, and treated him republicanly, mindful of the heavy mesne profits for the occupation of a continent, and the uncounted arrears of blood-money owed by my race to his; yet I find no trace of gratitude in my analysis of his character. He seems to be composed, selfishness, five hundred parts;—nil admirari coolness, five hundred parts;—a well-balanced character, and perhaps one not likely to excite enthusiasm in others. I am a steward to him; I purvey him also a horse; when we reach the Dalles, I am to pay him for his services;—but he is bound to me by no tie of comradery. He has caution more highly developed than any quadruped I have met, and will not offend me lest I should resign my stewardship, retract Gubbins, refuse payment, discharge my guide, and fight through the woods, where he sees I am no stranger, alone. He certainly merits a "teapot" for his ability in guidance. He has memory and observation unerring; not once in all our intricate journey have I found him at fault in any fact of space or time. He knows "each lane and every ally green" here, accurately as Comus knew his "wild wood."

Moral conceptions exist only in a very limited degree for this type of his race. Of God he knows somewhat less than the theologians; that is, he is in the primary condition of uninquisitive ignorance, not in the secondary, of inquisitive muddle. He has the advantage of no elaborate system of human inventions to unlearn. He has no distinct fetichism. None of the North American Indians have, in the accurate sense of the term; their nomad life and tough struggle with instructive Nature in her roughness save them from such elaborate fetichism as may exist in more indolent climes and countries.

Loolowcan has his tamanoüs. It is Talipus, the Wolf, a "hyas skookoom tamanoüs, a very mighty demon," he informs me. He does not worship it; that would interfere with his devotions to his real deity, Number One. It, in return, does him little service. If he met Talipus, object of his superstition, on a fair morning, he would think it a good omen; if on a sulky morning, he might be somewhat depressed, but would not on that account turn back, as a Roman brave would have done on meeting the matinal wolf. In fact, he keeps Talipus, his tamanoüs, as a kind of ideal hobby, very much as a savage civilized man entertains a pet bulldog or a tame bear, a link between himself and the rude, dangerous forces of nature. Loolowcan has either chosen his protector according to the law of likeness, or, choosing it by chance, has become assimilated to its characteristics. A wolfish youth is the protégé of Talipus,—an unfaithful, sinister, cannibal-looking son of a horse-thief. Wolfish likewise is his appetite; when he asks me for more dinner, and this without stint or decorum he does, he glares as if, grouse failing, pork and hard-tack gone, he could call to Talipus to send in a pack of wolves incarnate, and pounce with them upon me. A pleasant companion this for lamb-like me to lie down beside in the den of the late Sowee. Yet I do presently, after supper and a pipe, and a little jargoning in Chinook with my Wolf, roll into my blankets, and sleep vigorously, lulled by the gratifying noise of my graminivorous horses cramming themselves with material for leagues of lope to-morrow.

No shade of Sowee came to my slumbers with warning against the wolf in guise of a Klickatat brave. I had no ghostly incubus to shake off, but sprang up recreate in body and soul. Life is vivid when it thus awakes. To be is to do.

And to-day much is to be done. Long leagues away, beyond a gorge of difficulty, is the open rolling hill country, and again far beyond are the lodges of the people of Owhhigh. "To-day," said Loolowcan, "we must go copa nika ilihee, to my home, to Weenas."

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.